Cat Under Fire (13 page)

The cats fled down the black, burned hills, down into the tall green grass careening together, exploding apart, wild with their sudden freedom. Four days hanging around the Blankenships' had left them stir-crazy, dangerously close to the insane release people called a cat fit. Flying down, dropping steeply down, they collapsed at last, rolling and laughing beneath the wide blue sky. Dulcie leaped at a butterfly, at insects that keened and rustled around them in the blowing grass; racing in circles she terrorized a thousand minute little presences singing their tiny songs and munching on their bits of greenery, sent them scurrying or crushed them. “I wonder if Mama gave in—if she let Frances call the police.” She grinned. “I wonder if Frances tried again to phone Attorney Joseph Grey.”

She stood switching her tail. “If that was Janet's van that Mama saw, the Saturday night before the fire, what was she doing? She drove up to San Francisco that morning. Why would she come home again in the middle of the night, load up her own paintings? Take them where? If there'd been a show, her agent would have said.”

She looked at him intently. “Those weren't Janet's paintings burned in the fire, so whose paintings were they?”

“Could Janet have hidden her own paintings, to collect the insurance?”

“Janet wouldn't do that. And there wasn't any insurance.” She lay down, thinking.

“Of course there would be insurance,” he said. “Those paintings were worth…”

Dulcie twitched her ear. “Janet didn't insure her work.”

“That's crazy. Why wouldn't she? How do you know that?”

“Insurance on paintings is horribly expensive. She told Wilma it costs nearly as much as the price of the work. The rates were so high she decided against it, said she tried three insurance agents and they all gave the same high rates. Wilma says a lot of artists don't insure.”

“But Wilma…”

“Wilma has that one painting insured, with a rider on her homeowner's. That's a lot different.”

She was quiet a moment, then flipped over and sat up, her eyes widening. “Sicily Aronson has a white van. Don't you remember? She parks it behind the gallery beside the loading door.”

“So Sicily took the paintings, at two in the morning? Killed Janet and took her paintings, to sell? Come on, Dulcie. Why would she kill Janet? Janet was her best painter, her meal ticket.”

“Maybe Janet planned to leave her. Maybe they had a falling-out. If Janet took all her work away…”

“You've been seeing too many TV movies. If Sicily tried to sell those paintings, if they came on the market, Max Harper would have her behind bars in a second.

“And Beverly wouldn't take them, she inherited Janet's paintings.” He licked his paw. “And if there wasn't any insurance, Beverly had nothing to gain.” He nibbled his shoulder, pursuing a flea. Even with the amazing changes in his life, he still couldn't shake the fleas. And he hated flea spray.

“Maybe,” she said, “Sicily could sell them easier than Beverly. If she did, she'd keep all the money, not have to split with Beverly. With Janet dead, and with so
many paintings supposedly destroyed, each canvas is worth a bundle.”

“Whoever has them could sell them. Beverly. Sicily. Kendrick Mahl.”

“But Mahl had witnesses to everything he did in San Francisco.”

Mahl had gone out to dinner with friends both Saturday and Sunday nights, leaving his car in the hotel parking garage. Mahl lived in Marin County across the Golden Gate Bridge. He had driven into the city Saturday afternoon and checked into the St. Francis; the hotel was full of artists and critics. In the city he had taken cabs or ridden with friends.

Dulcie scowled. “I guess anyone could have rented a van. When we know who was in that van, we'll know who killed her. I'll bet Detective Marritt didn't take one thumbtack, one scrap of the burned paintings as evidence.”

“Or maybe Marritt took thumbtacks but didn't bother to find out how Janet stretched her canvases. You'd think someone would have told him. Wouldn't Sicily?”

“Unless she didn't want the police to know.” Dulcie examined her claws. “It'll take a lot of phoning, calling all the rental places, to find who rented a white van that night.”

“Dulcie, the police will check out the rental places, as soon as they know about the van, and about the missing paintings.”

“Where would someone hide that many paintings?” she said speculatively.

He sat up, staring at her. “You think
we're
going to look for those canvases? You think
we're
going to find two million dollars' worth of paintings? Those paintings could be anywhere, a private home, an apartment, another gallery…What do you plan to do, go tooling up and down the coast maybe in your BMW, searching through warehouses?”

She smiled sweetly, cutting her eyes at him. “We could try Sicily's gallery.”

“Sure, Sicily's going to have those big canvases right there under the cops' noses. And don't you think Captain Harper deserves to know that the paintings are gone, that they weren't burned?”

“It would take only a few minutes, just nip into the gallery and have a look. If we find them, we'll be giving Captain Harper not just a tip, but the whole big, damning story.” She grinned. “Not just a sniff of the rabbit but the whole delicious cottontail.” Her eyes gleamed green as jewels. “We can slip in through the front door just before Sicily closes, stay out of sight until she locks up.”

His eyes gleamed with the challenge. But his better judgment—some latent natural wariness—made his belly twitch. “If we do that and get caught, I hope it's the cops and not Sicily.”

“Why ever not? She wouldn't know what we're doing. And Sicily likes cats.”

He couldn't, in his wildest imagination, picture Sicily Aronson liking cats. The woman put him off totally. With her dangling bracelets and jiggling earrings and tangles of clanking chains and necklaces and her blowing, layered clothes, she was like a walking boutique. Dulcie practically drooled over the expensive fabrics Sicily wore, the imported hand-dyed prints, the layers of hand-painted cottons drooping over her long, handwoven skirts. Her handmade sandals or tall slim boots smelled of the animals they came from; and her dark hair, bound up in intricate twists secured with strands of silver or jewels, was just too much. She did not look like Molena Point; she looked like San Francisco's bordello district, like some leftover from Sally Stanford days, when that madam was the toast of the city.

And the fact that Sicily could amortize interest in her head, so Clyde had told him, and could accurately compute every possible tax write-off while making light banter or a sales pitch, made her all the more formidable.

“She only dresses like that for PR. It's part of the gallery image.” She reached a soft paw to him. “She's
really nice. If she catches us in the gallery, she'll probably treat us to a late supper.”

“Sure she will. Braised rat poison.”

She looked at him, amused. “I've been in the gallery a lot lately, and she's been nice to me.” And suddenly she looked stricken. “Oh dear. I guess…I hope we don't find the paintings there, I hope she didn't do it. I was thinking only of proving Rob innocent. But she has been kind to me.”

“I didn't know you went in there.”

“I've done it for weeks, sometimes at noon when court breaks for lunch, just to listen.”

“You suspected her?”

“No, I just wanted to find out what I could. After all, she is Janet's agent.”

“So what did you learn?”

“Nothing.” She licked her paw. “Except she's a sucker for cats. But I guess most people in the art world like cats. Last week she fed me little sandwiches left over from an opening, and twice she's shared her lunch with me; and she folded a handwoven wool scarf on her desk for me to nap on.”

“With that kind of treatment, Wilma may lose her housemate.”

Dulcie smiled. “Not a chance. Anyway, if Sicily catches us in the gallery, just roll over, curl your paws sweetly, and smile.”

“Sure I will. And nail her with twenty sharp ones when she reaches down to grab me.”

She turned away, snorting with disgust.

But in a moment, she said, “I wish we knew what to do about Janet's journal.”

“It's evidence, Dulcie. We have to tell the police where to find it. We've been over this.”

She sighed.

He moved close against her, licking her ear. “The diary is Captain Harper's business.”

“But her diary is so private, it's all that's left to speak
for her—except her paintings.” She looked at him bleakly. “Why did that terrible thing have to happen? Why did she have to die?”

“At least Janet left her work. That's more than most people leave behind them—something to bring pleasure to others.”

“I guess,” she said, touching her paw to his, half-amused. Joe did have his tender side, when it suited him. “I guess that's better than poor Mrs. Blankenship. She won't leave the world anything but a house full of china beasties.”

Earlier, when she and Joe departed Janet's house, slipping away in the shadows so Mama wouldn't see them, she had looked back across the street and seen Mama sitting at her window eagerly waiting for her.

“It was cruel to make her think I loved her, then to leave. Now she'll be more lonely than ever.”

Joe brushed his whiskers against hers. “You could get her a cat. An ordinary little cat who would love her. A kitten maybe.”

“Yes,” she said, brightening. “A little cat that will stay with her.” Her mouth curved with pleasure. “A sweet little cat. Yes, maybe a kitten. Or maybe the white cat. He'll need a home when we find him.”

He did not reply. In his opinion, the white cat was long dead—except, if he was dead, then what were these strange dreams? Did the dreams arise, as he hoped, only from Dulcie's active imagination?

They headed down again watching the hills for Stamps's dog. The wild rye and oats on the open slopes was so tall and thick that the animal could easily crouch unseen. They did not see it on the streets below, among the gardens and cottages, did not see it near the gray house, or around the old black pickup. Dulcie studied the ragged house with narrowed eyes, and a little smile curved her pink mouth.

“What?” he said.

“Looks to me like Stamps's window is open.”

He said nothing. As they drew near where the pickup was parked, they saw the dog, a shadow among shadows, asleep in the truck bed.

But even as they looked, the beast came awake and sat up and shook himself. Staring up the hill, he either saw them or smelled them, and he suddenly exploded, leaping from the truck straight up the hill…

…and was jerked to a stop by a chain attached to the bumper.

The cats relaxed, their hearts pounding. The dog fought the chain, rattling and jerking the truck, lunging so violently they thought he'd tear off the bumper and come clanging after them.

But the chain held. The bumper didn't give; it seemed to be solidly bolted. “Come on,” Dulcie said, “he can't get loose. If we can get in, get the list, we can be out again before the beast stops bellowing.”

“What makes you think he isn't home? His truck's there. And why would he leave the list?”

“He left it the other night. And he'll be at work. Charlie told him if he took any more time off, he was through.”

“Why would he leave the truck and dog?”

“She told him to lose the dog. She hates that dog. Maybe he had nowhere else to leave it but tied to the truck. He can walk to the job, it's only a few blocks. Look at the window, Joe. It's cracked open. What more do you want? It's a first-class invitation.”

Joe grinned. “Sometimes, Dulcie…”

“It won't take a minute. Snatch up the list and out again, home in time for breakfast.”

He stood, studying the house, then took off running, a gray streak. They fled past the truck and the dog, straight for Stamps's open window.

The back lawn of the decrepit old house was brown and moth-eaten. Two dented garbage cans leaned against the step beside the sunken, unpainted picket fence. The cats, slipping along through the weeds beside the added-on wing, crouched below Stamps's window, then reared up to look.

They could see no movement beyond the black screen and dirty glass, only the warped reflection of hills and trees. Leaping to the sill, they pressed their faces against the wire mesh, looking in.

“No one,” Joe said.

“He can't be known for his housekeeping. What a mess.”

The bed was unmade, sheets drooping off a stained mattress. Stamps had left most of his clothes discarded in little piles across the floor. One could imagine him undressing at night dropping garments where he stood, stepping away from them. The open closet revealed only two hanging shirts and a lone shoe. A bath towel hung over the doorknob. The stink beneath the double-hung window was of stale cigarette smoke, dog, and Stamps's laundry. Probably Stamps had sneaked the dog inside when the landlord wasn't looking. The dog himself, behind them on the street, rattled and clanged and bellowed, his pea-sized brain fixated on dreams of cat flesh. The window screen was securely latched.

Tensing her claws into little knives, Dulcie ripped
down the screen, efficiently opening a twelve-inch gash. Joe pushed through the hole and shouldered the window higher, and they slipped through, leaping from the sill to the back of an upholstered chair. Its ragged, greasy cover smelled of hair oil. One could imagine him sitting there all evening, smoking and drinking beer among the heaps of clothes. Dulcie made a rude face, ears down, eyes crossed. “Can't he even drive to the laundromat?”

An open bag of potato chips stood on the floor beside a muddy boot. Wrinkled jeans and T-shirts hung out of an open dresser drawer, and the top of the dresser was a tangle of junk. Joe, leaping up, met his reflection charging at him from within the dusty glass.

The refuse dumped on the dresser must have come from Stamps's pockets, emptied out each night over a long period. He could envision the pile growing until it overwhelmed the dresser, cascaded to the floor, and eventually filled the room. He nosed among half-empty matchbooks, odd nails and screws, a broken pocketknife, dirty handkerchiefs, two crushed beer cans, a rusty hinge, bits of paper, a folding beer opener, a broken shoelace, and a scattering of coins. He pawed open each folded paper, but most were gas receipts, or store receipts, or hastily scribbled nearly illegible lists for hardware supplies and plumbing supplies. At the bottom of the pile lay several wrinkled fast-food bags and flattened, nearly empty packs of cigarettes.

“Why would he leave the list in this mess? What's in the nightstand?”

She stepped around a full ashtray wrinkling her nose. “Greasy baseball cap, a sock with a hole in it. Three candy bars, some half-empty cigarette packs, a paperback book with no cover. Lurid stuff. Just what you'd expect from Stamps.”

She jumped down to nose beneath the mattress. She was pawing the sheets away when Joe said softly, “Come look.” He stood poised very still, staring at a wrinkled white paper. She leaped up beside him.

Beneath the nails and coins, beneath the tangle of gas receipts and McDonald's bags and wadded paper napkins, lay Stamps's list. Joe smoothed the wrinkled paper and fold marks where he had pawed it open. They crouched side by side, reading Stamps's nearly illegible script.

He had recorded the addresses of the targeted houses, how many people lived in each, the times of normal departure for each individual, and whether they left the house walking or by car. The list might be messy and hard to read, but Stamps's information was admirably detailed. He noted the make and model of each car in each household, noted whether the car was kept in the garage or on the street. He recorded whether there were children to be gotten off to school, underlining the fact that the school bus stopped at the corner of Ridgeview and Valley, at five after eight. He identified any regular cleaning or gardening services, and what days they would appear, and he noted whether there were barking dogs in residence at each address. He had listed what kinds of door locks, what kinds of windows, and whether there was any indication of an alarm system.

“Nice,” Joe said. “Messy but very complete.” He shook dust from his whiskers. “Too bad we can't take it with us.”

She got that stubborn look.

“Dulcie, if he finds it missing, they'll scrap their plan or change it. We'll have to memorize it; we can each take half.”

“We really need a copy for Captain Harper, not just another anonymous phone call. Don't you get the feeling that telephone tips make Harper nervous?”

“Of course they make him nervous. They drive him nuts. They have also supplied him with some very valuable information. And we don't have any choice. What're you going to do, type up a copy?”

“Even better. We'll take it up to Frances's office, it's only a few blocks. Run it through her copier and return the original, put it back under the junk.”

“And of course Frances will invite us right on in to use her copier. After all, look at the comfort you've given Mama.”

She hissed at him and cuffed his ear. “You can distract her. Fall out of a tree or something. While she's busy watching you, I'll nip inside through the laundry window, it won't take a minute. Her copier's pretty much like Wilma's.”

“She's sure to have left the window open, thinking you'll be back.”

“Of course she's left the window open. Mama's probably fit to be tied, waiting for me. It's nearly noon, and I've been gone since ten-thirty. I'm always there for lunch, so she'll be nattering at Frances to make sure the window's open.”

He just looked at her. “Dulcie, sometimes…”

She gave him a sweet smile and nuzzled his cheek. Nosing the list closed along its folds, she took it carefully in her teeth, leaped to the chair, and slid out through the partially open window. Joe followed, keeping an eye on the dog. They scorched past him as he bellowed and streaked away up the hill.

“Maybe he'll hang himself on the chain.”

He glanced at her. “You're drooling on the list.”

She cut her eyes at him and sped faster. It was impossible, carrying the paper in her mouth, not to drool on it. She held her head up, sucked in her spit, but despite her efforts, by the time they neared the Blankenships' the paper was soaked. She was thankful Stamps had written in pencil and not water-soluble ink. The Blankenships' brown frame house stood above them plain and homely. They approached from the side yard, where the spreading fig tree sheltered the back porch.

At the tree they parted, and, as Dulcie slipped around to the laundry room window, Joe swarmed up into the branches. Situating himself as high among the sticky fig leaves as he could, he looked down between them, straight into the kitchen window. He could see Mama
sitting at the cluttered table, sipping coffee. Frances stood at the counter, and she seemed to be making lunch. He could smell canned vegetable soup. He could hear them talking, but their voices were just mumbles; he could not make out the thrust of the conversation. Clinging among the twiggy little branches, he took a deep breath.

Filling his lungs so full of air he felt like a bagpipe, he let it out in a yowling bellow. His screams hit the quiet street loud as a siren. He hadn't sung like this since adolescence, when he fought over lady cats in the San Francisco alleys. He sang and squalled and warbled inventive improvisations. He was really belting it out, giving it his full range, when Frances burst out the kitchen door.

She stared up at him, incredulous, and tried to shake the tree, then looked for something to throw. Joe yowled louder. She snatched up a clod of garden earth, heaved it straight at him. She had pretty good aim—the dirt spattered against the branch inches from him. He ducked but continued to scream. The next instant the back door swung open, and old Mrs. Blankenship pushed out, waddling down the steps in her robe.

“Oh, poor kitty. My poor kitty, my kitty's up there. Oh, Frances, she…”

When Mama saw that it wasn't her kitty, she sat down on the steps, made herself comfortable. As if prepared to watch a good show. She seemed highly entertained by Frances's rage, and it occurred to Joe that Frances might have reached her limit with stray cats.

Frances heaved another clod. “Shut up, you stupid beast. Shut up, or I'm getting Varnie's shotgun.”

“He's frightened, Frances. The poor thing can't get down.”

“Mama, the cat can get down when it wants down.”

“Then why would he be crying like that? He's terrified.”

Joe tried to look frightened, warbling another chorus of off-key wails but watching Frances warily.
Come on
,
Dulcie, get on with it. I'll have to skin out of here damn fast if Frances goes for a gun
. In order to hold her attention, he pretended to lose his balance. When he nearly fell the old woman yelped. But Frances smiled, and threw another clod.

 

The moment Joe began to yowl, Dulcie leaped in through the laundry window. Streaking down the hall for Frances's office, she sailed to the top of the file cabinet and hit the on switch of the copier.

She hoped it wasn't out of paper, she didn't think she could manage a ream of paper. She was greatly cheered when the machine's sweet hum filled the room and no panic lights came on. How long did it take to warm up? Seemed like the ready light would never turn green.

But at last the little bulb flashed. She lifted the lid, laid the list inside, and smoothed it with her paw.

Lowering the lid, she pressed the copy button and prayed a beseeching cat prayer.

The machine hummed louder. The copy light ran along under the lid. In a moment the fresh copy eased out into the bin, and she slid it out with a careful paw. Joe was still singing, his cries muffled by the house walls. She thought she heard Frances shout.

Stamps's handwriting looked better on the copy than in the original. The oily stains and the wrinkles had not reproduced. She retrieved his own list from inside the machine and managed to fold the clean sheet of paper with it, using teeth and claws.

Joe's cries rose higher, bold and reassuring. She patted the little packet flat, gripped it firmly between her teeth, and switched off the machine.

Trotting back down the hall, she was almost to the laundry when she heard footsteps hit the back porch and the door open. She started to swerve into the bathroom, but there would be no way out. That window was seldom opened. She bolted down the hall for the laundry as Frances's footsteps crossed the kitchen.

Frances loomed in the doorway, saw her. “The cat…What's it got?” She ran, tried to grab Dulcie. “Something in its mouth…” The look on her face was incredulous.

Dulcie sailed to the sill and out.

“Damn cat's taken something…”

She dropped to the side yard, crunching dry leaves as Frances shouted and banged down the window. Scorching away from the house, Dulcie prayed Joe would see her and follow, but as she hit the curb and dived beneath a neighbor's parked car, he was still yowling.