Shirley Murphy - Murphy_Shirley_Rousseau_Cat_Telling_Tales_BookFi

Ryan was standing out on the curb, looking up.

Within seconds they were inside, snuggled warm against her, drenching her jeans and her red leather seats as they licked their sopping fur. Heading down the hill, she looked over at them with a little smile. “How did you explain to the dispatcher that you just happened on a buried body in the back of a deep crawl space, in the middle of the night?”

“I didn’t,” Joe said. “I hung up.”

“Three squad cars,” she said, “six uniforms and two detectives, the San Jose techs on their way down that icy freeway, a contractor called out in the middle of the night. All of this, Joe, hanging on one short, unidentified phone call.” She looked at him and smiled and shook her head. “So how did you find the body?”

“A little break-and-enter,” Dulcie said innocently. “From there, one thing just led to another.”

Ryan sighed, reached in the backseat, found a towel ripe with the smell of dog, and dropped it over them. “I guess the department has decided not to ask questions, just to be thankful for what they get.” Letting the truck ease over an icy patch without touching her brakes, she coasted to the curb in front of Dulcie’s house.

The front windows were dark. But they could smell smoke from the woodstove, and could see a light at the back, glancing up the hill, so Wilma would be awake in bed, reading. “Awake and worrying,” Dulcie said guiltily.

Ryan reached over the cats, opened the passenger door, watched Dulcie streak for the house and vanish through the plastic flap. When she looked down at Joe, he was laughing. “What?”

“She’ll climb in bed ice-cold and sopping wet, push right in against Wilma.”

That, in fact, wasn’t a bad idea. Snuggle up next to Clyde, thaw his frozen paws on Clyde’s warm, bare back.

Ryan scowled at him. “You can do what you’re thinking, Joe. Shock him out of a nice sleep—and go to your own bed hungry. Or you can endure the hair dryer to get warm, and finish up the fillet I saved for you, from supper.”

Well, hell. What choice did a little cat have? “Rare?” he asked.

“Of course, rare,” she said. “With a side of kippers on a warm plate.”

And that, of course, was no contest.

25

The Harpers kept the barn closed up at night, the big doors at both ends drawn shut against the wind and cold, and against predators, two-legged or four. Now in the early dawn, the alleyway was dim, but the light was strange, unnaturally pale. Billy woke in his box stall to a glow more white than shadowed, white light seeping in above the stall door, and the air was freezing. His face and hands were icy while the rest of him was too hot. Six cats were piled on top of him, and one curled up between his shoulder and chin, all seven snuggled close trying to keep warm. Sliding his hands under them, he luxuriated in their body heat and warm fur. For a moment, he didn’t know where he was. He wasn’t in his own bed on the thin pad through which you could feel the rough slats, this bed was soft, and saggy in the middle, and he was tucked between real sheets, smooth and smelling of laundry soap, and the blanket was soft and thick, too. And the air—the cold air didn’t stink of whiskey and throw-up, it smelled of horses and of fresh, sweet hay. All this in an instant, and then he sat up spilling cats every which way, realizing he was in the Harpers’ barn.

He swung out of bed, and stood looking out through the hinged mesh barrier that formed the top half of the stall door. Down at the end of the alley, the light seeping in around the big doors was bright white, the faint movement of air freezing cold. The horses were stirring in their stalls, restless and wanting breakfast. When he turned to look at the cats, they were hungry, too, all seven lined up in a row, now, waiting to be fed—but they, too, were puzzled by the light, they sat glancing up at the door and up at the ceiling, watching a shaft of white light that fingered through, where the timbers joined the wall. Striped Sam, and black Lulu, they were Gran’s favorites. He thought of Gran and felt his stomach go hollow. The image would never be gone, Gran lying dead on that stretcher, her charred body, his not wanting this to be real, wanting it not to have happened, wanting to believe that such a thing couldn’t happen.

He had seen the fire as he came up the highway, pumping hard up the steep hill, saw the EMT van turn in and had raced to catch up, raced behind in its cloud of dust down the dirt lane, saw the fire truck and cop cars and felt his stomach turn hollow. Like he felt now, hollow and sick. Gran on the stretcher, her clothes and skin burned black. They had pulled him away, wouldn’t let him near, he couldn’t touch her. She was gone, she wasn’t his gran anymore, she was a foreign thing. He had stood by the wet, black timbers, the live red coals, the smoke and steam and the stink of burning rags, trying to understand that Gran was dead, stood there until the hollow sickness in his belly made him retch and turn away.

But then later a jolt of something else hit him and he was immediately ashamed. Part of him felt free. Free of Gran’s drinking, of dragging himself awake in the middle of the night to hold a bucket so she could throw up, free of cleaning up after her and cleaning her up, having to change her nightie and get her back into her bed. He hated trying to clean up the rough wood floor, you could never scrub that stuff out, never get the smell out, the place always stank of throw-up. And then every night when she went off to work, seeming to be sober, worrying she’d have a wreck, get hurt, or hurt or kill someone else.

Now he was free. So free he felt like running, like he could fly, he was free of an old woman who refused to take care of herself, refused to take any responsibility for what she did to them both.

He loved Gran, but even right after she died, right after the fire, the burst of lightness and freedom inside him had felt pretty damn good.

Did you burn in hell for such thoughts?

The bag of kibble stood on a cardboard box that Charlie had brought in for him to use as a table. He poured the dry food into the cats’ dishes, set them on the hard dirt floor, and the cats dove in growling softly at each other. No one tried stealing, they were pretty good about that. Out in the stable, Charlie’s sorrel mare nickered for her hay and banged the door, and the two big dogs, who were shut loose in the alleyway at night, stood up on their hind legs, their front paws on the stall door, looking in. Both were fawn colored, they were litter brothers, Charlie had said, most likely of a Great Dane mother and maybe fathered by a German shepherd. Both were huge and ungainly and still acted like puppies, until Charlie or Max took a hand with them. After the fire, Charlie had shown him the smoke alarm that was wired from the barn to the house, and the speaker that, if there was trouble, if there was fire or a break-in, would let her and Captain Harper hear the dogs barking.

Opening the stall door, he pushed the dogs back, stroking and pummeling them, and stepped out into the alleyway. Moving out between the two rows of stalls past the restless horses, he approached the barn door with curiosity, where the white streaks of light shot in.

When he slid it open, the yard was white around him, the pastures white, the far hills, the roof of the house, the tops of the cars, all white, snow piled up in a white dazzle, snow on the sills of the bay window framing the lighted kitchen where he could see Charlie inside, getting breakfast.

The dogs had already bolted past him bouncing and barking and biting at the snow. Still wearing the old sweatsuit he slept in, he ran to join them and pummeled and pelted them with snow, rolled in the snow with them, laughing as they barked. Not in his whole life had he ever seen snow, only in pictures in books. He played in the snow with the dogs until he was freezing and soaking wet and then turned back inside the barn to get dry. He put on his day clothes, and fed the horses, measuring the grain carefully, following Charlie’s instructions, flaking off just the right amount of hay for each, filling their buckets with clean water. By the time he’d turned the horses out into the pasture and cleaned their stalls, the smell of bacon and pancakes was nearly more than he could stand. The two big dogs had long since gone in the house, and as he headed across the yard he could see Max Harper at the table hurriedly eating his breakfast, as if something pressing was pulling him away.