Shirley Murphy - Cat Pay the Devil

The paint smell came from there, from one of a row of gallon cans, each featuring its own handwritten label indicating living room, kitchen, master bath, and so on. Talk about neatniks. Clyde could take a lesson here. He could see where one can had been opened, a tiny line of paint still glistening at its edge, from where Peggy had touched up her own wall. Dropping off the low shelf, he circled the garage, not sure what he expected to find. The fact that Peggy Milner’s husband had had access to this private and uninhabited space, out of sight of the neighbors, interested Joe just as it had interested Harper and Garza.

Dallas had found nothing, but Dallas didn’t have a cat’s keen sense of smell. And as Joe circled, the scent of paint followed him, as if it was not all coming from the can beneath the workbench.

The smell grew stronger near the door that would open into the house. And stronger, still, when he padded toward the corner, following a foot-high, four-inch-wide, oversize baseboard that ran the length of that one wall. He remembered, from slipping in here after mice while the builders were working, that this space had been open, then, with telephone, electrical, and cable lines running through it-an electronic life-support system from the meter and cable boxes into the dwelling.

In the corner, the smell of water-based paint came strongest, and he found a freshly painted area, dry, but still fresh. The smell was faint enough that, he supposed, a human could easily miss it.

Studying the surface at an angle, he could see where the protruding baseboard had been cut and then resealed; and beneath the smell of paint, he caught a faint scent of caulking or patching.

Dragging a paw softly over the barely dry surface, he felt a subtle, raised line beneath the fresh paint. When he looked closely, he saw not only the patch line but brush marks.

He found no paintbrush in the garage, used or otherwise.

Maybe the cable man had been here. Or the phone guy, making some change that necessitated cutting into the baseboard. Maybe they had used their own brush, and had taken it with them?

Or maybe not.

The Milners had had the garage key. If a serviceman were to be admitted, Peggy would likely have come over to let him in, and she would have told her husband. Under the circumstances, wouldn’t he have made sure to tell the cops?

Well, Peggy Milner wasn’t talking. He stood a moment, considering, his heart pounding hard. If it was just painted , where’s the paintbrush? Why would someone…? Where…?

Muttering to himself, he headed out through the doggy door, leaped to the top of the fence and over, and fled up the street to the nearest neighbor’s garbage cans, where, among multiple offensive stinks, he’d caught a whiff of paint.

He found no paint can in the recycling box. Leaping atop the closed garbage can, pawing at the handles that fastened the lid in place, he flipped them up as easily as any raccoon could have. But it was impossible to get a purchase on the lid itself and push it off while standing on it. He gave up at last, dropped down, and with a flying tackle threw his weight against the side of the can, praying no one was watching. Over it went, the lid flying, the contents spilling into the street.

Did he hear someone running and shouting? Nosing in panic among the stinking mess, he pawed aside items he didn’t care to identify-he’d taste these smells for hours-spoiled food, bleach, and…

Paint! There! Pawing aside wadded paper, he snatched up a little, damp paintbrush stuck to the lid of a tomato can.

Taking the brush carefully in his mouth, he looked for a tube of patching compound or caulking. Behind him, the running had ceased. He was still looking when softer footsteps approached behind him, making him spin around.

A small boy stood staring at him, a kid of about seven. Short black hair, a red-and-blue baseball jacket. He looked up at the house behind them. “If Mrs. Hallman sees what you did, cat, you’ll be cat skin.” He stared at the paintbrush. “What’ve you got?” Lunging, the kid tried to snatch it…But Joe Grey was gone, scorching into the bushes and behind the houses, into a thorny thicket of blackberries. That should stop the little brat.

He waited maybe twenty minutes while the kid tramped around outside the thicket pawing at the vines. Joe smiled when the kid got hung up and scratched himself good, and then at last wandered away.

Slipping out again and along through the backyards, Joe headed once more for the Blean cottage. But this time, before he went over the fence, he slipped beneath a holly bush, lay the paintbrush against the holly’s trunk where it wouldn’t get any dirtier, then stood there debating.

He’d been seen doing something very uncatlike. Even a seven-year-old had to wonder why a cat would steal a dirty paintbrush. Who would that boy decide to tell about the weird gray cat? If this kid turned up while Garza was talking with some neighbor, and if the kid opened his busy little mouth…Joe shivered.

But it couldn’t be helped. Anyway, who would take the word of a seven-year-old boy? Why would anyone believe that a cat would want a dirty paintbrush? He looked out to the street and, when he didn’t see the kid, Joe irritably dismissed him.

He had to find a phone, he didn’t want to leave the brush there very long. Maybe he could get into the Blean cottage through the inner garage door and use that phone.

But why would there be a phone in there? Why would anyone bother to pay a monthly phone bill when they weren’t there very much, when they could just use their cell phones? Even for rich folks coming down once a year on vacation or the occasional weekend, to pay for a landline seemed foolish. He looked next door to the Milner house, wondering if he could get in there, instead.

Rearing up, slipping the paintbrush higher among the prickly branches of the holly bush, he had crouched to make a dash for the Milner house, thinking first to check the windows and then the roof vents, when a patrol car pulled into the Milner drive.

Talk about serendipity. Talk about happy accident and smiling fate! Dallas Garza stepped from the car and headed directly for the Blean cottage, moving carefully through the deceased’s flower garden, clutching a key in his hand.

At about the time Joe watched Dallas cross the garden, apparently to have another look at the Blean garage, up in the hills in the Cage Jones house Lilly Jones sat at her little writing desk methodically paying the monthly bills and making her phone calls; she was relieved that that Greeley person had left, but not at all happy that her sister, Violet, had moved in on her. And without even a phone call. Well, but the poor thing had nowhere else, the helpless creature never had had any gumption. Lilly supposed she could put up with Violet for the short term. In the long run, what difference?

Nor was she unduly upset that Cage was in the hospital in intensive care; she was not wringing her hands for her brother. If Cage’s wounds to the throat and face and chest were critical enough to seriously restrict his respiratory functions, that was his fault and his problem. Fate would do with Cage what fate would do.

She had spent the hour since her breakfast dusting and vacuuming. If that woke Violet, that was too bad. She hadn’t asked Violet to move back home, into her old room. She might feel sorry for Violet, but the girl’s presence compounded Lilly’s own problems.

Still, in some respects, Violet’s proximity might make life easier for her. Thinking about Violet, back again and living there, and then about Cage in the hospital, perhaps dying, Lilly Jones smiled with a dawning contentment, and returned to paying her bills.

Watching Dallas approach the garage, Joe snatched the paintbrush from where he’d shoved it up into the bush and, trying not to drool on it, fled beneath the lavender and Mexican sage to the gate of the dog yard that Dallas would have to open to reach the garage side door.