Ширли Мерфи - Cat Chase The Moon

Joe had heard her tell Thelma, in a lonely little voice, that she only wanted to be home with Grandpa and Tango, heard Thelma’s cold laugh. “You’re no better off with a helpless old man and a dumb horse. What good could either of them do you!” and that was the end of that.

A child with a father and two uncles who didn’t give a damn for her, and a mother who, if she did care, didn’t show it. Thelma didn’t know how to love a child, maybe she had no love in her. There didn’t seem much else in her, either. Though she might talk tough to Nevin and threaten him, she apparently didn’t do anything to change his way of life. It looked to Joe like she just followed along in the same path.

If that murder and robbery last night was Nevin’s work, the thought gave the tomcat shivers: a body crushed to death in a car door.

Nevin and Thelma went silent when a police car came by outside. Nevin looked out the window, watched it cruise quietly away tailing the car it followed, maybe just tourists rubbernecking. But the cop car shook Nevin; he began hastily throwing clothes, a razor, and various toilet articles in a duffel bag and in a few minutes he was gone, out the bedroom, silent as he crossed the living room. Joe heard him quietly open and close the front door, watched him cross the drive and slide into his gray Suzuki, heard the engine as he backed out and took off.

Thelma, still in her robe, crawled into bed and turned out the light. You’d think she would come into Mindy’s room, give her a little hug and some sympathy, spend some time with her to ease the pain of her daddy leaving. But no way.

Maybe better, though, if she left the child alone; Mindy was still crying and Thelma would only say something mean.

Joe watched Mindy’s light go out but he didn’t hear the rustle of covers as if she was getting into bed. He slipped to her sill where he could see in. She was still dressed in jeans and a shirt, and was pulling on a bulkier sweater. She put her ear to the wall of her parents’ room. Joe heard only silence, and so must she. In a minute she softly opened her bedroom door, he could hear her slipping along the hall, headed for the kitchen.

Coming down from the tree, Joe went around the side to the kitchen window. Leaping up and hanging from the sill, he could hear her talking, could see her at the wall phone. His ear to the glass, he could hear her whisper—the gist of which was that her daddy had left, that maybe he wasn’t coming back and good riddance.

“You’re not home yet. Why didn’t you take your cell phone? I saw you parked here, I wanted to sneak over but . . . He’s coming there, Grandpa,” she said, sniffling. “Coming to get some papers, he acted like you stole them. He’s in a mean mood, real mean. Oh, when you get home please pick up the recording, please see the flashing light when you come in—then get out of there. Go back in the woods or to the Harpers’. Hurry, he’s already left, maybe ten minutes. Don’t stay there, Grandpa, I’m afraid of him.” She was sobbing again. She choked, “I love you, I pray you get my message,” and she hung up.

12

Joe watched Mindy make a peanut butter sandwich and pour a glass of milk. He watched her leave the kitchen taking her lone supper down the hall. He climbed the cypress again and looked in her bedroom window—not like a human voyeur, he thought, amused, but feeling only pity. Now the room was dimly lit, she had turned on two tiny night-lights plugged in just above the floor; she sat up in bed, in her clothes, wolfing the sandwich and gulping the milk between sobs. Did she turn on those lights every night to give herself comfort? He wondered if she’d done that at her grandfather’s house or only here where she felt alone and unwanted. Her red sweater hung on the bedpost, her shoes and socks lay underneath, her school backpack beside them, he could see a white T-shirt stuffed in on top.

Finished eating, she set the empty plate and glass on the night table and tucked down under the covers. Joe watched her roll herself in the blankets, trembling with sobs, and pull one blanket over her head. The moon was starting to brighten the eastern treetops and the tops of the hills. He waited a long time until she swallowed back the last gulp of crying and began slowly, slowly to ease into the calmer breathing of sleep.

Only when he was sure she slept did he leave the cypress tree, moving away through its branches to the springy limbs of a small pine and across to his own roof, to his private tower. There he slid through its open window, looked out once more at Mindy, then burrowed among his scattered pillows where there was only peace: no crying, hurt child, no hateful human mothers. He could just see, in Mindy’s shadowed room, the child cocooned in her blankets. Curling down among his cushions in his own safe place, Joe positioned himself so he could keep an eye on her. Yawning, he wondered what would happen at Zebulon Luther’s house when Nevin slipped in—or marched boldly in—to retrieve his bank statements, wondered if Zeb would be there, if he’d gotten Mindy’s message? Or had he left it unnoticed on the recorder?

If Nevin got there first, as mad as he was, how cruel could he get with his own father? And Joe wondered if he should go down to Clyde’s desk and call Harper.

Or was their argument only a family hassle that would end up amounting to nothing? Even if Nevin did leave, would he have cooled down before he got to Zeb’s place? Joe avoided vague tips to the law that could turn into nothing. That would only make Harper unsure of the reliability of his snitch. Yawning, meaning to think about it for a minute as he watched Mindy, he was soon sound asleep.

He must have been asleep when she left, he woke to see the moon shining straight in onto her bed, onto a mound of covers thrown back. Her shoes and sweater were gone. Her school backpack that had been leaning against the bed was no longer there. That’s when Joe leaped from his tower into the house onto his rafter, down to the king-sized bed, and pawed at Ryan’s face.

“Mindy’s gone. Run away . . . clothes, backpack.”

But Clyde was already up and dressed. Ryan rolled out of bed, pulling on sweats. “Mindy’s not the only one.”

“What?” Joe said. “What else . . . ?”

“That woman,” Clyde said, “who was nearly buried, the woman Max moved to the care home . . . she slipped out of the home when Buffin was asleep. Buffin woke and couldn’t find her. He couldn’t shout for the nurses. He leaped to the phone and called the Firettis then followed her trail straight out the front door. She must have known where they hid the keys. Mary and John and Buffin are out looking for her and so are the cops. We . . . But no one’s looking for the kid. A child alone, right now she’s more important.” He grabbed his jacket. “Come on, Joe, get a move on before she hits the highway.”

Dulcie and Courtney prowled the antiques shop touching a soft paw to the old, delicate pieces, guessing at their age and origin; though some were already tagged, telling which century each hand-shaped, hand-glazed porcelain piece came from, each handwoven tapestry or rug. They curled up at last in a delicate Queen Anne love seat, on a cashmere throw. Mother and daughter were whispering to each other ancient tales when the door at the top of the stairs opened. Dulcie vanished behind an ancient cast-iron stove. Courtney pretended to be comfortably dozing, snoring just a little in a ladylike manner.

Two men came down the stairs, softly talking: Ulrich Seaver and, yes, Joe’s new neighbor Nevin Luther. They turned right, toward the workroom and the outside door that led to the alley. The cats heard the soft tick-tick as Seaver turned the dial of a huge iron safe as tall as the men. Nevin handed him a package, a bulging brown envelope. Seaver pulled on a pair of cotton gloves, opened it, and removed a stack of money, fanning out hundred-dollar bills like shuffling decks of cards.