Shirley Murphy - Cat Pay the Devil

When she’d left the last store, heading for her car, the low sun had shone sharply in her eyes. Now, as they traveled west, it would be shining in Cage’s eyes. Too low for the visor to block the glare? Was he wearing dark glasses? If not, and the sun was half blinding him, could she do something to make him swerve and crash? But the odds of doing that weren’t good. Tied up in her own car, she’d be unable to escape such a wreck.

Certainly no one was looking for her, not yet. No one in Molena Point would expect her at any given time-except Dulcie, she thought, feeling sad, and yet knowing hope, too. When she didn’t come home, when she hadn’t pulled into the garage by dark, her friends, if they called, would simply think she was delayed, as any woman shopping might be, or that she was in heavy traffic. But Dulcie would be pacing, the little cat would be growing frantic. Knowing Dulcie, it wouldn’t be long until she started raising some hell. She’d call Clyde, then Charlie. One way or another, she’d alert Max Harper. Max would go by the house and, when she didn’t appear long after dark and they couldn’t rouse her on her cell phone, he’d have every cop in northern California looking for her.

She wasn’t carrying her purse, only a fanny pack; her purse was locked in the trunk, and her phone locked in the glove compartment with her gun. Maybe Cage hadn’t used her key, yet, to gain access, to find her weapon and her phone, and play back her messages. And what was the difference? So someone was worried about her? That would be of little interest to Cage. Let them worry.

Did anyone else know Cage had escaped? Had it been in the papers, or on the news? In fact, had the jailers themselves done a head count and realized he was gone? Or had he pulled off something so slick that he hadn’t yet come up missing? Slipups could escalate; jails were overcrowded and shorthanded; men traded identities, bought their way out with help from friends. Knowing Cage, that’s what he would have tried. But whatever had come down, or would, right now, Wilma put most of her hope in one lonely and worried little tabby; thoughts of Dulcie stirring up some action helped considerably to soothe her.

Cage’s window was down, and the hot air grew cooler, the light through the blindfold dimming as evening drew down. When the car took a right off the freeway, she eased up to listen; she could hear less traffic now. Soon they made another turn, and their speed decreased as they climbed up a bumpy road. Sniffing the air, she caught the scent of dry grass, then later of pine and eucalyptus trees, so they had to be heading up into the coastal hills. There was a lot of empty land up there along the higher ridges, above the small horse farms and ranches. Was Cage making for some sparsely populated region where a body could be dumped and maybe never found?

Oh , Dulcie. If they don’t find me, you mustn’t grieve. I love you. Please , go live with Joe and Clyde , or with Kit and the Greenlaws. Take care of yourself. Please , do what’s best for you. The pine scent was sharper now, carried on a welcome cool breeze that hushed, high above her, through tall trees. There was no longer any light through the blindfold; she rode in darkness, bumping along to…where?

A t dusk, up on the open hills where the hot grass blew brown and rattling, ten feral cats paced nervously along a broken stone wall, watching the hills below for the hunting beasts that roamed the hills and for invading and curious humans; the clowder of cats was always alert and wary as they roamed among the estate’s fallen rooms and ragged walls and overgrown weedy rosebushes. Below them down the falling hills, all the world lay open, wild and empty, and close around them among fallen stone and hidden cellars where the shadows lay thick, all was silent and still. There was nothing to disturb them, this hot summer evening, but the ten cats paced, lashing their tails, wary and nervous: The human woman had come again into the ruins: the wraithlike young woman who came too often, hurrying stealthily down from the scattered small houses in the hills high above, a pale creature, half child, half woman, as skinny as a starving bird. Always, she crept into the rotting, overgrown old travel trailer that had ages ago been hidden among the fallen walls. She would lurk in there like a mouse in a rusting can, as if seeking privacy and quiet, as if wanting to hide there.

The trailer seemed a part of the vines that covered it, as if they had grown right into its metal skin. It must have been hauled up the little dirt road countless years ago, and pushed by men in among the half-fallen walls and left to rot. Even when their feral band had first come to live in this place, they had not, beneath its heavy mantle of ivy, discovered the trailer for nearly a week. It was not visible, even to a cat, from more than a few feet away. Willow had found it, her inquisitive nose following the stink of mildew.

Once they had discovered and investigated it, and had determined that no beast had taken up residence there, they had slipped away nervously, and had afterward avoided the rusting box, giving it a wide berth. But the thin, pale girl-woman, walking so sad, always wary and sad, liked to hide there.

The trailer could not be seen from the narrow dirt road below; that road hadn’t been used since the cats had come to live there. Nor could the top of it be glimpsed from the wooded hills above; Cotton had gone up there to look. No human ever came down through these woods from the far houses except the human girl slipping down into their own realm of shadows like a lost spirit from some ancient Celtic ballad. This band of cats knew the old myths, for they were part of their own history. These little, wild cats knew that they were out of place in this world. They were survivors in a world where such beasts were said not to exist, where humans no longer believed in such creatures. They were trapped in a world they didn’t understand and that would never understand them. With their human intelligence and human perceptions, they had learned to survive, to take what they needed from mankind and remain apart. But now, looking down to the sea, stained with the reds of sunset, and to the glinting rooftops of the far village, their thoughts were filled with the unwanted concerns that had reached out to touch them. Willow paced the wall, the faded calico hissing with agitation, and warily the others watched her, knowing well her strange perceptions, and sharply attentive to her fear. For Willow and Coyote and Cotton had friends in the village. This last winter when the weather was cold and wet, three village cats and their humans had saved them from a cage and set them free-three cats like themselves, who could speak with humans. Three who had chosen to live among humans.

Now, something was not right among those three; sharply Willow sensed Dulcie’s unease. “What?” she whispered. “What is this distress for tabby Dulcie, what has happened that makes her pace and shiver?” She looked at Cotton and Coyote, but they couldn’t sense what she felt-though on the wall beside her, the two toms paid attention. As had the other ferals, all seven, who had vanished uneasily among the stones and caverns.

Clyde Damen was more than uneasy. Switching lanes fast in his old open roadster, dodging village traffic, he swerved in front of a bread truck, so the driver slammed on his brakes, blasted his horn, and yelled obscenities; but then the man stared down at Clyde’s classic yellow Chevy and grinned with admiration and motioned Clyde ahead. Clyde gave him a thumbs-up, went in front of him and wheeled across Ocean, heading for Wilma’s cottage. He didn’t know how he’d explain his swift arrival to the law. He’d think of something to tell Harper. He’d say he’d called Wilma to see if she was home and wanted to catch dinner, that when she hadn’t answered he’d decided to run by, and there were Harper’s squad cars all over. Looking frantically for a place to park among the patrol units, he ended up two blocks away, squeezing the roadster in between a couple of old pickups, swinging out of the car, and hurrying back to Wilma’s.