Shirley Murphy - Cat Fear No Evil

The drawer was neatly arranged with a row of hanging files-and talk about luck. Dorriss's paid bills were right there in front, in one of six color-coded files that were tucked into a hanging box folder. The packets of paid bills were each held together by a large clip: utility and phone, automotive and gas, Visa and American Express. Other receipts and documentation were filed behind these, the entire box folder marked "current year taxes." When income tax time came, Dorriss had only to haul this stuff out and add up the numbers.

How strange that he would keep his credit card bills in plain sight. Or were these fake bills? Decoys meant for prowlers, and not the real thing?

But that was so dumb, that was really reaching. How would Dorriss even make that kind of fake bill?

Glancing over his shoulder toward the empty hall, he lifted out the packets with his teeth and spread them across the blotter. As he pawed carefully through, his ears went up and his whiskers stiffened-he was looking at hotel and restaurant charges in cities where the thefts had occurred.

He was pretty sure of the dates, though who could keep every burglary and every date in his head? The more he looked, the more he thought that the numbers did indeed match. The excitement made his skin ripple and his tomcat heart pound.

So what was he going to do now? Haul all the bills away with him, down the stairs, out the glass door, and around the house in the snatching wind, then drag them across the village in broad daylight?

Well, of course he was.

And of course Marlin Dorriss wouldn't miss the contents of these files. Particularly when, the minute he opened the drawer, there would be the empty file folder sagging like an abandoned mouse skin.

He studied the fax machine that stood beside the phone. Could he fax the bills to Harper, then put them back in the file?

But that operation, if he faxed all of them, could take hours. And were faxed bills adequate evidence for the judge to issue a search warrant?

Digging deeper back in the drawer he found files for previous years' taxes, each year carefully marked, each containing similar bills, credit card on top, phone bills at the back. Dorriss was so beautifully organized that Joe wanted to give him a medal.

Lifting a packet of paid bills from an earlier year, he dropped it into the front file in place of those he had removed. Voila. Who would know? Unless of course Dorriss had reason to refer to his recently paid bills. Digging a large brown envelope from the drawer of paper supplies, he pawed the bills into it, and worked the two-pronged fastener through its punched hole. Clawing the fastener closed, he tried not to think about possible tooth marks on envelope or bills. He was pushing the file drawer closed with his shoulder, bracing his claws in the carpet, when he heard a door open in the house below, and the breeze through the slightly open window accelerated as if in a wind tunnel.

Directly below, footsteps rang across the entry tiles, a man's heavy and hurried tread. Joe heard no voice. Dorriss didn't call out as if there was anyone else in the house-if it was Dorriss. The hard footsteps moved toward the stairs and started up, muffled suddenly by the thick runner to a faint brushing sound.

Gripping the heavy envelope in his teeth, lifting it free of the floor so as to make no sound, thus nearly dislocating his neck, he hiked the package across the hall to the nearest guest room. There on the thick antique rug he hastily dragged his burden under the bed; no dead rat or rabbit had ever been more cumbersome. Beneath the bed he paused, startled.

Now he smelled cat.

Tomcat? The scent of cinnamon was too strong to be certain. And the aroma was combined with the nose-twitching stink of a woman's perfume.

Helen Thurwell's perfume? But what kind of affair was this, if she occupied a guest room? Sniffing again at the expensive scent, he thought it was too heavy to be Helen's. Whose, then? Another of Dorriss's lovers, taking her turn when Helen wasn't available? He could hear Dorriss coming softly up the carpeted stairs. He hoped to hell the window above the bed was open. He could feel no movement of air, no breeze slipping in fingering under the bed.

This room would look down to the front entry, over the angles and juttings that faced the street, over descending roofs and ledges that should give him a quick passage to freedom-if he could get out. Listening to the approaching footsteps, he caught, over the numbing perfume, a whiff of Marlin Dorriss's distinctive aftershave, an aroma he had never smelled on any other human, that he had never encountered on the village streets; only those few times when he had happened on Dorriss in a patio or shop. Maybe Dorriss had it blended just for himself. The lawyer's soft footsteps on the thick carpet turned into the master bedroom.

Joe was about to slip out and check the window above him, when the sounds from the bedroom gave him pause. Stone sliding across stone? Wood scraping stone and wood? Dorriss coughed once, then Joe heard the heavy clunk of thick metal.

A safe? Was that why the desk wasn't locked? Whatever Dorriss wanted to keep private was locked away behind a wall of metal? Joe listened to papers being shuffled, then the scrape, again, of stone on wood. Then Dorriss moved into the dressing room; Joe heard the unmistakable snap of a briefcase or suitcase, then the slide of a zipper.

Leaving the brown envelope under the bed, he slipped out and padded down the hall into the master bedroom, watching the partially open door to the dressing room where papers still rattled. He could see, on a luggage stand, a black leather suitcase lying open. Dorriss stood over it, putting in folded clothes. On the stand beside the suitcase lay a sheaf of papers, and atop the papers a black automatic. A clip and a box of bullets lay beside it, the sight of which sent ripples of alarm through the tomcat.

He'd had enough of guns. His hearing hadn't been the same since he and Dulcie played moving target in the attic above Clyde's shop, chased and shot at by counterfeiting car thieves, and Clyde tried to rescue them. That was three years ago, part of that little caper during which he and Dulcie discovered their powers of speech, and their lives had so dramatically changed. The shock of seeing one human murder another had brought out latent talents in them that they had never suspected. One of those thieves had been Kate Osborne's husband, Jimmie, who subsequently took up residence at San Quentin.

Now, looking at the gun, he considered leaving the Dorriss house at once, even without the evidence.

Oh, right. Marlin Dorriss was going to shoot an innocent cat that happened to wander in? Dorriss must like animals, if he'd left the glass door open for some household kitty.

The more specific implication of that open door Joe did not want to think about.

Worrying only briefly about his own gray hide, wondering only briefly which of his nine lives he was living at the moment, Joe waited until Dorriss turned away, then slipped past the dressing room door deeper into the bedroom.

Creamy, hand-rubbed walls greeted him; a pastel Persian rug over blackish stained hardwood floors; a seating alcove arranged with a charcoal leather love seat and chair before a dark marble coffee table.

At the other end of the room stood a king-size bed with a pale brocade spread and a dull, carved headboard and matching nightstands. On the wall opposite the fireplace, next to the double dresser, stood a huge armoire inlaid with ivory, an antique cupboard that would be large enough to hold both a small bar and a thirty-inch TV But it was the fireplace that held Joe's attention.

A portion of its ornate paneling stood open and a steel safe loomed within, its steel door also wide open.