Shirley Murphy - Murphy_Shirley_Rousseau_Cat_Telling_Tales_BookFi

No one spoke. The silence was profound. When Vinnie didn’t appear, Joe fled for the guest room. Slipping in between the open suitcases spread across the floor, he saw Debbie’s purse lying on the seat of the little chair that was pulled up to the desk. In a flash he was up there, pawing open the bag and nosing out her billfold.

He made quick work of clawing through the money compartment. Twenty bucks? Come on, she wasn’t that broke. He could feel a little change in the side pocket, but that was all. Three credit cards, and those could already be maxed out. Dropping the billfold delicately back into the bag, he concentrated on the zippered side pockets.

Nothing but women’s stuff, lipstick, emery boards, Band-Aids, old bills and receipts. Abandoning the purse, he dropped to the floor, and considered the open suitcases.

The children’s clothes and Debbie’s were all mixed together, most of them none too clean. Carefully pushing each item aside, he searched between them, and looked in the side pockets among panty hose, a dingy bra, children’s tattered little T-shirts and panties. In Debbie’s makeup case he rummaged among bottles and tubes, wary of meeting a stray safety razor or a pair of sharp scissors, and getting unpleasant smells on his paws. Nothing, no hidden cash, not even loose change.

He went through the second suitcase and into the side pockets, he was losing hope when his reaching paw stroked a thick packet of folded paper with the greasy texture of paper money, and secured with a rubber band. Listening for any movement from the hall, hearing only Vinnie’s shrill voice from the kitchen, he pawed out the bundle.

It smelled of uncountable human hands, the oily scent of well-circulated greenbacks. Rifling through with a finesse more suited to Dulcie, he counted fifties and hundreds to a total of two thousand dollars. Well. That should pay rent on a simple room and groceries until she got a job. If, in fact, a job was in Debbie’s plans.

Straightening the stack, he put the money back in the side pocket, fought the zipper closed, and sauntered out of the room. Heading for the kitchen, he stopped still, hearing Tessa’s voice for the first time. She was crying. “I did, too,” she sobbed. “I dreamed about Pan and in my dream he talked to me.”

Vinnie laughed rudely.

“Don’t make up impossible stories,” Debbie said. “That’s the same as lying.”

“I didn’t make it up, I dreamed it.”

As Joe padded into the kitchen, Debbie was saying, “That’s the cat we had, I think it was in the picture I sent. It was only a stray, but the kids made such a fuss to let it stay that I gave in. Tessa decided its name was Pan, she said it told her its name,” Debbie said sarcastically.

Joe thought about the many times Misto had talked about his son, Pan. How many cats were named Pan?

“I did dream it!” Tessa said boldly, and Joe watched with interest the way she’d suddenly come alive. “He told me in my sleep, his name is Pan.” She looked hard at her mother. “After that, when I called him Pan, he always came to me.” Tears were rolling down her cheeks, tears of anger at her mother, tears of grieving for her friend who’d vanished, an innocent friend her mother hadn’t ever bothered to look for.

Ryan said, “How long did you have the cat?”

“I guess a year or so,” Debbie said. “It showed up at suppertime wet from the rain, slipped in when I heard a noise and opened the door. Got muddy water all over the carpet. I tried to push it out, I didn’t want to pick it up and get scratched,” she said, glancing meaningfully down at Joe. “Tessa pitched a fit until I fed it, it was easier to give in than listen to her bawl. Next morning she started calling it Pan,” Debbie said, amused.

“What happened to it?” Ryan said. “You said something in your letter, but—”

Debbie shrugged. “It left again, that’s what cats do.”

Clyde said, “Did you look for it?”

Debbie laughed. “How can you look for a cat? There one day, gone the next. Tessa bawled and bawled.” She looked at the little girl with disgust.

“You didn’t think it might have been hurt?” Ryan asked, trying to control her temper.

“With two kids to take care of? When did I have time to look for some stray cat?”

Tessa had stopped crying, retreating into her silence but staring angrily at her mother, her face red and splotched, the tears still running down. This little kid, Joe thought, is going to be trouble when she gets older—trouble for Debbie but, most of all, trouble for herself, so hurt and miserable and unloved.

And, he thought, how does she know Pan’s true name?

The nursing home in Eugene hadn’t known, they had called him Buddy. In the dead of night, did Pan tell Tessa his name? Was that young cat foolish enough to talk to the child as she slept? Had he crept into the little girl’s bed late at night, whispered to her over and over, The kitty’s name is Pan, your kitty is called Pan, and when she woke up she thought she’d dreamed that whispered message?

Joe was turning this over in his mind with a strange little shiver when there was a knock on the front door and Max Harper’s voice came through the intercom. “Anyone home? Any breakfast left?” The chief seldom stopped by early in the day, his sudden unannounced visit startled Joe. Clyde glanced at Debbie and rose to let him in.

Had Ryan or Clyde called Max to tell him Hesmerra’s daughter was there, one of the two sisters Max needed to notify of the old woman’s death? Or had a patrol unit spotted Debbie’s station wagon parked in the drive, called it in because of the Be On the Lookout that was out on it? A BOL not only because of the need to notify Debbie, but because of the manner in which Hesmerra died, because of a possible murder, because Debbie Kraft might have information useful to the department.

Max came on back to the kitchen, shook hands with Debbie, sat down at the crowded table, and accepted a cup of coffee. At the far end of the kitchen, Joe stretched out in the flowered easy chair where he could watch Max and Debbie without calling attention to himself. Debbie didn’t seem comfortable in the presence of the law, and that was interesting. But then, some people just naturally became defiant and angry at what they considered the intrusion of uniformed authority. Debbie was, under Max’s scrutiny, as silent and withdrawn as her smaller child.

11

When John Firetti left the veterinary clinic at midmorning, crossing the garden to his own small cottage to retrieve some paperwork, he stepped through the doorway into the empty house and paused. He listened, puzzled, to the faint echo of voices coming from his study.

Mary’s car was gone; he knew she’d left early to work with the cat rescue group setting up another shelter. No one else lived with them, and this wasn’t cleaning day, the housekeeper’s car wasn’t in the drive. He could hear nothing that sounded like burglars, no stealthy sliding of drawers or wrenching open of locks, just soft voices, one of them female, and John smiled. Was Misto entertaining guests? Pausing beside the fireplace, he listened.

Sunlight shone in through the big living room windows onto the two flowered couches and glinted across the coffee table that was littered with flyers and veterinary magazines and decorated with paw prints etched into a faint coat of dust. Beyond the fireplace, through the door to his study, he could see the pale, cool light of his computer screen. Silently he approached, looking in.

Three furry backs were silhouetted against the screen’s glow. Three pairs of upright ears, one pair orange, one pair tortoiseshell, and Dulcie’s dark tabby ears. Three tails hanging over, swishing in unison like metronomes for an unheard symphony. The attention of all three cats was fixed on the picture of a red tabby tomcat. But as John approached, they started, looked around at him like children caught at a forbidden prank—and Misto’s yellow eyes reflected such a strange mix of excitement and pain that John leaned down for a better look.