Ширли Мерфи - Cat Chase The Moon

She rose and shook herself and changed position to make sure she was awake, that this wasn’t another dream. Ulrich said something she couldn’t understand, she heard him moving around then the bedroom door opened and he headed, in his robe, through the living room straight for the door to the stairs. He looked over at her where she’d curled up again, her eyes closed as if asleep. Did he expect her to wake up and watch him, expect her to know or care what he was doing?

Maybe, she thought, if she had done the tricks tonight, if she had made the Seavers proud of her cleverness, if she showed them how she really could perform, it might be easier to escape; they would be more loving again and less bossy. Maybe if she were more obedient she’d earn more freedom, maybe find a careless moment when she could pull off a fast vanishing act.

Yes, and maybe not.

Ulrich, turning the upper knob for the bolt, then the doorknob below it, glanced over at her then eased the door open and shut it quickly behind him. For an instant she considered darting through between his feet and leaping to freedom, but she thought better of that. She looked at the door with interest. He hadn’t locked it behind him, there was just the knob to deal with.

Slipping from the couch, she listened through the door as his slippers padded down the stairs, the back door opened, and he scuffed across the storeroom toward the outer door to the alley. Trotting into the kitchen, she put her ear to the floor just above where he had stopped. The outside door opened and there were low voices.

She approached the door again, at the head of the stairs. Leaping, she swung on the knob. She worked at it with all her might, swinging, swinging harder. She felt the knob turn, she was almost out when she caught her pad on a screw and blood ran down, soon making her paws so slippery that the knob wouldn’t turn at all. Leaping to the kitchen sink, she took the dishcloth in her teeth.

After what seemed hours, swinging with the cloth wrapped around the knob, pushing with her hind feet against the molding, she was able to turn the knob far enough so she could force the door open. She wiped blood from her paws on the cloth, slipped through, pulled the door softly closed behind her, and hurried down the stairs where she stuffed the cloth under an Egyptian dresser. She paused, listening.

Two voices coming from the storeroom, Ulrich and a woman. Was that Thelma Luther? The inner door stood half open. Peering through, she saw the door to the alley open, too. Thelma’s car stood there. Ulrich must be certain that his “little cat” couldn’t get out the upstairs door, that she wouldn’t know how to open the knob. In the workroom itself, the big door to the safe hung open. Now! She thought. Do it now!

She crawled beneath a carved armoire, deciding. She’d have only a second—could she pull this off? Joe Grey had told and told her, it was time to get out. She could imagine her daddy’s voice echoing, “Get the hell out, Courtney! Now! Do it now! What are you, a sissy little housecat? Do it now! Right now!”

Ulrich and Thelma had removed the safe’s contents, they were laying out thick envelopes and packets on the worktable. Thelma was removing packs of money from each, counting it on a little hand computer, recording it in a ledger and putting it back in the envelope. At first Courtney hardly knew Thelma, she was dressed like a man, dark jeans, black shirt, heavy-shouldered black jacket, her hair tucked under a black knitted cap pulled low in front, even a man’s thick shoes. She had removed her thin black gloves to be able to count the cash. Adding up each packet, she wrote the total on a list with a name written at the top, and put the envelope back in the safe. When they were turned away Courtney crept closer, under a buffet carved in gold and red. A cloth lay beneath, a dust cloth that Bert must have dropped. Using one front paw, then the other, she managed to drape it over her back and shoulders, covering her bright colors, all but a few smears of blood on her paws.

With the two thus occupied jotting down numbers she ducked her head, tucked her tail under her belly, and crept behind their backs through the workroom like a pale ghost; there she eased among some packing boxes into a draft of cold air coming from the open door—but just as she started to dart out, a small noise from above, a creak in the upstairs floor, made Thelma glance around the storeroom then look up at the top of the stairs. But that door was shut tight. Maybe Fay had gotten up for a moment.

“No worries,” Ulrich said. “It’s just the cat.” He laughed. “It can’t get out, no cat would think to turn a doorknob, not when she couldn’t even jump through a hoop last night.” Then in low voices, they began arguing.

In that instant the dust rag flew behind the two of them like a gray ghost and Courtney was gone into the alley. The two thieves were after her as she headed for the street, racing through the shadows into the bushes, losing her dusty cloth on thorns and tangles, panting at the sound of their pounding footsteps. She didn’t hear Joe Grey bolting over the rooftops, she didn’t hear Pan leap from his cold nest against the apartment wall and race to join him, she only ran.

22

Shortly before Courtney fought the apartment door open and followed Ulrich down the stairs and across the shop to the storeroom, across the village Joe Grey leaped from his tower racing after Thelma’s car. A cold flash of fear had awakened him, almost a vision—though he’d never believed in visions. He had imagined bloody pawprints going down the Seavers’ stairs, more bloody prints leading behind the fancy furniture, then a gray rag draped over Courtney. What the hell was the matter with him, what was he seeing? Back there in the tower, had he had some crazy premonition? The scene was still with him as he raced across the wet shingles and peaks following Thelma, he was so uneasy he could feel his belly churn. He’d heard enough of Thelma’s “. . . I won’t need the safe number,” Varney’s indecipherable mumble then Thelma’s “I already called . . .”

Now, not seeing Thelma’s car parked before the antiques shop he galloped along the front and side looking in through the big display windows. He didn’t see Courtney. When he climbed to the roof and padded along the edge peering into the second-floor apartment, into the bedroom and living room, he didn’t find her. Fay was sound asleep. He crossed the roof and looked down, and there was Thelma’s car backed into the alley; leaning down right over it, he could feel the engine still breathing warm air. Why had she backed in? Lying flat on his belly just above the outer door to the storeroom, his head cocked over the edge, he saw that the alley door was open—and the inner door open wider. Had Ulrich shut Courtney upstairs knowing she couldn’t get out, that she wouldn’t know how to turn the knob?

Right . His vision, that impossible dream-picture that only Kit might have seen, had shown him bloody pawprints on the knob and on the stairs. Well, she’s sure as hell out now, he thought, smiling. At least she’s out of the apartment.

He heard Thelma Luther’s voice from the workroom beneath him, and then Ulrich; sounded like they were counting money. He could just see the door to the safe standing open. “Nine hundred and eighty-two,” she said. “That’s a total.” Then the faint sound of clicking, like an adding machine. “Five thousand, ninety-six. Next column?” It was then that he saw the faintest movement among the shadows behind the two figures.

Leaning so far over the gutter he had to claw hard not to fall, he prayed that was Courtney, that she was positioning herself for escape. Even from the roof he caught a whiff of her, faint but fresh. Was she waiting for a chance to bolt into the alley and be gone?