Shirley Murphy - Cat Laughing Last

"Talk about an overblown ego. You take yourself way too seriously."

"Such a big impression on the city council that the one bad egg on the council tried to ruin Harper's career, set Harper up to be prosecuted for murder. Tried to get him off the force big time- get him sent to prison on a life sentence."

Clyde slid the platters of meat and cheese into the refrigerator, with the bowls of salad, and busied himself arranging crackers.

"Who found young Dillon Thurwell when she was kidnapped-when all the evidence pointed to Harper? Who helped her escape?"

"Harper would likely have found her."

"Right. After she was dead. That woman was going to kill her."

"All right," Clyde said. "I have to admit you and Dulcie saved Harper's skin on that one, and maybe saved Dillon's life. But you two have come to believe that Harper can't solve a crime without you, and I call that really insulting. You two cats think-"

"I never said he can't solve a crime without us. I said we've helped him, that we've offered some positive input-the way any good snitch would do. Why can't you enter into a simple discussion of the facts without getting emotional? Without getting your back up, to use a corny and inappropriate colloquialism!"

Clyde sat down at the table and put his face in his hands, shoving aside the rack of poker chips and two new decks of cards. He didn't say, What did I do to be saddled with this insufferable, ego-driven animal? But it was there, in his silence, in the slump of his shoulders.

"And," Joe said, "when you do marry, you'll be in the same position as Charlie is with Harper. You marry anyone but Kate or Charlie, marry a woman who doesn't know what kind of cat you live with, you try to hide the truth from her, there's going to be trouble. It would never work. I'd have to move out, find another home-or you'd end up telling her about me! Sharing my fate with a total stranger. Compromising and endangering my life, and Dulcie's. Putting us-"

Clyde swung around in his chair, his face decidedly red. "If you don't get out of this house now, and stay out until we're done playing poker and everyone has gone home, I swear I will not only evict you and nail your cat door shut, I will take you to the pound. Shove you in a cat carrier and leave you at the animal shelter. See you locked in a metal cage forever-because no one would want you. No one would adopt such a bad-tempered tomcat."

Joe Grey smiled, leaped to the center of the table, and lifted a gentle white paw to Clyde. "You are becoming very creative. If you even tried such a thing, I would spill it all to Max Harper. I would break out of the pound-no trick for yours truly. I'd go straight to Harper. Sit down face-to-face with him and tell him my entire story. I would lay it all on him, every corroborating fragment of proof, every tip, every detail of past phone calls. Proof that I-I alone, not Dulcie-am his phantom snitch."

He thought Clyde would laugh, but Clyde's brown eyes blazed with anger. "If you ever did such a thing, I swear, Joe, I'd kill you."

Clyde shoved his face close to Joe's. "Do you remember the night at Moreno's Bar, after Janet Jeannot was murdered, when Harper tried to tell me his suspicions about certain cats being involved in the case? About certain mysterious phone calls? And you were eavesdropping under the table? Do you remember how shaken Max was?"

"Come on, Clyde…"

Clyde glared. "You so much as whisper to Max Harper, and you're a dead cat. Finished. Comprende?"

"You are so grouchy. You really need to get your life in hand."

Joe dropped down to the linoleum, stalked through to the living room, pushed out his cat door, and crept under the front porch. He'd never seen Clyde so irritable.

He really did have to blame Clyde's mood on pretty, blond Kate Osborne. Clyde and Kate were old friends, but now that Clyde had really fallen for her, she'd turned standoffish. Wouldn't come down from San Francisco, hadn't been down for over a month, didn't want Clyde to come up. Something was going on with her. Clyde didn't know what it was, and as a result, he'd been fierce as a goaded possum. Maybe it was Kate's search for her unknown family, maybe she was totally wrapped up in that, didn't want to think of anything else. Though that project, in Joe's opinion, could lead her into more grief than she'd ever wanted.

Looking out through the cracks between the porch boards, he saw Charlie coming down the street, walking the few blocks from her apartment-and looking very pretty, her kinky red hair tied back with a calico ribbon, her blue-and-white striped dress as fresh as new milk. When she had hurried up the steps above his head and gone inside, he slipped out of the musty dark to the porch again and sat down beside his cat door, his face to the plastic flap to listen.

"Hi! Clyde, you there? Am I the first one here? You in the kitchen?"

Her cheery greeting met silence. Joe heard the kitchen door swing. "Hi! There you are. I brought some chips."

No answer.

"What?" Charlie said.

"Can't you knock? Since we're not dating anymore, you could at least-"

"Well, pardon me."

Again, silence.

"Where's Joe?" she said. "You two have a fight?"

A longer silence.

"Well?"

"No, we didn't have a fight!"

"So where did he go to sulk? And you're sulking in here, in the kitchen. Were you fighting about the house again, about selling the house?"

"No, we weren't fighting about selling the house."

Charlie said no more. Joe heard one of them open the refrigerator and pop a couple of beers. Charlie knew how to handle him; Clyde's moods didn't bother her. And she was partly right. The problem about the house did make him cross.

Ever since construction had begun on Molena Point's new, upscale shopping plaza-ever since its two-story, plastered wall had risen at the boundary behind Clyde's backyard, blocking their view of the sunrise and the eastern hills, Clyde had been entertaining offers from realtors. The mall hadn't affected the property values, not in Molena Point, where village lots were so scarce that a buyer would pay half a million for a teardown. And this latest offer to Clyde had topped all the others. It was not from someone wanting a home or vacation cottage, but from a restaurateur planning to open an upscale cafe-a perfectly understandable plan, in a village where the businesses and cottages were mingled, many shops occupying former residences.

The offering realtor said the house would remain, along with the house next door, which the buyer had already purchased. The two buildings would be converted into dining and kitchen space and joined by a patio whose tile paving would run back to the two-story plaster wall, with outdoor tables and umbrellas and potted trees.

Dulcie thought it would be charming. Joe thought there were enough patio restaurants in the village. Clyde vacillated between outright refusal and considering the offer; he couldn't make up his mind. But he was as angry as a maimed wharf rat about his view being destroyed. Joe could understand that. The wall made Joe, too, feel like he was in a cage.

But what if Clyde did sell? Where would they live? The idea of moving upset Joe and seemed nearly as unsettling to Clyde.

Joe thought maybe his own distress came from his kittenhood, from the time when he'd had no real home, just an alley and a few one-night stands, then for a while a stranger with a shabby apartment and a bad disposition-until he met Clyde.

His and Clyde's move down from San Francisco, when he was still a half-grown kitten, had left him nervous for weeks afterward, distraught at losing the only real home he knew. Even Charlie's recent moves had unsettled him, first from her aunt Wilma's and Dulcie's house into an apartment, then into another apartment. Places that he'd liked to visit, gone before he got used to them. And now Mavity Flowers was about to be evicted, closing another door to him-and Mavity's cottage held some rare memories.