Shirley Murphy - Cat Seeing Double

Turning to go upstairs, she looked across the street at the neighbors' blank windows imagining people peering out from behind their curtains wondering what kind of woman had moved into their neighborhood bringing murder, neighbors already certain that she had killed the victim, neighbors wondering who he was and what kind of stormy relationship had led to this particular act of violence.

Well, they'd know soon enough. The papers would have it all, every dirty aspect of hers and Rupert's marriage. Some reporter would dredge up every harlot and married woman Rupert had ever bedded, every incident that would throw suspicion on her, his estranged and bitter wife.

Heading for the stairs, she stopped to inspect the truck again, and to brush some of the mud from its sleek red paint. Even her nice new truck, this solid and reliable symbol of her new and independent start in life, had become a part of the mess. Dallas and Officer Bonner had dusted it inside and out for fingerprints, a thorough job that had taken them the better part of an hour. Now, moving to the cab, she looked in at the red leather upholstery that puffed luxuriously over the two bucket seats. No hint of mud there. The day she bought the truck she had promised herself that the soft seats and pristine red carpet were going to stay as clean as her kitchen sink. No sawdust, no candy wrappers or greasy hamburgers or leaking Coke cans dripping their long sticky trails. No open tubes of caulking, no getting in the cab with wet paint or plaster on your jeans.

She had not imagined a strange dog tramping mud all over the truck bed-nor some evil little boy hiding under the tarp planning his sickening crime. She was incredibly tired from the morning's adrenaline-heavy emotions. And scared of what lay ahead.

Innocent or not, if another suspect wasn't found, the next few months would be ugly. And now that Dallas had taken away her gun, she had no protection against whoever was out there.

Did Dallas really think the killer wouldn't return, that he'd have no further interest in her? She leaned on the truck, light-headed.

She needed a hot shower and some breakfast. She needed food, needed to get her blood sugar up, dump some protein into the system. Needed to get away from the house for a while.

As she started up the stairs she saw movement across the street in a window, the slats of a Venetian blind shifting. Scowling at the snooper she beat it up the steps, her face burning.

Her door wasn't shut, it stood ajar. And a sound startled her, a soft hush through her open window that made her wrists go cold.

The stirring came again, a shuffling noise.

But she knew that sound, it was only the breeze through the open window rifling the papers on her desk, disturbing the stack of letters and bills and junk mail that had collected.

While she was gone, Hanni had come in every few days to go through her mail, to call her with anything important, but had left the rest for Ryan to clean up at her leisure. The mail blowing, that's all the soft sound was.

But why was the door ajar?

Very likely she hadn't closed it tightly when she and Dallas went back downstairs. It had a tendency not to want to latch. Certainly there was no one in there, no one would be dumb enough to enter with cops all over the place. Moving inside she thought she'd take a long hot shower then head out again and treat herself to a nice breakfast, try to get hold of herself, to get centered. She thought of calling Hanni, see if she could join her. Hanni wouldn't let her get the shakes, she'd put a positive spin on any disaster. A few smart retorts, a touch of twisted humor. So you cut the cost of the lawsuit, so quit bellyaching, you've inherited the whole enchilada.

Shivering, she decided against calling Hanni. Stepping into the kitchen to turn off the coffeepot, she stopped.

She was not alone.

He stood beside the breakfast table, a muddy dog so big his chin would have rested easily on the tabletop. His short silver coat was smeared with dried mud. His pale yellow eyes watched her with a look so challenging that she stepped back.

He was bone thin, deep jowled and with long floppy ears. Built like a pointer, his tail docked to a length of six inches. The tail wagged once, a brief and dignified question. He had left a trail of flaking mud across her kitchen and into the studio, had tracked to her unmade bed then back to the drafting table and desk, apparently quartering the room in a thorough inspection. While she stood looking at where he had wandered, his gaze on her turned patronizing, as if she was very slow indeed to make him welcome.

And certainly she should welcome him, she had done so several times before but not in Molena Point. Up in San Andreas he had in fact been far more welcome than the three eager children with whom he had sometimes come to the trailer.

The kids said he was a stray, that he roamed all over the hills. That had seemed strange and unlikely for such a handsome purebred. But surely he'd been very thin, and though she'd reported him lost to the sheriff and had run an ad in the paper, no one had claimed him. She'd seen him only with the children, happy to be running with kids-kids didn't demand that a dog follow rules, they themselves were rule breakers. Kids, still young animals in spirit, made fine companions for a wandering canine.

There was no question that this was the same dog, there could not be another weimaraner exactly like him, not with the same challenging look in those intelligent yellow eyes nor with the same small, lopsided cross of white marking his gray chest and the same notch in his left ear. The same old, cracked leather collar without any tags. She thought there could not be another dog anywhere with quite this insolent air. She knew that if she were to stroke his side and shoulder she would feel the little hard lumps where buckshot, sometime in his unknown past, must have lodged beneath his skin, gunshot likely administered by some angry farmer not wanting a hungry dog nosing around his chicken coops. She held her hand out to the big weimaraner, wondering what she had in her bare cupboards to feed him.

The dog stood assessing her, gauging her intentions.

"Hungry?"

His yellow eyes lighted, his long silky ears lifted, his short tail began to move slowly back and forth in a hesitant question.

She found a jar of peanut butter in the nearly empty cupboard and spread it on some stale crackers. When she held them down, he didn't snatch them, he took each gently from her fingers. But he gulped them as if truly starving, and when she filled a bowl with water, he drank it all, never lifting his head until the bowl was empty. She stood considering him.

Looked like Curtis had a companion when he hid in her truck. She could just see Curtis climbing in and calling to the dog, the big weimaraner eagerly joining him. This had to have happened in the small town itself when she stopped to pick up the windows. She could imagine Curtis slipping into the truck after she loaded up, while she was inside paying her bill, and coaxing the dog under the tarp with him. What did Curtis think would happen to a nice dog like this running loose in the city? The kids had called him Rock, because of his color like an outcropping of gray boulders, though when clean his coat was more like gray velvet.

The dog was, in fact, exactly the same color as Clyde Damen's tomcat, she thought, amused. Not only the same color, but both animals had docked tails that stuck up at a jaunty angle, and both had wise yellow eyes. How droll. Even their expressions were similar, bold and uncompromising.

The silly humor of dog and cat look-alikes helped considerably to ease her stress. She gave him all the crackers and peanut butter. There wasn't anything else in the cupboard that would interest a canine, only a can of grapefruit. When she picked up her truck keys, thinking to go buy some dog food, he brightened and headed for the door looking up at her with eager enthusiasm, as if they did this every day.