Shirley Murphy - Cat to the Dogs

Listening to the delivery truck pull away, he hauled the white paper bag in through his cat door and enjoyed, on the living-room rug, a nice selection of smoked herring, sliced Tilsit, and cracked crab. It was these little added luxuries that made his peculiar talents well worth the trouble they caused him. When he had finished eating, he pawed the containers back into the bag, licked up all telltale crumbs from the carpet, and carried the bag through the kitchen, out the dog door, and over the back fence.

Glancing at the next-door neighbor's windows and seeing no one looking out, he stuffed the evidence into their trash. Clyde wouldn't know a thing until he got his deli bill-then he'd pitch a royal fit.

Clyde didn't know a thing about the stabbing, either, when he got home from work. Only what he saw in the evening Gazette. After reading the front page he glanced at Joe, but made no offer to call Harper and glean a few additional facts. Joe wasn't about to ask him for that kind of favor. He'd be back on cheap, cardboard-flavored kitty kibble that hadn't passed his whiskers since his kitten days in San Francisco.

As it turned out, it was Wilma who got the particulars about the Chambers stabbing, and told Dulcie. Joe found Dulcie on the back fence in her usual perch. "You might as well move your bed and supper bowl up here," he said, settling down beside her.

She hissed gently and lifted a soft paw as if to belt him. "Something's going on. Dirken and Newlon are all worked up, really hassling Lucinda. You can't hear a thing, even with the windows open, with all those women in the kitchen. Can't they wash the dishes without so much jabber?"

Dirken and Newlon stood before the hearth looking down at Lucinda where she sat in her favorite chair, sipping her after-dinner coffee. She looked drawn into herself, tense, glaring up at them. Both men were talking at once. The cats couldn't make out their words, but they were apparently interrogating her.

"Chambers is more or less out of danger," Dulcie told Joe. "That rusty knife had sand from the park on it; forensics is pretty sure that's what was buried-it might have lain there for years, maybe a dog dug it up, or a transient making his camp, and the attacker found it."

"Harper's not assuming that Chambers was stabbed by a transient?"

"Of course he isn't. You know Harper better than that. Chambers was on the boat that night. Don't you suppose Harper's digging, don't you suppose he's got his teeth into this!"

"How did you…?"

"Wilma happened to drop into the Iron Horse, earlier this evening. A special favor, for yours truly." Harper often ate at the Iron Horse when he was working late.

"That's all she found out," Dulcie said. "It's all the police know, so far. Wilma said Harper had that tight, preoccupied look he gets when he's caught up in a tangle of evidence, when he's digging for the missing pieces."

She returned her attention to the parlor window. "Dirken and Newlon tried all through dinner to get Lucinda to talk about the stabbing, to tell them what she saw this morning.

"It was Lucinda who called 911. She told them she'd been out walking, saw the man lying there when she came across the park to use that awful rest room, that she thought he was asleep. Then she saw the blood. She ran to the phone, there between the men's and women's, but it was out of order. She hurried back to the village and called the station. She told Dirken that the rest is public knowledge-they could read it in the Gazette."

Joe grinned. "So why all the fuss? They think she saw something more?"

"Evidently. They're pretty wrought up."

"You think they stabbed Chambers? That they're afraid Lucinda saw them?"

"Maybe. Or maybe they want the goods on whoever did. Well, they've finished with the dishes," she said, glaring in at the Greenlaw women as they trooped toward the parlor.

Dirken and Newlon had pulled up chairs facing Lucinda; they sat forward, pressing their questions at her. The kitchen crew wandered in silently and found places to sit-an eager audience, all watching Lucinda.

"But you must have seen something else," Dirken was saying. "And why were you in the park at that hour? Just to say you went walking, Aunt Lucinda, doesn't make any sense. Who else was there?"

"Enough!" Lucinda snapped. She stood up, scowling down at them. "That is enough. Stop it, both of you. I have had quite my fill of this."

The cats watched with amazement. All the family was quiet, shocked that Lucinda was no longer a bystander in her own home, that she had made herself the center. Standing so fiercely, glaring at them, her very frailty seemed to increase her sudden surprising power. The cats thought she was going to say something about the stabbing; but instead, folding her hands before her in the traditional stance, Lucinda prepared to tell a tale-as if putting the subject of the stabbing behind her, letting the Greenlaws know that the matter was closed.

Whether the old lady was becoming stronger in dealing with Shamas's family, or whether this was a move of extreme desperation, to gain a little peace, was uncertain. Standing in the place of storyteller, so skillfully did Lucinda lay out her tale that soon she had drawn them all in. The stabbing seemed forgotten- and they were carried into a story that surprised Dulcie, that made her fur prickle with excitement, made the tip of her tail twitch, and made Joe Grey fidget uncomfortably.

"It is an American Indian tale," Lucinda said, "one I have read in three sources, as told by three different tribes. I don't believe the story springs from any Celtic telling; I don't believe there is any connection. But yet it is the same tale that comes from the Celtic lands.

"It is peopled with the same enchanted beings, it tells of the same lost world. The Iroquois call it 'The Tale of the First People.'

"In the beginning," Lucinda said softly, "in the beginning of the world all living things, all beasts, all men, all reptiles and insects and birds dwelt in the netherworld that lies below our plains and mountains. All was darkness in that place save for a thin green light that glowed down from the granite sky.

"In those days the animals could speak, and many of them were shapeshifters. Human hunters would turn themselves into ponies. Great eagles flying beneath the granite skies could transmute into warriors. There were women and men who could slip from hearth to hearth in the form of cats but soon were gone again, unwilling to warm for long any hearth but their own.

"The cat folk had their own cities among the hidden mountains, their netherworld caves fashioned into soft-cushioned bowers rich with carven furnishings, their walls set with pictures made from turquoise and jade.

"One day when a princess of that people was digging at the roof of her cave, carving a new sleeping bower, she dug though into vast space. Her paw thrust out, into the upper world.

"Shining through the paw-sized hole was a blaze of light that made the cat maiden cry out in fear. All the clan came running. The bravest crouched, squinting through the hole up into a gleaming and endless sky.

"And the boldest among the cat folk dug the hole larger and slipped through, up onto the face of the earth, with only emptiness above them.

"Soon other netherworld folk gathered, creatures from the hell-pit, the bird folk and serpent folk and then the giants, all peeping out into the upper world.

"Many turned away again, too afraid to step out beneath that bright sky, but not the cat folk. They went up into that world digging and clawing their way, and not until evening came and the ball of fire rode through the sky toward the mountains, were the cats afraid.

"They watched the sun sink down behind the peaks. They saw the sky grow dark, and they thought that by entering this land they had made the gods angry. They slept close together that night, crowded beneath a rocky ledge, sure that their spirits were doomed.