Shirley Murphy - Murphy_Shirley_Rousseau_Cat_Telling_Tales_BookFi

“All of it,” said Misto, laughing, “the fancy pillows, the velour lap robe, the works.” The cushions smelled deliciously of Kit, and there was a fine mat of her tortoiseshell fur embedded in the velvet and brocade. Drifts of snow had piled up outside one edge of the planked floor, but the tree house itself was fine and dry. Pan lingered, looking, followed Misto only reluctantly as he headed for the smell of breakfast, padding along a snow-covered branch to Kit’s cat door. The old cat pushed in under the plastic flap onto the windowsill, a leap to the dining table, and he paused, listening.

The house was silent. The smell of breakfast was immediate and rich, but the table had already been cleared. Peering into the kitchen, they could see dirty plates hastily stacked, sticky with syrup, as if Lucinda and Pedric and maybe Kit, too, had gone off in a fine hurry.

But at the far end of the table, two small saucers had been left on a single white place mat. Each plate presented a waffle, cut small and glistening with butter and syrup, and a slice of bacon broken into small bites. On the place mat itself shone one perfect, syrupy paw print carefully incised: a pretty invitation to breakfast, which they could hardly ignore. Pan said, “How did she know we’d come here?”

Misto smiled. “How could she not? She knew I’d be showing you the village, and where else would we start?” He turned his attention to breakfast, handily licking up every bite of his own share, and the good food warmed them right down to their icy paws. When no one appeared, they circled through the empty house, then returned to the tree house. Backing to the ground, their claws deep in the rough bark, they circled the house on the outside, as well, and finding Lucinda’s and Pedric’s boot prints leading away, and Kit’s paw prints trotting along beside them, they followed.

“They’re heading for the murder scene,” Misto said. The grave had not remained a secret for long, word never did in this small village; news traveled from friend to friend, neighbor to neighbor, and back again. The Firettis had heard it over breakfast from a busy-minded neighbor, and where else would Kit go?

The two tomcats galloped along in the wake of the Greenlaws’ footprints, amused when Kit’s paw prints vanished suddenly, to appear again after a block or so—little forays to the rooftops, or sometimes where Pedric had picked her up and carried her, most likely tucked inside his coat until her paws grew warm again. The two toms followed them up into the neighborhood of the Damens’ remodel and on up to where the yard and street were full of cop cars. Ryan Flannery’s red truck, too, and a white van marked with the seal of the state of California. There were cops everywhere, and over all came the sick smell of something dead for a very long time. Warily they scrambled up into the low, weeping branches of an acacia tree, crouched there behind its leafy curtain, looking out, their fur dusted with yellow pollen from the tree’s early blooms. The snow outside the tree was stained yellow, too, as was the bare ground within, sheltered by the tent of branches.

Lucinda’s and Pedric’s footprints made patterns among the tangle of other prints as if they had stood talking with the officers, then their trail headed away again, while Kit’s prints vanished at the base of a pine tree. And there she was above them, on a neighbor’s roof, Kit and Joe and Dulcie, three dark small shapes silhouetted against the milky overcast, watching the action below. Pan and Misto didn’t race to join them, there were too many people to see them, too many cops. Enough to see three cats together there on the rooftop so intently watching. What would they make of five? Such a gathering would stir far too puzzled an interest.

From among the drooping branches they could see directly into the big hole that was cut in the side of the small brown cottage, the raw earth within picked out with bright spotlights, blinding in their intensity. A slim, dark-haired woman in faded jeans stood looking in, her dark glasses shielding her from the searing light. “Detective Ray,” Misto said. A curtain of clear plastic had been hung over the opening, pulled to the side and tied back like a hastily devised shower curtain. They couldn’t see what was happening inside but could hear the soft brush of careful digging, as delicate as the brush of a cat’s paws.

But then soon, another decaying smell reached them, a bit different from the cellar’s taint of death. Pan, following his twitching nose, looked down beneath the tree where the ground was bare of snow, where rotted leaves were matted between the tree’s exposed roots: smooth gray roots as thick as human arms, twisted together, and over the aroma of death from the cellar, and the honey scent of the acacia blooms, this other faint, metallic smell. Dropping down from the low branches, Pan sniffed at the roots and at the dark stains on their smooth gray surface, and curled his lip in a flehmen face. “Blood.” He looked intently up at Misto. “Human blood.”

Misto jumped down and sniffed, too, flehming, trapping the smell on his tongue. “Old blood, not fresh,” he said. There was no scent of anyone having recently entered under the tree’s low branches, and he looked away to where the officers were at work. “How could they miss this? Stay here,” he said, and slipped out through the leafy curtain.

Easing across the snowy yard among the white-crested bushes, he scrambled up through the dark pine that crowded the neighbors’ house, and across a swaying branch onto the neighbors’ roof to join the other three, and excitement filled the old cat.

When first he’d arrived in the village just before Christmas, the three village cats had been nosing into another murder investigation; he’d fallen eagerly in with them, and found this work even more interesting than his many travels. Now, he whispered to Joe and led him down the pine and through the bushes into the leafy tent. Joe looked at the bloodstained roots and smelled them. He gave Misto a whiskery smile and a nod, then he melted away again, along the edge of the yard heading for Ryan, making straight for his housemate.

Within minutes Joe and Ryan were in her truck, her cell phone lying on the seat where Joe could punch in 911. Before he made the call, Ryan got out again, left the far door cracked open, and stepped over to join Kathleen. Joe was crouched on the seat, his face close to the phone, when dispatcher Mabel Farthy picked up. Knowing his voice, she was quick to put the snitch through to Kathleen, Mabel never wasted time on useless questions.

“Why did you wait until now?” Kathleen said. “When did you find this blood? No one’s been in the backyard, last night or this morning, there are guards all over. When did you—”

Joe broke the connection, then peered carefully up over the edge of the window, watching Kathleen as she dropped the phone back in its holster.

Slipping out of the truck, Joe was crouched in its shadow as Kathleen turned to Ryan. “The snitch,” she said. “What the hell is this? How does he do this? Couldn’t he give us a little more information? Why so damned secretive? What’s the point in calling, when he . . . ? Oh, to hell with it,” she said, looking away toward the acacia tree.

Kathleen was the newest detective on the force, she was still tempted to cross-examine the unknown informant. Not that it ever did her any good. She stood frowning, then headed for her car, pulled out her evidence bag from the trunk, hung two cameras around her neck, and headed for the acacia. As she approached its drooping branches, she didn’t see a pair of shadows slip out from the other side and vanish among the neighbors’ yards. When Kathleen knelt down to peer under, the space was empty.