Shirley Murphy - Cat to the Dogs

"But the next morning, the sun returned. The cat people came out to preen in its warmth, and they knew that they were blessed, that this bright world welcomed them.

"They wandered away over the land in every direction, and soon made this world their own. So the folk-of-the-cat came to our world," Lucinda told. "And so they have come and gone ever since, returning to the netherworld when they choose, living in both worlds and in both forms, sometimes cat, sometimes human.

"And if there are cat folk in the upper world who can no longer change their form, it is because they have strayed too far from their beginnings, because they have forgotten the ancient ways."

Lucinda turned from the hearth. The Greenlaws nodded and sighed with satisfaction. As Lucinda moved away from the storyteller's place, Pedric reached to take her hand, in a tender and personal gesture.

Dirken watched the two old people with a cold scowl. Newlon turned away, his look uncomfortable.

And on the fence beneath the maple branches, tears rolled down Dulcie's whiskers, their wet streaks marking her dark fur. The tale filled her with excitement and it scared her; it made her feel more than herself. The emotions it stirred turned her giddy.

But Joe Grey leaped from the fence up into the maple's highest branches, his ears back, his scowl deep.

He didn't like tales of a netherworld. Didn't like anything to do with his and Dulcie's mysterious history. Being himself, being Joe Grey, was quite enough. He didn't hold with some amazing and frightening past. He needed only himself and his loving lady.

Dulcie was still purring extravagantly when Dirken and Newlon came out the back door and sat down on the steps. Newlon produced a pack of Camels, and they lit up.

Newlon said, "You think she saw something more, on the beach this morning?"

Dirken shrugged. "More to the point, you think she heard anything?"

Newlon turned to look at him. "Did you do him, Dirken?"

Dirken stared at Newlon, drawing on his cigarette. "Hell, no. Didn't you?"

"I swear."

But Dirken kept looking. "You did him. Stands to reason."

Newlon turned to glance behind them through the screen as two large, aproned women began moving about in the kitchen, filling the coffeepot and cutting pieces of pie. Scowling, Newlon and Dirken shuffled a little more, then tossed away their cigarettes and went back inside.

The cats, highly irritated at the vague and unfinished conversation, galloped away along the fence and headed up into the hills to hunt, Joe Grey so frustrated by the lack of solid facts that he felt like attacking the biggest granddaddy wharf rat he could find, launching into a raking, screaming battle.

WILMA LEFT her desk at the automotive agency just before noon, hurriedly smoothing her gray hair and snatching up her purse, frantic to get out of the tiny salesman's cubicle before she started throwing heavy objects through its glass walls. Working in a transparent box made her feel like a lab specimen.

Well, the job was only temporary. She'd be glad to get back to work at the library. She hadn't planned to use her month's vacation working a second job, even if it was proving more interesting than she'd anticipated. She had spent the morning running a credit check on the out-of-town purchaser of a white-and-cream Jaguar XJR. What she'd found had her most interested. With her mind on the buyer's skillfully forged IDs, she glanced across the automotive showroom, past the drive-through that separated it from Clyde's repair shop, and she had to laugh.

Clyde had brought one of the pups to work, had left him tied just inside the glass door of the automotive-repair wing of the building, the pup all groomed and polished and sitting on a new plaid dog bed. All Clyde needed was a hand-lettered sign advertising the pup's many virtues.

Who knew, maybe Clyde would find Selig a home among his customers; most of them were well-to-do; surely it would take someone with money to feed that big fellow and care for him.

Hurrying down Ocean, enjoying the sun and the cool breeze skimming in off the Pacific, Wilma puzzled over her last three loan applicants.

The first credit scams she'd investigated when she started work for Sheril Beckwhite, had occurred over a two-month period. From these, she had passed to Max Harper enough information to launch seven police investigations.

But then this past week the action had heated up. She'd had five new applicants with impeccable credit ratings; her phone calls to their home numbers had been answered by a wife or by household staff. Their social security numbers, driver's licenses, all records corresponded to information filed in the issuing departments across the country. All were excellent credit risks. Each buyer had made a minimum down payment with a personal check, taking out the maximum loan; two had said they needed the tax write-off.

She'd turned them all down. It was after requesting hard-copy records from the archives of the various agencies, asking them not to use their computer information, but to go back to the originals, that she came up with the discrepancies. Every one was a scam.

Entering Birtd's Grocery through the back door near the deli, she was mulling over the legality, under today's criminal-friendly courts, of fingerprinting all loan applicants and running them through NCIC before approving their loans. The idea made her smile-too bad it would never fly.

She thought about her early days in Probation and Parole, when information was so much harder to gather-long before computers, before the statistics available through National Crime Information Center-back in the horse-and-buggy days, she thought, grinning.

Heading for the deli, she heard angry voices from the front of the store, and spotted gentle-natured Lewis Birtd near the bread display. He was arguing with an irate tourist, a dark-haired, meaty woman dressed in a sloppy Hawaiian shirt and baggy shorts, pushing a baby in its stroller and hauling a two-year-old by the arm.

Birtd's Grocery, located among the village motels, catered heavily to the more affluent tourists. Mr. Birtd carried a fine selection of the nicer party and snack foods and good wines, specializing in the two local wineries, and a complete line of imported beers and ales. He stocked only carefully selected fruits and vegetables and the finest meats. His deli was not as extensive as George Jolly's, but what he did provide was delicious and nicely presented. Local residents stopped by Birtd's for dinnerparty items and for sudden whims. Though for everyday purchases-of hamburger, bulk rice, and canned tomatoes, for cat food and paper towels-village folk went up the valley to one of the three grocery chains, all of which offered discounts in a constant competition that kept prices down and the residents of Molena Point coming back

Waiting at the deli counter for her avocado-and-prosciutto-on-rye and a container of dilled coleslaw, Wilma listened with interest and then concern to the quickly accelerating argument at the front of the store; the woman seemed to be claiming that Mr. Birtd had sold her an open box of cookies and that the cookies had made her children sick The children didn't look sick. Mr. Birtd didn't seem to know quite what to do with the woman. Her tirade had grown so heated that Wilma wondered if diminutive Lewis Birtd was in physical danger. When a second altercation broke out near the checkout counters, a puzzled unease gripped her. She craned to see.

A woman in a bright dirndl skirt and loose black jacket had backed Frederick Birtd into a corner beside the shelves of pickles, upbraiding him so violently that poor Frederick shuffled with embarrassment.