Shirley Murphy - Murphy_Shirley_Rousseau_Cat_Coming_Home_BookFi

Earlier, at the bottom of the stairs, looking across the kitchen to the studio, watching Maudie at her worktable, she’d had no idea what instinct held her back, but she’d paid attention. She was nervous at the faint voices she’d heard from outside. That couldn’t be Arlie and Kent, they wouldn’t talk out loud, though they were probably already nearby, watching the target house. Maybe she’d heard some neighbors’ voices contorted by the wind, floating on the night.

As Pearl was waiting for Maudie to leave again to go pick up the child, as she seemed to be preparing to do, the sound of a car in the drive and then footsteps on the porch made her back deeper into the closet. Pulling the door to, she pushed in behind the line of hanging coats, into the smell of old wool. She heard the front door open, heard Jared call out to Maudie, heard Maudie’s step as she came out of the kitchen.

“I was just leaving to go get Benny,” Maudie said. “You missed a good dinner.”

“I’ll get him if you like. Maybe there’ll be some leftovers,” he said hopefully.

“I never saw so much food,” Maudie said. “But you’d better hurry, those cops wolf it down like it’s their last meal.”

“I’ll go get Benny, and then, early as it is, I’m hitting the hay. I’ve had a ton of homework this week, feel like I’ll never catch up on my sleep.”

Pearl heard the front door open and close, heard Maudie move away across the tile floor toward the living room, heard Jared’s car start and back out of the drive. Now, again, she and Maudie were alone. Slipping out of the closet, meaning to trap Maudie in the living room, she heard the voices again, closer. Someone was out there, and a sense of wrongness tingled through her, the feeling she got sometimes at the poker table when, despite how the cards were falling, she knew to stop betting. That instinct was at work now. If she was smart she’d go with it.

Easing open the closet door to peer out, she saw Maudie in the kitchen, sitting at the table with her back to her. Silently she slipped to the front door, cracked it open, but drew back when the voices came again, the soft grainy voice of the man and the faint laugh of the young woman. Quietly pulling the door closed, she left the house, not through the front or side door, but out the low living room window into the bushes, where she was sure no neighbor would glimpse her. Moving along close to the side of the house and then into the neighbor’s wooded backyard, she waited for her companions. She would return in a while, this time to do more than confront Maudie, this time to force Maudie’s hand.

37

FOUR HOUSES DOWN from Maudie’s stood a wood-sided Craftsman cottage, its ivory tones picked out by four decorative lamps standing among beds of pale alstroemerias that were nearly finished blooming for the winter. Grass clippings from the little lawn were scattered along the stone walk, where Alfreda Meiers or her gardener had apparently neglected to sweep. The walk was sheltered by a Japanese maple, bare now in the winter cold. Three steps led up to the cream-colored wooden porch and the pale front door that was carved with fern patterns and without any panes of decorative glass. The walls flanking the door were solid, too, and unbroken, there was only the peephole in the door itself through which to view whoever might ring the bell. A widow of twenty years, a shy, fearful woman, Alfreda kept her windows and front and back doors double-locked. She had no dog to provide protection or warning barks; she didn’t want dog hair on her furniture. She didn’t have a weapon for protection, she was afraid of guns, and she felt that even pepper spray was far too dangerous. She carried her cell phone in her pocket so that if she ever did have an intruder, she could summon help. She had two grown daughters, both married and living in Southern California. She had no desire to live with either of them, nor they with her. The girls visited their mother infrequently, and with restraint.

Alfreda’s dinner had consisted of a broiled chicken breast, a small salad, and for dessert a sliced pear with a square of white cheese. After dinner she allowed herself a cheerful gas fire in the fireplace, and curled up on the couch to read the latest in a series of gentle mysteries that wouldn’t keep her awake. She heard several cars pass on the street, saw their lights bleeding in arcs through her living room draperies. She was only vaguely aware of a car pulling into a drive four doors up, and then soon departing again; she knew it was at the Tudor house, by the heavy sound of the front door closing. She hadn’t met her new neighbor, not formally, but they waved to each other on the street. At nine-thirty Alfreda closed her book, turned off the gas logs, turned down the furnace thermostat, and switched off the lights. By ten o’clock she had washed her face, brushed her teeth, slipped on her flannel nightgown, and was in bed, already drifting off, willing her dreams to be happy. This time of year, she tried to fix her thoughts on the happy holidays of her childhood, not on those later on in her life. She woke again at ten-forty, rudely pulled from sleep by the door chimes ringing, accompanied by frantic pounding on the door itself, as if someone were in trouble.

UP THE HILL from Alfreda Meier’s house and Maudie’s, atop the Damens’ little cottage, Kit and Misto sat at the edge of the roof watching the street below. They had watched Maudie in her studio, had seen Jared arrive home and leave again, then later seen him return with Benny, the child stumbling into the house half asleep, leaning against Jared. Had seen the guest room light go on and shadows move about as if both Benny and Jared were getting ready for bed, and in a few minutes the light went off again. Soon Maudie’s light went out, too, the house was dark, and Kit imagined the three drifting off into sleep. Only the cats were wakeful, alert to every smallest sound, to that of a passing car along the surrounding streets, to the distant bark of a dog, to a door closing blocks away. To the tiny scratching from above as a flying squirrel landed on the rough bark of a nearby pine. He looked down at them with huge, dark eyes, and sailed away again into the night.

Kit had, with a thoughtfulness that surprised even Kit herself, used the cell phone to ease Lucinda’s and Pedric’s worries when she didn’t come home; they had gone to the party early and, wanting to see the pageant, had also left early. They were home now, and they did worry when she was out in the night. As Kit and Misto held their vigil, he told stories from ancient Wales that she had never heard, she had committed each to memory, making it forever a part of her hoard of mysterious tales.

Below, they heard a car park four or five blocks down, the reflection of its lights suddenly extinguished. Footsteps cut the night and then silence, as if perhaps the driver had gained his own front door, silently opened it and closed it, not wanting to wake those within; and again the neighborhood was still. Kit was reciting to herself one of Misto’s stories when they heard the faintest echo of a doorbell just down the street, and then loud, insistent banging—maybe half a block down? Kit scanned the houses below. The banging continued and the bell kept on ringing, and they could see a dark shadow on the porch of the cream-colored house four doors down from Maudie’s. As they watched, the porch light blazed on revealing a thin man pounding, his back to them. He wore a black jacket, dark jeans, a dark cap. The questioning voice from within, a woman’s voice, was as thin as a whisper. Was she peering out through the peephole? How much of him could she see of him?