wasted on the besotted Mrs.-he glanced down at the pile of letters-Sherrod. She continued to beam at him as if he had fawned at her feet. As it was, he was so busy studying the address on the Sherrod junk mail that he barely glanced at her. He hadn’t left town! His tail twitched triumphantly. Morning Glory Lane was not familiar to him, but he’d be willing to bet that it was a street in Sussex Garden Estates, just off the bypass. That was a couple of miles from Giles Eskeridge’s mock-Tudor monstrosity, but with a little luck and some common sense about traffic he could walk there in a couple of hours. If he cut through the fields, he might be able to score a mouse or two on the way.
Spurred on by the thought of a fresh, tasty dinner that would beg for its life, Danby/Tigger trotted to the back door and began to meow piteously, putting his forepaws as far up the screen door as he could reach.
“Now, Tigger!” said Mrs. Sherrod in her most arch tone. “You know perfectly well that there’s a litter box in the bathroom. You just want to get outdoors so that you can tomcat around, don’t you?” With that she began to put away groceries, humming tunelessly to herself.
Danby fixed a venomous stare at her retreating figure, and then turned his attention back to the problem at hand. Or rather, at paw. That was just the trouble:
As he loped off toward the street, he could hear a plaintive voice wailing, “Ti-iii-gerrr!” It almost drowned out the jingling of that damned little bell around his neck.
Twenty minutes later Danby was sunning himself on a rock in an abandoned field, recovering from the exertion of moving faster than a stroll. In the distance he could hear the drone of cars from the interstate, as the smell of gasoline wafted in on a gentle breeze. As he had trotted through the neighborhood, he’d read street signs, so he had a better idea of his whereabouts now. Windsor Forest, that pretentious little suburb that Giles called home, was only a few miles away, and once he crossed the interstate, he could take a shortcut through the woods. He hoped that La Sherrod wouldn’t put out an all-points bulletin for her missing kitty. He didn’t want any SPCA interruptions once he reached his destination. He ought to ditch the collar as well, he thought. He couldn’t very well pose as a stray with a little bell under his chin.
Fortunately, the collar was loose, probably because the ruff around his head made his neck look twice as large. Once he determined that, it took only a few minutes of concentrated effort to work the collar forward with his paws until it slipped over his ears. After that, a shake of the head-jingle! jingle!-rid him of Tigger’s identity. He wondered how many pets who “just disappeared one day,” had acquired new identities and gone off on more pressing business.
He managed to reach the bypass before five o’clock, thus avoiding the commuter traffic of rush hour. Since he understood automobiles, it was a relatively simple matter for Danby to cross the highway during a lull between cars. He didn’t see what the possums found so difficult about road crossing. Sure enough, there was a ripe gray corpse on the white line, mute testimony to the dangers of indecision on highways. He took a perfunctory sniff, but the roadkill was too far gone to interest anything except the buzzards.
Once across the road, Danby stuck to the fields, making sure that he paralleled the road that led to Windsor Forest. His attention was occasionally diverted by a flock of birds overhead, or an enticing rustle in the grass that might have been a field mouse, but he kept going. If he didn’t reach the Eskeridge house by nightfall, he would have to wait until morning to get himself noticed.
In order to get at Giles, Danby reasoned, he would first have to charm Julie Eskeridge. He wondered if she was susceptible to needy animals. He couldn’t remember whether they had a cat or not. An unspayed female would be nice, he thought. A Siamese, perhaps, with big blue eyes and a sexy voice.
Danby reasoned that he wouldn’t have too much trouble finding Giles’s house. He had been there often enough as a guest. Besides, the firm had designed and built several of the overwrought mansions in the spacious subdivision. Danby had once suggested that they buy Palladian windows by the gross, since every nouveau riche home-builder insisted on having a brace of them, no matter what style of house he had commissioned. Giles had not been amused by Danby’s observation. He seldom was. What Giles lacked in humor, he also lacked in scruples and moral restraint, but he compensated for these deficiencies with a highly developed instinct for making and holding on to money. While he’d lacked Danby’s talent in design and execution, he had a genius for turning up wealthy clients, and for persuading these tasteless yobbos to spend a fortune on their showpiece homes. Danby did draw the line at carving up antique Sheraton sideboards to use as bathroom sink cabinets, though. When he also drew the line at environmental crime, Giles had apparently found his conscience an expensive luxury that the firm could not afford. Hence, the shallow grave at the new construction site, and Danby’s new lease on life. It was really quite unfair of Giles, Danby reflected. They’d been friends since college, and after Danby’s parents died, he had drawn up a will leaving his share of the business to Giles. And how had Giles repaid this friendship? With the blunt end of a shovel. Danby stopped to sharpen his claws on the bark of a handy pine tree. Really, he thought, Giles deserved no mercy whatsoever. Which was just as well, because, catlike, Danby possessed none.
The sun was low behind the surrounding pines by the time Danby arrived at the Eskeridge’s mock-Tudor home. He had been delayed en route by the scent of another cat, a neutered orange male. (Even to his color-blind eyes, an orange cat was recognizable. It might be the shade of gray, or the configuration of white at the throat and chest.) He had hunted up this fellow feline, and made considerable efforts to communicate, but as far as he could tell, there was no higher intelligence flickering behind its blank green eyes. There was no intelligence at all, as far as Danby was concerned; he’d as soon try talking to a shrub. Finally tiring of the eunuch’s unblinking stare, he’d stalked off, forgoing more social experiments in favor of his mission.
He sat for a long time under the forsythia hedge in Giles’s front yard, studying the house for signs of life. He refused to be distracted by a cluster of sparrows cavorting on the birdbath, but he realized that unless a meal was coming soon, he would be reduced to foraging. The idea of hurling his bulk at a few ounces of twittering songbird made his scowl even more forbidding than usual. He licked a front paw and glowered at the silent house.
After twenty minutes or so, he heard the distant hum of a car engine, and smelled gasoline fumes. Danby peered out from the hedge in time to see Julie Eskeridge’s Mercedes rounding the corner from Windsor Way. With a few hasty licks to smooth down his ruff, Danby sauntered toward the driveway just as the car pulled in. Now for the hard part: how do you impress Julie Eskeridge without a checkbook?
He had never noticed before how much Giles’s wife resembled a giraffe. He blinked at the sight of her huge feet swinging out of the car perilously close to his nose. They were followed by two replicas of the Alaska pipeline, both encased in nylon. Better not jump up on her; one claw on the stockings, and he’d have an enemy for life. Julie was one of those people who air-kissed because she couldn’t bear to spoil her makeup. Instead of trying to attract her attention at the car (where she could have skewered him with one spike heel), Danby loped to the steps of the side porch, and began meowing piteously. As Julie approached the steps, he looked up at her with wide-eyed supplication, waiting to be admired.
“Shoo, cat!” said Julie, nudging him aside with her foot.
As the door slammed in his face, Danby realized that he had badly miscalculated. He had also neglected to devise a backup plan. A fine mess he was in now. It wasn’t enough that he was murdered and reassigned to cathood. Now he was also homeless.
He was still hanging around the steps twenty minutes later when Giles came home, mainly because he couldn’t think of an alternate plan just yet. When he saw Giles’s black sports car pull up behind Julie’s Mercedes, Danby’s first impulse was to run, but then he realized that, while Giles might see him, he certainly wouldn’t recognize him as his old business partner. Besides, he was curious to see how an uncaught murderer looked. Would Giles be haggard with grief and remorse? Furtive, as he listened for police sirens in the distance?
Giles Eskeridge was whistling. He climbed out of his car, suntanned and smiling, with his lips pursed in a cheerfully tuneless whistle. Danby trotted forward to confront his murderer with his haughtiest scowl of indignation. The reaction was not quite what he expected.
Giles saw the huge, fluffy cat, and immediately knelt down, calling, “Here, kitty, kitty!”
Danby looked at him as if he had been propositioned.
