Cat in the Dark Read Free Page B

and as he crossed Ocean Avenue with its eucalyptus-shaded median, the trees’ narrow leaves, long and polished, reflected the moon’s glow like silver fish hung from the branches—thousands, millions of bright fish. No human, with inferior human eyesight, could appreciate such a night. No human, with dull human hearing and minimal sense of smell, could enjoy any of the glories of the natural world as vividly as did a cat. Clyde, poor pitiful biped, didn’t have a clue.
    Trotting up the moon-whitened sidewalk, he caught again the scent of the vagrant tom and followed it on the shifting wind, watching for any stealthy movement in the tangled shadows. But then, hurrying past the softly lit shops and galleries, he lost that sour odor; now, passing a block of real estate offices and little cafes, sniffing at the doors and at the oversized flower pots that stood along the curb, he smelled only dog urine and the markings of the cats he knew. The tom had, somewhere behind him, taken a different route.
    Approaching Dulcie’s cat door, which had been cut at the back of the library into Wilma’s office, he startled at a sound within—and the door flap exploded out and Dulcie shot through nearly on top of him, her green eyes wildly blazing.
    She froze, staring at him. She said no word. She lashed her tail and spun away again, racing for the nearest tree and up it, swarming up to the roofs.
    Puzzled and concerned, he followed her.
    Was she simply moon-maddened, wild with the pull of the full moon? Or had something frightened her in the library’s dark rooms?
    With Dulcie, who knew? His lady’s moods could explode as crazily as moths flung in a windstorm.
    At least he hadn’t scented the strange tom around her door, he thought with relief as he gained the moonlit peaks.
    Already she had disappeared. But her scent was there, warm and sweet, leading away into dense blackness between a tangle of vent pipes that rose from a roof as silvered and flat as a frozen pond. Slipping between the slashing shadows, he galloped past a dozen east-facing windows that reflected a dozen pale moons. Rearing up to look across the roofs for her, peering beneath overhangs and around dormers, he softly called to her. He spoke her name half a dozen times before he grew uneasy, began to worry that the tom had found her first.
    Most toms wouldn’t harm a female, but there was always the nasty-tempered beast who liked to hurt a lady more than he liked to love her, the unusual, twisted male who fed on fear and pain—beasts little different from a similarly warped human. Except there were far fewer such cats than men.
    Not that Dulcie couldn’t take care of herself. There wasn’t a dog in Molena Point who would tangle with his lady. But despite Dulcie’s temper and her swift claws, Joe searched with growing concern, hurrying along the peaks and watching the shadows and calling. Beneath the moon’s shifting light he could see nothing alive but the darting bats that skimmed the rooftops sucking up bugs and squeaking their shrill radar cries.
    Suddenly the tom’s scent hit him strong, clinging to the wall of a little, one-room penthouse.
    Sniffing at the window, Joe could smell where the cat had rubbed his cheek along the glass, arrogantly marking this territory as if it were his own.
    Peering in through the dusty pane, he studied the old desk stacked with papers and catalogs and the shelves behind, crammed with books and ledgers. What had the tom seen in there of interest?
    Beyond the desk a spiral staircase led down to the bookstore below. Maybe this cat, like Dulcie and like Joe himself, found a bookstore inviting; certainly bookstores had a warm coziness, and they always smelled safe.
    Maybe the cat had taken up residence there; maybe the two young women who kept the shop had adopted him, picked him up on the highway or at the animal pound. How would they know that Molena Point already had enough