Cat Bearing Gifts (6 page)

6

C
ROUCHED HIGH UP
the rocky slide, having crept into a dark cavity between two jutting boulders, Kit shifted from paw to paw listening to the coyotes yipping back among the woods, and they sounded more focused now and intent. Nervously she watched the road below for the first glimpse of Clyde and Ryan's red king cab. Flares glowed along the narrow highway, those nearest to the slide reflecting sparks of light against the wrecked trucks. How lonely the night was, now that the medics had taken Lucinda and Pedric away. Who would look out for them and sign papers at the hospital, if Lucinda fainted from the pain of her shoulder, if Pedric passed out from the concussion? Who would make phone calls to their own doctor and to their friends, who would make sure that everything possible was being done to help them?

Ryan and Clyde will,
she thought, trying to ease her worries. Down below her on the highway, even the two CHP cars looked lonely, one parked to the north of the rock slide, one to the south. She could hear their police radios' static mumbling and could smell coffee from their thermoses, each man cosseted in his small electronic realm, maybe talking back and forth on their cell phones as they waited for the wreckers and then the earthmovers to come and clear the highway.

She thought about their nice new Lincoln—a used one, but new to them and the first car Lucinda and Pedric had bought in ten years. The Lincoln gone, with all their beautiful purchases for their home and for Christmas. And Kate's treasure gone. Those men had a fortune hidden in the door panels, but they didn't know that. Maybe they wouldn't discover what they'd stolen, she thought hopefully.

Or do they know? Somehow, in San Francisco, did they find out what Kate had, did they spy on her, and then follow us here, follow us down Highway One?

Not likely,
she thought
. I'm letting my imagination run.
But,
she thought
, will they, for some reason of their own, remove the door panels anyway, and find Kate's treasure there?

Whatever they did, they were sure to root around in the glove compartment, find the car registration with Lucinda and Pedric's address, and they already had the house key, right there on the chain with the car keys.

But why would they go to Molena Point? They were probably headed miles away in the stolen Lincoln, maybe away from the coast where the cops might not be looking for them yet. Above her, the coyotes had eased nearer, through the trees, muttering among themselves. At a faint yip she crouched lower. They'd soon catch her scent, if they hadn't already, and come snuffling down among the rocks, hungry and tracking her.

If the beasts attacked, those two cops down there wouldn't help her. Why would they? A cat screaming in the night, they'd think it a wild cat, maybe hunting or mating, all a part of nature. All part of a world in which they had no call to interfere. How long before help
would
come, before she saw the lights of Clyde and Ryan's truck approaching up the road? It seemed forever since she'd called them. Hunkering down between the rocks, she stared up at the vast night sky, stared until the wheeling stars turned her dizzy, and made her feel so incredibly small. Tracing their endless sweep, she couldn't conceive of anything so huge that it went on forever.

What was
she
, then, in this vastness? Forgetting the innate cat creed that made each individual cat
know
that he was the center of all else, Kit thought, at that moment, that she was less than nothing, a speck of dust, a pinprick.

Except, I have nine lives to live, and that is not
nothing.

And to a hungry coyote I'm something. I might be nothing in the vastness of time and space, but I'm something to those hungry mothers.

But then she was ashamed of her fear.
What if, right now, no one knew I was here, no one in all the world was coming to help me? What would I do, then? I've rambled all over on my own, I grew up alone without humans to help me, and ignored by the other clowder cats. I made out all right, then. I always outsmarted the coyotes, I didn't cower, then, shivering like a silly rabbit. So what's the big deal, now? I'll just hunker down here between the boulders where they can't reach me, and damn well bloody them if they try.

But then she thought
, Maybe I have more to lose now. More than I did when I was a harebrained youngster wandering alone. Now I have Lucinda and Pedric, I have all my friends, cat and human, I'm part of the human world now, as I never dreamed could happen. And best of all, I have Pan. I can't die now in the mouth of some slavering predator, and lose what we have together.

From the moment she'd spied Pan up on the cliffs, heading for the windy shore searching for his father, she'd never doubted they were meant for each other, never doubted it even if, sometimes, their arguing grew volatile.
We always make up,
she thought with a little cat smile, and making up was so nice
. No
, she thought,
I don't mean to check out of this world
now, in the jaws of some slobbering coyote. Screw the damn coyotes.

Listening with renewed disdain to the beasts' yodeling, she backed deeper down between the rocks where she could lash out in safety, where they, if they tried to reach her, would meet only slashing claws. Curling up in a little ball, she deliberately made herself purr, and in a more sensible feline mind-set she imagined herself, as was proper to a cat, the very center of the vast universe.
She
was the center of all time and all space, one small and perfect cat, the universe whirling around her in endless veneration. This was cat-think, even nonspeaking cats knew in their hearts this assurance, and it made her feel infinitely better. Soon she felt whole again. Sheltered deep down among the rocks, too deep for a prying nose or reaching paw, Kit smiled to herself, and she slept.

B
UT TO
P
AN,
tonight, the universe seemed unruly and fierce as he hurried from the last roof down a pine tree, and across the Greenlaws' dark yard. Scrambling up Kit's oak tree to her tree house, clawing up over the edge, he already knew she wasn't there, her scent was old, mixed with the aged smell of feathers from a bird she had consumed weeks ago. The high-roofed aerie was empty, its cedar pillars pale against the night, Kit's tangle of cushions abandoned, crumpled together and half hidden by browning oak leaves.

Looking back along the oak branches to the big house, he saw no light in any window. There was no sound, and no lingering whiff of supper. No faintest scent of exhaust from the empty driveway as if the Greenlaws had only now returned and perhaps already gone to bed, as if maybe Kit would be tucked up under the covers between them.

Maybe they're on their way. Maybe they stopped for supper along the coast, and will be here soon. Sand dabs and abalone
,
and Kit's making a pig of herself
. Trying to reassure himself, he crept at last onto Kit's cushions. Burrowing among the leaves and pillows, he lay on his belly watching the street below, his whole body rigid with waiting and with his lingering sense of danger. He was so tense he couldn't rest; soon he rose again and began to pace, his heart filled with Kit's fear, his belly churning with her uncertainty and loneliness. He was pacing and fussing when the sound of leaves crumpled in the yard below by approaching paws brought his fur up, sent him peering over the edge, swallowing back a growl.

E
ARLIER THAT EVENING,
two blocks up the hill from where Pan would spin his whispered magic for little Tessa Kraft, Joe Grey and Dulcie had slipped down through Emmylou's ragged yard, departing the stone shack. Over the past weeks, whenever they found its two scruffy occupants absent, they had searched the fusty room, pawing behind whatever boards the men had loosened, sniffing the old stone wall so long concealed there. Early on, when the men first moved secretly into the stone shack, the cats, spying through the dirty window, had watched them searching and had pressed their noses to the glass wondering what could be of such interest, wondering why two tramps would tear the siding from the walls, removing it board by board and digging into the concrete behind, lifting out loose stones. What were they looking for?

What the cats had found was the oily smell of money, old paper bills, sour with mildew, but no money was there now in those spidery recesses. From the size and shape of the concentrated scent, they were certain thick packets of old bills had lain there. Hidden away for how long? Looked like the men hadn't finished searching, one whole wall was still boarded over. The cats took turns, tabby Dulcie crouched on the windowsill watching the woods and the weedy driveway below, while Joe Grey sniffed and poked behind the loose boards, where rocks were loose or missing. Was this Sammie's money, that had been hidden here? Did Emmylou know about it? In the six months since she'd inherited the place and moved in, they'd never once seen her near the stone hut.

It was Dulcie who first discovered the men slipping down through the woods and into the stone house carrying two grocery bags, a loaf of bread sticking out. She had been sunning herself on Emmylou's roof, deeply absorbed in composing a poem, when their stealthy approach made her fur go rigid.

“They've broken in,” she'd said to Joe later. “Emmylou can't know they're there, she doesn't go up there, she's said nothing to Ryan though Ryan has been helping her with the lumber for her renovation.” They were about to pass the word, see that it got back to Emmylou through human channels, when Joe saw the men as he was hunting rats in the yard below. From the looks of the smaller man, and from descriptions he'd heard, he thought that was Sammie's brother.

“Why would he be so secretive?” Dulcie said. “Why wouldn't Emmylou welcome him, Sammie's own brother?”

“Let's wait a while, and watch them.”

“But . . .”

“Emmylou's perfectly capable of taking care of herself,” Joe said. “You've seen her swing that sledgehammer, breaking up those concrete steps.” Emmylou was tall, well muscled, despite her slim build and gray hair. “Besides, when she talked about Birely she made him out a timid soul, easygoing. Not like someone who'd make trouble.”

“Humans don't always see others truly,” Dulcie said with suspicion. They'd waited and watched, and of course the minute the men went out, they'd tossed the place.

Not much to toss, in the one room. An overflowing trash bag, half a loaf of stale bread, seven cans of red beans, dirty clothes thrown in the corner beside a pair of sleeping bags that were deeply stained and overripe with human odor, the few boards that had not yet been nailed back against the rock wall, and five loosened stones lying beside them. But tonight, something was off, tonight the room seemed abandoned. The sleeping bags were in the same exact position as when they'd last come in, but the two greasy pillows and the extra blankets had been taken away, and when they prowled the room there was no fresh scent of the men, even their ripe smell was old and fading. The canned beans were gone, too, the only food was three slices of bread gone blue with mold in the package. Dulcie said, “Is their old truck still down in the shed?”

There was no way to tell except by smell, no way to see into the shed, not the tiniest crack in or under its solid door, which fit snugly into its molding. When they trotted down the steps to investigate, there was no recent scent of exhaust. Any trace of tire marks in the gravelly dirt had been scuffed clean by the wind.

“Maybe they're having a little vacation,” Joe said, “hitting the homeless jungles for a change of scene. But why did they leave their sleeping bags?”

“I would have left them, too,” Dulcie said with disgust.

Trotting down through Emmylou's weedy yard, they'd scrambled up to the roofs of the small old cottages in the neighborhood below. Leaping from house to house, trotting across curled and broken shingles, they'd moved on down the hill until Dulcie, quiet and preoccupied, left Joe, heading away home to her own hearth. To her white-haired housemate and, Joe suspected, to Wilma's computer. Watching her gallop away, her tabby-striped tail lashing, Joe knew well where Dulcie's mind was. The minute she sailed through her cat door she'd head for the lighted screen, where she'd be lost the rest of the night, caught up in the new and amazing world she'd discovered, in the secret world of the poet.

7

I
T WAS EARLIER
in the year, during that unusual February that brought snow to the village, when Joe found Dulcie in the nighttime library sitting on Wilma's desk, the pale light of Wilma's work computer glowing around her. When Dulcie turned to look down at him, the expression on her face was incredibly mysterious and embarrassed. How shy she had been, telling him she was composing a poem; only at long last had she allowed him to read it, to see what she'd written.

The poem made him laugh, as it was meant to do, and within the next weeks Dulcie produced a whole sheaf of poems, some happy, some uncomfortably sad, and the occasional funny one that made Joe smile. His tabby lady had discovered a whole new dimension to her life, to her already amazing world. That's where she would be now, sitting before the computer caught up in that magical realm where Joe could only look on, where he was sure he could never follow. Where he could only be glad for her, and try not to mourn his loss, of that part of his tabby lady.

To Joe Grey, words and language were for gathering information and passing it along—and for making certain your humans knew when to serve up the caviar. But Dulcie used language as a painter used color, and the concept was nearly beyond him, the inner fire of such expression quite beyond his solid tomcat nature. How many speaking cats
were
there in the world, living their own secret lives? And how many of
them
had found their souls filled suddenly with the music of words, with a new kind of voice that Joe himself could hardly fathom? Contemplating such wonders of the mind and heart left him feeling strange and unsettled, like trotting along a narrow plank high aboveground and suddenly losing his balance, swaying out over empty space not knowing how to take the next step, a devastating feeling to the likes of any cat.

Joe took a long route home, thinking about Dulcie and trying not to feel left out from this new aspect to her life; but soon again his thoughts returned to the two tramps, to questions that as yet had no answers, and to the paper money they were surely finding, money old and rank with mildew. Who had hidden it there?

How long had it lain within those damp walls? That stone building was more than a hundred years old, it had stood there since the early nineteen hundreds, when it was an outbuilding for the dairy farm that had once occupied that knoll of land. Ryan and Clyde had spent hours in the history section of the Molena Point library perusing old books and photographs of the area, when they bought the little remodel just two blocks down from Emmylou, where Debbie Kraft and her girls were now living. Had the money been secreted there since the place was built, or had a subsequent owner, Sammie or someone before her, stashed it away in those old walls?

Emmylou might not know about that hidden stash, but he didn't understand how she could fail to know that two freeloaders were camping on her property, not fifty feet from her. Yet she didn't seem to have a clue. Misto visited her often, he was sure she thought the old place as empty as a clean-licked tuna can.

It was strange, Jesse thought, that when he talked about the missing money, Misto grew silent and withdrawn and a curious look shone in his yellow eyes. As if he knew something, or almost knew but couldn't quite put a paw on what was needling him. As if some long-lost memory had surfaced but wouldn't come clear, leaving the old yellow tom puzzled and uncertain. Strange, too, that Misto spent so much time with Emmylou, visiting her and prowling her house, almost as if he felt a tie to the property.

Or maybe a connection to the dead woman who had owned it? If there were memories here, if there was a story here, either Misto wasn't ready to share it or he didn't remember enough to share, maybe could recall only tattered fragments. But this, too, unsettled Joe. Fragments of memory from when? Sometimes Misto talked about past lives, and Joe didn't like that, he didn't buy into that stuff. Even if they
did
have nine lives, which no one had ever proven, what made a cat think he could remember them, that he could recall those faraway connections?

As he crossed a high, shingled peak, the scudding wind hit him, thrusting sharp fingers into his short gray fur. Below him, the dark residential streets were black beneath the pine and cypress trees, only a few cottage windows showed lights, the soft glow of a reading lamp, the flicker of a TV. He was crossing a tiled ridge near Kit's house, just a block over, when he stopped and reared up, looking.

The windows of the Greenlaw house were all dark, with Lucinda and Pedric and Kit still in the city. There should be no one about, certainly there should be no creature prowling Kit's tree house among the oak branches, but there against the starry sky moved the silhouette of a cat pacing fretfully back and forth across the high platform, an impatient figure, an interloper prowling Kit's territory where no strange animal was welcome. Joe sniffed the air for scent but the sea wind was to his back, heavy with iodine and the smell of a rotting fish somewhere. Heading across the interceding rooftops, he slipped silently down to the Greenlaws' garden and then up again, up the oak tree to Kit's high, roofed platform, his fur prickling with challenge.

L
IGHTS WERE ON
at the Damens' house, upstairs in the master suite, lights silhouetting hurrying shadows against the shades, the commotion stirred by Kit's phone call as Ryan and Clyde hastily pulled on jeans, sweatshirts, and jackets, grabbed up backpacks, stuffing in flashlights, cat food and water, and the first-aid kit. Rock, the big silver Weimaraner, was off the love seat and pacing; he knew they were going on a mission and he couldn't be still.

The upstairs lights went off again, the stair light came on, then the porch light blazed as the three of them headed out for the king cab, Ryan locking the door behind them. Rock bounded past Clyde into the backseat, lunging from one side window to the other with such enthusiasm he rocked the heavy vehicle like a rowboat, staring out into the night looking hopefully for the first hint of his quarry and then poking his nose in Ryan's ear or against Clyde's cheek, urging them to hurry, demanding to be out on the trail tracking the bad guys. The sleek silver dog had no clue that tonight his target would not be an escaped convict armed and dangerous, but one small cat, frightened and alone, a quarry who, if at last he found her, would snuggle up to him purring mightily.

But even to find one small cat, a tracking dog needs a sample of his mark's scent, a clear and identifiable smell to follow among the millions of odors he'd encounter along the high cliff. “Pillows,” Ryan said. “Stop by the Greenlaws.”

“Pillows?” Clyde looked over at her, frowning.

“Kit's tree house. Her pillows. I brought a clean plastic bag.”

“You're going to climb the oak tree?”

“Ladder,” she said, glancing up at the cab roof where, above it, her long construction ladder rode securely tethered on the overhead rack. “Just take a minute, we'll have a nice, fur-matted pillow for Rock to sniff.”

“If we had Joe, he'd put Rock on the trail. Where the hell—”

“Even with Joe,” she said, “I'd want a scent article, as you're supposed to have, so as not to spoil Rock's training.”

“The one time Joe might be of help,” Clyde said, ignoring her logic, “he's off hunting. Or off with Pan whispering in that little kid's ear. Talk about an exercise in futility.”

“If Pan can help that little girl, we ought to cheer him on. Scared of her mother, bullied by her sister. Besides, Joe might not even be with Pan. He and Dulcie have been hanging around Emmylou Warren's all week, around that stone building up behind, whatever that's about.”

“I don't want to know what that's about. More trouble, one way or another.”

Ryan just looked at him.

“Name one time Joe went off on some crazy round of surveillance that he didn't stir a carload of trouble.”

“Name one time Joe wasn't leaps ahead of the cops,” she said. “That he didn't drop valuable information in Max Harper's lap, a lead that Max was grateful for, even if he didn't know where it came from.” She sat scowling at him. “Don't be so hard on Joe, we're blessed to know him, and all you do is rag him.”

Clyde grinned. “He loves it. Rags me right back.”

“You don't realize how lucky you are just to share bed and supper with Joe, just to know those five cats. But,” she said, “there is something strange going on at Emmylou's that Joe doesn't want to talk about. I guess, in time, he'll tell us,” she said. “In his own good time.”

J
OE SLIPPED UP
the oak tree and onto Kit's tree house ready to fight the intruder, his ears and whiskers flat. Only when the pacing cat turned, startled, and approached him stiff-legged, did Joe laugh and relax. Pan paused, too, tail twitching, his ears going back and up, edgy and questioning.

“What?” Joe said. “What's wrong?”

“I don't know.” The big tom lowered his ears uncertainly. “Kit's in trouble, I can feel her fear, she's scared and alone somewhere out in the night.”

Joe took a step back. “She's miles away, up the coast. You can't know what she's feeling, what she's doing.” This kind of talk made his paws sweat.

Pan drew his lips back. “She's in some kind of trouble.”

“Nightmare,” Joe said. “You fell asleep and dreamed of trouble.” Generally the red tom was a steady fellow, macho and straightforward—until he got off on this perception nonsense beyond all logic and reason.

But Pan's amber eyes blazed, he growled deep in his throat and spun around and was gone along an oak branch and in through the dining room window, through the cat door. “The Greenlaws, their cell phone . . .” he said over his shoulder. “Help me find the number.”

Joe sighed. He was crouched to follow, knowing they'd sound like fools to the Greenlaws with such a call, when car lights came down the street below. They slowed, and Ryan's red king cab turned into the drive, headlights sweeping the front of the house and up through the oak branches, blazing in Joe's face. Squinting, he peered over, breathing exhaust as the engine died.

Ryan emerged from the passenger side, stepped around to the rear bumper and up onto it, reaching up to the overhead rack where the extension ladder was secured. He watched Clyde swing out the driver's door and move to help her. Why did they need a ladder? They
had
a key to the house, all the Greenlaws' close friends had keys. From the dining room, Pan shouted, “
You
picked up! Say something. Pedric?
Is this Pedric?”
Silence, then, “
Pedric, are you all right? Where's Lucinda?”
Another silence, then, “
Who
is
this? If this isn't Pedric, who are you? Why do you have Pedric's phone? Where's Lucinda?
Speak up or I call the cops, they'll put a trace on you!”

Joe smiled. He didn't think MPPD was set up to trace the immediate location of a cell phone but it sounded good. He watched Ryan open the extension ladder, lean it against the edge of the tree house, and climb nimbly up. Joe waited until his housemate had swung up onto the platform and switched on her flashlight, then stepped out into its beam. The eerie nightglow of his eyes made her catch her breath.

“Did you have to do that, sneak up like that?” she asked shakily.

“I'm
sneaking? What are
you
doing climbing up here in the middle of the night like some—”

“Like some cat burglar?” she said, laughing. She knelt and grabbed him up and hugged him. Her hugs always embarrassed him, but they made him purr, too.

Putting him down again, she fished a plastic bag from her pocket and reached across him to snag one of Kit's well-used pillows from the untidy pile. He watched her drop it into the plastic bag and seal it up with a twisty. He looked over the edge at the king cab where Rock was hanging out the open window, whining softly. He looked toward the house where Pan was on the phone, and looked again at Ryan. Now there was silence from the house. Joe watched Pan emerge through the cat door, ears back, tail lashing, his tabby forehead creased with worry, unsettled by that distraught phone conversation.

“Come on, Pan,” Ryan said, swinging onto the ladder and down, frowning up at Pan there above her. “Come on, we're headed up the coast.” She looked worriedly at the red tom. “It's Kit,” she said softly. “She . . . We're going to look for Kit.”

Pan leaped from the oak to the ground, sinking deep in the leafy mulch, fled to the king cab and up through the window past Rock. Joe followed, as Ryan descended the ladder clutching Kit's pillow. Inside the pickup, Pan was crouched on the back of the driver's seat, tail lashing. Joe, unsettled by the red tom's unnatural perception, hopped sedately up into the front seat beside Clyde, and snuggled close. Pan might indulge in these wild flights of fancy, but he could count on Clyde for a soothing dose of hardheaded commonsense.