Shirley Murphy - Cat Spitting Mad

Kate fetched a can of cat food.

He looked at her, amazed. Cat food?

"Cat food," she said, shaking the can at him. "I'm not cooking eggs for you. Dinner was one thing-you can share our dinner, but I'm not laying out caviar and kippers at six in the morning like Clyde does. Besides, you're getting fat."

He hated when someone threw insults and he couldn't talk back. Fat? Kate didn't know muscle when she saw it. Under his gray velvet fur he was as solid as coiled steel. Studying the can Kate had flipped open, and taking a good sniff, he was relieved to know it was the fancy kind, the brand that, the commercials implied, should be served on a linen tablecloth from a crystal sherbet dish.

He guessed Kate hadn't seen the commercials, because she plopped the fish concoction into a cracked earthenware crock and plunked it unceremoniously on the floor.

So much for early-morning amenities.

Grinning with sadistic pleasure, she turned her back on him.

Garza, finishing his breakfast, rose and stepped to his desk. Joe heard him lift the phone and punch in a number-it was local, seven digits.

"Max? Right. You want to come down to the station? I'll want another statement. Then I want to go up to your place, have a look at the house and stable, then on up to the scene. That fit with your plans?"

All very friendly and low-key.

And Joe was stonewalled. He considered hiding in Garza's car, riding up to Harper's with the detective, then following the two men up the mountain-but he knew that wasn't smart.

Garza, pulling on a suede sport coat over his jeans and shirt, headed for his Chevy coupe. When he had gone, Joe looked with meaning at Kate.

She opened the door and followed him out, leaving Hanni deep in the arts section of the morning paper.

Joe's whisper was hasty. "Someone came prowling last night. Stood outside your bedroom. Did you see him?"

Kate turned pale. "No. Not a thing. Who…?"

"Tall and thin. It could have been Wark."

She went completely white.

"There are footprints. Good ones. Garza needs to see them."

"I-what'll I do?" She was clearly shaken.

"Call the station. Tell them you just found the prints-that they seem fresh to you. That they go to the kitchen window, then on around the house. They'll send someone."

"Shall I call Dallas? I have the number of his cell phone."

"I-let the department handle it," Joe said, not certain himself what to do. "And walk around the house yourself first. So they'll believe you. Don't step on his prints." And he hurried away to make sure that Dulcie and the kit were safe, despite Wilma's promise. Racing down the sidewalks dodging early-morning shadows, he kept seeing that brief, muddy gleam of the man's eyes, looking in through the kitchen window.

IT WAS STILL DARK when Dulcie set out to find the kit. Prowling the village among the blackest pools of night, it wasn't hard to follow the tattercoat's smell, which had taken on a potpourri of eau de bath powder from Wilma's dressing table.

Awakened by Joe's predawn phone call, she had galloped into the living room to make sure the kit was safe in her basket, and found her gone. With her mind on Lee Wark, she had stormed out her cat door, tracking the kit's boudoir scent over the roofs and across gardens and streets until she found herself doubling back to her own street some five blocks above Wilma's house.

The kit's trail led to a neglected duplex built over a pair of double garages, a property unusual in the village for its shabbiness, the yard overgrown with weeds, the clapboard walls badly in need of paint. The stairs led up to a deck that ran the length of the building, dark at the far end but light beneath the windows of the nearer unit; she could see a lamp burning within, but no movement. The kit's scent led up the stairs to the deck, where an unlatched screen had been pulled out a few inches; Dulcie spotted a hunk of dark fur clinging. She was about to leap up when Joe Grey appeared from the shadows.

She turned a slow green gaze on him. "You following me or the kit?"

"Both of you." He was all claws and nerves. "I have a bad feeling about Wark."

Above them, the sky was the color of Joe's coat, heavy gray without any promise of sun, though the time must be nearly seven.

Joe looked the building over. "Shoddy. Why would the kit come here?"

"Who knows what's in that wild little head?"

Leaping to the sill, he tried to see through the muslin curtains. There was a screen, but the glass was open a few inches. Dulcie followed, the two cats balancing awkwardly on the slanted, narrow ledge. They were looking into the kitchen and could see one big room to their right, apparently a studio apartment. It was sparsely and cheaply furnished. Pushing in under the screen, they stepped onto the old, cracked tiles of the counter, icy beneath their paws. Dropping silently down, they followed the kit's scent across the battered linoleum, beneath the scarred breakfast table and into the studio. They heard the courthouse clock striking seven. The room contained a decrepit metal chair meant for outdoors, a scarred coffee table littered with clothes, and a pullout couch made up into a bed. The bed was occupied, the woman's tawny hair spilling over the pillow. Crystal slept soundly.

And in the rusty metal chair, the kit slept, curled up tight and so deep under that she was not aware of them.

"What the hell?" Joe said softly.

"Beats me."

"Has she been slipping away to visit Crystal? Why would she do that?"

Crystal's sandals and riding boots were tossed in the corner beside a pair of high heels. Her purse lay on the coffee table among the tangle of clothes, beside a blue folder. Joe reared up to have a look, front paws on the coffee table.

"Sarden Realty," he said softly. The folder bore the familiar tree-in-a-circle logo of the local real estate firm. As he reached a paw to flip it open, the kit woke.

She gazed from one to the other with eyes like yellow moons. "How did you find me?"

"Shhh," Dulcie said. "She'll hear you."

Joe pawed open the folder. He was silent for a few moments, then looked at Dulcie. "It's a sales contract and closing statement. Escrow papers. For this address, Dulcie. Crystal has bought this place."

"Crystal? This dump? Why?"

"The previous owner was Helen Marner," Joe said. "The escrow closed two weeks before Helen was murdered. Crystal paid four hundred and eighty thou, with forty thousand down."

Dulcie looked at him wide-eyed, trying to process this. "What does this mean? Can we get this to Garza? Can you slip the papers out?"

"Oh, right. Crystal finds the papers gone, knows someone's been in here."

"But…"

Creeping toward the bed, Joe studied Crystal for signs of waking. She seemed deep under.

Something wasn't right here. Something was making his fur crawl. He felt as edgy as a mouse in a glass bowl. "Peninsula Escrow," he whispered, leaping onto the table. "Garza can get a copy from them." Standing among Crystal's wrinkled clothes, he looked intently at the kit. "What are you doing here, Kit? What made you come here?"

"I followed a man. He was in Wilma's garden. And then I followed Crystal."

"You're not making sense."

"Yes, I am. A man came in Wilma's garden and looked in the window."

"What man? When was this?" Joe felt his fur going stiff. "What did he look like?" He stared into the shadowed hall that led, apparently, to a bathroom and closet, but saw no one, could scent no other human in the apartment.

"What did he look like, Kit?"

"Muddy eyes. Bent over, like his shoulders wouldn't hold him real straight."