Foggy Mountain Breakdown and Other Stories (24 page)

“No collar, Julie. Someone must have abandoned him on the highway. What shall we call him?”

“Varmint,” his wife suggested. She was a hard sell.

Giles ignored her lack of enthusiasm for his newfound prodigy. “I think I’ll call him Merlin. He’s a wizard of a cat.”

Merlin?
Danby looked up with a mouthful of tuna. Oh well, he thought, Merlin and tuna were better than Tigger and cheap dry cat food. You couldn’t have everything.

After that, he quickly became a full-fledged member of the household, with a newly purchased plastic feeding bowl, a catnip mouse toy, and another little collar with another damned bell. Danby felt the urge to bite Giles’s thumb off while he was attaching this loathsome neckpiece
over his ruff, but he restrained himself. By now he was accustomed to the accompaniment of a maniacal jingling with every step he took. What was it with human beings and bells?

Of course, that spoiled his plans for songbird hunting outdoors. He’d have to travel faster than the speed of sound to catch a sparrow now. Not that he got out much, anyhow. Giles seemed to think that he might wander off again, so he was generally careful to keep Danby housebound.

That was all right with Danby, though. It gave him an excellent opportunity to become familiar with the house, and with the routine of its inhabitants—all useful information for someone planning revenge. So far he (the old Danby, that is) had not been mentioned in the Eskeridge conversations. He wondered what story Giles was giving out about his disappearance. Apparently the body had not been found. It was up to him to punish the guilty, then.

Danby welcomed the days when both Giles and Julie left the house. Then he would forgo his morning, mid-morning, and early afternoon naps in order to investigate each room of his domain, looking for lethal opportunities: medicine bottles or perhaps a small appliance that he could push into the bathtub.

So far, though, he had not attempted to stage any accidents, for fear that the wrong Eskeridge would fall victim to his snare. He didn’t like Julie any more than she liked him, but he had no reason to kill her. The whole business needed careful study. He could afford to take his time analyzing the opportunities for revenge. The food was good, the job of house cat was undemanding, and he rather enjoyed the irony of being doted on by his intended victim. Giles was certainly better as an owner than he was as a partner.

An evening conversation between Giles and Julie convinced him that he must accelerate his efforts. They were sitting in the den, after a meal of baked chicken. They wouldn’t give him the bones, though. Giles kept insisting
that they’d splinter in his stomach and kill him. Danby was lying on the hearth rug, pretending to be asleep until they forgot about him, at which time he would sneak back into the kitchen and raid the garbage. He’d given up smoking, hadn’t he? And although he’d lapped up a bit of Giles’s scotch one night, he seemed to have lost the taste for it. How much prudence could he stand?

“If you’re absolutely set on keeping this cat, Giles,” said Julie Eskeridge, examining her newly polished talons, “I suppose I’ll have to be the one to take him to the vet.”

“The vet. I hadn’t thought about it. Of course, he’ll have to have shots, won’t he?” murmured Giles, still studying the newspaper. “Rabies, and so on.”

“And while we’re at it, we might as well have him neutered,” said Julie. “Otherwise, he’ll start spraying the drapes and all.”

Danby rocketed to full alert. To keep them from suspecting his comprehension, he centered his attention on the cleaning of a perfectly tidy front paw. It was time to step up the pace on his plans for revenge, or he’d be meowing in soprano. And forget the scruples about innocent bystanders: now it was a matter of self-defense.

That night he waited until the house was dark and quiet. Giles and Julie usually went to bed about eleven-thirty, turning off all the lights, which didn’t faze him in the least. He rather enjoyed skulking about the silent house using his infrared vision, although he rather missed late night television. He had once considered turning the set on with his paw, but that seemed too precocious, even for a cat named Merlin. Danby didn’t want to end up in somebody’s behavior lab with wires coming out of his head.

He examined his collection of cat toys, stowed by Julie in his cat basket because she hated clutter. He had a mouse-shaped catnip toy, a rubber fish, and a little red ball. Giles had bought the ball under the ludicrous impression
that Danby could be induced to play catch. When he’d rolled it across the floor, Danby lay down and gave him an insolent stare. He had enjoyed the next quarter of an hour, watching Giles on his hands and knees, batting the ball and trying to teach Danby to fetch. But finally Giles gave up, and the ball had been tucked in the cat basket ever since. Danby picked it up with his teeth, and carried it upstairs. Giles and Julie came down the right side of the staircase, didn’t they? That’s where the bannister was. He set the ball carefully on the third step, in the approximate place that a human foot would touch the stair. A trip wire would be more reliable, but Danby couldn’t manage the technology involved.

What else could he devise for the Eskeridges’ peril? He couldn’t poison their food, and since they’d provided him with a flea collar, he couldn’t even hope to get bubonic plague started in the household. Attacking them with tooth and claw seemed foolhardy, even if they were sleeping. The one he wasn’t biting could always fight him off, and a fifteen-pound cat can be killed with relative ease by any human determined to do it. Even if they didn’t kill him on the spot, they’d get rid of him immediately, and then he’d lose his chance forever. It was too risky.

It had to be stealth, then. Danby inspected the house, looking for lethal opportunities. There weren’t any electrical appliances close to the bathtub, and besides, Giles took showers. In another life Danby might have been able to rewire the electric razor to shock its user, but such a feat was well beyond his present level of dexterity. No wonder human beings had taken over the earth; they were so damned hard to kill.

Even his efforts to enlist help in the task had proved fruitless. On one of his rare excursions out of the house (Giles had gone golfing, and Danby slipped out without Julie’s noticing), Danby had roamed the neighborhood, looking for … well … pussy. Instead he’d found dim-witted tomcats, and a Doberman pinscher, who was definitely
Somebody. Danby had kept conversation to a minimum, not quite liking the look of the beast’s prominent fangs. Danby suspected that the Doberman had previously been an IRS agent. Of course, the dog had
said
that it had been a serial killer, but that was just to lull Danby into a false sense of security. Anyhow, much as the dog approved of Danby’s plan to kill his humans, he wasn’t interested in forming a conspiracy. Why should he go to the gas chamber to solve someone else’s problem?

Danby himself had similar qualms about doing anything too drastic—such as setting fire to the house. He didn’t want to stage an accident that would include himself among the victims. After puttering about the darkened house for a wearying few hours, he stretched out on the sofa in the den to take a quick nap before resuming his plotting. He’d be able to think better after he rested.

The next thing Danby felt was a ruthless grip on his collar, dragging him forward. He opened his eyes to find that it was morning, and that the hand at his throat belonged to Julie Eskeridge, who was trying to stuff him into a metal cat carrier. He tried to dig his claws into the sofa, but it was too late. Before he could blink, he had been hoisted along by his tail, and shoved into the box. He barely got his tail out of the way before the door slammed shut behind him. Danby crouched in the plastic carrier, peeking out the side slits, and trying to figure out what to do next. Obviously the rubber ball on the steps had been a dismal failure as a murder weapon. Why couldn’t he have come back as a mountain lion?

Danby fumed about the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune all the way out to the car. It didn’t help to remember where he was going, and what was scheduled to be done with him shortly thereafter. Julie Eskeridge set the cat carrier on the backseat and slammed the door. When she started the car, Danby howled in protest.

“Be quiet back there!” Julie called out. “There’s nothing you can do about it.”

We’ll see about that
, thought Danby, turning to peer out the door of his cage. The steel bars of the door were about an inch apart, and there was no mesh or other obstruction between them. He found that he could easily slide one paw sideways out of the cage. Now, if he could just get a look at the workings of the latch, there was a slight chance that he could extricate himself. He lay down on his side and squinted up at the metal catch. It seemed to be a glorified bolt. To lock the carrier, a metal bar was slid into a socket, and then rotated downward to latch. If he could push the bar back up and then slide it back …

It wasn’t easy to maneuver with the car changing speed and turning corners. Danby felt himself getting quite dizzy with the effort of concentrating as the carrier gently rocked. But finally, when the car reached the interstate and sped along smoothly, he succeeded in positioning his paw at the right place on the bar, and easing it upward. Another three minutes of tense probing allowed him to slide the bar a fraction of an inch, and then another. The bolt was now clear of the latch. There was no getting out of the car, of course. Julie had rolled up the windows, and they were going sixty miles an hour. Danby spent a full minute pondering the implications of his dilemma. But no matter which way he looked at the problem, the alternative was always the same: do something desperate or go under the knife. It wasn’t as if dying had been such a big deal, after all. There was always next time.

Quickly, before the fear could stop him, Danby hurled his furry bulk against the door of the. cat carrier, landing in the floor of the backseat with a solid thump. He sprang back up on the seat, and launched himself into the air with a heartfelt snarl, landing precariously on Julie Eskeridge’s right shoulder, and digging his claws in to keep from falling.

The last things he remembered were Julie’s screams and the feel of the car swerving out of control.

*  *  *

When Danby opened his eyes, the world was still playing in black-and-white. He could hear muffled voices, and smell a jumble of scents: blood, gasoline, smoke. He struggled to get up, and found that he was still less than a foot off the ground. Still furry. Still the Eskeridges’ cat. In the distance he could see the crumpled wreckage of Julie’s car.

A familiar voice was droning on above him. “He must have been thrown free of the cat carrier during the wreck, officer. That’s definitely Merlin, though. My poor wife was taking him to the vet.”

A burly policeman was standing next to Giles, nodding sympathetically. “I guess it’s true what they say about cats, sir. Having nine lives, I mean. I’m very sorry about your wife. She wasn’t so lucky.”

Giles hung his head. “No. It’s been a great strain. First my business partner disappears, and now I lose my wife.” He stooped and picked up Danby. “At least I have my beautiful kitty-cat for consolation. Come on, boy. Let’s go home.”

Danby’s malevolent yellow stare did not waver. He allowed himself to be carried away to Giles’s waiting car without protest. He could wait. Cats were good at waiting. And life with Giles wasn’t so bad, now that Julie wouldn’t be around to harass him. Danby would enjoy a spell of being doted on by an indulgent human, fed gourmet catfood, and given the run of the house. Meanwhile he could continue to leave the occasional ball on the stairs, and think of other ways to toy with Giles, while he waited to see if the police ever turned up to ask Giles about his missing partner. If not, Danby could work on more ways to kill humans. Sooner or later he would succeed. Cats are endlessly patient at stalking their prey.

“It’s just you and me, now, fella,” said Giles, placing his cat on the seat beside him.

And after he killed Giles, perhaps he could go in search
of the building contractor that Giles bribed to keep his dirty secret. He certainly deserved to die. And that nasty woman Danby used to live next door to, who used to complain about his stereo and his crabgrass. And perhaps the surly headwaiter at Chantage. Stray cats can turn up anywhere.

Danby began to purr.

367 Calabria Road
Passaic, New Jersey 07055

Dear Laurie Gunsel:

I hope you don’t mind me writing to you via your publishers. It says on the book jacket that you live in the Atlanta area, but that’s a big place, so I figured this was the best way to make sure that you got my letter.

I have just finished reading your new book
Bullet Proof
, and I had to write and tell you how much I enjoyed it. Since finding that book, I have been looking for the rest of the Cass Cairncross detective series. I located your first book (
Dead in the Water
) in a used bookstore, and I hope to acquire first editions of all your works. In hardcover yet, which is something I don’t do for many authors.