Shirley Murphy: Murphy_Shirley_Rousseau_Cat_Telling_Tales_BookFi

When he slid the closet door back, the rod and shelves were nearly empty. He removed one of three shirts and the only pair of jeans. From behind the fallen covers she watched him jerk the suitcase open, grab a pair of black Jockey shorts and black socks, and begin to hurriedly pull on his clothes. Why the rush? Was he afraid a police patrol would see the light, find out he’d returned? Why had he come back at all?

As nervous as he was, and with a suitcase packed and waiting, this time might he be gone for good, taking with him the evidence to fraud and murder? What, in fact, could be more damning than that he’d been faking Alain’s e-mail—while she lay rotting in her grave?

She wondered if he had just now heard about the fire? If he had poisoned Hesmerra’s whiskey months earlier, had he just now learned that she was dead? Had he come back to find the papers he knew she’d stolen, papers he’d searched for before she died, and had never found?

The laptop lay on the dresser just a few feet above her. Once Kraft vanished again, even as efficient as MPPD was, there was the chance he’d somehow evade them. If she knocked the little computer off the dresser onto the soft carpet, she and Pan could drag it, between them. She was trying to think how to get it out the door unseen when Erik finished dressing and turned to the bed; silently she slid deeper out of sight.

She heard him throw the covers back, perhaps meaning to lay the suitcase on the bed and open it. With a swish of sheets, the quilt fell to the floor—she thought Pan would leap clear of it and run, maybe distracting Erik so she could snag the laptop.

Pan didn’t run, she heard him hiss and growl, and knew he must be standing boldly where Erik had jerked the covers away. She slid out behind Erik, to look. Oh my. Pan stood facing Erik, snarling like a cougar, his claws bared, his daggered paw lifted to strike.

Kraft backed away. Clearly he recognized the tomcat, this cat he had tormented—clearly he thought that if the cat was there in the village, Debbie must be there, that she must have brought the cat with her. His puzzlement made Kit want to laugh, but his rage scared her so bad her paws began to sweat.

Was he wondering if Debbie had come back because of her mother’s death, if she suspected he’d killed Hesmerra? Seeing Pan seemed to ignite all his anger at Debbie. When he lunged for Pan, the tomcat struck, his bared claws tearing long slashes down Erik’s arm and hand, then he leaped away and fled for the open glass door, Kit beside him looking back, reluctant to leave the laptop.

But Erik was fast, he blocked the opening, kicking at them, jerked the door closed, and lunged to grab them. They vanished under the bed, waiting with claws lifted for his hand to reach under. He kicked the bed and swore, but he didn’t kneel down and reach in. When he couldn’t drive them out by kicking and pounding on the bed he turned away, as if to waste no more time on stray cats.

Peering out, they watched him snatch a handkerchief from the suitcase, wrap it around his hand, and toss the last of his clothes in, watched him fetch a batch of papers from the top dresser drawer and drop those in on top. Before closing the suitcase, he returned to the bathroom. Kneeling before the vanity, he removed a drawer, and then slid a portion of the cabinet’s inner wall aside.

A small metal safe was set into the wall. Deftly he worked the dial, swung the little door open, and began to remove thick packets of money, bills bound together with paper strips. From behind these he pulled out a dozen plastic tubes, each half as big around as a tiny cat food can, but longer and made of pale, thick plastic.

“Gold coins,” Pan whispered, his words barely a breath. “He had cylinders like that in Eugene, I watched him count out the coins, each one as bright as the sun.”

As Erik tucked this fortune into the suitcase and locked it, Kit crept out from beneath the bed and hid among the black folds of quilt. She watched him turn off the laptop and unplug it, watched him wind the cord and slip it into a side pocket of the computer case, watched him zip the case and set it atop the suitcase. As he returned to the bathroom to lock and conceal the safe, the cats were a blur. They leaped on the suitcase, dragged the laptop off and to the door, and they were out of there, their hearts hammering as they fought the door open and hauled the laptop through, their teeth deep in the leather case. They dragged it across the patio, noisily across the scatter of gravel, and out of sight beneath the patio wall. Kit was ready to race away with it, when Pan set down his end and vanished under the wall again into the terrace. She peered under.

Kraft was still in the bathroom, she could see his moving shadow. She watched Pan take a roofing pebble in his mouth, leap to the glass door, and push the pebble down into the bottom track, wedging it in just where the door would shut, a tiny black pebble that might never be noticed within the creases of the dark metal track.

Pan returned from beneath the wall, saying nothing. He picked up his end of the laptop, and they carried it between them, their teeth firmly in its padded case. They dragged it across the roofs and up a sharp peak, and down again within a sheltered niche where three roofs joined—down into a dark and shingled crevice not easily accessible to a human, only to someone smaller and more agile. Sliding the laptop into deep darkness, they scrambled out again and ran. Erik Kraft wasn’t likely to climb up those peaks and look down.

They raced down the stairs and up the street into the shadows of a narrow alley, and there they waited for Kraft to appear. “He’ll think it fell on the floor,” Pan said. “Black laptop, black carpet, black folds of comforter. Take him a minute to realize it isn’t there. When he sees the slider open . . .” He went still, listening. They heard the glass door open, heard Kraft race across the terrace, heard the patio table rattle as he scrambled over the wall. They didn’t run. Backing deeper among the shadows, they wanted to see what he would do, listened to his footsteps pounding across the roof and down, watched from their dark recess as he raced up the sidewalk stopping strangers, asking questions, looking for an escaping thief. Watched him peer into parked cars, race from one little alley to the next, stop to stare in through the doors of closed shops.

“When he gives up,” Kit said, smiling, “when he knows he won’t find it, what’s he going to do? Call the cops? File a report for one stolen laptop, that’s ripe with evidence?”

Pan gave her a satisfied look as they followed Kraft around the corner, watched him double-time up the front stairs.

“He’ll grab his bag and be out of there,” Kit said. “We need to see his car, get his license, then we call the station.” She turned to look at Pan, her green eyes widening. “The pebble!” she said. “ That’s what the pebble was for? So we can get back inside.”

31

Looking down from the balcony to the crowded room, Joe cut a look at Dulcie. How easy to drop down onto the buffet table, right between the sliced turkey and the salmon mousse, grab a few bites before anyone even noticed.

“Don’t even think about it,” Dulcie said. Misto smiled, the older cat, too, envisioning a grand leap into the heart of the feast—what a stir they’d make in the crowded room.

People were still arriving, eager for the auction, and Joe thought about all the money CatFriends would raise tonight, to pay for cat food and medicine. Out through the tall windows on the patio, the rescue cats themselves, safe in their cages, were drawing as much attention as the treasures to be bid upon. They were of every color, every disposition. Some rubbed against the bars or reached out a friendly paw to whoever spoke to them. Only a few backed off, keeping their distance, still distrustful since their own humans had abandoned them. Sammie Miller’s two black-and-white cats snuggled together on a blue blanket looking up hopefully when anyone approached. Twenty-five unadopted strays, from the sixty-two cats that CatFriends had trapped and placed in foster homes. Those who didn’t find homes tonight were destined to become permanent members of their adopters’ families—but they didn’t know that. They looked out through the bars at a conflicted and perplexing world: They were imprisoned, but they were safe. Surrounded by kind hands and gentle voices, but yet crowded by too many strangers pressing against their cages. Frightened or friendly, they didn’t know what was happening to them. “Maybe,” Dulcie said, “they’ll all find new homes tonight.”