Cat Under Fire (6 page)

Where Charlie's ancient van stood two feet from the curb, Charlie's thin, denim-clad legs protruded from beneath, her feet in the dirty tennis shoes pressed against the curb to brace her as she worked. The six unopened cans of motor oil that stood on the curb beside a pile of clean rags were of a local discount brand, and the oil was fifty weight in deference to the vehicle's worn and floppy rings, oil thick enough to give those ragged rings something they could carry. Anything thinner would run right on through without ever touching the pistons. Clyde stood on the curb studying Charlie's bare, greasy ankles. He could smell coffee from the kitchen, and when he turned, Wilma waved at him from the kitchen window, framed by a tangle of red bougainvillea, which climbed the stone cottage wall, fingering toward the steeply peaked roof.

The cottage's angled dormers and bay windows gave it an intimate, cozy ambience. Because the house was tucked against a hill at the back, both the front and rear porches opened to the front garden, the porch leading to the kitchen set deep beneath the steep roof, the front porch sheltered by its own dormer. The house was surrounded not by lawn but by a lush English garden of varied textures and shades, deep green ajuga, pale gray dusty miller, orange gazanias. Wilma had taught him the names hoping he might be inspired to improve his own landscaping, but so far, it hadn't taken. He didn't
like getting down on his hands and knees, didn't like grubbing in the dirt.

A muffled four-letter word exploded from beneath the van, and Charlie's legs changed position as she eased herself partially out, one hand groping for the rags.

He snatched up a rag and dropped it in her fingers. “Spill oil in your eye?” Kneeling beside the vehicle, he peered under.

She lifted her head from the asphalt, the rag pressed to her face. Beside her stood a bucket into which dripped heavy, sludgy motor oil. “Why aren't you at work? Run out of customers? They find out you're ripping them off?”

“I thought you had an appointment with Beverly Jeannot.”

“I have. Thirty minutes to get up there.” She took the rag away, selected a relatively clean corner, and dabbed at her eye again. “I didn't have to do this now, but the oil was way down, and I didn't want to add—oh you know.”

“No, I don't know. All my cars run on thirty weight and are clean as a whistle. How's the Harder job going?”

“I have my two people working up there.” She tossed out the oily rag, narrowly missing his face. “Thought I'd wash this heap, but I won't have time.”

“What difference? Is clean rust better?”

Under the van she watched the last drops of oil ooze down into the bucket. Replacing the plug into the oil pan, she slid out from under, pulling the bucket with her. Kneeling on the curb, she opened a can of oil, stuck the spout in, then rose and inserted the spout beneath the open hood into the engine's oil receptacle.

“Better get a hustle on. Beverly Jeannot doesn't like the help to be late.”

“Plenty of time. She's formidable, isn't she? How do you know her? I thought she lived in Seattle—came down just to settle the estate.”

“I don't know her, I know of her. From what Janet told me.”

She removed the can, punched another, and set it to emptying into the van's hungry maw.

“Like a suggestion?”

She looked up, her wild red hair catching the light, bright as if it could shoot sparks.

“Ride up to the shop with me, and take that old '61 Mercedes. It looks better than this thing, and it needs the exercise.”

“You're being patronizing.”

“Not at all. This is entirely in the interest of free enterprise—it will help your image. Beverly Jeannot's a prime snob. And I don't drive that car enough.”

“And what's the tariff? How much?”

“You're so suspicious. It really needs driving. Scout's honor, no strings. Not even dinner—unless you do the asking.” He watched her open the third can of oil, admiring her slim legs and her slim, denim-clad posterior. He liked Charlie, liked her bony face and her fierce green eyes, liked her unruly attitude. He was at one with her general distrust of the world; they were alike in that.

But beneath her brazen, redheaded shell she was amazingly tender and gentle. He'd seen her with the cats, kind and understanding, seen her playing with a shy neighborhood pup who usually didn't trust strangers.

Charlie had had a heavy crisis in her life when she realized she had wasted four years on a college degree that wouldn't help her make a living. He thought she was handling it all right. She would, when she met with Beverly Jeannot this morning up at Janet's burned studio, give Beverly a bid on the cleanup, the work to begin as soon as the police had released the premises. He thought that removing the burned debris, alone, would be a big job.

As she turned, he brushed dry leaves off the back of her sweatshirt. “There's a lot to do up there, cleaning up the burn rubble.”

“I wouldn't bid on the job if I couldn't do it,” she said irritably. Then she softened. “I'm going to have to
hustle. All I have is Mavity Flowers, and James Stamps.” She removed the last oil can and slammed the hood. “I wish I could get a better fix on Stamps. But he'll do until I can get someone I trust.”

“Mavity, of course, is a whiz.”

“Mavity has some years on her, but she's a hard worker. She'll do just fine on the cleaning, and maybe the painting. It's the other stuff, the repairs, that she can't handle. That's my work.” She picked up the oil cans. “Beverly's in a big hurry, wants the work done pronto, soon as the house is released.” She tossed the empty cans in a barrel inside the van. The Chevy's bleached and oxidizing green paint was cracked, dimpled with small rusty dents. The accordioned front fender was shedding paint, rust spreading underneath.

She looked the vehicle over as if really seeing it for the first time, stood comparing it with Clyde's gleaming red 1938 Packard Twelve. “You serious about the Mercedes?”

“Sure I'm serious.”

She grinned. “I'll just wash and change. Come on in, Wilma's in the kitchen.”

He followed her in, wondering why Beverly Jeannot was in such a hurry to have the fire debris cleaned up. Maybe she needed the money. He'd heard that she meant to rebuild the upstairs and put the house on the market. He thought she could make just as much profit by selling the building in its present condition, with just a good cleanup. Let the buyer design a new structure to suit himself. He went on into the kitchen and sat down at the table, where Wilma stood beating egg whites, whipping the mixture to a white froth.

“Angel cake,” she said.

He waited for the automatic coffeemaker to stop dripping and poured himself a cup. From the kitchen he could see through the dining room into the living room, where Janet's landscape dominated the fireplace wall, a big, splashy oil of the village and treetops as seen from higher up the hills, lots of red rooftops and rich greens.
Wilma had paid for the painting in part by designing and planting Janet's hillside garden—she'd had some huge decorative boulders hauled in, and planted daylilies, poppies, ice plant, perennials she said were drought-resistant. She had done the garden the same week Janet moved in.

The house had suited Janet exactly. She had designed and had it built for the way she wanted to live. The big studio-garage space upstairs was connected to the upper, back street by a short drive. The studio was big enough for both a painting area and a welding shop, the east wall fitted with floor-to-ceiling storage racks for paintings and a few pieces of sculpture. And there was room to pull her van in, to load up work for exhibits. Wilma had admired Janet's planning and had loved the downstairs apartment. Both stories looked down over the village hills. The area Wilma had landscaped was below the house, between the apartment and the lower street.

He watched Wilma select an angel cake pan and pour in the batter. “Why don't you buy Janet's place? You've always liked it. It would be just right for you and Dulcie. You could build a great rental upstairs, where the studio was.”

She looked at him, surprised. “I've thought about it.” She set the cake in the oven. “But I'd feel too uncomfortable, living in the house where she died.”

She poured coffee for herself, and sat down. “And it's too far from the village,, I like being close to work.” Wilma's cottage was only a few blocks from the library, where, since her retirement, she had served as a reference assistant. “I like being near the shops and galleries, I like walking down a few blocks for breakfast or dinner when I take the notion, and I like being near the shore.

“If I lived up there, it would be a mile climb home after work. Face it, the time will come when I couldn't even do that uphill mile.”

“That'll never happen.” He rose and refilled his coffee
cup. He didn't like to think about Wilma getting old, she was all the family he had. His mother had died of cancer eight years ago, his father was killed a year later in a wreck on the Santa Ana Freeway. He and Wilma were as close as brother and sister, always there for each other.

“Even though I still work out, and walk a lot, that climb up to Janet's can be a real artery buster.

“Besides, I enjoy my garden. Janet's hillside doesn't suit me. That was a landscape challenge, a minimum-care project, not a garden to potter around in. No, this place fits me better.” She grinned. “It took me too long to dig out all that lawn, put in the flower beds. Now I want to enjoy it—I can potter around when I feel like it, leave it alone when I choose. I about wore out my knees planting ground cover and laying the stone walks.

“And Dulcie loves the garden. You know how she rolls among the flowers.” She set a plate of warm chocolate cookies on the table. “I miss her, when she's not here for our midmorning snack. Lately, she's taken to eating a small piece of cake and a bowl of milk at midmorning—when she's home at that time of day.

“But this morning, she was gone when I got up. I wish I didn't worry so about her.”

He restrained himself from eating half a dozen cookies at one gulp. “She came poking at Joe's cat door around nine. Looked like they were headed for Janet's.”

“I wish she'd just torment the neighborhood dogs the way she used to. Spend her time stealing, and enjoy life.” She gave him that puzzled look he had seen too often lately.

“But who can talk to cats? No matter how bizarre those two are, they're still feline. Still just as stubborn, still have the same maddening feline attitude.”

He belched delicately.

She sampled a cookie. “Beverly Jeannot is meeting Charlie up at Janet's. If she finds those two in the apartment…”

“They'll stay out of her way. Do them good to get
booted out. Though I doubt they can get in—Harper boarded up the burned door with plywood.”

“You don't think Beverly would hurt them?”

The idea surprised him and he thought about it. “I don't think she'd hurt an animal. And with Charlie there, she won't.”

“Well, if the cats want to…”

They heard Charlie coming down the hall.

Wilma rose uneasily, turned her back, and busied herself at the stove. She had to be more careful. It was hard enough dealing with her own feelings about Dulcie's new talents. But having a houseguest, even if Charlie was her niece, didn't help. She'd barely recovered from the shock of Dulcie's eloquence when Charlie arrived. With Charlie in the house, she was terrified she'd say something to Dulcie and that Dulcie, in her boundless enthusiasm, would shoot back a sharp observation, come right out with it.

She'd talked to Dulcie ever since she'd brought her home as a small kitten. Cats were to talk to. She'd always talked to her cats. When Dulcie's replies had been a rub against her ankle, a purr, and a soft mewl, life was simple. But the first time Dulcie answered back in words, both their worlds had changed.

Now, of course, their conversations were hardly remarkable. Just relaxed remarks between friends.

Does the vacuum cleaner really bother you
?…

Only when it jerks me out of a sound sleep; if you'll wake me up before you start it, that will help…I do love the scent of lavender in the sheets…Is there any more of that lovely canned albacore
?…

Do you want to watch
Lassie.?…

No, Wilma. We both know
Lassie
is stupid
…

You are a cat of impeccable taste. How about a
Magnum
rerun?…Oh, I would much rather watch
Magnum.
And could we have a little snack of sardines
…?

Charlie swept into the kitchen, dressed in fresh jeans and a pale yellow sweatshirt. She had tied back her hair
with a yellow scarf, the curly red tendrils already escaping around her face, the effect fresh and electric. Snatching up a handful of cookies, she hugged Wilma and punched Clyde's shoulder to move him along.

Wilma stood at the kitchen window watching as they drove away in the Packard.

She had to be more careful around Charlie. In spite of her wariness, she had caught Charlie several times studying Dulcie too intently.

She told herself that was only the gaze of the artist. Charlie did have an artist's disturbing way of staring at a person or an animal as she memorized line and shadow, as she absorbed the bone structure and muscle, committing to memory some rhythm of line.

She hoped that was all Charlie was seeing when she studied Dulcie. She hoped Charlie wasn't observing something about the little tabby cat that would best go unnoticed.

The cats careened uphill streaking through blowing grass, racing against time. Tangles of heavy stems whipped above their heads wild as a storming sea. Racing blindly up, the wind deafened them. Then, gaining the hill's crest, they paused to look back.

Far down the falling land, the houses were toy-sized, and along the winding streets they still saw no police unit heading up from the village. They could not, from this vantage, see up across the black, burned hills to the streets that flanked Janet's house, to see if a police unit was already parked there. The buffeting wind tore at their fur, and they hunched down, flattening their ears against its onslaught.

But suddenly, below, something moved in the grass, a huge dark shape slipping upward, a quick, heavy animal shouldering closer. The wind picked up its scent as it lunged into a run.

They spun around, exploded apart, leaped away in opposite directions—the dog couldn't chase them both.

He chased Dulcie. She could feel the beast's heat on her backside, could hear it snapping at her hindquarters. She thought it had her, when she heard it yelp. She dodged to look, saw Joe riding its neck—he had doubled back. The dog bellowed with pain and rage, twisted to grab him, and she flew at its head, clawed its ears, clinging to its face, digging in. It ran blindly, bucking. They rode it uphill, twisting, and she could smell its blood.

Riding the beast, she began to laugh, heard Joe laughing, felt the dog tremble beneath them confused, terrified. It had never heard a cat laugh.

When it couldn't shake them and couldn't grab them, it bolted into a tangle of broom, trying to scrape them off. The rough branches tore at them, they were scraped and slapped by branches, hanging onto the beast, hunching low, ears down, eyes squeezed shut.

“Now!” Joe shouted.

They leaped clear, down through tangles of dark thorny limbs dense as basket weave. The dog thrashed after them, snapping branches, lunging, sniffing. They crouched below the dark tangles, creeping away, pulsing like the terrified rabbits they hunted. Listening.

He thrashed in circles, searching.

They fled away through the thorny forest, then again they went to ground, straining to hear, to feel his vibrations coursing beneath them through the earth. Maybe he would scent them and follow, maybe not. They dared not go into the open. Dulcie, hiding and frightened, knew he was the dog that had followed her down among the houses. He was the hunter now, and she the prey, and she didn't like the feeling.

He was quiet a long time, only a little hush of movement, as if he were trying to lick his wounds.

They heard him move again, hesitantly. They dared not rear up to look.

Then, poised to run, they heard him crashing away.

He was leaving. Joe reared up, watching, then laughed, dropped down, and strolled out of the bushes, lay down on the grass, grinned at her. “You raked him good.”

“So did you.” She stood up on her hind legs, to see the dog amble away downhill, making for the houses below, where, perhaps, he could find a friendlier world.

They lay down in the windy sun. “We should have stayed on his back,” Joe said. “He would have carried us clear up to Janet's.”

She spit out dog hair. “I smell like a dog, and I taste like a dog.”

Far below, the dog had stopped in the yard of a scruffy gray house with a leaning picket fence. An added-on room jutted from the back, with a small, dirty window beneath the sloped roof.

The mutt lifted its leg against the picket fence, then began to twist in circles, trying to lick its wounded back while pawing at its face. But after a while it gave up, wandered to the curb, and leaped into the bed of an old black pickup.

That truck had been in the neighborhood for some time. Several weeks ago they had watched a thin, unkempt man moving into the back room, carrying in two scruffy suitcases and several paper bags. They had watched him, inside the lit room, moving around as if he was unpacking. They had not, then, seen the dog.

“Maybe it was in the cab of the truck,” Joe said. “Or already in the room.” He looked at her worriedly. “The mutt ought to be chained.” He licked her ear. “That beast running loose really screws up the hunting.”

“Maybe he'll lie low for a while, after the raking we gave him.”

“Sure he will—about as long as it takes the blood to dry.”

She smiled, rolled over in the warm sun. But a little ripple of fear touched her, thinking of the white cat somewhere among the hills, maybe hurt. If that dog found him…

She had dreamed about him again last night, but she hadn't told Joe—the dreams upset him. Joe Grey might be a big bruiser tomcat who could whip ten times his weight in bulldogs, but some things did scare him. The idea of prophetic dreams was a scenario he did not like to contemplate. When it came to spiritual matters, the tomcat grew defiant and short-tempered.

But her dreams were so real, every smell so intense, every sound so sharply defined. In the first dreams,
when the white cat trotted away, wanting her to follow, he had vanished before she could follow. But in one dream, he stood on the surface of the sea. It was a painted sea, blue and green paint, and he had sunk into the painted waves, and the paint faded to white canvas so nothing remained but canvas.

And in her dream last night she had seen him wandering through twilight, walking with his head down as if burdened by a great sadness. He stepped delicately, lifting each paw hesitantly and with care, stepping among tangles of small white bones: the white cat walked among animal bones, little animal skulls.

But again when she tried to follow, he vanished.

He had been so real; he had even smelled stridently male. She longed to tell Joe the dream, but now, heading uphill again, running beside him, she still said nothing. Soon they had left the healthy wild grass and padded across burned grass, across the black waste, crossing the path of the fire, crossing its stink.

This was the shortest way to Janet's, but they trod with care through the gritty charcoal, watching for sharp fragments, for protruding nails and torn, ragged metal, for broken glass to cut an unwary paw. Skirting around fallen, burned walls, they crept beneath fire-gnawed timbers that stood like gigantic black ribs, angling over them.

A child's bedroom wall rose alone, like the remains of some dismantled stage set, its pink kangaroo wallpaper darkened from smoke. A baby crib stood broken, one rail crushed, its paint deeply scorched, blistered into a mass of brown bubbles. A sodden couch smelled of mildew, its springs and cotton stuffing spilling out. A burned license plate lay atop a heap of broken dishes and twisted silverware, a warped metal sink leaned against a bent and blackened car wheel. They trotted between melted cookpots lying whitened and twisted, between blobs of glass melted into bubbling new forms like artifacts from alien worlds.

The smell of wet ashes clung in their mouths and to their fur. They stopped frequently to clean their paws,
to lick away the grit embedded in their tender skin and stuck between their claws. A cat's pads are delicate sensors in their own right, an important adjunct to his ears and eyes. His pads relay urgent messages of sharp or soft, of hot or cold. The feel of grit was as unwelcome as sand in one's eyes.

Higher up the hill, black trees stood naked, reaching to the sky in mute plea. And one lone, blackened chimney thrust up, an old solitary sentinel. The fire, after burning the top floor of Janet's house, had careened southward, leveling nearly all the dwellings within its half-mile swath.

But above Janet's burned house, on up the hill, the blaze had missed eight houses. They marched prim and untouched along the rising hill, along their narrow street. And, strangely, nearer to Janet's two houses had been spared, one up the hill behind her burned studio, one across the side street. And though Janet's studio was gone, flattened to ashes, the apartment beneath stood nearly untouched, held safe beneath the concrete slab which formed its roof, which had formed the studio floor. From the blackened slab rose three black girders, twisted against the clouds.

The garden below the house was largely undamaged, though its lush greens were dulled by ashes. The daylilies were blooming, their orange and yellow blossoms brilliant against the burn.

The front of Janet's apartment was all glass, the five huge windows dirtied by smoke, but unbroken. Behind the smoky glass, long white shutters had been closed across four of the windows, effectively blocking the view of the interior. The last wide window, down at the end, was uncovered—almost as if someone was there, as if someone had not been able to bear closing the house entirely. The sight of that window made Dulcie shiver—as if some presence within wanted sunshine, wanted to look out at the hills for a little while, look out at the village nestled below.

There was no police car parked below the apartment, and none above on the street behind, or in the drive which
led to the studio slab. The little side street was empty, too, beyond the blackened vacant lot There was no car at all parked along the side street before that untouched house. Strange that that ancient brown dwelling, among all the newer houses, would be left standing.

Steps ran up the hill. Halfway up, Janet's deck gave access to the front door. The cats avoided the steps, where charcoal and rubble had lodged. Trotting uphill they stirred clouds of ashes. Their eyes and noses were already gritty with ash, their coats thick with ash, Dulcie's stripes dulled, Joe's white markings nearly as dark as his coat. If they needed a disguise, they had it ready-made.

A fallen, burned oak tree lay across the entry deck. The front door was covered by plywood nailed across, affixed with yellow police notices warning against entry. They could see, beneath the plywood, the remains of the door, hanging ragged and charred. Dulcie dug at it, rasping deep into the burned wood, ripping away flakes and chunks of wood. She was nearly through when Joe hissed.

“Someone's watching—the house across the street.”

She drew back, tried to look like she was searching for mice. Glancing across the empty lot she could see within the lone house a woman peering out, the lace curtain pulled aside, her face nearly flattened against the glass.

“Hope she gets an eyeful.” Dulcie waited until the woman drew back and disappeared before she dug again, tearing at the charred wood. She had made a hole nearly two inches wide when a patrol car came up the side street.

The cats backed away as it parked directly below. Slipping up the hill to the concrete roof, they crouched at its edge among heaps of ashes, watching a lone officer emerge. Detective Marritt came quickly up the steps, carrying a crowbar and a hammer, his tightly lined face seeming far older than his shock of yellow hair and his lean, muscular body.

Metal screeched against wood as he pulled nails and pried away the barrier. Leaning the two sheets of plywood against the house, he unlocked the burned door,
disappeared inside. Dulcie moved to follow, but Joe nipped her shoulder.

She turned back, her green eyes blazing. “What? Come on, can't you?”

“You're not going to push right in under his feet.”

“Why not? He won't know what we're doing.”

“Wait until he's finished.”

“We can't. We won't know if he finds the diary. If he puts it in his pocket…” She started down the hill again, but Joe moved swiftly, blocking her, shouldering her into a heap of ashes and rubble.

She hissed and swatted him, but still he drove her back, snarling, his yellow glare fierce. She subsided unwillingly, ears back, tail lashing.

“The cops saw too much of us, Dulcie, when Beckwhite was killed. Captain Harper has too many questions.”

“So?”

“Think about it. We've already made Harper plenty nervous. He's a cop, he's not given to believing weird stuff. This stuff upsets him. You force yourself on him, and you blow your cover.”

She turned her back on him, lay down in the ashes at the edge of the roof, looking over the metal roof gutter watching the door below, sulking.

Joe growled softly “We can't find out anything if every time we show our faces around the police, they smell trouble and boot us out.”

She sighed.

He lay down beside her. “We do fine when they don't know we're snooping. Don't push it.”

She said nothing. She was not in a mood to admit he was right.

“We make Harper nervous, Dulcie. Give the man some slack.” He moved closer, licked her ear. And they lay side by side, watching for Marritt to come out and waiting for their own turn to search the house. Hoping, if the diary was there, that Marritt came through in his typical sloppy style and missed it.