Cat on the Edge (12 page)

Twelve-year-old Marvin Semple had nearly finished his evening paper route. He was headed home on his bike, wheeling beneath low branches along the dim and shadowed residential street, pedaling past a row of overhanging oak trees, when he heard a cat scream.

The cry came from somewhere ahead, up near the end of the block. A second scream cut the silence, and he pedaled faster. Maybe a dog had some poor cat. He didn't know anyone on this street who had cats, but it could be any village cat. He was gazing ahead into the thickening shadows when he saw movement in the Osborne yard. A man was standing near the house straddle-legged, flinging something at the ground.

Crouching over his handlebars he raced toward the man, not wanting to believe what he saw.

Yes, it was a cat. The man was flinging a cat at the concrete walk. For an instant he saw the animal clearly, its pale fur bright in the dark evening as the man swung it down. Its scream chilled him. “Stop it!” What was the guy doing! Again the man
flung the cat at the ground. Marvin shouted again and doubled over his bike pumping as hard as he could.

He screeched to a stop and dropped his bike, scattering his remaining papers as the man pushed the cat under the bushes. The guy ran. Marvin raced to where the cat lay.

Crouching, he lifted it gently from beneath the bushes.

It looked dead.

Holding it carefully, he glanced up in the direction the man had disappeared. A black car was pulling away fast, skidding around the corner.

He carried the cat beneath the streetlight and stood cradling it, trying to see if it was breathing. He couldn't see any rise and fall of its chest, but when he put his face to its nose, he could feel a faint breath. Gently he cradled it, deciding the best thing to do. The evening was fast growing dark. He was fifteen blocks from home.

Soon his exploring fingers found a barely discernible heartbeat. He could see no blood. The cat was beautiful, cream-colored and mottled with orange streaks. Marvin held her as delicately as he could in one arm. With his other hand he picked up his bike and straightened the nearly empty paper bags across the rack.

He laid the cat inside one bag, on a bed of folded newspapers, then removed the belt from his pants and used it to bind shut the bag against her escape. He knew from reading every book he could find about animals, that an injured cat or dog, or any
injured animal, might run blindly away, evading the very person who sought to help it. If a horse or dog were injured, you should always get a lead on them to hold them steady. The first aid book said always confine a hurt animal as gently as you could. He had wanted to feel more carefully for broken bones, but he was afraid he'd injure the little cat. He picked up the scattered papers to balance the weight of the cat, so the bag wouldn't slide.

He was sure there would be enough air inside the closed canvas bag—he had left an inch hole at the top, and the canvas was thin and cheap.

With the cat safely bedded down, he took a running start and headed for the upper perimeter of the village.

It was six blocks to Ocean, then up Ocean five more blocks, then over two. He didn't know any faster way to get help. If he called his dad, it would take a while to find a phone, and a while more for his dad to reach him. And they'd still have to lift the cat into the car, and drive the same route he was taking.

He was headed for one of two animal clinics in town, the one his family used for their assorted pets, for their dogs and their guinea pigs and rabbit, the one he took stray cats to several times a month.

The clinic would be closed, but Dr. Firreti lived next door. Dad had gotten Firreti out of bed when their terrier was hit by a truck, and Firreti had been real nice. He'd saved Scooter. It had taken him half the night to patch up the little dog. Now, with this
cat, Dr. Firreti wouldn't mind having his supper interrupted. Pumping hard, swerving around cars, Marvin sped the seven blocks to the blue frame house next door to the clinic.

He propped his bike against the porch, undid the canvas bag, and lifted out the unresisting cat.

Holding her close, he banged on Dr. Firreti's front door. Bending over her, he could still feel her breath soft against his cheek.

From inside he heard Dr. Firreti's step coming toward the door. Heard the knob turn.

The door opened and he looked up into the veterinarian's round, sunburned face. Dr. Firreti was silent and still for a moment. “Evening, Marvin. Good, another cat. How come it's not still in the cage? I see, it's too far gone to fight you. My God, we don't need a sick one.”

“She's not sick. A man beat her. He banged her against the ground, tried to kill her.”

Firreti bent down to look closer, touching the cat lightly, feeling its pulse, lifting an eyelid.

Marvin held her securely, in case she should come awake and try to get away. How many cats had he brought to Dr. Firreti? Nine, he thought. Nine cats, and with each one he had stood beside by the metal table watching Dr. Firreti prepare the needle—the syringe. And the last two times, Dr. Firreti had let him watch the operation.

Now, he was ashamed of his sudden tears. He hadn't cried with the other cats.

But then, no one had beaten them. No one had tried to knock the life out of them. And his dad said
it was no crime to cry, not for something hurt and smaller than you. Not the way he'd cried for Scooter. But he was ashamed anyway.

“We'd better get her over to the clinic,” Dr. Firreti said. He shut the door behind him, put a hand on Marvin's shoulder, and together they headed next door to the white, cement block building.

Pale fog brightened the midnight village with auras of diffused light gleaming around the streetlamps. The two cats ran through the mist like small, swift ghosts, hardly visible; it was a low fog, of the kind villagers called a marsh fog. Weaving near the ground it twisted in uneven masses along the sidewalks smearing the lit windows of the galleries, hiding the small details of doorknobs, hinges, potted trees. Above the low river of wet air, the roofs and treetops and the sky shone sharp and clear. The fog's white mass effectively veiled the brick alley beside Jolly's Deli.

The cats moved quickly into the alley past the fuzzed gleam that swam around the wrought-iron lantern. They stopped beneath the jasmine vine beside Jolly's back door, and looked back warily toward the street.

They saw no dark, moving shapes within the fuzzed light and mist. They heard no footfall, heard only the muffled beat of Dixieland jazz from Donnie's Lounge up on Junipero. The time was just after midnight.

Slowly and methodically they began to search the alley for the stolen wrench. They dug into the earth of the planters, around the roots of the oleander trees though surely the police had dug in the pots, looking for the murder weapon. The police must have investigated every crevice in the alley; but the cats searched anyway. Dulcie poked her paw into cracks beneath the uneven thresholds at the doors of the little shops, feeling into every small opening she could find in the old, renovated buildings.

They nosed up under the windowsills, and beneath the climbing vine at the other end of the alley where Dulcie had been crouching when Beckwhite was murdered. They climbed the jasmine trellis to the roof and searched there, pawing along the metal gutters into a sticky mixture of mud and slimy dead leaves. Joe grinned. If he found the mess repulsive, Dulcie was ready to retch. Every little while he heard her trying to lick off the stickly accumulation, then sputtering out cat spit.

They searched the entire roof, then searched the alley again, but they found no weapon.

Sitting on the damp brick walk, Dulcie said, “Maybe he still had the wrench when he chased you. Maybe he hid it somewhere else.”

“If he just wanted to hide the evidence, it could be anywhere.”

“But Joe, if he hid it to get Clyde—so if Clyde crossed him in some way, then…”

“I still don't get why Clyde would cross him. They weren't friends. It would have to be something at the shop.” He frowned. “Clyde serviced the cars
Wark shipped in, but that's all. They didn't even like each other—at least Clyde doesn't much like Wark. What else could have been between them?”

She licked her paw. “Could Clyde know something about Wark? Something to do with the shop?”

Joe flicked an ear. “I've never heard him say anything. Never heard him say anything to Max Harper. If he knew something illegal that Wark had done, he'd tell the chief of police. Clyde's as straight as an old woman.”

She shifted her bottom on the cold brick paving.

“But Clyde has been coming home from work really short-tempered lately. Not like himself. And when Beckwhite…”

He stopped speaking. His eyes widened. “I just remembered something.” He spun around, and headed for the fog-muffled street. “Come on. Maybe I know where Wark hid the wrench.”

She ran to catch up. Within minutes, racing along the foggy streets side by side, they slid into the crawl space beneath the antique shop where Joe had escaped from Wark.

The earth was cold beneath their paws. The dark, moldy dirt smelled sour. Neither of them mentioned the sharp scent of female cat. As they pushed underneath, festoons of cobwebs caught at their ears and whiskers.

He said, “That night, when I hid under here, just before I ran out the back, Wark knelt and looked in. I thought he meant to crawl in, but he only reached, feeling around. Maybe that's what he was doing; maybe he was hiding the wrench.”

He reared up, sniffing at the top of the concrete foundation where it supported the heavy old floor joists.

Dulcie patted at the earth along the foundation beneath the opening, to see if Wark might have dug a shallow hole. But the earth was smooth and hard. Probably no one had dug in this ground for a hundred years, except for the resident cat—a female, she had noticed. She wondered about that, about why Joe had picked this particular building to hide under.

But he'd told her. It was the first place he could get under. All the other shops were store buildings on concrete slabs, no crawl space. This old place had been a house, once. Houses had crawl spaces. Wilma's house had a lovely crawl space, cool in hot weather, and delightfully mouse-scented, though the mice themselves had long ago met their maker.

She nosed along the top of the concrete foundation, reaching her paw warily behind ragged bits of black building paper. She didn't want to rip her soft pads on a hidden nail. She wondered how far Wark could have reached in. After some feet of poking and sniffing, she hissed, “Here. Something cold.”

She pawed aside a ragged corner of building paper that was caught between a double joist. Its end sat securely atop the cement foundation, a double beam built to support some extra weight in the house above. Maybe a refrigerator; or more likely an old-fashioned icebox, from the age of the place.

The wrench was there, shoved up between the two joists. She tried to pry it out, then Joe tried,
clutching it between his paws. The wrench wouldn't budge.

“Be careful,” she said. “His fingerprints could be on it, as well as Clyde's.”

“Damned hard to get it out without pawing. I wonder if he wore gloves.”

“Well, did you see gloves on his hands?”

“I don't remember. I was too busy saving my neck. I don't know how else to get it down, without smearing it. Do you have a better idea?”

She stood on her hind legs, tapping at the wrench with a delicate paw. “What about this hole, here in the end?”

The small hole that ran through the end of the handle wasn't big enough to get a paw through. Joe could just hook his claws in. He pulled as hard as he dared without tearing out a claw, but the wrench remained solidly secured. As he backed away licking his paw, Dulcie said, “What would a human do?”

“How the hell do I know?”

He pictured with amusement Clyde's infrequent household repairs.

But Clyde did know how to use a lever. Clyde claimed levers had been one of the great steps forward for mankind. That seemed to Joe a little much, but what did he know? Certainly the lever system was innovative, at least from a cat's point of view. He'd been fascinated when Clyde levered up the heavy file cabinet in the spare bedroom, when a black widow spider ran underneath.

Clyde wouldn't have bothered to kill a spider just for himself. Probably if a black widow bit Clyde, it
would be the one to die. But, afraid for the animals, he had lifted the file cabinet by wedging it up with a long metal rod. When the spider ran out, he stomped it. The smashed spider had left a permanent black spot on the carpet.

Thinking about the lever, he moved away into the blackness to prowl the cavernous space, and soon Dulcie joined him, searching for a piece of iron, maybe a scrap left from some repair, or even a stout stick to help dislodge the wrench.

Searching through the scent of female cat, he was interested that Dulcie did not remark upon the matter. Well if she wasn't asking, he wasn't offering. Anyway, what difference? That was another life. That female meant nothing, now.

When they found no lever to use on the wrench, nothing but a few rusty nails, Dulcie headed for the street. Trotting out the hole in the foundation, moving along through the fog, she stared up at each parked car until she found one with a window half-open.

She leaped, hung by her front paws, and climbed through, her belly dragging on the glass. She disappeared inside.

Joe waited, watching the street. Twice he leaped up the side of the car to stare in, but she was on the floor, he couldn't see what she was doing. When she appeared at the glass again, she had a thin, rusty screwdriver in her mouth, securely clamped between her teeth.

As she climbed out, the metal hit the glass with a little ping.

Within minutes, in the dark beneath the antique shop, they had pushed the screwdriver through the hole in the torque wrench. Bracing the lever against a joist, Joe laid his weight on the handle.

The wrench gave, it slid down a few inches.

But then it stuck again. He pried harder. He was able to force it slowly out, until it protruded so far he couldn't get a purchase.

When still it was stuck, Dulcie pushed him aside. Leaping up, wrapping all four paws around the screwdriver, hanging upside down, she swung hard, lashing her tail, jiggling and bouncing.

The wrench fell with Dulcie under it, she hit the ground hard. She lay still, panting. The wrench lay across her. Joe nosed at her, frightened, until she began to untangle herself.

“You okay?” he said at last.

“I'm fine.” She licked at her shoulder. “We'd better find something to wrap the evidence. The police use plastic.”

“Or we'd better wipe it clean, if Clyde's prints are on it.”

“We don't know what's on it. The killer's prints could be there, too, if he was careless.”

They found a newspaper on the porch of the antique shop and removed the plastic bag into which it had been inserted to protect it against damp weather. Within moments they had bagged the evidence.

They left the cellar carrying the heavy package between them, heading north. When a young couple approached them out of the fog, walking slowly
with their arms around each other, they ducked into a doorway. When the bleary lights of a car sought them, they crouched over the wrench to hide it.

Several times Joe left Dulcie guarding the plastic bundle as he investigated possible hiding places. But nosing through the mist into niches between walls and into doorways, no place suited him. As they approached the Dixieland music emanating from Donnie's Lounge, he quickened his pace.

A walled patio served as entry to Donnie's neighborhood bar. The little stone paved rectangle was bordered on three sides by wide flower beds planted with marigolds. The flowers' sharp scent tickled the cats' noses.

They laid the murder weapon among a tangle of yellow blooms where the earth was soft, and they dug.

As they loosened each flower, Dulcie laid it aside, careful not to bite through the stem. She thought the flowers might be poison, too. She had seen a list once of plants poisonous to cats, but she didn't remember much of it. Only oleander and, she thought, tomato leaves. Who would want to chew on a tomato vine? Each time the doors to Donnie's swung open, the music burst out, hurting their ears, but with a wildly compelling beat. The surge of jazz was laced heavily with the sharp smell of beer and whiskey. As they dug, Dulcie got that faraway look as if dreaming again, dreaming about a night of barhopping.

When the hole was some eighteen inches deep, they lowered the plastic-wrapped evidence. Dulcie
said, “I feel like we're burying a corpse in one of those body bags.”

“Should we say a few words over the deceased?”

She grinned. “Say a prayer for the man who killed Beckwhite. I think he's going to need it.”

They pushed dirt back on top of the plastic-wrapped wrench, and Dulcie pressed each marigold in carefully, patting earth around its roots just as Wilma would do. “We don't want them to die, someone might investigate.”

She resettled the last of the soil, then pawed dry leaves over the earth's wound. When no sign of digging remained, she stepped out of the flower bed, shook her paws, and licked the remaining earth from them. “No sense in leaving pawprints.”

They were headed across the small stone patio for the street when the bar door swung open. Light from within hit the stone wall, driving them back down its length into shadow.

At first sight of the two men emerging, they hunched lower, and Joe swallowed back a snarl. Dulcie's fur bristled.

Lee Wark came down the path not five feet from them.

“And that's Jimmie Osborne,” Joe breathed. “Why is Osborne out drinking with Beckwhite's killer?”

The men swung past them out the gate, both jingling car keys, and headed north. The cats followed, Dulcie proceeding warily, Joe pushing ahead quick and predatory, coldly hating Wark, and with precious little love for Osborne.

He'd never liked Osborne—the man was a bully and a coward. How many times when Jimmie and Kate were over to the house for supper, had Osborne been coldly rude to Kate.

Joe smiled. It made his night to annoy the man; he considered it a perfect evening when he could harass Osborne, torment him until he turned pale with rage. And with fear.

Now, hurrying through the fog after the two men, both cats grimaced at the smell of the killer. Wark's scent, more distinctive than Osborne's faint aroma, lingered sharply in the damp air. The smell goaded Dulcie, she forgot her earlier fear. Moving along beside Joe, she crouched to a slinking stalk, her ears clutched flat to her head, her tail lashing. Creeping through the fog, she gauged her distance. She considered the angle of thrust needed for a clean leap onto Wark's back, contemplating with delicious anticipation her claws digging in.