Ширли Мерфи - Cat Chase The Moon

He was quiet for a while, then, “I sat down at the table . . . another car wheeled in . . . the kitchen door opened again, I’d forgot to lock it . . . Footsteps . . .”

A medic tried to hush him. “If you’ll be still, maybe I can bring your blood pressure down.”

Zeb paid no attention. “His white hair . . . It was DeWayne, he headed right to Nevin’s bedroom, he must’ve seen his brother’s car . . . maybe seen the light . . . They began talking real loud then yelling at each other. I got myself some crackers and a glass of milk . . . I sat listening to them fighting. I shouted, ‘Keep it down.’ I didn’t give a damn what they were arguing about, I just wanted them out of there.

“Nevin yelled that DeWayne was into his bank statements, that they were all out of order. ‘Or you were,’ he shouted at me. He said he saw my horse one day over at the Harpers’, said maybe I showed them to Harper. He looked back at DeWayne, said, ‘Either him or you were pawing through them.’ They came reeling out to the kitchen stumbling and pounding each other . . . red faces . . . then stopped and stood staring at me .”

Zeb was running out of steam, his voice dropped to a whisper, weak and angry. “I was afraid. Afraid of my own boys.

“Nevin grabbed me, shouted, ‘You know, don’t you, old man! You know about the money. And you know what happened at the bank. You say a word, and Thelma goes to jail right along with me—it was her car—there’ll be no one left at home, and where does that leave your precious Mindy? Child welfare.’”

Mindy stood in the corner against the old refrigerator, stood straight and silent, her face white. She hurt for her grandpa and she prayed for him; but she knew the medics and the doctors would make him all right. And there was something else in her brown eyes besides her worry and pain for Zeb; there was a gleam of fear which, slowly, morphed into the hard look of fight.

This was not the end of her life as she knew it! This was not the beginning of something far worse, of years in child welfare! She’d run away, first, where they’d never find her.

But, watching Max Harper kneeling beside Zeb, she knew that, despite what might happen to her thieving family, Max wouldn’t let her be sent to welfare, that Max and Charlie would somehow see that she stayed with Grandpa; and she leaned down and kissed Zeb on his forehead.

The medic sighed, and grabbed fresh ice packs to ease the bleeding. He wished the child would back off, wished the old man would shut up. The old guy was hyped with anger, and if he had a concussion they couldn’t give him a sedative. He wanted to get him on the gurney, get him to the emergency room.

Zeb took a sip of water from a straw the medic gave him. For an old man with a head injury he was talking too much. “Nevin shouted about some big jewel robbery then about murders and warrants . . . it didn’t make sense. They were fighting so bad I swung up out of the chair . . .” He stopped to cough. “And all of a sudden they both laid into me . DeWayne shoved me and hit me real hard . . . Nevin yelled, ‘ You were into my bank papers. What kind of father are you!’ He grabbed DeWayne, said, ‘You knew, too.’ He hit DeWayne again, knocked him into the table . . . kicked him until he was down, until DeWayne’s white hair was all bloody.”

By this time the old man’s voice was about gone. The blond medic gave him a cool cloth. Joe could see, by the blood pressure gauge, that Zeb was pushing takeoff.

Zeb said, “DeWayne staggered up and out to his car, I heard the door slam, heard it race away, roaring rough up Highway One like it needed an engine job. Not one of those limos they drive but one of those old rough-running cars they brought with ’em, and I hope he doesn’t come back.”

Officer Crowley went outside, walked around the place; he came back in, avoiding others’ footprints and tire tracks. “Both cars gone,” he said needlessly. “What is this about bank statements?”

Max said, “Let him rest.” Crowley nodded, said no more. A car pulled up out front, Charlie’s SUV. She came in the front door, stood out of the medics’ way watching, and then followed Max outside where they could talk; of course Joe Grey followed.

“He said it was about the statements,” Max said. “What statements?”

“Zeb brought them to me,” Charlie said. “Nevin’s bank statements that Zeb copied, in town. He put the originals back in Nevin’s dresser where he found them. He said to give you the copies when the time was right. He said he didn’t want to be seen going in the station.” She grinned at him. “Now, I guess the time is right.”

“Statements from a Molena Point bank?”

“No. Santa Cruz and three others.”

“And the originals? Zeb has them here?”

“That’s what he said, that he’d put them back where Nevin hid them, folded in a gray sweater—but that he also found a stack of newspapers in the trash that gave the dates of the robberies. He compared them with the statements, cut them out and made copies. He gave those to me, too. It’s all at home, in the safe.” Charlie had never done anything like this, had never hidden evidence from Max or lied to him—except the one secret she had sworn to keep, about the speaking cats. Now, it took her a while to tell Max all that Zeb had told her. “But why is . . . ?”

“It’s only corroborating evidence,” Max said. “Might not mean much now. But it could mean a lot if Zeb knows even more than he’s telling. The snitch’s voice, the night of the murder and bank-money theft, pretty much matched Zebulon’s. What else did he see, that he didn’t tell you about? And why not?”

“Maybe because he wasn’t sure?” Charlie said.

“Maybe because he was sure,” said the chief. “Because he’s scared as hell to lay out the truth.”

They went back through the house to the front, watched the medics load the gurney into the emergency unit and strap it down. Detectives Kathleen Ray and Dallas Garza had arrived. Both were shooting pictures of the many tire marks, those that their own units had driven around trying to leave the suspect ones clear. Two officers were still searching the house, and taking pictures in Nevin’s room. Kathleen smiled as she took shots of the pony’s hoofmarks cutting over the tire prints they thought were DeWayne’s and Nevin’s, pony prints that went right into the house then out again.

Max went into the bedroom carrying the uniform Charlie had brought him. Mindy was crying again, she escaped outdoors, avoiding sympathetic looks for a few minutes. The cats followed her; Joe Grey, Pan, and Kit sat on the fence nuzzled by the pony, who in turn was hugged by Mindy, the child bawling into his buckskin neck. The pony was her comfort, but she wanted to hold Grandpa tight, too. The medics had three times chased her away. When Ryan came outside and put her arm around the child, Mindy cried against her, cried all the harder.

Joe could see Max in Nevin’s bedroom hastily changing into the uniform. “To impress the hospital staff,” Charlie had said. Hospital social workers, if they started asking questions, could be surly about Zeb’s living arrangements when he was sent home, an injured old man living alone trying to take care of a little child. They would be asking questions like, Where is her mother? Where is her father? Why doesn’t the child live with them? How can an old man who needs a nurse himself care for a child? Can he cook? How would he get her to school?

It would be easier for a chief in full uniform to subdue the complaints of those with an overblown sense of authority. Easier to drill into them that he had complete jurisdiction over Mindy. And, Joe thought, Max did have jurisdiction or might soon have it if Nevin had robbed and killed Jon Jaarel and if Thelma had contributed her car, making her an accomplice.