Shirley Murphy - Cat Fear No Evil

"I can't talk now. You're where?"

Pause. Against all good sense, Joe remained listening, gripping the envelope in his teeth.

"What the hell are you doing there? What the hell made you take off? Call me back, I can't talk.'"

Silence, then an intake of breath. Then, "You're telling me the truth?"

Pause. Then, "All right, get on with it. That's very nice indeed. Then you need to get back here. I told you not to play these games with your little friends. They've made a mess, and you'll have to clean it up. I don't want any more of your childish pranks, I can't afford to deal with that stupidity, and I won't have it rubbing off on me. Get back here fast, my dear, and take care of this."

A soft click as Dorriss hung up. Joe crouched on the sill, his teeth dug into the envelope, adjusting his weight-and-trajectory ratio, eyeing a lower roof. With the extra baggage, if he missed his mark he'd drop like a rock, two stories to the stone terrace.

But he didn't want to toss the envelope, let it fall and maybe split open, spill the evidence all over Dorriss's front yard, to be snatched and sucked away in the sea wind.

He took a deep breath and was airborne-airborne but falling heavily, his usual buoyancy gone. His ability to twist in the air had deserted him. He felt like a rock, a flung boulder. Falling, he was falling…

He landed on the little roof scrabbling with frantic claws, five feet to the left of the window and five feet below, coming down with a thud that shook him clear to his ears.

But he was all in one piece and, more to the point, so was the envelope. He was poised to jump again when a sound to his right stopped him. Made his blood turn to ice, made him search the low roofs.

A dark little gargoyle stared up at him. Crouched on the edge of the tiles, Kit watched him wide eyed, but then stared suddenly past him at the window above, at the sill he had just abandoned. Her voice was a terrified hiss. "Jump, Joe! He's coming! Jump! He's opening the shutters! Jump now! Drop that thing and jump!"

Earlier that morning, the kit had seen Joe Grey heading for the police department as she prowled the roofs alone thinking about Lucinda and Pedric, mourning them, deeply missing them. Wandering the peaks and shingles feeling flat and sad, she had seen Joe Grey below, galloping up the sidewalk, headed somewhere in a hurry. Coming down, she had followed him and when he galloped through the courthouse gardens, of course she had followed. But then he turned and saw her, and instead of his usual friendly ear twitch, inviting her to join him, he'd given her a hiss, a leave-me-alone snarl, and had cruelly sent her away again. Or he thought he had.

Slinking away through the bushes hurt and angry, she had turned when he wasn't looking, and followed him to the front door of the PD. Had watched him slip inside on the heels of the judge's secretary. The tall blonde, delivering a sheaf of papers, took no notice of the gray tomcat padding in behind her. The kit wanted to follow, but he'd been so cross she daren't. And then only a minute later a delivery boy hurried up the street carrying a big white bag of takeout that smelled of pastrami and made her lick her whiskers, and she had watched the dispatcher buzz the boy through.

Joe Grey had gone in there to share the captain's lunch and had sent her away alone. Feeling incredibly hurt and sad, and mad too-all claws and hisses-she didn't even want to beg lunch by charming some likely tourist in one of the sidewalk cafes as she so often did. She felt totally alone and abandoned. She had no one. Lucinda and Pedric were gone forever. And this morning, Dulcie had rudely slipped off without her. And now Joe Grey didn't want her. How cruelly he had driven her away.

All alone, with no one to care about her, she climbed to the roof of the PD and hunched down in the oak tree. There she waited for nearly an hour angry and lonely, until Joe Grey came out again. But then, leaving the station, he was not licking his whiskers, he did not look happily fed. He looked so gaunt and hungry himself that that made her feel better. Much better.

She watched him crouch in the geraniums drinking hungrily from an automatic bubbler that watered the courthouse gardens, then he took off fast, heading across the village. The kit followed. Joe was so interested in wherever he was going that he paid no attention now to who might be behind him. He was all hustle, dodging people's feet and up trees and across roofs, his ears pricked, his stub tail straight out behind. She trailed him five blocks to Ocean and across Ocean among the feet of tourists and on again to the fine big house that looked like a museum from the front and was all glass at the back.

Sneaking low and carefully the kit had followed him around the side of the house and saw him go in through an open glass door. Hiding in the shadowy bushes that grew among the boulders, she watched him enter that big house through an open slider. Was that door open for him} He sniffed the door, then went right on in, as bold as if he lived there. When he had gone inside she pressed her nose against the door, looking.

Joe had disappeared. She peered into the room, then she followed her nose. Joe's scent led across the huge big room that had brightly colored caves all around, all elegantly furnished, so many places to play and to hide. She investigated one fascinating niche then another, rubbing and rolling, racing across the backs of the couches and trying her claws in the brocade. Sniffing leather and velvet, exploring every single object in every single room, she never did find Joe Grey. At last she approached the stairs.

But looking up that broad, angled flight, the kit stopped and backed away. What was up there? Joe had been up there a long time. What was he doing? She had heard no sound, no thump of paws, and she was frightened. She was standing undecided, looking up, when she heard a car park out in front, heard the car door open and close, then a man's footsteps on the stone terrace. Quick she hid behind the closest chair, crouching against the thick, soft velvet.

The kit knew Marlin Dorriss. Didn't everyone in the village know him? He was a philanthropist, whatever that meant, and a womanizer. She knew what that word meant. Wilma said he was usually circumspect in his personal life and that meant quiet and careful like a hunting cat. Except he wasn't circumspect about Helen Thurwell. Marlin Dorriss was tall and slim, with a lovely tan, beautiful deep brown eyes, and short-clipped white hair. Handsome, and kind looking.

But as he crossed the big room and headed up the stairs where Joe Grey had gone, she felt afraid.

She couldn't race up the stairs past him to warn Joe. But she could slip out, and around to the front, and maybe, if she could gain the angled roofs and ledges, she could get inside.

Scooting through the bushes to the front of the house she clawed and scrabbled her way up bits of wall and across slabs of roof, looking above her for an open window-and then suddenly above her, a window slid open.

And there was Joe Grey. She saw his white paw slide the glass back, saw him press between the glass and the shutter with a huge packet in his mouth. He remained so for some time, staring back into the room. Then he crouched as if someone was coming and leaped into space twisting to land on a roof below. Above him, Marlin Dorriss appeared; she could see him at the next window. She choked back a cry. Joe stared down at her.

"Jump," she hissed. "He's coming! Jump! He's opening the shutters! Jump now! Drop that thing and jump!"

Then everything happened at once. Dorriss closed the shutters and turned away, and Joe leaped to the next angle with the brown paper bundle, then leaped again to the concrete. The bundle split open just at the edge of the bushes. In the wind, papers began to flap and dance. Kit had never seen Joe move so fast. Grabbing a mouthful of papers he pulled the package under the bushes and was back again snatching up more. The kit leaped.