Cat Spitting Mad (2 page)

A woman's scream?

Or the cougar?

The two sounded very alike.

Another scream broke the night, from farther down the hills. One cry from high to the north, the other from the south, bloodcurdling wails answering each other.

“Bobcats,” Joe Grey said.

“Are you sure?”

“Bobcats.”

She looked at him doubtfully. The screams came again, closer this time, answering each other. Dulcie pushed close to Joe, and they spun away into the forest and up a tall pine among branches too thin to hold a larger predator.

There they waited until dawn, soaking wet and hungry. They did not hear the cries again, but Dulcie, shivering and miserable, spent the night agonizing over the little tattercoat, the curious little scamp whose impetuous headlong rushes led her into everything dangerous. By dawn, Dulcie was frazzled with worry.

The rainclouds were gone; a silver smear of light gleamed behind the eastern hills as the hidden sun began to creep up. The cats heard no sound beneath the dim, pearly sky, only the drip, dripping from the pine boughs. Backing down the forty-foot pine, the two cats went to hunt.

A wood rat and a pair of fat field mice filled them nicely, the warm meal lifting their spirits. With new strength and hope, they hurried north toward the old Pamillon estate, where the kit liked to ramble.

Entering among the crumbled walls and fallen, rotting trees and dark cellars, they prowled the portion of the mansion that still stood upright, but they found no sign of the kit.

The Pamillon estate had been, in the 1930s, an elegant Mediterranean mansion standing on twenty acres high above Molena Point, surrounded by fruit trees, grape arbors, and a fine stable. Now most of the buildings were rubble. Gigantic old oak trees crowded the fallen walls, their roots creeping into the exposed cel
lars. The flower gardens were gone to broom bushes and pampas grass and weeds, tangled between fallen timbers.

And the estate was just as enmeshed in tangles of a legal nature, in family battles so complicated that it had never been sold.

Some people said the last great-great-grandchildren were hanging on as the land increased in value. Some said the maze of gifts and trusts, of sales and trades among family members was so convoluted that no one could figure out clear title to the valuable acreage.

The kit had discovered the mansion weeks earlier. Newly come to that part of the hills, she had been as thrilled by the Pamillon estate as Magellan must have been setting anchor on the shore of the new land, as new wonders and new dangers shimmered before her.

Joe and Dulcie searched the hills for three days, taking occasional shelter in a tiny cave or high in the branches of an oak or pine, where they could leap from tree to tree if something larger wanted them for supper. They had never before given such serious thought to being eaten. Among the dense pine foliage they blended well enough, but on the hills, on the rain-matted grass, they were moving targets. And all the while they searched for the kit, running hungry and lean, the village was there far below them, snug and warm and beckoning, filled with the delicacies provided not only at home but in any number of outdoor restaurants.

It was late Thursday afternoon, as the two cats pushed on into new canyons and among ragged ridges,
that they saw Clyde's yellow antique roadster climbing the winding roads, going slowly, the top down, Clyde peering up the hills, looking for them. Dutifully Joe raced down to where the road ended, causing Clyde to slam on the brakes.

Leaping onto the warm hood, he scowled through the windshield at Clyde. “The kit come home?” A delicious smell filled the car.

“Not a sign. I could help you look.”

Joe lifted a paw. “We'll find her.”

“I brought you some supper.” Clyde handed over a small bag that smelled unmistakably of Jolly's fried chicken.

“Very nice. Where's the coleslaw and fries?”

“Ingrate.”

Taking the white sack in his teeth, Joe had leaped away to join Dulcie. He hadn't told Clyde how despondent he and Dulcie were growing. And there was really nothing Clyde could do to help.

By Saturday evening the sky was heavy again, and the wind chill. If the kit was already home, slurping up supper and dozing warm and dry before the fire, Clyde would have come back; they'd see his car winding up the hills or hear the horn honking. One more day, they thought, and they'd give up and go home. And on sodden paws they moved higher into the lonely pine woods. They were well up the forested ridges, far beyond their usual hunting grounds, and the afternoon was graying into evening when they heard horses far below, maybe a mile to the north, and the faint voices of women.

Five minutes later, they heard screams. Terrified, angry, blood-chilling.

Joe was rigid, listening, his yellow eyes slitted and intent. He turned to look at Dulcie. “Human screams.”

But the screams had stopped, and faintly they heard horses bolting away crashing into branches and sliding on the rocks.

Hurrying down out of the mountain, and racing north, it was maybe half an hour later when on the rising wind they caught a whiff of blood.

“Maybe the cougar made a kill,” Dulcie whispered, “and frightened the horses, and the women screamed.”

“If the cougar made a kill, we'd hear him crunching bone. It's too quiet.” And Joe shouldered her aside.

But she slipped down the hill beside him, silent in the deepening evening, ready to run. They were just above a narrow bridle trail when a slithery sound stopped them, a swift, slurring rush behind them that made them dive for cover.

Crouched beneath a stone overhang, they were poised to run again, to make for the nearest tree.

A rustle among the dry bracken. They imagined the cougar slipping through the dead ferns and pines as intently as they would stalk a mouse—and something exploded out of the woods straight at them, bawling and mewling.

The kit thudded into Dulcie so hard that Dulcie sprawled. She pressed against Dulcie, meowing loud enough to alert every predator for twenty miles—“
Yow! Yow! Yow!
”—her ears flat, her tail down. She couldn't stop shivering.

Dulcie licked her face. “What is it? What happened
to you? Shh! Be still!” Staring into the woods, she tried to see what had chased the kit. Above them, Joe moved up into the forest, stalking stiff-legged, every hair on end.

“No! Down there,” the kit said. “We have to go down there. It was terrible. I heard them scream and I smelled the blood and…”

Dulcie nudged her. “Slow down, Kit. Tell it slowly.”

The kit couldn't be still. “The horses bolted nearly on top of me. I ran. I don't want to go back, but…”

“Start at the beginning,” Dulcie said softly.

“I went back afterward, after that man was gone. I went back there just now and they're dead.” The kit stared round-eyed at Dulcie. “Two women, one young and pretty. So much blood. They're all over blood.”

“Show us,” Joe said, slipping down beside them.

“I don't want…”

“Show us, Kit,” Joe Grey said, towering over her.

The kit dropped her head obediently, this kit who was never obedient, and padded slowly down the hills where the black pines reached in a long and darkly forested peninsula. Slipping along through the edge of the forest, the two cats stayed close beside her. Down three steep, slick shelves of stone, dropping down among the dry ferns and loose shale, then onto the bridle trail and that was walled, all along, by the forest. The night was filled with the smell of blood and with the stink of death, mixed with the scent of the kit's fear.

T
he night
was alive with the tiny noises of other creatures, with little rustlings and scurryings and alarm-cries where small nocturnal browsers fed on the forest's vegetation, prey to nocturnal hunters and to each other. The kit led Joe and Dulcie down through the forest over the jagged ridges toward the sharp, metallic smell of blood—but then the kit drew back.

Warily, the two older cats approached the bridle trail and the two dark heaps that lay there. The smell of death forced their lips in a deep flehmen; that stink would soon bring predators crouching unseen in the night.

But no four-legged predator had done this terrible deed.

Where was the person who had stabbed and torn his fellow humans? Was he hidden in the forest, watching? Might he be listening, so that if they spoke, he would know their secret?

Tasting the damp wind, they sniffed and tested before they approached the two dead humans. When at
last they slipped closer, they were skittish, ready to bolt away.

They looked and looked at the two women, at their poor, torn throats, at their pooled blood drying on their clothes and seeping into the earth.

The cats knew them.

“Ruthie Marner,” Dulcie whispered. The younger woman was so white, and her long blond hair caked with blood. Dulcie crouched, touching her nose to Ruthie's icy arm, and drew back shivering. Blood covered the woman's torn white blouse and blue sweater. She had a deep chest wound, as well as the wide slash across her throat. So much clotted blood that it was hard to be sure how the wounds might have been made.

Helen Marner's wounds were much the same. Her blond hair, styled in a short bob, was matted with dirt where she had fallen. She was well dressed, much like her daughter, in tan tights, paddock boots, a tweed jacket over a white turtleneck shirt, her clothes stained dark with blood. A hard hat lay upside down against a pine tree like a sacrificial bowl.

No horse was in sight. The horses would have left the fallen riders, would have bolted in panic, the moment they could break free.

Dulcie backed away, her tail and ears down. She'd seen murders before, but the deaths of these two handsome women made her tremble as if her nerves were cross-wired.

The cats could see no weapon, no glint of metal near the bodies. They did not want to pad across the foot
prints and hoofprints, to destroy the tenuous map of what had taken place here.

But something more terrible, even, than the sight of the double murder held both cats staring.

A jacket lay on the ground beside the bodies, trampled by the horses' hooves, a creamy fleece jacket with a strand of red hair caught in the hood, a jacket the cats knew well. They sniffed at it to make sure.

“Dillon.” Dulcie's paws had begun to sweat. “Dillon Thurwell's jacket.”

Dillon always wore that jacket when she rode, and she'd been riding every day with the Marners. Dulcie looked helplessly at Joe. “Where is she? Where is Dillon?”

Joe looked back at her, his yellow eyes shocked and bleak.

“And Harper,” he said. “Where's Max Harper? It's Saturday, Harper always rides with them on Saturday.” He backed away from the bodies, his angled gray-and-white face drawn into puzzled lines.

Police Captain Harper had taught Dillon to ride. These last two months, the foursome had been seen often riding together, as Dillon and Ruthie trained for some kind of marathon.

Leaping up the stone ledge, Dulcie stood tall on her hind paws, staring around her into the night, looking for another rider.

Nothing stirred. There was no smallest whisper of sound—every insect and toad had gone silent. High above her in the forest she could see the kit, peering out from among the rocks.

Trotting up to join her, Dulcie began to quarter the
woods, as Joe searched below, both cats scenting for any trace of Dillon.

Circling ever wider, rearing up to sniff along a clump of young pines, Dulcie caught a hint of the child, well to the north of the bodies. “Here. She was here—she rode here. I can smell her, and smell a horse.”

But Joe was assessing the hoofprints that raced away from the scene tearing up the trail.

“Four horses.” He looked up solemnly at Dulcie. “One with small, narrow hooves. That would be Ruthie's mustang. And a big horse, heavy—wide hooves. The other two sets seem ordinary.”

Dulcie looked at Joe. “The big horse—big hooves, so deep in the earth. Like Max Harper's gelding.”

“But Harper couldn't have been with them. They wouldn't have been harmed if Harper was with them.” Joe's yellow eyes blazed, the muscles across his gray shoulders were drawn tight. “Four horses. The Marners. Dillon. And the killer. Not Max Harper.”

The prints of the big horse showed a scar running diagonally across the right front shoe, as if the metal had been cut by a hard strike, maybe from a stone.

Warily the kit came down out of the rocks to press, shivering, between Joe and Dulcie. She was usually such a bold, nervy little morsel. Now her eyes were wide and solemn.

Helen and Ruthie Marner had lived in Molena Point for perhaps a year. Joe's housemate, Clyde, had replaced the brake linings on Mrs. Marner's vintage model Cadillac. Clyde ran the most exclusive automotive shop in Molena Point, and he was as skilled and
caring with the villagers' imported and antique cars as a master jeweler with his clients' diamonds.

Clyde hadn't liked Helen Marner much; he called her stuck-up. It had amused him that Max Harper encouraged Helen's friendship, but they all knew why. Harper had refused to ride with Dillon alone and put himself in a position that might attract slander.

Harper had gotten to know Dillon during a grisly murder investigation at Casa Capri, an upscale retirement home. Joe and Dulcie had begun their own investigation before anyone else suspected foul play. But Dillon had come into the act soon after—before anyone had a reason to call the police. She, too, had sensed something wrong. And her stubborn redhead's temperament had kept her prying, despite what any grown-up said. Of course she'd been right, just as Joe and Dulcie had been, all along.

Max Harper had been very impressed with Dillon—had, during the surprising investigation, grown to respect and admire the child.

When Dillon told Harper that she longed to learn to ride, the captain had volunteered some lessons, if Dillon's parents agreed and providing someone else came along. An ever resourceful child, Dillon had recruited the Marners, as well as Clyde Damen's girlfriend, Charlie, as an occasional backup.

“And now they're dead,” Joe said, looking down the night-dark hills, his ears and whiskers back, his yellow eyes blazing.

“Maybe,” Dulcie said softly, “maybe Dillon got away.”

“On that little, aged mare? Not hardly. Escape a
killer on a big, heavy horse, a rider bent on stopping her?” He turned to look at Dulcie. “If Dillon saw him murder Helen and Ruthie, he'd have to silence her.”

She sighed and turned away.

He crowded close to her and licked her face and ear. “Maybe she did escape, Dulcie. She's a spunky, clever kid.”

That was what he liked about Dillon. Thinking of Dillon hurt made him sick clear down to his tomcat belly.

The cats could see no bike tracks along the trail, and the path was too narrow for a car. Staying on the bracken, studying the dirt and the surround, they could find no boot or shoe prints leading in to indicate someone had followed the riders on foot. Joe imagined a stranger on horseback pulling Helen Marner from her horse, grabbing Ruthie's horse, and pulling her off, knifing them as Dillon escaped, whipping Redwing to a dead run.

Why? Why had someone done this? What had they gained?

“Robbery?” he said softly. “How much money would people carry, out for a Saturday ride? And their horses weren't valuable, just common saddle horses.” He knew that from hearing Harper and Clyde talking.

He wanted to shout Dillon's name, bawl her name into the night until the child came running out of the bushes, safe.

He tried again to catch the smell of the killer but could detect nothing beyond the stink of human death, and the sweeter perfumes of horse and of the pine woods.

To look upon a human person brutally separated from life by another human never ceased to sicken the tomcat. This kind of death had no relationship to his own killing of a rabbit or squirrel for his supper.

Dulcie had left him; he could hear her up in the forest padding through the pine needles, and he caught a glimpse of her sniffing along, following Dillon's scent. Calling the kit, he leaped up the hill, watching for the predators that would soon come, drawn by the smell of blood.

He didn't like to leave the bodies alone, to be ravaged by hunting beasts—both out of respect for the sanctity of human creatures and because evidence would be destroyed. But the highest urgency was to find Dillon.

The sky had cleared above them, enough so he could see through the treetops a sliver of rising moon, its thin light seeping in hoary patterns between the black pine limbs.

“I saw more,” the kit said softly.

Joe paused, his paw lifted. “What did you see? Did you see the person who killed them?”

“I heard the screams. I ran to see. Two horses bolted right at me and swerved away down the mountain. No riders, reins flying. Then a girl came racing, leaning over her horse, and a man riding after her, trying to catch her. He grabbed at her horse. They were deep in the trees. I couldn't see what happened. They disappeared over the hill. The man was swearing.”

“What did he look like?”

“He looked like Police Captain Harper.”

“What do you mean, he looked like Captain Harper?”

“He was tall and thin and had a cowboy hat like Captain Harper, pulled down, and a thin face and a jacket like the captain wears. A denim jacket. I could smell the girl's fear. I ran and ran; I didn't go back until just now, when I found you. I came back in the dark when I heard you. I don't…”

“Listen,” Joe said. Voices came from far down the hills, calling, calling, moving up toward them. “Ruthie! Ruthie Marner! Dillon! Helen! Helen Marner! Dillon! Dillon Thurwell!”

And below them, all across the bare slopes, lights came rising up and they could hear horses—a snort, the rattle of a bit, a hoof striking stone. Up the hills they came, their torches sweeping the slopes and shining down into the ravines. And down beyond the horses and hikers, cars moved along a winding road shining spotlights among the far, scattered houses. The red bubble of a police car rose up over the crest, then two more red-lit units searching for the Marners and for Dillon—searching too late for the Marners. Drawing slowly up the hills toward that grisly scene.