Shirley Murphy: Cat Playing Cupid

"All you want, in the kitchen. Did you clean those scratches on your face? You're sure they're only from branches? The coyotes didn't get near you?"

"Not within yards, Max. Will you stop worrying?"

He took her hand. "Just glad you're safe-don't want you frothing at the mouth and biting people." He brought her another sandwich from the kitchen, and fresh, hot tea, then threw another log on the fire and settled down again to fill her in on the events of the evening. She had, while in Dr. Firetti's office, taken a call on her cell from Ryan.

"Joe's fine," Ryan had begun in a preamble to who-knew-what, then gave her such a brief sketch of where they were and why that Charlie had wanted to stop her, make her tell it slowly. "We're headed home now. Joe's asleep on my lap. He had a hamburger and then we stopped for dinner, smuggled him into a little steakhouse," she had said, amused. "I can't believe how much this cat eats."

Ryan had had the speaker on, Charlie heard Clyde laugh.

Joe must have awakened; he had growled, "You'd be hungry, too, if you barely escaped being hauled off to the pound." And the tomcat's yowling harangue had assured her that he was just fine.

Now she waited for Max to give her the details of what had gone down at the airport and in the city. But by the time he'd finished with San Jose and the race to San Francisco, and was recounting how the San Francisco uniforms had decked Ray Gibbs, she was nodding and jerking awake.

"Bedtime," Max said, picking up her empty cup and plate. She rose, yawning hugely. "And Ryder Wolf is dead," she said quietly. She would have thought she'd feel no emotion for Ryder. She was surprised by how sad that death left her.

"What will happen now?" she said as they turned out the lights and headed down the hall.

"The usual," Max said. "SFPD will go over the stolen Audi, Santa Clara County sheriff's office will examine Lindsey's Mercedes and take evidence. Ditto with Gibbs's car. The sheriff will send a unit over to the city to transport Gibbs back to the Santa Clara County lockup."

"To be arraigned for murder," she said, crawling into bed. "What will happen to Lindsey? Is she under suspicion for Chappell's death?"

"Don't know yet," he said, slipping in beside her. "We've yet to identify the woman in the grave. Maybe that's Nina, maybe not. And we have to establish cause of death. Gibbs could be arraigned on that count, too." He looked over at her-and smiled. She was sound asleep.

Strange, Max thought, watching her. Although this case had endangered Mike and Dallas, it hadn't worried her nearly as much as had tonight's events involving the feral cat. The stress of forging back through that black tangle of woods to rescue the two cats-how many people would do that? The stress of having to shoot the coyotes. Her worry and fear for the cats always touched him. And she claimed she wasn't tenderhearted. Smiling down at his unpredictable redheaded wife, Max turned out the lamp and was soon asleep himself as the rising moon sent a first glimmer through the high windows.

BUT LATER, ASmoonlight washed broadly through the windows of the Harper house, touching Charlie's face, she woke again to relive the scene in Dr. Firetti's examining room. As the doctor went to fetch some food for the cats, she had stepped out into the hall, leaving Sage and Kit alone, tucked up in the big basket he had fixed for them. But there, she had paused.

Behind her, she could hear them talking and she turned to listen; she was dismayed as Sage begged Kit to come back to the clowder, to join the clowder once more, to stay with him and be a pair.

She didn't want Kit to return to the wild, didn't want her to leave her life in the village, none of Kit's friends wanted that. Yet they all, cats and humans, wanted her to be happy. The question was, what did Kit want? Kit, herself, didn't seem to know. She made up to Sage one minute, snuggling and purring, and the next minute was fighting with him. Tonight she'd told him, "No, Sage. I won't come back."

"But we've always been best friends," he'd said. "You don't really want to stay here among humans, you can't really want to live as a captive, locked up in houses with humans."

"I don't live as a captive," Kit had hissed. "I come and go as I please, I do as I please. I'm not locked up ! I belong here!"

"But what about us. If you love me…"

"We will always be loving friends," she'd said softly. "I…I don't know how I feel…Stone Eye is gone," she'd said, "but if another tyrant comes along, will you be obedient to him, too? So he'll protect you?"

Sage had said nothing. Only silence.

"Does being safe mean more to you than our freedom?" she'd snapped. There was a thump on the floor as she'd leaped out of the basket and come racing through the door-but Charlie had moved faster, catching her up and holding her close, Kit's heart pounding against her, a fast little trip-hammer.

"You can't run away, Kit. Just listen to him. Listen to his side, you owe him that."

Kit had turned her face away-but then in a moment she looked up at Charlie, and shame showed in her wide yellow eyes. As Charlie carried her back into the examining room, Sage had tried to rise, stumbling against the side of the basket, crouching as if to leap out. Charlie hurried to stop him, setting Kit down in the basket beside him, where the two hissed at each other. But then Sage had looked ashamedly down at his paws.

"I'm sorry," the pale cat had mumbled. "No one can force you to leave here, no one can force you to love me."

"I'm sorry," Kit had said contritely. "I guess…Maybe, sometimes, one doesn't have a choice in how one feels."

"I guess maybe sometimes," Sage had said, "one takes the easy way." He looked at Kit a long time, then lay down again. Tentatively Kit curled down beside him. Sage purred a little, and nuzzled Kit's whiskers-and Charlie turned and left them, slipping out of the room.

Two stubborn little individuals , she'd thought, feeling tears start. So at cross purposes. She'd hurt deeply for them, had headed home filled with concern for Sage and for the fiery young tortoiseshell.

NOW, AS CHARLIEdropped into a tired sleep again snuggled against Max, down in the village, at Molena Point PD, Lindsey Wolf finished giving Detective Garza her formal statement, clarifying every detail she could recall from the moment she'd first parked across from Gibbs's condo and then followed his car. From those terrible moments in the airport when she saw her sister murdered, to the moment when, in the gift shop at Fisherman's Wharf, Gibbs himself was shot and taken into custody.

In Dallas's office, against the faint sound of the dispatcher's voice from up the hall and the voices of various officers moving in and out through the building, she told Dallas everything she could remember. The long ride in the cab watching Gibbs's car moving in and out of traffic. Thinking her driver would have a cell phone, and he hadn't. Not wanting to relay her message through his dispatcher, not sure what the dispatcher would tell her superior and other drivers. Following Gibbs to the hotel, paying her cab fare, and slipping into the restaurant to use their phone, having to explain that it was an emergency. By the time they finished the interview, she felt wrung out.

"Come on," Dallas said. "Mike's waiting. You'll feel better with a drink and some dinner." And they headed for Mike's apartment, leaving the center of the village, its streets and shops bright and awash with moonlight, and heading up among the darker streets where the moon was hidden above pine and oak and cypress trees.

"Have you thought about what you'll do now?" Dallas said. "After all that's happened, will you find it too painful to stay here in the village?"