Ширли Мерфи - Cat Chase The Moon

Charlie had wanted to leave out the part about a man stealing Courtney. She didn’t know what kind of city council brouhaha that would cause, what kind of position that would put Max in if his officers went pounding on doors and searching the shops for a cat; though she didn’t think Max would ever suggest that. All she wanted was a story that Max would believe, and that might encourage his men to keep an eye out for Courtney without puzzling questions. Courtney had been stolen, in Charlie’s mind the pictures and tapestries of her had prompted the theft, there was no other way to look at the kidnapping.

As full daylight crept into the village, the cats’ human friends were all out nailing or taping up Charlie’s posters, and of course still searching for Courtney, walking the little courtyards between buildings, peering under porches, under and over fences, among huge pots of flowering trees and bushes, looking down occasional alleys that held only grubby garbage cans. Had the small calico escaped from her captor, or did she lie somewhere hurt, or worse?

And while everyone looked for her, Courtney was just as fiercely searching for a way out. In the chill morning, when Seaver went downstairs to ready the shop for opening, she prowled the apartment once again from window to window, seeking a loose latch, for a way to freedom. She had awakened on the couch edgy and frightened, and knowing she was done with dreaming of Seaver’s bright and impossible future—she was cold and frightened one moment, excited the next; and she began again to wonder where his missing wife had gone. Perhaps she wasn’t the woman in the grave? Maybe he hadn’t tried to kill her? Whatever he’d done with her, and whatever plans he had for Courtney herself, she wanted only to be out of there.

Putting aside thoughts of grand gallery exhibits and the TV shows he’d promised featuring her, still she prowled the apartment pawing at the locks, her ears down, her calico tail lashing. Peering out the tall glass windows she could see her mama and daddy and the other cats down on the streets with her human friends, all looking for her. She wanted to wrap her paws around every one of them, she wanted to be held, wanted to be loved by those she trusted, she wanted to be safe.

The way the windows were set into deep stone sills, though she could see down, it would be hard for anyone below to get a glimpse of her up here. She watched Joe Grey scramble to the roofs searching the windows of other apartments, but even when she stood up tall, looking across, and scratching down the glass, there were too many reflections, slants of first sunlight bouncing off other buildings so he must not see her at all. His ears flat, he backed down the oak tree again, she watched him pause beside another newsstand and rear up to read the front page of the Gazette that had just been put in the rack. Could that be about her ? But soon he went racing away once more, heading for the courthouse, for MPPD.

8

Joe Grey entered through the bulletproof glass doors of MPPD on the heels of two garbagemen marching a dirty-faced young boy between them. Their truck was parked in the red zone. The taller, better-groomed city servant held a young calico cat close against his shoulder, held her tight but gently. Joe, only glimpsing her, thought for a second it was Courtney but then saw that it was not. He felt further dismay when he realized that his office friend, blond, plump Mabel Farthy, was not at the dispatcher’s desk with her welcoming smile. Instead, sour-faced EvaJean Simpson scowled at the calico, at the dirty, fighting boy being dragged through the door, and at the garbagemen. She gave Joe himself a poisonous stare.

The real surprise was that the waiting room was half full of calico cats, each in a battered carrier, the cages lined up in the far corner between the long counter and the window. Joe pushed in behind the garbagemen and fighting kid and ducked under a folding chair, searching through the bars of each cage for Courtney.

She wasn’t there, no one looked back at him with eager amber eyes, no one yowled out to her daddy.

Where had these cats come from? Had they been collected by sticky-fingered little thieves like that kid, after reading Charlie’s posters? Clean, healthy neighborhood cats maybe snatched from their own front porches, each “rescuer” eager for his thousand dollars.

Money they’ll never see, Joe thought, extending his claws.

He was only partly hidden in the chair’s shadow. In a minute EvaJean would see him and make a royal fuss—once she was finished dressing down the garbagemen. “That cat does not belong here. Look at the poster, at the phone numbers. Call them, call the shelter, call those rescue people. All this fuss over a cat. This is a police department, not an animal pound.”

The man with the cat fetched an empty cage from those stacked to one side. He put the cat gently in, gave her a last pet, and set the cage with the others.

EvaJean said, “I suppose you want to book that boy. People don’t realize . . .”

“We don’t need to book him. Just take his name and address and file a complaint. We already gave him a talking-to that ought to cool him for a while. If he pulls something like this again, you can take care of him.”

“I don’t take care of little boys, or cats. I want him and those cats out of here.”

The glass door opened and Charlie Harper came in. She nodded curtly to EvaJean and began collecting the cats in their cages. The two men helped her carry the calicos out to her SUV where she had backed into the red zone and opened the rear door. She carried in some extra cages, for further contributions.

“Where will you take them?” said the shorter, unshaven man.

“To the vet, to be checked for an identification. You know, those implanted chips. If we can’t find all the owners, we’ll take those cats to our shelter.” She glanced under the chair at Joe Grey, her green eyes laughing as he left the shadows and walked boldly past EvaJean’s counter, following Charlie as she headed for the hall and Max’s office.

“The cat can’t go back there,” the clerk said sourly. “Catch him, Mrs. Harper. Take him away. Your husband doesn’t need a cat in there, he’s in a meeting.”

Charlie smiled. “Joe spends half his life in that office, he’s been in meetings before. You’re a temp, EvaJean. You’re signed up to work here all week, until Mabel gets back. You wouldn’t want to be in the chief’s bad graces all week, let alone the rest of the department?”

EvaJean’s look was snake-cold. Ignoring Charlie, she turned away to the copy machine.

But Charlie didn’t want to break into the meeting. She loaded the last of the caged cats in her SUV and took off for Dr. Firetti’s. Joe Grey smiled as he sauntered on down the hall and pushed into the chief’s office through the slightly open door. If Max was in a meeting, it would most likely be about yesterday evening’s murder and robbery and their connection to the other bank thefts. Maybe he’d also hear some casual mention of missing Courtney, maybe some of the guys were keeping an eye out as they went about their patrols. To a cop, a vanished cat doesn’t compete with theft and murder. But maybe Charlie had sweet-talked Max into seeing that his men keep a lookout. Courtney was Joe Grey’s own kitten, and most of the officers considered Joe family, a part of the department, though they had no idea that Joe, so many times, had helped them wrap up a case.

Now, maybe it was their turn to help Joe.

Max and three detectives were crowded around the desk examining half a dozen pages of what looked like the coroner’s preliminary report, with graphs, colored photographs, charts, and various printouts. Leaping to the desk, Joe pushed comfortably between Detective Juana Davis and the chief. Max looked down at him like, What the hell do you want? Maybe he was grumpy from being awakened at three in the morning.