Cat Under Fire by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

Author:Shirley Rousseau Murphy [Shirley Rousseau Murphy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780061740268
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2007-03-03T16:00:00+00:00

14

The cats fled down the black, burned hills, down into the tall green grass careening together, exploding apart, wild with their sudden freedom. Four days hanging around the Blankenships’ had left them stir-crazy, dangerously close to the insane release people called a cat fit. Flying down, dropping steeply down, they collapsed at last, rolling and laughing beneath the wide blue sky. Dulcie leaped at a butterfly, at insects that keened and rustled around them in the blowing grass; racing in circles she terrorized a thousand minute little presences singing their tiny songs and munching on their bits of greenery, sent them scurrying or crushed them. “I wonder if Mama gave in—if she let Frances call the police.” She grinned. “I wonder if Frances tried again to phone Attorney Joseph Grey.”

She stood switching her tail. “If that was Janet’s van that Mama saw, the Saturday night before the fire, what was she doing? She drove up to San Francisco that morning. Why would she come home again in the middle of the night, load up her own paintings? Take them where? If there’d been a show, her agent would have said.”

She looked at him intently. “Those weren’t Janet’s paintings burned in the fire, so whose paintings were they?”

“Could Janet have hidden her own paintings, to collect the insurance?”

“Janet wouldn’t do that. And there wasn’t any insurance.” She lay down, thinking.

“Of course there would be insurance,” he said. “Those paintings were worth…”

Dulcie twitched her ear. “Janet didn’t insure her work.”

“That’s crazy. Why wouldn’t she? How do you know that?”

“Insurance on paintings is horribly expensive. She told Wilma it costs nearly as much as the price of the work. The rates were so high she decided against it, said she tried three insurance agents and they all gave the same high rates. Wilma says a lot of artists don’t insure.”

“But Wilma…”

“Wilma has that one painting insured, with a rider on her homeowner’s. That’s a lot different.”

She was quiet a moment, then flipped over and sat up, her eyes widening. “Sicily Aronson has a white van. Don’t you remember? She parks it behind the gallery beside the loading door.”

“So Sicily took the paintings, at two in the morning? Killed Janet and took her paintings, to sell? Come on, Dulcie. Why would she kill Janet? Janet was her best painter, her meal ticket.”

“Maybe Janet planned to leave her. Maybe they had a falling-out. If Janet took all her work away…”

“You’ve been seeing too many TV movies. If Sicily tried to sell those paintings, if they came on the market, Max Harper would have her behind bars in a second.

“And Beverly wouldn’t take them, she inherited Janet’s paintings.” He licked his paw. “And if there wasn’t any insurance, Beverly had nothing to gain.” He nibbled his shoulder, pursuing a flea. Even with the amazing changes in his life, he still couldn’t shake the fleas. And he hated flea spray.

“Maybe,” she said, “Sicily could sell them easier than Beverly. If she did, she’d keep all the money, not have to split with Beverly.

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