Shirley Murphy: Cat on the Money

“Don’t you think I asked!”

In the shadows, Dulcie’s green eyes shone with amusement. Clyde said nothing more, and soon, when Harper turned the conversation to his horses, Joe nudged Dulcie and they moved swiftly through the shadows beneath the tables, streaked past the bar and through the kitchen and out the screen door, into the narrow alley.

“There’s something I didn’t tell you,” Joe said, crouching beside the garbage cans. “Something that might explain why we haven’t seen old Greeley with the black tomcat. Come on.” And, ignoring the heady scent of raw fish and meat wrappers, he headed fast up Ocean Avenue, dodging around the feet of tourists.

“What? Where are we going?” Dulcie hissed, galloping beside him.

He didn’t answer, but lowered his head and ran, swerving down a side street-stopping suddenly when a black cat loomed out of the shadows, blocking their path.

Azrael, black as sin, his tail lashing, his amber eyes narrowed and cold. He drew himself taller, bowing his neck, looking down at Joe. “So, little gray kitty. You are still following me? Still playing detective? What, you poor creature, do you imagine I’ve done now?”

Joe Grey smiled, his yellow eyes assessing Azrael, his sleek gray coat rippling over hard muscle. “I had no thought of following you, you pitiful mouser. Though I see you are still playing at your mindless games, stealing money that only your whiskey-sodden partner can make use of.”

Azrael laughed. “Not any more. That old fake is long gone-this tomcat works alone.”

“And where did you leave him?”

“Walking the streets of Panama, if it’s any of your business. Rolling drunk. Maybe dead by now, mugged in some alley.”

“And you stowed away on your own, back to the states,” Joe said indulgently.

Azrael laughed. “I have my contacts. That was a nice take, by the way, from Charles, Ltd.”

“No cat on this earth, you poor, worm-ridden beast, can manipulate the dial of a safe. No cat can turn that little wheel with the required precision.”

But Joe wondered. If a cat could turn a doorknob, as Joe and Dulcie and Azrael all could do, what might Azrael have taught himself, with sufficient practice? Was the dial of a safe beyond a clever cat’s talents? With a cat’s keen hearing, could not the tumblers tell him all he needed to know?

Joe looked the tomcat over. “Who brought you back from Panama? What gullible human did you con into a plane ride?” Though if Joe’s suspicion was right, the idea that had sent him hurrying from Moreno ’s Grill, Azrael’s arrival was easily enough explained. “Who did you con into taking you aboard in a little wire cage? Or did you spend 12 hours in the luggage hold, freezing your sorry tail?”

The black tom leaped on Joe, all teeth and claws, the two raking each other in a whirlwind of hard, furry bodies, thumping against concrete and against the brick wall, a war of pent-up rage that ceased only when the third party threw her weight into the battle, slashing both toms and screaming at them until they broke apart to stare at her.

She stood between them, holding Azrael’s gaze until the two toms moved far enough apart to formally end the battle. But she was shivering with fear. What she wanted to do was bolt. She’d always been afraid of Azrael, even when once, long ago, he had charmed her. His look at her now was deadly-an evil smile, the smile of a black shark heaving up from the darkest seas.

And then he turned and sauntered away, lashing his long black tail.

“Why did you do that?” Joe growled. “Why didn’t you let me finish him? You made me look a fool.”

“Not at all. You would have killed each other. Look at you. Your ear’s torn, blood running down your face-your shoulder torn. Although you sent him away with as much blood,” she said softly, licking his ravaged ear. She watched Azrael, a black speck far in the distance, disappearing down an alley.

“I think I know how he got here,” Joe said, “and who our burglar is.” He led Dulcie beneath the oak trees, in the gathering dusk, to her favorite shop.

Standing close together, rearing up on their hind paws, they looked into the show window at the feast of bright colors and intricate patterns. “Here’s the link,” Joe said, “between Azrael and one of the look-alikes-maybe the best connection we have yet to the death of Frances Farrow.”

Dulcie reared up, looking into the brightly lighted display window, her tabby paws against the glass, her green eyes glowing; she never tired of the shop’s imports, the brilliantly colored Guatemalan jackets and weavings, the San Blas appliqués, the painted Mexican figures. Close beside her, Joe Grey watched her tenderly, always moved by his lady’s passion for the beautiful and exotic.

They had met the shop’s owner, Ms. Sue Marble, at about the same time they met Azrael and old Greeley. The cats had been greatly amused when the lonely, white-haired lady and Greeley became an item and took off to Central America together, Sue on another buying trip, Greeley returning to his home-with Azrael in his carrier, of course. Sue knew nothing about the black cat’s hidden talents.

Now the couple had been gone for nearly a year, and Azrael was back in the village with no sign of either Greeley or Sue-and the mysterious burglaries had resumed.

“That jacket in the window,” Joe said, pawing at the glass. “The red one, woven with birds and animals. Where does that come from?”

“ Ecuador, I think. Or maybe Peru. Why?”

“I saw one like it last night, when I tossed the motel room of the look-alikes.”

“Maybe one of them bought, it here. They could…”

“It was worn, Dulcie. Faded, not new.”

Dulcie sat down on the sidewalk, the concrete still warm from the vanished sun. “So what are you saying?”

“I’m wondering if one of those three women has been in South America.”

She smiled, her whiskers twitching. “You’re thinking one of them has been in Panama, and that’s how Azrael got back?” She licked her paw. “That’s reaching for it. What ever…?”

“There were cat hairs on the jacket. Black cat hairs.”

“You are maddening. Why didn’t you say so!”

Joe smiled.

“Could you smell his scent?”

“Not in that motel room. Enough perfume and lotions in there to deaden the nose of an elephant.”

“In Sue’s last letter to Wilma, she said she and Greeley were getting married. She said nothing about coming back. She seems very happy, making her buying trips out of Panama to Peru and Guatemala and shipping the purchases back here, to her shop manager.”

Dulcie frowned, her ears going flat. “She did say she wasn’t happy about Greeley ’s cat, that he’d turned out to be a problem. Remember how, in the beginning, she called him a dear, handsome fellow! She thought he was so regal. Maybe Greeley and the tomcat were burglarizing shops in Panama, maybe she found out. Maybe she threw Azrael out of the house.”

“That wouldn’t explain how he got here. Greeley has no friends in the village to send Azrael to, only his sister. And Mavity hates that cat.”

“But maybe Greeley is here,” Dulcie said. “He’d be staying with Mavity. Let’s have a look.” And beneath the darkening evening sky, the cats headed for the marsh and Mavity’s little fishing shack. East three blocks through the village, and over seven to the marshy shore of the bay, then along through the cattails and sea grass, the mud cold beneath their paws and smelling of dead fish, to a long row of houses standing on mud-blackened stilts.

Scenting around the pilings and around the tires of Mavity’s old VW bug, they found no hint of Greeley. But the tomcat had definitely been there. His day-old aroma was on the steps, and on a rusty porch chair as if he might have slept there.