Cat Deck the Halls (27 page)

T
HE ALLEY BEHIND
Jolly's Deli, with its fancy brick paving and tiny shops, smelled of roast turkey, though it was not yet Christmas day. The shops' stained-glass windows glowed with Christmas candles and bright decorations. At the back door of the deli, beside a potted poinsettia, stood an empty plate, its surface licked glossy clean. Three satisfied felines sat before it, happily licking their paws and whiskers.

Dulcie and Kit had spent the morning crouched in the oak tree behind the jail, pummeled by cold wind, eavesdropping on Leroy Huffman and Ralph Wicken—while Joe enjoyed a comfortable two hours lounging in Juana Davis's office watching Max Harper on Davis's TV monitor as he interrogated Betty Wicken.

Afterward, the three deployed to Jolly's alley, following the scent of roast turkey—turkeys had been roasting at Jolly's for days, for deli slicing and for the Patty Rose picnic, and each morning George Jolly saw to it that the village cats got their share of generous scraps carefully boned
and arranged on the nice white plates that he kept for that purpose.

Now, full to bursting, the cats had a leisurely bath and exchanged the morning's intelligence.

“All they did in that cell was argue,” Dulcie said, “and Ralph whined a lot. Leroy said Ralph messed up the heist by calling attention to them with his fixation over little children, and Ralph said it was the blue van that did them in, that the van had been a stupid idea. I don't see that we learned much that could be of use to the department. Except—”

“Except,” Kit interrupted excitedly, “Leroy Huffman
did
kill that girl in Arkansas. Evina's niece. Ralph said if he hadn't done that, killed that girl and then run, no one would have followed them, that Evina wouldn't have followed them out here, and they wouldn't be in this fix now, so it was all Leroy's fault.” As cold as Kit and Dulcie had been on that oak branch outside the jail window, it was always satisfying to listen to a couple of no-goods laying the blame on each other.

“I wonder,” Dulcie said, “how they found out Evina was watching them.”

“Betty Wicken saw her,” Joe said. “She finally told Harper—she glimpsed Evina twice in that downstairs window. Didn't pay much attention the first time, then later caught a glint that looked like binoculars or a camera. She called Leroy to come look, and of course he knew her. That was just yesterday.

“And,” Joe said, “Harper got her to tell him how she knew about the mural. He told her the more she cooperated, the easier it would be for Ralph. She really cares about that little-scum brother of hers. Max said he had enough on Ralph to lock him up for the rest of his life. I'm not sure he
does,” the tomcat said, smiling. “But he made her believe it. She went on a long time about how hard she's worked to keep Ralph away from children.”

“How
did
she know about the mural?” Kit said, licking a smear of turkey from her whiskers.

“She worked there,” Joe said. “She worked as a housecleaner for the Patty Rose Home, early in the fall. She cleaned up the old studio after the Home bought it.”

“But the mural was hidden,” Kit said. “How…?”

“Some old book about Anna Stanhope that Betty read when she worked in a gallery in Oregon. It said Anna had completed a mural that had never been on exhibit or listed with any collector. Some collector had looked for it, years ago, on the Stanhope estate. Betty got curious, came down here, and got a job there so she could nose around. She said she pried off a part of the wall, and then patched it.”

“She told Harper all that,” Dulcie said, lying down in a patch of sun, “to protect that no-good brother?”

“She did,” Joe said. “Well, Dorothy Street will soon have the mural back where it belongs.”

“I wonder,” Dulcie said, “will they install it in the school, in the main hall? Or sell it to pay for work on the new classrooms? A valuable mural that the school never knew they had.”

“I thought you were the art lover. When did you get so money conscious?”

“When I saw how hard Dorothy works to support the school. You think this playhouse contest is just for fun? She's hoping that enough of the builders will donate their houses to the school as tax write-offs so when they're auctioned, the school can add to the trust fund. You know she has a long list of homeless children waiting.”

Joe did know. It was hard for the state to adopt out older children when, say, something had happened to their parents. Joe yawned. Full of turkey and warmed by the morning sun, he was thinking of a short nap when Dulcie nudged him. “They'll be gathering for the award.”

Kit was already scrambling up the jasmine vine to the roof, and by the time Joe flipped over and raced up behind them, she and Dulcie were gone, flying across the peaks. This was Lori and Dillon's big day, and no one wanted to miss it.

They arrived to see the grounds nearly as crowded as when the playhouses were being assembled, but totally different. No trucks or forklifts, now, lumbering among the gardens. No racket of tools and engines. Only Christmas carols from a sound system on the mansion's balcony, the shouts and laughter of children, and, risen overnight like a Lilliputian city across the lawns and among the gardens, dozens and dozens of bright and amazing playhouses. The cats wanted to explore every one, running in and out as the children were doing, climbing and laughing.

“There's Corlie,” Dulcie said, watching the child scramble into a castle tower six feet off the ground. This was the first time the cats had heard her laugh. Juana Davis and Cora Lee stood smiling up at her; but beside them, Lori and Dillon looked wilted. This castle playhouse was far larger and more elegant than their house, and it had not only two crenellated stone towers but a stone wall with arrow niches and a drawbridge that left the girls looking sour and defeated.

“It's overdone,” Dulcie said. “Can't they see that?”

“Come on,” Joe said. “It's impressive. You have to be realistic.”

“I like theirs better,” Kit said loyally.

The crowd began to move toward the balcony of the mansion, where Dorothy Street stood with two men. “We'll know soon enough,” Dulcie said nervously, watching the girls as they hurried toward the balcony and up the stairs where the contestants were gathering. Davis and Cora Lee followed, walking slowly with Corlie between them; and as the cats scrambled into a pear tree, they saw the girls appear at the back of the balcony clutching each other's hands as Dorothy Street moved the microphone.

The thank-yous and introductions took a long time, and made Lori and Dillon, as well as the cats, fidget with impatience. When at last Dorothy announced the winner, the local contractor who had built the grand castle, and when she turned to beckon him forward, Lori and Dillon turned away from the crowd, long-faced. Cora Lee hurried up the stairs to be with them; but the cats slunk away into the bushes, their own hearts heavy, too.

“I was so sure,” Dulcie said.

“
They
were so sure,” Joe said sadly, but with a hint of feline disapproval. He might have said the girls had counted their catch too soon. Wisely, he kept his mouth shut.

“There's still the auction,” Kit said hopefully, lashing her fluffy tail. “That castle's all for show. The kids all liked Lori and Dillon's bright house better, with all its decks and holes and ins and outs. I bet it sells for a bundle.” And she scowled out of the bushes, at the winner, her ears and whiskers plastered to her head, her yellow eyes glaring.

T
HE STAGE OF
Molena Point Little Theater was framed with evergreens, and five Christmas trees stood tall behind the white-robed choir; Cora Lee French, the evening's soloist, was brightly robed in Christmas red.

Cora Lee had reserved, for her friends, a spacious box looking down over the audience to the stage. Only the three cats were seated higher than any human, up among the shadows near the ceiling, comfortably sprawled along a rafter, warm and snug in their exclusive aerie.

In the friends' private box, little Corlie French sat at the front with Lori Reed, Detective Davis, Captain Harper, and Charlie. Charlie was dressed in emerald velvet, her red hair piled high and caught with a holly sprig. Ryan, seated behind her, wore white fleece and sported a white bandage wound rakishly around her head. Clyde sat on her left, Dallas to her right, his sport coat lumpy with his own hospital wrappings. Wilma, the senior ladies, and the Greenlaws filled the last rows, dressed in a rainbow
of Christmas colors. The cats, looking down past their friends' box, could see the top of Dillon Thurwell's red head where she sat with her parents. None of the audience looked up among the rafters to discover three cats perched above them—or almost no one.

Wilma looked up once, and grinned; Charlie and Clyde looked, and then Ryan glanced up but immediately looked away again, as if shifting position to ease her aching head. The cats watched her warily.

“Do you think she knows?” Dulcie whispered. “Oh, she couldn't.”

“Don't go imagining things,” Joe told her. But, watching Ryan, Joe felt tense and uncertain, too. “She can't know,” he said reassuringly. “Ryan isn't…” But then, recalling his argument with Clyde, he shut up and said no more. Had Clyde
told
Ryan? Oh, hell, he wouldn't do that.

But, thinking of this, Joe crouched there on the rafter in the darkened theater, silent and uncomfortable, wondering.

Dulcie looked at him, frowning, but then she turned away, giving herself to the music, to the Christmas hymns and carols that had been beloved by humans for so many centuries. Whatever Ryan
might
have guessed, she thought, there was nothing they could do about it, and her little niggling worry lost itself in the cascades of magnificent Christmas music, in the joyous paeans to a power greater than anyone on earth could really understand. She didn't speak, and there was not a sound from the audience below her. And when at last the concert had ended and the stage lights went up, still everyone sat hushed, bathed in the afterglow.

And then applause rang through the rafters so violently
that the cats spun around on their beam and raced away, back into the lighting booth, escaping the deafening thunder. Running through the dim and shadowed booth, leaping tangles of cable and wires that seemed as threatening as land mines, they fled out through the window they'd left unlatched, to the cold silence of the roof—to the almost silence.

They listened as the soft echo of applause died below them, and as one last hymn began in a curtain call for the chorus. More applause. And then one more, lighter Christmas song, a merry and warming solo by Cora Lee. And then they heard the hustle of the crowd rising and moving out to the lobby; and the cats headed for Kit's house, for the Greenlaws' Christmas party.

Trotting quickly across the cold rooftops, they said little, each small cat still caught in a wonder beyond anything that even these special cats could conjure. Caught in the glorious noise of mankind, which far outstripped the ugliness that seemed, too often, to overwhelm the world of humans.

 

P
AUSING IN
K
IT'S
tree house, the cats sat for a little while watching the Greenlaws' guests arrive, looking down through the windows, enjoying the bright Christmas tree and the lighted candles, the laughter and the good smells, basking in the tangle of familiar and happy voices on Christmas Eve. Lori and Dillon had arrived, Dillon with her parents, Lori with Cora Lee and little Corlie and Mavity. The two older girls, already eating and laughing, seemed nearly recovered from their painful disappointment.

A disappointment of the ego,
Dulcie thought, smiling.
Not of the pocketbook.
The cats, after the awards ceremony and the buffet picnic and the very satisfying auction, had padded close behind Cora Lee and the three girls as they came down the stairs and headed for Cora Lee's car, Lori and Dillon holding Corlie's hands, one on either side.

“That was,” Cora Lee had told them, “the best Christmas present
I
could have had, to see your house sell for the highest price of them all.” She looked down at the girls. “You received nearly twice the amount of the prize money. And what thrills me most is to know where your playhouse will be donated.”

“But,” Lori said, “we didn't
win
.”

Cora Lee paused by the car, turning to look sternly at her. “You did next best. Your house did better, if you want to look at the financial gain. Think about that, Lori. Your house sold for far more than the winner received. Doesn't that impress you? You built a wonderful house. You did a fine job on it, and it has given back to you a nice boost for your future, a sizable addition to your college fund. But best of all,” Cora Lee said, looking very serious and cool, “is that it will become a part of the San Francisco Children's Hospital.” She hugged both girls. “Do you know what an honor that is?” Beside her, Corlie looked up at the girls, her dark eyes bright and needy, as if she very much wanted them to smile.

The cats had watched them drive away, and then, wanting to know what the Bureau man had found in Gabrielle's computer, and wanting to know what new intelligence had come into the station, they went their separate ways. As Joe Grey headed for the station, Dulcie and Kit raced over the roofs to the seniors' house.

They had found Corlie already there, snuggled on the living-room window seat with the two dogs, and they could hear Cora Lee and Gabrielle in the kitchen. Joining Corlie and the dogs, pretending to doze but listening to every word from the kitchen, they soon knew that Gabrielle hadn't even asked if the girls had won, and that she was in no mood to hear the financial good luck of anyone, particularly of little girls.

Mel Jepson had, indeed, been able to bring back Gabrielle's programs, and he had found all four accounts stripped bare. He had, however, also found Kuda's accounts, to which Gabrielle's money had been transferred. The cats marveled at what a skilled computer technician could do. Despite the fact that it was a holiday, Jepson had, with a few personal phone calls, been able to put a hold on the transfer of funds to Kuda's accounts. “By tomorrow,” he'd told Gabrielle, “if there are no glitches, the money should be deposited back to you.” The cats hoped that would be the case, if only for the sake of the three other seniors. Gabrielle was hard enough to live with, anyway, without this disaster and her resulting emotional furor upsetting the household.

But now, at Kit's house, trotting across the oak limb and in through the dining-room window to join the party, they put aside Gabrielle's misfortune as Dulcie and Joe paused on the sill eyeing the long table where that delectable buffet was laid out—and Kit leaped onto a chair, poised to reach up a paw and snag a slice of roast turkey. This was, after all, her own home. She drew back only when Lucinda spied her and gave her a warning look.

But then Lucinda served up three small plates from the buffet and set them on the windowsill: a Christmas feast
loaded with rich delicacies that would put down any normal cat, but did not bother these small gluttons. Not until the cats finished every crumb, and looked up, did they see how crowded the room had become.

All their friends had arrived, even Evina Woods. She sat before the fire talking with Max Harper. The cats heard her say she was flying out in the morning, that Cora Lee would take her to the airport when she picked up little Corlie's aunt Louise. Slipping down from the window ledge and making their way across the crowded room, the cats leaped to the top of a bookcase and settled down to wash, and to listen.

They learned, within the hour, that Dorothy meant to press charges against the Wickens and Leroy for the theft of the mural. That the mural would, indeed, be hung in the main hall of the school. That Max Harper was certain Leroy Huffman would be indicted for the murder of young Marlie James. That Cora Lee was hoping to persuade Corlie's aunt Louise to stay and visit for a while in Molena Point, to keep little Corlie near her. And that Charlie was so wired about the response to her book, and about the reviews it was getting, that she was already toying with several new writing projects. Comfortably sprawled above the heads of the party, the cats napped, and listened, and enjoyed; and they pronounced the party a success, a needed time of healing for all their friends, a time of comforting one another after a week of distress; a time of getting their balance, again, for the new year to come.

 

T
HAT NIGHT
J
OE
Grey slept in his tower, his windows closed against the icy wind, his cushions pawed into a warm nest around him to replace the warmth of a bed partner, and to block out any private conversation from the rooms below.

I better get used to this,
the tomcat thought.
This could be the new order of the day.

But Joe had no notion of what was really coming, and how much he would have to get used to. He awoke to thin daylight and the heady aroma of bacon, and decided it was okay to go down into the house.

Pausing a moment to admire the silvery morning around him, he soon slipped in through his cat door onto a rafter, dropped down to Clyde's desk and then to the Oriental rug. Ryan's foldout bed was empty. Glancing through the glass door to the upstairs deck, he saw her standing out in the cold, wrapped in Clyde's warm wool robe, sipping a mug of coffee. He studied her with interest.

Though she had her back to him, Joe recognized clearly the stance and body language that heralded Ryan Flannery's preoccupation with some new and exciting design problem. Curious, he stood watching.

Ryan had built this upstairs deck atop the carport as part of the total remodel she'd done, which gave Clyde's one-story house a second floor.
Now,
Joe thought,
what's she up to? Are we remodeling again? What? Is Clyde planning to enlarge the study?

But even as he stared at her slim back, wrapped in Clyde's plaid robe, Ryan turned and looked at him, fixing him with a steady green gaze. Eye to eye. Woman to cat,
in a too-familiar manner that shocked Joe and made him back away.

“I was just wondering,” she said, stepping back into the warm room, “if the city would let us build a solarium up here—a kind of studio.”

Joe stared silently at her, his heart starting a staccato beat against his ribs.
A studio? Clyde has no use for a studio. Why are you telling
me?
Why are you talking to me?

“Would that be all right with you?” Ryan said.

Joe tried not turn tail and run, or to look terrified. He sat down and washed his left-front paw. Ryan knelt, pulling Clyde's robe closer around her, and tried to look him in the eye. Joe wouldn't look at her; he concentrated on his paw.

“Come on, Joe. Did you think I was out cold when you made that call to dispatch? To Mabel Farthy? When you said, ‘Thank God it's Mabel'?”

Joe looked at her a long time, his heart pounding so hard he felt like he had a herd of drunken mice dancing inside his chest.

“With a concussion,” Ryan said, “it takes a while for a person's memory to come back. The length of time varies. In my case, it didn't take long.”

Joe remained safely silent, deeply occupied with his grooming. This was terrible. This was a major crisis. Why the hell wasn't Dulcie here? She'd know how to handle this woman.

Ryan reached to stroke his ear, but then she drew her hand back. “Joe, I heard Dulcie say, ‘Her cell phone!' and then Kit raced away. Then, in just a minute, you had Mabel on the line. You said, ‘Thank God it's Mabel,' then, ‘Stanhope mansion…' and then something about thieves hit
ting me with a hammer.” Ryan smiled. “You told Mabel I was out cold.”

Joe abandoned his pretense at grooming and openly gawked at her.

“Well, of course I kept my eyes shut,” she said. “I didn't know what I was hearing. Talking cats? I thought I was in really bad shape, having really crazy delusions.”

Joe gave her a look that said he understood. But he wasn't willing to answer. He could only swallow, his throat as dry as if he'd just eaten feathers.

“It will take a while for us both to get used to this,” Ryan said, rising. “I can understand that.” She looked solemnly down at Joe. “Never fear, tomcat. I'll keep my mouth shut. This is not the kind of secret I would ever share with the department. Or,” she said, “with anyone in my family.” And she turned away and headed downstairs, giving him space, following the enticing aroma of pancakes and bacon.

It took Joe some time to recover sufficiently to follow her. He strolled into the kitchen, where breakfast sat on the stove keeping warm. No one was there but the three household cats eating from their bowls on the rug. From the living room he heard voices. He wandered in, trying to look casual.

Ryan and Clyde were sitting on the floor before the lighted Christmas tree eating chocolates from a box that Ryan had apparently just unwrapped. Ryan looked at Joe, and held out her hand to him. The sparkle of the diamond ring on her finger reflected the colors of the Christmas lights. Third finger, left hand. A ring that had not been there yesterday evening when Clyde brought her home from the hospital, and had not been there a few minutes
ago, upstairs, when she knelt talking to him. The empty ring box lay beside the open box of chocolates.