Cat Breaking Free (2 page)

Charlie Harper, the wife of Molena Point's chief of police, far preferred time on horseback or at her easel to a formal social life. Partly because of this, she and Ryan had hit it off at once. When Ryan's sister, Hanni, moved down from the city, too, to start her own interior design studio, the three women soon became fast friends. The fact that Ryan and Hanni were from a law-enforcement family cemented the bond. Their uncle Dallas worked for the Molena Point Police Department, Dallas and his nieces comprising a family exodus that amused the tomcat. Though why should it? Who wouldn't leave San Francisco with its increasing crime? Molena Point was small, friendly, and comfortable. And the family had had a vacation cottage in the village since the two sisters were children.

Joe said, “If Ryan were worried, you think she'd leave you alone with Chichi for a week? You think she'd go off on horseback, letting Chichi have her way with you?”

“Put that way, you make me sound like a real wimp.”

“Anyway,” Joe said, “Ryan and Charlie and Hanni have planned for that trip all year, getting their horses in shape, calling the blacksmith, checking their gear…”

Clyde smiled. “I'm playing second fiddle to a couple of lady equestrians and a sorrel mare.”

Joe yawned. “I'm surprised Chichi keeps pushing you, though, after seeing the chief of police over here two or three times a week.” Chief Harper and Clyde had grown up together. Max and one other friend were as close to family as Clyde had. “Unless,” Joe said, his yellow eyes narrowing, “unless
that
fits into her plan.”

Clyde stared at him. “She's going to pull a scam on Max Harper?”

The tomcat licked his white paws. “Why not? That woman would try to scam anyone. She even tried to make up to Rube, just because he's your dog. Just like she used to baby-talk me in San Francisco.”

“She backed off Rube fast enough,” Clyde said, smiling. Chichi had been mad as hell when Rube growled at her. In Joe's opinion, the old black Lab was sometimes smarter than Clyde. He looked down at Rube, stretched out across the bricks, his aging black bulk soaking up the sunshine. “Rube knows his women. He should, he's lived with you since he was a pup.” Joe watched the elderly Labrador roll over onto a warmer patch of paving.

“Slowing down,” Clyde said sadly, setting down his coffee cup and kneeling beside Rube to stroke and talk to the old dog. Rube lifted his head to lick Clyde's hand, his tail flopping on the bricks. But Clyde and the tomcat exchanged a look. Rube hadn't been himself for some time; they were both worried about him. Dr. Firetti had prescribed a heart medication, but he hadn't been encouraging.

Joe was thinking it a blessing that the morning was quiet so the old dog could rest, a silky calm Saturday morning, when their peace was suddenly broken. Loud rock music shattered the silence, jolting all three of them, hard rock coming from next door where they heard a car pulling up the drive on the far side of the neighbors' house. They could hear nothing but the car radio blasting. What ever happened to real music? the tomcat thought. In Clyde's house, the old Basin Street jazz was king; and, since Clyde and Ryan started dat
ing, a certain amount of classical music that even a tomcat could learn to like.

The radio went silent. They heard two car doors slam, then two men's voices, one speaking Spanish as they headed down the drive, to the entry to Chichi's back bedroom. They heard the men knock, heard the door open, heard Chichi's high giggle as the door closed again, then silence. Rising, his ears pressed back with annoyance, the tomcat leaped from the chaise to the barbecue to the top of the plastered wall, where he could see the door and the drive.

An older brown Plymouth coupe stood in the drive. Stretching out along the top of the wall, Joe watched the one bedroom window he could see; the other was around the corner facing a strip of garden and the drive. Inside, Chichi was sitting on the bed facing the two men, who sat in straight chairs, their backs to Joe. The three had pulled the night table between them and were studying some kind of papers they had spread out. Frowning, the tomcat dropped from the wall down into the neighbors' scruffy yard. Racing across the rough grass and around the corner, he leaped into the little lemon tree that stood just outside Chichi's other window.

Scorching up into its branches he tried to avoid the tree's nasty little thorns, but one caught him in the paw. Pausing to lick the blood away, he tried to keep his white markings out of sight, hidden among the sparse foliage. What were they looking at? A map? He climbed higher, stretching out along a brittle limb, peering down.

Yes. A street map of the village. He could see the words “Molena Point” slanted across one corner. One
man was Latino, with collar-length black hair. The other was a gringo, with sandy-red hair and short beard. Of what significance were the streets and intersections that the Latino man traced so intently with one stubby finger? Joe could not see the notes Chichi was making, where she had propped a small spiral pad on the corner of the table. He tried to peer around her shoulder but couldn't stretch far enough without risking a fall out of the spindly little tree. He caught a few words, but they were doing more tracing than talking. They seemed to be working out some scenario. It was clear to the tomcat that these three were not, by the wildest stretch, planning a Sunday church picnic.

N
othing could be seen on the vast green hills but the
three riders, their horses jogging across the rising slopes high above the sea; they were pursued only by swift cloud shadows as ephemeral as ghosts slipping along behind them. Far below them where the hills dropped away, a carpet of fog hung suspended, hiding the cold Pacific. California weather, Charlie thought, loving the swiftly changing contrasts of light and shadow and the damp smell of iodine and salt. The chill wind was refreshing after a good night's sleep and a big breakfast; she was deliciously warm inside her leather jacket; her mass of wild red hair, held back with a leather band, kept her neck warm. She sat the big buckskin easily; she was watching a gull swoop low to disappear below the fog when her attention turned suddenly to the pine forest that followed on her right, deeper inland.

Something moved there, something small and quick. Many somethings, she thought, frowning. Small crea
tures slipping along fast among the shadows as if secretly following them. In the shifting patterns of sun and shade she tried to make them out, but could see nothing clearly. She didn't want to move Bucky closer and alert her two companions. Uneasily, she studied the woods. She had been watching for some time when, behind her, Ryan put the sorrel mare to a gallop and moved up beside her.

“What are you watching?” the dark-haired young woman said. “What's in there, what are the horses looking at?” Both horses were looking toward the woods, their ears flicking nervously as they stared into the tangled shadows.

“Maybe rabbits,” Charlie said. “I really can't see what it is. This time of year, maybe baby rabbits.” Though none of their horses was in the habit of shying at rabbits.

Ryan frowned. With her dark Latin beauty and startling green eyes, Ryan Flannery looked, in Charlie's opinion, more like a model than a building contractor. Even this morning with her short dark hair tucked beneath a battered slouch hat and wearing faded jeans and faded sweatshirt, Ryan Flannery was striking, her mix of Irish and Latino blood creating a stunning and singular beauty. Riding Charlie's sorrel mare, turned in the saddle, Ryan peered into the shadows of the woods with curiosity but warily. She looked ready to act if action was needed.

Ryan's sister, moving up beside them so not to miss anything, watched the woods intently. Mounted on a dappled gray gelding whose coat exactly matched her short, well-styled silver hair, Hanni Coon was the glamorous one of the three. Hanni's designer jeans,
this morning, were of a skillfully faded shade that dramatically set off her hand-knit coral-and-blue sweater. Her Western boots were too new to look natural; they sported rattlesnake insets and had been handmade by Tony Lama. Hanni's roping saddle was plain but expensive, elegantly understated, with a soft, elk-suede seat. The saddle blanket was hand-woven llama wool from Peru. Even the temperament of Hanni's gray gelding matched her own. He was as flamboyant as Hanni, a flashy, meddlesome Arab who would rather prance and sidestep than take the trail at a sensible walk. As the three women watched the woods, Ryan and Hanni perhaps envisioning baby rabbits, Charlie knew that what she had seen wasn't rabbits. As they crested the next hill, she deliberately turned away.

“I guess it's gone,” she said, hiding her nervousness. Ryan and Hanni didn't need to see what was there. The three women rode quietly for some time, caught in the beauty of the rolling green land and the muffled thunder of the waves crashing against the cliffs far below. The piping of a meadowlark shattered the air, as bright as tinkling glass. A hawk dropped from the clouds screaming, circling close above them; but the meadowlark was gone. In all the world, at this moment, there seemed no other presence but the birds and the innocent beasts of the forest. Of the creatures that followed them, only Charlie guessed their true nature. She told herself she was wrong, that probably those small, swift shadows
were
only rabbits.

Ryan and Hanni soon strung out behind Charlie again into a comfortable riding distance. She looked down at the fog far below her, the fog she had loved since she was a child, imagining hidden worlds among
the mist's pale curtains. Even when she was grown, in art school in San Francisco, she had indulged herself in fantasies as she walked the city's steep streets where fog lay thick. Peering into mist-curtained courtyards and gardens, she had imagined all manner of wonders; as if, if she looked hard enough, she would glimpse unknown and enchanted realms.

Now below her hidden beneath the fog lay her own village, her home of two years—her home forevermore, Charlie thought, smiling. Molena Point was her own enchanted village—enchanted if one didn't look too closely, at the dark side that any idyllic setting could reveal.

Stroking Bucky's neck, she thought how lucky she was to have moved to Molena Point. She was certain that fate had led her to Max. To have married Max Harper was more than a dream come true. She wished he were here, riding beside her instead of home at the station slugging it out with the bad guys, with the dregs of the world.

So strange that she, eternal dreamer and optimist, had married a hard-headed cop. A man who, by the very nature of his work, was forced to be a cynic—at least in most matters.

But not a cynic when it came to her, or to his horses and dogs. There was not, in Max Harper's view, any reason to be a cynic regarding the nature of animals, for they were the innocent of the world.

Max had promised that they'd take this trip together, soon. A belated honeymoon, to make up for their original honeymoon plans a year ago, when their wonderful cruise to Alaska was aborted by the bomb at their wedding. A bomb that was meant to kill them.

That didn't matter now; though the bitter aftertaste
was there. They were together, that was what mattered. And despite the perfection of this weeklong journey, she could hardly wait to get home.

She and Ryan and Hanni had ridden for three days down the coast, with a day's layover at the Hellman ranch to get the sorrel mare shod when she threw a shoe. It had been an easy trip, no roughing it, no camping out in the rain, no pack animal to lead, though they had carried survival gear, just in case. They had stayed each night at a welcoming ranch, dining before a hearth fire, sleeping between clean sheets and stabling their horses in comfort; had experienced nothing like what the first explorers and settlers had known traveling these hills, sleeping beneath drenching rain, eating what they could shoot or gather, fighting off marauding grizzly bears with muzzle loaders. It was hard to imagine grizzlies on these gentle hills; but this had been grizzly country then. The early accounts told of bear and bullfights, too, staged by the Spanish vaqueros and American cowboys in makeshift arenas; and Charlie shivered at the cruelty.

Now that they were nearing home again a bittersweet sadness touched her, but a completeness, too. Her soul was filled with a hugeness she could not describe; she felt washed clean. No religious retreat could ever, for Charlie, be as healing and inspiring as this open freedom, on the back of a good mount, wandering through God's country away from the evils of the world. As the sun began to burn through the fog, she could see the rooftops of Molena Point far ahead, a montage of red and brown peaks, hints of white walls softened by the deep green oaks and pines that rose between the cottages and shops. Soon she would be able
to see their ranch, too, the white fences and oak trees of their own few acres. All three women were silent, drinking in the first sight of home, all with the same mix of sadness.

Hanni said, “I feel like an eighteenth-century traveler rounding the hills in a strange land, amazed to suddenly see my own rooftops.” That made Charlie smile; but then she pulled Bucky up, again looking at increased movement in the woods. Had she heard a plaintive sound? A soft cry mixed with the wind and the crashing of the surf against the cliffs? Or maybe she'd heard only the faraway cry of the hawk? Dropping the reins across Bucky's neck, she sat listening.

The wind struck more sharply, hiding any sound. Above the pine woods a sliver of sun grew brighter as the clouds parted again. Pushing back her kinky red hair, Charlie brushed loose strands off her forehead and buttoned the throat of her jacket. Very likely she had heard nothing; she was as foolish as Hanni's gray gelding.

But no. Bucky had heard; he was watching the woods and he began to fuss, flicking his ears and rolling his eyes. Bucky, unlike the gray gelding, wasn't given to fantasies. Steady as a rock, the buckskin did not shy without good reason. Apprehensively Charlie studied the dark tangles among the pine trunks and deadfalls. She had not imagined that stealthy running, low to the ground among the dry branches and scrub bushes; had not imagined something intently following them. And she did not want to—must not—let Ryan and Hanni know its true nature.