Cat Deck the Halls (18 page)

F
ROM AMONG THE
boxes behind the blue van, the cats watched Betty and Leroy finish loading their tools in through its side door, then vanish back into the house. The door to the kitchen clicked shut and the dead bolt slid home, seating itself with a solid thunk—and there was no way to open the dead bolt on the garage side, except with a key.

They hadn't wanted to barge back in the house behind those two, to be shut in again with Betty and Ralph Wicken and Leroy. Getting into the house originally, on Betty's heels, and then slipping into the garage so close to her, had already stretched their luck. It would take only one faint rub against a pant leg, and those three would be on them like hawks on a rabbit.

And, while Betty Wicken was admittedly a brutal woman to throw a clay pot at a little cat, her brother, Ralph, stirred a deeper fear. Ralph gave all three cats the chills. His thin face and close-cropped hair and big meaty ears made him seem almost like a predatory animal they might meet
on the wild hills—but it was Ralph's smell, of unhealthy, nervous sweat, that made their fur really bristle.

Even if, to most humans, they were only cats and presented no imminent threat, they did not trust what Ralph or Betty Wicken might think to do to them.

But now, locked in the Wickens' garage like mice in a cage, the cats grew uneasy. To someone small, with only claws and teeth, the solidly built garage seemed nearly impregnable.

The other pedestrian door, which led to the backyard, was secured high above the knob, near the top, with a fastening that they might, or might not, be able to manipulate. And the plywood over the three small, high windows looked to be securely nailed.

And of course the electric garage door, if they leaped up to push the button, would cause a racket that would bring all three residents storming out—to glimpse them racing away, to realize it must have been cats who had opened that door, and to grow unreasonably alarmed and hostile. Dulcie licked her sweaty paws. Kit bit at a nonexistent flea, and Joe Grey paced, staring up to the ceiling, at the screened air vents high above them between the rafters.

But first he approached the small side door leading out to the garbage cans, the door they hadn't been able to open from outside. There was a thin line of light on the left, where the door fit unevenly into its frame. The dead bolt had an interior knob, but while it might be possible to turn that, the hasp and loop high above, installed nearly at the top of the door, made the tomcat lay back his ears in consternation.

There was no padlock through the loop; instead the householders had shoved a heavy stick of wood through. Interesting that they were so security conscious. He wondered if he could climb on the stacked boxes and make a wild leap at the stick—wondered how much noise that would create inside the house as he thudded against the door. Behind him, Kit and Dulcie fidgeted. Joe leaped at last, not at the door but to the top of the van and from the van to the rafters.

Crouched on a rafter, he considered the three tiny, mesh-covered vents. They were so small that he wondered, even if he could claw the screen off, whether a cat could squeeze through. There looked to be less than three inches of clearance, and Joe wasn't sure he could get his head through.

But behind him, Dulcie wasn't waiting. Leaping to the van's roof and to the rafter beside him, she stood up on her hind legs and attacked the screen, wildly clawing.

Off balance, she tore a rip down the nearest mesh grid, and slipped and nearly fell. Joe snatched at her, and braced her with his shoulder. The grid was tightly in place, stapled to the wooden molding and sealed with old paint. Kit leaped up beside them and reared up, too.

Frantically clawing and joggling each other, the two females at last loosened one corner, blood spattering from their paws. Then Joe took a turn, and with teeth and claws the three cats together managed to pull a corner of the screen free—they pulled until the whole screen came flying, flinging Dulcie off the rafter. She hung clinging, Joe's teeth gripping her neck like a mama cat holding a kitten.

He pulled her up until she got a purchase and, scram
bling, righted herself. Her paws were bleeding, and her lip was cut—but Kit had squeezed though the vent and was gone, tufts of her dark, bushy tail left behind on the torn screen. They heard her hit the garbage can.

Dulcie went next, fighting through the rough opening, pulling out hanks of her own fur and raking her tender flesh. Joe heard a second thud as she dropped onto the metal lid.

Gingerly, the tomcat reared tall and poked his head into the little space. He was bigger than Dulcie and Kit, and he'd hate like hell to get hung up. If he could get his head through, though, then the rest of him could follow. He fought, clawing and wriggling. Rusty wire ripped along his shoulder, and something jabbed down his leg. A nail? But suddenly he was free, and falling.

He hit the garbage can and thumped to the ground—and they ran, scorching around the side of the house and across the drive, smelling their own blood and leaving bloody paw prints, and into the shadows of the woods, where they crouched together, Dulcie and Kit shivering and Joe Grey tense and angry. Well, at least he'd memorized the license plates of both vehicles, though that seemed, at the moment, small reward.

“Whatever the Wickens are up to,” Dulcie said, licking her paw, “Harper needs to know about the van.”

Joe looked back at her. “I'm not sure that's smart.”

“Why ever not? We—”

“If the Wickens go up there during the playhouse competition, we'll
see
the van. Whatever they mean to steal, we'll see them in the act, and then we'll call the department.”

“What if they kidnap a child?”

“They're not
after
a child. You heard Betty Wicken,
she told Ralph to lay off the kids, to stay away from the school.”

But Dulcie laid back her ears. “What if we're wrong? What if we missed something, and they do take a child? I'm going home, to call Harper.”

Kit said, “My house…”

Dulcie shook her head. “Lucinda and Pedric have had enough involvement. Let's don't make more waves.” And she crouched to leap away.

Joe stopped her, pushing belligerently in front of her. “Just listen. They're not going to steal a child. This isn't about kidnapping, you heard them. I think they're after something in the old studio.” He looked at her intently. “If Max puts a tail on them, if they spot a cop before they make their move, maybe no one will ever know what they're after.”

“You don't give Harper much credit.”

“The department is working a murder case, Dulcie. They're looking for a vanished body, and trying to keep on top of shoplifting and increased holiday thefts. And Harper has officers on double shift to protect the little girl. Plus three officers off for the holidays, and extra patrols around the school. If he sends a uniform up to tail the Wickens, it may have to be a rookie. And if the Wickens make the rookie, they'll dump the van and take off—maybe never be found.”

Dulcie quieted. Joe looked intently at her. “The department only stretches so far. And think about this. If the snitch tells Harper that the van was hidden in the Wickens' garage—and where else would they hide it?—that puts the Greenlaws right on the spot again.

“Don't you think,” Joe said, “that Lucinda has been involved enough, for the moment? She brings Harper the pot shards with, presumably, fingerprints on them. She leaves. Then, in a little while, Harper gets an anonymous call that there just happens to be a blue van like Charlie's, right there below Lucinda's house? Where,” he asked, “does that leave Lucinda?”

“With egg on her face,” Dulcie said contritely. “With
snitch
written all over her.”

“Is that what you want?”

The kit looked from one to the other. “Joe's right, I don't want to drag Lucinda in again. We just need to be up there when the Wickens get there with the van, we just need to watch them. Meantime,” she said, “Lori and Dillon are going to load up the playhouse and I'm going to watch.” And Kit took off for the seniors' house, meaning, this once, to keep her mouth shut and not tell the law what she knew.

Dulcie watched her go flying through the leaves, and then turned quietly for home. She knew that Joe was right. Or, she hoped he was.

Joe Grey watched them both, twitching an ear, then he laid back his own ears, spun around, and headed fast for the department—to see what he could learn, what new information might have come in. And to put to rest the niggling and edgy voice that said,
Is this the right decision? You sure you want to withhold that information from the chief?

A
SQUAD CAR STOOD
in the seniors' drive, its wheels and hood radiating a gentle warmth.
As if it had arrived maybe half an hour earlier,
Kit thought. The big white Chevy was parked just to the left of the garage, at an angle that left the closed garage doors clear—and that provided, unknown to the cop who had parked it, swift feline access to the hood, to the top of the car, and onto the garage roof. Three leaps, and Kit looked down from the flat, tarred roof at her own paw prints embossed delicately into the squad car's thin coating of dust—then she padded across the warm tar paper to peer in through Cora Lee's windows, into her friend's sunny, bright bedroom.

The little girl was there, with Officer Eleanor Sand. Kit, twitching her tail with interest, studied the child curled up on the rug before the tall bookcases among a pile of cushions. Cora Lee sat on the floor beside her, an open book in her lap. Eleanor Sand sat on the window seat—looking directly out the window at Kit. The tall, lovely blonde
showed surprise for only an instant, and then amusement, at the sight of a cat on the roof. Kit looked back at her uncertainly—then the two big dogs were leaping to the window seat beside Sand, wagging their tails and pressing their noses to the pane inches from Kit's nose. Everyone was staring at Kit; she didn't know whether to be embarrassed at being caught snooping or to play it up and let herself strut a little. Because she was certainly, at the moment, onstage.

But then Cora Lee, laughing, rose and opened the window. Kit stepped in, and the dogs were all over her, slurping and soaking her fur. Cora Lee settled them down, so they backed off, only wagging and grinning. She closed the window and sat down on the floor again, as lithe as a dancer. But the child reached from the cushions, wanting Kit. Her black hair was rumpled, her dark eyes huge. Dodging the dogs, Kit leaped down into the pillows and stepped into her arms, and together they snuggled down in the warm nest.

Gently Cora Lee pulled a lap blanket over the two of them, took up the book again, and, in a dialect that Kit had never heard from her Creole friend, continued the Christmas story. The bright jacket said
Ole Saint Nick.

The pictures, when Cora Lee held them for the little girl to see, showed not winter snow, but a sultry river among swampy trees; not reindeer and sled and Santa in a red coat,
but the alligators hitched to a little square boat that was filled with bags of gifts. Santa was dressed in brown, but he had a real white, bushy Santa Claus beard; and the child seemed quite comfortable with the change from reindeer to alligators. Halfway through, Cora Lee paused to look up at Eleanor.

“Our family told a similar Christmas story in Cajun dialect when Donnie and I were little. This book wasn't published then, but we loved our family version, we heard it several times every Christmas. I was around twenty when this book came out, and I wrote to the author for this signed first edition.”

“It's charming,” Sand said. “I've never heard it, but the Cajun way of telling makes me feel happy. Interesting,” she added, “that our young friend picked it from among all your picture books.”

Cora Lee, being an artist, had a handsome collection of picture books, and she could hardly resist buying the most beautiful ones that came out each year. She had followed with excitement the progress of Charlie's book; though it was not a picture book, it had many illustrations, and Cora Lee had predicted after seeing the first sketches and reading the first rough draft that it would have deep appeal to readers of all ages.

Kit hoped so. Charlie's book was
her
story, it was based on her own kittenhood, on that frightened and lonely time when she had no one to love her, no one to care if she lived or died.

When Cora Lee had finished reading the rhythmic Cajun phrases, the child reached up for the book. Hugging it to her possessively, she tucked it beneath the blanket
beside Kit, and held both the book and Kit close.
This little girl might be mute,
Kit thought,
but she surely made her feelings known.

“I wish Donnie were here to share it,” Cora Lee said. “When we were kids, he always read aloud with such pleasure.” Automatically she glanced toward the window, though she could not have seen his car from upstairs. Kit had not seen it when she arrived; there was only Cora Lee's car at the other side of the drive, and the squad car—though when she'd crossed the drive she'd padded over a cold patch of concrete that the thin winter sun hadn't yet warmed, where a car or maybe Donnie's old pickup had recently stood.

There was no blue van parked in the drive today, so Mavity must be off in the real van, on a cleaning job. Kit had seen Mavity's ancient VW parked around the side of the garage where Mavity kept it—so as not to offend the neighbors, she said. She said her old car looked like a rusting hulk up on blocks in the yard of some backcountry shack.

The VW didn't look that bad to Kit, but probably Gabrielle encouraged Mavity to hide it—it was not a sleek new Mercedes, such as Gabrielle herself drove.

“You said your cousin Donnie's family was killed in the hurricane?” Eleanor was saying.

Cora Lee nodded. “His children, yes. There are a lot of questions about those failed levees, about the shoddy way they were reinforced, and where the federal money went, that was given to the state to do that work. Questions,” Cora Lee said, “that in my view ought to lead to some serious charges. But I guess…I guess I'm getting old and crotchety.”

Eleanor laughed. “You don't look like you'll ever get
old. But a bit judgmental? Why not? My daddy told me, ‘If you are not brave enough to make judgments about life, you'll end up with a head full of porridge.' My daddy wasn't big on shady politicians, either, and on the folk who allow and encourage them.”

Cora Lee smiled. “There's plenty of that, in New Orleans. Even as a child, I was aware of the ugly stories about the good-old-boy politics.” She stood up when they heard a truck pull in, and moved to the window. Kit could hear a tractor or some kind of heavy equipment, and already the big chocolate poodle and the Dalmatian had charged out of the room and down the stairs, barking and threatening.

Kit wanted to see, too, but that would appear too strange. Racing to the window must be traditionally left to the rowdy and protective canines. Instead, she yawned and stretched, and made a show of slowly extricating herself from the little girl and from the quilt and pillows. She gave the child a nose touch, then languidly jumped to the sill beside Cora Lee, rubbing up against her as if for a pet, glancing out only slyly, as if she didn't give a whit what was out there. Behind her, Eleanor Sand knelt to gather up the little girl, perhaps uneasy at the activity below. “I think we'll move on,” she said quietly.

“I didn't know they'd be here so early,” Cora Lee said, picking up Kit and holding her, watching a flatbed truck as it backed carefully up the far side of the drive. It parked well away from Eleanor's squad car. The forklift ambled between them, to the garage door; and when the two women and the child headed downstairs, Eleanor holding the little girl's hand, Kit padded down behind them and out the front door.

She paused on the front porch, watching Eleanor's squad car pull away, and Cora Lee and the truck driver disappear into the garage. The driver was a big, bald, sad-faced man who resembled a grieving bloodhound.

In a moment the garage door rumbled open to reveal the bright, many-colored playhouse that nearly filled the interior. Lori and Dillon stood talking with the driver, both girls gesturing and looking as anxious, Kit thought, as two mother cats protecting their kittens.

But soon, under the girls' hands-on direction, the truck driver and the skinny, wrinkled forklift driver showed that they could be gentle and careful as they helped the girls separate the house into its three parts. Lori and Dillon insisted on removing all the bolts themselves, but they allowed the two men, under their nervous instruction, to separate and slide each section onto a heavy-duty dolly, and roll it out the door to where the forklift could raise it onto the truck bed.

Kit watched, hiding a smile, as Lori and Dillon shepherded every move, Dillon's short red hair rumpled every which way, her old blue T-shirt torn and stained. Lori's long dark ponytail had come loose from its ribbon and hung in a tangle, and her own T-shirt was stained with red and green paint.

The girls might look scruffy, Kit thought, but their finished creation shone perfectly groomed and impressive. They were so excited about the contest, and so afraid some accident would mar their work, that they gripped each other's hands, white-knuckled as each piece was loaded onto the flatbed. Kit could see, inside Cora Lee's car, where the bright turquoise and blue and red
floor pads waited, along with the rope ladder neatly piled on top.

The two men were tying padding around the three sections when Donnie's old truck pulled in, the truck he had bought used in the village when he'd arrived by plane from Texas. The tall, slim, graying blond man swung out, grinning. “Looks like you're all set to go.”

“We're going to have some pie and milk first,” Cora Lee said. “The girls need fuel before they get to work putting the house back together.” She put her arm around Donnie. “Come join us.”

She looked at Lori, who was fidgeting to get started. “We'll be up there, Lori, by the time the truck is in place. The men will have to wait in line at the gate and be directed in, and there'll be a mob waiting.”

“We'll be in, in a minute,” Lori said, “as soon as they're finished tying down.”

“Sometimes,” Cora Lee said as she and Donnie headed up the steps, “watching the girls, I feel like I'm a child again, too. The way we used to be,” she said, heading for the kitchen. She turned to look at Donnie. “Fifty years. We're totally different people, now. And yet…”

“And yet,” he said, “we're the same people. We're the same two kids we were. Only the packaging is different.”

Cora Lee laughed. “A bit frayed around the edges?”

Kit padded into the kitchen behind them, watching Cora Lee set out the pie and begin to cut it, while Donnie started the coffee.

“You're proud of the girls,” he said.

“They've worked hard on this project, and with such excitement. They did a huge amount of library research
into architectural styles, surveyed every kind of structure and style from French Country to African huts to those Dutch-influenced hex-sign details from the Caribbean—and put it all together in their own way.”

“Including the hex signs,” he said. “I like that.” The hex signs were no more than big, primary shapes—triangles, circles, rectangles—painted on the shutters and walls in bright, contrasting colors.

“I so hope the girls will win,” Cora Lee said. “But whether they win or not, they should realize a nice profit. That money would give Lori a leg up for college, with her father in prison. And Dillon…her folks can pay for college, but she wants to contribute as much as she can. Dillon has come a long way since the bad time she had when her parents nearly divorced.”

“I understand a lot of credit goes to the police chief?”

Cora Lee nodded as she dished up the pie. “Teaching her to ride and handle horses, to be responsible for an animal, that has steadied her. As has Ryan's training.”

“Ryan Flannery?”

“Ryan hired Dillon as a carpenter's gofer and then helper. She had to get special permission from the school. Between the two experiences, Dillon's a different person now, much more sure of herself and what she can do. Much more responsible.” She changed the subject when they heard the girls coming.

“We read the
Cajun Night Before Christmas,
today,” she told him. “Do you know the book? We were grown, when it came out. But it was so like the Christmas stories that your dad used to tell.”

Donnie gave her a faltering glance, as if he wasn't
tracking. Then, “You read it to Lori and Dillon? A picture book?”

Cora Lee laughed. “No, to the little girl who was found in the plaza. Where the murder was reported. An officer brought her up to visit—they just left. I'm sorry you weren't here, you'd love her. She's so solemn, and so hurt, Donnie. I wish you could have read some of the book to her; I used to love to hear you read.

“But maybe later. I'm sure one of the officers will bring her back.” She looked up when Lori and Dillon came in, and asked Lori to give Kit some milk and a few crumbs of gingerbread.

“Those were happy times,” she said to Donnie, “those hot summers when we'd play in the walled garden after supper and lie on the grass, and you'd tell a story or read a book to me.”

Donnie was quiet, turned away to see to the coffee. When the phone rang, Cora Lee picked up. “Yes, he's here. Just a moment.” She handed him the phone.

He answered, listened; then, “I'll take it in Gabrielle's study,” he said. “Would you hang up for me? The connection seems faint.”

Gabrielle's bedroom and sewing room/study were just across the hall from the kitchen. Cora Lee waited until she heard him pick up. When she heard his voice, she reached to hang up. Donnie was saying, “Fine, she's just fine.” Cora Lee didn't know what made her pause. She wanted to hear more; she listened for only a moment, then hung up guiltily. Who would be fine? Was he talking about Gabrielle? But there was nothing wrong with Gabrielle.

Or maybe he was talking about
her,
because she had
rehearsals and then the concert. But who would he be talking to, about her? She wished she'd had the nerve to listen to the rest of the conversation—if the girls hadn't been there, she might have. Something in Donnie's voice, as well as his words, left her puzzled.