Shirley Murphy - Cat Seeing Double

"You are pale," Ryan said softly. "We shouldn't be talking about this stuff. You want to get out of the crowd, go somewhere quiet and lie down?"

"I'm fine," Charlie said crossly. "I don't need to lie down."

But she wasn't fine, she couldn't get over being scared. She'd thought she was okay until, walking up the grassy aisle, with all their friends, everyone she knew and cared about, standing like a wall to protect her, she kept imagining the grass exploding in front of Dallas and Wilma, exploding with all those people crowding close.

She felt ice-cold again. Her hands began to shake.

Ryan put her arm around her, hugging Charlie against her shoulder.

Charlie shook her head. "I'm sorry. Delayed reaction."

"I guess that's allowed. You don't have to be stoic and fearless just because you married a cop."

"It would help."

They looked at each other with perfect understanding; but they glanced up when Clyde and Wilma approached their table.

Wilma was wrapped in a blue cashmere stole over her pale gown, against the night's chill. She carried a woven shopping bag that bulged and wriggled.

Clyde carried two paper plates heaped with canapes and salads and sliced meats. As he set one in the center of the table and the other underneath, Joe and Dulcie slipped beneath the table; and from Wilma's shopping bag the kit hopped out, strolling purposefully under the table to claim her share.

"Cora Lee's fine," Wilma said. "Apparently something hit her in the head, but no concussion. They want her overnight, though." When, early in the spring, Cora Lee had walked into the middle of a robbery and murder, she had been hit by such a blow to her middle that her spleen had ruptured and had to be removed. The dusky-skinned actress told them later she was terrified she would never sing again. But she had sung, the lead in the village's little theater production of Thorns of Gold. With the kit as impromptu costar during the entire run, the play had sold out every night.

"Dallas is trying to get Curtis Farger remanded over to juvenile," Clyde said. "But since the fire, with their building gone, they're not eager to take any kids. Kids scattered all over, in temporary quarters, and not great security." He looked at Charlie. "Max would be smart to get a move on, before you decide to enjoy the cruise without him."

"Maybe we'll just do a few days in San Francisco, and book the cruise for next spring." Their reservation at the St. Francis gave them three days in the city before boarding their liner for the inland passage. At the moment, that sounded pretty good to Charlie.

"Can you cancel a cruise like that?" Wilma said. "Even Max…" She watched Charlie, frowning. She wanted her niece and Max to get on that ship and be gone, to be away from the Farger family.

"Max knows someone," Charlie said. "When he made the reservations, that was part of the package, that if something urgent came up, we could cancel." She glanced beneath the table where the cats feasted, Joe and Dulcie eating fastidiously, the kit slurping so loudly that Ryan looked under too, and laughed.

When the cats had demolished their quiche, seafood salads, rare roast beef, curried lamb, and wedding cake, they stretched out between the feet of their friends for a leisurely wash, grooming thoroughly from whiskers to tail. They could have trotted over to the jail and had a look at Curtis Farger, but they were too full and comfortable. And Joe didn't think they'd hear much. Very likely Curtis had already been questioned as much as he could be, until a juvenile officer arrived in the morning to protect the kid's rights. Sleeking his whiskers with a damp paw, Joe Grey thought about the legal rights of young boys who set bombs to kill people.

No one liked to believe that a ten-year-old child had intended, and nearly succeeded in, mass murder. In the eyes of the law, Curtis and his grandfather were innocent until proven guilty. But in Joe Grey's view they were both guilty until proven otherwise. If you attacked innocent people with all claws raking, you should know that your opponent would retaliate.

Charlie said, "This afternoon at the church-before the bomb-I felt like I was nineteen again, so scared and giddy. And then after the bomb went off, it was… I wasn't nineteen anymore, couldn't remember ever having been so young." She chafed her hands together.

"There was some reason," Ryan said, "some profound reason, why that bomb went off prematurely. What made the kid turn and run? What made him trip and fall? You couldn't see much under those overhanging trees. He was lucky he didn't break something, falling off that roof. Just bruises-and those scratches on his face from the branches." She looked at Clyde. "Do you think he would have set off the bomb if he hadn't fallen? Do you think he would have pressed that little button?"

Clyde and Charlie and Wilma avoided looking at each other. All were thinking the same. Had no one seen Kit attack the boy?

"The boy went to a lot of trouble," Clyde said, "to suddenly abandon the idea. Whether he made the bomb or the old man did, don't you think a ten-year-old would do what he was told to do? If the old man forced the kid to go up on the roof, if he threatened Curtis…"

"You're saying he would have done it," Ryan said. "But then fate stepped in-as if Max and Charlie's guardian angel was looking after them, looking after all of us."

Wilma lifted her champagne glass. "Here's to that particular angel. May our guardian angels never desert us." And Wilma did not need to look beneath the table to know that the guardian angel was pressing against her ankle. That particular angel purred so powerfully that she shook both herself and Wilma.

The platter sof party food were empty, the wedding cake had all been eaten or small pieces wrapped in paper napkins and carried away as little talismans to provide midnight dreams of future happiness. The empty champagne bottles had been neatly gathered and bagged, the tables and chairs folded and loaded into waiting trucks. In the quiet night the grassy, tree-sheltered median was empty now and silent and seemed to Ryan and Clyde painfully lonely. As they headed for the few parked cars, Ryan took his hand.

The bride and groom had left for San Francisco, for the bridal suite at the St. Francis, the loveliest old hotel in the city. They had joked about arriving in Max's Chevy king cab, and had talked about renting a limo but considered that extravagant. The pickup wasn't fancy but it was safe on the highway, and in the city they would put it in storage during their cruise. They had three days to enjoy San Francisco before they moved into the stateroom of their luxury liner and sailed for Alaska-or before Max realized that he couldn't leave, with the bombing case working, that they'd have to head home again.

"Maybe only a three-day honeymoon," Ryan said sadly, already certain of what Max would do.

"Whatever they do," Clyde said, walking her to Dallas's car, "they're happy." He gave Ryan a hug by way of good night, watched her settle in beside Dallas, then swung into his yellow convertible to drive the three blocks home, leaving Ryan and her uncle heading for her place to collect what little evidence might remain in the bed of her truck. Strange about the kid hitching a ride, hiding under the tarp where he couldn't be seen through the rear window-he had to know exactly when she'd be leaving San Andreas. He had made his way into the town itself, maybe hitchhiking, to wait for her there.

Clyde drove home thinking uneasily about Joe, and about the kit and Dulcie. The cats would be into this case tooth and claw.