Cat to the Dogs (9 page)

S
EATED ON
the Victorian couch between Dirken and Newlon, Cara Ray looked like a porcelain doll, her short pink skirt revealing a long expanse of slim, tanned leg as she dished out the giggles and charm.

If I were a human person,
Dulcie thought jealously,
I'd have legs even nicer. And I wouldn't be a cheap hussy.
From the fence, the cats enjoyed front-row seats to Cara Ray's brazen display—she was the center of attention. They watched, fascinated, as she drew the Greenlaw men in like ants to syrup. Only Sam, Cara Ray's friend from the Oak Breeze Motel, sat across the room as if he didn't much care for her company.

The half dozen big-boned Greenlaw women watched Cara Ray's performance with quiet anger. The dozen Greenlaw children who hunkered on the floor between the chairs of their elders watched their mothers, watched Cara Ray, and smirked behind their hands. The children, Dulcie thought, were amazingly obedient and quiet tonight, nothing like the way the little brats shouted and pushed and broke things in the village shops. Near the hearth,
beside old Pedric, Lucinda sat quietly, too. The cats couldn't read her expression.

Of those on board ship when Shamas drowned, only Winnie and George Chambers were not present. Harper had told Clyde he talked with them twice. Their answers to his questions were the same as they had given Seattle police, that they had not awakened that night, that they were heavy sleepers, had slept through the storm, did not know that Shamas had drowned until the next morning.

But tonight was story night and the cats forgot questions and police business as Dirken rose to tell his tale, standing quietly before the fire waiting for silence to touch the crowded room. But outdoors, around the cats, the breeze quickened. Wind whipped the parlor curtains and a gray-haired Greenlaw woman rose to shut the windows.

A series of slams, the windows were down, and the cats could hear nothing; Dirken's voice was lost.

“Come on,” Dulcie hissed, “before they shut the back door, too. Maybe the screen's unlatched.”

“And get shut in with that bunch?”

But he dropped from the fence and was across the weedy grass ahead of Dulcie and in through the screen, leading the way through the kitchen behind two stout Greenlaw women who stood at the sink rinsing dishes.

In the shadows of the dining room beneath the walnut buffet, they gained a fine view of table and chair legs, of human legs and a child here and there tucked among their elders' feet. Neither Joe nor Dulcie liked the assault of so many human smells and so much loud talk and louder laughter; but who knew what the evening might offer?

Before the fire, Dirken looked smug and full of himself. His red hair hung over his collar in a shaggy ruff; his blue shirt fit tight over muscles that indicated he worked out regularly—prompting Dulcie to wonder if he had installed, in his travel
trailer, some sort of gym equipment, to keep in shape while he took his little jaunts.

All the clan lived in new and luxurious trailers or RVs when they were on the road, which, Dulcie gathered from Lucinda's remarks, was more than half the year. What these people did for a living wasn't clear. If they traveled on business, what kind of business? Some kind of sales, Lucinda had told Wilma. But that was all she told her.

When the Greenlaw clan first arrived at the Moonwatch Trailer Park, the dozen nearly new travel vehicles checking in as a group, the proprietor had spoken to Max Harper, and Harper had checked them out. Since then, Dulcie had seen the police cruising that area on several occasions. She didn't know what such a large traveling group might add up to, to alert Max Harper, but she didn't laugh at him.

Standing before the hearth, Dirken waited. The parlor was hushed. The family, usually so violent and loud, so rude, was quiet now, and gentle—as if the tradition of story time touched powerful emotions, drawing them together.

“What shall it be?” Dirken said. “What will you hear? ‘Paddy's Bride'? ‘The Open Grave'?”

“Tell ‘Drugen Jakey,'” Lucinda said softly. “Tell ‘Drugen Jakey' again?”

“Yes,” said old Pedric, laying his hand on hers. “‘Drugen Jakey' fits these hills.”

Dirken looked at them with annoyance.

But then he masked his frown, whatever the cause. His voice softened, his manner and stance gentled, his voice embracing the old-country speech. “That tale be told twice before,” he told Pedric.

“Tell it,” a young nephew spoke up. “That tale belongs well to these coastal hills.”

“Ah,” Dirken said. “The green, green hills. Do they draw you, those rocky hills?” His laugh was evil. No one else laughed.
Lucinda looked startled. Pedric watched quietly, clasping his wrinkled hands together, his lined face a study in speculation.

“All right, then,” Dirken said, “‘Drugen Jakey' it will be. Well, see, there was a passel of ghosts down the village coomb, and worse than ghosts…”

Standing tall before the fire, his red hair catching the flame's glow, his booted feet planted solidly, Dirken seemed to draw all light to himself.

“No man could graze his beasts down there for fear of th' underworld beings. Th' spirits, if they rose there and touched his wee cattle, wo'd send them flop over dead. Dead as th' stones in th' field. Devil ghosts, hell's ghost, all manner of hell's critters…”

In the silent room, cousins and aunts and nephews cleaved to Dirken's words, as rapt as if they had never before heard the ancient myth.

“Oh yes, all was elder there…” Dirken said, and this was not a comfortable tale; Dirken's story led his listeners straight down into a world of black and falling caverns that, though they excited Dulcie, made her shiver, too. Joe Grey didn't want to hear this story; it made him flatten his ears and bare his teeth, made him want to scorch across the room and bolt out the nearest window.

But as the tale rolled over them all, painting the deep netherworld, Lucinda looked increasingly excited. Soon she seemed hardly able to be still, drinking in the nephew's words as he led his listeners down and down among lost mountains and ragged clefts and enchanted fields that had never seen the sun, never known stars or moon.

Speaking the old words, Dirken seemed caught, himself, in the story, though he might have told it perhaps a hundred times—his broad Irish face gleaming as he painted for them a Selkie prince who, taking the form of a ramping stallion, charmed three human girls and led them down from this world through a clear, cold lake to waters that had never reflected earth's sky. He spoke of griffons, of harpies, of a lamia rising from the flames of hell; he described so
convincingly the hell-beasts that soon Dulcie, too, wanted to escape. Dirken spoke of upper-world fields and hills quaking and opening to that cavernous land. The stories made Joe Grey swallow back a snarl, made Dulcie back deeper beneath the buffet, hunched and tense.

It's only a story,
she told herself.
Even if it were true, this place and this time are safe. Those stories, those times are ancient, they are gone. Whatever might once have lain beneath these hills, that was olden times, that isn't now. Whatever strange tie that Joe and I might have to such a place, it can't touch us here in this modern day, can't reach us now.

And that knowledge both reassured and saddened her. Crouched in the shadows beneath Lucinda's buffet, she felt a sense of mourning for her own empty past.

She had no certain history such as the Greenlaws knew. No real, sure knowledge of the generations that had come before her. The stories she had adopted as her own, from the Celts and Egyptians, were tales she had taken from books. She could not be certain they were hers, not the same as if the mother she had never known had given them to her.

If you don't know the stories of your own past,
Dulcie thought sadly,
what can you cling to, when you feel alone? If you don't have a family history to tell you who you are, everything flies apart.

It was when the storytelling had ended and trays of sandwiches were brought out from the kitchen with pots of tea and coffee, and everyone was milling about, that the cats saw Cara Ray rise and move away through the crowd, through the kitchen, and out to the backyard. They followed her, winding between chair legs and under the kitchen table and swiftly out through the screen door.

Crouched beside the back porch, they watched Newlon come out, too, furtively looking about. He saw Cara Ray, a dark shadow standing by the far fence, and approached her through the weedy yard. Cara Ray turned away stiffly, not as if she were waiting for Newlon, but as if she didn't want him there. When he moved close
to her, she pushed him aside so hard he lost his balance and half fell against the fence.

“Leave me alone, Newlon. Stay away from me.”

“What did I do, Cara Ray? You were all sweetness, there in the parlor.”

“Only in front of the others, so they wouldn't…Stay away, Newlon. And stay away from Lucinda. You didn't need to come here.”

“Of course I needed to come. On the boat, you…Shamas is dead, Cara Ray. Now we can…”

“I told you, Newlon, leave me alone. I don't want to see you. Do you want me to go to the police?” she said, glancing toward the house. “Do you want me to tell them how Shamas died?”

“What would you tell them, Cara Ray?”

“You might be surprised.”

The cats, crouched in a tangle of dead weeds, listened with interest but drew back when the back door opened again and Dirken stepped out, moving through the dark yard as if he knew exactly where Cara Ray would be standing.

“Go on, Newlon. Dirken won't like to find you here.”

“But I…But Cara Ray…”

“Go on, Newlon.” And, watching Newlon slip obediently away, Cara Ray smiled as lethally as a pit viper coiled to strike.

“I
DON'T
like to give you advice,” Joe told Clyde from atop the back fence, “but dogs really don't respond very well to…”

Clyde looked up from the ragged lawn where he was trying to make Selig sit at heel. “Of course you like to give me advice. When have you ever been shy about laying your biased feline opinions on me?” Selig, in response to Clyde's command, lay on his back, waving his paws in the air.

“So do it your way,” Joe said, amused.

Clyde turned his back, giving the pup his full attention. “Up-Sit,” he told Selig.

Selig wriggled and whined.

Clyde jerked the lead. Selig flipped over onto his feet and danced in a circle around Clyde, leaping to slurp his tongue across Clyde's nose.

Silently Joe watched the little display of superior human intelligence.

Clyde turned to glower at him. “Shut up, Joe, and go away.”

“I didn't say a word. But I can see that you're right. You don't need my advice. Anyone can tell you're doing wonders with that
puppy. I'd say you have absolutely no peer as a dog trainer. In fact—”

“Can it, Joe. The truth is, he's just too young to train. He's still a baby. In a few months when he's older, he'll—”

“In a few months when he's older, if he keeps on playing with you and ignoring your commands, he'll be a hundred times harder to deal with.”

Clyde sighed.

“For one thing, he'll be twice as heavy, twice as hard to lift when he pulls that stuff. What you ought to do, is—”

“You're going to hand out advice whether I want it or not. You can never keep your opinions—”

“You're losing him, Clyde. You're losing him before you have a good beginning. You can't train a puppy like this—you're going to make him untrainable.”

“And how do you know so much? What makes a mangy tomcat an authority on dog training?”

“I'm an animal. I know how an animal's mind works. Cat or dog. You're not thinking like a puppy. You just—”

Clyde stepped closer to the fence, fixing Joe with an enraged stare. “You are an expert in every facet of life. You not only read the editorial page and treat me to your learned interpretations, you are now a dog-training expert. To say nothing of your unmitigated conceit in furnishing the law-enforcement officers of this community with your invaluable consultation.”

“Can't you move on past that incident? You've been chewing on it for days.” Joe glanced around at the neighbors' houses. All the windows were blank, the yards empty; but he kept his voice low. “What was I supposed to do? The guy's lying dead in his car, brake fluid dripping all over the place from a brake line that was cut as straight as if it had been sliced with a meat cleaver, and I'm supposed to walk away and say nothing?

“I hear a second car on the highway, hear it honk its horn just before the skid, and there are no other witnesses that I know of,
and just because I'm a cat, I'm supposed to withhold that information from the law.

“Well, thank you very much, Clyde, but I don't think so. And as to the dog training, if you're so stiff-necked you can't accept a little friendly advice when it's offered in a kindly manner, then screw it. Go ahead and ruin a good dog!”

Selig, driven to madness by the lack of attention and his need to play, reared up against the fence, drawing his claws down the wood in long gouges—knowing that if he kept at Clyde long enough, Clyde's ridiculous attempt at lessons would end and they'd have a nice roughhouse, rolling in the grass. Leaping at Clyde, raking at his arm and cheek, Selig left four long red welts down the side of Clyde's face, narrowly missing Clyde's eye, all the time barking with excitement into Clyde's left ear. Joe imagined Clyde's eardrum throbbing and thickening from the onslaught of those powerful sound waves. Clyde whacked the pup across the nose with the folded leash, his face red with pain, anger, and embarrassment, and his cheek bleeding.

Joe said no word.

“All right,” Clyde shouted, tossing the leash at the tomcat. “If you're so damned smart, you train him!” And he spun around and slammed into the house.

Joe stared down at the leash lying in the grass. Selig began happily to chew it, working the good leather into his back incisors and gnawing with relish, his brown eyes rolling up to Joe, filled with deep satisfaction.

Joe considered taking the leash away from the pup and settling him down to a lying position with a sharp command and a few claws.

But he'd only make Clyde more angry, and more out of control.

And what good, for Clyde, if
he
, Joe Grey, trained the pup? What would Clyde learn?

A cat had to balance his willingness to help humankind with the knowledge that people must learn to do things for themselves.

After all, Clyde
had
bought a highly recommended dog-training book, and had actually read it. He had registered for, and attended two sessions of the dog-training class that Charlie insisted on—though so far, nothing seemed to have sunk in.

All Clyde did was baby the pups, laugh when they acted silly, and get mad when they didn't mind him. The trouble with Clyde was, he was a pushover. He wanted the puppies to love him, he wanted to play with them and have fun.

If he'd just figure out how to make learning the best game of all, he could teach them anything. If he could make those babies love their obedience routines, he wouldn't have a problem.

Trotting along the top of the fence to the maple tree that had become Dulcie's second home, Joe stuck his nose in among the leaves.

Dulcie, curled up atop the fence, was glued to the scene at the Greenlaw house like ticks to a hound's ear. The sporadic hammering he'd been hearing all afternoon came from a second-story dormer, where Dirken, perched on a tall ladder, was replacing some siding, nailing on the boards none too evenly. Joe nudged her. “You want to hunt? It's getting cool. The rabbits…”

She shook her head, watching Dirken. “He ripped the siding off and looked all around inside with a flashlight. There's a dead space in there, I think it goes under the attic. Those boards he took off, they're maybe a little bit soft, but not really rotted. I had a look—until he chased me away.” Dulcie smiled. “I don't think Dirken likes cats.

“Anyway, that siding's no worse than the rest of the house.”

She glanced at Joe, saw his expression, and her eyes widened. “Okay, so I'm hanging out here too much. So come on,” she said softly. “Let's hunt. Whatever he's looking for, I guess he didn't find it.” She gave him a sweet, green-eyed smile. “Come on, Joe. Let's go catch a rabbit.” And she fled along the fence, dropped down into the next yard, and led Joe a chase through the village and up the tree-shaded median of Ocean, slowing at the cross
streets, racing across the park above the Highway One tunnel and up into the hills.

There, among the tall, dense grasses, they killed and feasted, reveling in warm blood—for a few hours, indulging their wild, pure natures, forgetting the tedious intricacies of civilization and the trials of the human lives that touched them. Racing across the hills, madly, deliciously dodging and leaping, they came to ground at dusk in the ruins of an old barn and curled up together for a nap, daring any fox or raccoon to approach them.

But just before dawn they shrugged on again the cares of civilized life. Trotting home, they indulged in a detour up the roof of the Blankenship house and heard, through the open window, Mama talking to black-and-white Chappie, whom Dulcie had brought to her when he was a kitten. Chappie was grown now and handsome. Mama talked, but Chappie didn't reply; nor could he, except with soft, questioning mews.
A good thing,
Dulcie thought,
that he's just an everyday cat. If he
could
talk, Mama wouldn't let him get in a word.
Leaving the Blankenship house, they fled through the village to Jolly's alley—a lovely example of civilization, the brick paving regularly scrubbed, the stained-glass windows of the little shops all polished, the jasmine vine neatly trimmed and sweet-scented, and the gourmet offerings always fresh, set out for village cats.

There they breakfasted on Jolly's cold prime rib, leftover shrimp cocktail, and a dab of Beluga caviar; and it was not until the next night that Joe's opinion about dog training was vindicated, that Max Harper gave Clyde exactly the same advice, word for word, that Joe Grey had given him.

Joe was sauntering up the back steps to the dog door when he heard dog claws scrabbling inside, on the linoleum, and Harper's angry voice. “Get down! Stop that!” There was a
yip
, and puppy claws skidded across the kitchen floor.

Pushing inside to the heady smell of broiling hamburgers, Joe paused in the laundry, where old Rube and the three cats were taking refuge.

The kitchen was alive with the two gamboling pups rearing and bouncing like wild mustangs crazy on loco weed. Max Harper sat at the kitchen table, his long legs tucked out of the way, observing the enthusiastic youngsters in much the same way he might watch a gang of hophead street kids tearing up his jail.

Harper did not hate dogs. Harper loved dogs. When his wife, Millie, was alive they always had several German shepherds around their small ranch.

But Harper's dogs, like his horses, were well mannered, carefully and patiently trained. As Joe stepped into the kitchen, Harper was saying, “I don't mean to tell you your business, Damen. But these young dogs need a bit of work.”

Joe turned away, hiding a grin.

“They're growing pretty fast,” Harper said. “The bigger they get, the harder they're going to be, to—”

Clyde turned from the stove. His expression stopped Max.

“You don't want my opinion?”

Clyde said nothing.

“Well, of course you're right. They're your pups, you don't need to be told how to handle them.” He gave Clyde a long, droll stare. “I'm sure you'll work it out—find homes for them before they tear down the walls.”

“They're only puppies, Max. Don't be so critical. You sound just like—like
Charlie
,” Clyde said hastily, glancing down at Joe. “Charlie says that stuff.” He took a long swallow of beer. “They're just puppies. The vet says they're only four or five months old. Give them time, they'll settle down.”

“You're saying they're too young to train.”

“They're just babies!” Clyde repeated.

“And already as big as full-grown pointers. If you don't do something now, before they get any larger, they'll be completely out of hand. If you don't mind my saying, what you ought to do is…”

Clyde banged a plate of sliced onions onto the table, slammed
down bottles of catsup and mustard, and dropped two split buns into the toaster.

Joe dared not make a sound. Laughter stuck in his throat like a giant hair ball. He watched Hestig rear up to smell the grilling hamburgers, watched Clyde drag the pups out to the backyard and shove the plywood barrier across the dog door. Clyde turned to look at Harper.

“Wilma says you were asking her some questions about Shamas Greenlaw's relatives. What are you working on?”

“Simple curiosity,” Harper said shortly.

Clyde raised an eyebrow.

“For the last week or so, we've had a rash of shoplifting. Petty stuff.”

“The past week,” Clyde said.

“About the same length of time that Shamas's relatives have been camped up at the Moonwatch. I'm just a bit curious.”

“Same kind of curiosity that took you sliding down Hellhag Canyon the other night.”

“What's this, some kind of cross-examination?”

Clyde just looked at him.

“That trip down the canyon was well worth the trouble,” Harper said.

Clyde said nothing.

“I got a phone tip. Okay?”

Clyde's gaze flickered.

The toaster popped the buns up. Clyde snatched them out and began busily to butter them.

Harper sipped his beer, watching Clyde. “Maybe I didn't give you all the details. The night I went down the canyon, I get down to the wreck, my torchlight picks out a couple of scrape marks in the earth, where my men hadn't stepped.”

Clyde dished up the burgers and put them on the table. Harper reached for the mustard. “There were pawprints on top of the scrapes. Big pawprints. And a small set of prints, like maybe a…
squirrel.”

“You saw animal prints,” Clyde said.

“On top the animal prints was the clear print of a jogging shoe.”

“So someone went down the canyon. People go down there to hike. Naturally a hiker would be curious, seeing a wrecked car, particularly a vintage Corvette. Pity, to wreck a nice car like that.”

“To say nothing of getting dead in the process,” Harper said dryly.

“So you found a shoe print,” Clyde said with less rancor. “And…?”

“Portions of the same print leading to the brake line, and two going away from it. Fragments, but enough to show a grid.”

Clyde put down his hamburger and paid attention.

“Several of the prints had been stepped on by the diamond pattern of my men's boots—both those men wear the same brand of boots. Someone besides my men was down there,” Harper said, “just after the wreck. First, some kind of animals came prowling, directly after the wreck. Then a man wearing jogging shoes—those sets of prints were laid down before my men arrived—and my men were on the scene not ten minutes after the accident.”

“I don't understand what you're saying.”

Harper looked hard at Clyde. “I'm saying that the brake line could have been switched after the wreck. That there's evidence it may have been switched. Why are you so defensive?”

“Why would I be defensive?”

Harper shrugged and sipped his beer. “Maybe those two pups belonged to the dead man. That would explain why they were roaming around Hellhag Hill where you said you found them. Or maybe they belonged to the guy in the jogging shoes, maybe they followed him down the hill, were milling around while he switched the brake line.”