Shirley Murphy - Cat Fear No Evil

All the windows were open to let out the gas, as was the front door, and still the air stunk of gas. She could see Captain Harper and Detective Garza inside. She could not see the medics, they were not around their van. Were they in there working on someone? Was Mr. Quinn in there? Dulcie's skin rippled with dismay. If he was still there, if he had not run out…

Had he been asleep when the gas leak started, had he perhaps had not awakened? Was he dead in there? Dulcie thought, sickened.

James Quinn was an elderly man, though he still worked as a Realtor. He was a very nice single man living alone, with no one to wake him if he slept too soundly during such a disaster.

Or, she thought, had he already gone to work when the leak started? Maybe he didn't even know about the leak, maybe he had left the house really early, to show a distant piece of property, maybe he had no idea what was happening here. James Quinn did not seem to Dulcie the kind of person to have carelessly left a gas jet on, to have not turned it off properly. According to Wilma, Quinn was if anything overly careful and precise.

Helen Thurwell's real estate partner was a short, gentle, wiry man, thin and bald, with leathery skin from hours on the golf coarse. His tee time was dedicated as much to business as to pleasure. Though pushing seventy, Quinn was still a top salesman with the firm, low key, easy, never pushy. That was what Wilma said. A man to whom clients came, as they came to Helen, when they wanted to avoid the hard sell. Playing golf with his clients, Quinn made many a casual, million-dollar deal.

Where was the kit? She was always in the front row when anything happened in the village. Searching the block for Kit, from her high vantage where she could hardly miss another cat, Dulcie began to entertain a sick feeling. Was the kit in that house?

But why? Why would she be in there?

A crew from PG &E was working at the curb where, earlier, the fire crew had removed a concrete cover and turned off the gas. Most of the utility trucks and squad cars were parked down the block, safe in case of an explosion. The crime tape the police had strung was not enough to keep back onlookers without the officers who were politely but firmly directing them. She saw Wilma and Charlie and Kate standing with the crowd waiting for any opportunity to help. But where was the kit? Surely she had heard the sirens, there was nowhere in the village where she couldn't have heard them.

The medics were bringing someone out on a stretcher. James Quinn lay unmoving, his face and hands strangely red. They set the stretcher down on the lawn and the medics knelt over him. But soon they rose again; they did not work on Quinn. He lay waiting for the coroner's attention.

Dulcie knew that under other circumstances the body would not have been moved until a detective had photographed the scene and made sketches and notes. She supposed with the house full of gas, that hadn't been an option. But to leave him lying here on the lawn seemed strange, even with a police guard around him. Maybe Detective Garza wanted to photograph the body and let the coroner have a look before they moved Quinn again. How could Quinn have died in there? How could he not have smelled the gas? Even in sleep, one would think the stink of gas would wake him. He wasn't a drinker. Never touched liquor; so he had not slept in an alcoholic stupor too numbed to wake. And from what she had heard of Quinn's careful nature, it would not have been like him to leave the gas on accidentally. She saw Dr. John Bern's car being driven over the lowered police tape, coming slowly up the street; she glimpsed Bern's bald head, the glint of his glasses.

Dulcie was watching Dr. Bern kneeling over the body when a thumping on the shingles above her jerked her up. The kit came galloping straight at her and, hardly pausing, dropped down onto the awning, rocking the canvas and digging her claws in. Dulcie was so glad to see her, she nuzzled against Kit, licking her ears and whiskers. The kit stunk of gas.

"You've been in there," Dulcie hissed.

The kit looked at Dulcie, shivering. "He's dead." She stared across the street at the stretcher and the body. "I was in there when you came the first time, I looked out and saw you and Joe, I saw you sniff at the gas then turn and race away. I knew you'd call the station so I… but listen, Dulcie…"

The tattercoat's round yellow eyes were wide with the news she had to tell. "The gas stunk so strong I went in through the back door-to see if he was in there, to wake him if he was still asleep, to…" The kit stared at her with distress.

"You could have died in there."

"I pushed the back door open to get in, a little breeze came in. I wasn't there long and I stayed low against the floor, but it choked me and I felt dizzy. He was lying on the kitchen floor. I stuck my nose at his nose and there was no breath and he was cold, so cold, and the gas was making me woozy so I got out of there fast and you and Joe were there, then running away up the street so I knew you'd call for help. Why was there gas in there?"

Dulcie sighed. "You didn't paw at a knob, Kit? And make the gas come on?"

"No! I never! The gas was all in there. Why would I do that!" she said indignantly. "I smelled it from the street. That's why I went in." Her eyes darkened with pain. "But he was dead. Cold dead."

Dulcie looked and looked at the kit. The kit settled down beside her, pushing very close. She was quiet for a long while. Then in a small voice Kit said, "Where's Joe Grey?"

"He's following someone." Dulcie didn't mean to tell the kit more. For once, the kit could keep her nose out. Below them, the coroner still knelt over James Quinn, Dr. Bern's bald head and glasses reflecting the morning light.

Down the block within the growing crowd, the cats saw Marlin Dorriss pushing through. The tall, slim attorney was dressed in a pale blue polo shirt and khaki walking shorts that, despite the chilly weather, set off his winter tan. His muscled legs were lean and brown, his white hair trimmed short and neat. He was a man, Dulcie thought, that any human woman might fall for-except that Helen Thurwell had no business falling for anyone. In doing so she had royally screwed up her daughter's life, had sent Dillon off on a tangent that deeply frightened Dulcie.

It was hard enough for a fourteen-year-old girl to grow up strong and happy. In Dulcie's view, human teen years must be like walking on the thinnest span across a vast and falling chasm where, with a false step, you could lose your footing and go tumbling over-as the kit would say, falling down and down.

The cats didn't want that to happen to Dillon.

Watching Marlin Dorriss approach the stretcher, seeing the concern and kindness in his face as he observed from some distance the body of James Quinn, it was hard for Dulcie to imagine him willfully destroying a close little family. The matter deeply puzzled her.

Dorriss had lived in Molena Point for maybe ten years, in an elegant oceanfront villa. A semiretired lawyer, Dorriss served only a few chosen clients, representing their financial interests. He was gone from the village much of the time, keeping a condo in San Francisco, a cabin at Tahoe, and condos in New York and Baton Rouge. He was a sometime collector of a few select painters, mostly those of the California action school, such as Bischoff, Diebenkorn, and David Park. He collected a few modern sculptors, and bought occasional pieces of antique furniture to blend into the contemporary setting of his home. Dorriss was charming, urbane, easy in his manners, but a man deeply frustrating to the local women. If he dated, the relationship never went far.

Certainly he had woman friends across the country if you could believe the photographs in the Molena Point Gazette, the San Francisco Chronicle, and one or two slick arts magazines. Dulcie imagined Dorriss consorting, in other cities, with wealthy society women as sleek and expensively turned out as a bevy of New York fashion models.