Shirley Murphy - Murphy_Shirley_Rousseau_Cat_Coming_Home_BookFi

Two shots blasted the night: Maudie’s gun and Max’s. Dallas didn’t fire for fear of hitting Max. Two shots were enough. Pearl jerked and fell against the door. Max flung the door open, his gun on her as he pulled her out of the car to sprawl facedown in the dirt.

Pearl didn’t move. In the beams of the officers’ lights a thin finger of blood began to pool from the back of her neck, and blood stained the ground beneath her. Joe could see where one bullet had exited, tearing through her throat. When Dallas shone his light around inside the car, Joe could see through the open door that two of the dashboard dials were shattered where a bullet must have passed through Pearl. Easing back out of the way, Joe lay down beside Rock, wanting to comfort the big dog. Rock was shaking—from the stress? From the smell of human blood? Or from the loud explosion of gunshots? Lying close together, cat and dog watched Max slip into the backseat of the Jaguar beside Maudie and put his arm around her, saw the older woman lean against him.

Who had killed Pearl was a toss. But did it matter? Pearl wouldn’t kill anyone else, Joe thought with satisfaction. And she wouldn’t torment Benny or his grandma anymore.

And the tomcat had to wonder, what would happen to Pearl if indeed she now faced some divine retribution? This was a matter of conjecture, but Joe Grey had his own version.

46

BENNY TOOLA’S BIRTHDAY, two days after his mother’s death, could have been a grim affair for the little boy, and Maudie did her best to provide a gentle celebration. The child needed a party, needed folks around him who cared, who might herald a new stage in his life, help him deal with his fear and conflicted feelings. Benny had hated his mother, had mourned her lack of love for him. His shock when she murdered his father could have turned the child inward with a hatred and fear that might never leave him. But Pearl was his mother, after all, and he’d surely grieve for her, if only for what she’d denied him.

But Maudie’s emotions were conflicted, too, her guilt at having shot Pearl battling with her sense of strength and closure. She didn’t want to know the autopsy results, didn’t want to know whether her shot or Max Harper’s had killed Pearl. It was enough that she had taken a stand, though at that moment she could have done nothing less. Max said she had saved his life. Maybe she had, or maybe he’d saved his own. Whatever the truth, she had set out to kill Pearl, to see that Pearl paid for Martin’s death; she had never deceived herself about that. Now it was done, and she and Benny were free, now her concern was for Benny.

There would be no funeral until the coroner released the body. Most likely, he said, some time between Christmas and the New Year. Maudie hoped Benny could start the New Year with the funeral, too, behind him.

The day after Pearl died, Maudie made a trip down to the station to give her statement to Chief Harper and Detective Garza; then she fetched Benny from Ryan and Clyde’s remodel, where he was happily scrubbing the bathroom tiles alongside Lori, and together Maudie and the little boy went shopping to pick out the makings of a special birthday gift.

They found a set of furniture Benny liked, bright oak with brass fittings, and they consulted paint samples, taking home dozens of little colored swatches which Maudie held up to the wall while Benny chose the one that pleased him. Returning to the store, they bought the paint, and the next morning they were up before dawn, Maudie making pancakes as Benny set the table. Then, together, they painted the walls of the little sewing room. When the paint was dry they washed the windows and polished the hardwood floor. The next morning, the furniture was delivered: a twin-sized bed with drawers underneath, a small desk and bookshelves and a soft pad to fit the window seat, which Maudie covered with a bright quilt. They hung the big bulletin board they had bought and a trio of framed airplane prints they had found in a hobby shop. Benny moved his clothes and his few possessions into his new room, and he slept there the night before his birthday, at first curled up on the window seat under Maudie’s quilt, looking out over the rooftops and away across the greenbelt that ran behind the house.

“I looked for the yellow cat,” he told Maudie the next morning. “The yellow cat on the roofs, and for Dulcie and Joe Grey and Kit, but they didn’t come, no cat came. They haven’t gone away?”

“They’re not gone,” Maudie told him. “Ryan and Clyde wouldn’t let them go away. I’m sure that at least Ryan’s gray tomcat will be here later, for your birthday party.”

Neither Joe nor Dulcie nor Kit meant to miss Benny’s birthday, though Misto was otherwise occupied. The night that Pearl was shot, Misto, who was curled up beneath the seniors’ deck with Kit, felt lame and was hurting all over from his long run up the hills. Ryan had enticed him to come out, and she took him home with them, holding him on her lap as Clyde drove. Misto investigated the Damen house only briefly before he followed Snowball upstairs and curled up on the couch between the little white cat and Joe Grey. Next morning, the Damens and Joe crowded into Clyde’s yellow roadster to take Misto to see Dr. Firetti.

Even after all the passing years, John Firetti remembered the little yellow tom kitten who, he’d suspected even then, would one day realize that he could speak. When the kitten disappeared from the shore where Firetti fed the strays, he had searched for weeks for him. “I put ads in the paper for a lost yellow kitten,” he told Misto, “but they came to nothing. I hoped someone had adopted you, but I worried, wondered if you were with someone kind, if they were treating you well. I thought whoever took you might be strangers, tourists. I watched in case you should find your way back, and fretted about you for a very long time.”

“I did find my way back,” Misto said, laughing. “Though it took a while. I’ve wandered a long way and lived many places.” He looked at John Firetti eagerly, as if he might like to share his adventures with the doctor, as if he might enjoy settling in with a human friend for a little while; and John looked back at him with such excitement and wonder that both Ryan and Clyde had to hide a grin. Joe Grey watched the two of them with interest. Maybe, he thought, Misto’s tales might be worth a listen. Who knew what wild scenes the old cat could paint of close calls, of adventures and escapes among the human world.

There in the clinic, Dr. Firetti checked Misto over, then invited them across the way to his cottage, Clyde and Ryan for a cup of coffee. Mary Firetti settled Misto on a blanket on the flowered couch while Joe prowled the house, forever nosy, and John Firetti laid another log on the fire. Mary Firetti was a slim woman, her soft brown hair done up in a bun at the back, her denim jumper, over a white T-shirt, loose and comfortable, her leather sandals low-heeled and sensible. When she carried in the coffee tray, she set down a bowl of cream for Misto and one for Joe Grey. “Will you stay with us a while?” she asked Misto. Her direct address to him startled the yellow cat; he looked at her with alarm, then looked up at John.

“It’s all right,” John said. “Mary’s kept the secret just as I have.”

Misto looked at Mary for a long time, then stuck his nose in the cream. Yes, he would like to stay for a while. Mary seemed a warm, comfortable person, the Firetti cottage smelled of lavender and of cats, and he thought he quite liked the cozy household.

BENNY’S BIRTHDAY SUPPER featured an array of potluck casseroles and salads, many brought by their guests, and the chocolate birthday cake Maudie had made the night before, after Benny slept. Chocolate icing with Benny’s name and HAPPY BIRTHDAY in red and green writing as fancy as Maudie’s quilts. Around the cake was piled a mountain of gifts which, soon after supper, Benny tore open, scattering the wrappers and revealing bright and intriguing books he’d yet to read, board games he’d never played, more gifts than he could ever remember receiving, though Martin had done his best to please his little boy. Dulcie and Kit curled up beside him on the floor as he pored over the books, the lady cats snuggling close; around them the conversation swung comfortably from Christmas Day plans, to the depositions of Marlin Dorriss and Jared Colletto and the warrant out on Kent Colletto, to Pearl’s embezzlement. Her ledger had not been found, but the copies of her alternate set of books had been sent to the LAPD. Though she would never face a judge in this life, the information would help Beckman Heavy Equipment straighten out their clients’ accounts. The stolen money, if LAPD could uncover any hidden bank accounts in Pearl’s name, might help make up the funds that the firm had refunded to their wronged clients.