Shirley Murphy - Cat Fear No Evil

Leaving the car and letting themselves out the side door, which Candy locked behind them, the three girls headed away in separate directions, each to her own home. As Candy and Leah melted quickly into the night, Dillon, hurrying toward her own home, kept well away from the shadows. She didn't like being out in the small hours alone, though she would never let the others know that. Her girlfriends were about the only family she had now that she could count on. Her mother was zilch, a zero. And her dad had caved. He didn't fight back, he didn't do anything. He was just very quiet, turning away even from her- so patient and tolerant with Helen that he made Dillon retch. If she'd been her dad, she'd have packed up and hauled out of there, the two of them. Leave Helen to ruin her life any way she wanted.

Or she'd have booted Helen out and changed the locks, let her move in with what's-his-name.

But he wasn't doing either; he wasn't doing anything. Moving quickly along the dark streets, she was just a few blocks from home when she started thinking about that contractor, Ryan Flannery; when she saw suddenly a flash of green eyes and heard again the woman's rude comments, there in the Harper kitchen. Bitch.

Except, hearing Ryan's voice, for a moment Dillon was drawn beyond her anger. Ryan's retort had been almost exactly the same as Captain Harper's angry words.

And a small still voice down inside Dillon asked, what was she going to do about Ryan Flannery's challenge?

Kate Osborne didn't learn about Lucinda and Pedric's deaths until Sunday evening as she waited for the elderly couple to arrive for their visit. Lucinda had called two nights before, to say they'd be there by late afternoon, that they would be driving down from somewhere near Russian River, some little out-of-the way campground. And Kate had to smile. She was sure Lucinda hadn't had this much fun in all her adult life before she married Pedric. Her earlier marriage to Shamus, while busy with social functions and exciting for the first few years, had deteriorated as Lucinda aged, Lucinda staying home ignoring the truth while Shamus played fast and loose.

"I thought we'd eat in," Kate had told her. "That you might be tired, so I'd planned a little something at home. I make a mean creole, if you'd like that."

"That sounds like heaven," Lucinda had said. "A hot shower and a good hot creole supper. Couldn't be better. We'll plan to take you out the next night." Kate thought that maybe, with Lucinda and Pedric there, she could get her head on straight, maybe could look at her own problems more objectively. This last week had been so strange and unsettling.

She had actually grown reluctant to go out at all after dark, and that was so stupid. But of course she'd have to work late, if she were to finish with her present clients in a timely manner. The work week would have been satisfying if she hadn't kept watching nervously for the man who had followed her to reappear.

At least she had found her extra keys in the drawer where she sometimes kept them; they had fallen down between the folds of her sweaters. That had eased her mind; and nothing in the apartment had, again, been disturbed. The windows had remained locked, and she saw no one lingering down in the street.

But still she was nervous. And then on Thursday evening, leaving work, she saw him. When she started out of the building, a man stood across the street, tucked into the darkness of an unlit doorway. She had stepped back inside her building.

She couldn't tell if he was watching her, couldn't tell if it was the same man. She had remained inside the glass door until he left the mosaic of shadows, ambling on down the street in plain view, a perfectly ordinary man wearing nondescript jeans and a brown windbreaker-but his face had been turned away. She wanted to see his face. And in spite of common sense, her fear escalated. The next day, did she imagine a shadow slipping away behind a building? Imagine that the man on the crowded sidewalk in broad daylight was keeping pace with her?

Then late last night she'd heard a series of thuds, either in the apartment or on the roof.

Taking her flashlight and her vial of pepper spray, she had made the rounds of her familiar rooms. Nothing had been amiss. But then this morning she'd noticed two desk drawers protruding, not pushed in all the way. And the couch and chair cushions were awry, and a kitchen cabinet door ajar. This had occurred after she had prowled at midnight. Then she found a wad of short black hair on the kitchen counter.

She had flushed it down the toilet and Cloroxed the countertop. She had no idea how the cat was getting in. No lock had been disturbed, and she had found her lost keys, though she supposed they could have been copied then returned to her. But what was the purpose? Consuela knew by now that the jewels were not here; she must have learned that the first time she searched the apartment.

Kate was not afraid of Consuela. And she should not be afraid of the black tomcat. On Sunday, with Lucinda and Pedric due to arrive, she hurried home from finishing a stack of orders at the office, showered, and dressed comfortably in a velour jogging suit and scuffs. She wanted dinner preparations finished early, as they would be there before dark. She boiled the shrimp and made the creole sauce and measured the rice to be cooked. She set the table in the little dining room with her new paisley place mats, and put together a salad with all but the two ripe avocados she'd selected from her hoard on the windowsill. She set an amaretto cheesecake out to thaw. The scent of the freshly boiled shrimp and of the creole sauce filled the apartment, stirring her hunger. She filled the coffeepot, using a specially ground decaf, and curled up on the couch near the phone with a book, waiting for Lucinda's call that they were about to cross the Golden Gate. From the bridge, it was only ten minutes.

She read for some time Loren Eiseley's keen observations of the world. Strange that they were so late; it was growing dusky. Traffic must be heavy; not a good time to come into the city, with people returning from the weekend. When it was nearly dark, she rose to pull the draperies. Before closing those on the east, she stood a moment looking out toward East Bay, watching the lights of Berkeley and Oakland smear and fade in the gathering fog. She hoped Lucinda and Pedric arrived before the fog grew thick. Making a weak drink, she returned to her book. Only belatedly did she pick up the phone to see if they had left a message on the service before she ever got home.

She no longer used an answering machine; three power outages with the resultant failure of the machine had prompted her to subscribe to the phone company's uninterrupted reception even when the phones were out.

There was no beeping message signal. There was no sound at all from the receiver, no dial tone.

How long had the system been out? This happened every now and then, particularly in bad weather. As her apartment had not been disturbed, she didn't think anyone had tampered with the line.

Lucinda didn't have the number of her cell phone. Anyway, she realized suddenly, she'd left that phone in the car, plugged into the dash, the battery removed to keep it from turning to jelly She had meant to bring it up with her; now she did not want to go out in the night to get it. She was disgusted that she had forgotten it when all this last week she had carried the phone even when she walked.

It was nearly seven thirty when she poured herself another mild drink and decided to fix a plate of cheese and crackers to calm her rumbling stomach. Lucinda had said they'd been up around Fort Bragg, poking along the coast. They did love their rambling life. For a pair of eighty-year-olds, those two folks were remarkable. Slicing the cheese, she reached to turn on the little kitchen TV that had been a birthday present to herself. She didn't watch much TV, but she liked to have the news on while she was getting dinner. Shaking out the crackers, she caught something about an accident in Sonoma County. An RV and a tanker truck. She glimpsed a brief shot of the wreck, the vehicles so badly burned you couldn't tell what they had looked like. Fire trucks, police cars, and ambulances filled the screen. She stood at the kitchen counter unmoving.