Ширли Мерфи - Cat Chase The Moon

Thelma was in such a temper they didn’t know what she would do. She was reaching for Mindy when a car came down the street, a squad car, its headlights on though the morning was beginning to grow light. Max Harper stopped and got out, looking at the little scene, looking Thelma over. He looked at the two parked cars. He got out and felt their hoods. Joe Grey followed him, no more nosy than usual. Both cars were warm and still smelled of exhaust. Max looked at Mindy, at her solemn, frightened face.

“Were you alone in the house all night?”

She looked at the chief. She couldn’t be afraid of Max Harper but she could be plenty afraid of what Thelma would do if she admitted she had been alone there. Even when Harper looked angry, somehow she wanted to hug him. “Yes,” she said softly. “I got scared and I came here. I slept in Joe Grey’s tower. He didn’t mind. When Ryan got up, I came downstairs. She made pancakes.”

Max’s eyes held Mindy’s, amused and caring; but not caring when he turned on Thelma. “Where’s Varney?”

“In the house, probably already asleep,” Thelma said, having watched Max check the heat of both car engines.

“Was he out all night? Where was he?”

“I have no idea.”

As the two faced each other, both angry, Joe Grey slipped behind Ryan and Clyde into his own yard, behind the bushes.

“Of course you know where Varney was,” Max said. “I know where you both were, and the other three.”

Thelma suddenly looked like she wanted to run.

“I’m not going to cite you,” Max said. “I could arrest you, take you in on several charges. Child neglect. Robbery, several counts. I could leave you in jail, or the judge could put you under house arrest. For now, I want to see how you two respond to a serious warning. And how you do when we bring Zebulon home, how well you take care of him.”

“We’ll do just fine. I’m to pick him up this morning.”

“You and I will pick him up together. I signed him in. I sign him out. They’ll be sending a physical therapist for a few days, and a visiting nurse. While Zebulon’s here, I want at least one adult with him and Mindy. You are not to leave either one alone,” Max said. “The hospital has him ready and waiting. Are you ready? Do you have a bed made up for him?”

“He’s well enough now to be up and around.”

“Do you have a comfortable bedroom for him?”

“He’ll sleep in Mindy’s bed. I have a cot for her. I’ll wake Varney, tell him to change the sheets. I’ll only be a minute.” She was a little more diffident now. Despite his usually easy ways, Max Harper could be frightening.

Max and the Damens sat on the Damens’ front porch, out of the thin rain, waiting for Thelma. Joe always felt irritable when he could listen to his friends talking but could say nothing, not the smallest comment. When Ryan brought Max a cup of coffee, Joe wondered if he’d like some pancakes but, again, there was no way he could offer. At last he watched the two cars leave, Max’s squad car following Thelma and Mindy.

A cop car following her made Thelma decidedly nervous. She made sure to come to a full stop at every signal, to watch if a tourist even set foot off the sidewalk, to follow every traffic rule. Don’t tailgate, stay in the proper lane. The fact that the chief followed behind her was the same principle as, at the station, a cop always walked behind his visitor or detainee, never in front. Thelma had changed clothes and combed her hair, which was an improvement, and she had dug out a pair of pants and a shirt for Zebulon.

Joe Grey knew that Zeb would refuse to go to the apartment. That he’d pitch a fit all the way, that he would remain cranky until Thelma took him back to the ranch, to his own home. And Thelma wasn’t about to do that.

Restless, Joe galloped up to his tower where he could look down into Mindy’s window as Varney moved the child’s bed to the back of the room and set up the cot by her own night table and dresser. Varney was tousled from sleep, was wearing an old corduroy robe over bare, hairy legs, and he was still yawning. He made up both beds with clean sheets, but making a mess of it. Even a cat could do better. He found an old tattered quilt for Mindy, and gave Zeb her warm covers. Yawning again, he wandered off toward his room; Joe watched him crawl back into his tangled bed, watched with disgust as Varney drifted off, snoring with his mouth open. The tomcat had the feeling that this last distasteful hour marked the tone of the days ahead, that whatever happened next would be ugly. He felt as if the whole village had fallen into a tangle of confusion. Yet there was no way, he told himself, that a simple cat could right all the wrongs in the world.

25

It was shortly before Fay Seaver arrived home, and before Courtney escaped, that the usual scattered crimes on the outskirts of the village began to decrease. A few break-ins, a missing billfold slyly slipped from someone’s back pocket by a young entrepreneur, the annoying offenses that a small town might experience. The snatching of a purse in the late evening, a briefcase missing from an unlocked car. Max’s crew patrolled the streets, answered routine calls, made a few arrests for break-ins, but his officers were beginning to grow bored; though they were always on alert for any domestic battle that could turn into murder as sudden and volatile as a lit cigarette thrown on gasoline. And still the crime numbers dropped—but then a new round of serious thefts jarred the department’s attention.

Several quick daylight attacks on empty streets, the robber escaping with a thick pack of fresh new bills. Slick, midday snatches and the thief gone with an impressively large sum of cash as the lone victim left the village bank walking swiftly toward their car or their home or shop. This brought out the foot patrols dressed in civilian clothes wandering innocently among local shoppers, new hires that most village folks didn’t recognize.

But younger men and boys wandered the streets, too, fellows who weren’t hunting bank customers but were still looking for the lost cat. Looking for the nice reward if they found her, an incentive that Seaver had offered on the new posters he’d put up over the older, ragged signs. He had no idea at all where the calico was hidden, nor, he thought, did his accomplices. All over the village folks wandered casually, women and girls seeming preoccupied with clothes shopping while searching for the bright calico with the striped leg, thinking what they’d do with five thousand dollars. Even on the roofs, more cats than usual were seen boldly prowling, not hunting birds and rats among overhanging branches but slyly spying on the village humans.

Some of the cats, the villagers knew well: dark gray tomcat. Dark, striped tabby. Yellow tomcat. Windblown tortoiseshell, all appearing for a moment, moving from roof to roof, disappearing into the trees watching the seeking pedestrians. Other cats, just as quick and wary, were from the wild feral band, coaxed down by Joe Grey from their hidden clowder in the hills among the ruined mansion to help alert Courtney if they were needed; cats come to help because their human friends had helped them many times, wild, speaking cats generally afraid of humans. Cats who had sometimes looked to Joe Grey for their own protection. Cats who knew, better than any, the rare and intrinsic value of young Courtney, of the bracelet calico with the long and amazing lives.

This late afternoon Joe Grey prowled a roof near the village bank, not looking for Courtney—he knew where she was—but looking for a connection, for a link, for a key to the disappearing bank money. Now as he leaped to a building next to the bank, the drizzle increased. He found shelter against a second-floor wall behind a lacy acacia tree where he could look down into the bank windows. He felt the rain decrease; the low sun slipped out over the sea, the rain clouds driven back to lie dark and heavy among the far eastern hills. He could see through the big glass windows into the tellers’ cages where Fay Seaver was back at work in her fancy cashier’s cage, wearing, of course, one of her neat little suits and nice jewelry.