Cat in the Dark by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

“Tomcats sit on jury…”
    â€œCat excused because she’s nursing kittens…” She rolled over, convulsed with feline glee.
    â€œBut,” she said at last, “what about the murders? We don’t…”
    â€œWhat murders?”
    â€œThe three deaths. Azrael said he saw death—three murders.”
    â€œYou don’t believe that stuff. Come on, Dulcie, that’s tomcat grandstanding. There will be murder in this village …” Joe mimicked. “ I smell death, death before the moon is full …” He yowled with amusement. “ I see you two little cats standing over the bodies …Oh, boy, talk about chutzpah.”
    â€œBut…”
    â€œSo who is going to be murdered over a couple of little, two-bit burglaries? Come on, Dulcie. He was giving you a line. That tomcat’s nothing but a con artist, an overblown bag of hot air.”
    But Dulcie lashed her tail and laid back her ears. “There could be truth in what Azrael said.” With all his talk of voodoo and dark magic, was the foreign tomcat able to see into the future?
    Certainly there was a sense of otherness about Azrael—a dark aura seemed to cling around him like a grim shadow. And certainly when she read about cats like themselves, a thread of dark prophetic talents wound through the ancient myths.
    Who knew, she thought, shivering, what terrifying skills the black tom might have learned in those far and exotic lands?

8
    D ORA AND RALPH Sleuder’s shuttle from L.A. was due to land at 11:03, and as Mavity headed up the freeway for Peninsula Airport, her VW chugging along with the scattered Sunday traffic, the fog was lifting; the day was going to be pretty, clear and bright.
    Wilma’s elegant breakfast had been a lovely way to end the week; though the pleasant company made her realize how much time she spent alone. It would be nice to have Dora and Ralph with her, despite her crowded little house. She did miss her family.
    She really ought to entertain them better, ought to get Wilma’s recipe for that elegant casserole. All she ever made for breakfast was eggs and bacon or cereal. Well, of course she’d be making grits. Dora couldn’t face a morning without grits—she always brought instant grits with her from Georgia. The first time Mavity heard of instant grits, which were more common in the south than instant oatmeal, she’d doubled over laughing. But after all, it was a southern staple. And Dora worked hard at home. On the farm,breakfast was a mainstay. Dora grew up in a household where her mother rose every morning at four to fix grits and eggs and salty country ham and homemade biscuits from scratch, a real farm breakfast. Biscuits and redeye gravy became Greeley’s favorite after he married a southern girl at eighteen and moved south to her father’s farm.
    Greeley and his wife had had only the one child, only Dora, and for thirty years he had lived that life, so different from how he grew up here in California. Imagine, getting out to the fields every morning before daylight. You’d think Dora would want to get off the farm, but no, she and Ralph still planted and harvested and hauled produce to market, though they had some help now. And now they had that junk car business, too. Ralph called it a “recycled parts exchange.”
    For herself, she’d rather clean other people’s houses than do that backbreaking field labor. After a day’s work, her time was her own. No sick cows to tend, no broken water lines or dried up crops to worry over. She could come home, make a nice cup of tea, put up her feet, and forget the world around her.
    And maybe Greeley hadn’t liked it all that well, either, because the minute Dora’s mother died—Dora was already married—Greeley hit out for Panama, and the next thing she knew, he’d learned to be a deep-sea diver. That had shocked everyone. Who knew that all