Ширли Мерфи - Cat Chase The Moon

When next Dulcie looked, Courtney had disappeared.

Galloping after her, skidding around the corner, Dulcie expected to see her daughter farther down the side street still peering in windows. She and Kit ran along the building mewing softly. Not seeing Courtney they stared across the street to the other stores, photography shop, art shop, small café—they found her scent, crossed to that side, and ran following her trail behind potted flowers and under porches. Courtney wasn’t one to play tricks on her mother. Or, not usually. At the end of the next block her trail ran along beside a stucco wall, they could smell where she had rubbed against it—but suddenly her scent was joined by the smell of a man. Someone they didn’t know. Then just as suddenly Courtney’s scent vanished. As if he had picked her up?

They air-scented for her, but they smelled only blood. Human blood—and they smelled Courtney’s anger, her rage. They hoped she’d clawed him good, hoped he’d dropped her, not liking her sharp rapiers. They could find no trail as if she had run from him. Was he still carrying her as she raked him? Had he hurt her? They followed his trail and the blood trail until the smells stopped at the curb.

Now they smelled canvas. A canvas bag? Then the hot stink of exhaust, and of tires taking off. Little pieces of bloody, torn canvas lay on the wet street. Why hadn’t Courtney cried out, why hadn’t she yowled for help? They followed his fresh tire tracks fast along the fog-wet street. At the next intersection, the marks of five cars coming out of driveways, turning as if headed for the freeway, maybe for a long drive to work; these crossed over the marks that the cats followed. But one car had turned around in the intersection smearing the other wet tracks, mixing them all up. Kit confusedly raced away down Ocean Avenue to find Joe and Pan, to find help. Dulcie was shaking with fear when the tomcats came running.

Joe licked Dulcie’s face. “We’ll find her, she can’t have gone far.”

“Joe, a man grabbed her. We didn’t see him, we didn’t recognize his smell. He took her, he caught her, took her away in a car. We smelled his blood, she must have fought hard, scratched him good. What will he do to her?” She was sick with terror. “Can we tell the cops? Will they listen? Will the department put out a BOL for a cat?”

“Harper might,” Joe said, “if Clyde or Ryan ask him. If Charlie asks him.” He was scared as hell, too. “We need help, now.” Without another word he hit the roofs scrambling up a sagging vine and over the peaks for home, for his two housemates; Dulcie headed for her own home with Wilma, streaking along the sidewalk, Kit running beside her, stopping to scent at the bushes, to smell every shop door, peer under every porch, sniff at every car and into every dark corner praying that Courtney had gotten away from him. They searched behind every flower box, up every tree, through the fog-heavy night for the little cat’s scent and bright colors, all the time praying, He hasn’t hurt her. Oh, he hasn’t hurt Courtney. Dulcie’s heart was pounding. What has he done to her, what does he want with my baby? And in her mind she saw Courtney lying hurt and alone, trapped inside a bag, unable to free herself.

6

But Courtney wasn’t hurt. She was quite safe, at least for the moment, though she was still mad as hell. What did he want with her? Having driven only a few blocks, with her in the bag on the floor of the front seat, he had turned into a drive and killed the engine. When he lifted the bag out of the car, that was when she nearly got away, pushing through the hole she’d torn, yowling and spitting. He’d clutched the bag closed, carried her through one door and then another; doors close together as if he’d crossed a small room, and closing each behind him. She tried to think which direction they had come, where she might be.

He opened another door and carried her up a hard stairway, his shoes scuffing on something that sounded like rubber matting. Up the flight of steps and through another door that he slammed behind him, too, and he dumped the bag on the floor. She lay shivering. She had gone through a whole range of emotions—terror, rage, and earlier when he had stuffed her in the bag holding her mouth shut, she had been so wild she’d ripped the bag nearly apart. Now, lying in the bag undisturbed, she listened. When he didn’t move or speak, she clawed her way out through the bloody hole she’d made.

She was in an upstairs apartment.

She could have run but she didn’t. She stood looking up at her captor. But this was not the prowler in the library. This man was quite different. His head and face were clean shaven, smooth and lightly tanned; his eyes were as blue as her kitten eyes had been, before they turned a deep amber. He was well groomed and clean, neatly dressed. He looked down at her with interest, and then with a smile of gentle caring—and did she see a touch of amusement? Maybe because she was scowling at him? He did not look cruel. Strange that even at first, capturing her on the street, he had carried her so gently that he hadn’t hurt her, even though she’d fought and ripped at him. Most of the blood was his. Even gripping her by the back of her neck so tightly, he had been careful not to injure her, he had endured her slashing without striking back.

But did his gentle look hold something else, too? For an instant she had the sense of a big, friendly-appearing dog peering down innocently at a smaller animal that he meant, the next moment, to tear apart.

But that was foolish. He stroked her back then patted the cushions of the brocade couch inviting her up. “Come, my dear. Make yourself comfortable. You’ll enjoy living here. Don’t be afraid. You can see that the apartment is lovely, and the antiques shop downstairs, which will be yours later, all the beautiful furniture and sculpture to rub against. Come up, my dear, and make yourself at home.” And he fluffed up the folded throw at one end.

She leaped to the couch onto the cashmere throw, but she sat tall and still, full of defiance. All this elegance had begun to make her uneasy—yet the living room was lovely: ivory satin draperies closing out the night; lovely, carved antique chairs and chests. Wilma had taught her a little about antiques but she didn’t know enough to sort these out. There were stained-glass lamps, too, and a rich Persian rug all in deep tones that had felt thick and soft under her paws.

“You’ll so love living here—until we go on to New York, of course. Until you really become famous. Then, oh, you’ll love living in such elegance.” And he smiled and knelt and stroked her back in just the right way. How could he intend any harm?

He sat down at the other end of the couch, comfortable and easy. “You will be happy with me, my dear, and with our adventures. You will know luxuries you would find nowhere else, not in this day. And you will soon be famous. Oh, very famous when our project is complete. You will be on television, in the magazines, and then we will go for the movies. What can you learn, my dear? Can you learn tricks? That would be a nice touch. Oh, you will be idolized in the city.”

His grand words began to excite her . . . but then they made her shiver. Were those words what her daddy called con talk, enticing promises that Joe Grey said meant trouble? Big trouble, the tomcat had said . You might find that out soon enough if you’re not a wary young cat.

But the visions this man painted for her glowed too bright in her imagination, galleries richer even than this beautiful apartment, richer than his grand downstairs showroom where she and Dulcie and Kit had sometimes looked in the windows at his lovely wares. She had seen him then, waiting on customers when they had thought he was just another shopper.