Cat Shout for Joy (24 page)

 

36

L
ate-­evening sun shone
through Wilma's dining room windows into the large new cat cage she had set up there. The bedroom quarters had grown too small for full-­time use. Now Dulcie and the kittens, and Joe Grey, too, had room to sprawl for a nap in the sunshine. The ringing phone woke Joe.

The babies didn't stir, they slept deeply, their tummies extended and full. Nor did Dulcie wake, worn out from the kittens crawling over her in their attempts at rough-­and-­tumble. The babies' eyes were open and their tiny ears unfurled. It was less than two weeks and Joe was proud of them; John Firetti called them precocious and waited eagerly for their first words. They all waited, trying to think how to
keep
them from talking at the wrong time, in front of the wrong ­people.

Wilma answered the phone on the second ring. Joe heard her desk chair squeak.

“Oh, yes, I'd love that. What can I do?” By the smile in her voice he could tell it was Charlie, she had a special tone for her niece. “Are you sure? Is Max . . . ?” She was quiet, then, “Yes, that sounds fine.” Hanging up, she looked across into the dining room. “Charlie's on her way over with a shrimp casserole, a last-­minute potluck. Ryan and Clyde are bringing a salad. Max will be along, he's at the station waiting . . .” She paused, watching Joe. “Waiting for a callback from Georgia.”

Joe came to full attention.

She said, “Looks like they've got Tekla!”

He leaped out of the pen and headed for the cat door. Wilma watched him disappear. She couldn't
not
have told him, nor would she have stopped him.

Joe, racing from peak to peak, was hardly aware of clouds darkening toward evening. Almost thundering over the roofs, he hit the courthouse tiles, raced their length and dropped down the oak tree to the station. He slid in through the glass door behind a pair of teen­age girls. Across the lobby, Detective Davis was headed down the hall toward Max's office. Joe fled past the counter, hoping to avoid Evijean, but a familiar voice stopped him.

“Yes, sir, Captain. I'm still waiting, I'll put it straight through.” Mabel Farthy's voice—­Mabel was back. There she was, his blond, pillow-­soft friend standing at the counter beside sour-­faced Evijean Simpson, a stack of papers and files between them. Was Mabel catching up on the cases at hand? Was this Evijean's last day? He was torn between racing to Max's office or leaping to the counter.

He leaped—­Mabel grabbed him up in a warm and smothering hug. “Oh, my. Look at you. Where's Dulcie? But Davis said she had kittens? Oh,
my
! Imagine. Kittens! You're a father, Joe Grey, and don't you look proud.”

He tried not to look too proud. He rubbed his face against her shoulder; he nuzzled her face and smiled. She petted him until Evijean cleared her throat loudly. When Mabel turned to frown at Evijean, Joe slipped from her arms, dropped from the counter and fled. He didn't want to get Mabel in an argument with Evijean on her first day back.

Life was good, leave it that way. Evijean would soon be history.

Slipping into Max's office, he hoped that somewhere on the East Coast, Tekla was resting her heels in the cooler, and that would top off the day.

Juana and Dallas sat on the leather couch, sipping fresh coffee and looking pleased. Max lounged behind his desk, his feet up on the blotter, waiting for Mabel to put his call through. Whatever was coming down, all three were smiling. Joe flopped down on the deep Persian rug and tried not to look curious. He rolled luxuriously, then had a little wash. Nothing so distracted a human from a cat's true intention as to watch the cat bathe. A little cat spit, a busy tongue licking across sleek fur, and most ­people would relax as if hypnotized. Maybe they could feel the comforting massage in their own being, a kind of reflex contentment. He looked at Max, at ease behind the desk, and a sense filled Joe that indeed all was right with the world. Slipping up on the couch beside Juana, he waited, as the officers waited, until the phone's open speaker came to life—­until Mabel said, “Sheriff Dover is on, Captain Harper.” The call from Georgia law enforcement was not from the GBI as Joe had expected, but the deep, slow voice of Pickens County Sheriff Jimmie Roy Dover.

When Max answered, Dover said simply, “We lost her.”

“Lost her?” Max barked, envisioning as Joe did that again Tekla had given them the slip.

But Dover didn't sound dismayed. In fact there was a smile in his voice.

“When she disappeared, and every deputy out helping the rescue crews, the best we could do at the moment was put out another BOL and alert Meredith Wilson. This wasn't one big tornado, Max. Narrow, slicing ones hit all over the state, scoured the low places between the hills. At the lake here, wiped out nine cabins and the motel. That low wind roaring along the cleft between the hills, screaming like a banshee, struck through half a dozen of these valleys, uprooted trees like mown hay, flattened buildings. Couldn't tell where it would hit next, never seen anything like it. Local police and highway patrol and us, we had every man out looking for the dead and injured.

“Twenty-­four hours, the storm began to ease up. No word on Tekla. Phone lines were down, but we got Meredith Wilson on her cell. All was quiet at their place. We sent two deputies out there as soon as we could spare them, but no sign of Tekla.

“About then, GHP got a call from a citizen with a police band, said he'd spotted the car Tekla was driving, just north of Waycross. Blue Honda Civic, he didn't get the plate. Headed for Florida. Lone woman driving, blond hair that looked like a wig, he said, kind of crooked on her head. County sheriff deputy made her and pulled her over.

“It wasn't Tekla,” Dover said. “This woman checked out, she had family in Florida. Officer fingerprinted her but no match, and sent her on her way.”

On the couch beside Davis, Joe had to hide a smile. These law enforcement guys from the South, they were talkers, they liked to string it out. Well, that was okay, southerners were storytellers, it was in their blood. Wilma said some of the best writers came from the South. She had described for him and Dulcie southern families sitting on their deep, covered porch in the warm evenings, rocking away, watching the fireflies, weaving family stories and ghost stories and their traditional tales.

“We had two other reports,” Dover said. “Blue Hondas, lone women, but both turned out duds. Until tonight, nearly a week later,” the sheriff said.

“Weather blowing in again, but it wasn't here yet, just heavy clouds, when Meredith Wilson called us. Said a blue four-­door, she couldn't tell the make, had stopped on the road in front of their mailbox, then turned in, pulled in among a stand of young sourwood trees.

“I sent two deputies. Takes about twenty minutes from the station, and called in four more as backup. Our first car gets there and turns in, the storm is gearing up. Enough wind to cover sound and movement. Meredith and her father could still see Tekla's car. We told them to stay inside, don't answer the door, stay away from the windows.

“First patrol car checks in, approaching the house. Next thing, we hear gunfire. Second car pulls up and we get an Officer Down call. We radioed for the medics. Two more cars arrive, deputies surround the place. The officer is lying in the doorway shot in the leg and a wound in his side, his partner kneeling over him applying tourniquets to stop the blood. And Tekla's sprawled on the steps,” Dover said. “She's dead, shot through the chest—­but not by our men.”

There was a little pause. Dover said, “Meredith Wilson killed her, with her daddy's favorite handgun.”

They were all silent. Then, “It was later we found the scar on Tekla's revolver where one of my deputies shot it from her hand. She could well have kept firing, have hit more of us if she'd had the chance.

“So I guess,” Dover said dryly, “besides saving lives, Meredith Wilson saved the California courts some money. Maybe,” he said, “the good Lord handled this one.”

And Joe Grey, face hidden from the chief and the detectives, couldn't stop smiling.

I
n Wilma's living
room before the fire, Max and Charlie sat close together on the couch, Ryan and Clyde on cushions before the hearth. Joe and Dulcie lay on Wilma's lap, in her easy chair. The kittens, for the moment, were blessedly asleep in their pen. The house smelled deliciously of shrimp casserole set in the oven to keep warm. Ryan's big salad bowl and a basket of French bread waited on the table. Impromptu meals, Wilma thought, were the best. The Greenlaws had brought a berry shortcake; Lucinda sat near Charlie and Max, at the other end of the couch; Pedric chose the padded desk chair, Kit stretched out on the blotter beside him. Pan was home with the Firettis. Kate and Scotty had opted out for their own impromptu supper, they didn't say where.

Just this morning John Firetti had examined the kittens again, had pronounced them fine and healthy and had doted over the babies. Talking to the kittens and stroking them, he had called the lighter buff boy Buffin, then had looked up guiltily at Dulcie. “It's just a nickname, it's not for me to name them.”

Dulcie smiled. “Why shouldn't you name them? You helped them into the world. Buffin? I like that. Buffin,” she said, “as golden pale as the sea sand. The name has a gentle sound.” She looked up at John. “Misto named Courtney, and he would like this name, too.” She laid a paw on John's hand and looked down at the tiny baby. “Hello, Buffin.”

“And this other little fellow,” John said, “with the dark shadow on his pale coat? Does he yet have a name?”

“Not yet,” Dulcie said. “I guess Joe and I are waiting . . . for our friends to help. Or maybe,” she said, “maybe we're waiting for this little boy to name himself.”

And now this evening, this was how it happened when, the friends all moving to the dining table, paused around the cage looking down at the kittens.

“You don't want common names,” Max said, startling Dulcie—­as if they had been talking about just that. She watched the chief nervously.

“They're Joe's kittens,” he said, “Joe Grey's and Dulcie's.”

Everyone was quiet. What was Max saying, what was he thinking? That the kittens were far more than
just
special? In the silent room Charlie glanced at Ryan and Clyde, and at Wilma.

But maybe, Dulcie thought, Max meant nothing—­his expression was bland, maybe he was just taken with her babies. He had grown to enjoy Joe's bold and purring interruptions in the office. Now he admired Joe's kittens; surely that was all he had meant.

Charlie said, “Wilma has already named the girl kitten, she is Courtney.”

“And this morning,” Wilma said, “John Firretti gave me another name . . . maybe not so original, but it fits.” She bent down to stroke the paler boy kitten. “Buffin,” she said. “This is Buffin.”

Charlie said, “I like it, it's a sturdy name. He
is
sturdy, look at him.” She leaned down to pet the sand-­colored baby. But when she picked up the other kitten, with the gray cloud marking his pale coat, he immediately nipped her and dug his claws in, making her laugh. “This one's a little wildcat, he's going to be a handful.” She glanced down at Dulcie and Joe, then at Wilma.

“Striker,” she said. “What about Striker? But Striker as in to protect, not to threaten.”

Behind Max's back, Dulcie and Joe looked at each other, amused. Yes, a strong name. And a strong, determined kitten. And Joe thought,
A good name for a young cop kitten—­if that's what Striker turns out to be.

Wilma looked into Dulcie's green eyes, then into Joe's level gaze. “Striker. I like that,” she told Charlie. When she took the kitten from Charlie she received a sharp scratch of her own. She set him down in the pen, tapped him gently on the nose when he tried for another swat. When he drew back, she gently stroked him. He looked up at her uncertainly.

“Hello, Striker,” she said, laughing, and she removed her hand before he thought to lunge again.

When Ryan brought the casserole to the table and everyone gathered, Courtney and her brothers, smelling the warm shrimp, let out lusty mewls. Even kittens with full tummies could bellow demanding cries; but a look and a soft mumble from Dulcie, and soon they quieted.

As they all took their seats, Ryan was saying, “What I don't get is how Tekla got the jurors' names. Doesn't the court seal those, so no one can influence the jurors during the trial or do them harm afterward?”

“It was the jury clerk,” Max said, “a Denise Ripley, she passed the names and addresses to Tekla. They went through high school together. Maybe buddies, maybe not, but Tekla paid her well. Ripley spilled when the chief judge called her in. He got her story—­I'm not sure how. Maybe she thought he would only fire her and not prosecute, though I'm sure he didn't promise that.” Max smiled. “Ripley's in jail now, under indictment.”

“She got what she deserved,” Charlie said, “and so did Tekla. Meredith Wilson is alive, unharmed. Because of Meredith, maybe so are a ­couple of deputies. And maybe those jurors, too, who were lucky enough to escape the Bleaks.”

“What would the world be like,” Ryan wondered, “if all the vindictive, blood-­hungry ­people suddenly went up in smoke, vanished into nothing?”

“I'd be out of a job,” Max said, laughing. “I'd be spending my time with Charlie, in a long and satisfying retirement.”

“And pretty soon,” Wilma said, “with no more evil in the world for us to stand against, ­people would become as weak and ineffective as garden slugs.”

Dulcie thought about that. But in her mind, at that moment, the prospect of an innocent world, of a safe life for her kittens, such a dream would offer more than a few virtues.