Cat Fear No Evil (27 page)

Identity theft could go on for many months before the victim had any clue. Who knew how soon the recipients of such attention would wake to find their houses mortgaged or sold, their CDs cashed, their bank accounts stripped, and their credit destroyed? How many people had he already swindled?

And Dorriss had left town last night, had caught a flight somewhere. Setting out to transfer other people's funds, to collect cashier's checks secured by other people's real estate?

Dropping down from the couch she leaped to Juana's desk where she prowled innocently among the detective's stacked papers. Juana, watching her, moved her cup so as not to have cat hair or maybe a cat nose in her coffee. As Dulcie turned away she spotted it, lying on a stack of papers: The photocopy of a flight schedule, with the name of a local travel agency at the top, and Marlin Dorriss's name beneath.

Pretending to play, gently pawing at the papers, she studied the schedule. Dorriss or the agency had thoughtfully typed a cover sheet, a condensation, on
one page, giving seven destinations and dates. The pages stapled behind it would surely give departure and arrival times, airline, airport, flight number. Well, the cover sheet was all she needed. She couldn't help it; she looked up at Davis, smiling and purring. Oh, the detective was on top of it; Detective Davis had run with her suspicions before ever interviewing Helen Thurwell. Dulcie could imagine Davis calling all the travel agents in town until she hit pay dirt.

Dorriss had flown out last night to LA. Two days in LA, then to San Diego where he'd pick up a car. He must be driving back up the coast, because the next flight was out of San Francisco, heading north. The itinerary gave not only flights and car rentals, but hotel reservations in Laguna, La Jolla, then Santa Barbara, and Sacramento, before he caught the San Francisco flight. The entire trip would take just under two weeks.

It must be nice to enjoy such a long working vacation. Was this another string of strange burglaries? Or a chorus of well-planned securities sales or purchases and bank withdrawals, all in names other than Marlin Dorriss?

Lying down on the desk, Dulcie watched as Juana rose to see Helen out. Helen looked pleadingly at Juana; she was very quiet now, very subdued, understanding at last that she had been the unwitting collaborator in a high-powered criminal undertaking. The detective put her arm around Helen. “We'll get to the bottom of this. You did nothing deliberately. Try not to worry.”

“I was
deliberately
stupid,” Helen said. “So criminally stupid that I got my partner killed.” She looked
miserably at Juana. “I have no doubt, now, that his death was not an accident.”

She shook her head. “James was not careless, he would not have left the gas on like that. He was not forgetful, not even in the smallest matters.” She found a tissue in her pocket and wiped her eyes. “I have been stupid for a very long time.” She was crying in earnest, her shoulders shaking.

The expression on Juana Davis's face was a mixture of discomfort, sympathy, and a cop's restrained look of triumph. Taking her arm from around Helen, Juana touched Helen's shoulder, heading her into the hall.

And Dulcie, watching the two women, found it hard to muster much sympathy for Helen Thurwell. All the empathy in the tabby's heart was for Juana Davis as the detective set out on what could be a difficult task, heartbreaking for many more people than Helen Thurwell.

Dulcie knew, from listening to Dallas Garza and Captain Harper, that the crime of identity theft might be uncovered and the culprit apprehended; the perp might even be prosecuted, but the damage done might never be undone, the victims' money might never be recovered.

S
treaking between the complex of condo buildings
and up the hill behind, through the gardens of expensive estates, Joe drew nearer the black tom but then lost him again among a cluster of smaller homes. Racing past two houses that were still boarded up from the last earthquake, Joe paused in their neglected gardens seeking Azrael's scent.

There: the black beast appeared suddenly crossing the street while dragging his burden, leaping clear of a car. The cat was slowing and tiring. Swiftly Joe closed on him. He was about to leap and grab Azrael, when behind him a car slid across both lanes and screeched to the curb; Joe caught a glimpse of Lucinda bent over the wheel, and Pedric beside her. The back door opened and Kate slid out.

She caught Joe up, snatching him in mid-stride and kept running, chasing the black tom, clutching Joe to her so hard he could hardly breathe. Ahead of them Azrael was a smear of black swerving away from the street through the bushes and heavily over a fence.
Kate, running along the fence, found a gate and fought it open. Crossing the yard clutching Joe, she lost minutes finding the way out.

“Let me go, Kate! You've lost him!”

“No! I can catch him!” She glanced down at him, her blond hair plastered with sweat, her eyes frightened.

“He has the jewels,” Joe coughed, half strangled. “Ease up, I can't breathe.”

Tightening her grip on the back of his neck, she eased her hand on his chest. He gulped for air. “I didn't know you could run like that. How did you find us? Where's Clyde? Why are you…?”

She didn't answer. Glimpsing Azrael swerving into an alley, she flew after him across someone's patio and through another garden. Lucinda's car was lost beyond the yards and fences. They passed a boarded-up house, then soon another, not derelicts but nice houses; Joe thought they were somewhere in Cow Hollow where there had been a lot of damage in the earthquake. Ahead on the sidewalk, the black tomcat appeared suddenly; he stood panting as if at the end of his strength, the blue bag at his feet. Joe tensed to leap down.

It was here that Lucinda found them and pulled to the curb. Azrael snatched up the bag and disappeared into the bushes, heading for a boarded-up house as Clyde's car swerved in behind Lucinda. Kate dropped Joe and lunged through the bushes after the black tom. The beast bolted up the steps and through a broken window between crookedly nailed boards, dragging the blue evening bag.

The faded Victorian house listed to the left, supported by a scaffolding of rough lumber all along one
side. All the windows were secured with boards over the dirty and broken glass. Two boards were nailed across the front door, and there was a chain barrier across the front steps. The trim on the three stories was splintered along one side, and shingles had fallen into the bushes.

Slipping under the chain barrier, Kate was working at the doorknob and pushing at the door. The house must once have been a comfortable home for a big family. Joe wondered why these houses had been let sit for so long. Through the broken window where the black tomcat had gone, Joe could see pale shadows moving. Kate put her shoulder to the door, sent it flying open, ducked under the boards, and disappeared inside.

Warily Joe followed her. He didn't like the place; he didn't like its deep hollow silence. It smelled of something dank and foreign. As he moved up the steps, Clyde thudded up behind him. They entered together, Clyde ducking beneath the boards.

Only a dull light seeped through the dirty, boarded-up windows. They stood for a moment in the gloom, then moved on in, the floor creaking beneath Clyde's feet, the dry dust puffing up beneath Joe's paws—dust that was marked all over with paw prints. Beyond the dim living room, in what appeared to be the dining room, Kate stood facing a tall china cabinet that towered in the darkest corner, a folded mattress leaning up against it amid a tangle of ragged lumber.

 

Kate stood looking up through the shadows at the black tom. Crouching atop the tall cabinet he stared down at
her, his amber eyes narrowing as if waiting for her to speak. The blue suede bag lay between his paws; he loomed over it, fiercely possessive. A split second and he could leap down squarely into her face, clawing and biting; his eyes blazed and threatened, making her tremble.

Around her the house was silent. It stunk of cat. Heaps of trash were piled in the dark corners, papers, wine bottles, beer cans. She thought there would be hordes of mice to feed the pale cats she'd seen slipping away. To her left a broken stairway led partway up to the floor above, where a ragged hole gaped. A pale cat peered down, then was gone, a cat that looked as hard of body as a dog, and with a lean killer's face. Beneath the stairs blackness loomed so dense, so complete that she felt as if the house floated in a void, as if the floor on which she stood had nothing but emptiness beneath. The room was cold, a coldness that went to the bone. Watching the cat, his hints of another world that had so stirred her dreams now filled her with fear. How could she have wanted any such world, how could she want any world to which this beast was drawn?

But she wanted her property back; she was not willing to turn away from what was hers. Moving closer in among the leaning boards, she thought that if she stood on the humped and folded mattress, she could reach the bag and snatch it away.

He watched as she began to climb, his smile slow and amused. And suddenly grabbing the bag in his mouth, he leaped directly past her face. She lunged, snatching the bag from his mouth—and felt claws like knives down her arm. The suede ripped open, too, under her spurting blood. The jewels spilled, falling away
to vanish among the boards. Dropping down, she snatched at a bracelet, quickly kneeling among the boards reaching to catch the slithering chain of a locket. Snarling, the black tom came at her—and Joe Grey came flying, toppling boards and knocking Azrael among them. Jewelry scattered and fell between the fighting tomcats, lost in the rubble, hidden beneath falling boards.

Snatching up the emerald bracelet, Azrael spun and ran, leaping for the blackness beneath the stairs.

Kate rose to follow but Clyde grabbed her, drawing her back.

They stood at the edge of the hole staring down beneath the stairs into total blackness. They could see nothing, no hint of foundation, no broken timbers or tumbled earth. Only emptiness falling away, deep black space that seemed to go down and down as if it spread out beneath the house, black and endless, as if perhaps the quake had shifted the earth, leaving a cavern beneath that part of the house. Kate backed away, dizzy. Leaning against Clyde, she leaned against Joe Grey as well where Clyde had snatched him up, holding him safe from that abyss. In Clyde's arms Joe met her stare with the same deep fear that filled Kate herself; and from somewhere within the blackness, Azrael spoke to her.

“You would do well to follow me, Kate Osborne. You would do well to come with me.” Was he crouched on some ledge or fallen timber that was invisible to her? She stared and stared but could see nothing, no glint of his yellow eyes. Then beside Kate something moved among the rubble, and from the shadows a pale cat leaped past her into the blackness, then another, an
other—and they too vanished. And from deep within that dank space, Azrael's purr rumbled. “You will forever regret your cowardice, Kate Osborne, if you stay behind. You can see that they accept me now. Because I took the jewels. Because I bear the emerald choker. They will lead me now, down into that world.” The cat purred louder, his rumble echoing. “Come with me, Kate Osborne. Come now…”

Kate backed farther away.

“If you will follow me, I will lead you home, Kate, where hidden rivers run beneath the earth among green meadows, where you can dig jewels from the cavern walls, all the wealth you want, for the taking.” A cold breath touched Kate, a stink of damp sour earth as if stirred by movement somewhere deep within that void. And Azrael did not speak again.

She stared down into the empty dark that waited just beneath her feet, and she turned away sickened, leaning into Clyde's steady grip. He pulled her away, putting his arm around her; she could feel Joe's heart pounding fast between them. The relief on the tomcat's face was comical.

Behind Clyde, Lucinda and Pedric stepped from the shadows. Whatever they felt, whatever they had seen, they did not speak. The four of them knelt, searching for Kate's inheritance among the rubble and broken lumber, while Joe Grey sat washing blood from his paws.

Moving one splintered board at a time, they uncovered and retrieved nine pieces of the jewelry. When Pedric got a flashlight out of his car and shone it under the stairs, they could see only blackness, as if indeed, beneath the house, a vast area of landfill had shifted
away, leaving the building on some earthquake-riven ledge. There was no sign of the choker, no answering flash of gold and green from those murky depths.

“Out,” Kate whispered, backing away, the true sense of danger coming home to her. They moved swiftly out beneath the door's barrier, into the fresh air.

A police car was pulling to the curb. As Detective Reedie stepped out, Joe Grey slid from Clyde's arms into Lucinda's, and under her jacket, out of sight. And the old woman wandered away with him.

Kate, smoothing her disheveled hair, smiled at the detective and held out her folded sweater, in which she had wrapped the jewels and the shredded blue bag. “We have them!” she said breathlessly, trying to invent a plausible story that did not include a thieving black tomcat. “How did you find us?”

Reedie looked at the jewels and at her bleeding arm, at her dirty hands and streaked face. “I saw you running,” the detective said warily, “from the window of the condo. What was that you were chasing?
A cat?
It was carrying that blue bag?” The handsome young detective looked hard at her. “You want to tell me what happened?”

Kate didn't know what to say. He watched her, waiting. His thatch of brown hair made that handsome face look even more boyish; his brown eyes looked half angry at being scammed, half filled with curiosity.

“I saw Consuela's car,” she said, “we were coming back from breakfast. The blue Corvette? I pulled over, hoping it was hers, and saw something running—a big black cat—from under a pine tree at the end of the condo. I couldn't believe…It was dragging some
thing blue. My bag, I knew it was my bag. I just…jumped out of the car and ran.”

The detective turned, glancing toward Clyde. “And your friend in the silver Cadillac?”

He had obviously seen Clyde parked in front of the condo. Kate explained that Clyde had seen the Corvette, too, that he had been sitting in his car watching the building where it was parked, wondering if it belonged to Consuela. She was faltering when Clyde took over.

Clyde seemed truly amazed that the cat had grabbed the blue bag; he thought Consuela must have thrown it out the window when she knew the police were at the door. “I was turned away,” he said. “I thought I heard something hit the ground among the dead leaves. When I looked, I saw a snatch of blue. But why that cat would grab it up…” Clyde shook his head, at a loss to explain the black beast. “Cats do weird things. Well,” he said, grinning, “Kate got her jewels back.” He studied Reedie. “Was that Marlin Dorriss's condo? I'd heard it's in the Marina. Was Consuela connected with Dorriss?”

“It is Dorriss's condo,” Reedie said stiffly. “What made you ask?”

“A hunch,” Clyde lied. “I saw them together once, in Molena Point, and wondered. Are you going back there now?”

“I am. You have some business there?”

“I would like to follow you back, talk with you.”

Reedie glanced at Kate, then nodded.

Kate just hoped Reedie wouldn't go digging for more answers than he needed.

Well, her story sounded plausible to her. The best
lie, sometimes, was the truth, with the incriminating parts left out.

 

After Reedie left, Lucinda dropped Clyde and Joe back at the condo. There, Joe quietly slipped into the Cadillac while Clyde talked with Reedie, then went with him to look for the Packard—but only after Reedie called Molena Point PD and talked with Harper.

Clyde told Reedie that he had no proof of any misconduct on Dorriss's part. Just a feeling, Clyde said. A hunch that Dorriss might be involved in the thefts. He lied to Reedie, and through Reedie he lied to Harper, and all to protect Joe Grey. He said to Reedie innocently that, if the officers had found any stolen items in the condo, then maybe Dorriss had the Packard as well. In short, Clyde wove a tangle in a way that he abhorred, all for the gray tomcat.

Kate said later that she wished Clyde didn't have to stir up so many questions for Reedie, when the detective would be talking more than once with Harper and Garza about the case. But it couldn't be helped, if Clyde wanted to look for his Packard—and Clyde loved that Packard.

She did wonder privately sometimes if any woman ever in Clyde's life would stir the possessive emotions generated by those abused and neglected old cars that he made whole and new again.

Dropping Clyde off at the condo, Kate and Lucinda and Pedric, feeling suddenly nervous at carrying all the jewels with them, headed for the Greenlaws' appointment with the appraiser, hoping he would see them though they were nearly an hour late. They agreed to
meet for lunch either at Kate's favorite sidewalk café, or across the street at I. Magnin where Clyde—after he found the Packard, he said, as if he was certain he'd find it—had a bit of shopping to do. Off Kate and Pedric and Lucinda went, carrying with them what might be a fortune wrapped in Kate's sweater; and Clyde and Joe Grey went to shop, all as if this were a perfectly ordinary morning.