Shirley Murphy - Cat Under Fire

Four rows of open racks marched away, bins made of slats to allow for air circulation, and filled with standing paintings. But Joe, shut in, felt his paws grow damp. His brain kept playing the same theme. No way out of the storeroom except this one door. No way to escape the gallery. And this storeroom was like a coffin. In his heart, he was four months old again, cowering away from attacking boys, clawing up restraining walls.

He turned away, so Dulcie wouldn't see his fear.

Hey, get a grip. This is not the behavior of a macho tomcat. But his paws were really sweaty, and he was beginning to pant.

He got himself in hand sufficiently to move with Dulcie up one corridor and down the next, looking at each canvas, searching for Janet's work. They couldn't move the big canvases out of the racks, but each group of paintings leaned against a slatted divider. As Joe pulled a painting back, Dulcie could slip in between, take a look. Their paws were soon abraded, scraped nearly raw by the rough linen canvas and cut where the raw ends of picture wire had nicked them. They found only four of Janet's paintings, all without frames, the raw edges stapled. No thumbtacks. Two were of village streets done from some high vantage.

"From the tower of the courthouse," Dulcie said. "That's Monte Verde Street below, those red blooming trees and the red roofs. And this other one, that's the Molena Point Inn. Look, she's put in a little cat asleep on the inn roof, a little black cat."

She sighed. "You should come up the tower with me, it's lovely. Up the outside steps to the second-floor balcony, then along the open corridor and up into the tower."

Her eyes glowed. "You can pull the tower door open, they don't lock it. Up the tower stairs to that open place near the top and there you are, a little jump up onto the stone rail, you can see all the town below, see the hills in one direction and the sea in the other. You can…"

"Could we hurry this a bit?" Her description of those seductive open spaces wasn't helping; he hungered for space and air. "It's about time for the patrol."

The Molena Point police not only conducted tight street patrols, but they carried passkeys to most of the shops. Joe had seen, as he prowled the night-dark rooftops, uniformed officers entering restaurants and galleries, perhaps because they heard some noise or saw an unfamiliar light. The department provided a high degree of security for the small village; you wouldn't find this kind of attention in San Francisco.

When they found no more of Janet's work, when they had flipped off the light and fought the door open, Joe sat in the middle of the open gallery calming himself, getting himself together again; but only slowly did his heartbeat gear down. Beside him, Dulcie sat dejected. "I was so sure the paintings would be here."

He washed diligently, soothing his tight muscles and shaky nerves, he'd never felt so edgy. The phrase nervous as a cat had taken on sudden new meaning. "Maybe they're in a warehouse, maybe one of those around the docks."

"Possible. There are plenty of warehouses down there. Remember the fuss in the paper about turning them into restaurants and tourist shops? That's what defeated the last mayor. No one wants Molena Point to be so commercial." She rubbed her face against his shoulder. "Yes, we can go down to the wharves, take a look Sicily…"

She stopped speaking, her eyes widening. "Or a storage locker." She stared at him, her eyes black as polished obsidian. "There are storage lockers north of the village. Charlie keeps her tools and ladders there, all her repair and cleaning stuff. Wouldn't the paintings be safer in a locker than in a warehouse? And at two in the morning, would Sicily go down into that warehouse area alone?"

"If Sicily has them."

"If they're in a locker, there should be some kind of receipt. Charlie got a receipt for her locker. I saw it on her dresser, stuck into her checkbook."

"You just happened to be passing."

"Actually, I was looking at her art books. She doesn't care if I prowl."

Trotting across the gallery, she leaped to Sicily's desk, began to nose through the papers in an in-box, then through a little basket containing a tangle of small, handwritten notes and postcards.

She clawed open the file drawer. And as she searched, Joe prowled the perimeters of the gallery, nosing along the bay windows, hoping one would open.

When he turned, all he could see of Dulcie were her hindquarters and tail as she peered down inside the files. "Look for a duplicate key, a spare for the front door."

She raised her head, watching him. His kittenhood must have been terrible. He couldn't bear to be trapped though he would seldom talk about it.

Sicily's files were filled with brochures and announcements of one-man exhibits, with newspaper clippings and reviews. Some contained, as well, glossy, full-color offprints of magazine articles featuring the artist's work. In the front of each file was clipped an inventory listing by title, the medium and size of each painting received by the gallery, the date received, the dates of exhibits entered, and whether the work was accepted or rejected. There were notations of awards won, and of reviews.

The listing also contained the date a painting was sold, the price, and the name and address of the buyer. All the inventories were handwritten in small, neat script. There were three J folders.

Janet's folder contained a list of her work taken by the gallery, but the dates were all months old. Two-thirds of the works had been sold. Dulcie could find no indication that a large number of paintings had suddenly been added to Sicily's inventory-unless the dates had been altered. And when she clawed open the smaller desk drawers she found only office supplies-a stapler, pens, blank labels, stationery, and envelopes- and in one drawer, beside boxes of paper clips, a tangle of bracelets and a lipstick.

She was patting some restaurant receipts back into order when suddenly the burglar alarm screamed.

She shot off the desk straight into Joe, the siren vibrating in waves, exploding, shaking them.

Joe pushed her toward the back, into darkness away from the windows. Her fur felt straight out, her heart pounding.

"They'll send a patrol car," he said. "I was looking for an escape route and I broke the beam." They stiffened as police sirens screamed up the street and Dulcie spun around toward the storeroom.

"No," Joe hissed, "not there. There's not even a window. Come on-under the desk."

"But…"

Lights blazed in the street as a squad car slid to the curb. Its doors flew open. Two officers emerged, shining their lights in through the glass, and the cats shrank back beneath the desk. "Keep your face down," Dulcie whispered. "Your white markings are like neon. Hide your paws."

Joe ducked his head over his paws, turning himself into a solid gray ball. From the alley behind the gallery, a second siren screamed.

"If they see us," Dulcie said, "try to look cute."

"You think this is a joke."

"Relax. What can they do? If they shine their lights under here, roll over and smile. You're a gallery cat. Try to look the part."

"Dulcie, those cops'll know Sicily doesn't have gallery cats. When they open the door, run for it."

"How would they know she doesn't have cats? And what if they do? So they think we got shut in here accidentally. What else would they think? What are they going to do, arrest us?"

"You left the desk drawer open."

"Oh…" She tensed to leap up.

He grabbed her, his teeth in the nape of her neck. "They'll see us."

She shrugged, her dark eyes wide and amused. "What are you afraid of?" she said softly.

He was ready to fight, to claw any hand that reached for them, but he was scared, too. "They'll think we're strays and call the pound." The pound had cages, locked cages. Having grown up in city alleys, he was far more aware of the terrors of the pound than was Dulcie. Far more wary of the powers of the police. Who could outfight a trained police officer? A cop knew all the tricks, knew to grab you by the tail and the back of the neck, putting you at an extreme disadvantage.