Cat Seeing Double

Wondering if she could make a go of her own business, if she had it in her to do that, she'd sat in bed trying to calm her nerves, so stressed she hadn't even called her sister, though Ha

Ha

Alone in her motel room she'd gone to sleep hugging her pillow, congratulating herself that Rupert was out of her life, and scared silly of what lay ahead.

Now, standing at the rail watching Juana Davis come around the side of the garage and look up, she set her cup on the rail and went down to answer the detective's questions.

In the early dawn, Jolly's alley was softly lit by its decorative lights and by the gentle glow from the leaded windows and stained-glass doors of its little back-street shops. The charming, brick paved lane, lined with potted trees and tubs of flowers, was not only a favorite tourist walk, but was the chosen gathering place for the village cats-for all the nonspeaking felines who knew nothing of Joe and Dulcie and Kit's human speech nor, in most cases, would have been impressed. If the occasional cat looked at them with fear or with wonder, these moments were few and fleeting.

Entering at the eastern end of the block-long retreat, they found an old, orange-tabby matron beneath the jasmine vine, licking clean the big paper plate that George Jolly had set out. Joe knew the matron well, they had once been more than friendly but that was long before he met Dulcie. Probably the old girl didn't remember those hasty trysts, and certainly Joe didn't care to. He was a different tomcat now, totally faithful to his true love-though he still liked to look. No harm in a glance now and then.

The matron, finishing her breakfast, lay down on the bricks precisely where the first thin rays of morning sun would have gleamed, if the dawn sky had not been low with fog. Dulcie glanced at her absently, her mind on San Francisco and on Charlie and Max Harper awakening this morning in that beautiful city.

"Breakfast at the St. Francis," she said softly, "looking down on the city." Such a journey, to the city by the bay, had long been Dulcie's dream. But at Dulcie's words, the orange cat widened her eyes then turned her face away with disgust, tucking her nose under her tail. Such un-catlike behavior was both alarming and patently beneath her notice. Squeezing her eyes shut she refused to move away from them, though the skin down her back rippled with wary a

"Breakfast in bed," Dulcie whispered, still dreaming, "then to wander that elegant city, to ride the ferries to Sausalito and to Oakland, to visit the museums and galleries."

Joe looked at her and sighed. Sometimes it was hard to understand the shape and depth of Dulcie's longings.

Though Joe was just as different from other cats as was Dulcie, he didn't suffer from her exotic hungers and impossible yearnings. He didn't steal his neighbor's cashmere sweaters and silk teddies, for one thing, and haul them home to roll on like some four-pawed Brigitte Bardot. He didn't imagine wandering through Saks, or Lord and Taylor. He had no desire to dine at the finest restaurants with views of San Francisco Bay. Joe Grey liked his life just as it was-as long as Dulcie was a part of it.

The two cats stirred suddenly. Their ears pricked. Their bodies went rigid as sirens screamed from the station four blocks away.

Swarming up the jasmine vine to the roof where the kit sat welcoming the dawn, they watched two whirling red lights racing north among the cottages where some hours earlier they thought they'd heard the two shots fired-and like any pair of human ambulance chasers, Joe and Dulcie took off across the roofs, intent on police business.

The kit trailed along halfheartedly, her mind on other matters.

Racing across the rooftops and crossing above two streets on spreading oak branches, Joe and Dulcie scrambled down a trellis and galloped along the damp morning sidewalks and through fog-wet gardens, eagerly following the sirens. A screaming rescue vehicle passed them. And somewhere in their mad race the kit vanished. Glancing around, Joe and Dulcie fled on; there was no keeping track of the kit. Up the next hill, the rescue vehicle and squad cars were parked in the drive and at the curb of Ryan Fla

Though the dawn was now bright, a light burned around the edges of Ryan's closed garage door. The voices that issued from within were low and muffled. The cats could hear Ryan, her voice taunt and upset, and could hear Detective Davis and Officer Bo

Stepping from his car, Dr. John Bern headed around to the side door. Bern was a slight, ski

A body lay among a stack of stained-glass windows, as if shrouded by them in some weird religious ritual. Where the windows formed a tall V shape, the cats could see the man's feet sticking out at one end, clad in expensive Rockports. At the other end his head and one shoulder were visible. There was a small hole through his forehead. His neatly trimmed brown hair was soaked with blood. Dr. Bern opened the electric door to give more light, and knelt over the body, making certain the victim was dead. There was not much blood pooled beneath him. When soon the coroner rose again, he began taking photographs. Twice he glanced across the garage to the far, back wall as if tracing the line of trajectory that might have occurred if the victim had been standing when he was shot. Detective Davis, fetching a ladder from beside a stack of old doors, climbed to photograph at close range the twin bullet holes in the Sheetrock. She took pictures from several angles, then told Bo

"Allow plenty of board, we don't want to pull on it if there are nails near the shots. You may have to saw through the nails or slice out part of the stud."

"Do we have the tools?"

"Ryan has."

The cats could see, when Dr. Bern lifted the man's head, how the shot had left the back of the skull with a wide, ugly tear wound and fragments of bone sticking out. As John Bern dictated his notes into a small tape recorder, he was hesitant in this assessment, offering several possible scenarios as to the sequence of events. When he had finished dictating, Detective Davis spent a long time herself photographing the scene, shooting the body from all angles, laying a ruler here and there around the corpse to show distances. She photographed most of the garage, the floor, the stored tools and plywood, the stacked paneling and newel posts, the furnace and laundry area, and the inside stair that led to the upstairs apartment. Only Joe Grey and Dulcie escaped documentation, crouching silently behind the plywood then moving behind some stored boxes then a mantel, on around the garage as Davis's strobe light flashed. They froze in place when young Bo