Cat Pay the Devil (21 page)

I
t was midnight when the old man descended to the
basement and, working silently, moved the piled boxes out of the closet, shoving them in among the rest of the detritus that crowded the concrete room. He guessed Lilly had gotten nervous about that safe, so visible and all. The fact that it was covered up told him there was something to be nervous
about
.

Kneeling over the locked metal box he tried to remove it from the closet, but it was sunk deep in the floor. Probably bolted, the bolts removable only from inside, once it was open. When he couldn't budge it, he took from his pocket a small, rechargeable electric drill and a miniature periscope, a tiny light on a long, thin, flexible neck, an eyepiece at the end.

The sound of the drill wasn't loud. But twice he stopped to listen to the house above him, just in case Lilly woke and started down. The big old house remained silent, and within minutes the drill had gone through the thick metal lid, leav
ing a quarter-inch hole into which he slid the periscope.

Slowly he turned the safe's dial, watching through the periscope as the plates moved, slowly working out the combination until, after maybe twenty minutes, he was able to apply that information and lift the heavy lid.

Staring down into the metal box, Greeley was very still. His expression didn't change. An observer could have read nothing on the face of the grizzled old man. He knelt there in his wrinkled clothes and old worn shoes, shaggy gray hair, three days' growth of stubble, looking down blankly into the empty safe. Only slowly did his rage burn to the surface, like a flame that started deep inside a building, belatedly flickering and blooming until it blazed red and violent through the walls.

Rage. Disbelief. A deep and painful disappointment. He knelt there a long time, looking. At last he closed the safe again, spun the dial, and rose. He put back the boxes on top as they had been, shut the closet door, and turned resolutely to search the rest of the basement, but without much hope.

Knowing Cage, he limited his survey to places that would be relatively fireproof, because Cage had once lost a nice haul in a fire, in an old, tinder-dry apartment. He investigated a patched area of concrete where another safe might be sunk, but could find no way into it. Carefully he examined the concrete walls, the concrete floor beneath the stairs. He looked over the stacked boxes and old bits of furniture, but they were all tinder, not what Cage would choose. At last he turned away, discouraged, and left the basement, moving up the wooden stairs in his stockinged feet just as he had come down.

Back in his room, shutting the door silently behind him, he sat down on the bed, put his feet up on the spread, poured a good jolt of whiskey into the plastic glass he'd taken from
the bathroom, and drank it down. You could bet that bitch parole officer had been here, just like Cage must've thought. Her and her partner, her and that hard-nosed Bennett—served him right coming in here and stealing, served him right he got shot.

He thought about them cats. That one cat that lived with the Getz woman. Had them cats spied on Cage, watched as he opened the safe and then told her? And she'd waltzed right in here, her and Bennett, and cleaned it out? With
them
cats, anything was possible.

It did not occur to Greeley that Wilma and Mandell Bennett had made that official search of the Jones house with the DEA agents some years before tabby Dulcie had come to live with her. In fact, before Dulcie was born. Sitting on the bed finishing the whiskey, the old man began to feel trapped, driven into a corner by an unfair and twisted fate. He'd been counting on that gold. Not so much because he needed it; he had already cashed out half his own share, before this trip, more than enough for all the cars and whiskey, and even women, he could handle in what remained of his lifetime; and he didn't care about fancy houses and clothes, he cared only about his own pleasure. No, it wasn't that he needed Cage's half of the haul. He wanted it purely because he'd set his mind on it—because this theft had been the big one. The one spectacular prize before he retired, before he kicked back and enjoyed life. This job was big enough to have the entire Panamanian government panicked into closing its borders, if they'd knowed about it.

That was the beauty of this heist. The Guardia didn't know, not a clue. A theft from thieves didn't get a lot of police action. If those guys he and Cage'd stole from had run to the Guardia,
they
were the ones who'd be in the
carcel
.

And now, that bitch parole officer had cheated him out of every penny.

Sure as hell no one else had known about the stash. Cage wouldn't of told anyone, he was too closemouthed. Greeley wondered if he'd told Eddie Sears, but Cage never had trusted him. Cage's sister Violet, she didn't count for nothing, skinny little thing afraid of her own shadow. Ditto Lilly Jones. Lilly didn't have the imagination or the balls to think of stealing anything. The very idea of cracking a safe would give the old girl a sick headache.

No, it was that Getz woman. Fancy stone house and new car. Not hardly, on her federal retirement. Likely socked the rest of the loot away in some kind of securities or some little-old-lady annuity, safe and untouchable.

But right now he had to search the rest of the house. Cage
could
have hidden the stash somewhere else, and he'd be a friggin' fool to miss it. Slipping out of the room to toss the main floor, he used a little penlight that wasn't much. A nuisance searching in the dark. He went through the refrigerator-freezer, which might be impervious to fire but was the first place a burglar would look. He was turning out the living room, checking the electrical plugs for tampering, when he heard a noise at the front door. The lock clicked, the knob turned, and as the door opened Greeley drew back behind the couch, crouching down as sneaky and undignified as them damned spying cats.

 

“I still have no idea what Cage was after,” Wilma said, settling back into the leather booth, sipping her whiskey and water, gazing into the fire that Moreno's Bar and Grille kept blazing even in warm weather. The cozy restaurant was nearly empty at this hour. A rare steak was on the way, with
fries and onion rings. “Was he dumb enough to hide stolen stocks or securities there in the house? There's no theft like that in his record, but that doesn't mean much. Who knows what Cage might have pulled off that was never connected to him.”

Clyde frowned. “Stocks or securities that could be traced? Whatever it was, it had to be pretty valuable to leave it there all those years while he was in prison.”

“Or,” Wilma said, speculating, “maybe something he thought would increase in value? I wonder if he has that much foresight.”

“Or,” Clyde said, shaking his head, “he meant to hide it until the law forgot about it?”

Wilma laughed. “Cage won't be around that long. If it's of interest to Treasury agents, they don't forget.” She yawned, beginning to relax, feeling the aches and tension subside. The cozy retreat, and Clyde's company and the promised steak, had made her feel almost normal again. That, and the fact that Dulcie and Joe Grey were tucked up on the leather bench beside her, Joe with his head on her lap, treating her to a rare show of affection. She was greatly touched that the tomcat had put aside his macho disdain of cuddling.

Clyde made a pattern of rings on the table with his glass. “What will happen to Violet? I guess she's glad Eddie's in jail. Or she should be.”

“I don't know that she's glad. I half-expect she'll go back to him when he gets out, even years down the road.” The subject of Violet tired her. “I don't have much patience for a woman who won't help herself, and I don't think she plans to do that.”

Clyde shook his head. “Maybe she'll change.”

“If she has any sense, she'll get out of Molena Point and go where Eddie won't find her, go while she has the chance.
I told her I'd help her.” She stroked Dulcie, then looked up at Clyde. “At least Mandell is mending.”

On their way down from the ruins, she had called the San Francisco hospital on Clyde's cell phone and had been able to speak with Mandell. He was out of intensive care and wanted to get into physical rehab as soon as possible. He said that when he got his hands on Cage Jones, he planned to be in top form.

“I'll be right beside you,” Wilma had told him. “Have you been able to figure out what Jones thinks we took?”

“Nothing my secretary could find in his early files. She went through everything. But those years he was in Central America, who knows what he did down there? Didn't you and Cage go to school with some guy who later moved down to Panama? A diver for the Panama Canal?”

“Greeley Urzey. Greeley was older, but it was a small school. When Cage grew up, he and Greeley ran around together for a while. They were in Panama at the same time.”

Mandell had been silent for a few moments, then, “Something I read, some years back. I keep thinking about it, but can't bring it clear. Be glad when I'm off this pain killer and I can get my mind straight.”

“About crimes down there, some unsolved crime?”

“Seems like something spectacular. How would I forget that?”

“Let me do some checking. I'll run it by Max.”

Talking with Bennett, she'd had the speaker on. Both cats, when they talked about Greeley and Cage, had been glued to the phone. But when she'd said good night to Mandell and hung up, she had studied their two sleek little faces, Dulcie's green eyes and Joe's yellow eyes as innocent as the gazes of kittens, the two cats looking back at her blandly and saying nothing.

Mandell had described how Cage had shot him, how he'd gone into the office as he often did on weekend mornings to catch up on paperwork, worked from seven until midmorning, then had gone out for a good breakfast. When he stepped out of the courthouse elevator in the parking garage, checking around him as he always did, he felt the impact a second before he heard the shot. He took a second shot in the shoulder and heard a car speed away, glimpsed Cage's face as the car swung up the ramp. He had tried to run after it, then to use his cell phone, then he must have blacked out, which embarrassed him; he could remember nothing more.

“Woke up in the ambulance,” Mandell had said, “thinking strange thoughts…about my Cherokee ancestors who I never knew. I could see them marching as prisoners across the continent into that dry hot land they hated. Woke up hot and parched, thinking I was marching…Strange,” he said, “what the human mind will do.”

Wilma thought of Mandell again after dinner, when Clyde dropped her and Dulcie off at home, thought that it would take Mandell time to recover, that he would be pretty laid up for a while, and no one to do things for him in his little bachelor apartment.

Clyde insisted on going through the house with her. The trashed rooms were heartbreaking, daunting. She tried to put that out of her thoughts; she'd clean up tomorrow. The first thing she did was go to her car, unlock the glove compartment, and retrieve her .38, which was locked there, just as she'd left it.

“It would be nice,” Clyde said, “if you'd sleep with that where you can reach it. And,” he said, “if you would consider putting a lock on the bedroom door, to narrow the odds of someone walking in on you. Dulcie can't play watch cat
all night.” He stroked Dulcie gently. “She stands guard all night, she'll never get her beauty sleep.”

Wilma laughed and gave him a hug. “I'll keep it close, and I'll call a locksmith in the morning.” And within half an hour of Clyde's leaving, she and Dulcie were tucked up in bed, a chair propped under the doorknob, which at least would make some noise if someone came in. She didn't see how it would be needed, now that Cage was in the hospital, and Eddie in custody, but she'd promised Clyde. She did straighten up the bedroom. Then, stretched out in bed between smooth sheets, she relished the clean feeling from her shower, the feel of Dulcie snuggled warm beside her, extravagantly purring, and the thick stone walls of her own house secure around her.

T
here was no need now for stealth on the dark
bridle trail; the two riders headed home using their torches to throw wide beams of cheering light among the trees that crowded their passage, bright paths that delineated tire marks ahead, broken by the hoofprints of their horses and the paw prints of the big Weimaraner. On her sorrel mare, Charlie welcomed the quiet, empty night around them as she tried to get centered again, after seeing Cage Jones's bloodied face when she shot him, the explosion of bone and blood, seeing Cage twist and fall. Her mind and spirit were sick with that moment, with the shock of shooting a man.

But the alternative could have been her own death, and Max, too.

“Takes a while,” Max said, watching her, riding close and putting his arm around her.

“Does anyone really get over it?”

“You live with it. Better than not stopping him.”

“I know. But it's hard to get used to. Do you remem
ber, when I read C. S. Lewis aloud, where a damned soul wouldn't change itself, so it went out like a snuffed candle? Just vanished? And you said, ‘What would the alternative have been?'”

“Yes, I remember.”

“I keep seeing Jones's face, all bloody. And a moment before, when he raised his gun at me, so vicious and filled with hate.” She looked at Max. “The devil's face, it seemed to me,” she said, looking at him shyly.

“That's not crazy,” he said softly. “Evil is evil, Charlie.”

She leaned into Max, their legs bumping against each other, the horses fussing because they were forced too close together. There had been moments this evening when she'd wondered if they would ever be together again, if she would ever see Max again. Tonight, when she'd thought that Cage had killed Wilma, when she'd thought that they would both be dead by morning, hope had nearly deserted her.

She sat up straight, looking away through the trees where the lights of the ranch shone, welcoming them home, and she squeezed Max's hand. And as they headed down the last hill through the woods, loud barking greeted them and the three dogs came running—their own two unruly half Great Danes, and Rock, dancing around the horses. Beside the house, Ryan's red truck stood parked beside a squad car. The air was filled with the aroma of something spicy cooking.

The door opened, spilling light from the kitchen, and Ryan stepped out, the smell of simmering chili filling the night. Dallas came out behind her and crossed the yard to help with the horses. That, too, was a rare treat, that Dallas would rub the horses down, give them a flake of hay and extra grain, see that they, too, were comfortable. Handing
her reins to Dallas, she slid gratefully from the saddle, made her way tiredly across the yard beside Max, and went into their bright house. They were home, safe and together.

 

In the upstairs master suite of Clyde Damen's house, all the windows were open, the predawn breeze blowing through smelling of the sea, cooling the bedroom and study. Beneath the high rafters, in the king-size bed, Clyde slept sprawled across the sheets, clad only in Jockey shorts, snoring. The gray tomcat slept close against Clyde's shoulder, on his back, his four paws in the air, much as he had slept when he was a kitten. He snored, twitching in his sleep. He woke at dawn still half worn out from dreaming, irritable and hungry. He nudged Clyde, his cold, insistent nose jerking Clyde from sleep. Clyde rolled over, glaring. Then, turning, he stared incredulously at the bedside clock.

“It's five o'clock. Five
A.M.
! Do you realize—”

“It's Monday. You going to work?”

“Six,” Clyde said, rolling over. “You know what time the alarm rings. Go back to sleep. If you can't sleep, go up on the roof. Wake up the neighbors. Leave me alone.”

“I'm hungry. Weak with hunger.”

“You are not weak with hunger. You ate half my steak last night and nearly an entire order of fries. I'm surprised you didn't throw it all up in the middle of the bed. If you—”

“Weak,” Joe repeated. “The excitement…” He looked hard at Clyde. “Stress. That kind of thing is really stressful for a cat, all that shooting. Stress can kill a cat. I feel—”

“You are not going to die of stress. Or of starvation. You might die of strangulation if you don't shut up. Your problem is, you're turning into a first-class pig. If you think you're hungry, go get some kibble. Paw open the cupboard,
you've done it enough times. And use a little consideration, don't spill kibble all over the floor.”

Joe didn't want kibble. He wanted something hot and freshly cooked. He wanted comfort food, something to warm his little cat heart and soothe his frayed nerves. He wanted restorative fat and cholesterol, a real tomcat breakfast, the kind only Clyde could make. Letting himself go limp on the pillow, paws drooping, he looked up at Clyde pitifully.

For an instant Clyde's dark eyes widened in a flash of concern, but then he caught himself. Glaring, he turned over and pulled the pillow over his head. Joe sighed. Some woman could give Clyde an equally pitiful look and he'd fall all over himself, but when a poor little cat tried it, nothing. Joe lay, sighing his last, until he almost believed that he was fainting away—and finally his perseverance did the trick; Clyde sat up scowling at the clock, glared at Joe, muttered something unnecessarily rude, and swung out of bed. “Who can sleep after that performance? What do you want for breakfast!”

Joe considered several menu options while Clyde retreated to the master bath and turned on the shower. “Damn cat! Damn rotten spoiled tomcat!”

Grinning, Joe padded down the stairs, slipped out through his cat door, and stood looking up and down the street. When he saw no neighbors about, and no one looking out a window, he took the morning paper in his teeth and hauled it through his cat door. Dragged it through to the kitchen and with some difficulty wrestled it up onto the kitchen table. The paper was getting heavier every day. If they didn't solicit all that unnecessary advertising to bulk it up…Unfolding it as he waited for Clyde, he scanned the front page.

There was nothing about Wilma's or Charlie's kidnap
ping, or about the arrest of Cage Jones. Max and Dallas had been adept, indeed, at keeping things quiet. There were still a lot of loose ends in this case, and it didn't need to go public yet.

The front page covered the third break-in murder, though, recapping how Peggy Milner had been killed in her kitchen. How a neighbor had seen her in there, but when she went to Peggy's door, and knocked and called out to her and Peggy didn't answer, the neighbor had called 911. Peggy had been fixing a late supper for one, as her husband was working late. She had been stabbed. The neighbor said the sight sickened her. There were, so far, no other witnesses. The article followed up with recaps of the Linda Tucker and Elaine Keating killings, pointing out similarities between the three incidents. The byline on the article said “Jim Barker.”

Barker was a tall, neatly groomed, sensible guy with three little girls and a keen sympathy for the problems the police faced when information was aired too soon. He covered the police blotter with common sense and real interest, not with a chip on his shoulder like some egocentric newsmen. Joe remembered some very snide articles by other reporters questioning the conduct of Max's officers, and, more than once, claiming it would be foolish to spend city money on drug dogs and working police dogs, for whom Joe had the highest respect.

He wondered sometimes if Molena Point would ever get a police dog. That would be a fine addition to the force—except that a canine officer could sure destroy Joe's rapport with the law, could mess up his investigations and totally destroy his clandestine surveillance. A trained evidence dog would pick up the faintest cat scent at a crime scene, and might single him or Dulcie or Kit out as having been there, might come down really hard on them. And a dog would
know the minute a cat entered the PD, would know where they were, under which desk, behind which chair. No, dogs would be a problem in Harper's department. Anywhere else, they'd be an asset.

Clyde came down the stairs and turned on the coffeepot. “And what is your royal highness's pleasure this morning?” Rudely, he picked Joe up from atop the front page. “Do you have to hog the entire paper?” Setting Joe on his own side of the table, Clyde laid out a place mat and silverware for himself. “Omelet? What do you want in it? Ham? Bacon? Mushrooms? Cheese?”

“That would be fine.”

“That
what
would be fine?”

“What you just said. You can hold the mushrooms if you want, if you're really—”

Clyde sighed and jerked open the refrigerator.

“That door gasket isn't going to last another six months if you—”

“Can it, Joe. I haven't had a lot of sleep.”

Joe yawned in Clyde's face to demonstrate that he had missed just as much sleep.

“You slept all the way home,” Clyde said, cracking eggs into a bowl.

“I merely had my eyes closed. I was thinking.” The tomcat returned to the front page, perusing the article that pointed out the similarities among the three murders. It left out only those sensitive facts that Harper would not have wanted published, such as the identification of fingerprints and the list of suspects—of which, Joe knew, there were few. Jim Barker said that at this point the police were looking at no single burglary suspect who might be involved in all three cases. The paper went on to say, in a sidebar, that the Molena Point police kept a current list of the names and
addresses of all calls for domestic disturbance or abuse.

An accompanying human-interest article at the bottom of the page dealt with the plight of abused women. It quoted a psychologist's assessment of the fears of such women, and their reluctance to make a fresh start. It suggested steps they might take to separate themselves from their abusers if they chose to do so, including agency, shelter, and private foundation names and phone numbers. Jim Barker had done an admirable job for Max in helping to alert other women before it was too late. He had, at the same time, as was surely Harper's intent, alerted other possible wife killers that the department was aware of their brutal tendencies.

As Clyde dished up their omelets, Joe pushed the paper around, facing Clyde's plate. Far be it from him to hog the morning news. Twitching an ear at Clyde by way of thanks for an elegant omelet, he glanced down at Rube's empty place on the floor, as he had done every morning since they'd had to put the old Lab down. And, as he did every morning, before he started to eat he said a little cat prayer for Rube that he supposed was just as valid for dogs.

Then he set to on the omelet, as ravenous as if he couldn't remember his last meal. He ate slurping and enjoying, then at last gave his whiskers and paws a hasty wash, another flick of the ears for Clyde, and he was off—up the stairs, onto Clyde's desk, up onto the rafter and out through his rooftop cat door. He paused in his tower for a hasty drink where the water was cool from sitting out all night; then he was out his tower window and across the roofs heading for Molena Point PD.