Shirley Murphy - Cat Pay the Devil

This performance earned, the moment they were alone in the car, an incensed scolding. “Kitty , baby? Come to Papa?” The tomcat was so furious that, when Clyde tossed him into the front seat, he deliberately scratched Clyde’s hand. “If I weren’t so good-natured, I’d have bloodied your face! If you ever again call me kitty baby, I swear I’ll kill you, Clyde. Slowly and painfully, as I would disembowel a gutter rat!”

But then, because he was totally wired after what he had found, proof that Wilma had been there, Joe broke into a grin. “Actually, that was some rare performance you gave in there. Juvenile. Insulting. But crudely amusing.”

Clyde stared at the tissue that Joe had laid carefully on the seat. “What did you find? You think Wilma handled that?”

“I know she did. Wiped her lipstick and powder on it, maybe before she slipped a sweater over her head. She tried on jeans, two sweaters, and a green linen jacket, all of which she left hanging neatly in the dressing room, her scent all over them. Good-looking jacket, but not her color.”

Clyde dangled the tissue carefully by one corner, took a clean tissue from the box beneath the dash, wrapped the evidence in it, and placed it in the glove compartment. “This is evidence to us, Joe. But how do I present it to the law? What would I tell Davis?”

“I don’t know. All I know is, Wilma was there, and recently. Could you say the smear of lipstick looked like Wilma’s, so you picked it up just in case?”

Clyde raised an eyebrow.

“Let me think about it,” Joe said. “Maybe I can come up with something.” He twitched a whisker. “Tell Davis you’ve been training me to follow scent, like a tracking dog? That I found it and you’re really proud of me, that it’s the same color lipstick as Wilma’s, and you bet if they ran the DNA…”

Silently Clyde looked at him.

“Guess that wouldn’t fly, either,” Joe said.

“I guess not.”

“I personally think the concept has possibilities. A cat’s sense of smell isn’t as good as a bloodhound’s, but it’s far superior to a human’s. I could-”

“Leave it, Joe.”

Joe shrugged, and looked at the clock on the dash. “Ten of nine. I have time for one more shop.” And he leaped out before Clyde could grab him, was out the window heading for a store that, he’d noticed, featured print denim jackets, just the kind of thing Wilma liked.

Clyde shouted at him, then followed him, running-but before Joe hit the shop door, he stopped. He did a sudden, cartoon cat skid, spinning back to the curb, to the gutter where the tiny, bright corner of a credit card had caught his attention with a hint of Wilma’s scent and the faint, metallic smell of blood.

Pawing aside a crumpled paper bag, he uncovered the bent plastic card. Yes, it smelled of Wilma, all right. It had been folded the way Clyde folded his outdated credit cards when new ones arrived in the mail. He would fold the old card once, break it in half, then fold and break it again before he threw it away.

This card wasn’t broken, just bent. The name Wilma Getz was embossed clearly below the red band that bore the name of a chain bookstore for which Wilma received bonus credits. It was the red stripe across the top that had caught Joe’s attention.

The asphalt beneath where it had lain featured what was clearly a blood spot, dry but fresh. In this heat it wouldn’t take long to dry. He tried to calculate. Maybe an hour? He had no way to ascertain exactly how long since that blood had been spilled, but surely no more than three hours. He was no forensic pathologist, he was just a simple hunter who’d had a fair amount of experience with spilled blood. Taking the card in his teeth, he backed out of the gutter looking up at Clyde.

Gently Clyde reached for it, lifting it gingerly by one edge. He looked at its brightly colored logo and at Wilma’s embossed name. “What’s that on the corner? Is that blood?”

“Blood.”

“You sure?”

Joe just looked at him.

“Human blood?” Clyde asked. He had total faith in Joe’s ability to distinguish human blood from, say, mouse blood or the blood of some canine unfortunate enough to have run afoul of the tomcat.

“Human blood,” Joe said.

“That could be the blood in Wilma’s car, then. Can you tell if it’s Wilma’s blood?”

“That I can’t tell.”

Clyde looked around them, but no one was near to witness their exchange. “This,” Clyde said, “is what we came to find! This, we can show Davis. How the hell did you see this, how did you find this under that trash?”

“Saw the red stripe, then caught her scent. My superior sense of smell, and my superior wide-angle vision, combined with a far more sensitive retina that enables me to-”

“Okay! I’ve read the books. You smelled it, then you saw it.” Reaching down, Clyde gripped Joe firmly, both out of friendship and to keep him from leaping away again as they headed for the car. Joe refrained from pointing out that if he hadn’t left the car, against orders, he would never have found this piece of evidence.

Before Clyde started the engine, he laid the credit card in a clean tissue, folded the corners over, and placed it, too, in the glove compartment. Then he called Davis’s cell, switching on the speaker out of deference to Joe.

She picked up on the first ring, grunted when she heard Clyde’s voice. “I’m sitting in Chili’s with a couple of CHP guys. Sheriff’s deputy just left. I’ll meet you by the register.”

Driving the short distance across the parking lot, Clyde pulled into a slot in front of the restaurant, then looked down at Joe. “That was a long shot on Wilma’s part.”

“Maybe that was all she had time to do. She’d know there’d be a report out for her when she didn’t show up, that her name would be on every police computer…”

“The street sweeper could have picked it up, anyone could have.” Clyde removed the wrapped credit card from the glove compartment, leaving the lipstick-stained tissue. “Here comes Davis up to the front. Get in the carrier; you’re not staying here.” He gave Joe a stern look. “If I can smuggle you into Chili’s, you damn well better behave yourself. No yowling. No thrashing around making a scene.”

“When have I ever yowled and thrashed around making a scene, as you put it? I want to hear what Davis found. Order me a burger. Rare, with no-”

“I know how you like your burgers. Shut up and get in the carrier.”

J oe slunk into the cat carrier growling at Clyde, watched Clyde fasten the latches, and felt the carrier rudely snatched up and swung out of the car; the next moment they were entering Chili’s, into a heady miasma of broiled hamburger, French fries, and various rich pastas that hit the tomcat with a jolt. He hadn’t realized he was so hungry. Clyde greeted Davis and they settled into a booth, Clyde dropping Joe’s carrier on the leather seat, which smelled of uncounted occupants and of spilled mustard.

“Have you eaten?” Clyde asked her.

“No,” Davis said. “Nothing but coffee, I’m awash in it.”

Joe, if he sat tall in the carrier, could see the sturdily built detective across the table, her short black hair smooth and clean, her dark uniform regulation severe. Where most detectives wore civilian clothes, easy and comfortable, Juana Davis preferred a uniform. Joe’s theory was, she felt that it made her look slimmer. “I’m starved,” she said, picking up her menu.

When the hostess came, glancing apprehensively into the carrier, Clyde said, “Just got off the plane. Trained cat, very valuable. He does movie work.” The yellow luggage ticket hanging from the handle was an excellent touch, and seemed to impress the thin, swarthy waitress.