Cat Breaking Free (19 page)

And, yes! The next minute, when Maria asked Luis if he wanted more eggs, he snapped at her and rose, shoving back his chair. “I'm going to bed! Keep the damned house quiet.” Dulcie glanced at Joe, excited because they could get on with searching. But scared out of her paws to try for the key. When Luis went to bed, would he take his pants off? In the daytime?

No cat would be fool enough to slip a paw into Luis's pocket when Luis was still in the pants.

Or would he? She looked at Joe, and wasn't so sure.

They drew deeper under the dresser as Luis headed down the hall—and as another car pulled up the drive. They heard its door open, and then the click of high heels. The front door opened. A woman called out: “Luis? Maria? You home?” Chichi's voice. The cats listened to her strident, whisker-wilting giggle as her high heels clicked across the entry. Luis, coming down the hall, quickly stuffed the roll of bills in his pocket and pulled his shirt out to hang loose. The implications of the blonde's easy, familiar entrance, the affirmation that she was tight with this family—but not totally so—held Joe and Dulcie tense with interest.

“T
he list is shaping up,” Chichi sang out, waving a
notebook at Luis and taking his arm to turn him back toward the kitchen. They sat down at the table across from Tommie; she dropped her purse on an empty chair. Silently Maria set a cup of coffee before her, then returned to shoving dishes into the ancient dishwasher. Their voices lowered, as if not wanting Abuela to hear, Luis and Tommie studied the notebook.

Listening, Joe slipped out from under the dresser, heading for the hall. Dulcie grabbed the skin of his rump in her teeth. “Let me,” she said through jaws clenched firmly onto his hide. “I don't have white markings, I can fade into the carpet. And Chichi's seen you. I could be any stray that wandered in.”

Joe looked at her doubtfully, but he drew back. His look said clearly that if anyone laid a hand on her, he'd skin them with his bare claws.

Creeping down the hall, Dulcie hugged the baseboard, her belly sliding along the faded runner. Just out
side the kitchen she melted into the shadow cast by the partially closed door. The room smelled of chorizo and sour dishes. Luis sat with his elbows on the table, where he had spread out a large sheet of paper that must be the map. As Chichi read off her notes, he repeated the names of several village streets and shops, which she helped him find. Dulcie peered up at the tall refrigerator, longing for a higher perch from which she could see.

Was this woman the brains of their burglaries, or only the messenger gathering information? Listening to Chichi's detailed rundown of the times that the jewelry stores and other shops opened, of how many employees were there to both start and end the day, whether male or female and approximate age, Dulcie was soon so wired she could hardly be still. They were taking great care with their plans.

Chichi had run her surveillance both morning and evening, as if the thieves had not yet decided the best times for the burglaries.
Were
they planning multiple burglaries all at one time? They were smug indeed to think they'd get away with that. With the information Dallas and Harper now had, and would soon have, these hoods would be in jail before they broke the first window.

“People will be coming in all week,” Chichi said. “Cluttering up the streets. And a jazz parade on Saturday. I don't think…”

“Cops'll be up to their ears,” Luis said, smiling with satisfaction. “Snarled traffic, a real mess. Their minds'll be on tourists and crowd control.”

“You want traffic and crowds, why not wait until the big antique car show instead of this local yokel jazz festival? I don't see…”

“That's months away. I've got twenty idle guys about to go nuts. You think they're going to wait all summer?”

“Give them something else to do. Take them up the coast, hit a few beach resorts.”

“You want to pay their gas and rent and food bills? Twenty guys? And that antique car show, they'll bring in every cop on the coast
and
the whole damn CHP. Those cars are worth a mint. Cops cluttering the streets everywhere. That's the trouble, working with a woman!”

“I got the information, didn't I? And I'll tell you this, Luis,” she said sullenly. “You're going to use the jazz festival, you better look at the early evening closings, when the town's jammed. Some of those stores'll stay open, but the jewelry stores won't. And your cover's no good, first thing in the morning. No one'll be on the
streets
in the morning. All the mornings I've wasted getting up early…”

“This stuff's none of your business anyway. You do what you're told, you don't tell
me
what to do. It was different in L.A.” He looked her up and down, taking in her tight pink sweater that offered plenty of cleavage, her skintight black jeans. “Half of these, you got no closing time. I said to…”

“I got closing times on the jewelry stores. I'm not finished.” She flipped the notebook page. “Here's the frigging closings.” But, confronted with Luis's rising rage, she seemed to draw back, turning suddenly as docile as Maria.

When Luis finished marking his map, Chichi tore out the pages, handed them to him, and put the empty
notebook in her purse. Where had her spunk gone, all of a sudden? The woman's brassy nerve seemed just to have vanished.

Did Luis beat her? Dulcie could see no marks on her, but that didn't prove anything. The puzzled tabby cat remained crouched on the faded hall runner until the men began yawning again and started to rise; then she streaked for the bedroom.

Their shoes scuffed down the hall as she fled under the dresser, ramming into Joe. She was barely hidden when they came in. Luis sat down on the unmade bed nearest the door and pulled off his shoes, dropping them on the floor on a tangle of blanket. His feet smelled awful. How often did he wash those socks? Was he going to take off his pants and shove them under his pillow, or keep them on? The cats grew so nervous, waiting, that they could hardly breathe. From the kitchen they could hear Chichi and Maria talking softly among the clicking sounds of cutlery and plates and running water.

What would they be talking about, dumpy little Maria who looked so browbeaten, and brazen Chichi Barbi with her carefully collected hit list—brazen until a few minutes ago? Yet the two women seemed close; there was a gentle sympathy in their voices, which intrigued Dulcie.

Joe laid his ears back in annoyance when Luis lay down on the bed fully clothed, tucking his feet under a lump of the blanket. Well, Dulcie thought, so much for that. How comfortable could it be to sleep with one's pants on? That was another plus to being a cat: no confining pants and shoes. Tommie pulled down the yel
lowed blinds under the lace curtains, stripped down to his shorts, and dropped his clothes on the floor, grumbling as he pulled up the tangle of covers and crawled underneath. The cats waited some time before both men were snoring. Then they slipped out from under the dresser and, despite any fear Dulcie might harbor, Joe reared up against Luis's bed, looking.

He was just reaching out a paw when Chichi came down the hall.

Quick as a pair of terrified mice the cats were under the dresser again, crouching in the dusty dark peering out at her. She stood in the doorway observing the sleeping men.

When she was satisfied that their snores were indeed real, she came on in and began to toss the room. The cats looked at each other, fascinated and amazed. What was coming down, here?

Chichi was as methodical as a cat herself as she searched in and under every piece of furniture. When she approached the dresser, they nearly smothered each other, pressing back into the darkest corner. She slid open the drawers above them almost soundlessly, and rifled through. Then, in the closet, she investigated every garment, felt into every pocket. She didn't approach Luis, but she went hastily through Tommie's pockets, lifting his heaped clothes with distaste.

Only then, dropping Tommie's wrinkled shirt back atop his pants, she approached Luis's sleeping form.

When she was two feet from him, Luis snorted. She jerked her hand back. She waited, then stepped near again. She wouldn't be looking for the key. Did she mean to take the money? He muttered and turned over, throwing out his arm, and she was gone, backing out of
the room, apparently losing her nerve. She was halfway down the hall when Luis opened his eyes blearily. But then he only grunted and turned over, and was soon snoring once more.

Chichi did not return.

Dulcie had thought Chichi Barbi was a nervy, brazen young woman who wasn't afraid of much. Who maybe hadn't the sensibilities to be afraid. Now, she wasn't sure. She didn't know what to make of Chichi—brassy and confrontational one minute, cowed and uncertain the next.

But whatever the truth, Chichi
was
conspiring with these crooks, was diligently helping them. Dulcie watched warily as Joe approached Luis again, his paw reaching; and she moved close behind him. If Luis woke and snatched Joe, the more teeth and claws the better.

Luis lay on his back, his snores loud and rhythmic. The cats were so close that their noses stung not only with the smell of his feet but with his garlic breath. Rearing up with his left paw against the edge of the mattress, Joe eased his right paw toward Luis's pants pocket. And Dulcie slipped silently up onto the nightstand, ready to spring into Luis's face if he grabbed for Joe. Ready to defend her tomcat, she looked as lethal as a coiled snake.

Faster than she could blink, Joe's paw slipped into Luis's pocket.

 

Reaching delicately to the bottom of the pocket, Joe felt two car keys on their chain. Then, among a tangle of loose change, he could feel another key fob. Round,
with some kind of raised emblem, attached by its short chain to a lone, fat, stubby key. That sure felt like a padlock key.

Soft as butterfly wings, his paw caressed the hard metal. Gently he hooked his claws into the chain. Luis grunted, stopped snoring and scratched his leg. He turned over, reaching automatically to his pocket, in his sleep. He nearly touched Joe. The tomcat panicked, reared away from him and dropped off the bed—without the key.

Angry at his own clumsiness, Joe wondered if he had tickled Luis. He crouched beside the bed, scowling, until Luis began snoring again with little uneven huffs, then he slipped up for another try.

Luis's snores continued unbroken until Joe's paw was again in his pocket; but suddenly Luis jerked upright, thrashing his arm, flailing out, then rubbing his eyes. Joe was gone, vanished beneath the bed, Dulcie beside him.

Directly above them, Luis sat up, bouncing the springs so close to their heads they ducked. Swinging his legs to the floor, he sat on the edge of the bed yawning, then, in his socks and his pants but no shirt, he headed down the hall to the bathroom. Not until they heard the shower running did the cats come out from under the bed, to crouch before the closed bathroom door.

Dulcie didn't want to go into that small closed space with Luis. Joe leaped, grabbing at the knob until he had a secure grip between his clutching paws. Swinging with all his weight, he turned the knob. Beside him, Dulcie pushed the door open.

The shower water pounded, its thunder hiding whatever noise they might make, its steam and the mottled shower door hiding them from Luis's view—they hoped. The room was like a sauna, steam blurring the porcelain fixtures. Behind the obscure glass door, the ghost of Luis's squat, broad figure genuflected and scrubbed.

On the closed toilet seat lay Luis's wadded-up pants. Faster than the speed of the pounding water, Joe's paw was into the pocket among the tangle of keys and loose change. This time he knew what he was looking for. Beyond the shower door Luis bent one knee as if washing his feet—an indication to Joe that he was about to finish up and step out, that any minute he would slide the door open and snatch a towel from the rod. Glancing at Dulcie, he saw a sharp mix of fear and predatory determination in her wide green eyes.

Pawing deeper into the pocket, he tried to separate the little fob with its single fat key from the other keys, and to catch its chain in his claws. At last, with it securely hooked, he drew it out.

The fob at the other end of the chain held the carved picture of a long-tailed quetzal bird, its image half worn away from use. Gripping the bird in his teeth, he pushed quickly out the door, Dulcie by his side. When, behind them, the shower door slid open, Dulcie swallowed a mewl. They shouldered the bathroom door closed and were gone, twin shadows streaking down the hall into the empty living room and behind the couch, the first piece of furniture they encountered.

Crouched in the shadows, they listened to the two women in the kitchen. “…Must be tired, Maria,”
Chichi was saying. “Abuela to take care of, Luis and Tommie to cook for, and those cats to tend, cleaning their cages…Would you like to get out for a while?” There was a jingle of keys. “Go on, take some time for yourself. Bring home some groceries, you can say you were doing the shopping. Go have a sundae, a look in the store windows. I'll take care of Abuela, see that she's comfortable, make her a nice cup of tea.”

Slipping through the living room and into the dining room, the cats peered through a second door into the kitchen. Maria stood by the table, pulling on a red jacket over her blue sweat suit. “You sure you don't mind?”

“Go while you have the chance.” Chichi hugged Maria. “Before Luis comes out of the shower. I'll tell them you had to go to the store.”

“That we were out of beans and milk,” Maria said quickly. “Chorizo. Onions. And sand, that cat sand.”

“Why does he keep them? What's he mean to do with them, now that Hernando's…” pausing, Chichi glanced toward Abuela's bedroom.

Maria's expression went solemn. “He…Hernando said they were worth money. Luis believed him. He's too stubborn to turn them loose, he's sure he can sell them, make a bundle. I guess that's all,” she said uncertainly.

“Stray cats! Not worth shooting. And the poor things stuffed in that cage. I'll clean the cage before I go, so it won't smell so bad.”

“You can't clean it, Luis has the key. Can't clean it properly. You can reach the scoop in between the bars, though.”

Chichi sighed. “How can a grown man be so stu
pid?” She gave Maria a little shove. “Go on, before he comes out.” The two women looked at each other with a bond of friendship, and Maria slipped away, out the front door. The cats heard her start the car and back down the drive.

In the kitchen, Chichi immediately resumed her search, going through the pockets of Luis's windbreaker that he'd left hanging over a chair. When she pulled out a small, empty, black silk bag, Joe swallowed back a hiss of surprise that almost gave them away.

“So,” the tomcat said when they were behind the couch again, “she did give the bag to Luis. And Luis came in this morning counting money.” Luis had gone back to bed, they could hear his snores chorusing off-key with Tommie's. “
Is
she looking for the money? Or something else, too? Go on, Dulcie. Follow her. I'll go in Abuela's room; if she's asleep I'll open the lock.”