Shirley Murphy - Cat Spitting Mad

Charlie said, "I don't like it that Wilma didn't answer her phone."

Harper didn't seem concerned. "Maybe she unplugged it. She does that sometimes."

Charlie glanced down at Dulcie. Dulcie blinked in agreement.

"Here," Dillon said. "In the old kitchen, the stairs are here. They're crumbly."

As they started down, the cats caught the old, fading scent of puma. The stairway led down to a long, low-ceilinged cellar with thick adobe walls and heavy roof timbers, a chilly cavern that had been used for canning and root storage, in the days when families had to be self-sufficient. The human's footsteps echoed. Joe didn't like this descending into the earth; it made his paws sweat.

He'd never liked tight places, not since his San Francisco days of narrow, dead-end alleys where his only escape from mean-minded street kids was often down into some stinking cellar, with no idea whether the boys would follow him or not.

Dillon walked leaning against Charlie, nearly asleep on her feet, her head nodding, the blanket from the Mercedes that Charlie had wrapped around her half fallen off and slipping to the ground.

A door at the back of the long cellar led through a thick wall and down four more steps to the old World War II air raid shelter, its roof and one wall fallen in, open to the kitchen, above.

"When I hid here before," Dillon said, "I thought maybe a cougar wouldn't prowl so deep. That maybe he wouldn't come down here?"

"No sensible beast would come down here," Harper told her. "A cougar doesn't use caves. They want to see around them."

Right on, Joe thought, exchanging a look with Dulcie. No sensible beast, only humans. And cats stupid enough to follow humans.

But the kit padded ahead of them, all pricked ears and switching tail, looking about her bright-eyed at the mysterious and enchanting depths, her hunger for adventure and for deep, earthen places supplanting all caution.

The very tales that made Joe shiver, the old Celtic myths that spoke of wonders he didn't care to know about, drew the kit. The old Irish tales of a land beneath the earth, and of cats who could change to humans. The kit thrived on those stories; she hungered for the kind of tales that made Joe Grey cross.

She's young, Joe thought. Too young. Too trusting. Way too curious. Padding behind Harper's beam into the black maw of the air raid shelter, he felt he was stepping into a gaping and hungry mouth.

The shelter had had two rooms. Where the first had caved in, they could see the ruins, above, and the clear night sky.

The door frame of the second, roofed portion still stood. The heavy plank door had been ripped off and lay on its side across the opening, barring the lower half. Behind it, someone had pulled a rusty set of shelves across, to further block the entrance. The shelves still held ancient cans of food, rusted tight to the metal surfaces.

Harper moved the shelf unit aside, glancing questioningly at Dillon.

"I pushed it there. Like a fence-it was all I had."

He swept his light across the small concrete room. "I can't believe these three cats have come down here with us. Sometimes they act more like dogs than cats."

Joe and Dulcie exchanged a look. He wished he could give Harper an answer to that one.

Within the closed, damp room, they could smell the fresh scent of cougar, his trail coming down the earth slide, a track newly laid within the last few days. The kit backed away from the scent, her eyes huge, and patted at a lone pawprint in the loose earth.

Perhaps the young male had come here out of curiosity, had come down into the excavation to look and to mark, the way a cougar would investigate a new house under construction, stopping to spray the open, studded walls, to sniff at a hammer or at bent nails or at an empty beer can left behind by the building crew-leaving his pawprints for the carpenters to wonder and laugh over, and perhaps feel the cold sting of fear.

Joe, imagining the cougar padding down that insubstantial earth slide, didn't know he was growling.

"What?" Charlie said, kneeling before him. "Has someone been here?"

Joe laid back his ears, giving her a toothy snarl.

"Cougar?" Charlie said, her eyes widening. "Has the cougar been here?"

Joe's eyes on Charlie told her all he needed to say.

Charlie rose to face the door and the open pit beyond, her hand resting on the.38.

CHUNKS OF CONCRETE had fallen where one wall was crumbling, and rising from the debris stood a rusted, two-bunk bed with mouse-chewed mattresses. On the floor beside its iron legs were stacked more bulging cans of food, their labels presenting stained and faded pictures of tomatoes, beans, and corn-ruined cans ready to poison anyone foolish enough to sample their contents. Or, as Dillon had said, ready to explode in your face. Atop one can was a limp box of disintegrating matches and a grime-covered first-aid kit. The dozen gallon bottles of spring water against the wall ought, by this time, to be growing frogs. In the far corner lay a heap of animal bones and a strip of hide with short brown hair. "Deer," Harper said, picking up a leg bone with hoof attached, and a jawbone that had long ago been licked clean.

"No puma would drag his kill down here. The deer might have been sick, stumbled and fallen, then foxes and racoons were at him."

Joe wanted to tell Harper that a cougar had been there, that his scent was fresh, that he had come prowling long after those bones were abandoned, and that this male might have a lay-up somewhere else among the ruins, maybe even in the standing portion of the house itself. That he might, scenting their fresh trail, return to have a look.

A curious cougar, if alarmed and cornered, could turn deadly.

Dillon yawned, looking longingly at the upper bunk. Tossing her blanket on top, she was about to climb up when Harper put his arm around her.

"Give us a minute. You're so tired-if you lie down you'll be gone. We need to talk. Come sit down, let me ask a few questions, get it on tape. Then you can sleep."

Dillon sat down on the floor between Harper and Charlie, her back to the concrete wall, the three of them watching the cavernous opening that yawned beyond the frail barrier-though Joe would far rather see the cougar approaching than Crystal and her friend. Light from the flashlight bounced against the wall, brightening Charlie's carrot-colored hair and Dillon's darker, auburn bob. The tape recorder that Harper took from his pocket was no bigger than a can of cat food.

"Do you mind the tape?"

"No. We do tapes at school."

"You hid here after the murder?"

"Yes, he was chasing me," she said, yawning.

"Who was?"

"The man who killed Ruthie and Mrs. Marner. The same man who shot at us tonight. Crystal said his name was Stubby Baker."

Harper raised an eyebrow. "Did you know a Stubby Baker?"

"No. I didn't know that man."

"The evening of the murder, did you see the killer's face? Could you identify him if you saw him again?"

"His hat was pulled down and his coat collar turned up, but I got one good look. When his face was close to me. Thin face. Bony. Those eyes-black eyes. The same man as tonight, with the gun. And he was riding Bucky."

"You're sure it was my gelding?"

"Of course I'm sure. I know Bucky. Your horse, your saddle. Bucky's bridle-that nice silver bit. The man's hat and clothes looked like yours, too. When he rode up to us, with the hat pulled down, I thought it was you. I thought how strange you had your hat pulled down because the sun wasn't in your eyes, it was behind you, real low in the sky. Then I saw-saw it wasn't you."