Part 8 (1/2)

But of course he would call Sheril, she was so recently widowed, she needed all the friends she could get. When Samuel was killed, everyone at the shop had rallied around to help her. Jimmie would be calling to help out in some way, do one of the little kindnesses. The fact that he was being extraordinarily thoughtful regarding Sheril did strike her. Jimmie didn't ordinarily go to any particular trouble over people.

But after all, Sheril had been his boss's wife.

When Sheril answered, Jimmie's voice was not that of a helpful friend. It was soft and intimate. Kate felt her claws reaching and retracting, felt her tail whipping against the carpet.

He told Sheril he would just get some fresh clothes and drop off his laundry, then he'd be over, that he'd pick up a couple of steaks and a bottle of brut.

Steaks? Brut? She didn't know whether to leap out and claw him, or to fall over laughing. Cheap Sheril Beckwhite and dull, unimaginative Jimmie. That should be an exciting evening.

But how degrading that he had betrayed her with Sheril, of all the women they knew. Why Sheril? How perfectly ego-destroying.

Though in truth, she realized, she didn't give a d.a.m.n. She wondered how long he'd been seeing Sheril. She was embarra.s.sed that she hadn't guessed. Not a clue. How many people knew? How many people were laughing because she didn't know?

She wondered what Sheril was like in bed.

Maybe Sheril did things she didn't do, things that would shock Jimmie if she did them. The b.i.t.c.h syndrome. The good girl, bad girl syndrome. She had to stop her tail from las.h.i.+ng and thumping against the carpet; he was going to hear her.

She waited quietly until Jimmie had left the housea”with his clean clothes and his laundry in two paper bags. Really cla.s.sy. Then, frightened but resolute, she stood in the middle of the bedroom repeating the words Wark had whispered. She hardly thought it strange that she remembered them so clearly, they seemed seared in her head, as natural as, it seemed, was her ability to speak them. She didn't think, she just did it.

A sick feeling exploded inside her, a sick dizziness. But then a feeling of elation swept her, reeling and giddy; and she was tall again. Her hands shook. For a moment it was hard to walk, hard to remember how to move on two feet. It was very hard to turn and look into the mirror.

When she did look, Kate was there looking back at her, tall and blond, the Kate she knew. How strange that she was cleaner; though her clothes were still a mess. She stood looking for some time, glad to see herself again.

It did occur to her to wonder which being she liked best. But what matter? She evidently had control of both. Talk about liberating.

She turned away from the mirror, and a.s.sembled her toothbrush and some makeup and toiletries. She packed panties and bras, a couple of blouses, a robe, stuffing everything into her overnighter. She tucked in an extra checkbook from her own account, then opened Jimmie's dresser and removed the stack of twenties and hundreds he kept for emergencies. She put the bills in her purse on the dresser.

She showered and washed her hair, gave it a few quick swipes with the blower and shook it into place. She put on fresh jeans and a clean s.h.i.+rt, and a decent pair of sandals. In the study she retrieved their savings book.

The balance was forty thousand and some change. She would stop at the bank and clean out the account before he found the book missing, open an account in her name alone. More than half of it was money her mother had left her. She figured she deserved the other half. She was straightening the pile of bank statements she had disturbed, when she uncovered, behind them, several small folders held together with a rubber band.

She removed them, frowning, and slipped off the rubber band. They looked like bankbooks, but she and Jimmie had no other accounts, just the one.

They were bankbooks. She opened one, then the next. All were on foreign accounts, two in the Bahamas, one in Curacao, two in Panama. None was in Jimmie's name, but in the names of companies unfamiliar to her. The balances were all in the six figures, the largest for eight hundred thousand, none for less than three hundred thousand.

These had to belong to someone else. Why would Jimmie have them? Who would he be keeping bankbooks for? Her hands shook so hard she dropped the books. She knelt to pick them up, knelt on the rug staring dumbly at the evidence of accounts worth over two million dollars.

Maybe they were Beckwhite's. But why would Jimmie have Beckwhite's bankbooks, and after he was dead?

She thought of taking them with her, showing them to an attorney, or at least to Clyde. She started to put them in her pocket, but a coldness filled her.

If these were Beckwhite's bankbooks, what did that mean? And even if they were not Beckwhite's, if they were Jimmie's accounts, still, he was into something frightening.

She put them back in the drawer, and straightened the drawer, making sure everything was as she had found it. The bank statements had been facing with the cut edges of the envelopes to the back. The bankbooks had been facedown. Spines to the right? Or the left?

She was growing more shaken as the possibilities behind those huge accounts presented themselves.

She put their savings book back, too, just as she had found it. She didn't want him to know she'd been in this drawer; she'd rather do without the forty thousand.

She had meant to take her car, but she didn't want him to know she'd been home. She was, suddenly, afraid of Jimmie. She closed the drawer and left the room quickly.

In the bedroom she opened her purse and s.n.a.t.c.hed out the twenties and hundreds, put them back in his dresser drawer. When she looked out the bedroom window to the backyard, she saw that the neighbors were setting up their barbecue. The afternoon had grown gray with cloud, heralding an early dark. In the Jenson yard, four tiki torches burned, and a crowd of kids had gathered. There were more than a dozen children in the yard. One of the Jenson kids must be having a birthday. She watched Joan Jenson spread a paper tablecloth over the long picnic table, watched the two Jenson boys weight down the corners with rocks. Well she wasn't going out that way in the form of Kate, not when Jimmie had alerted the whole neighborhood that she was missing. And when she looked out the front, there were cars pulling up in front of the Jensons'. She'd have to leave as the cat.

She stuffed her checkbook and keys in the pocket of her jeans. If her clothes had stayed with her, surviving the change, then whatever she put in her pockets might survive, too. She had no idea if there were rules to this alarming new life. She hid her purse and her packed bag on the shelf of her closet, behind some boxes. And she changed to cat with a haste that left no time to enjoy the strange rush it gave her.

The little cream-colored cat slipped out the back door, praying that the children wouldn't see her. Those boys were death on cats.

To leave without money or her car was going to present endless problems. But she couldn't shake the idea of getting out unseen. She wanted to leave no trail for Jimmie; not until she knew what was going on. Not until she knew where those bank accounts came from.

She fled around the side of the house and into a flower bed. She was crouched between some clumps of daylilies, looking out, scanning the street when a noise startled her.

Before she could run, Wark was on her, he had appeared out of nowhere. He grabbed her by the legs, squeezing with excruciating pain, and swung her high, then down toward the concrete. She fought, twisting, trying to reach him with her claws. A shout from the street put him off-balance.

But again he swung her.

This time she got a paw free and raked him. There was another shout, and she hit the concrete in a jarring explosion that dropped her into blackness.

The cat lay on the cement walk unmoving. Wark shoved her with his foot, pus.h.i.+ng her under the bushes. Then, goaded by the shout, he ran, pounding away through the gloom that had gathered beneath the overhanging oaks.

Halfway down the block he swung into a black BMW and burned rubber, screeching away into the darkening evening.

13.

Joe watched Dulcie remove every trace of fur from their freshly killed squirrel before she touched the rich, dark meat. He had watched her do this at each meal, remove feathers, claws, beaks; he had never seen a cat so fastidious. The squirrel was big and fat and it had fought hard, leaving a long b.l.o.o.d.y gash down Dulcie's leg. They had caught it by working together, by driving it away from all available trees.

He was impressed by Dulcie's bold hunting style. She was quick and fearless, and she could catch a bird on the wing, leaping to s.n.a.t.c.h it from the wind. He had seen her outrun a big rabbit, too, and bring it down screaming though the animal outweighed her. The rabbit had raked her badly. It hurt him to see her beautiful tabby coat torn and bloodied, hurt him to know how those gashes stung and throbbed. He had licked her wounds at intervals all night to ease the pain, and to prevent fever. She was so beautiful, so delicate. And so puzzling.

At first light yesterday morning he had watched her steal a child's blue sweater from a deserted porch. Waking, he had watched amazed as she dragged the sweater deep into the bushes.

Following her, he found her in a little clearing arranging the sweater, kneading and patting it. She was so engrossed she didn't hear as he brushed softly in through the foliage. When she had shaped the sweater to her liking she curled up on it and rolled onto her back, her head ducked down, her paws limply curled above her belly. Her purrs rumbled.

But when she glanced up and saw him she looked startled and embarra.s.sed. And when he asked her what was so great about the sweater and why she had taken it, she clutched the blue wool with her claws and stared at him, hurt. He felt ashamed. Her need was a private thing, a preoccupation he should not have spied on and really didn't understand.

”It's so soft,” she said, by way of explanation. ”So soft and pretty, and it's the very color of a robin's egg. Can't you imagine wearing it, all soft wool against your bare skin?”

”I don't have bare skin,” he said uneasily. What was this? What was she dreaming? What did she imagine?

”Don't you ever wonder, Joe, what that would be like? To be a human person?”

She had to be kidding. ”No way. I may talk like a human and sometimes think like a human, but I'm a cat. I'm a fine and well-adjusted tomcat.”

”But wouldn't you . . . ?”

”No. I wouldn't. I can just imagine it. Repairing the roof, mowing the lawn. Having to deal with car registration and income taxes. With traffic tickets and lawsuits and fixing the leaky plumbing.” He shook his head. ”No way would I be a human.”