Shirley Murphy - Cat Cross Their Graves

"That's what scared me most," she said. "That those things of Uncle Hal's were there in our garage, Pa's garage, after Uncle Hall disap- After Uncle Hal was gone away."

Leaping in through the third-floor window that Lucinda had left ajar for her, Kit burrowed among the pillows trying to get warm. She was freezing. She was hungry. Thirsty. Cold. Behind her out the window the sky was cold, was the color of ice cubes. Her poor bloody paws were all ice from the rooftops, so cold that every cut burned and ached. She wanted hugs. She wanted soft creamy stuff rubbed on her paws the way Lucinda would do. She wanted to tell Lucinda and Pedric that she was home and what she'd found and what had happened to her; she wanted so many things at once she was ready to explode, but she needed most of all to call Captain Harper.

Call him now. At once. Tell him about the pictures. About the man she had followed and who had captured that child. Tell him everything that raced around in her head, like trapped mice.

But where were Pedric and Lucinda?

She stopped wanting everything and listened. Sniffed to catch fresh scent.

They weren't here? She did not smell coffee brewing in the little kitchen, and no lights were on, and there was no good breakfast waiting on a little cart by the fireplace. It was usually brought there by dawn because they all three liked to eat early. The room was still cold, so no one had turned the thermostat up the way they always did, even though dawn was brightening. Were Lucinda and Pedric still out looking for her? Had they searched all night? How hard it had been when she heard Lucinda last night calling and calling her and she couldn't cry out.

But then the kit thought when she listened and sniffed again that the apartment didn't quite feel empty. Had her dear old couple come home very late and gone sadly to bed defeated by not having found her, and were now still asleep?

Leaping off the window seat, she fled to the bedroom and stood in the doorway looking. And her pounding heart slowed at sight of the double lump in the bed, at the scent of their sleep and the lovely rhythm of their breathing. She wanted to leap up and wake them, tell them she was all right, tell them she loved them-but maybe she should let them sleep.

With uncommon restraint the kit turned away remembering that Lucinda and Pedric were not young and that sometimes they tired easily and that she had likely worn them right out making them search for her. Reluctantly she returned to the window seat and nosed down among the velvet and brocade, making a little nest in the pillows to let the heat build around her. And she thought about the child and wondered where she had gone, and prayed again very hard that she was all right.

It took only a few minutes until she was warm again, then she leaped to the arm of the easy chair by the phone. Pushing the headset off its cradle, she punched in the number of Max Harper's cell phone. Lucinda was always amazed that she could remember so many numbers. But Kit had trained her wily memory on the ancient Celtic tales, and that delighted both Lucinda and Pedric. Kit had loved those stories when she was very small; they were the only wonder she knew in her miserable life. She had devoured every word the older cats told each other as she listened from the cold outer edges of that swift-clawed, bad-tempered crowd.

Settled down for the night among the garbage cans in some stinking alley, Kit had soaked up those stories as the only sustenance and the only warmth she knew. She had held the magic of those stories to her until they were a part of her and she knew every word, could repeat them all.

The phone rang four times before Captain Harper answered. Kit swallowed. She always found it hard to speak to him. "Captain Harper, the man who killed Patty Rose is staying in a cottage behind a house on Dolores. A brown-shingled house with a weedy yard, just south of Tenth. Peeling paint, his car and two other cars parked back at the end of the gravel drive. He is small, like a boy. His car is an old gray two-door Honda, 9FFL497," Kit said, seeing the license plate in her head like a little picture. She knew Harper would be writing it down.

Was he taping her call? He'd told Wilma once that taping the snitches' calls might be the only way he would ever learn who they were. Wilma had said, "Do you really want to know, Max? Seems to me you have a good thing going. You sure don't want to blow it."

Now, when Harper had been silent for too long, Kit said, "He had pictures of Patty Rose, Captain Harper. When she was young, a star. In every picture, there was a hole in her head like a bullet hole. And he had newspaper pictures of four men including him, so I think his name is Irving Fenner. After Patty was shot, someone ran away down into the parking garage. I think it was him, but I…" She couldn't say that the fresh scent of a man on the stairs near Patty went down into the parking garage.

"The pictures are in two brown envelopes, but they're not in the cottage anymore. They're under it. Under the foundation jammed up in the floor joists just inside the front vent."

So far, Harper had said nothing. But she could hear him breathing. The kit didn't expect him to say anything, and she sure didn't want him to ask questions. But then Harper said, "The cottage behind a brown house on Dolores. South of Tenth. We can retrieve the envelopes by reaching through the vent."

"The vent's on tight, though. Take some tools."

"How did you…?"

"He has a gun, Captain." She started to tell him to look under the bathroom sink, then she knew she couldn't tell him that. He was already wondering how the envelopes got under the house. How could they, when the vents were jammed tight? She had to hope, when they searched the house, that they'd find the murder weapon under the sink but wouldn't find cat hairs clinging to that ragged hole! Or paw prints and spatters of her blood-cat blood. She didn't dare think about a lab report that would show cat blood.

Pushing the phone back on its cradle and leaping to the window seat, she snuggled down, shivering again, trying to get warm again, and looked out at the slowly brightening morning that, despite the hint of coming sun, was all gray winter colors. Why was the light on in the tearoom? It had been burning when she got home.

Who was there this early? Against the dancing firelight, she could see the silhouettes of two figures sitting at a little table; the woman had short hair, but the man was more in shadow. Was that Detective Garza, the broad shoulders, the hint of a square jaw? She watched the firelight shift and leap, reflected across the glass china cupboards-and atop the cupboards, a small, dark shape crouched, intently listening. The kit smiled. She could see the gleam of his white markings, too. Whatever was going on in the tearoom, she would hear about it, hear it in detail from Joe Grey.

She imagined Captain Harper going to retrieve the envelopes, and that warmed her. She thought about the child and was thankful they'd found each other-without her, the child would still be tied up. Without the child, she would still be locked in there, too, with that insane little man. And the little girl-who knew what would have happened to her? She wondered where the child had gone, all alone in the night and so frightened. She prayed he wouldn't go looking for her, prayed she had a place to hide. She wondered, if Irving Fenner found the pictures missing, if he would think the little girl had taken them, and that could make everything worse for the child. From her window she watched an escaped newspaper twist and flap along the street like a live thing, then a flock of blowing leaves skitter; the hastening wind carried scraps of debris dancing and teasing and making her paws twitch-and the wild need to chase sent her leaping down again and racing for the bedroom.