Cat Raise the Dead (17 page)

Adelina slipped the files back into the drawer, locked it, and put the photographs back in the envelope. “I don't know why these people have to visit the same day as that Pet-a-Pet business. And I don't know whether
allowing those animal enthusiasts in here is worth the trouble, for the little PR it affords.”

“Well it certainly wasn't my idea.”

Adelina sighed. “Have you done all the errands?”

“Of course. What time?”

“Two-thirty. Don't leave half the box in the closet.”

“I never do. What about that new nurse, that big slow woman? I don't—”

“I'll see that she's kept busy. Have you made any progress on her? I don't like keeping her when she—”

“So far, nothing. You should have looked deeper before you hired her.”

“I didn't have any choice. It isn't easy to get help. Just get on with your job. Everyone has some skeleton in the closet, and you're to keep on until you find it. You've had two weeks, and you don't have a thing. If you'd pay more attention to business—”

“I've checked DMV. Five credit bureaus. Four previous addresses and talked with three of her landlords.”

“What about NCI? That was foolish, to allow that Lieutenant Sacks to get married.”

“What was I going to do, poison his dearly beloved? There'll be someone else. Max Harper—”

“You'll leave Harper alone; he's not to be approached. I don't trust him for a minute. What about that Lieutenant Brennan?”

Renet did not reply.

“If not Brennan, then you'll have to buy the information in San Francisco—that should be no problem.”

“You needn't be sarcastic. And I might have other things to attend to.”

“You had better plan your time around matters of first importance.” Adelina rose. “Lock the door when you leave. And make sure you have your little party under control.” And she disappeared into the hall, her black skirt swishing against her silken thighs.

Renet didn't move from the love seat for some time, but sat tapping her foot irritably. When she did rise, she
stepped to the desk and tried the locked drawer. When she couldn't open it, she tucked the brown envelope under her arm and left the room, locking the door as she'd been instructed.

The instant they were alone, Dulcie slid out from between the pillows. Standing on the window seat she shook herself, licked her paw, swiped at her whiskers. “I'm all matted down—those pillows are hot as sin.” She watched Joe slide out from under the love seat, pawing dust from his whiskers. He leaped up beside her, and they sat looking out to the drive and the gardens.

They could see no one. The red Bentley and Renet's blue van were parked before the door. When they were certain they were unobserved they slipped out beneath the open window, through the scrolled curves of the burglar grille, and dropped into a bed of marigolds.

Crouched among the sharp-scented flowers, they scanned the gardens. They saw no one.

“The smell of marigolds is supposed to keep away fleas,” Dulcie said.

“Old wives' tale. Come on, we're out of here.” Close together they raced across the drive away from the manicured grounds, flew down the hill into a tangled wood so wild and unkempt it could never be a part of Casa Capri. At once they felt safe again, and free.

Fallen branches and drifts of rotting leaves lay tangled against the trunks of the ancient, sprawling trees. Together they fled, leaping from log to log, plunging through piles of crackling leaves, shaking off the tight sense of closed rooms and locked doors and under-furniture niches that would hardly let a cat breathe. They were flying down through leafy tangles and branches when a shrill sound stopped them. A strange and muffled cry. They froze still, two statues, listening.

The woods angled downward, the old twisted oaks rising among fallen, rotted trees, among dead branches and dry, brittle foliage: a shadowed graveyard of dying trees. The cry came again, a muffled gurgle. Puzzled, the cats trotted down among the shadows, watching, leaping silently over logs, sinking down into drifts and damp hollows. Far below them, between a tangle of dead branches, they glimpsed something bright, a gleam of metal glinting from the dark tangles.

Slowly and warily padding down, they could soon make out the handlebars of a bike. The crying came from there. The rough, gulping sobs sounded more angry than hurt.

The bike leaned against the forked trunk of an ancient oak that had split down the middle, its two halves leaning jagged against their neighbors. At the tree's base, Dillon sat in a pile of dead bracken, her head down on her knees, her arms around her knees, bawling so hard she didn't hear them, heard no rustle of paws crunching leaves.

Dulcie dropped down beside her. Dillon startled, looked up. The child's face was smeared with tears and makeup, black eyeliner and lipstick and powder all run together. Dulcie climbed up into her lap, touched Dillon's cheek with a soft paw. Dillon smiled through her tears, grabbed Dulcie to her, hugging her, burying her face in Dulcie's shoulder—then began bawling
again, crying against Dulcie until Dulcie's fur was wet. Joe sat watching, exasperated at the female display of weeping. All this because she'd been booted out of Casa Capri.

When at last Dillon stopped crying, she eased her grip on Dulcie and reached her fingers to Joe, touching his nose. “What are you two doing, way up here in the hills? You're miles from home. This isn't Pet-a-Pet day.” She frowned, puzzled. But then she grinned through her streaked makeup. “You were hunting—Wilma said you hunt all over these hills.”

She looked hard at them, and her eyes widened. “Did you hear me crying? Did you come down here because you heard me crying?”

Dulcie snuggled against her, but Joe turned nervously to lick his paw. Had they shown more than a normal cat's interest? The kid didn't need to get any ideas about them.

But she was only a kid. All children believed in the sympathy and understanding of animals; most kids thought their dogs understood every word they said. Kids grew up on fairy tales featuring helpful animals, and even on
Lassie
reruns—a helping animal was no big deal, to some kids as natural as a loving grandmother.

Dillon wiped her tears with the back of her hand, smearing black and red. “I only wanted to see Jane. They acted like I was some kind of criminal.” She gave them a deep, confiding stare. “She isn't there. Why else would they be so nasty. And they know that I know she isn't there.” She gave them a determined look, her brown eyes blazing with anger. “Well they can go to hell. I'm going to find out what's going on.

“Yesterday I called her trust officer, but the switchboard said to leave a message. Voice mail—big deal. I gave my name and phone number, but now I'm sorry. My folks'll have twenty fits.”

Dulcie reached a soft paw again, patting the child's face. Dillon gathered them both into her arms, pulling
Joe into her lap with an insistent little hand. She held them against her as if they were rag dolls, pressing her wet face into their fur. The child was warm, and smelled of the perfumed cosmetics.

“I love you both. I wish you could tell me what to do.” She kissed Dulcie's pink nose. “They were so gross, marching me out of there like a baby.” She looked at them bleakly. “Jane isn't there. And no one will believe me.”

Unblinking, Dulcie stared at the child, so intent that Dillon widened her eyes, looked into Dulcie's eyes deeply, suddenly alarmed. The two gazed at each other for a long moment, in a strange, silent aura of communication.

Dillon whispered, “What, Dulcie Cat? What is it? What are you trying to tell me?”

Joe wanted to shove Dulcie away, she wasn't behaving like an ordinary cat. He could feel her concern for Dillon. If the people of Casa Capri were this adamant about keeping out strangers, then maybe there was reason to fear for the child.

Dillon said softly, “Are you afraid of them, too?”

When Dulcie looked almost as if she would forget herself and speak to Dillon, Joe pushed her aside.

Scowling, she jumped down, turned her back on him, began to wash herself, contrite suddenly, and embarrassed.

They sat with Dillon for a long time, until at last she sniffled, blew her nose. Finally, she picked up her bike and began to drag it through the woods, heaving it over the tangles, heading for the road.

They didn't follow her.

At the top of the hill she blew her nose again, looked down at them once more, puzzled, then kicked off and sped away, coasting down the dropping street. They watched her small, lone figure until she disappeared around a curve.

They were licking Dillon's salty tears from their fur,
licking away her makeup, when suddenly Dulcie gave him a wild look and exploded away through the sunshine, racing up across the hills—too wild to be still another instant. Shedding the restraint of cautious hours last night and this morning, shedding the tension of dealing with Dillon, she leaped invisible barriers, careened around bushes and through dead grass and across driveways and gardens, across the open fields. Joe sped behind her, infected by her drunken lust for freedom, their ears and whiskers flattened in the wind, their paws hitting only the high spots.

Dulcie paused at last, half a mile north of Casa Capri in a favorite field where three boulders thrust up. The smooth granite glinted hot with morning sun. Leaping to the top, she stretched out across the warm stone, twitching her tail, rolling in the heat. She chased her tail, then lay on her back, letting her paws flop above her, idly slapping at a little breeze.

Joe lay in the warm grass below, nibbling the tender new blades which thrust up between last year's growth. “The kid's going to get herself in trouble, nosing around.”

“Not if we find out what's going on first.”

He looked up at her, exasperated. “So what was Adelina writing? I'm surprised she didn't feel you breathing down her neck.”

Dulcie lifted her head, her eyes slitted against the sunlight. “Personal letters. She was writing to a friend of Lillie Merzinger. The file had Lillie's name on it, and there were letters to Lillie in a scrawly handwriting, and some snapshots of two ladies standing beside a lake, with pine trees behind. There were graduation announcements, too, and wedding invitations, little personal mementos, the kind of personal stuff people save.”

She rolled over to look at him. “There were machine copies of letters from Lillie to Dorothy. Adelina spread them all out, as if to refer to them, before she began to write.”

She rolled again, to warm her other side. “What did she do, open Lillie's mail? Open the letters Lillie wrote, before they were mailed, and make copies?”

“What did the letter say?”

“Boring stuff. About Lillie's poor digestion, and about Dorothy's old dog and about Cousin Ed. Dull, personal things. Why would Adelina write the letter in the first person, and sign Lillie's name?”

“So Lillie Merzinger's too sick to answer her mail,” Joe said. “Someone has to answer her letters, or her family would worry.”

“But why doesn't she tell Lillie's family she's too sick to write? Why wouldn't she type a regular letter on the computer? Print it out with the rest of her letters. Tell them how Lillie's feeling, that she's taking her medicine, maybe getting a little better. And if someone's really sick, wouldn't she phone the family?”

Dulcie's eyes narrowed to green slits. “And the other letter, the one she wrote on lined paper—she wrote it in a totally different handwriting. She signed it James. Addressed the envelope from James Luther.”

She snatched at a flitting moth, caught it in curving claws, chomped and swallowed it, then fixed him with a hard green gaze. “And why was her handwriting different for each letter? Why was she forging those letters?”

They both thought it:
Because Lillie and James aren't there anymore
. Their thought was as sharp on the wind as if they'd spoken.

Joe slapped at a wasp, turned away and began to wash his back.

Normally he'd be as eager as Dulcie to find out what was going on, but this situation made him edgy. He felt as though very soon they were going to wish they'd kept their noses to themselves. Casa Capri, with its locked doors, gave him the fidgets.

“And what,” Dulcie said, “is Renet's mysterious presentation tomorrow? Like a speech? Why would Renet give a speech? A speech about what?” She sat up tall on
the warm boulder, her eyes narrowed, thinking. She shivered once, then lifted a paw and began to clean her pink pads, licking fast and nervously, tugging fiercely at each claw. Tearing off each old sheath, she angrily released the sharper rapiers beneath. She was wound tight, edgy and irritable.

Joe wanted to say,
You thought visiting the old folks would be all kippers and cream
, wanted to say,
Casa Capri didn't turn out like you expected
. But she glared at him so crossly he shut his mouth.

As he bent to tend to his own claws, suddenly she leaped from the boulder and streaked away across the hills again, all nerves and temper. He stared after her, watched her vanish into the tall grass, watched the heads of grass shake and thrash in a long undulating line as if a whirlwind fled through.

He took his time about following her, lingering to sniff at the sweet dusty smells, at masses of yellow poppies which seemed to have bloomed overnight, at old scents of mouse, at rabbit droppings. She was headed diagonally across the hills moving north, and occasionally he stood on his hind legs, so as not to lose her.

He couldn't see her cross the crest of the hill but he could see the grass shaking. Beyond them to the north, the hills were black from last fall's fire but were slowly turning green again, as new spring grass sprang up between the remains of that terrible burn. He could still smell burned wood on the wind, and wet ashes. And against the sky there still stood the skeletons of black, dead trees, and a lone chimney, an abandoned sentinel, though some of the houses had been rebuilt.

Janet Jeannot's studio had been replaced in a way Janet might not like if she were alive to see it. It was now a second-floor apartment, an inoffensive cedar structure without any of the excitement of an artist's studio. To the east of Janet's house, up beyond the
highest homes, he could see where the drainage culvert emerged from the hills, the place where he and Dulcie had discovered the final key to Janet's killer.

Dulcie had disappeared. He leaped to the highest hillock to look for her. Gazing down the rolling hills, he thought how they must have been a century ago, before there were ever houses. A wild land, all open, alive with animals far larger than the creatures he and Dulcie hunted, a land of cougars, of wolves and bear, a land belonging to beasts that would send
Felis domesticus
scooting for cover.

And though the wolves and bears were gone, still sometimes the cougars and coyotes came down out of the mountains, driven by thirst or hunger, and by encroaching civilization—where tracts of new houses covered their hunting territories—wild animals moving closer each year to human dwellings. Now sometimes in the small hours, a lone coyote wandered the street of a coastal town, hunting domestic cats and small dogs. And already two humans had died at the claws of attacking cougars. He was gripped with amazement that a shy, totally wild creature would dare enter the world of houses and concrete and fast cars.

But the animals, if they were starving, had little choice. He was no philosopher; the only conclusion he could draw was that if humans kept pushing the animals off the land they needed to survive, then humans had better sharpen their own teeth and claws.

Rearing above the grass, still he did not see Dulcie, saw no thrashing where she sped through, only a faint susurration all across the grass tops where the breeze fingered. He heard no sound above the hush of wind and the churr of the buzzing insects.

But suddenly he knew where she was headed, and a chill of fear touched him.

High above the last houses, an ancient barn stood rotting and half-fallen in, its silvered boards leaning inward, its roof torn open to the sky. Dulcie would be
there, he'd bet on it. Hunting the rats that ruled that dim, cavernous ruin.

Someday the remains of the old barn would collapse and rot to nothing, but now it belonged to wharf rats. Having long ago cleaned out the last kernel of grain in the feed bins, they subsisted on roots and on mice and lizards, and on whatever smaller creature ventured into their domain.

Some of the rats had migrated down to the boatyards again, but the biggest and boldest had remained to challenge whatever predator invaded their dark and rotting home. Raccoons did not bring their kits to hunt there. A fox had to be full-grown before it would face those beasts.

A stupid place for Dulcie to go, insane to go alone. Terrified for her, he raced across the hills, hoping he was wrong, but knowing she was there. That rat-infested mass of timbers was exactly the place she would go to work off frustration from their night of confinement. He wished she wasn't so damned volatile.

Ahead, the old barn towered drunkenly, its timbers balanced precariously against one another. He was on the crest of the hill some ten feet above when he saw Dulcie, crouched in shadow among the fallen walls. She seemed, at first, a part of the shadows. She moved slowly, slinking beneath the timbers, her belly hugging the ground. She was poised to leap, but he could not see her quarry. He watched her swing her head from side to side, sorting out some tiny sound that he could not yet hear.

He sped down soundlessly, but he did not approach close enough to spoil her attack. He waited, ready to leap, every muscle and nerve jacked into high voltage, watching her creep deeper into the blackness.