Cat Fear No Evil (8 page)

“Anyone else here?” Dulcie hissed.

“Just us three,” Wilma said. “What's the matter?”

So,
the black cat thought. Both Charlie and Kate Osborne knew that these little cats could speak. Interesting. Apparently Joe Grey and Dulcie hadn't been very careful.

“What
is
it?” Wilma repeated.

“Gas leak,”
Dulcie mewled. “A house up the street. Really strong, not like when you catch a sniff of it on the street.”

Azrael could hear Joe Grey talking into the phone, giving the location, most likely talking to a police dispatcher. Telling her how strong the gas stink was and from which side of the dwelling. The next moment, some blocks away, a siren began to scream, and a fire engine went rumbling through the narrow village. He could feel the tremors in his paws as it passed, sharp as the precursor to an earthquake.

Listening to the blasting horn and the siren's final shrill scream just a few blocks away, Azrael flattened his ears. He could hear men shouting, then two more sirens, probably emergency vehicles in case there was an explosion. All these conscientious do-gooders flocking to help, so dedicated they made him gag. He imagined firemen searching for a gas cutoff, plying a wrench to stop the gas at the street. Imagined them
gingerly pulling open front and back doors, ducking away and covering their faces in case the gas exploded. All that drama to save a few human lives, when the world was already overpopulated. In Azrael's view, the human herd could stand some thinning.

He froze, closing his eyes when Joe Grey streaked past. The gray tom didn't pause. Had Joe Grey caught his scent, even over the smell of fried bacon? Azrael heard Joe hit the kitchen and keep running. The plastic door flapped once, twice, and both cats were gone—and Wilma and Kate and Charlie were running out, humans and cats gripped by the urge to
rescue someone,
to
help people.
Enough smarmy goodwill to sicken a crocodile.

Now, with the house to himself, he left the shadows with leisurely insolence, and strolled into Wilma's kitchen. Leaping to the table, he polished off three pancakes and two slices of bacon. He licked the plates clean, then licked the cube of butter and drank the cream from the pitcher, nearly getting his head caught. Why would anyone make a pitcher so ridiculously small? He sniffed at the cooling coffee but it smelled inferior, not the rich Colombian brand he preferred.

Dropping to the blue-and-white linoleum again, he sauntered back through the dining room and down the hall to the guest room. Likely both humans and cats would be up the street all morning preoccupied with helping their neighbors. The black tom smiled. Fate couldn't have planned it better.

Alone in the guest room he set about a methodical search, pawing among Kate's silk lingerie bags and rooting in the gathered elastic pockets that lined the sides of her suitcase, his agile black paws feeling care
fully for a small metal object. For what could be his passport to a greatly elevated position in the eyes of his current partner. For what, possibly, might also be a source of information that could prove most interesting.

T
he yellow-and-white Victorian cottage stunk so
powerfully of gas that the two cats thought it would go up any minute in an explosion of bricks and splintered wood and shingles. They'd seen such a disaster before. They didn't want that experience again. But with typical feline curiosity, they were too interested to leave. Cops were on the scene now, and that generated more questions.

Once the fire crew had cut off the gas, having circled the house peering in, they had broken the lock and gone inside. Shortly thereafter a rescue vehicle pulled up in front, then two police cars came screaming.

The house belonged to James Quinn, a Realtor with Helen Thurwell's firm. Quinn was, in fact, Helen's partner, handling sales with her as a team. The air around the handsome Victorian cottage was, even from a block away, so heavy with gas it made the cats retch.

Scorching up a pine tree, they clung in the frail branches side by side, where a breeze helped clear the air. Watching the police evacuate the houses along the
block, they were both alarmed and amused by people running out of their homes loaded with valuables and carrying their pets. A frazzled-looking young woman apparently forgetting something tried to run back inside, and pitched a fit when an officer stopped her. An old woman in a pink bathrobe hobbled out accompanied by an officer, her arms loaded with a two-foot-high stack of what looked like photograph albums, the little tie cords at the spines flopping in her face. As if she was saving all the family pictures. A portly lady in a red-and-black sweat suit clutched three cats, the frightened animals clawing her as she hurried down the street. When Wilma and Charlie saw her, they took two of the cats and ran with her, carrying the cats three blocks to a neighbor and handing them inside. Neither Joe nor Dulcie had seen the kit. Scanning the street looking for her, Joe moved from paw to paw, growing so nervous and restless he seemed about to explode, himself.

“The kit's all right,” Dulcie said. “She won't…”

“You don't know what she'll do. And it isn't only the kit…” Joe's yellow eyes narrowed. “Coming through the dining room—I think I caught the scent of that black beast.”

“Azrael? In the house? Oh, but why would he…? Where, Joe? We have to go back.”

“As I passed the buffet. Just a faint whiff of scent—the whole house smelled of bacon.”

Her eyes wide, she crouched to leap down. But he reached a paw to stop her. “I'll go back, Dulcie. Stay here, watch for the kit. Who knows where she's gotten to. You know how she is, she'll be in the middle some
where…” He sounded truly worried, his frown deep and uneasy.

“I'll watch, I'll find her. But you…Be careful, Joe. Why did he go into Wilma's house? What's he up to?”

Joe's eyes were filled with conflicting concerns. “Watch for the kit but don't go near that house. Promise me!” He gave her a whisker rub and was gone, backing fast down the rough bark of the pine tree and streaking for Wilma's house. Dulcie stared after him, her ears flat with frustration, then she turned to search the gathering crowd again and the surrounding rooftops for the dark small presence of the tortoiseshell kit; the kit could vanish like a shadow among shadows. And, by her very nature, she was powerfully drawn to any kind of village disaster.

Dulcie looked and looked for a long time, but didn't see the kit. She saw no cat at all among the bushes or slipping between the feet of the thickening crowd or concealed in the branches of the surrounding trees. No cat hidden among the angles of the rooftops. Growing more and more worried, she left the safety of pine tree at last, and galloped across the roofs toward the gas-filled house.

Crouching on a shop roof just across the narrow street from the yellow Victorian house, she watched several officers in the front yard gathered around a paramedic's van. Below her hung a striped awning that bore, along its front edge, the name of the antique store it sheltered. Dropping down into the sagging canvas, crouching belly to stripes like a sunbather in a giant-size hammock, she studied the windows of James Quinn's yellow house.

All the windows were open to let out the gas, as was the front door, and still the air stunk of gas. She could see Captain Harper and Detective Garza inside. She could not see the medics, they were not around their van. Were they in there working on someone? Was Mr. Quinn in there? Dulcie's skin rippled with dismay. If he was still there, if he had not run out…

Had he been asleep when the gas leak started, had he perhaps not awakened? Was he dead in there?
Dulcie thought, sickened. James Quinn was an elderly man, though he still worked as a Realtor. He was a very nice single man living alone, with no one to wake him if he slept too soundly during such a disaster.

Or, she thought, had he already gone to work when the leak started? Maybe he didn't even know about the leak, maybe he had left the house really early, to show a distant piece of property, maybe he had no idea what was happening here. James Quinn did not seem to Dulcie the kind of person to have carelessly left a gas jet on, to have not turned it off properly. According to Wilma, Quinn was if anything overly careful and precise.

Helen Thurwell's real estate partner was a short, gentle, wiry man, thin and bald, with leathery skin from hours on the golf course. His tee time was dedicated as much to business as to pleasure. Though pushing seventy, Quinn was still a top salesman with the firm, low key, easy, never pushy. That was what Wilma said. A man to whom clients came, as they came to Helen, when they wanted to avoid the hard sell. Playing golf with his clients, Quinn made many a casual, million-dollar deal.

Where was the kit? She was always in the front row
when anything happened in the village. Searching the block for Kit, from her high vantage where she could hardly miss another cat, Dulcie began to entertain a sick feeling. Was the kit in that house?

But why? Why would she be in there?

A crew from PG&E was working at the curb where, earlier, the fire crew had removed a concrete cover and turned off the gas. Most of the utility trucks and squad cars were parked down the block, safe in case of an explosion. The crime tape the police had strung was not enough to keep back onlookers without the officers who were politely but firmly directing them. She saw Wilma and Charlie and Kate standing with the crowd waiting for any opportunity to help. But where was the kit? Surely she had heard the sirens, there was nowhere in the village where she couldn't have heard them.

The medics were bringing someone out on a stretcher. James Quinn lay unmoving, his face and hands strangely red. They set the stretcher down on the lawn and the medics knelt over him. But soon they rose again; they did not work on Quinn. He lay waiting for the coroner's attention.

Dulcie knew that under other circumstances the body would not have been moved until a detective had photographed the scene and made sketches and notes. She supposed with the house full of gas, that hadn't been an option. But to leave him lying here on the lawn seemed strange, even with a police guard around him. Maybe Detective Garza wanted to photograph the body and let the coroner have a look before they moved Quinn again. How could Quinn have died in there? How could he not have smelled the gas? Even in sleep, one would think the stink of gas would wake
him. He wasn't a drinker. Never touched liquor; so he had not slept in an alcoholic stupor too numbed to wake. And from what she had heard of Quinn's careful nature, it would not have been like him to leave the gas on accidentally. She saw Dr. John Bern's car being driven over the lowered police tape, coming slowly up the street; she glimpsed Bern's bald head, the glint of his glasses.

Dulcie was watching Dr. Bern kneeling over the body when a thumping on the shingles above her jerked her up. The kit came galloping straight at her and, hardly pausing, dropped down onto the awning, rocking the canvas and digging her claws in. Dulcie was so glad to see her, she nuzzled against Kit, licking her ears and whiskers. The kit stunk of gas.

“You've been in there,” Dulcie hissed.

The kit looked at Dulcie, shivering. “He's dead.” She stared across the street at the stretcher and the body. “I was in there when you came the first time, I looked out and saw you and Joe, I saw you sniff at the gas, then turn and race away. I knew you'd call the station so I…but listen, Dulcie…”

The tattercoat's round yellow eyes were wide with the news she had to tell. “The gas stunk so strong I went in through the back door—to see if he was in there, to wake him if he was still asleep, to…” The kit stared at her with distress.

“You could have died in there.”

“I pushed the back door open to get in, a little breeze came in. I wasn't there long and I stayed low against the floor, but it choked me and I felt dizzy. He was lying on the kitchen floor. I stuck my nose at his nose and there was no breath and he was cold, so cold,
and the gas was making me woozy so I got out of there fast and you and Joe were there, then running away up the street so I knew you'd call for help. Why was there gas in there?”

Dulcie sighed. “You didn't paw at a knob, Kit? And make the gas come on?”

“No! I never! The gas was all in there. Why would I do that!” she said indignantly. “I smelled it from the street. That's why I went in.” Her eyes darkened with pain. “But he was dead. Cold dead.”

Dulcie looked and looked at the kit. The kit settled down beside her, pushing very close. She was quiet for a long while. Then in a small voice Kit said, “Where's Joe Grey?”

“He's following someone.” Dulcie didn't mean to tell the kit more. For once, the kit could keep her nose out. Below them, the coroner still knelt over James Quinn, Dr. Bern's bald head and glasses reflecting the morning light.

Down the block within the growing crowd, the cats saw Marlin Dorriss pushing through. The tall, slim attorney was dressed in a pale blue polo shirt and khaki walking shorts that, despite the chilly weather, set off his winter tan. His muscled legs were lean and brown, his white hair trimmed short and neat. He was a man, Dulcie thought, that any human woman might fall for—except that Helen Thurwell had no business falling for anyone. In doing so she had royally screwed up her daughter's life, had sent Dillon off on a tangent that deeply frightened Dulcie.

It was hard enough for a fourteen-year-old girl to grow up strong and happy. In Dulcie's view, human teen years must be like walking on the thinnest span
across a vast and falling chasm where, with a false step, you could lose your footing and go tumbling over—as the kit would say, falling down and down.

The cats didn't want that to happen to Dillon.

Watching Marlin Dorriss approach the stretcher, seeing the concern and kindness in his face as he observed from some distance the body of James Quinn, it was hard for Dulcie to imagine him willfully destroying a close little family. The matter deeply puzzled her.

Dorriss had lived in Molena Point for maybe ten years, in an elegant oceanfront villa. A semiretired lawyer, Dorriss served only a few chosen clients, representing their financial interests. He was gone from the village much of the time, keeping a condo in San Francisco, a cabin at Tahoe, and condos in New York and Baton Rouge. He was a sometime collector of a few select painters, mostly those of the California action school, such as Bischoff, Diebenkorn, and David Park. He collected a few modern sculptors, and bought occasional pieces of antique furniture to blend into the contemporary setting of his home. Dorriss was charming, urbane, easy in his manners, but a man deeply frustrating to the local women. If he dated, the relationship never went far.

Certainly he had woman friends across the country if you could believe the photographs in the Molena Point
Gazette
, the San Francisco
Chronicle
, and one or two slick arts magazines. Dulcie imagined Dorriss consorting, in other cities, with wealthy society women as sleek and expensively turned out as a bevy of New York fashion models.

So what was it about Helen Thurwell that so attracted him? The tall, slim brunette was nice enough
looking, but she was not the polished, trophy-quality knockout that Marlin Dorriss seemed to prefer. And why was Helen ruining her own life and Dillon's for a high-class roll in the hay when Dorriss had dozens of women?

As she crouched in the sagging awning studying the attorney, she saw Helen Thurwell approaching from the alley behind Jolly's Deli. At the edge of the crowd Helen paused, standing on tiptoe trying to see. When she realized which house was surrounded, she began to force her way through the crowd.

She stopped when she saw Quinn's body, then started forward again, her hand pressed to her mouth. At the same moment she saw Marlin Dorriss.

Even now, at this stressful moment, there was a spark between the two. They stood very still, as if joined by an invisible thread, both looking at Quinn but sharply aware of each other.

Then Dorriss turned away and headed up the street.

Helen remained looking, her face very white, her fist against her lips. Behind her, Detective Garza emerged from the house carrying a clipboard and a camera, his square, serious face and dark eyes filled with a stormy preoccupation, with an intensity that Dulcie knew well.

Pressing forward on the sagging canvas, Dulcie didn't take her eyes from the detective. As she watched Garza, he in turn watched Helen Thurwell.

Not until Helen turned away from Quinn did Garza approach her. The two spoke only briefly, then they moved up the steps and inside the house.

Across the street, half a block away, Helen's daughter stood watching them, pressed into the crowd with
three of her school friends. Dillon's look followed Helen with an anger that made Dulcie shiver. The same expression, the same hate-filled resentment with which, moments earlier, Dillon had observed Marlin Dorriss as he turned and left the scene.

Glancing at Kit, Dulcie dropped from the awning to a bench, then to the sidewalk. With the kit close behind her, they skirted through the bushes past the uniformed officers and the coroner and the body. Crossing the porch in shadow, within moments they were inside the house, silent and unseen. Following Detective Garza and Helen Thurwell through the house, Dulcie and Kit glanced at each other, their curiosity equally sharp, equally predatory and keen.