Shirley Murphy - Cat Spitting Mad

"The three of you are going to Charlie's. You're going now. And you're going to stay hidden."

"Dulcie and the kit are going. I'm settled in with Detective Garza and I intend to stay there."

Clyde slammed down the plate he was drying, nearly breaking it. "At least you won't be here in the house taunting Max Harper, making his life miserable."

"We are trying to save his life. And when have I ever taunted Harper?"

But then Joe said, more gently, "How is he doing?"

"Not good. Won't talk about the case or about anything else much. He's quit going out with the search parties. Afraid he might taint some piece of evidence."

"How would he…?"

"If they find her-when they find her-someone might claim he tampered with evidence or slowed the search, maybe made counterproductive suggestions, that kind of thing. He's getting…"

"Paranoid," Joe said. "That's not like Harper."

"He talked last night about quitting the force. Retiring. After he's cleared, of course. Talked about going to Alaska."

"Alaska!" Joe yowled.

"Max Harper," Dulcie mewed, "leave Molena Point? I don't believe that."

"There's more than that to believe." Clyde looked at the cats deeply. "I think there's something between Max and Charlie."

The cats widened their eyes, trying to look amazed.

"I wouldn't be surprised to see them, when this thing is over, take off together for Alaska."

Dulcie stared at Clyde, then turned away, washing furiously.

Clyde said, "Max had been talking, the last few months, about reorganizing the department. He has five new officers and a new clerk. They're getting crowded in that one-room setup. But now…"

"He has basement space," Joe said. "Where they store the old files, where they have the shooting range and emergency operations room."

Clyde nodded. "He's done some really nice plans to redesign the building, give officers more space and privacy. Add an up-to-date report-writing room, more room for communications, a bigger evidence lockup, more security.

"But since the Marner murder, it's as if he never heard of a redesign. Has no interest. Seems like he doesn't give a damn about the department."

"When this is over," Joe said, "he'll launch into it. Bounce back. Reorganize the space. That would be just the ticket, get his mind off what those buzzards are trying to do to him."

"If we only knew which buzzards," Clyde said. "I don't know, I've never seen him like this. Years ago, in Salinas, after a bad bull ride when Max got gored in the shoulder, when he was all broken up and in the hospital-and didn't have a dime-he was still joking. Still on top of it.

"His shoulder got infected, he had a high fever, three ribs broken. I was scared he was going to cash it in. But he hung in there-joking all the way, with that dry humor.

"Even when Millie died, even though he's never gotten over it or stopped missing her, he was never like this.

"You had the feeling, when Millie died, that no matter how destroyed he was, he knew things had to get better. That he knew that's the way life works-that we all take our bumps and keep ridin'. But now…" Clyde shook his head. "Now, he doesn't seem to believe that anymore."

Joe just looked at him. Sometimes all these human problems were too much; sometimes he thought the household animals were the lucky ones. All they had to do was nap on their soft beds, gobble their three squares, enjoy lots of petting, and no worries over humankind's disasters.

Except he remembered too clearly that other life, before he realized his ability to speak. He wouldn't want to return to that. He'd been bored out of his tomcat mind.

As a young cat, it had been a big deal to invent some simple new entertainment-find some new diversion in one of the several shabby apartments he'd lived in, a new way to tease some human in one of the interchangeable families who'd taken him in. Stupid kitten stuff. He'd never had a real human friend until he met Clyde. Or he'd find some smaller, skinnier kitten abandoned in an alley, someone weaker than he, that he could tease and torment.

When he moved in with Clyde, he'd graduated to intimidating Clyde's lady friends. How amusing, to terrorize those lovely young women, faking lethal claws, treating them to loud snarls and flashing teeth-all because life could get so yawningly, nerve-deadeningly, mind-numblingly dull.

But now, with his newly discovered skills, there was no time to be bored. He hardly had time for a nap or a good rabbit hunt-the sleuthing life took every claw-clinging ounce of creativity he could muster.

And now, as a pattern of clues was forming in the Marner murders, a morass as intriguing as a crisscross of fresh rabbit tracks, he had no time for discontented thoughts-except in terms of the final retribution for this killer.

This case was more than a fascinating puzzle. This time, he wanted not only justice, he wanted revenge. Sweet, sharp-clawed revenge. This time, he was out for blood.

DRESSED IN the oversized T-shirt she'd slept in, Charlie Getz stood on a ladder in her small bathroom, removing the vent fan from the ceiling. She had gone up on the roof last night, removed the fresh-air grid and wiped out a quarter-inch of accumulated dirt from inside the vent pipe. The four-inch tunnel didn't allow much room-peering along its length at a small circle of sky, she went queasy at the tight quarters through which the cats must push. Six feet of claustrophobia leading from her apartment out to the village rooftops. She guessed Dulcie and the kit could slither through, but Joe Grey had better not try.

Coming down the ladder, glancing in her bathroom mirror at the reflection of her milk-white legs, she had a sharp vision of Molena Point's pretty, tanned blondes in their tennis shorts. The only tan she had was what her grandmother had called a farmer's tan, brown only on her neck and hands and lower arms. Not a body to bring the men flocking.

Not the face, either, she thought. But I have a warm heart. And I have nice hazel eyes, if anyone bothers to look.

She wished Max Harper would bother.

Lifting the disconnected ceiling fan from atop the ladder, she nodded to Dulcie and the kit where they crouched in the doorway peering up.

"That should do it. Your own private tunnel. I'll leave the ladder for you to climb.

"But I warn you, Dulcie. If a rat or a bat comes in through that vent-if so much as a wool moth comes in-you're dog meat."

Dulcie smiled. Lashing her tail in reply, she leaped up the ladder into the hole and was gone through the ceiling. Charlie imagined her slipping along above the bathtub, popping out of the wall above the roof like a swallow from its hole. The kit followed her, her fluffy tail twitching as it disappeared, probably to race madly across the rooftops.

She'd done a drawing once of Dulcie and Joe running across the roofs. But it wasn't a cheerful piece, it was dark and frightening. Though it hung in a prominent place in the Aronson Gallery, still it disturbed her.

Clyde had brought Dulcie and the kit over last night, like a father bringing his children to stay with a favorite aunt. Clyde had treated her like an aunt, too, making it obvious that he knew how she felt about Harper. When he left, she'd been really down. Had she hurt him terribly? She'd queried Dulcie, but Dulcie had little to tell her.

"He's… would the word be stoic?" Dulcie had said. "Understanding?"

"Stoic, Dulcie?"

"Max Harper is his best friend. You are, in a different way, his best friend. He's so caught up in Harper's problems just now…" Dulcie, sitting on the end of the daybed, had looked up quizzically at her. "You are asking me, your friendly neighborhood cat, about your love life?"