Cat Pay the Devil (9 page)

D
ulcie and Kit, too, were headed for the Jones house,
racing up into the hills, skirting the canyon, where a fitful wind blew at their backs, pushing them along and ruffling their fur. Shouldering through tinder-dry weeds, they bounded into bright flower beds, then tangled grass, then across the back garden of the four senior ladies, on and on, up the ridge through all manner of backyards; at the crest of the hill, they circled around to the street, to the front entrance of the Jones house, just as Greeley had done.

The tall, brown, boxlike dwelling stood on the highest blunt ridge, nearly smothered by eucalyptus trees, a two-story structure with no architectural grace, though the trees hid most of its faults, the silvery-leafed giants crowding so close that their wind-tossed branches rattled against the siding, slapping the cracked wood.

The lumpy front yard was dry and bald, with a thin scattering of scruffy grass. There was no sign that anyone wa
tered, or cared about growing things. Dulcie paused to pull a thorn from her paw, gripping it in her teeth and jerking hard, then spitting it out. A few parked cars stood along the street or in the narrow, cracked driveways. One imagined garages too full of trashy personal treasures to accommodate even a bicycle. No person could be seen in the yards or at the windows. In a few houses, though, lights were on. Above the darkening rooftops, the evening sky was still silvered with the fading day. Venetian blinds covered the windows of the Jones house. All were closed, so the cats could not see in; a faint light burned in what seemed to be the living room.

A block away, a water company truck was parked, as if out late on an emergency call, two uniformed men bent over the curbside meters. One was Officer Blake, a tall, balding, string bean of a man. The cats didn't know the other officer. Down at the other end of the block, three PG&E employees were working, as if perhaps attending to the same emergency: two were older officers the cats had never seen. The cats knew that Max Harper had men on call for surveillance, when he might be shorthanded. Despite the late-afternoon heat, the windows of the Jones house were all closed.

“Must be like an oven in there,” Dulcie said. “Could Lilly have air-conditioning? Oh, not in this old house.” Most folks on the coast didn't bother with artificial cooling; usually a sharp evening breeze took care of any unusual heat. Kit counted the windows and studied the size of the house, staring high above them. “Why would she live alone, in such a big old place?”

“It belongs half to her and half to Cage,” Dulcie said. “When he was on parole, Wilma suggested he get something smaller, put the money in savings, but he didn't want to do that. I guess the house is paid for, so Lilly lives rent free. Their parents bought it years and years ago, when they
were first married…I'll bet they never dreamed it might be a place for their son to hide from the law.”

Circling the house, sniffing the front porch and along the narrow, leaf-covered driveway that slanted down to the basement garage, they caught not the faintest scent of Wilma.

“If she isn't here,” Dulcie whispered, “where has he taken her?”

Kit studied the house, her yellow eyes burning with thoughts of getting inside. They checked the basement vents, but all were solidly screwed in place. They slipped up the eucalyptus trees, one after the other, to inspect the attic vents, but these, too, were securely fastened.

The back blinds and the upstairs blinds were all open, as if Lilly was concerned only with privacy from the street. Peering in from the trees through upstairs windows, they made out four sad-looking bedrooms and one old-fashioned bathroom. When they looked into the main floor from the back of the house, they found an equally outdated kitchen and bathroom, all grim, neglected rooms; it appeared that no one had painted those box tan walls or replaced any rug or piece of marred furniture since the place was built.

Was that because Lilly didn't have the money, or because she didn't care? Not likely Cage would care. There was a younger sister, but she had married and moved out shortly after the parents' deaths. The cats pressed their noses to a living room window, trying to see through the cracks of the closed Venetian blinds; they could see nothing, but voices reached them…A TV? No, these were live voices, one scratchy and familiar. Dulcie looked at Kit.
“Greeley? Greeley Urzey?
It can't be. Why would he be here? What would Mavity's brother be doing here?” Tense with questions, she pressed her ear to the dusty pane.

“It's Greeley, all right,” she said, listening. “Mavity told Wilma he was in town. Moved right in with her, freeloading
as usual. But why would he be here? He doesn't know…Oh,” she said. “He'd know Lilly!” The idea of a connection between Greeley and Lilly Jones, or Cage Jones, didn't seem to wash until she remembered that Wilma had gone to school with Cage as well as with Mavity and Greeley. She thought Cage and Greeley had been friends, then. All children together, so very long ago.

“Here,” Kit whispered, edging along the sill. “You can see in here, where the slat's bent.”

Crowding against Kit, Dulcie peered between two slats.

Faded brown couch, faded chairs long overdue for recovering. One frilly lamp lit with a low-watt, dull bulb. Mothy-looking afghans folded over the upholstered chair and couch backs, as if to hide excessive wear. And on the walls, dusty-looking needlework pictures of flowers and square-faced dogs crammed between a collection of huge, ugly masks. What an unsettling combination, the prim, prissy needlework and the rude, primitive faces, crudely made and garishly colored: the faces of devils with their mouths open and tongues sticking out, the heads of snarling jungle beasts with fangs bared and dark holes for eyes, each aboriginal face adorned with jutting feathers.

Even in the history and art books Dulcie liked to browse through in the midnight library, she had never seen uglier masks. The effect of so many huge, violent faces leering down into that stumpy, fussy, old-fashioned room was totally off-putting—as if evil spirits had thrust through the walls, an out-of-control primitive world breaking into that dull, proper house.

Greeley Urzey sat on the couch, a fusty, rumpled old man as out of place in the prim room as were the wild masks. He and Lilly spoke so softly that, even with their excellent hearing, the cats could make little of the conversation.

“Why is he here?” Dulcie said. “He and Cage went to
school together, but…Could this have to do with Wilma? Greeley hates Wilma…Is Greeley part of this? Is Wilma locked in there, and Greeley guarding her?” She looked helplessly at Kit. “We have to get in…Maybe the basement?”

Kit shivered, not wanting to be shut in that house with Greeley Urzey. That old man knew about speaking cats, and he knew they were close to the law. For that alone he hated them.

“Come on,” Dulcie said, dropping from the windowsill, down to the bushes, to circle the house again. But as they rounded the corner, Kit paused in a flower bed. Resigned to Dulcie's determination, she looked up past a scrawny jasmine vine to a high, small window.

“Bathroom window?” Kit said. “Would she bother to lock that? No human could get through that.”

“And I doubt a cat can get up that vine,” Dulcie said, “without tearing it from the wall—spindly thing doesn't look strong enough to hold a mouse.” But, testing it, she started up anyway, heading gingerly for the little window.

 

Tied in a hard, straight-backed chair, Wilma couldn't move without the tight ropes cutting into her arms and ankles. The worst was the tight bandana binding her eyes. She fought panic at being unable to see where she was, to see what—or who—was near her.

At least he'd removed the tape from across her mouth, had ripped it off, surely taking half her skin with it, saying, “You can yell now, bitch. Yell all you want, there's not a soul to hear you or to care.”

There'd been a time when Cage wouldn't have dared call her bitch. The room was so hot, the blindfold and her jacket so constricting she felt locked in a straightjacket. She was
not a woman given to hysterics, but she felt very near the edge. Only her deep anger at Cage kept her fear at bay. She could not deal with him if she fell apart.
If
he ever returned, to be dealt with. If he did not simply leave her to starve or die of thirst. She was painfully thirsty. She tried not to think about water. She felt close to pure terror, and she must not let that happen. She had dealt with criminals most of her adult life. She was not going to give way now.

Cage had driven her car up into the hills somewhere, up a long, winding gravel road. Blinded, able only to listen, she had tried to sense where they were, tried, as well, to catch some familiar scent on the breeze, the way an animal would do.

He had parked on a gravel drive or yard. When he cut the engine, she'd heard the other car pull up behind them. Forcing her out of the car, Cage had untied her ankles long enough for her to walk across gravel and then rough, rocky earth, his hand bruising her arm as he roughly guided her. She'd smelled eucalyptus and pine trees, and had heard above her the faint swish of wings, then a few birds chirping. He'd pushed her up three wooden steps and through a door that slammed behind them. She heard him lock it, didn't hear the other man enter. He forced her across a rough wooden floor, pushing her to avoid her falling over furniture. The place smelled of dust and sour, rotting wood. When he shoved her into the straight-backed chair, she'd tried to talk to him, had felt so hindered because she couldn't see him.

“What is it, Cage? What do you want from me? How did you get out? Whatever you did, it had to be pretty clever.”

He'd refused to be suckered by that. And had refused to remove the blindfold.

“For heaven's sake, tell me what this is about. Maybe I can—”

“Where is it!” he'd barked.

“Where is what?”

“You know what! That day you searched my place, you and Bennett and the frigging DEA!”

“That was ten years ago!”

“Don't matter. You have it, or had it, and I want it back—or want what you got for it.”

“I have no idea what you're talking about. I don't
know
what you want.”

“You know damn well. You two took it, and I want it now. All of it.”

“I honestly don't know. You'll have to tell me, or we'll be here forever.”

“That day after the friggin' feds left, you and Bennett were there by yourselves. There a long time, Lilly told me. You went through the house again and I want what you took. That's stealing, stealing by federal officers. How do you think that would look. The newspapers would love to get hold of that.”

“So tell them.”

“First, I'm giving you a chance. Trying to treat you nice in spite of what you did. Lilly was there, she's my witness. It's mine, bitch. I want it back, now.”

“What did Lilly say we took? I can't imagine your sister lying.”

Lilly Jones was the opposite of Cage in every way. She had always seemed an honest, straightlaced woman who believed in obeying the law. Opposite even in looks—Cage big boned, oversized, and bullish. Lilly frail, and as thin as a sick bird. Lilly Jones spoke little; when she did speak, her attitude was wooden and impassive, stolid to the point of insensibility. The younger sister, Violet, was even more withdrawn. But at least Violet had had the good sense to
marry and get out. Or, it had seemed to be good sense at the time. Wilma heard later that she'd married an abuser. Violet had not been in evidence during the time Wilma supervised Cage, so she had never met the girl.

She realized suddenly that Cage had her purse, she could hear him going through it, and he began to comment on the pictures in her billfold. Until that moment she had convinced herself that she could talk Cage out of whatever this was about; she had assumed that only
she
was in danger. Now, suddenly, she was far more afraid.

“Pretty redhead.” Cage's voice told her he was smirking. “Maybe if you don't want to give me what's mine, don't want to save yourself, you'll like to save them that's close to you.”

She hadn't answered, had gone cold inside, and felt herself tremble. She heard him toss her purse aside, and then a small rustling as if he was flipping slowly through the packet of photographs she'd tucked in the bag.

“From these pictures,” Cage said, “looks like this redhead lives up in the hills. Lives pretty fancy, too, them horses and all. Nice big house like that, that tall peaked roof and glass and all, should be easy to spot from the road, even if you don't have her address in here. Isn't that Hellhag Hill rising up behind?

“Why, here's another picture, and she's getting married. That's you, there, the flower girl or whatever. Must be a real close friend. Or a relative? Why, I believe that there's your niece, the one they call Charlie.”

“Whatever you want from me, Cage, you touch her, you'll never get away, the law will track you wherever you hide—and then they'll burn you.”

Cage hit her hard, across the mouth. That was the first time he'd ever hit her. During the years that she'd had him
on parole, then later on probation on a different charge, he would never have dared do that. He gave a cold laugh. “Bennett got his. You don't want the same, bitch, you'll tell me where you hid 'em.” He'd gone silent for a moment, then, “If you sold 'em, you'll hand over the money pronto if you want to go home again. And if you want that redheaded niece safe. Is that how you bought that house of yours, that fancy stone house? With my money? You did, you'll pay for that, too.”

“What did you do to Bennett?”

“How you think it'll look to the feds, turns out you bought that house with stolen goods? Illegal to take that stuff out of the country. Illegal as hell just to have it. You and Bennett think of that?”