Cat Seeing Double

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Authors: Shirley Rousseau Murphy
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looked at each other with perfect understanding; but they glanced up when Clyde and Wilma approached their table.
    Wilma was wrapped in a blue cashmere stole over her pale gown, against the night’s chill. She carried a woven shopping bag that bulged and wriggled.
    Clyde carried two paper plates heaped with canapés and salads and sliced meats. As he set one in the center of the table and the other underneath, Joe and Dulcie slipped beneath the table; and from Wilma’s shopping bag the kit hopped out, strolling purposefully under the table to claim her share.
    â€œCora Lee’s fine,” Wilma said. “Apparently something hit her in the head, but no concussion. They want her overnight, though.” When, early in the spring, Cora Lee had walked into the middle of a robbery and murder, she had been hit by such a blow to her middle that her spleen had ruptured and had to be removed. The dusky-skinned actress told them later she was terrified she would never sing again. But she had sung, the lead in the village’s little theater production of Thorns of Gold. With the kit as impromptu costar during the entire run, the play had sold out every night.
    â€œDallas is trying to get Curtis Farger remanded over to juvenile,” Clyde said. “But since the fire, with their building gone, they’re not eager to take any kids. Kids scattered all over, in temporary quarters, and not great security.” He looked at Charlie. “Max would be smart to get a move on, before you decide to enjoy the cruise without him.”
    â€œMaybe we’ll just do a few days in San Francisco, and book the cruise for next spring.” Their reservation at the St. Francis gave them three days in the city before boarding their liner for the inland passage. At the moment, that sounded pretty good to Charlie.
    â€œCan you cancel a cruise like that?” Wilma said. “Even Max…” She watched Charlie, frowning. Shewanted her niece and Max to get on that ship and be gone, to be away from the Farger family.
    â€œMax knows someone,” Charlie said. “When he made the reservations, that was part of the package, that if something urgent came up, we could cancel.” She glanced beneath the table where the cats feasted, Joe and Dulcie eating fastidiously, the kit slurping so loudly that Ryan looked under too, and laughed.
    Â 
    When the cats had demolished their quiche, seafood salads, rare roast beef, curried lamb, and wedding cake, they stretched out between the feet of their friends for a leisurely wash, grooming thoroughly from whiskers to tail. They could have trotted over to the jail and had a look at Curtis Farger, but they were too full and comfortable. And Joe didn’t think they’d hear much. Very likely Curtis had already been questioned as much as he could be, until a juvenile officer arrived in the morning to protect the kid’s rights. Sleeking his whiskers with a damp paw, Joe Grey thought about the legal rights of young boys who set bombs to kill people.
    No one liked to believe that a ten-year-old child had intended, and nearly succeeded in, mass murder. In the eyes of the law, Curtis and his grandfather were innocent until proven guilty. But in Joe Grey’s view they were both guilty until proven otherwise. If you attacked innocent people with all claws raking, you should know that your opponent would retaliate.
    Charlie said, “This afternoon at the church—before the bomb—I felt like I was nineteen again, so scared and giddy. And then after the bomb went off, itwas…I wasn’t nineteen anymore, couldn’t remember ever having been so young.” She chafed her hands together.
    â€œThere was some reason,” Ryan said, “some profound reason, why that bomb went off prematurely. What made the kid turn and run? What made him trip and fall? You couldn’t see much under those overhanging trees. He was lucky he didn’t break

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