Shirley Murphy: Cat Striking Back

Juana glanced at it, and picked up. “Yes, Chief.” Juana Davis was old fashioned enough that she didn’t much care for a speakerphone, she was never sure who might be out in the hall listening, an arrestee on his way to an interview, a felon being escorted back to lockup.

Behind the chair, Dulcie was content to listen to the one-sided conversation, but Kit wanted to climb up on the desk where she could press her ear against the receiver. Dulcie’s look drew her back.

After a moment, Juana nodded. “I hope you can get an ID.” She paused, then, “I’m just getting to the last interview. A Mrs. Edmond Turner, four houses down from the Chapmans’…Nancy Turner, yes. She said she stopped by the Chapmans’ Saturday around noon to loan Theresa a book she’d wanted to read on vacation. She said Frances Becker was there, that Frances said she was on her way out for a quick walk, that she and her husband were leaving that afternoon. That before they left, she’d wanted to see the kittens. The two women were in the laundry with the kittens, she said Frances was making a real fuss over them. It surprised her, that Frances was down on the floor playing with them like a kid.”

Another pause, then, “Yes, she did. Said both women were wearing shorts and flip-flops, that only young women could dress like that in this weather. She said Frances walks a lot, usually on weekends.

“She said there was a rolled-up blue towel lying on the floor next to Frances, looked like a beach towel. Said the kittens were all over it, playing and clawing it.” Davis had a satisfied smile on her face. “Yesterday at the swimming pool, the threads I bagged? Some of them were blue. Blue threads stuck to the coping, some of them with blood.”

She listened for a few minutes, answered, “Yes,” then, “No. When Mrs. Turner left Theresa’s, Frances was still there.”

The cats could hardly be still. Dulcie and Kit were fidgeting with interest, and Joe Grey watched Juana intently. Had Frances stopped by Theresa’s on her way not to walk but headed for the abandoned pool? Carrying her beach towel, intending to strip and catch a little sun before leaving? Joe thought about the towels that Clyde had used as cat beds, how they quickly got matted with fur. He imagined Frances beside the empty pool, stripping off her shorts and shirt, lathering on suntan oil and stretching out on the blue towel-where every yellow cat hair would have clung to her oily skin.

Was it Frances Becker who died? And not Theresa?

Across the room, Dulcie’s heart was pounding. Kit could hardly keep from lashing her tail. That was Frances with cat hairs stuck to her suntan lotion! Theresa isn’t dead? That was Frances Becker who’d died in the pool, not Theresa?

Juana said, “No, she didn’t. Yes, let me read it.” She looked at the screen to quote Nancy Turner. “‘She likes to take long midday walks alone. Sometimes she wears a Walkman, listens to classical music. Frances does a lot of her work at night. I can hear the CDs she plays. She’s very dedicated in her accounting jobs, I see her office light on very late.’

“That’s most of it,” Davis said. “She couldn’t tell me which way Frances went when she left the Chapmans’, she said she’d gone right home, that she didn’t know where Frances usually walked once she left the block.”

Resting his chin on his paws, Joe thought about Frances Becker, so sensible and low-key. Was she the kind of person to sunbathe naked? How much did they not know about her? He thought about her charming husband-her philandering husband-and how much they didn’t know about him, either.

Was Ed Becker capable of murder? If he was a womanizer, Joe thought, then why wouldn’t he be just as capable of stealing? Had Ed Becker planned those thefts, Frances found out and tried to stop him, and he’d killed her?

Joe thought about Ed following her to the abandoned pool, killing her, getting rid of the body, and then moving on as he’d planned, to steal from his neighbors. Proceeding just as glibly as when, behind Frances ’s back, he stole the attentions of his neighbors’ wives.

This scenario made sense. And yet as relieved as he was to hope that Theresa was alive, still a dozen questions rattled in his head and wouldn’t let him rest.

“Yes,” Davis said. “You’re headed there now? If she’s from the neighborhood, Charlie will know her. Yes, I’ll be at the autopsy first thing in the morning.”

As much as the tomcat liked to be in on every aspect of a murder, when he imagined Davis photographing the autopsy, he was willing to bypass this part of the investigation. Dissecting a human body was not the same as eviscerating a mouse.

Well, it shouldn’t take but a few minutes for Charlie to identify the victim, and for Max to call Davis. He watched Dulcie and Kit curl up behind the chair to wait, and he stretched out along the bookshelf, closing his eyes. Praying, as coldhearted as it might seem, that that was Frances Becker up there at the morgue, and not Theresa.

LEAVING THE COUNTY morgue beside Max, Charlie slipped into the passenger seat of her Blazer, happy to let him drive. As soon as he turned the key she rolled down her window, turning her face to the wind, hoping to blow away the smell of formaldehyde and death that clung to her. The stink seemed to have seeped into her every pore, and every fiber of her clothes. Were they depositing the smell in her Blazer, too, so it would never again be the same? Would her nice SUV, which had been a gift from Max on her last birthday, forevermore smell like a grave?

How did John Bern stand it? She’d wondered more than once what made a person like Bern embrace that particular profession. He was young, strong and intelligent, and nice looking, his premature baldness seeming only to add to his attractiveness. He’d told her once that it was the challenge, that he was fascinated by the precise procedure, of unraveling the mystery of how someone died. He said that if it was a murder, he got completely caught up in helping to discover the killer.

She looked back at the cream-colored, four-story stucco building, its roof fluted with red tile, thinking about the chill and antiseptic morgue in its basement, about the physically cold, visually cold viewing room with its unadorned walls, chill gray terrazzo floor that could be easily scrubbed, and its hard metal chairs. A room that hadn’t offered much in the way of emotional comfort as Bern rolled out the cold metal gurney bearing Frances ’s covered body.

“We’ve done preliminary testing for drugs,” he’d told them. “My guess is she died from an intracerebral bleed. I don’t want to make a final judgment yet as to whether she was struck, or if this occurred naturally, from a fall. Looks like she fell at least several feet, from the contusion and the specks of grit and cement embedded in the skin.”

They had discussed the autopsy for the following morning, which Detective Davis would attend, and before they’d left, Max had called Mabel to put out an APB on Frances Becker’s white Honda Accord, which was the car missing from the Becker garage. Now, pulling out of the parking lot, Max said, “You okay? You’re pale as hell.”

“Fine,” Charlie lied. “I’m fine.”

“The smell will go away,” he said, wondering if she was going to be sick. “If it was her husband who killed her, then is there no one to notify? She had no family?”

“Not that she ever mentioned.”

“ Davis will go over the house again, maybe she’ll find an address in her files, some relative.”

“One thing about Frances,” she said, “she was a neat- nick, everything in order. It shouldn’t take Davis long to find an address, if there were any relatives.”