Shirley Murphy: Cat Pay the Devil

Kit’s frustration notwithstanding, the answers did come, the first, early the following morning. Kit woke to the ringing of the phone. She rolled over on the big bed as Lucinda picked up. Lucinda listened, then turned on the speaker so Pedric and Kit could listen.

“Cage Jones died at four this morning,” Wilma said. “The hospital called Max, and Charlie called me. She was crying.”

“Oh dear,” Lucinda said, swinging out of bed and feeling for her slippers. Beside her, Kit shivered. Charlie had killed a man and, no matter how casual a cat might feel about taking another creature’s life, Charlie was a tender human.

“What can we do?” Lucinda said.

“She’ll be all right,” Wilma said. “She’s strong, it just takes time. She knows very well that she saved lives that night. Max said that as soon as he can get away they’re going to saddle up and take that week’s ride down the coast that they’ve been planning, take some time alone together.”

That same day, Violet Jones moved back into her childhood home with Lilly, and found a part-time job waiting tables. And it was later that week that Greeley Urzey left the village, just disappeared, didn’t tell Mavity he was going. “Just like him,” Mavity said. “He shows up, makes trouble, and vanishes.” Greeley checked out of his motel at five A.M., the day after Cage’s fence, in San Francisco, ID’d Cage and Greeley as having sold him illegal gold huacas. The fence had studied pictures from Interpol that identified the pieces he’d bought as having been stolen in several Panamanian burglaries. When federal officers went to arrest Greeley, he was gone. He had sold his car two days before to a private party. If he got on a plane, he’d used a fake ID. The feds were still looking for his trail on the day of Cage Jones’s funeral, which was delayed while forensics determined whether Max’s.38 or shotgun pellets had killed Cage, though the question was academic. It was a week before the funeral when Lilly Jones disappeared.

Violet called Wilma to say that Lilly was gone. She wasn’t crying. She didn’t know why Lilly had left; she said they’d been getting along just fine. Her voice was stiff, but Wilma thought that, secretly, she was pleased. She told Wilma that Lilly’s bank account had been closed and that she had left a large check, telling Violet to open her own account in order to pay future household bills. Lilly’s note said there was no mortgage, and that, with Cage’s death, Violet owned half the house. That she would have to pay the taxes, and insurance, and upkeep. Lilly did not leave a forwarding address. She took only a few clothes and the one good suitcase. She explained that Violet couldn’t sell the house, of course, without Lilly, but that if Lilly decided to release her half, she would send a legal paper to that effect. She did not take the old Packard, but transferred the registration to Violet. She did not make airline reservations under her own name.

There were no charges against Lilly Jones. But Max gave the information to Interpol. Violet, when she checked with the bank to be sure Lilly’s account was indeed closed, learned that Lilly had also relinquished her large safe-deposit box. At this time, two abused village women left their homes, seeking shelter and protection, and Violet, while waiting tables at the Patio Café, toyed with the idea of taking in such women as roomers, for mutual support. She thought about this during Cage’s graveside service, which she witnessed apparently without emotion, turning away when it was finished, dry-eyed and composed.

Hidden among the tombstones behind Violet and the few others present, the three cats waited. The morning was hot, overcast, and muggy. The service was short. Lilly’s minister did not seem inclined to go on at much length about the life or virtues of Cage Jones. The selections he read from the Bible were blandly generic. Violet spoke no words of cleansing or of memory on Cage’s behalf. Cage Jones’s funeral was a glum affair. In the arrangements Lilly had made for it before she vanished, she seemed concerned only about doing the minimum civil duty and being done with her brother. The cats, curled up in the shadow of a nearby granite monument, looked sadly at one another. To possess human life, and to have so squandered it that one departed accompanied only by hatred or indifference-that was, in their eager feline minds, indeed a terrible waste. They felt no grief for Cage Jones; they felt only disgust. What each of them wondered about, and grieved over, was the emptiness and waste.

They watched Wilma and Charlie turn away and leave the cemetery with Max and Dallas, watched Violet leave alone. When the handful of people was gone, they waited patiently until the backhoe had arrived and the grave was unceremoniously covered with earth, and then sod laid over it.

Then, alone, Joe Grey approached the grave.

And now, smiling with a sad but perverse sense of humor, the tomcat dug a hole in the center of Cage Jones’s grave, dug it in the soft dirt, as any cat would dig, but carefully between the squares of sod. He dug it deep. He dropped the leather thong, which he had carried all the way to the cemetery secure between his teeth, dangling the heavy gold devil-dropped it deep into the hole and buried it, covered it well, as any cat would do.

And he turned away, smiling, leaving Cage Jones alone with his only remaining treasure.

SHIRLEY ROUSSEAU MURPHYhas received seven national Cat Writers’ Association Awards for best novel of the year, two Cat Writers’ President’s Awards, the “World’s Best Cat Litter-ary Award” in 2006 for the Joe Grey Books, and five Council of Authors and Journalists Awards for previous books. She and her husband live in Carmel, California, where they serve as full-time household help for two demanding feline ladies.

www.joegrey.com

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