Shirley Murphy - Cat Fear No Evil

What, indeed? Azrael had thought, observing Kate and smiling.

Having been raised in Latin America where unusual tales were believed, where wild stories had substance, where myth was a powerful part of life, the tomcat was a strong believer in matters supernatural. And why not, given his own surreal nature.

"The gold work," Kate was saying, "is so unlike anything else I've ever seen, like nothing I've found in any book on jewelry." But she laughed. "I take one class in the history of jewelry, ten years ago, and I know it all."

"But you did research it," Wilma said. "You spent hours in the city libraries."

Kate had leaned back, sipping her tea. "I'm being so silly. Those twelve pieces, even if they're a couple of centuries old, were very likely made right here in California. And even if the jewels are paste, the appraiser was interested in them-as curiosities, he said."

"Who was he? You had them appraised in San Francisco?"

"Yes. Emerson Bristol. He came highly recommended."

The tomcat stiffened and remained still, watching Kate through the cracks. Emerson Bristol. Well doesn't that win the gold cat dish. And as he considered this unlikely happenstance, some interesting pieces began to fall into place.

"I know who he is," Wilma said. "Yes, he has an excellent reputation."

"Bristol showed me some pictures from different periods. That, with what I remember from art school and then what I found on my own, made me see clearly what he meant. The style of my pieces is almost Art Deco, yet very different from that, much more primitive. Yet not medieval. Or baroque or Spanish, but a little of all of them. Not anything like nineteenth-century European work."

She looked intently at Wilma. "Whoever made that jewelry had his own ideas. Maybe some lone jeweler emigrating from Europe, wanting to work alone, to do his art his way. I can understand that, that he did not want to follow tradition."

She broke a French roll, dropping a few crumbs down onto Azrael's nose. "Maybe he produced a small body of work that found its way into private collections but never into any big collections or museums. And then it got scattered again when people died off, and was all but lost."

"Did Bristol think that might be the case?"

"We didn't discuss that. He simply said he found the work different and interesting." Kate had leaned forward again, as if looking intently at Wilma, her face hidden above the table. "Could that lone jeweler have been my ancestor? And those twelve pieces stayed within his family? Then through their attorney, they found their way to me."

"I'm no authority," Wilma said, "but if others found it interesting, as your appraiser did, why was it ignored and forgotten? When the jewelry is so unique, why didn't some collector search it out? You said Bristol wanted to buy it?"

"He said he has a small collection of oddities. He didn't offer me much. After all, the jewels are paste." Kate paused. "Well the gold, of course, is worth something. It's lovely, but…"

"You have the other pieces safe, not lying around your apartment?"

"They're in my bank box, because of the gold and the workmanship. Until I know what they're all about."

"You said five other pieces, besides the barrette you gave Charlie, are designed with the images of cats?"

"Yes. But lots of designers use cats, have done, all through history." Kate sat very still at the table. The setting sun piercing down through the slats had warmed Azrael. Kate said, "Perhaps the pieces are older, from some European village that was very fond of its cats. Or maybe the jewelry was made in some isolated community here, by talented immigrants who settled back in the mountains, a little enclave where cats were valued."

She was, Azrael thought, denying the very world he sought, denying the very world from which she surely had descended.

"Folk who stayed together," she said, "a little pocket of civilization that preferred to remain off by itself."

"But why," Wilma said, "when the pieces are so beautifully made, weren't they set with real stones?"

"A common practice in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and even today, I guess. It didn't seem to make much difference whether the jeweler was working with real stones or imitation, the craftsmanship was equally fine." Kate set down her teacup. "The most amazing part, to me, was to finally track down the legal firm that gave them to me. The firm that served my grandfather-if McCabe was my grandfather. It's changed its name twice, and it looks to me like it won't be around much longer. The one remaining attorney is ancient. I can't imagine hiring him. I understand he does mostly grunt work now.

"But for him to simply give me the jewels, to haul out those old photographs of me as a child, and the names of the foster homes, and to feel that he had adequately identified me-" Kate shook her head. "Poor old thing. He must have been well over eighty, and had palsy, and…well I have to admit, when he gave me the box of jewels and said they were mine, I signed a release for them and got out of there as gracefully fast as I could manage. Before he changed his mind.

"And when I saw Bristol," Kate said, "I didn't give him my real name or phone number. I know that's bizarre. I- This whole thing, that doddering attorney, the jewels hidden away like that, all of it has me edgy, but strangely excited."

"It would have me edgy, too. And very interested. I think you were wise, keeping your identity to yourself until you know more."

The Getz woman would say that. She didn't trust anyone, Azrael had thought, scowling. Now he knew why Bristol hadn't been able to find his mysterious client after she left his office. The tomcat had licked his whiskers-his partner would be pleased to hear the answer to that little puzzle.

If, he had thought, if I choose to share what I know.

"Why," Wilma was saying, "hadn't the lawyer ever been in touch? Why had he never contacted you, when apparently the firm, in its better days, kept track of you as a child?"

"The instructions he read to me said I was not to be given the jewelry until I was eighteen. By that time there was only the one partner; he didn't explain but I'm guessing he was already letting things slide, forgetting things. That walk-in safe-anything could be stashed in there, from the year one.

"When he opened its door and we went in, there were boxes of files in the back that looked like they'd been there since the place was built, in the eighteen hundreds."

"Were there no papers for you, nothing besides the jewelry?"

"There were two yellowed newspaper clippings. Something about Marin County, about a large number of cats disappearing and a tide of cats racing away in the night through a garden. The other clipping was the same kind of thing, in the city. Both from the same year, half a century ago." She was silent a moment, looking at Wilma. "Cats disappearing where? It gives me the shivers. And the strange thing is, ever since I saw the appraiser, I have this idea I've been followed."

Beneath the table, Azrael was riven with interest. Cats racing away to where? To what mysterious place? To the netherworld that he felt certain lay deep beneath northern California? And could Bristol know of such a world? Was this why he wanted the jewels? Or did he want the jewelry for its value? Had Bristol hired someone to follow Kate? But how could he, when he didn't know who she was? And that wasn't Bristol's style. The man was an upscale appraiser, he was well accepted in the city, very proper and circumspect. His under-the-table ventures were always accomplished at arm's length, by a man who knew far more intimately how to circumvent the law.