Cat Cross Their Graves (24 page)

Now that Lori was gone, was it working again? Had he reconnected it, after Lori left? But why would he? It wasn't like he could park in there. Caught apparently in deep depression or something worse, why would he even remember the garage door?

Just below the light switch beside the inner door was the little button that should operate the mechanism. No trick at all, with the cardboard boxes piled against the wall, to reach the button and press it.
Leaping atop the stacked boxes, she crouched until they stopped teetering, then pressed.

Nothing. Not even a click to indicate a flow of electricity. She pressed the button three more times, bruising her paw. She was about to drop down again when she thought to scan the ceiling directly above her.

And there it was, in the smooth ceiling. A second attic door, leading to the space above the garage, a rectangle of plywood set into a wooden molding.

The other attic door had been loose, Jack Reed knew Lori couldn't get out through the attic, so why would he nail this one shut? And she could see no new nails at the edges. Maybe Reed had even taken cruel pleasure in imagining Lori climbing unsteadily up onto the flimsy cardboard boxes, reaching up, straining to move the plywood and climb through—only to discover that the crawl space led nowhere. That, after searching among the dark and the spiders, there was, after all, no way out. And Dulcie hated Jack Reed. If he had appeared before her just now, she would have leaped in his face clawing and biting.

Instead, she leaped up as powerfully as she could, striking the door with her front paws. She felt it give before she dropped back, and she saw a little line of unpainted wood where it had shifted position. She leaped again, and again it moved, leaving a wider crack. Apparently this one had no hinges. Crouched atop the musty boxes, waiting for her skipping heart to slow, she leaped and pushed it one more time, opening a crack as big as her paw.

Certain that they could get through, she dropped
down again, feeling relieved and smug, and returned to find Joe.

He was still in Jack Reed's bedroom, pawing into the stacks of newspapers and paperback books and catalogs. She knew better than to ask what he was looking for; neither cat knew. Glancing at Joe, she padded past him to search through a pile of Reed's folded jeans, patting at the pockets and slipping her paw in.

All the pockets were empty. Together they searched Jack's dresser drawers, working as efficiently as any pair of thieves, then investigated the high closet shelf. They snooped along in the dark beneath Jack's hanging clothes and prowled among his shoes and heavy work boots. They searched under the bed among the dust mice and peered up at the cheap flat bedsprings, poking their paws in among them. They found nothing. Coming out again to study the electric plugs above the baseboards, they reared up to sniff at those possible hiding places. The lack of opposing thumbs, their inability to use a screwdriver to remove a switch plate or pry off a fascia board, was maddening. In their attempt to detect some hollowed-out secret cache, and not knowing what kind of evidence they were looking for, they could only sniff those suspicious areas and thump them with a paw, listening to the faint, empty echo.

But a cache of what? Drugs? Weapons? What
were
they looking for? If Jack had killed his brother, he hadn't taken much care with Hal's billfold and belt and ring. Why would he be careful about hiding anything else? Moving on to Lori's dark little room,
with its one small, boarded-up window, again Dulcie imagined Lori as a prisoner there, locked inside her own house. She imagined the child curled up on her bed reading the fairy tales that stood on her bookshelf. Perhaps in her imagination trying to invent an exciting adventure story to cloak her father's mistreatment.

Except that Lori, despite her love of fantasy, or perhaps because of it, was at heart a true realist.

Feeling enraged for and weepy about Lori, she watched Joe fight open the top drawer of the little chest. Leaping onto the chest to look, she waited while he opened each of the three drawers in turn. The first yielded only the child's tattered T-shirts, some little socks, one with a hole in the heel, and two pairs of jeans so small that Lori must long ago have outgrown them. The other two drawers offered little more. A nightie, a heavy sweater, some spelling and arithmetic papers that were graded A or B.

But then in the bookcase, on the bottom shelf beneath a stack of oversize picture books, three shoe boxes were lined up. Nosing the books aside, they pawed the lids off.

The first held an old rag doll, a tiny battered teddy bear no bigger than a newborn kitten, and the picture of a woman who was surely Lori's mother. Natalie Reed, it said on the back. She had dark brown hair like her daughter, and the same huge dark eyes. Beneath the picture, wrapped with tissue paper, were a faded cotton apron printed with blue flowers and a dime-store strand of pearls with a flimsy bit of bent wire for a clasp. Was this Natalie's legacy to her
daughter? Was this all that Lori had left from Natalie Reed's life?

But Lori herself was Natalie's legacy. In Lori, Natalie Reed had created, with her love and caring and teaching, a treasure of great value, a treasure to be cherished.

In the second box was a small album, the kind with old-fashioned black pages. Joe, lifting the pages one at a time with his claws, adeptly flipped them. Pausing before four photographs arranged on a single page, he let out a chittering hunting cry, raucous and loud. His yellow eyes had grown huge, his muscled crouch over the pictures as predatory as a stalking lion.
“Voilà, Dulcie!
Look at this! Wait until Harper and Garza see this!” He stared at her, all sparks and fire, his paw pressing on the page. “Talk about the heart of the matter! Talk about cracking the case!” Shifting from paw to paw, the tomcat rumbled with crazy purrs. “I think,” Joe said, hardly able to be still, “I think we just cracked both cases!”

T
he minute the weather cleared, Ryan's building
crew began to work again on the Harpers' new living room, leaving Charlie and young Dillon finishing up Charlie's studio. Having installed and mudded the drywall, Charlie couldn't wait to paint the walls and move into her new space.

Now it was nearly noon; Ryan's crew had the living room walls framed and were waiting for a lumber delivery, and for the crane to lift the heavy beams into place. She and the four carpenters and her uncle Scotty were kneeling beside the corner of the new foundation where she'd spread out the blueprints when she heard the lumber truck turn into the long drive. Rising, walking out to show them where to drop the load, she was only vaguely aware of the phone ringing inside the house.

Waiting for the truck to back around, she scanned the pasture to make sure the three dogs were safely confined before the lumber was dropped. Rock stood
at the fence huffing softly, watching every move in the yard. The big silver Weimaraner was protective of Ryan even in a work situation, and that was all right with her. But the big dog was consumed with interest, too. As curious as any cat, she thought, grinning.

Rock had been a stray, abandoned and uncared for. A beautiful, purebred dog who should have been treasured. She was still amazed by her good luck in finding him—or, in Rock finding her. Motioning the truck into position, she was watching its bed lift and tilt to drop its load when Charlie came out the back door looking distressed, her freckles dark across her pale cheeks. Ryan nodded to Scotty to take over, and turned to see what was wrong.

“It's Genelle Yardley, they took her to the hospital. She fell. Wilma found her unconscious, on the floor by the bookcases. Sprawled out of her walker as if she'd been reaching for a book. Wilma called nine-one-one, and started CPR.” Charlie had a large, flat package under her arm.

“No one was with her? I thought the senior ladies—”

“They're in and out all day, they never leave her for long. Susan and Gabrielle are still in the city. Cora Lee fixed her breakfast this morning and ate with her, then left. She said Genelle had unexpected company, a little girl, a neighbor child, I guess. When Mavity went down half an hour later to clear up the breakfast things and make her bed, the child had gone. Mavity left Genelle resting on her chaise on the porch with a comforter over her. She always wants to be outside. See as much of the world as she
can, I guess,” Charlie said sadly. “Little things, her flowers, the birds…

“Wilma stopped by about forty-five minutes after Mavity left; she found Genelle, lying by the bookcases. She hadn't wheeled her oxygen over with her, so when she fell, she couldn't reach it. Half a dozen books were scattered on the floor around her, volumes of Celtic myth.”

Charlie looked at the newly delivered lumber and beams, at the framed walls. “It's going to be a wonderful room, Ryan. I'm going into the village to mail these drawings, then by the hospital, see if I can lend any moral support. Dillon's in my studio, sanding.”

“I'll look in, make sure she doesn't sand the paper off the board. Give Genelle my love. I guess she won't get her tea party on Monday.”

“I wouldn't bank on that. Genelle's tougher than she looks. That woman wants a tea party, she'll have a tea party. Though she might prefer a smaller group, not
all
the Friends of the Library.”

“What if she doesn't leave the hospital?”

Charlie shook her head. “Then we'll have the party there. If these are Genelle's last few days, then we'll have a catered tea in the hospital. All the fixings, all the flowers and goodies the inn can put together.” Clutching the flat package between her knees while she pulled on her coat, she turned away to her van.

 

Pulling away up their long, private lane, Charlie thought about Genelle trapped in a hospital bed when she'd rather be tucked up under a comforter on
her own terrace, the sea breeze on her face, the color and smell of her garden around her. She wondered which of the neighbor children had come visiting. Most kids didn't want to be around sick people, didn't know what to say to them. Turning onto the hillside highway that led down to the village, she looked out at the sea, thinking about death. Thinking about Genelle's tenuous tie to life. And fear touched Charlie, fear of what came after.

What are we?
she thought, chilled.
Do you just go out like a light when you die? Or
is
there something more?

If there was an eternal life, was it like that great rolling sea that stretched away below her? Flowing forever to endless shores, carrying uncountable dead souls like swarms of plankton to new lands? Carrying each one to a new challenge beyond their old, discarded life? And she had to laugh at herself. She'd never thought that any one religion was the only right one, that all others were misinformed. That seemed so silly. But she guessed that no doctrine was going to call departing souls “plankton.”

Well, her own soul wouldn't be lost just because of her irreverent imaginings, she'd never believe that, either. Any intelligence vast enough to create this world and all in it had to be more easily amused than angered.

Below her the hills were like emerald from the heavy rains. She never tired of their brilliant green curves, which dropped and rolled below her. At home, the horses couldn't wait to get out into the pasture to gobble up the new grass—Max would let them have just so much, then shut them in their stalls
again. Horses, like some people, would indulge themselves until they were sick.
Like I am with chocolate,
she thought. And she thought about the kit, also with a sometimes obsessive appetite, and she smiled and said another little prayer that the kit kept safe.

 

Crouching over the black page of the album, Joe and Dulcie studied the photographs of Lori's family. Joe was still grinning, like the Cheshire cat. But this wasn't Alice's fantasy, this was real. What they had found was real. Shocking. Amazing. Very real.

The four names were neatly captioned in white ink on the black paper. The photograph showed Lori at about five or six, an elfin child with big, dark eyes. Natalie and Jack were young, a handsome couple with their arms around each other. “That must have been a while before Lori and her mother moved away,” Dulcie said. “But who's the other man? Who's Hal?”

“Jack's brother,” Joe said. Hal Reed stood with Jack beside a company truck emblazoned with “Reed, Reed, and Vincent.” Below the company name was painted “Jack and Hal Reed. Bruce Vincent.” Vincent, the third partner, was not in the picture.

Joe looked at Dulcie, his whiskers and ears close to his head, his yellow eyes slitted with triumph. “You didn't see the other pictures, the ones the kit found, that Harper and Garza dug out from under that cottage.”

She looked at him, trying to be patient.

“Harold Timmons, Dulcie! I swear, Hal Reed is Harold Timmons. He was in the pictures that Kit found, standing next to Irving Fenner.”

“I don't—”

“It's the same guy. Harold Timmons served time in those L.A. killings. Harold Timmons is Hal Reed. Jack's brother.”

She stared at him. “Lori's uncle Hal.”

“Lori's uncle Hal. Convicted in the L.A. killings.”

“Is that…Is that why Jack locked her up? Not to keep her captive?” She looked at Joe, her green eyes huge. “But to keep her safe from Hal? But Hal's gone. Jack—”

“And maybe,” Joe said, “to keep her safe from Irving Fenner, too?”

The two cats were quiet, thinking about that. “Where is she?” Dulcie whispered. “Where's Lori? Alone, in the library? And Fenner's out there.”

Closing the album and gripping it in his teeth, Joe lifted it back into the box and nosed the lid into place. “Let's get out of here. We can—”

“Call from my place,” she said. “Now, Joe. I want out of here now.”

Galloping beside her to the garage, Joe was acutely aware of Dulcie's sudden uneasy feelings. Slipping into the garage beside her, he watched her leap to the top of the piled boxes, leap again, and he followed her up and through. Clawing at the plywood, pulling it back into place behind them, he was tense to get to a phone, get Harper over there to toss the Reed house—before Jack Reed, too, developed a sense of impending crisis.

Within minutes they were out the attic vent hole
and into the oak tree. Even as they sailed from the tree to the ground, the hairs along Joe's back hadn't stopped bristling. But they were out of there, thank the great cat god for that, and were racing for a phone. They were scorching through the bushes when Dulcie stopped, stood looking at him.

“I'll make the call,” she said softly. “If you'll hightail it over to the station, be there when Harper picks up.”

“What's the difference?”

“I don't know. See what this call stirs up,” she said softly. “Maybe we'll find out what Hyden was so excited about.” She didn't know why, but she wanted him to be there. This case was Joe's baby, Joe had followed the cops when they retrieved the newspaper clippings, he was the one who had seen Harold Timmons's picture. “This is your party. Well, and Kit's party, big time. Go on, Joe. Go on over to the station.”

Joe grinned, nosed her ear, and took off up a pine tree to the rooftops, heading fast for Molena Point PD. And Dulcie, watching him disappear across the roofs, turned and raced away through the tangled gardens, heading home. She had no idea the kit could have used their help just then. No idea that as they had fought their way out of Jack Reed's house, the kit was holding another lone vigil—that Kit wasn't finished with her surprises.

 

Kit was trotting across the roofs when she heard loud, angry voices on the sidewalk below. The sounds of two men arguing, plenty of shouting. Racing to the edge, leaning over with her paws in the
gutter in a morass of rotting leaves, she peered down over the china shop's sign.

Two men stood below her, toe to toe. The tall man was really angry, shaking the little man: It was
Irving Fenner
. The kit froze, watching. She still didn't understand why, after he'd killed Patty, Fenner hadn't run away. Except, he'd wanted Lori. Now that he'd lost Lori, was he again looking for the child? But surely Fenner didn't think he could stay in this small town for very long without the cops finding him. That he'd been able to hide until she found him quite amazed the kit. Peering closer at the logo on the tall man's uniform, she realized that was Jack Reed. Her ears sharply forward, her whiskers bristling, Kit listened. Reed was saying, “You came up here to kill Patty, you bastard! I hope the cops—”

“You going to turn me in, Reed? Like you did in L.A.?”

“What're you doing here, what're you after?” Jack looked across the street at the library. “You watching someone, Fenner?
Lori!”
He grabbed Fenner and shook him. “What have you done with Lori?”

“You think I'd fool with your kid, Reed, after you blew the whistle on me?”

Reed shook him harder. “You were after Lori, even back then. Sick, Fenner. You're sick.” He pulled his fist back. “Where is she? Where's Lori? What've you done with her!” He twisted Fenner's arm behind his back and marched him to a white truck. A pickup truck, a “Vincent and Reed” truck. People on the street just stood, looking.

Kit swallowed, trembling. Crouching, with her paws in the leaves getting soaked, she watched Reed
shove Fenner in the truck, then swing around into the driver's seat. The next instant, they were gone. And Kit took off over the rooftops, heading for the nearest phone.

 

Atop Wilma's cherry desk beside the sunny window, shielded from the neighbors' view by the white shutters, Dulcie spoke into the speaker of Wilma's phone. The deep-toned living room, with its crowded bookcases, stone fireplace, rich paintings, and oriental rugs, always eased her, always calmed her anxieties. As she described for Max Harper the photographs of Jack Reed and his family, she imagined Joe Grey crouched above Harper's desk, listening. Imagined Harper and the gray tomcat joined in spirit by their mutual and intense objective. Giving Harper the location of the album in Jack's bedroom, she wondered how long it would take him to get a warrant. If the judge was in his chambers, maybe not long.

“Will you tell me your name?” Harper said, as he always did. “Tell me how to get in touch?” This was a ritual question to which Harper no longer expected an answer. Likely he'd never stop asking. Giddily, Dulcie wanted to tell him her name, wanted to say,
Oh, you can reach me at Wilma's. If I'm not home, leave a message. Or call Clyde, Joe will pass it on.

Right. Having said all that was necessary for the case at hand, she terminated the call, pressing the speaker button, then sat staring at the electronic instrument, already feeling lonesome. She loved hearing Max Harper's voice right in her ear, close and
personal. Loved the feeling that Molena Point's police chief was her secret friend, loved the giddy amusement of mystifying him. Loved knowing that he would never learn the identity of his two snitches. Seeing Captain Harper nearly every day, when she was in her dumb-animal guise, she always felt such a delicious high. She loved knowing that she and Joe and Kit had passed on to him the latest secret intelligence; for Dulcie, these were among life's most amazing moments.

Gloating over her morning's work, she had turned to leap down when, from the kitchen, she heard her cat door flapping, and then the thudding gallop of Kit racing through. Kit burst into the dining room and under the table as if bees were after her, nearly decapitating herself on the chair rungs. Through the living room like a runaway freight train and up on the desk—a streak of dark fur and streaming tail that nearly knocked Dulcie off the edge of the desk.