Shirley Murphy - Cat Pay the Devil

Crowding against Kit, Dulcie peered between two slats.

Faded brown couch, faded chairs long overdue for recovering. One frilly lamp lit with a low-watt, dull bulb. Mothy-looking afghans folded over the upholstered chair and couch backs, as if to hide excessive wear. And on the walls, dusty-looking needlework pictures of flowers and square-faced dogs crammed between a collection of huge, ugly masks. What an unsettling combination, the prim, prissy needlework and the rude, primitive faces, crudely made and garishly colored: the faces of devils with their mouths open and tongues sticking out, the heads of snarling jungle beasts with fangs bared and dark holes for eyes, each aboriginal face adorned with jutting feathers.

Even in the history and art books Dulcie liked to browse through in the midnight library, she had never seen uglier masks. The effect of so many huge, violent faces leering down into that stumpy, fussy, old-fashioned room was totally off-putting-as if evil spirits had thrust through the walls, an out-of-control primitive world breaking into that dull, proper house.

Greeley Urzey sat on the couch, a fusty, rumpled old man as out of place in the prim room as were the wild masks. He and Lilly spoke so softly that, even with their excellent hearing, the cats could make little of the conversation.

“Why is he here?” Dulcie said. “He and Cage went to school together, but…Could this have to do with Wilma? Greeley hates Wilma…Is Greeley part of this? Is Wilma locked in there, and Greeley guarding her?” She looked helplessly at Kit. “We have to get in…Maybe the basement?”

Kit shivered, not wanting to be shut in that house with Greeley Urzey. That old man knew about speaking cats, and he knew they were close to the law. For that alone he hated them.

“Come on,” Dulcie said, dropping from the windowsill, down to the bushes, to circle the house again. But as they rounded the corner, Kit paused in a flower bed. Resigned to Dulcie’s determination, she looked up past a scrawny jasmine vine to a high, small window.

“Bathroom window?” Kit said. “Would she bother to lock that? No human could get through that.”

“And I doubt a cat can get up that vine,” Dulcie said, “without tearing it from the wall-spindly thing doesn’t look strong enough to hold a mouse.” But, testing it, she started up anyway, heading gingerly for the little window.

Tied in a hard, straight-backed chair, Wilma couldn’t move without the tight ropes cutting into her arms and ankles. The worst was the tight bandana binding her eyes. She fought panic at being unable to see where she was, to see what-or who-was near her.

At least he’d removed the tape from across her mouth, had ripped it off, surely taking half her skin with it, saying, “You can yell now, bitch. Yell all you want, there’s not a soul to hear you or to care.”

There’d been a time when Cage wouldn’t have dared call her bitch. The room was so hot, the blindfold and her jacket so constricting she felt locked in a straightjacket. She was not a woman given to hysterics, but she felt very near the edge. Only her deep anger at Cage kept her fear at bay. She could not deal with him if she fell apart. If he ever returned, to be dealt with. If he did not simply leave her to starve or die of thirst. She was painfully thirsty. She tried not to think about water. She felt close to pure terror, and she must not let that happen. She had dealt with criminals most of her adult life. She was not going to give way now.

Cage had driven her car up into the hills somewhere, up a long, winding gravel road. Blinded, able only to listen, she had tried to sense where they were, tried, as well, to catch some familiar scent on the breeze, the way an animal would do.

He had parked on a gravel drive or yard. When he cut the engine, she’d heard the other car pull up behind them. Forcing her out of the car, Cage had untied her ankles long enough for her to walk across gravel and then rough, rocky earth, his hand bruising her arm as he roughly guided her. She’d smelled eucalyptus and pine trees, and had heard above her the faint swish of wings, then a few birds chirping. He’d pushed her up three wooden steps and through a door that slammed behind them. She heard him lock it, didn’t hear the other man enter. He forced her across a rough wooden floor, pushing her to avoid her falling over furniture. The place smelled of dust and sour, rotting wood. When he shoved her into the straight-backed chair, she’d tried to talk to him, had felt so hindered because she couldn’t see him.

“What is it, Cage? What do you want from me? How did you get out? Whatever you did, it had to be pretty clever.”

He’d refused to be suckered by that. And had refused to remove the blindfold.

“For heaven’s sake, tell me what this is about. Maybe I can-”

“Where is it!” he’d barked.

“Where is what?”

“You know what! That day you searched my place, you and Bennett and the frigging DEA!”

“That was ten years ago!”

“Don’t matter. You have it, or had it, and I want it back-or want what you got for it.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t know what you want.”

“You know damn well. You two took it, and I want it now. All of it.”

“I honestly don’t know. You’ll have to tell me, or we’ll be here forever.”

“That day after the friggin’ feds left, you and Bennett were there by yourselves. There a long time, Lilly told me. You went through the house again and I want what you took. That’s stealing, stealing by federal officers. How do you think that would look. The newspapers would love to get hold of that.”

“So tell them.”

“First, I’m giving you a chance. Trying to treat you nice in spite of what you did. Lilly was there, she’s my witness. It’s mine, bitch. I want it back, now.”

“What did Lilly say we took? I can’t imagine your sister lying.”

Lilly Jones was the opposite of Cage in every way. She had always seemed an honest, straightlaced woman who believed in obeying the law. Opposite even in looks-Cage big boned, oversized, and bullish. Lilly frail, and as thin as a sick bird. Lilly Jones spoke little; when she did speak, her attitude was wooden and impassive, stolid to the point of insensibility. The younger sister, Violet, was even more withdrawn. But at least Violet had had the good sense to marry and get out. Or, it had seemed to be good sense at the time. Wilma heard later that she’d married an abuser. Violet had not been in evidence during the time Wilma supervised Cage, so she had never met the girl.

She realized suddenly that Cage had her purse, she could hear him going through it, and he began to comment on the pictures in her billfold. Until that moment she had convinced herself that she could talk Cage out of whatever this was about; she had assumed that only she was in danger. Now, suddenly, she was far more afraid.

“Pretty redhead.” Cage’s voice told her he was smirking. “Maybe if you don’t want to give me what’s mine, don’t want to save yourself, you’ll like to save them that’s close to you.”

She hadn’t answered, had gone cold inside, and felt herself tremble. She heard him toss her purse aside, and then a small rustling as if he was flipping slowly through the packet of photographs she’d tucked in the bag.

“From these pictures,” Cage said, “looks like this redhead lives up in the hills. Lives pretty fancy, too, them horses and all. Nice big house like that, that tall peaked roof and glass and all, should be easy to spot from the road, even if you don’t have her address in here. Isn’t that Hellhag Hill rising up behind?

“Why, here’s another picture, and she’s getting married. That’s you, there, the flower girl or whatever. Must be a real close friend. Or a relative? Why, I believe that there’s your niece, the one they call Charlie.”