Cat Breaking Free (7 page)

 

Long before the first alarm sounded on the police switchboard, before any call came in to the dispatcher, Max and Charlie Harper had settled in for the evening, replete with their good Mexican dinner. They had made a pot of coffee and brought the two dogs in for a relaxed evening before the fire. Charlie, tired and happy after her pack trip, lay on the rug before the blazing logs, lulled by the fire's crackle, by the faint crashing of the distant surf, and the music from an Ella Fitzgerald CD. The two big dogs lay near her, eyeing her coffee, though they didn't like that bitter brew. Max sat sprawled in one of the two red leather chairs, enjoying the beauty and peace of their home and admiring Charlie's neat butt in her snug jeans.

Above them the ceiling of the great room rose to a high peak that towered over the rest of the house, its cedar rafters perfuming the room. In the daytime the long glass wall offered a wide sweep down across the pastures to the open hills and to the sea beyond and, off to the right, the rooftops and dark oaks of the village.
The thin, pleated blinds pulled high and the lamps unlit they enjoyed the night sky. As yet there was no hint of trouble, no faint finger of red touching the sky, no faint, distant sounds of unrest in the small village.

The furnishings of the room were simple, the red leather chairs, the bright primitive colors of the Turkish Konya rug that Charlie had found at an estate sale, the long wicker couch with its fluffy pillows. Opposite the windows, the fireplace wall was faced, floor to ceiling, with round river stones and flanked by tall bookcases. The other two walls of the room were stark white, setting off Charlie's framed drawings of horses, dogs, wild animals, and of the three cats. One wall was broken by a sliding glass door that led to the wide stone terrace; the terrace, in turn, joined the kitchen. Charlie was telling Max about the quarter horse ranch where she and Ryan and Hanni had spent two nights, when Max's cell phone buzzed. “Damn!” she said violently.

“Maybe it's nothing,” Max said, flipping the phone open.

The next moment, she could tell by his face that it was the end of their quiet evening. He listened, asked several questions, then rose. Neither said anything. Charlie got up from the floor and kissed him. He hugged her hard, grabbed his jacket and was out the door—gone while she stood there wondering, for the thousandth time, why she had married a cop.

But she knew why.

Pouring another cup of coffee from the pot by the fireplace, she lay down again among the cushions, thinking that she should pull the shades now that she was alone. Thinking she really ought to turn the police scanner on, find out what was happening. But she was
far too comfortable to do either. She'd know what was happening soon enough. Rolling over on the rug, snuggling between the two dogs, she said a prayer for Max, as she always did. He would not like knowing that she prayed for him; this was his job. But she prayed anyway. What could it hurt; she couldn't help how she felt, no matter how she tried—and then she began to worry about the three cats.

They'd be right in the middle, you could bet on it, drawn to the crime scene like kids to a fire. Three little cats, so small, three rare little souls, so strangely blessed with human talents, out in the night peering down from the trees or rooftops, keen with predatory enthusiasm for whatever crime was coming down.

Though her prayers might not make anyone safe, and though she would not change the cats any more than she would change Max, Charlie prayed for them all.

A
s Max headed down the hills to the village, their
friends listened to the sirens that he hadn't heard from his distant position, and saw the reflections of flames up around the high school, and they paid attention. Max and Dallas would be heading up there, as would their other friends on the force. In the hospital, Wilma Getz woke from dozing before her TV, turned off the set, and listened. The tall, thin, wrinkled woman wished she had the little police scanner she had bought recently for just such occasions, for times when she knew Dulcie would race off into the middle of danger.

Dressed in her own red flannel nightgown instead of the hospital gown that had left her chilled and irritable, Wilma was comfortable enough despite the fact that she didn't like hospitals. Her long, silver-white hair had, until tonight, been bound into a bun in an effort to keep it confined under the cap they put on you before surgery. Now that she had been allowed to wash and
blow-dry it, she felt better. Her clean hair lay smooth and comfortable, pulled neatly back in a ponytail.

Reaching for the little mouse that would allow her to raise the back of her bed, she tried to track more precisely the scream of the sirens as they hurried up the hills. Swinging her feet to the floor, wincing at the pulling pains, she made her way to the window, supporting herself on the night table, then along the back of the visitors' chair.

It hurt to raise the venetian blind. Lifting her arm high and pulling hard sent a sharper pain cutting along her incision. Time to start exercising, get herself back in working order. Her young, enthusiastic surgeon, Jim Hallorhan, had only this morning pronounced her ready to start some serious rehabilitation.

It hurt less to slide the window open. The chill night air felt fresh and good on her flushed face. Her room faced east, away from the village, toward the hills. High up, cutting the blackness, she could see a thin smear of red dancing against the sky, very near the high school. She made out the whirling red lights of the patrol cars and fire rig and what was probably a rescue unit. She prayed that the three cats, if they insisted on racing up there, would keep to the residential rooftops and out of the way. She thought it wasn't a big fire, maybe trash cans or an outbuilding. Very likely the units would quickly get it under control. She had been watching for some time when something else alerted her. She stood still, listening in the other direction, from the village beyond the hall and the opposite line of rooms. Had she heard a shot, faint and muffled?

Crossing the hall, she slipped into an empty room where the blinds were open to the village below, to the
dim, narrow streets and little shops that lay snug beneath the leafy canopies. She watched the moving beams of police torches flashing along the faces of the buildings, and shadowy uniforms searching among the shops; farther away along the darkest streets she sensed, as much as saw, occasional swift movement. This was a strange, phantom kind of search. She stood for a long time, making little sense of it. What had gone down? Burglary? Robbery? Murder? There would be nothing on TV until it was over. She stood worrying about the cats, knowing that if they weren't already down there, they soon would be. She wished she had her binoculars. She tried to spot Joe Grey's stark white markings stalking the roofs; he was so much easier to see than her own Dulcie or the kit.

Perhaps it had been a break-in that the officer in charge had decided to handle with a quick canvassing search, while the perps had successfully fled or were hiding nearby. She could only pray the cats kept clear. After a lifetime of considerable control over the criminals she handled, she felt helpless as a civilian. Helpless, indeed, when the action involved the three cats.

Worrying but knowing there was nothing she could do, she returned at last to her room, chilled, and slipped into bed. She wished they gave you more than two thin blankets. Well, Dulcie was with Lucinda and Kit; maybe, somehow, the Greenlaws would manage to keep the two in.

Fat chance, Wilma thought.

But the Greenlaw terrace was so close to the action that maybe the two cats would be content to watch from that vantage. Maybe. She turned over, wincing at the pain, reminding herself that the surgery was over,
that her gall bladder was gone and that that was no big deal. A few minor changes in her diet, a small price to pay for a cessation of sudden pain. Tomorrow she'd be up at Charlie and Max's, able to start exercising again—while Charlie waited on her, she thought, amused. She ought to be home in her own house, making her own meals, but Charlie wouldn't hear it. Charlie said it was the only excuse she had to enjoy her aunt as a houseguest.

As if Charlie needed a houseguest right now, with the new addition barely finished and a hundred chores and details to tend to, trying to get settled into her new studio so she could get on with her several commissions for animal portraits, and with the children's book she was writing.

That, for Wilma, would be the biggest treat, to tuck up with Dulcie before Charlie's fire on these chill days, after Max went off to work, when Kit could speak freely, telling the fascinating tales of her kittenhood when she traveled with the wild band of ferals.

Charlie's book would include no speaking, sentient cats. Just the story of a band of feral cats trying to survive. Even so, it was turning into a magical tale, as the best realistic story should be. Magical, too, when illustrated with Charlie's drawings. Not long ago, Charlie had cursed her art education, calling it a total waste of time and money, a squandering of four years of her young life. Now, look at her, Wilma thought, grinning.

 

It was earlier, ten minutes before the first siren shrieked heading up the hills to the high school, the village streets still quiet and nearly deserted when Dul
cie and Kit arrived on the terrace of the Greenlaws' second-floor apartment. Full of Mexican supper, they had taken their time meandering home over the rooftops, detouring to lazily chase a little bat, then to sit by a warm chimney and have a nice wash and enjoy the evening.

Their dawdling, circuitous route brought them, yawning, to the tall pine tree beside the Greenlaw terrace. As they dropped to the terrace, they could smell coffee; Lucinda stood in the shadows, her cup balanced on the terrace wall, as she, too, enjoyed the evening.

But as the two cats landed on the terrace, a siren screamed only blocks away, heading away from the fire station up toward the hills. And another siren, another. Fire trucks and then an ambulance, then patrol cars racing by nearly bursting their eardrums. Dulcie and Kit leaped to the low terrace wall, ready to follow.

“Wait,” Lucinda said.

“But…” Dulcie began, looking up the far hills where a red glow was beginning to lick at the sky. The cats, not seeing Pedric, thought he'd likely gone to bed early, aching with arthritis.

“Wait, you two!” Lucinda said with urgency.

“What?” Kit said. “You never want us to go. We'll stay to the rooftops, we're safe there.” Both cats crouched to run, staring up to the hills at the brightening flames, both ready to bolt and follow the fire trucks. Below them the village was still, the streets quiet. Imperatively, Lucinda put her hand on Kit's back.

Kit stared up at her. “You never want…”

The old woman spoke softly but with harsh command. “You've missed something. Look down! Something else is happening! Help me look, quick, you two
can see in the dark better than I!” She pointed down across the street to the corner shop opposite their building; looking, the cats went tense.

Molena Point had no streetlights; only the soft glow from the shop windows. Between these, the sidewalk was shadowed and dim. They all three watched the dark windows of Marineau's Jewelry store; Lucinda could see little within, but the cats' eyes grew round, and they crouched, their tails lashing.

“Two shadows,” Dulcie said softly. “Moving inside. How…?” Then a thin, shielded light flicked on, as if from a miniature flashlight. The next instant a sharp tinkling, almost like music, and tiny jagged glints of light flickered and fell.

“Before the sirens headed up the hills,” Lucinda said softly, “I heard the faintest sound. The little light flashed once, and went out. I thought I heard glass break then, too, but muffled. As if by a towel.” She held up her cell phone. “I called the station. What else can you see?” Even as she spoke, the tiny light flickered again, and they heard a sharper crack as of heavier glass breaking, more bright shards fell.

“Why doesn't the city put in some decent lighting?” Lucinda snapped irritably. “Ambiance is all very well, until something ugly happens.”

Max Harper had tried to get the city to install decorative, soft-glowing streetlamps. The city council said that would spoil the quaint sense of Old World mystery that the tourists liked. Max had pointed out that there was plenty of crime on the dark medieval streets, that robbery and murder were common during those times. He said modern tourists didn't need
that
much am
biance. Several members of the city council had laughed at him. But the shopkeepers hadn't laughed, particularly the jewelry store owners.

The lighting Max wanted would not have spoiled the atmosphere, but it sure would have hindered such stealthy break-ins as was occurring below. Lucinda and Dulcie and Kit watched as a dark figure slipped out the broken glass door and fled, vanishing among the street's shadows.

“Two are still in the store,” Dulcie said, watching the pair of black-clad figures barely visible in the blackness, even to a cat's eyes; watching them moving about at their work. Then, “Oh!” Dulcie hissed. The thieves came bolting out and took off up the street, disappearing—and before Lucinda could grab Kit, the cats were after them, racing away unheeding of the old lady's cries.

Sailing from the rooftop terrace into an oak, they crossed the street on bending branches into another tree, leaped four feet to the shingled roof of the jewelry store and raced across it following the thieves. Running, the cats heard the purr of an engine; a car swerved around the corner and skidded to a stop, and the two figures piled in and were gone.

 

Lucinda stood looking after the cats, half annoyed, half filled with fear for them. But she couldn't stop them, couldn't change them; they were doing what, according to their rules, they
must
do. As the little cats were swallowed by the night, two squad cars slipped around the corner without lights. Four darkly uni
formed officers emerged, moving to cover the door and the broken display window. She cursed herself for calling the cats' attention to the burglary, for putting them in danger. If she'd kept her mouth shut…

But it would have made no difference. If they hadn't seen the burglars, they'd be off to the fire, and that could be worse. Or, if they had paused before they raced away to the hills, they would have heard the jewelry store break-in for themselves, the tinkle of shattered glass.

For a long moment Lucinda stood envying the cats, wishing she, too, could race across the rooftops leaping from peak to peak as free and sure of herself as they. She caught a glimpse of movement down the alley where other officers were approaching, friendly shadows slipping silently through the dark streets. How many men could Harper spare, with something happening up in the hills, too, where the red glow bloomed brighter and another siren screamed?