The Cat Between Page 10

  The Cake-Jumping Cats of Dibble was just for fun, to be squeezed in whenever she could. She figured she must be about half to two-thirds done. Would four chapters be enough? Five? Reluctantly, she returned to the nineteenth century.

  At cat feeding and Gerry coffee time she pushed the art history away. There. A week’s worth prepared. She stretched and built up the fire. She was just relaxing with her novel and a St. Lucian coffee—plain but good—when the phone rang. “Hello?”

  A plaintive male voice asked, “Is this—are you—is this the right number?”

  “Uh, for what?”

  “For drawing lessons. Can I speak to the instructor?”

  “I’m the instructor. Gerry Coneybear.”

  “Oh.” The voice seemed surprised. “Are you an artist?”

  Biting back the rude reply she was thinking—no, I’m a gymnast, secret agent, lion tamer—Gerry, regretting the necessity of advertising for new students, patiently replied, “Yes. I’m a successful commercial artist and I graduated in fine arts from the University of Toronto with great honour.”

  “Oh.” There was some hurried whispering at the other end of the line.

  Gerry waited, then spoke. “Would you like to come be part of a small group learning how to draw? It’s on Wednesdays from one to three and the first class will be this Wednesday.”

  More whispering. “My wife can’t come on Wednesdays,” the man said and hung up.

  “How peculiar,” Gerry mused, and returned to her book.

  She’d just got to the part where Charlie the taxman was struggling against the combined charms of Ma’s cooking, Pop’s whisky and Marriette’s good looks, and still fruitlessly trying to get Pop to fill out an income tax form, when the phone rang again.

  “Hello?”

  “All right,” said the same voice as before.

  “All right?”

  “The class. On Wednesday. Her name’s June Conway. She’ll be there.”

  “Oh, good,” Gerry replied faintly, wondering how this would play out. “Thank you.”

  “Thank you!” He hung up.

  “Well, whatever next, cats?”

  Next involved ordering a pizza. Ten minutes later she remembered Prudence’s ready-made dinners in the fridge but it was too late to cancel the pizza. After it arrived, she read lots more of The Darling Buds of May sitting in front of the fire, in a hot bath and in bed. She fell asleep dreaming of nightingales singing in a bluebell wood.

  Saturday, Gerry worked away at her cartoon strip and took a few calls about the drawing class. One more person agreed to come. Two students made a class so she phoned Judith Parsley, the only one of last autumn’s class who’d indicated she would come if winter lessons were offered. Judith was thrilled and signed up.

  Gerry buzzed out to Lovering’s shopping district and stocked up on staples. She walked from where she’d parked at the grocery store past some of Lovering’s smaller merchants. On a whim she went into the British store, which she hadn’t yet fully explored.

  Too many British candy bars and cookies tempted her. She kept her purchases modest—a Cadbury Flake bar and a package of oat crunchies—though she lingered a long time in front of the Doctor Who mugs. Maybe she’d buy one for her birthday. Hmm. The white one with the iconic red British telephone call box or the blue one with the Dalek saying “Exterminate!”? Too difficult. Perhaps she needed both.

  Then she went across the road and had a scone (with everything) and a cup of excellent coffee at the teahouse. Well satisfied with her partial day off, she went home. There was a message on her phone answering machine. “Ah, June says—” whisper, whisper—“June says she’s changed her mind.” Click.

  “Well, really!” Gerry exclaimed and put away her purchases.

  Sunday morning she puttered, determined to have a day off. She played with Jay. She picked up a brush and wandered around the house grooming cats, most of whom enjoyed the process. She even managed to coerce the difficult calico cat, Lightning, into letting her gently brush her head and ears. But as soon as she tried to touch the cat’s sides or tail, badly scarred from burns received in a previous life, Lightning hissed and scooted away.

  Gerry straightened. She put the cat brush on the living room mantel, where it joined a sad-looking poinsettia, a catnip mouse someone’s sharp teeth or claws had punctured, and the carved wooden cat Cece and Bea had brought her from their trip to Jamaica.

  She was procrastinating. Should she call Jean-Louis or wait for him to call her? The age-old question. She picked up the Jamaican cat and was admiring its smooth curves when the phone rang. “Gerry!” Jean-Louis’s voice made her warm. It was nice to be wanted. “I’m so sorry to call so late in the day. I slept in. I was up all night searching for a boy missing on the mountain. We found him this morning.”

  Gerry, thinking of her art college student, Jerry Pinsky, skiing at Royal Mountain that weekend, asked anxiously, “Is he all right?”

  “Yes, yes. Cold but not frostbitten. He knew enough to keep moving. Says he was doing some kind of research, tracking coywolves, measuring the tracks of coyotes and wolves, and their hybrids, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if he was running away from home. You should have seen the sour-faced woman who picked him up this morning. I couldn’t tell if she was happy to see him or not.”

  “Oh, I’m sure she was happy,” Gerry automatically replied. “Why wouldn’t she be?”

  “She had a lot of trouble manoeuvring her big Cadillac in the parking lot. I saw her swearing through its windows. The kid just clutched his knapsack and hunched down in the back.”

  “A blue Cadillac?” Gerry asked. “Kind of old?”

  “How’d you know?”

  “And a Middle Eastern–looking boy?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “I’ve seen her drop the boy and sometimes a couple of girls off at the college. Her husband just died across the road from your place. In the empty house.”

  “Ah.” Silence followed as Jean-Louis digested this information.

  “Jean-Louis, how did the boy get on the mountain in the first place? Was he skiing? Had he been one of your students?”

  He replied slowly. “No, no, he works part-time in the restaurant on the hill. He must have finished his shift and decided he’d head into the forest for a bit of homework.” He yawned. “Gerry, I have to go back to sleep.”

  “Oh. Okay. I guess I’ll just snowshoe.”

  “Tsst! I was supposed to take you cross-country skiing for the first time! I’m sorry.”

  “That’s okay. We didn’t have firm plans and anyway, I forgot to buy boots, I just realized. So we’re both disorganized.”

  “Gerry, would you do me a favour? If I leave the door unlocked, would you take Harriet with you when you go into the woods? Give her a good run?”

  Gerry felt pleased that he trusted her with his dog. Over the phone she felt none of that vague discomfort she’d felt in his presence at Cathy’s house. And he’d acted appropriately that night when she’d almost run over Harriet. Probably she was getting used to him. “Of course. She’s great. It’ll be fun.”

  “I’ll leave the leash by the door.”

  Gerry stuffed a handful of dog treats into her coat pocket and, putting her snowshoes on her shoulder, walked to J-L’s house. She cautiously opened the door and stuck her head inside. She was met by the rich sound of full-bodied snoring coming from upstairs and the sight of a big blond husky sitting on the mat, a goofy grin on her face and her tail wagging. Gerry put a finger to her lips. “Shush,” she breathed, found the leash and snapped it on.

  They headed back onto the main road. Gerry, worried about juggling her snowshoes and a sixty-pound husky against oncoming traffic, tried one of the few dog commands she knew. It had worked when J-L had used it. “Heel?” she said doubtfully, and to her amazement, Harriet, who’d been pulling he
r along, nose clamped to the ground, came to Gerry’s left side and pranced docilely, giving her sly upward smiles, as if to say, “See what a good dog I can be?”

  “Good girl! I’ll give you a reward when we’re off the road.” When they were partway up the lane next to Cathy’s long front yard, Gerry gave the promised cookie and released the beast.

  Harriet covered about 500 yards in what seemed like an instant to Gerry. She panicked. “Harriet!” she cried in a high-pitched voice. The dog responded by galloping back to her side. Gerry gave her another cookie and snapped the leash back on. “We better wait until we’re well away from the road. You’re too fast!”

  At the end of the lane, the uninhabited farmhouse looked forlorn. Snowmobile tracks criss-crossed the open fields around it. Gerry found the trail, put on her snowshoes and let Harriet go. The dog was quickly out of sight but reappeared when Gerry called. Through a combination of intermittently shouting “Harriet!” and rewarding with cookie fragments the grinning, curly-tailed maniac who came bounding back, Gerry figured out how to keep the dog in sight—more or less. They both enjoyed the climb up into the dark pine plantation.

  The air was cold and clean and the surroundings silent. Now that she knew what witch’s brooms were, Gerry looked at them more closely.

  Fantastic clumps made up of short branches growing in all directions, they almost looked like porcupines perched in trees.

  One tree’s branch hung over the path, and, as Gerry inspected its witch’s broom, she saw it had a dark centre. Harriet had re-joined her at that point and sat, nose pointing up at the branch, and Gerry commented, “Harriet, it almost looks like—” She reached up into the tree.

  PART 3

  FISHER

  Graymalkin remembered waking up the night of the attack. The old man had been all right, sleeping. The cat had yawned, showing his fangs, and stretched, each leg thrust out and trembling in turn. When he’d felt refreshed, he groomed for a bit. The old man had turned over, mumbled something and settled. The cat jumped off the bed.

  The old man had had his bedroom shifted to a room on the main floor of his home. He rarely went upstairs. But that didn’t mean the cat couldn’t. After a brief snack from the bowl of kibble on the kitchen counter, he’d sprung up the stairs and taken his familiar position.

  Graymalkin’s lookout post, the old man had laughingly described the seat that filled the space in front of a small bow window tucked up high in one of the house’s many mismatched gables. Not that the cat cared about architecture. He just wanted to see out. And this window in a spare bedroom was uniquely positioned.

  Not only could he see his own backyard, snow-covered, stretching through bare trees to the lake, but, to the left, that of the house next door, his former home, which he’d previously shared with a multitude of other cats.

  Not his style, sharing. He remembered grooming his shoulder complacently. He walked alone. A self-satisfied glint in his eye, he’d contemplated his true name—Defiance.

  A flutter near the shoreline of the house next door had made him freeze. The hunter’s instinct. Sheepishly, he’d relaxed. After all, the flutter couldn’t sense him, perched up high behind glass. Perhaps, he’d thought, he should go down there and…

  The slight motion had repeated. A bird? It had moved from tree to rock to tree. It had to be a bird. He’d hopped off the shelf and made for the way out. The secret way out.

  From outside, squirrels had worked at a bit of the roof’s soffit until it had come away. The cat had made short work of their idea about over-wintering in the old man’s attic, dispatching a few of the slower ones. Not that the squirrels had stopped trying, gnawing through drywall not just in the cat’s lookout room when he was busy elsewhere.

  It had been fun to silently creep up the stairs, enter the room, hop from the window seat up onto the tall wardrobe that concealed one of the holes in the drywall and squeeze through into the attic. Fun because he sometimes surprised one or more of the long-tailed rodents. Fun to hear them squeak and scrabble their way towards the exit. And fun to follow them out through the broken bit of soffit onto the ledge where swallows used to nest. Swallows no longer, the cat had thought with satisfaction.

  He’d jumped from the swallows’ ledge to the cherry tree. Its red bark was smoother than he would have chosen in a tree used to descend three stories, but it was the only one within reach.

  Halfway down, he’d paused, listening. Only the drip of snow melting off the roof. The January thaw made his descent easier. Other times, the cherry tree’s bark had been slippery with ice.

  At the bottom of the tree, he’d paused again and sniffed. A rank odour had assailed his olfactory receptors. Dog. Possibly wild. He’d looked down at the snow in his backyard. No tracks. He leapt.

  Cold. Wet. He’d repressed a shudder and taken the path to the left toward his former home, hunching a bit. What was in summer a green and secluded aisle between tall fleshy plants with dangling orange flowers had then offered only the shelter of the snowbanks shovelled up by the women as they created a path from their house to the old man’s back door. The cat had felt exposed.

  The chain-link gate had posed no problem. Easy to dig under in the other three seasons, it was likewise easy to kick aside the soggy snow. Nasty stuff, though easier than mud to groom off once one was back inside.

  In the neighbour’s yard, he’d surveyed the house, looking for other cats. Their cat flap (as was his) must be blocked off in winter. Sometimes he saw someone he knew sitting at a window. Not that night. But the flutter.

  He’d turned his head to the shoreline where small trees gave way to rocks now half-covered in snow. Yes. His head swivelled. There.

  He’d run along the shovelled path that skirted the back of the house before it turned toward the lake. Sometimes he’d seen the young woman walk down to sit on a rock and gaze at the frozen water. The older woman never went down there. Too smart, he’d thought, to leave the comfort of the house without a good reason. Like investigating a flutter.

  He’d reached the end of the path and looked up. There. Not a bird. The cat, disgusted, had turned away. A ribbon. A toy for kittens. He’d followed the odour of a strange cat to the house next door, seen the cat drop from a window and proceeded to investigate. His investigations had been insignificant—to him. Back outside, he’d caught another whiff of a rank odour, different from the first, this one more feral.

  And then it was upon him.

  11

  Gerry poked the package on the kitchen table with one finger. Black plastic, it gave a bit when she prodded it. “What do you think it is?”

  Prudence’s eyes became slits. “How should I know?”

  Gerry straightened. “I’m going to open it.”

  “I wouldn’t,” Prudence advised. “Did you mention finding it to anyone?”

  “You’re the first. J-L was asleep when I returned Harriet yesterday.”

  “Well, thank goodness for that,” Prudence primly commented.

  “Whaddya mean?” Gerry asked, a bit aggressively.

  “I mean that the less people who know you took something from the woods, the better. What did you think I meant?”

  Gerry, who’d thought that maybe Prudence was referring to any burgeoning romance there might be between herself and J-L, relaxed. “Oh, nothing. I’m going to open it,” she repeated a little uncertainly.

  “All right. I’m waiting,” Prudence said.

  Gerry looked at the package. It was a bag about the size Gerry had seen Cathy use to pick up Prince Charles’s poop. She giggled insanely. “What if it’s dog poo, Prudence? That somebody threw in a tree?”

  “Don’t be stupid.” Prudence sounded cross. “Who would pick up dog poo in the woods? Just get on with it. Here, put these on.” She handed Gerry the yellow washing-up gloves from the kitchen counter.

  Gerry put them on, squeezed the package an
d undid the twist tie. She peered in. “It’s full of lots of little bags.” She dumped them onto the table. The women stared in dismay.

  “Oh, shit,” Prudence uncharacteristically said. “Put it back right away and call the police.”

  The police, when they came, were highly suspicious, not of Prudence so much, but of Gerry. How often did she go into the woods? Did she go alone? Who did she meet there? How long had she known J-L? Then the questioning shifted. Had she known Nolan Shrike and forgotten to tell them? Did she know Mrs. Shrike? Did she know any of the students staying at the Shrike house?

  It was noon when they left. Prudence and Gerry ate their lunches together. Prudence had made Gerry a ham and cheese during the questioning and munched her own favourite—a peanut butter and sweet pickle sandwich with a bag of potato chips. “Well, I didn’t get much housework done this morning,” she admitted.

  “Don’t worry about that. This is serious. Do you think the police think Mr. Shrike was mixed up with drug dealers?”

  Prudence shrugged. “Maybe he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe the dealers used the house next door for meeting and Mr. Shrike came to check the property by chance. That was his job, after all.”

  “Yee-es. But Mrs. Shrike told me he used to take their dog into the woods for walks. And that’s where I found the drugs.”