Мерфи Ширли Руссо

Cat Cross Their Graves. Cat Breaking Free. Cat Pay The Devil

10. CAT CROSS THEIR GRAVES

1

Up the Molena Point hills where the village cottages stood crowded together, and their back gardens ended abruptly at the lip of the wild canyon, a row of graves lay hidden. Concealed beneath tangled weeds and sprawling overgrown geraniums, there was no stone to mark the bodies. No one to remember they were there save one villager, who kept an uneasy silence. Who nursed a vigil of dread against the day the earth would again be disturbed and the truth revealed. On winter evenings the shadow of the tall, old house struck down across the graves like a long black arrow, and from the canyon below, errant winds sang to the small, dead children.

There had been no reports for a dozen years of unexplained disappearances along the central California coast, not even of some little kid straying off to turn up at suppertime hungry and dirty and unharmed. Nor did the three cats who hunted these gardens know what lay beneath their hurrying paws. Though as they trotted down into the canyon to slaughter wood rats, leaping across the tangled flower beds, sometimes tabby Dulcie would pause to look around her, puzzled, her skin rippling with an icy chill. And once the tortoiseshell kit stopped stone still as she crossed the neglected flower bed, her yellow eyes growing huge. She muttered about a shadow swiftly vanishing, a child with flaxen hair. But this kit was given to fancies. Joe Grey had glanced at her, annoyed. The gray tom was quite aware that female cats were full of wild notions, particularly the tattercoat kit and her flights of fancy.

For many years the graves had remained hidden, the bodies abandoned and alone, and thus they waited undiscovered on this chill February night. The village of Molena Point was awash with icy, sloughing rain and shaken by winds that whipped off the surging sea to rattle the oak trees and scour the village rooftops. But beneath the heavy oaks and the solid shingles and thick clay tiles, within scattered cottages, sitting rooms were warm, lamps glowed and hearth fires burned, and all was safe and right. But many cottages stood dark. For despite the storm, it seemed half the village had ventured out, to crowd into Molena Point Little Theater for the weeklong Patty Rose Film Festival. There, though the stage was empty, the darkened theater was filled to capacity. Though no footlights shone and there was no painted backdrop to describe some enchanted world and no live actors to beguile the audience, not a seat was vacant.

Before the silent crowd, the silver screen had been lowered into place from the high, dark ceiling, and on it a classic film rolled, a black-and-white musical romance from a simpler, kinder era. Old love songs filled the hall, and old memories for those who had endured the painful years of World War II, when Patty’s films had offered welcome escape from the disruptions of young lives, from the wrenching partings of lovers.

For six nights, Molena Point Little Theater audiences had been transported, by Hollywood’s magic, back to that gentler time before X-ratings were necessary and audiences had to sit through too much carnage, too much hate, and the obligatory bedroom scene. The Patty Rose Film Festival had drawn all the village back into that bright world when their own Patty was young and vibrant and beautiful, riding the crest of her stardom.

Every showing was sold out and many seats had been sold again at scalpers’ prices. On opening night Patty herself, now eightysome, had appeared to welcome her friends; it was a small village, close and in many ways an extended family. Patty Rose was family; the blond actress was still as slim and charming as when her photographs graced every marquee and magazine in the country. She still wore her golden hair bobbed, in the style famous during those years, even if the color was added; her tilted nose and delighted smile still enthralled her fans. To her friends, she was still as beautiful.

When Patty retired from the screen at age fifty and moved to Molena Point, she could have secluded herself as many stars do, perhaps on a large acreage up in Molena Valley where a celebrity could retain her privacy. She had, instead, bought Otter Pine Inn, in the heart of the village, and moved into one of its third-floor penthouses, had gone quietly about her everyday business until people quit gawking and sensibly refrained from asking for autographs. She loved the village; she walked the beach, she mingled at the coffee shop, she played with the village dogs. She soon headed up charity causes, ran benefits, gave generously of her time and her money.

Two years ago she had bought an old historic mansion in need of repair, had fixed it up and turned it into a home for orphaned children. “Orphans’ home” was an outdated term but Patty liked it and used it. The children were happy, they were clean and healthy, they were well fed and well educated. Eighty-two percent of the children went on to graduate from college. Patty’s friends understood that the home helped, a little bit, to fill the dark irreparable void left by the death of Patty’s daughter and grandson. Between her civic projects and the children’s home, and running the inn, Patty left herself little time for grieving.

She took deep pleasure in making the inn hospitable. Otter Pine Inn was famous for its cuisine, for its handsome and comfortable accommodations, and for the friendly pampering of its guests. It was famous indeed for the care that Patty extended to travelers’ pets. There are not so many hotels across the nation where one’s cats and dogs are welcome. Otter Pine Inn offered each animal velvet cushions by a window, a special menu of meaty treats, and free access to the inn’s dining patio when accompanied by a human. Sculptures of cats and dogs graced the patio gardens, and Charlie Harper’s animal drawings hung in the inn’s tearoom and restaurant. Police captain Max Harper had been Patty’s friend from the time she arrived in Molena Point, long before he met and married Charlie.

When Patty first saw Charlie’s animal drawings, she swore that Charlie made some of her cats seem almost human, made them look as if they could speak. Patty Rose was perceptive in her observations, but in the matter of the three cats who lived with three of her good friends, Patty had no idea of the real truth. As for the cats, Joe Grey and Kit and Dulcie kept their own counsel.

Now in the darkened theater, as the last teary scenes drew to a close, Charlie leaned against Max’s shoulder, blowing her nose. On her other side, Ryan Flannery reached for a tissue from the box the two women had tucked between them. Patty’s films might be musicals, but the love interest provided enough cliff-hanging anxiety to bring every woman in the audience to tears. Over Charlie’s bright-red hair and Ryan’s dark, short bob, Max Harper glanced across at Clyde with that amused, tolerant look that only two males can share. Women-they always cried at a romantic movie, squeezed out the tears like water from a sponge. Charlie cut Max a look and wiped her tears; but as she wept at the final scenes, she looked up suddenly and paused, and her tears were forgotten. A chill touched Charlie, a tremor of fear. She stared up at the screen, at Patty, and a fascination of horror slid through her, an icy tremor that held her still and afraid, a rush of fear that came out of nowhere, so powerfully that she trembled and squeezed Max’s hand. He looked down at her, frowning, and drew her close. “What?”

“I don’t know.” She shook her head. “Nothing. It� it’s gone.” She looked up again at Patty, at the twenty-year-old Patty Rose deep into the love scene, and tried to lose herself again in the movie.

But the sense of dread remained, a feeling of regret so vivid that she was jolted completely out of the story. A sense of wrongness and danger that made her grip Max’s hand more tightly. He drew her closer, uneasy himself now, and puzzled.

Patty really hadn’t been herself these last weeks, and that had concerned Charlie. Patty was usually either all business or cutting loose, laughing with her friends, singing her old songs and making fun of herself, hamming it up. Whatever Patty did, she was completely in the moment, giving of herself fully. But these last weeks she had seemed distracted, drawn away and quiet, her attention wandering so, that sometimes you had to repeat what you said to her. Charlie had glimpsed her several times looking off across the inn’s gardens or out through its wrought-iron gates to the street as if her thoughts were indeed very far away, and her gamin face much too serious.

Now, as Charlie frowned over Patty’s distraction, and the crowd in the theater was caught in the last tearful moments of Patty’s love story, Patty Rose was out in the storm crossing the inn’s softly lit patio.

Pulling her wrap close around her against the cold wind, she headed through the blowing garden for the closed tearoom.

The shifting shadows were familiar enough, the tile roofs, the dark, shivering bushes no different than on any windy night. The black tearoom windows rippling with wind reflected only blowing bushes and tossing trees and the long wing of the inn itself, and the guests’ lighted windows. Then the dark, uneasy glass caught her own reflection as she moved quickly down the brick walk through the shifting montage of garden and dark panes, heading for the tearoom’s small auxiliary kitchen. She meant to make herself a cup of cocoa, to sit for a while in the empty tearoom and get herself centered. Put down the silly sense of invasion that had followed her the past week.

When Charlie shivered again, Max squeezed her shoulder. She looked up at him and tried to smile. His lean, leathery good looks eased her, his steadiness reassured her. The deep lines down his cheeks were smile lines, the tightness of his jaw reserved for less pleasant citizens than his redheaded bride. She leaned into his hard shoulder, rubbing her cheek against his sport coat; he had worn the cashmere jacket she liked, over a dark turtleneck and faded jeans. He had bought their tickets for all six showings mostly to please her, but she knew he was enjoying Patty’s films. She snuggled close, trying to pay attention as the last scene played out. Wadding up her tissues and stuffing them in her purse, she pushed away whatever foolish imagining had gripped her; but she was so engrossed in her own thoughts that when Max reached into his pocket to answer his vibrating cell phone, she was startled. The dispatcher knew not to buzz him here. Not unless the matter was truly urgent.

As he lifted the phone from his belt, the chill touched her again. As he punched in the single digit for the station, sirens began to scream across the village, patrol cars and then the more hysterical wailing of a rescue unit. Max rose at once and quietly left the theater, was gone so fast she had no time to speak to him.

Watching his retreating back, she felt Ryan’s hand on her arm-and the chill returned, making her tremble, cold and uncertain. She could not remember ever having had that sudden lost, frightened sensation minutes before the sirens screamed. When Ryan took her hand, she rose helplessly and followed him and Clyde out the side exit, ahead of the departing crowd.

Tenminutes before the sirens blasted, the tortoiseshell kit awoke just as startled as Charlie, just as eerily scared. When the sirens jerked her up from her tangle of cushions on her third-floor window seat, she immediately pressed her nose against the cold, dark glass.

The time was near midnight. Above the village roofs and chimneys, above the black pools of wind-tossed trees, the distant stars burned icy and remote. Impossible worlds, it seemed to Kit, spinning in a vastness that no one could comprehend. Beyond the inn’s enclosing walls, a haze of light from the village shops shifted in the wind as indistinct as blowing gauze; against that pale smear, the black pools of trees rattled and shook. She stared down past the lower balconies to the inn’s blowing gardens and patio, softly lit but deserted. What had waked her?

Nothing moved on the patio but the puppets of the wind. She heard no faintest sound.

She and Lucinda and Pedric had been at Otter Pine Inn since before Christmas, enjoying the most luxurious holiday the kit had ever imagined. Over the hush of the wind, from deeper within the darkened suite, through the open bedroom door, she could hear Lucinda’s and Pedric’s soft breathing. The old couple slept so deeply. Lucinda had told her, laughing, that that was the result of a good conscience. The kit, staring down through the bay window to the courtyard and sprawling gardens, studied the windows of the bar and the dining room and the tearoom.

The tearoom was closed and dark at this hour, and the faintly lit dining room looked deserted; she thought it was about to close. No one came out of the bar, and its soft lights and black-smoked windows were too dark to see much. No one was returning through the wrought-iron gate from the street, ready to settle in for the night. As she pressed her nose harder to the glass, her whiskers and ears sharply pricked, her every sense was alert.

Otter Pine Inn occupied nearly a full block near the center of the village, just a short stroll from Ocean Avenue. Its wrought-iron gates, its three wings that formed a U, and its creamy stucco walls surrounded winding brick walks and bright winter blooms. The roofs of the inn were red tile, mossy in the shady places, slick and precarious under the paws, slick all over when they were wet.

There were four third-floor penthouses. Patty Rose’s suite was at the back. Kit and Lucinda and Pedric had a front suite overlooking the patio and the front gate. In one of the other two penthouses this weekend were a young couple with three cocker spaniels, in the other a family with two children and a Great Dane, a dog the kit avoided, but only because she didn’t know him. The cockers were more her size; she could easily bloody them if the need arose. Or she could terrorize them for amusement, if she liked. If Lucinda didn’t catch her at it. Since before Christmas, Kit had enjoyed such a lovely time with her adopted family. The three of them had indulged in all manner of holiday and post-holiday pleasures-concerts, plays, long walks, and amazing gourmet delights.

Though for the concerts, she had to endure one of those abominable soft-sided doggie carriers with its little screened window. Of course, she could open the stupid thing from inside with a flick of her paw, but the embarrassment of being in it was almost too much. She was, after all, not a toy poodle! Lucinda laughed at her and made sure she had little snacks in there, but Lucinda really did understand. And their reunion was so amazing, after Kit had painfully mourned her dear old couple’s death. When the TV newscasts had reported the terrible wreck that destroyed the Greenlaws’ RV while the elderly couple was traveling down the coast, all their friends had believed them dead. The kit never really believed that. Then when no bodies were found in the burned wreckage, hope began to touch them all. And when Lucinda herself called to say they were alive, Kit had nearly flown out of her skin with joy. Now, to have her beloved adopted family back from the grave, as it were, was a never-ending wonder to the small tortoiseshell.

Settling into Otter Pine Inn for the holiday, visiting with their friend Patty Rose, the kit had every possible luxury-her own cushioned window seat, her own hand-painted Dalton china dinner service, and anything at all that she cared to order from the inn’s gourmet kitchen or from attentive waiters on the dining patio. Now, twitching an ear, she listened harder. Had she heard, on the instant of waking, angry human voices?

Below, the bar’s lights went brighter, and three yawning couples emerged, maybe the last customers, heading for their rooms. Molena Point was not a late-hour town; even the tourists turned in early, many to rise at dawn for a walk with their dogs or a run along the white-sand beach. The shore in the morning was overrun with wet, sandy dogs running insanely and barking at nothing.

Now in the bar, the lights blazed and she could see the waiters starting to clean up, wiping the tables; the cleaning staff would arrive soon to sweep and scrub. The smell of rain came sharply through a thin crack around the side of her window. She could hear voices now, hushed and angry, an argument from somewhere beyond the dining room. Maybe from the stairs that led down to the parking garage? She hated that garage; the vast concrete basement made her shiver with unease; she didn’t like to go there. When she was little she had thought that caves and caverns were wonderful places, peopled with amazing and mythical beings. Now those grim, echoing hollows frightened her. Angrier and louder the voices came, though maybe too faint for a human to hear. Burning with curiosity and a strange sense of dread, she pressed at the glass of the side window with an impatient paw until it opened.

Yes, a man and a woman arguing. She didn’t recognize the man, but the woman was Patty Rose; she had never heard Patty so angry. Impatiently Kit pushed against the screen. The way the echoes bounced and fell, she thought they were on the stairwell down to the garage, their words deflected by the inn’s plastered walls. Patty’s tone was hot and accusing, but the way the man was snapping back, Kit could make no sense of their words. She was pawing at the screen’s latch when three sharp reports barked between the walls, echoing and reverberating across the patio. Slashing hard down the screen, she ripped a jagged hole.

Behind her she heard Lucinda thump out of bed. Before the agile old lady could stop her, Kit forced through the screen tearing out hanks of her fur and dropped to the second-floor balcony. Below her, doors banged open, people were running and shouting. She heard a tiny click as Lucinda snatched up the bedside phone, heard Lucinda alert the dispatcher as, likely, a dozen people were trying to do.

“Three shots, that’s all I know,” Lucinda said as Kit slipped beneath the rail. “Yes, shots, my dear,” the old woman said testily. “That was not a backfire. I know gunshots when I hear them. And there was no smallest sound of a car engine.”

Kit dropped onto the back of a bench and into a bed of cyclamens. Racing across the brick walk and through the taller flowers, she listened for the shooter running, but all she heard was her own fur brushing through the foliage. As she skirted a bed of geraniums, her nose tingled at the flowers’ smell where she crushed them.

Strange, the stairwell that led down to the parking garage was dark, the little lights along the steps had been turned off. As she reached the top of the stairs, she heard running below, the faintest footsteps fast descending: soft shoes heading for the parking basement. She caught a whiff of geranium mixed with the sharp iron smell of blood, heard the squeak of rubber soles on concrete.

On the dark stairs, a body lay sprawled head down. Staring at the mutilated woman, Kit glimpsed, far below, a running shadow disappear through blackness into the garage. But Kit’s attention, her whole being, was centered on the dead woman.

Patty Rose lay tumbled, unnaturally twisted down the concrete steps, her white silk dressing gown slick with blood. Her face was turned away but was reflected in the steel hood of the recessed light: bloody, distorted. The smell of blood filled Kit’s nose; she could taste the heavy smell. Sirens screamed closer, muffled by the wind and by the walls of the buildings. Heart pounding, she crept down the steps to Patty. The sirens grew louder, coming fast. Trying not to look at Patty’s poor torn face, Kit reached out her nose searching for breath. And knowing there would be none. Police cars careened around the building, slamming on their brakes. Then silence. Car doors slammed and the night was filled with the static of police radios, with the dispatcher’s voice, with footsteps pounding across the patio above her, cops running down the stairs; and Kit ran, pelting down into darkness.

Crouched far down the steps in blackness, she smelled Patty’s blood as strong as if it was on her own whiskers. Her tail was between her legs, her whole being felt shrunken.

Patty Rose had held Kit on her lap and loved and petted her, Patty had shared tea with her and fed her bits of shortbread all buttery warm, Patty had talked so softly to her. This kind woman had talked and talked to her and had never known that Kit could have answered her.

That seemed terrible now, that Patty had never known. Patty Rose would have been thrilled. Kit wished she could talk to her now, that she could tell Patty she loved her.

Below her she heard another scuffle of footsteps near the door to the parking garage, a faint squeak as of rubber soles on concrete, and then, from the far side of the garage, the cops surging down the two ramps and inside. Kit stood on the dark steps alone, heartbroken and shivering.

Oh, she longed for Joe Grey and Dulcie to be there with her, for the strength of the big gray tomcat and for tabby Dulcie’s mothering. She knew she was nearly a full-grown cat, but right now all she wanted was to push close between the two bigger cats, like a lost kitten.

Joe Grey and Dulcie, and their human friends, had cared for Kit ever since she left the wild bunch she had run with. Always picked on, she hadn’t had the courage to leave until she met Joe and Dulcie, and Lucinda and Pedric. Oh, then her life had so changed. To find two speaking cats like herself, and to find humans who understood-that had been an amazing time.

But right now this minute, she ached just to feel Dulcie’s nose against her ear, to hear Dulcie and Joe Grey tell her that everything would be all right-she longed, most of all, for this terrible thing to have never happened, for Patty Rose to be alive and unharmed.

Above her, two medics knelt over Patty’s poor bloody body. Kit’s nose was sour with the smell of death. Far below, she could hear the faint scuffs and voices as the officers searched. Strange, she’d heard no car screeching out to escape. Was the killer hidden among the parked cars or under them? Or ducked down in a car, thinking the cops would miss him? She imagined him creeping out later through the confusion of police cars and rescue vehicles and somehow eluding them. Was that possible? Oh, the officers would find him, theymustfind him!

But if they didn’t catch him, Kit thought� she knew something about that man that the law didn’t know.

Racing down, she hit the bottom step and fled into the garage dodging a confusion of swinging spotlights, the officers’ torches burning leaping paths through the blackness. Crouching in shadow under a small black car, she listened, paws slick with sweat.

At last she began to creep along between the cars, scenting the concrete, seeking the smell of crushed geranium-and listening for the sound of softer shoes slipping away accompanied by that telltale little squeak, that chirp of rubber against concrete.

2 [��������: pic_3.jpg]

When sirens careening through the night woke the village, the most curious or adventuresome residents threw on whatever clothes were handy and followed, running through the streets to form an unwanted crowd, so many unruly onlookers that they had to be forcibly kept in check by half a dozen busy officers; the more considerate folk sat by their open windows tuning their radios to the local station, or stood in their miniscule front gardens asking their neighbors what was happening.

In the village library, which should have been empty at two in the morning, the racket jerked a little girl sharply from her troubled sleep. She sat up flinging herself off her thin mattress and against the cement wall, scrambling like a terrified animal. The sirens screamed overhead nearly above her, heavy vehicles thundering down the street as if they were right on top the basement. Sounded like the rumbling engines were coming down at her. In the tiny, hidden basement, she wondered if she would die crushed by trucks and by fallen concrete.

She didn’t flick on her little flashlight, she was afraid to.

There was no window into her hiding place, no one could see her, but still she was afraid. Was there a fire somewhere near? She pulled the thin blanket tighter around her. The basement was always cold. A damp cold, Mama would say. She missed Mama terrible bad.

She hadn’t run away until Pa boarded up the kitchen window, long after he’d nailed plywood over the other windows and locked the doors with key bolts that she couldn’t open. When he covered the kitchen window, too, she knew she couldn’t stay there anymore. He’d nailed that plywood on after the neighbor saw her looking out, a big, bony, nosy woman, saw her at the window and came over to ask him if she was sick and why wasn’t she in school. That’s when Pa found her footprint on the tile counter where she’d climbed up to see if she could unlock the window, where she forgot to wipe away the waffle mark of her jogging shoes. He told the neighbor she was home with the flu but afterward when the neighbor was gone, he was white and silent, and he locked her in the bathroom all night. She didn’t know what was wrong with Pa except he didn’t love her anymore and wasn’t like that when she was little.

She was six when he’d started yelling at her and locking her in the house and wouldn’t listen to Mama, and that was when Mama packed a suitcase and the two of them slipped away after he went to work and drove clear across the country to North Carolina to live. Where Pa wouldn’t never think to look. They’d lived in Greenville for five years.

After Mama died and the social workers put her in foster homes one after another and she kept running away, that was when she told them she had a father in California, and they sent her back.

She’d thought he’d be different, anyway better than foster homes. But then she was sorry. Pa didn’t hurt her like some of the kids had told her about, but he kept her like an animal in a cage, and the cage seemed smaller every day. She was afraid to call the social worker, though, call the number they gave her, she didn’t like social workers.

The rumbling had stopped, the sirens were fainter. Lying in the dark listening to them move away, she hugged herself. She wished she had another blanket. She imagined growing old in this basement, living her whole life here and no one knowing. She thought that over the years everyone must have forgotten this small space behind the library’s basement workroom, the way it had been walled off to itself. It was just a cubbyhole with rough concrete calls, not smooth walls like the workroom, and it wasn’t as big as their little bathroom at home. She’d known about it since she was six, though. She’d found it when Mama worked in the library; she’d used to come in here to play, slip in behind the bookcase and no one knew.

Now it wasn’t play anymore.

She only had enough food for another week. The welfare woman took her money, that Mama gave her. The welfare woman in Greenville, with the big nose, said she’d keep it for her but she never gave it back. Twenty dollars Mama gave her, and Pa never gave her even a nickel.

Now when she ran out of cans to open she’d have to go out in the dark and steal food from the back of restaurants like the homeless did.

Well, she guessed she was homeless now, too.

Or in a kind of prison.

Except, Mama would say,This isn’t a prison, you’re here by your own choosing, Lori. You can leave when you want, no one is making you stay here.

But where would she go?

Mama wouldn’t tell her to go back to Pa; Mama hadn’t stayed, had she? But Mama wasn’t here to tell her where to go, where to hide.

Well, she was done with the welfare people and the foster homes. The other kids said the homes were out for blood, took in kids just to make money. The more kids the foster homes got, the more money they made. Didn’t matter to them if you had to sleep on the floor, ten to a room, what did they care? She’d heard plenty from the older kids. She wondered where those sirens were going, wondered what those cops were like, out in the night with their sticks and guns, wondered what they’d do with a runaway child.

Call child welfare? Call Pa? No, she wasn’t going to the cops. She curled up shivering on the thin mat, pulled the blanket tighter, and snuggled into the old, stained pillow. As hard as she hugged herself she couldn’t get warm and she couldn’t go back to sleep.

JoeGrey and Dulcie crouched out of the way among a tangle of ferns as officers’ feet raced past them, the cops’ hard black shoes thundering on the brick walk. Within the lacy foliage, Dulcie’s dark tabby stripes rendered her nearly invisible. Joe Grey’s pewter coat was the color of the shadows; his white markings among the lacy fronds might be mistaken for bits of blown paper. Both cats’ eyes burned with interest-though there was an unusual unease between them. They were not snuggled close. They sat apart, and they had not, as was usual, raced onto the patio together. Joe had been hunting. Dulcie had been home in bed with Wilma as her housemate read aloud. Neither cat was in the best mood. As the officers crowded around the stairs to the garage, Joe glanced at Dulcie, stiff and wary.

For nearly two weeks, they had hardly spoken. Joe didn’t know what was wrong with Dulcie, and he certainly wasn’t asking. If she didn’t want to talk, that was her problem. When, among the village rooftops or gardens, he happened on her by accident, he remained as aloof as she. Tonight, racing onto the inn’s patio from different directions, they had eyed each other like strangers, Dulcie’s stance defensive, Joe swallowing back a hiss.

Yet now as officers moved down the stairwell toward an objective the cats couldn’t see, both slipped quickly through the garden to look, glancing shyly at each other. Beyond them across the patio two uniforms guarded the inn’s front gate, and two more strung the traditional yellow tape against the gawking crowd that had gathered even on this rainy night. Dulcie glanced at Joe. Padding closer, she gently touched her nose to his. “Where’s Kit?” she said softly. “Is she down here in the middle already?”

Joe glanced, scowling, up at Kit’s third-floor window. The lights were on but Kit was not in sight. The side window was open and he could see a rip in the screen. He turned to study the shadows around the stairwell, but he saw no gleam of yellow eyes. Dulcie, rearing up, scanned the windows, too. “The screen’s torn. Maybe Lucinda tried to keep her in.”

Fat chance,Joe thought.

When Dulcie nuzzled him, he didn’t respond. She gave him a sideways look. She could imagine Kit leaping down the roof to the balcony, down again-at the sirens’ call, she thought, amused. She slipped closer to Joe, who had shifted away, and this time he didn’t move. He was watching Ryan and Clyde, who had come in before the tape was strung, and watching Lucinda and Pedric hurrying down the stairs from their penthouse, the tall elderly couple pulling on their jackets. Softly, Lucinda was calling the kit. Both she and Pedric looked worried.

The stairwell was mobbed now with uniforms, the flash of police torches reflecting up from below projecting gigantic shadows up along the stucco walls. The lights beside the descending steps, which marched down to the garage, and the garage lights below, had been extinguished. Joe wondered if the killer had disconnected them, or if perhaps a gunshot had shorted them out.

Was Kit down there in the stairwell, below the crowd of officers? Or maybe above them, peering over from the deep shadows of the balcony that ran above the stairs? Looking along the balcony, Joe searched for her but saw no gleam of yellow eyes. He glanced at Dulcie, and his look softened. For a moment the two cats were close again, of one mind, their noses filled with the smell of death. Sliding into the bushes at the top of the steps, staring down among the flashing torch lights, both cats froze.

Patty Rose lay below them, her white satin robe bloodstained, her face brutally torn. Dulcie was so shocked she felt her supper come up, her mouth fill with bile. Joe’s ears were back flat to his head, his whiskers laid flat, his eyes burning like yellow fire.

Detective Garza knelt beside Patty, feeling for a pulse. The cats knew there could be no pulse. When at last Garza rose and backed off, the medics knelt over her trying for a pulse, too, trying to stop the bleeding, trying to start her heart beating again. They worked for a long time before they rose and turned away. Beside Dulcie, Joe’s face seemed suddenly thinner, his whole body smaller and limp. Shivering, the tomcat nosed at her. She looked at him helplessly, read in his eyes exactly what he felt-as if all that was good in life had vanished, as if the negative forces of the world had suddenly won. Never had either cat imagined Patty Rose murdered. Such wanton violence to someone so good, so innocent of malice, filled them with defeat. Crouching with Joe above the stairs, Dulcie watched Detective Garza unpack his cameras.

Peering from behind several uniforms’ dark trouser legs, shuttering their eyes against the bright strobe lights, the two cats watched Dallas Garza begin to shoot the scene. The big, square-faced Latino was dressed in soft jeans and a wrinkled blue T-shirt, as if he had grabbed the first clothes at hand. He wore scuffed tennis shoes but no socks. His short, dark hair was uncombed. His tanned jaw was darkened by a day’s growth of shadowy whiskers, and set with a cop’s controlled anger at this death of a good friend. As he stood above the body, Garza’s dark, solemn eyes searched every inch of the stairwell as he decided where to shoot, making sure he missed nothing. Some of his close-ups were made more difficult by the steep flight of steps, some were assisted by the dropping angles. When he had shot a roll of film, he began to set up additional lights to eliminate shadows, to do it all again. The two cats fled to the concrete walkway above the stairwell.

Crouching there on the cold cement, tasting the smell of death, they tried not to look down directly at Patty, but the lights brutally illuminated her. Sickened, Dulcie couldn’t help but imagine a grisly film shoot, macabre and shocking. A horrifying farewell for a great star, a surreal and disgusting final drama too much like the sickest of human culture.

She watched Captain Harper and the coroner approach the stairs through the crowd of officers. At the top of the steps, the two men paused, waiting for Garza to finish so Dr. Bern could examine the body before taking it to the morgue. There, the final bits of fiber and debris would be removed from Patty’s clothes and body. She would be examined for all manner of trauma and of course for bullets. Samples would be taken before her body was tagged and locked away in a cold metal drawer. The cats knew the drill. They had attended more murder scenes than some of the rookies present. But that didn’t make this death easier.

Certainly Captain Harper looked sick, so stricken that Joe wanted to put out a paw to him. The tall, thin chief watched the procedures in silence, his lined face pale and grim. Watched Garza finish photographing the body and surroundings and wind back the film of the old, reliable Rolleiflex camera, then shoot a few minutes of video, moving up and down the stairs. When he started toward the walkway above, the cats melted into the deepest shadows, Joe hiding his face and chest and paws by curling into a furry ball.

When Garza seemed sure he’d missed no shot, he tucked the cameras into his black leather bag, then knelt and began lifting samples, picking up small bits of debris with tweezers, and using a small soft brush to sweep the tiniest flecks into evidence bags. Garza had been with Molena Point for just a year, since Max Harper hired him away from San Francisco PD, a change that Garza had been more than happy to make. Leaving behind him too many years of big-city crime, he had moved into his family’s vacation cottage at the north side of the village, a small old hillside cottage they jokingly called the Garza/Flannery estate. At about the same time Dallas left San Francisco, his niece, Ryan, after a painful divorce had also relocated from the city, to start her new construction company in Molena Point.

As the cats crouched among the flowers watching Garza, they heard a woman start across the patio behind them, coming from the front gate, her hard-soled walk quick and decisive. They didn’t need to look, they knew Detective Davis’s step. Juana Davis crossed and stood at the top of the stairs beside Dr. Bern, studying the body, watching Detective Garza collect evidence on the steps below. The case seemed to be Garza’s call, but maybe both detectives would work this one, as they sometimes did. The cats could imagine the hours of interrogation as Harper and his two detectives questioned all the many hotel employees and guests. At last a stretcher was carried down the steps, Dr. Bern supervising the lifting and securing of the body, and Patty Rose was taken away.

Garza studied the crime scene and photographed the area beneath where she had lain, then lifted some samples. When at long last he turned off the strobe lights, when the stairwell was once more in darkness, the cats dropped down onto the concrete steps, well below where the two detectives stood talking.

“Was she alone?” Davis asked, puzzled. “Alone on the back stairs in the middle of the night? In her nightie?”

Garza shrugged. “You know she was famous for that, getting a snack in the middle of the night, raiding the tearoom pantry.”

Davis nodded. “Never could understand how she kept her figure. Patty’s� she’s slim as a girl.” Davis had a problem with weight; she was squarely built and, despite lengthy workout routines, the burgers and fries all went to fat.

“Harper’s photographing and printing the pantry The door was open, the light on.”

Davis glanced toward the tearoom. “He need help?”

“He took a rookie to lift prints. Cameron, she’s good with that.” Jane Cameron had been on the force just a month, having come straight from San Jose PD, where she’d served her apprenticeship after graduating from San Jose State.

“Where’s Dorothy?” Davis said, looking back to where a small group of employees had gathered, kept in check by Officer Brennan. Dorothy Street was Patty’s personal secretary. Davis glanced up to the narrow balcony that ran above the stairs. The dim, chill walkway, even in the daytime, gave no hint of the sunny apartments to which it led. At intervals beneath the concrete roof, the five doors were closed. No one had come out or gone in while the cats were there. Yellow crime-scene tape closed the doors now. Each door opened to a large and comfortable room reserved for members of the hotel staff. The cats, when they prowled the garden behind that wing, always peered in through the wide glass doors at the spacious residences. Dorothy Street had a two-room apartment down at the end. “She should have heard the shots,” Davis said, studying the closed doors.

Garza shook his head. “She’s in L.A. Flew down last week; her daughter’s having her first baby. Max called the number she gave the staff.” He handed Davis a slip of paper. “First one is the daughter’s home number. No answer. You want to try the hospital?”

Davis nodded. “You’ve gone over Patty’s suite?”

“Not yet. We’ve secured both doors.”

Again the cats heard Lucinda calling the kit, her voice harsh with worry. “How long has she been gone?” Dulcie whispered.

Joe shrugged, and Dulcie began to fidget. “She can’t have followed the killer?”

Joe’s yellow eyes burned. “She can’t?” Both cats rose and began to sniff along the concrete, seeking the kit’s scent. The two detectives were discussing the witnesses. “� get their preliminary statements tonight,” Garza was saying. “Bartender and two barmaids, ten customers, four kitchen staff. Dining room closes at ten. No other guest so far has come forward. I’ll take the bar group. You want the kitchen staff?”

Davis nodded. The officers would, the cats knew, question each witness individually, keep them from talking among themselves. When witnesses started comparing what they remembered-thought they remembered-everything got garbled. With a little imagination, the pop of a beer can opening could turn into the sound of a gunshot.

“Maybe Max will take a few,” Garza said. “We might get a couple hours’ sleep before breakfast.”

“Right now I’d settle for breakfast,” Davis said wistfully.

“Finish questioning your bunch, maybe they’ll fry you anegg”

Listening to Garza and Davis, the cats grew increasingly uneasy about Kit. It wasn’t like her not to be on the scene. Prowling the balcony, they picked up no scent of the tortoiseshell. Lucinda was still calling her. They looked at each other and forgot their differences.

“You want to catch the interviews?” Joe said, knowing she would not. They could read the interview reports on the dispatcher’s desk at the station or in one of the detectives’ offices. A cat lolling on a cop’s desk was not unusual at Molena Point PD, Joe and Dulcie had long ago seen to that.

The urgency of the moment was to find the kit, and neither cat could pick up her scent. Joe was so concerned that he’d almost forgotten his anger with Dulcie; he glanced at her now with speculation.

Well, he wasn’t asking questions. And he wasn’t sneaking around following her, he wasn’t lowering himself to that. If she wanted privacy, that was her affair-but she couldn’t keep a secret forever.

It was the possibility of another tomcat that worried him. Hehadchecked for the scent of a strange tom around the village, and had found none, nor had he detected the scent of another cat on Dulcie. But what was so sacrosanct that she couldn’t share it?

Uncomfortable beneath Joe’s stare, Dulcie put her nose to the concrete again. She hated keeping secrets from him, she considered that the same as lying, and she wanted to share every aspect of life with Joe. But she couldn’t tell him this. Leaping down from the concrete walk to the steps below, she landed on a spot far beyond the chalk marks where Patty’s body had lain. Moving on down, scenting for the kit, she couldn’t smell much over the sharp stink of death. She was shaky with shock and grief. Now that the harsh strobe lights had been removed, the shadows leading down to the parking garage were thick and black, even to her eyes. She sensed Joe behind her, felt him brush against her, and in darkness they moved down together toward the bottom of the stairs.

Had Kit come down here before the police arrived? All alone, trying to sort through the smells of blood, shoe polish, and scorched dust from the harsh spotlights, through the smell of camera equipment and gunpowder. There was black fingerprinting powder on every surface. They didn’t want that stuff on them. Not only did it taste bad, but their respective housemates would pitch a royal fit. Joe could just hear Clyde. “Stuff’s hell to get off, Joe. Can’t you think about these things? And do you have to have your nose into every damn crime scene?”

As the cats slipped into the black garage, they would have been nearly invisible except for the snowy gleam of Joe’s white nose and his white chest and paws. His disembodied white markings moved beside Dulcie like tiny white ghosts. The garage stank of cigar smoke, of hair cream, of various scents that could belong to anyone. They could find no trail of the kit. Padding between the cold wheels of cars that had been parked there all night, they kept their noses to the concrete like a pair of tracking hounds.

Back and forth they quartered the garage, under and around the cars. They caught whiffs of cops they knew, little air trails of human scent-shoe polish, aftershave, tobacco-swirled with the automotive stinks until, mixed by the sucking wind that swept through the garage, all became mucked together like an overdone stew, and nothing of value remained. When, after an hour they had found no trace of the kit, they left the garage feeling decidedly cranky. Trotting up the short drive, they slowly circled the block-long building, then padded in beneath the yellow crime-scene tape, where the wrought-iron gate stood open. The gate did not smell of the kit, nothing smelled of the kit, all was a mishmash of too many human scents. Stopping among the patio flowers, they stared up at the Greenlaws’ windows.

The kit was not looking out; they saw no figure, no movement within. The one light was burning, as before. The patio was silent except for the faintest murmer of voices from the tearoom and dining room, and the soft crackle of a police radio turned low. And then, from across the gardens, they heard Lucinda calling again. Softly calling and calling the kit. Calling for a cat who might, by this time, be very far away and deep into trouble.

3 [��������: pic_4.jpg]

The harsh lights that had illuminated the patio had been extinguished; only the fainter garden lights remained, sending their soft glow low among the flowers. The tearoom lights were turned up brighter, and the cats could see Dallas Garza inside, beyond the flowered curtains, seated at a little table, talking with one of the waiters. The windows of the dining room, too, were bright where other employees or guests waited their turn. In the garden, two police guards moved back and forth along the walks, one of them yawning, their radios hoarse in the silence. Beneath the maple tree, Lucinda stood beside a wooden bench calling the kit. The thin old woman sounded more angry than pleading. When she saw Joe and Dulcie, she sat down on the bench and put out a hand to them.

Leaping to the bench beside her, Joe Grey crowded close. Dulcie climbed into Lucinda’s lap, staring up into the old woman’s long, thin face. Dulcie’s voice was only a whisper, not audible to the guards above the mumble of their radios. “You’ve been out searching, out on the streets.” It was not a question.

“Where is she?” Lucinda said. “You’ve been looking, too?”

Dulcie twitched an ear.

Lucinda frowned. “She slashed through the screen. I woke hearing gunshots, very close, three shots. By the time I threw on a robe and went to find Kit, she was gone, the screen torn, her fur caught in the wire.” Lucinda went silent, cuddling Dulcie close as an officer wandered past them. Then she looked down at Dulcie and Joe. “We’ve tramped the village for over an hour, looking for her. Clyde is out there somewhere. Pedric’s still looking. I’m worried for him, he’s been gone a long time. Did you know that Kit’s been watching a stranger? Some tourist, I thought.”

The cats’ eyes widened.

“She’s so secretive. All week, she’s been peering out the window at him, watching, and sometimes she would slip out and follow him-though she’s never gone long. As if maybe he takes off in a car. A thin man, small. Maybe five feet tall. I don’t-”

At Joe’s expression, Lucinda stopped. “What, Joe?”

“Black hair,” Joe said. “Small hands like a child?”

Lucinda nodded. “No taller than a twelve-year-old.” The old woman stared at him, just as Dulcie was staring. “Do you know him? Who is he? I’m terrified of what might have happened to her.”

Joe kneaded his claws nervously on the redwood bench. “I only saw him once, don’t know who he is. Guy made me edgy as hell.” Just thinking about that little man made Joe’s fur stiffen with apprehension.

Three nights ago when he saw the small, strange man, he had backed away for no reason and hidden from him, not even ashamed of his cowardice. Maybe it was some subliminal scent, or maybe something in the guy’s movements. Whatever, he’d kept his distance.

That was Monday night; it had been raining all night but had finally eased off. Entering Jolly’s alley, he had enjoyed a leisurely and solitary midnight feast, finishing up the fresh leftovers George Jolly had set out. Crouching beneath the little roof of the feeding station that Mr. Jolly put out in bad weather, a little decorative structure like a hand-decorated doghouse, Joe had taken his time enjoying his meal, hoping wherever Dulcie was, with her stupid secrets, she was hungry and cold. Jolly’s alley was one of Dulcie’s favorite places, and Joe had taken perverse delight in going there alone and pigging out on the fine deli offerings, including one of Dulcie’s favorites, creamy salmon salad.

He had been sitting beneath the jasmine vine washing salmon off his whiskers when a strange little man passed by, out on the sidewalk. He watched the guy pause and turn back to stand at the mouth of the alley, looking in. Being that the man was silhouetted against the streetlights, Joe could see only that he was short and frail, couldn’t see his face. But even his silhouette made Joe’s fur stand up, gave him a jolt that he didn’t understand but that sent him backing deeper among the shadows.

The stranger had peered in at the potted flowers and shrubs, idly studying the inky recesses beneath the benches and around Joe’s concealing vine. Joe, already crouched down, ducked his head to hide the white stripe down his nose, concealing as well his other white markings. Hunched there like a rolled-up porcupine, he had felt icy fear course through him, puzzling but quite real.

Maybe the guy had stirred an ugly memory. Triggered an unpleasant association. Maybe jarred in him some emotion from that other incident in Jolly’s alley, three years earlier, when those two men entered and Joe witnessed one kill the other with a crescent wrench. Maybe this little man’s appearance reminded him of that singular and shocking moment.

And maybe not. A cat couldn’t always account for his fear-driven reactions. But a cat had the sense to pay attention.

Watching the small man, Joe had licked his shoulder, which was wet from the recent rain, and had wondered why this tourist was out in wet weather. A little rain was no big deal to a cat; there were countless niches where one could shelter out of the downpour and lick one’s fur dry. But not many tourists walked for pleasure on a rainy night. The man had seemed so interested in the stained-glass doorways of the little out-of-the-way shops that lined the alley that Joe had wondered if he was planning to break in.

Yet his body language had seemed wrong for a breakin, relaxed but not stealthy. Not watchful enough of the street behind him, not attentive enough to the two open ends of the alley.

The stranger was such a small guy. His bones looked as thin as bird bones. His skin was very white, his hair as sooty black as the crows that bedeviled Joe from their clumsy perches among the oak trees. The guy’s cheeks were thin and narrow, his pointed chin darkened by black stubble. His pale, child-size hands looked frail and weak. Moving suddenly, he had entered the alley.

Wandering along the narrow brick walk, he glanced without interest at the empty paper plate in its wooden shelter; he looked into the jasmine vine but didn’t seem to see Joe, who was still rolled up like a frightened caterpillar. Joe thought the guy was maybe fifty or sixty, he could never be sure about human age. To interpret a person’s age from a set of facial features was for Joe a far more difficult science than reading their body language.

The guy’s high forehead was feathered by wispy black hairs that lay thinly across his pearly scalp. Thicker hair grew on his thin arms and the backs of his small hands, as if the maker of all living creatures had somehow gotten his wires crossed and put most of the hair in the wrong places. Joe imagined that if this man were to shake hands with a normal-size person, one would hear his bones cracking. The man seemedunfinished.Moving on through the alley, he paused beside a wrought-iron bench. What did he find of such interest in Jolly’s alley that he remained standing there, looking? What was he lookingat?But then when a car came down the street, its tires swishing on the wet pavement, he headed out of the alley fast, as if he didn’t want to be seen there.

Joe looked up at Lucinda, feeling cold. This had to be the same man the kit had been watching. How many child-size men were there? The population of Molena Point wasn’t all that big. If Kit had seen him tonight, whathadshe seen? Joe imagined too clearly the kit’s yellow eyes, round and huge with curiosity, with shock at Patty’s death-and perhaps with secret knowledge. If Kit had seen the killer, there was no telling where her rage and determination would lead her.

Earlier that night as the detectives and coroner worked over Patty’s body, photographing and videotaping, collecting fingerprints and lab samples, and then as Joe and Dulcie and their human friends searched for the kit, Kit moved alone through the windy night tracking Patty’s killer. Or, she started out to track him.

Frightened and cold, filled with hatred of the man, she had followed the geranium scent as far as she could, hurrying along the icy concrete, her small body shivering with chill and grief, hurting so for Patty that all her senses seemed numbed. Besides geranium, she had picked up the stink of dirty socks and dog doo, all three mingling in the same gusts of air. As nasty as that was, it made her tracking faster; she galloped along following that wafting sourness, scanning the airy drafts like a small bird dog. His trail led her straight to Molena Point Little Theater.

The movie crowd that had enjoyed Patty’s films was just dispersing. Had there been no announcement, then, of Patty’s terrible murder? Maybe not. The cops had had enough trouble keeping people out of the inn’s patio and away from the crime scene. Maybe they’d encouraged the theater personnel to say nothing, to simply continue with the filmed interviews that followed the movie. The programs were sometimes quite long. That was why Lucinda and Pedric had skipped this one after four nights’ running. Drawing back among the bushes at the edge of the sidewalk, Kit watched people hurrying to their cars, or starting to walk home bundled up against the stormy cold. Rearing up on her hind paws trying to see through a forest of human legs, she looked and looked for the man-she could smell him close to her, he’d come here, all right, to mix with the crowd, as if this would this be his alibi, that he was at Patty’s movie.

There, she saw him-the small man who had watched Patty, and who carried the scent of the killer. Kit wanted to leap on him and claw him, hurt him as he had hurt Patty. Dulcie said, and even Joe said sometimes, that in the case of human crime it was better for human law to punish the killer. But right now it would be more satisfying to tear at the evil creature as she would at a rat, dismembering it. Racing between hard oxfords and women’s high-heeled boots, she slid into the bushes behind him.

Phew. The scent of dog doo laid over geraniums and dirty socks. When the man turned and nearly stepped on her, she spun away. If she were a cop, she could stick a gun in his ribs. So frustrating sometimes, being only a cat. When he moved away through the crowd, she followed, dodging people’s feet and drawing surprised and interested looks. She followed him up the sidewalk, swerving and running, falling back behind people then hurrying ahead. After five blocks he got into a car, an old gray Honda parked at the curb a block from the library. Got in and took off, the smell of exhaust choking Kit. She followed the car, running down the middle of the street, until she had to streak for the curb or be crushed, landed pell-mell on the sidewalk, tumbling and scared out of her little cat wits.

The car had vanished, its stink lost among other cars, among the smell of tires and asphalt and diesel. She crouched on the concrete, shivering at having been so close to being hurt, so foolishly close to moving cars, telling herself she must not do that again.

But at last she shook herself and licked her cold paws, then started on in the direction the car had gone, looking ahead for any gray car, hunting stubbornly.

As she searched hopelessly along the endless dark streets, rearing up, scanning the side streets, twice she heard, far behind her, Lucinda calling her. She did not turn back, she kept on even when her friend’s voice grew louder, closer. Lucinda would pick her up and hold her and make a fuss over her-and force her to go home. Later as she raced up to the roofs to better see the streets below, she heard Clyde, and then Pedric’s low, gruff voice calling and calling her. Obstinately she turned away and kept on searching.

She had watched this man for nearly two weeks as he hung around the inn. She knew he was watching Patty but he’d never seemed threatening, such a small, frail man. Lucinda had seen him once, and they’d thought he might be a fan of Patty’s. Now he had turned suddenly into the most terrible of monsters. Kit felt guilty, deeply guilty that neither she nor Lucinda had told anyone about him, and that Lucinda had never asked Patty about him.

Was this man thereasonPatty had been distracted? Had she known he was watching her? And all the time, had he been waiting to kill Patty? And Patty herself had told no one. Had she not thought he would attack her? Never dreamed he would shoot her? A deep, terrible remorse filled the kit.

She tried to remember if she had ever seen his car, before tonight. Tried to bring that car clear again, that gray Honda. It was old and battered. A two-door, she thought. She had been so focused on the man and on dodging people’s feet that she had not, as Joe or Dulcie would have done, set to memory its license number. Now that omission, too, was a matter of shame.

But she knew that car. And once, coming from along the seashore where she’d been hunting alone in the weedy shoulder above the sand, she’d seen it, she was sure she had. That time, her mind had been so intent on breakfast because she’d caught nothing in the tall grass, not even a mouse, that she’d hardly paid attention.

But now she paid attention. Where? Where had she seen it? Squinching her eyes closed, she made that picture come back to her, that old gray car. Parked. It had been parked way back down a weedy driveway beside a dark-sided, neglected cottage with tall grass in the yard, a cottage half hidden behind a bigger house, not a typical Molena Point cottage, well kept and pretty.

As the first fingers of dawn crept above the eastern hills, that was where Kit headed, to find that house. To that part of the village where, on one of the side streets off Ocean, she’d seen his car.

Padding along trying to remember which street, which block, she doubled back and forth. Where the collie barked? Where the yard seemed always to smell of laundry soap? Around her, dawn lightened the street between the shadowing oak trees, leaving pools of blackness beneath. She was tired, so tired that when at last she saw the gray Honda, she didn’t believe it.

But there it stood way at the back behind the bigger house just as she remembered. Why hadn’t the man skipped, why wasn’t he out on the highway heading for L.A. or San Francisco? He had his nerve, coming back where he must have been staying. She caught his scent, she sniffed again, she swished her tail. She approached warily down the cracked, overgrown walk, staying within the tall grass, past the main house and through the scruffy yard like an overgrown jungle. Both houses were brown-shingled boxes with small, dirty windows. At the side of the cottage on a patch of gravel beside a black Ford sedan and a blue Plymouth stood the gray Honda, its fenders pushing into the rough bushes.

Approaching the steps on silent paws, looking up at the grimy windows, she stalked the cottage. These dark-shingled old buildings didn’t look so much like Molena Point as like a pair of deserted houses she’d seen on her travels while running with that wild band of feral cats. He must be renting. Surely he was a visitor; she’d never seen him before he began to hang around Patty. Above her against the brightening dawn sky the roof shakes curled up, warped and black with rot. The boards on the steps warped up at the ends, too, and the narrow wooden porch sagged to the left. The path beneath her paws had run out of paving stones, was now rough dirt and gravel. She padded over to investigate his car.

Its tires were nearly cold, but she could feel the faintest heat lingering around its engine. When she glanced up at the house and saw movement beyond the glass, she crouched down as if hunting mice, sneaked into the bushes lashing her tail as if hot on the track of escaping game. There, deep within the shrubs, she looked out, again studying the window. Now the figure had disappeared inside beyond the murky glass, but then in a minute the door opened.

The little man stood in the doorway looking out, his thin face caught in a shaft of weak light. She wondered again why he hadn’t run. He had to know the cops were after him. Did he think he was that clever, mixing with the theater crowd? Did he think the law wouldn’t track him? He had very black hair and very white skin, and little, fierce black eyes. His forearms sported as much matted black hair as a mangy dog, a white-skinned sickly dog.

Dropping two bulging garbage bags on the rickety porch, he swung back inside, perhaps for another load. She could smell from the garbage bags the stale odor of old food; an empty can rolled out, crusted with something unpleasant. Crouched and tense, the kit waited. Was this the behavior of a killer, taking out the garbage?

He came out carrying a cardboard box, came down the steps, and headed for the Honda; behind him, he had left the door ajar. The minute he turned to open the trunk of the car, she fled up the steps and across the porch and into the cottage.

But once inside, she saw that there was only the one room, only one door. One path of escape. The other door, which stood open, led to a tiny bathroom. Watching the door behind her, she slipped beneath the bed, her heart thudding. She hadn’t been smart to come in here. Should she scorch out before he returned? This man wasn’t right; no sane person, no one with any gentleness, would have killed Patty.

Outside, he slammed the trunk and his soft soles crunched across the gravel.Run, Kit. Run.But she didn’t run; stubbornly, she backed deeper beneath the bed.

4 [��������: pic_5.jpg]

The room was musty and dim. She peered out from under the far end of the bed, watching him. He picked up the box and returned to the car; she heard him making noises as if loading it into the seat. In the dim room, dirty curtains were closed across three small windows, one window on each of three walls. On the fourth wall, through the open door to a bathroom, she could smell the stink of black mold. The window curtains must once have been bright plaid but were now a faded grid of colors as sickly as scrub rags. What kind of landlord would rent a place like this? There was no accounting for humans. Above her the dirty, dark ceiling absorbed what little light came in. Thin cobwebs clung to the dark old rafters, and the boards above them were crude and rough, as she’d see in some old garage.

Overlaying the other sour odors was the smell of stale food. The worn linoleum beneath her paws was so dirty that, when she crossed the room, grit and sticky stuff had pressed into her pads. She hated licking that gunk away. Where the linoleum had worn through, the fibers were filled with goo, like old ketchup.

A small, rusted cookstove stood in one corner between a dirty little refrigerator and a sink that was fixed to the wall with no cabinet or counter, its rusty plumbing hanging out underneath. A wooden table next to the sink was piled with cardboard boxes.

There was no closet. Next to the bed, five big nails had been driven into the wall. Some limp shirts and a tan windbreaker hung from these. She wondered if the bigger house, in front, was any cleaner. What a strange, forlorn place to find in this village, where most of the cottages were pampered and painted and their gardens lovingly tended. Maybe Lucinda was right, maybe some folks didn’t want to do a thing to their property-just wait, and sell at inflated prices. Make a killing and move on. Strange, Kit thought, how some humans loved beauty and tried to make things nice, while others clung to ugliness.

She’d learned a lot since she left the band of ferals. When she was a little kitten, all she’d seen of humans were people’s abandoned cars left to rust along the back roads, dirty streets, and garbage-strewn alleys. She hadn’t understood until later that her band of strays had kept warily to the ugliest places, where humans expected them to be, where they were less likely to be chased or captured.

Hearing him outside at the car, clattering and walking around on the gravel, she slipped out from under the bed and leaped up on the table, peering into the boxes. One contained crookedly folded underclothes, and packs of letters and papers shoved in beside them. Another box held his dirty laundry. Phew. And two smaller boxes overflowed with empty beer cans. He was coming back, the grinding of gravel, the scuffing of his shoes up the steps. She flew under the bed.

Coming in, he slammed the door behind him and moved directly to the table, his rubber soles squeaking-something about the way he twisted his foot, she thought. She crept out as far as she dared, watched him set down a brown paper bag. He opened the refrigerator, pulled out a can of beer, and popped the lid. He picked up the box of laundry, tucked it under his arm, and left again, swilling beer, slamming and locking the door; she heard the bolt slide home. She listened, as nervous as a cornered mouse, as he started the Honda. Listened to it back out the gravel drive. As it turned onto the street, bits of gravel crunched under its wheels against the blacktop. What a strange man. He kills a woman, apparently follows her for weeks and then murders her, and now he’s, what? Going to the laundromat? Taking out the garbage and doing his laundry? As Lucinda once said of someone, his mind was wired wrong. Drug dealers, thieves, killers. Not wired up right, Lucinda said. She listened to the car head away to the south but she remained still and shivering, more and more frightened by his strangeness.

When at last she came out from under the bed again and leaped onto the table, she looked into the bag. Yes, groceries. Peanut butter, bread, soup. As if he planned to stay awhile? Did he think no one would look for him? Or did he want them to look, did he want to be caught? Or was this food to take with him when he left, when he belatedly ran? She pawed into the cartons of clothes and papers hoping to find something that the law would want, something that could give the cops a handle, the way Joe said.

Nosing through the jumble of papers and jockey shorts and paperback books, she found, at the bottom of the second box, two big brown envelopes like magazines came in. Because he had sealed them closed, she wanted to see inside. Gripping them in her teeth, she pulled them off the table, dropping down with them, dragging them under the bed through a haze of dust to the back wall.

Crouching, she clawed the flaps open as neatly as she could, which wasn’t very neat at all. When she shoved her nose in, her nostrils tickled with the smell of old newspapers. Slipping her paw inside, she was more careful now as she pulled out the contents and spread it in the dust.

There were three yellowed newspaper photographs, fuzzy and unclear, and a tangle of newspaper clippings. The photos were dull pictures of four men standing before a building. In all three pictures, the small man stood at the end, like some wizened-up child who had been made to stand next to his elders. The names in the short captions were Harold Timmons, Kendall Border, Craig Vernon, Irving Fenner. If they were in order, left to right, then the man she had followed was Irving Fenner. The columns below the pictures told about a series of murders in Los Angeles. There were no dates but the clippings were old, dry and brittle. Scanning the text as Lucinda or Wilma would have done, she went cold and still; she crouched unmoving, her paw half lifted, her eyes black and huge. Patty’s name was there. In the article. And something about Patty’s dead daughter, Marlie Rose Vernon.

This was about the murder of Marlie and her little boy. About Marlie’s husband, Craig Vernon, who had been convicted of killing their child. Kit knew the story from Lucinda. The article said that Irving Fenner was an accessory to the murder.

Kit stared at the clippings and stared. After a long time she pawed them back into the envelope, her paw unsteady and damp with fear.

The second, fatter envelope was filled with glossy photographs, real professional portraits that made Kit catch her breath. Glossy magazine stories, too, with big colored pictures. Every photograph and every magazine picture was of Patty Rose when the famous actress was young and very beautiful indeed, her blue eyes huge, her short blond hair curling around her face. Pictures of Patty in elegant clothes, Patty in all kinds of scenes from her movies, all with other famous actors. Pictures of Patty singing with Stan Kenton, with Artie Shaw, Glenn Miller, with all the famous bands that Wilma liked to listen to; Wilma and Lucinda had wonderful collections of Patty’s old music.

In each picture, Patty’s smile was the same that Kit knew, a smile filled with joy, as if nothing bad could happen in the world. In each picture, someone had punched a small, round hole in the paper-through Patty’s forehead. A hole like a bullet hole.

Kit sat for a long time, shaking all over. Thinking about Patty, hurting bad inside, like huge hands crushing her. As she huddled there miserable and terrified and lost, she heard, outside and far away, a faint voice calling, calling her. A voice garbled in the wind but one she loved so dearly. She longed to cry out. Oh, she needed Lucinda. She longed to run out-if she couldgetout. Run to Lucinda where she would be loved and safe.

But she didn’t cry out, and she didn’t try to get out-not yet.

Pawing the pictures back into their envelope, she left a mark on one from her dirty pad. Trying to lick the page clean, she only smeared it. She didn’t like to contaminate the evidence; that’s what Joe would call it. Max Harper would need these, they might help very much to convict Irving Fenner.

Closing both envelopes as best she could after clawing them open so raggedly, she heard Lucinda calling her again, and this time Lucinda was closer, so close that it was all Kit could do not to leap to the window and claw at it, claw at the door and yowl.

And why not? She had the evidence, amazing and valuable evidence. If Lucinda came now, if Lucinda could let her out now�

But how could she, if the door was locked, if the windows were locked?

Snatching the two envelopes in her teeth, she dragged them just to the concealing edge of the crooked bedspread. Heavy to drag, they would be cumbersome indeed to carry. Once, she had helped Joe Grey carry a similar brown envelope for blocks across the village. Such a big, bulging package that it had taken the two of them together to pull it all the way to Joe’s house and inside, and get it up the stairs.

Joe wasn’t here to help her now, no one was.You are alone, my dear,she thought primly, as Lucinda or Wilma might say.You are on your own.

Leaving the envelopes out of sight beneath the edge of the bedspread, she leaped up at the knob of the front door knowing very well the door was locked; she could see the thrown dead bolt. She didn’t hear Lucinda now. Had she gone on, searching in another direction? Moving farther away, along the dark street? Leaping up the door again and again, she fought the bolt until her paws were bleeding; at last she turned away and tried the windows.

All three windows were locked and were probably stuck, too. They were filled with ancient paint in the cracks, paint chipped off in layers of gray, cream, white, each layer thick between the sill and window. What did people do for fresh air? Even if she could have turned the round brass locks, she doubted these windows would open for anything less than a crowbar in human hands.

Was Lucinda carrying her cell phone? Inspired, Kit searched the room for a phone. She had long ago learned, from Joe Grey, how to paw in a number; and she had learned from the wild band she ran with how to remember stories, numbers, whatever she chose. When she was running with the wild ferals, the only joy she knew was their tales of the ancient speaking cats, the Celtic cats, and she had absorbed those delights word for fascinating word.

Finding no phone, circling frantically, she stared up at the ceiling. There was no way out, and no phone, and she could feel a yowl starting deep inside. She heard the car again, he was back, skidding to a gravelly stop. The car door creaked open, then slammed; he scrunched across the drive. As he squeaked up the steps she snatched the envelopes in her teeth and, hauling them, made for the bathroom. She didn’t panic until she was inside. There, trapped in that tiny space, she went shaky.

The front door banged open. She stared helplessly around her, then pawed frantically at the two little doors under the sink, pawed and pulled until she fought one open. He was coming, his footsteps crossing the hard, gritty floor. Dragging the envelopes into the dank, moldy space, she pulled the door closed with her claws, her heart pounding so hard she thought it would burst.

The oilcloth beneath her paws was sticky but it was encouragingly loose, curling up at one corner. She’d barely pulled it back when he barged into the bathroom flinging the door wide. She crouched, shivering. If he opened the cupboard door, she’d go for his face. His feet scuffled on the other side of the cabinet, inches from her. Carefully pawing the oilcloth farther up, she slipped the envelopes under. Above her, he used the toilet and flushed, then turned on the water of the basin.

Working fast beneath the sound of running water, she smoothed the oilcloth over the envelopes. The wood beneath was black with rot, so soft that shards of wood came loose in her claws. Crouching atop the lumpy oilcloth, she watched the cabinet door.

But there was nothing under there for him to reach in for, not even scouring powder-not that he seemed to feel a need for cleaning products. She crouched there for what seemed hours, listening to the pipes groan. When she put her nose to the hot water pipe, it burned her. He must be shaving. She heard him brush his teeth. The water went on and off several times. She longed to hear Lucinda calling her again, even from far away, longed just to hear her friend’s voice. He was rummaging around in the medicine cabinet. She felt so tired, so very hungry and thirsty. Her paws were beginning to sweat, and the cabinet walls seemed closer, the space growing smaller. She listened to him rummaging around. What was he doing? Why didn’t he leave, what was taking him so long? She began to tremble with the panic of being shut in, trapped in that dark closed place.She wanted out! Wanted out now!

Panting, she told herself that she lay atop something so valuable, atop the very evidence that might fry Patty’s killer. Told herself she had what the cops needed, that she would get out, that she would get the envelopes out of there. But all she could really think of was that she was locked in, caged, trapped in this dark, close cupboard in this horrible old house and that maybe, for her, there was no way out. Huddled atop the envelopes panting and shivering, she was scared out of her little cat mind.

5 [��������: pic_6.jpg]

No one knew the kit was trapped in the old cottage. Lucinda and Pedric, Wilma and Clyde searched half the night for the little tortoiseshell. They looked everywhere they could think to look-underneath porches, through any open windows, into the back gardens of shops and cottages, and in all the little alleys. Clyde had climbed fences and Wilma had hurried up exterior stairways onto private balconies. Several times she’d stepped out from the balconies to wander the rooftops like a cat herself. She heard Lucinda and Pedric calling, too, calling and calling the kit. But at last they had given up, had all turned toward home, silent and worried and angry.

Charlie would have been out searching, but she was unaware of the small cat’s absence; she and Ryan had left the murder scene early, before anyone had begun to search for Kit. Now, this morning as Ryan turned her red pickup into the long lane, Charlie was just coming out of the barn leading Max’s big buckskin, turning the horses out for the day. Charlie looked up and waved.

Ryan waved back, but her mind was on the weather that so stubbornly dictated the work on this job. California winters could be windy and nasty, but this bout of storms seemed to have gone on forever. She had been able, between heavy rains, to pour the foundation for the Harpers’ new living room and frame and dry-in the new mudroom; and now, this morning, the weatherman promised their first clear day, so maybe they could get on with framing the living room.

Of all those who complained about the extended wet weather, the building contractors had grown perhaps the most irritable, cursing the succession of storms that decisively halted construction schedules. All through the Christmas season, construction jobs had waited while cold storms battered the California coast, wind and rain lashing Molena Point until the village seemed ready to wash out to sea. The Molena River rose so high that many lowland houses flooded, their carpets and furniture soaked with mud, driveways washed out, streets closed. South of Molena Point, on Highway 1, rock slides shut down both lanes for over a week, just before New Year’s Eve. The wet weather had caused Ryan to put off not only the larger portion of the Harper job, but the start of a new house in the north hills, and had forced her to give three carpenters unwanted vacations. This, coupled with the obdurate reluctance of the county building department to issue any permit on a timely basis, had left her highly ticked. Not until after New Year’s had she been able to sweet-talk the county inspectors into issuing the Harper permit, employing what charm she could muster. Ask any Molena Point contractor, working with their county building department was like working with bureaucrats from hell.

But now, in the wake of the murder, her irritation seemed only petty and without substance. The death of someone who had done wonderful things in her life, things that made a difference in the lives of others, that death seemed to Ryan an enormous loss.

She and Charlie had left Otter Pine Inn around one last night, leaving Max and Ryan’s uncle Dallas and a handful of officers interviewing witnesses. She’d lost track of Clydeher date, she thought, amused, had gone off on some serious errand with Wilma and the Greenlaws. Now, as she swung out of the truck, Charlie came out of the barn again and hurried toward the house, having apparently finished with the horses. Ryan let Rock out the passenger side, gave him a command, and the big weimaraner raced for the house.

Charlie moved ahead of Ryan into the kitchen to pour fresh coffee, letting Rock in. She stood warming her hands around the coffeepot, then knelt down to give Rock a hug. He was so sleek and healthy, and so much the gentleman, it was hard not to hug him. Rock had been good for Ryan, and the big dog had had his own part in spotting Ryan’s husband’s killer and thus clearing Ryan of the suspicion that had surrounded her.

Of course no one except Charlie herself, and Clyde and Wilma, knew that the gray tomcat and his two ladies had, as well, pointed the department toward evidence that convicted the real killer. Charlie hoped the cats would stay out of this murder-though she wouldn’t lay money on it.

Leaving Otter Pine Inn last night with Ryan, Charlie had wanted only to be quiet, to grieve for Patty alone until Max got home and could hold her and they could comfort each other. Setting the alarm, she had fallen into bed wondering if Max would get home at all, if he’d get any sleep. The next days would demand a lot of everyone; this was not just a remote police investigation. They were all grieving; certainly Max was. Patience would be required of them all. This was not like the murder of a stranger, and not like a natural death, where after a few days there would be a funeral and some kind of closure.

Arriving home alone to the few lights she and Max had left on, she had brought the two big dogs inside from where they roamed the fenced-in yard around the house. She’d wanted them inside with her as she crawled gratefully into bed. She had soon slept, the dogs sprawled on the rug snoring. But she did not sleep well; she kept waking, seeing Patty’s torn face in the harsh, glaring lights, the officers and coroner moving around her, busy at their work. Seeing the awful pain in Max’s eyes.

She had dozed and waked until Max came in about four. He had crawled into bed ice cold. She had clung to him, warming him, had held him close, not talking, until he slept.

This morning, letting him sleep, she had risen with some renewed strength and resolve. She had quickly showered, then gone out to feed the horses and clean their stalls. Returning, pouring a cup of coffee, she heard Max get up. She had stood at the kitchen window looking out at the morning, letting the long, unbroken view down the hills strengthen her. The first early light, when the broad expanse of sea and hills was dressed in rich, dawn colors, seemed always new to her. Leaning against the counter sipping coffee, she’d heard Max get out of the shower, the silence as the water stopped pounding in the pipes. Putting bacon in the skillet, she’d mixed the pancake batter listening to the dogs’ impatient barking. Going to the door, she had made them be still. Max’s buckskin gelding, not to be outdone, began banging his stall, wanting to be in the pasture, making her laugh. She tested the griddle that was heating, flicked water on the hot metal, and watched the drops bounce and dance. As she poured pancake batter, the sea wind blew harder, rattling the tarp that covered their stacked lumber. If they got any dry weather, she wondered how long it would hold.

Setting the bacon and pancakes in the barely warm oven, she went to turn the horses out. They had finished eating and were eager for the sunshine that the clearing sky promised. Looping a rope around Bucky’s neck, she led the big buckskin out, letting the two mares follow him. As she was shutting the gate, Ryan’s red truck had pulled off the road and into their long lane, Rock with his head out the window. Above Ryan’s truck, the sky over the sea was truly brightening.

“We can start framing the living room this morning,” Ryan said. “Don’t know how far we’ll get. Don’t know whether Scotty will want Dillon to help us or work with you-you can rip out the Sheetrock between the two bedrooms this morning, take out that wall.” It amused her to be giving the owner of the house orders. Charlie was, with some experience behind her, turning into a fair carpenter. The tear out would be an exercise in violence that might help Charlie work off some of her anger at Patty’s death. And they were both eager to finish Charlie’s new studio. Charlie couldn’t wait to bring her desk and easel over from the barn, her drafting and work tables and boxes of art supplies that were stacked in the grain room inviting the mice to sample her inks and paints and her expensive drawing paper.

The kitchen was warm, its bright colors always welcoming. Red and blue pillows were scattered on the window seat, and the breakfast table was set with red place mats. Charlie was dressed this morning in a pale blue sweatshirt and jeans; blue always helped to cheer her.

“You sleep?” Ryan said.

“A little. You have breakfast?”

Ryan nodded. “Rock and I had leftover steak. I had an orange and some kiwis, but he likes his kibble.” She sipped her coffee. Standing in the kitchen, the two women looked out at the increasing brightness as the clouds blew south, and watched Ryan’s uncle Scotty pull in, his old white truck muddy halfway up the sides. Dillon Thurwell was with him, the girl’s red hair catching the light as he turned in the yard to park. Someone usually picked her up in the village; she couldn’t drive yet and it was a long bike ride. Dillon worked with them on weekends and when she wasn’t in school. With their fiery red hair, Scotty and Dillon might have been related, though they were not. The big, burly Irishman and the slim young girl got along like a pair of redheads, too. The two waved, pulled on their work gloves, and headed for the covered lumber pile, where they began pulling out two-by-fours, stacking them along the foundation for the new living room. When they had maybe two dozen placed, Scotty stood explaining something to Dillon, talking with his hands as he always did, making Ryan laugh. In a minute they headed around the far side of the house where their tools were stored underneath.

Dillon, having worked with Scotty through Christmas vacation, seemed to like this new twist in her life. The fourteen-year-old had learned quickly once she had knocked the chip off her shoulder. She’d settled in well to help with cleaning up the debris, filling the tarp-covered Dumpster that had been hauled up to the site; and in the old living room, which would become the new master bedroom, she was learning to mud and tape drywall. With the constant rain, all work seemed twice as hard-taking out the demolished drywall and wood scraps, hauling new building materials into the mudroom, trying to keep the house halfway clean. And then draining the foundation for the twenty-by-thirty-foot living room so they could at least frame the walls. The earth within was still a pool of mud, but the concrete foundation was firm and deep.

“I always wanted a swimming pool,” Charlie said, looking out at the mud where the living room would rise.

“Don’t knock it. Bring in a masseuse, add a steam room, you can make a bundle. Harpers’ spa, restorative soaks in Molena Point’s rare and rejuvenating beauty clay.” But Ryan looked at Charlie shyly, a bit embarrassed by making jokes this morning. “You promised to help the senior ladies with their garden today, if it didn’t rain. Will they go on with that, after last night? And even if they feel up to gardening, will the ground be dry enough?”

“Should be nice and soft to get the weeds out. They’ve never had a problem with slides on that hill; there are railroad ties to retain it. Somewhere underneath there’s supposed to be a shoulder of granite running along above the canyon.” Charlie pushed back her unruly red hair. “The ladies will be up to it. Work is better than sitting around grieving. While they weed, I’m going to take out whatever geraniums they don’t want; I can pot them until we finish building. Those overgrown pelargoniums are magnificent.”

“You have so much time to garden. Five commissions pending for animal portraits, the picture book you’re working on, your own repair and cleaning business to oversee, to say nothing of the fact that you’re working for me on the house.”

“You can’t spare me this afternoon? Call it my lunch break.”

Ryan laughed. “I can spare you. It comes out more even, for framing, with just Scotty and me, and Dillon doing the odd jobs.”

Finishing her coffee, Charlie rinsed her cup and headed for her soon-to-be studio. Ryan and Charlie and Max had planned the renovation together, the three of them taking their time, paying attention to how the sun would slant into the new great room with its high rafters and stone fireplace, how much more view down the falling hills the raised floor would allow. Standing in the front yard on ladders, they had made sure how much of the sea and the village rooftops would be visible.

While the old living room became a large new master suite, their present bedroom would be Max’s study. The two smaller bedrooms would become Charlie’s spacious studio, and she could hardly wait. The renovation might seem wild to some, but to Charlie and Max and Ryan, it made perfect sense. By the time the phone rang at eleven-thirty, Charlie had finished the tear out and, with help from Scotty, had finished putting up the new drywall. She was drunk with the big new space; she wanted to whirl around shouting and swinging her arms, she could hardly wait to cut through the wall for the large new windows with their north light; but that would have to wait until the weather settled. Hurrying into the kitchen, she picked up the call.

“It’s Wilma. We haven’t found Kit, no one’s seen her. I just�”

Wilma didn’t sound at all like herself. “She disappeared before� right after the murder. I didn’t tell you last night, I thought�” Charlie’s aunt, a tall, capable, no-nonsense former parole officer, was not given to a shaky voice and tears. “We’re headed out to look again, Lucinda and I. Pedric is already out, after just a few hours’ sleep.”

“I can join you. I-”

“No. I just� wanted you to watch for her as you head down to the seniors’. Dulcie and Joe aren’t nearly as concerned as we are. They say she’s been gone before.”

“The last time, she turned up in the middle of a double murder,” Charlie said. “I’ll look out for her, and leave my cell phone on. Call me if I can join you.” Charlie didn’t like to see her aunt so upset. Those three cats were so dear, so very special. And Kit was so damned headstrong. How could Joe and Dulcie not worry? And how did you look for one small cat, if she didn’t want to be found?

In the mudroom she pulled on a pair of rubber boots, then hurried out to her van. Her cleaning crews didn’t need it today; when they did, she had to use Max’s old wreck that he’d kept for emergencies and which, they agreed, laughing, was an emergency in itself. Heading down toward the village, she drove slowly, watching the roadside and the hills, searching for that dark little hurrying tattercoat. Praying the kit was on her way home, praying she was all right. Several times she stopped to scan the trees, looking for a dark lump perched among the branches. Below her, the hills glowed brilliant green against the indigo sea. The grass, fed by the heavy rains, had sprung up tall and lush, as vibrant as living emerald. The horses could think of nothing but that tender new growth, all they wanted to do was race out and gorge on it.

Between the hills and sea, the white shore stretched away scattered with black boulders, and down to her right, the village rooftops shone with shafts of sunlight striking between dark smears of cypress and pine. Could Patty Rose, wherever she was now, still glimpse this lovely land? Might Patty from her ethereal realm crave a last look at the dimension she had left behind?

Or did she no longer care, now that she moved in a far more fascinating realm?

Or was Patty simply gone? Was there nothing more?

Charlie didn’t believe that.

Coming into the village, slowing among the cottages, she watched the streets and rooftops for Kit, trying not to let Wilma’s distress eat at her. Maybe Joe and Dulcie were right, that Kit would show up in her own time, sassy and wondering what all the fuss was about.

But it wasn’t only the missing kit that made her edgy about the cats. She was puzzled by Joe and Dulcie, too. For nearly two weeks, they had been acting so strangely. Wilma said Dulcie had hardly been home, that when she was home, she was silent and remote. Or nervous and completely distracted. And Clyde said Joe was cross as a tiger, that the tomcat was so bad tempered he sometimes wouldn’t talk at all, would just hiss at Clyde and stalk away.

Clyde thought Joe’s anger was because of Dulcie’s preoccupation; and Clyde, with Joe’s grouchy silence, had become just as bad tempered himself. A pair of surly housemates snarling at each other and at their friends-until last night. Then all minor concerns, it seemed to Charlie, had been put into proper perspective.

And as she’d descended the winter hills, Charlie had had the feeling that it all was connected: the kit’s disappearance, Dulcie’s secrecy, and Joe’s distress somehow all linked together-and that those puzzling situations had a bearing on Patty’s murder. She had no idea how that could be, but she couldn’t shake the thought.

6 [��������: pic_7.jpg]

Crouched in the dark cabinet beneath the bathroom sink, Kit listened. Irving Fenner, having brushed his teeth and presumably shaved, seemed to have crouched down himself, just outside the cabinet door. She heard the faint hush of fabric against the sink cabinet as he knelt, imagined him reaching for the door. Two unlike creatures facing each other on either side of the thin wood barrier. He was totally still. Her heart pounded so hard it shook her whole body.

She heard his hand brush the door. The door creaked, and the left-hand side swung out as she slid, silent and fast, behind the other door. He had to hear her heart pounding, had to smell her fear as she pressed into the corner, into the deepest dark.

He reached in as she watched through slitted eyes. His hand passed just inches from her face. He reached back, thrust his hand straight back to the drainpipe that hung down in a rusty gooseneck curve. His face was so close to her she could have shredded it. She was deeply tempted. He was half turned away, a perfect target, his forehead and shoulder pressed against the edge of the cabinet, so close that she had to draw back to keep from touching him. His arm smelled sour, of old sweat, of soap caught in the swarthy hairs, of sleep. Reaching down, he slipped his hand into the hole where the pipe went through, where the black wood had rotted. Forced his hand down inside, his hairy wrist knocking off additional flecks of soft wood, some falling away beneath the house.

Leaning in, feeling around inside the hole, he drew out a package. It was about the size of a shoe, a strangely shaped package wrapped in brown paper. Its smell nearly made her cry out. Gun oil. The package smelled of gun oil, the same smell as Captain Harper’s regulation automatic and as the guns the detectives carried. The same smell as the.38 that Wilma kept in her night table against a possible but unpleasant contact with some bitter ex-parolee; the gun that Wilma took up to the range once a month so she wouldn’t be out of practice, then cleaned with gun oil at her little workbench in the garage, a tawny, nose-twitching scent. Kit remained stone still as he backed out with the package and shoved the cabinet door closed.

She listened to his footsteps cross the room. Listened as the front door opened and then closed. Listened to his footsteps on the gravel, then the car door open and slam, and the car start and pull away. What was all the coming and going? Her paws were slick with sweat. Her heart pounded like trapped birds flapping in her chest; she felt too weak to run away and too terrified to remain where she was. She was trapped in this house and there might be no way out.

Except, there was the underhouse, the crawl space, if she could get down there. Tasting the stink of mold and rotting wood, she nosed at the hole where the pipe went through. There was always a way, always. Kit did not take well to defeat; she did not believe in defeat.

She wondered if the gun had been used to kill Patty, and if it held his fingerprints. Wondered, if ballistics had that gun, would they find the proof the law needed to convict that man?

The little hole beneath the sink would take her a long time to dig out and get through. Backing out from under the sink, leaving the envelopes hidden, she stood in the middle of the dark little room looking around her. Leaping to the sink, she tried the bathroom window, but it was as thick with paint as the others. She tried the front door again, leaping up, snatching at the knob that would move the bolt, that was too small to get her claws around. Her paws started bleeding again. If she had more leverage, if she could get up higher�

Stalking a wooden chair, she set her shoulder against it and pushed, heading toward the front door.

The chair didn’t slide along the floor, but fell over onto its back. She shoved again, throwing all her weight against its side, edging it slowly across the floor. Its journey was much too loud, a sliding scrunching that made her skin twitch with fear. But at last she had it across. Pushing it against the door, she stood on its side and worked at the knob with both paws. Desperate now, ever more frantic at being closed in, she grew angry enough to try to claw through the wood itself.

When the knob wouldn’t move, she gave up at last and returned, defeated, to the bathroom, leaving the overturned chair behind her and her faint, bloody paw prints on the dirty floor. Maybe Fenner wouldn’t notice the paw prints.

But he sure would notice the chair. Going back, she tried her best to right it. She pawed and fought until she’d slipped her front paw under, and then her shoulder. It was a light chair; she guessed that was why it had fallen. A small ladderback. Maybe if she�

Crouched with her shoulder beneath it, slowly she reared up, pressing it with her shoulder. When it was as high as she could reach, she grabbed it between the slats and lifted higher. Lifted, rearing up as high as she could. And when she gave it a little push, up it went, rocking back and forth, threatening to fall again.

Catching it in her paws, she steadied it until it stopped rocking and stood as it had before. She gave it a lovely loud purr, and returned to the bathroom, her tail lashing.

She didn’t like to think what would happen if the cops were to search this place, after they had the evidence, and found her blood and paw prints. There would be hell to pay-she had no idea how she would explain such a thing to Joe Grey. She licked her paws trying to stop the bleeding, but the damage was already done. Pushing into the tiny bathroom, she immediately felt so caged that she wanted to race out again. It was very hard indeed to press into the dark cupboard beneath the sink.

Clawing at the hole beneath the drain, pawing and tearing the rotted wood away, she could feel the niche where he had tucked the gun. A little space, back on top of a floor joist. She dug and dug, dug at the rotting sides of the hole until her paws were nearly raw. Until, at last, she had a hole big enough to slip through.

Bellying in, she hung halfway through the crumbling wood, peering around into the blackness below her. The underhouse space stretched away to the front of the cottage, and was maybe three times as tall as a cat, tall enough for a large dog to walk around in without crouching-though he would scrape his back on the floor joists and pipes and wires running through. Away in the far walls, three small louvered vents let in faint light through their grids. The space smelled of wet mold and rat droppings.

Hanging farther down inside, her round, furry butt planted on the cabinet floor above, her hind paws braced against the edges of the rotting floor, she stared through the black, cobwebby crawl space to those far bits of dust-filtered sunlight and let loose with her hind paws and dropped down, landing on the sour earth and the scattered bits of rotted wood.

Ears and whiskers back, and carrying her tail low, she padded beneath the cobwebs, brushing over rusty nails and pieces of ragged screening or wire. According to human myth, cats loved dark, hidden places. Well, certainly in her younger days, before she knew better, she’d been drawn to mysterious caves, but not like this place. The caves in her wild dreams led to wonderful underneath realms to be discovered-not to a dark, stinking underhouse strewn with rusty nails. Easing through the black, cobwebby labyrinth of cement supports and cast-iron pipes and hanging electrical wires, she approached the vent that would face the front yard, and stood sniffing in the good, fresh air. She could smell green grass and pine trees, and from somewhere the lingering aroma of someone’s breakfast of bacon and hot maple syrup. Rearing up, she hooked her claws in the vent grid and pulled.

She pulled harder. Bracing with her hind paws, she jerked and jerked, backing and fighting until she feared she’d tear a claw out. Giving up at last, and muttering softly, she went to try the vent nearer the drive.

She had no better luck with that vent. Crossing through the darkness and the spider curtains, she tried the last one; she fought until not only her paws but both forelegs hurt, then gave up, backing away, her tail limp and her head hanging. A little whimper of defeat escaped her. She was trapped in this prison of a house. Greedily she sniffed the small wisp of fresh air that filtered in through the dirty grid, the scent of pine trees and green bushes. And, she couldn’t help it, staring out at the open, free world that she could no longer reach, the kit howled.

But at last she quieted and turned resolutely away, and headed back to the crawl hole and the bathroom to retrieve the envelopes, to get them out before he returned. What if he came back and reached in again, and happened to flip the oilcloth back? What if he found them?

So?she thought.So? What was he going to think?

She didn’t know what he’d think; she couldn’t imagine. But he’d tear the place apart looking for whoever had been there.

And, searching, what if he found her paw prints? What would he think then?

Dulcie would say she was losing her grip, would tell her to get hold of herself. What was he supposed to think? That a talking cat had taken his envelopes? She tried very hard to calm her shivering nerves as she hooked her claws in the rotting wood of the hole and crouched to leap up, prepared to retrieve the clippings and pictures. Prepared to get out of there somehow, and tip the cops about Kendall Border and Craig Vernon and Harold Timmons, whoever those men were. Tip the cops that Irving Fenner had indeed been connected to Patty Rose. Irving Fenner, who had watched Patty, and who had shot a bullet hole into each of Patty’s pictures-Irving Fenner, who had killed her dear Patty Rose?

Entering the village, Charlie called Wilma on her cell phone, touching the button for her aunt’s number. Wilma didn’t answer. Turning down Ocean, Charlie watched the streets, among the feet of the locals and tourists, looking for the kit. She saw no one searching for Kit. But then, as she approached the library, she saw a dark little shape in the garden of the shop next door. With a surge of excitement she touched the brakes and pulled over.

But it was Dulcie, there by the building next to the library, not the tortoiseshell kit. Dulcie, prowling along through the front garden as if she was searching for Kit. When the dark tabby turned away, moving down the little lane between the buildings, Charlie didn’t call out to her.

Dulcie had been hanging around that building a lot lately. It and the library stood close together; they were of the same Mediterranean style, same white walls and faded red-tile roofs, and had been built at the same time. They had once been part of an estate that included servants’ quarters, carriage houses, stables, and outbuildings. This building now housed an exclusive men’s clothing shop, with an apartment behind it and a larger apartment above. Its basement, if she recalled correctly, had once run beneath both buildings, and the narrow walk between the two buildings had been a passageway for delivery carts. Dulcie, as Molena Point’s library cat, considered all adjacent gardens her personal territory, off-limits to the other village cats whether she chose to hunt there or not.

The three rentals in the smaller, two-story structure had produced a comfortable income for Genelle Yardley since she’d retired. Genelle’s family had, years ago, given the larger building to the library foundation. Just recently, Charlie understood, Genelle had put her rental building in trust for the library as well, for when she died-and Genelle was dying. The party that Patty had been planning for Genelle was, in fact, a final goodbye. A gesture that could only be understood in light of the two women’s long and sympathetic friendship.

So much death,Charlie thought.Not a happy way to start the new year.

Though Genelle’s approach to death showed an amazingly matter-of-fact attitude. Quite methodically, Genelle had updated her trust to her satisfaction and had put all her personal and financial affairs in good order. She had left a nice sum of money to Patty’s children’s home, and Genelle’s gift of her building to the library would, indeed, be well used. The library was so cramped for space that the librarians, including Charlie’s aunt Wilma, had to discard far more out-of-date books than they cared to, to make room for the new books that were needed or were in demand.

Genelle was only in her sixties, young to leave this world; Charlie realized that fact ever more sharply with each of her own approaching birthdays, though she was only half Genelle’s age. She supposed Genelle’s matter-of-fact approach to death was in character with Genelle’s practical turn of mind and organized thoughts, which had made her a very efficient business manager for Vincent and Reed Electrical before her retirement, and certainly she had managed her own inherited money judiciously.

Charlie watched Dulcie vanish, down at the end of the alley, and wondered again what this little tabby, of such special intelligence, was hiding. Wondered if it had to do with the lane itself or with the garden of the rental building, where Wilma had often seen her prowling lately. When Wilma had asked Dulcie what was so fascinating there, Dulcie’s green eyes had widened with innocence.

“Mice,” Dulcie had said, staring up at her housemate as if Wilma shouldn’t have to ask. “I can smell mice inside that building and I can hear them.” Charlie and Wilma had been sitting in Wilma’s blue-and-white kitchen, at the kitchen table, Charlie and Wilma having coffee, Dulcie in her own chair enjoying a bowl of milk, and all threeofthem eating Wilma’s homemade sticky buns. Dulcie said, “Maybe mice that were driven inside by the rain. Succulent little mice, Wilma. They smell lovely. But there’s no way to get inside, no way to get at them.”

Wilma had just looked at Dulcie. “You and Joe seldom hunt mice; you much prefer to go up the hills and kill jackrabbits-a catch, as Joe puts it, that you can get your teeth into. And,” Wilma had said pointedly, “I notice that you’re not hunting with Joe much these days.”

Dulcie had lashed her tail with such annoyance that Charlie almost choked hiding her laugher.

“And,” Wilma had said further, “prowling around that building, you didn’t look as if your mind was on anything remotely connected to mice.”

“What else would I be doing?” Dulcie had laid her ears flat, leaped down from her chair, and stalked out her cat door, her tail lashing with an angry hurt that had shamed them both-just as she’d meant to shame them.

Charlie moved on past the library without stopping, and before heading up the hills to the senior ladies’ house, she tried Wilma’s cell phone again. Nothing. Then she swung by Clyde’s to see if he might be at home, if he had any news of the kit. At one time in Charlie’s life, she would have found it ludicrous to spend all night and day searching for a cat. But she hadn’t known then what she knew now.

Clyde’s car wasn’t in the drive; he was either looking for Kit or had gone on to work. As she pulled up in front, Joe Grey was just leaping up the steps toward his cat door. When he heard her van he turned, scowling at her, his ears back, then ducked to slip through the plastic flap. She opened her door. “Wait, Joe!” she hissed. “Wait for me!” She swung out, glancing around to see if any neighbors were watching, if anyone had heard her. Joe had paused beside his cat door looking back at her, scowling with annoyance, the white strip down his nose drawn into a thin line, his yellow eyes narrowed.

“You didn’t find her,” she said softly, coming up the walk.

“We didn’t find her,” he snarled, hardly a whisper. She sat down on the steps.

The tomcat stopped scowling and sat down close to her. He looked tired, his ears and whiskers drooping; he looked resigned. “Lucinda and Pedric and Wilma are out looking, calling and calling her. Dulcie and I can’t call her in broad daylight. And we couldn’t pick up her scent. Not anywhere.” He lay down, his paw touching her leg. “Lucinda and Pedric are worn out. Eighty years old, and only a couple hours’ sleep.”

“You don’t look so great yourself.”

“Village full of tourists, all you can smell is perfume and dog doo, gum wrappers and stale tobacco.” Joe yawned. “Clyde went on to work. I need food and sleep, I’m bummed out. Nothing as exhausting as looking for that damned kitten.”

Charlie didn’t point out that the tattercoat wasn’t a kitten anymore, only young and headstrong. “And you and Dulcie searched for her together?”

He just looked at her.

“You haven’t been seeing much of each other these days.”

“Dulcie doesn’t share her appointment calendar with me,” Joe snapped. He yawned again, rose, and headed for his cat door. Charlie reached out to stop him.

“What is this, Joe? What is this with Dulcie? What’swrongbetween you two?”

Joe laid back his ears and hissed at her.

“What? This is scaring me,” Charlie said. “You’re mad enough at Dulcie to eat rocks!”

His yellow eyes were fierce and unforgiving. He looked, with his angled head narrowed by anger, as formidable as a stalking cougar.

“Not another tomcat?” Charlie said softly. “I don’t believe Dulcie would do that.”

“What else would she be up to that she won’t tell me? Even tonight, searching for the kit, she was closemouthed. Remote as all hell.” He nosed at the plastic flap intending to terminate the conversation. She pressed on his chest and shoulder, making him pause, and imagining a bloodied hand. Joe had never slashed her, but now he looked like he might.

“Maybe she promised someone,” Charlie said softly. “Maybe she’s keeping someone else’s secret, maybe she can’t-”

“Promisedwho}Keepingwhatsecret? There’s no other cat she can talk to except the kit.” His yellow eyes widened. “There’s no human but the Greenlaws, and Clyde and Wilma and you.”

She didn’t want to mention the black tomcat that had once come on to Dulcie. They all thought, hoped, that cat was gone. Preferably, to a place where hecouldn’tcome back. Charlie thought if Azrael ever did show up, Joe might kill him. “Couldn’t there be some innocent reason for Dulcie keeping a secret? Someone else-some kind of promise that isn’t meant to hurt you? Dulcie would never hurt you, Joe.”

“You’re saying she’s spoken with someone new? That she’s talked to some new human? That she’s given away our secret?” His eyes burned into hers. “Idon’t believethat.”

“I’m not saying shetoldanyone. I’m not suggesting shetalked withanyone. I’m saying maybe someone’s in trouble, and they made it clear that others mustn’t know. That maybe Dulcie-”

“Whattrouble? What secret?”

Charlie just looked at Joe. He was such a big, dignified cat, all hard muscle and gleaming silver coat, and his white markings were polished like new snow. But now his yellow eyes burned with such deep hurt and wounded pride and anger that Charlie wanted to pick him up and hug and cuddle him.

But she didn’t dare. Joe had always been too dignified to tolerate hugging.

And how could Joe’s beautiful tabby lady keep secrets from her tomcat? How could his lovely and talented coconspirator in matters of criminal investigation, his skilled hunting partner, whether it be human felons or four-legged rats, how could his true love intentionally hurt him?

Wanting so to stroke Joe Grey and comfort him, Charlie shyly drew her hand away. She could no more cuddle this tomcat than she could pick up and cuddle Detective Dallas Garza. Than she would, at one time, have cuddled Chief of Police Max Harper-before she knew Max better. Instead, she rose. “Get some sleep, Joe. Get something to eat. Shall I come in and make you an omelet?”

“There’s stuff in the fridge. Half a chicken,” he said ungratefully. “Damn kitten. No more sense than to go off by herself after an armed-”

She reached to block his cat door. “Why would the guy shoot her? Why would he even guess what she is? Get a grip, Joe.”

He stared back belligerently. “She’s so nosy. Irresponsible. No telling what she might-”

“Give Kit some credit, Joe. She found that meth lab up in the hills, and she didn’t give herself away. She�” She stopped talking and reached diffidently to scratch his ear. “She’ll likely be back when you wake up. Call me on my cell, I’ll come help you look; at least I can offer wheels. I’m just headed up to the seniors’ to dig up some flowers.”

Joe stared at her and yawned, and slid in through his cat door. Charlie remained crouched on the porch looking around at the houses across the street, praying that some neighbor hadn’t seen them talking. Well, she could talk to a cat all right without causing raised eyebrows. As long as they didn’t see the cat talking back.

But the neighbors’ windows all looked empty, curtained and serene; she saw no one looking out. Rising, pushing back a loose strand of hair, she headed for her van and the senior ladies’ house, armed with her shovel and empty pots and plastic bags. Maybe Wilma would be there, maybe Wilma would tell her the kit was home with Lucinda and Pedric-then maybe this queasy nervousness in her stomach would go away.

7 [��������: pic_8.jpg]

Dulcie had that same sick feeling about the missing tortoiseshell that Wilma or Clyde must feel when she and Joe were gone for several days; surely it was the same uneasy worry that filled her now. They had looked everywhere for the kit; no oneknewwhere else to look.

And she felt edgy about Joe, too. A dozen times last night as they searched for the kit, she’d wanted to tell him the secret that lay between them, tell him where she’d been going for the past two weeks. But every time she started to mention Lori, she reminded herself that shehad,in her own heart, promised the child. That when Lori whispered, “You won’t tell anyone, Dulcie,” she had, by her purring and cuddling, really promised Lori, just as much as if she had whispered, “I’ll never say a word.”

Now, agonizing, all she did was get her mind in a muddle. She went into the library at last, not through Lori’s secretly unlocked basement window, but through the open front door. As library cat, she had as much business padding in through the main entrance as had the head librarian-and there had been times in the past, with another head librarian, when Dulcie had been more welcome. Her appearance in the library always generated smiles and greetings and pets, and today was no different. Except that she made quick work of the petting and cuddling, only pretending to linger. Purring and winding around the patrons’ reaching hands, she sidled toward the stairs in an oblique dance until she was able to disappear among the stacks. And in an instant she was down the steps and into the basement workroom.

She had been visiting the runaway child for nearly two weeks, but she still hadn’t learned much about her. Lori’s casual, disjointed remarks were only frustrating. And how maddening were their one-sided conversations, when Dulcie had to remain mute, when she couldn’t ask questions.

She’d fared no better listening to conversations around the library and watching the daily paper. She heard nothing about a runaway child, and no missing child was reported anywhere near Molena Point. No mention on the local radio station or TV And surely theMolena Point Gazettewould jump on that kind of story.

Certainly there was no recent police report; she would have heard about that from Wilma or Charlie or Clyde-from Max Harper’s own wife and his two closest friends. Max had grown up with Clyde; they were like brothers, brothers who had indulged in a good deal of beer drinking and bar fights during their young days on the rodeo circuit, Dulcie thought, smiling. It always amused her, and amazed her, to imagine either of the two men crouched atop the chute, settling down onto the back of a bull as the gate was opened; to imagine them riding the lunging, twisting, hard-landing bulls. Though she didn’t like to think of the end of the ride, of the terrible, lunging horned danger, when they were on the ground once more.

In the basement, two librarians were working on a book order, sitting at the big, scarred worktable. The room was cool, its concrete walls emitting a perpetual chill that on a hot day was delightful, but was not so pleasant in the winter. Both ladies were wearing heavy sweaters. Dulcie, leaping onto an empty table, lay down between the stacks of new books where a slant of watery sunlight seeped in through a basement window. Five basement windows opened into deep wells that were cut into the sidewalk. All but one was securely locked, although all of them appeared to be locked. Settling down for a light nap, waiting for a chance to get in to Lori, Dulcie sleepily watched the librarian at the computer preparing orders. She was worn out, what with keeping Lori’s secret from Joe and with worry over the kit.

Well, she could do nothing about Joe at the moment; he would just have to sulk. And they’d have to trust the kit. Just as she herself wanted Wilma to trustherand not always to be calling her and hovering. Kit was a big cat now; she would have to take care of herself.

But the worst of her tiredness came from her pain over Patty’s death. Patty Rose, who would have hurt no one. No one� She was nearly asleep when the two librarians rose from their desks, picked up their purses, and headed for the stairs to go to lunch. She waited for some time, to be sure they didn’t come back, hadn’t forgotten anything. When neither hurried back down the stairs, she squeezed behind the small bookcase; there was barely room between it and the wall.

She didn’t try to shove the bricks aside to reveal Lori’s hidden entryway. Instead, pawing at the loose heat vent, she reared up, pushing the swinging grid aside. Crawling up and in, scrambling through where the big plastic pipe had fallen away from its connection, she entered the hidden part of the basement.

She had always known that grid was loose, hanging by one rusty screw, the other three screws not secure in the soft, old plaster. Long ago she had sniffed around there for mice but had never found fresh scent. She was more likely to find the occasional unwary mouse in the workroom itself, drawn by a candy bar left in a desk drawer, or upstairs among the books and the reading-room couches, both of which offered delightful nesting material for a mouse family. While she had long ago eradicated the main populations of library mice, an occasional optimistic newcomer would venture in, only to find itself summarily dispatched and on its way to mouse heaven.

Slipping in, pausing in the darkness, sniffing child scent and the sharp aroma of peanut butter, she dropped to the cold concrete floor. The cement-walled room was so dark that even a cat had to squeeze her eyes closed for a moment before she could see anything at all. But she could hear the child’s slow, even breathing.

It still dismayed her that, all these years, she hadn’t a clue that this room was here. She had assumed that behind the vent was just crawl space, dirt and foundation and spiders. Apparently the library’s drainage system was well constructed, because the little basement room had remained dry even during this winter’s heavy rains. The floor beneath her paws was dry as dust, though icy cold. And there was no faintest scent of mildew. Moving by the thin light that seeped through the vent behind her, she approached the sleeping child.

Lori lay curled up on her old sun pad, which maybe Lori’s mother had once used. She had pulled her thin blanket tight around her as if to shut out the tiniest finger of cold, and had spread her windbreaker over that. For a long while, Dulcie stood watching Lori nap, her little hand under her cheek, her brown hair tangled across the stained old pillow.

Lori had moved into the hidden room surprisingly well equipped: the thin little pad, the old blanket, the backpack on the floor beside her with its canned provisions-though the pack was thinner now. Dulcie thought the child had brought as much food as she had been able to carry, but it wouldn’t last much longer. Whatever the reason for her running away, and wherever she had come from, this little girl wasn’t playing games. The puzzle was, if no one had reported a child missing, and if no one was looking for her, did she not have a family? That hardly seemed possible. Where, then, had she come from?

Or was someone searching secretly for her, someone who did not want to go to the police, who wanted to remain unknown? And why? Because they had hurt her, or meant to harm her? The child woke suddenly and sat up, startled, knowing someone was in the room. But then, staring into the darkness, she saw Dulcie. Catching her breath with pleasure, she put out her arms. Her voice was a whisper.

“Dulcie? You mustn’t let them see you come in here.” She glanced warily toward the workroom. “You mustn’t let them know. Maybe they’re at lunch? Oh,” she said, shivering, “I wish you could understand. No one must find me! I wish I could make you understand.”

But I do understand,Dulcie thought.I wish I could speak, I wish we could talk. Who would find you? Where do you come from and what are you afraid of?Leaping onto the blanket, Dulcie curled up close to Lori, basking in Lori’s warmth, breathing in her little-girl scent-and wishing not only that she dared speak, but that she could share this child with Joe Grey. She longed to tell Joe about Lori, to discuss the child with him. Longed for Joe to help her come up with some answers. But she didn’t dare, not until she knew who or what Lori was hiding from.

Because what if Joe, thinking only to help, placed one of his anonymous phone calls to Captain Harper about a lost child, a runaway child? And Harper came and scooped Lori up? What if, in the eyes of the law, Lori must be returned to the person she had run from? Sometimes the police could do little but what the legal statutes told them to do.

The Molena Point police were Joe’s friends, Joe believed those officers could do no harm. In relying on the men he admired, the tomcat could be as hardheaded as any street cop. If he decided that Captain Harper should find Lori, no matter what Dulcie said, the tomcat would take the matter to the chief.

When Joe Grey got stubborn, got his claws into a matter, no one could turn him aside-and once Lori had been returned to whoever was her legal guardian, the law might not be able to protect her.

Dulcie stayed with the child for a long time, curled up close to her on the thin mat with the blanket wrapped around the two of them. With her thick tabby fur, Dulcie was really too warm, but the child clung to her as if she were starved for warmth. When at last Lori dozed, Dulcie slept, too, for a little while, then woke and lay wondering.

She knew that Lori slept during part of the day and then prowled the library late at night feasting on the books, as Dulcie herself often did. She had to smile at the way the child lugged books through the hole in the wall. Lori reminded Dulcie of herself when, slipping through her cat door late at night into the closed library, she would paw a book down from the shelves onto a reading table, paw open the pages, and read into the small hours, lose herself to the world around her as she wandered through even more fascinating worlds.

When Lori ran away, she had brought with her, besides her bedding and food and her little flashlight, a battery-operated lamp of the kind sensible humans kept for power outages. Each time before turning it on, Lori would check the loose bricks in the wall, which she kept to block her makeshift door. Making sure she could see no light between them, she would carefully hang her jacket over the roughly closed opening, anchoring it on the rough bricks. And all the while she would listen for any sound from the other side. Even at night she did this, to make sure no one was out there working late, who could catch a glimpse of light in the wall where there should be none.

Now, sighing, Lori snuggled even closer. It must be hard for a child to hide in this cold place all alone. For a kid of maybe twelve, Lori was amazingly disciplined.

But Lori was a reader; her world and experience had expanded her thinking far beyond the here-and-now everyday world she occupied. There was no question that she was a bright child. Dulcie had seen adult nonfiction books on every subject from model trains and miniature dollhouses to a history of Molena Point and one on the various breeds of dogs. All were books that, if any patron asked for them, would be recorded by the librarians as missing, but then would be found a few days later. Dulcie liked best that three Narnia books were stacked neatly against the wall, that Lori loved C. S. Lewis and his magical world-that not everything in Lori’s life centered around fear, but still could embrace wonder.

Lori woke, whispering into Dulcie’s fur, “He was there when I went out this morning, Dulcie. It wasn’t hardly light yet. I don’t think he saw me; I slipped back through the window real quick and slid it closed.”

Whowas there?Whoare you hiding from?

In the dark, the child looked intently at Dulcie.“Washe looking for me?” She shivered. “If he’d seen me, he’d of followed me.

“But he couldn’t of seen me, he was looking straight ahead, driving.” She squeezed Dulcie tight. “How long can I stay here, though? My food is nearly gone.” She stared hard at Dulcie. “And then what? I try to ration it, but I sure get hungry.”

Dulcie reached a soft paw to touch Lori’s cheek. There were no marks on the child as if she’d been beaten, as if whoever she was talking about had hurt her. No scars or bruises. But certainly Lori was scared.

“Mama would say, ‘Go to a grownup,’ someone I can trust. A grownup to help me.” In the darkness, she shivered. “Who? There aren’t no grownups I trust. Not those child-welfare people.” Dulcie found it interesting that, though Lori was a voracious reader, her English sometimes faltered. She had lived way out in the country, in the south, since she was six. Maybe in that rural area, such usage was natural. Dulcie nuzzled Lori’s cheek, purring. But she looked up when she heard voices beyond the wall, heard the two librarians on the stairs, coming down, and she leaped away, toward the heat vent.

“Dulcie?” Lori whispered.

But Dulcie was into the air duct and through it and slipping out from behind the bookcase as the two women entered, taking off their coats. Yawning and stretching, she looked up at them blearily and wandered away under the tables, where she lay down to roll and wash her paw.

And the moment they settled to work she trotted away again, up the stairs, and raced across the reading room before someone wanted to pet her. She was out the front door and around the corner, up a bougainvillea vine, moving eagerly to the rooftops. There she investigated every cranny between the peaks and chimneys, every high balcony and little penthouse window, searching for the kit’s scent, hoping maybe Kit was headed home or had come to look forher,in the library. Or maybe, worn out from her unknown journey, had stopped in some unlikely place for a nap.

Padding through stark noon shadows and shafts of sunlight, Dulcie had searched the roofs for maybe ten blocks, slipping along the gutters looking down at the busy streets and into the trees and little yards. She was just above her favorite fish cafe, sniffing the good smells, when a police car turned down the street below her, moving as fast as it dared on the busy street, but without a siren. A second unit sped by, and a third. Something was happening; the officers’ sleek white cars moved together as purposefully as three hunting sharks. Quickly she followed, running across the roofs, over and around peaks, keeping the cars in sight as they slid through traffic. They were heading up into the hills; she was going to lose them. Curiosity drove her faster. As she crossed the roof of the police department, below her another car left the station and instead of following farther, she scorched up the courthouse tower, where she could watch from its open parapet, from the highest lookout in the village.

Crouched on the high, open rail of the parapet, she watched the five cars turn onto a street that led high up into the hills. The senior ladies’ street? Yes, the street of her four retired friends, of the house the ladies had bought together for their retirement, the tall old house that they were slowly renovating.

But that didn’t mean anything, there were lots of houses on that street, including their friend Genelle Yardley’s home. Stretching as tall as she could on the wall of the parapet, balancing on the narrow bricks, she counted the streets and the blocks, counted the rooftops. And she caught her breath, dropped down to the brick paving, and leaped down the tower’s winding stairs hitting every fourth step, then took off across the roofs. As she raced across oak limbs and more rooftops, icy fingers crawled up her spine. Thatwasthe seniors’ house, where the police units had turned in, the home of Cora Lee and Mavity and their two housemates. What was happening? What was wrong?

8 [��������: pic_9.jpg]

Half an hour before Dulcie fled across the rooftops following Max Harper’s police units, Charlie parked her van on the wide, cracked drive in front of the senior ladies’ tall old house. The dark, peak-roofed structure rose above her, shabby and neglected, but it would not remain so for long; these ladies, given time, would have it looking as fresh as new. They planned for repairs and softer paint, new landscaping, and a granite-block parking apron to replace the cracked drive. In the meantime, the five bedrooms plus the two small downstairs apartments offered ample room for the four ladies and their future plans.

Swinging out, glancing at her aunt Wilma’s car, which was parked at the edge of the drive, she looked in through the driver’s-side window. Yes, Wilma had left her cell phone on the seat. Had she given up searching for the kit then? If Kit had been found-had come home-Wilma would surely have called her.

Moving around the side of the house between tall weeds, toward the backyard, she tried to imagine how the landscaping would look when the ladies were finished with it. The fifty-year-old house had seen many tenants, the more recent of whom had done little to care for it; the ladieshadpruned the neglected old apple tree and the pear trees and had dug the choking growth away from them, leaving wide circles of dark, turned earth. The four senior ladies liked to say that their house marked the last boundary between civilization and the wild, unspoiled land that had once graced all of these coastal hills. While the front of their new home stood snug between its neighbors on a tame and civilized village street, the back of the house overlooked the wild, dropping canyon where black-tailed deer browsed, and raccoons and possums slipped through the grass. One might, on occasion, while sitting quietly on one of the two decks, see a bobcat or even a cougar or black bear. Certainly there were coyotes, the ladies heard them at night just as Charlie and Max heard them up in the hills, their primitive song engendering a strange mix of wonder and ancient fear. Their yipping stirred a restless unease in those who loved their cats. It gave rise to added fear in those who knew Joe Grey and Kit and Dulcie, who knew their secret, who imagined those three cats out in the night venturing too near the hungry beasts. But the cats were wise, Charlie told herself, they were clever. And she could not change their ways. She glanced up at the windows where new white interior shutters caught the light. So far, the ladies had concentrated their limited funds and time on the inside of the house; the day they moved in they began to renovate the living area and kitchen, patching and painting, then each had designed her own bedroom to please her individual taste. Susan Brittain liked lush potted plants around her and hand-thrown ceramics, lots of sunlight and bright watercolors. Blond Gabrielle Row preferred more formal and expensive furnishings, which, even when purchased used, spelled money. Little, wrinkled Mavity Flowers went in for solid comfort if she could get it cheaply, and lots of bookshelves fitted out with her beloved paperback romance novels.

Tall, elegant Cora Lee French had done her top-floor bedroom and studio with an eye to maximum work space, plenty of white walls where she could hang her bright landscapes, and room to paint and to work on other projects. Now, with the rooms sparkling, the four ladies were impatient to get at the outside. The hired painter would have to wait for dry weather, but the ladies could sure dig out the weeds and tame the overgrown perennials that crowded the back flower beds. Charlie could imagine the masses of colorful blooms they would plant down there, overlooking the canyon.

As she passed the wide back deck she could smell coffee and see empty cups and a thermos on the picnic table. Down below at the lip of the canyon, the ladies were hard at work. She didn’t see Wilma. Wherever her aunt was at the moment, she would soon be down there digging enthusiastically; among her other talents, Wilma was an eager and expert gardener.

Now she saw only Mavity and Cora Lee kneeling in the dirt of the long, raised flower beds, both of them up to their elbows in weeds, attacking the tangle with such vengeance you’d think the plants had attacked them. Stacks of wilting weeds lay behind them. They had freed the geraniums, which now stood leggy and rank, reaching in every direction for the sun. The other two members of the foursome were off in San Francisco for the week visiting Susan’s daughter. Maybe Wilma was walking Susan’s two big dogs. The standard poodle and the dalmatian were a handful, but Wilma loved them; she’d jump at any chance to walk them. And today, she was likely looking again for the kit. Charlie watched Mavity and Cora Lee fondly.

Both women were in their sixties, and were very different from each other but they got on famously. Mavity’s short gray hair was always wildly frowsy, and this morning as usual she was dressed in a white maid’s uniform, one of a dozen similar garments, all limp from uncounted launderings, that she bought in the secondhand shops. Her white pants and tunic were streaked with dirt, as were her wrinkled, sun-browned hands. By contrast, Cora Lee was as neat and immaculate as if she’d just stepped out of the house. Not a speck of dirt, not a wrinkle, her cream cotton shirt and beige jeans fresh and clean. Not a hair of her short, salt-and-pepper bob was out of place. Her flawless cafe au lait skin was like velvet, her subtle makeup as carefully applied as if for a party-but when Cora Lee looked up at Charlie, her eyes were red from crying.

She searched Charlie’s face and put out a hand to her.

“I’m so very sorry,” Charlie said. Cora Lee and Patty Rose had been close; they had done three musicals together for Molena Point Little Theater after Patty retired.

“She was a fine lady,” Cora Lee said softly. “Such a joy to work with. Who would do this? Do the police know anything yet?”

Charlie shook her head and patted Cora Lee’s gloved hand. “There were no direct witnesses, or none they’ve found so far. Not a clue yet to a motive. Patty’s secretary has been out of town; she’s flying back this morning.” Charlie never knew what to say to someone grieving; there was so little one could say that would help. Digging a cap from her pocket, she pulled it on and tucked her red hair under, trying to capture the escaping wisps of curl.

Cora Lee tossed another weed on the pile. “Is Lucinda all right?”

Charlie nodded. “She’s all right, she’s tough. We’re all devastated, Cora Lee. But how’s Genelle Yardley taking it? She and Patty were such dear friends.”

“I dreaded telling her this morning. But when I went to fix her breakfast, she already knew. She was up, as usual, sitting on her terrace reading the paper, the tears just running down. I�” Cora Lee shook her head. “I wouldn’t have told her, so early. Though I suppose Patty’s secretary would have called her, if she’d been here. The paper arrived before I did. But she� She believes so strongly that death is not the end. She� she’ll be all right. I’ll go over again later.”

The four ladies had been seeing to Genelle Yardley since Genelle had gone on oxygen, helping their neighbor through what they all knew was a terminal illness. Helping her get around with the cumbersome oxygen cart, fixing her meals and cleaning her house, taking her out in a wheelchair. Genelle had no one, no family. A home-care nurse came in to help with her medications and to bathe her. Genelle, despite her increasing difficulty in getting a full breath, was in surprisingly good spirits-or she had been until this happened. Belief in an afterlife or not, this had to be devastating for her. Patty had been close to Genelle’s family since before Genelle was born. Coming home to the village even during her busy Hollywood years, Patty had always spent some time with the Yardleys. Patty said your real friends were the old friends, before you got famous.

Now, Charlie thought, Patty’s death might set Genelle back severely. She could only hope this wouldn’t make Genelle turn away from her stubborn battle to enjoy the last of her life as best she could. Wouldn’t change her so she let herself go into a deep depression. And Charlie thought,I will enjoy life while I’m young. I will love and enjoy Max every moment I’m given; I will enjoy my friends while we’re all young and strong, can ride and shoot and work and dance. And I will enjoy them when we can no longer do those things.

Kneeling farther along in the flower bed, she began to dig around the roots of a tall old pelargonium. She didn’t know what color its blooms would be, but she remembered seeing masses of bright-pink blooms in these flower beds, as vivid as peppermint ice cream.

She knew she wouldn’t be at work five minutes before her jacket and jeans would be muddy and she’d have smears of dirt over her freckles and in her escaping hair. And she could never work in gloves, could never do anything in a garden without wallowing. It was a wonder her cleaning and repair customers, who included gardening in their varied lists of jobs to be done, didn’t drop her services for someone who looked more professional.Like Cora Lee,Charlie thought, watching the older woman with speculation.

Cora Lee French’s smooth presence was a talent Charlie knew she’d never master. If she felt rocky, she looked rocky. If she was mad, she knew she looked like a vixen. Max said she was always beautiful-but Max loved her. Charlie thought, not for the first time, that Cora Lee would make a perfect manager for Charlie’s Fix It, Clean It. She was getting to the point where she desperately needed a manager, yet even to ask Cora Lee seemed an imposition. Cora Lee had cut back on her waitress and hostess jobs, for which she was always in demand at the best village hotels and restaurants, to pursue her other interests. She had been painting a lot, these past months, not theater stage sets but exciting canvases. And now she had this new venture, at which she was making such good money that she didn’t need to wait tables or manage Charlie’s business. Cora Lee’s hand-painted chests, cabinets, and armoires were selling for very nice sums through the local interior designers. Ryan’s sister Hanni had put Cora Lee’s pieces in some very exclusive homes.

No, Cora Lee was not a prospect as manager, she was far too busy. Charlie wondered for a moment if Mavity would want a stab at the job. Wizened and leathery little Mavity Flowers could still outwork many men; Charlie couldn’t run the business without her. She was fast and efficient at cleaning, at painting and plumbing repairs, and at most gardening chores. But planning and directing the crews’ work made Mavity nervous. Watching Mavity put all her weight on her trowel to send it deep beside a doomed weed, Charlie shook her head. It wouldn’t work; Mavity would balk at the responsibilities of interviewing, hiring, firing, and keeping the records.

Still, she had to find some kind of manager. Her own interests, like Cora Lee’s, were moving her powerfully in other directions. She didn’t want to abandon the business; she was proud of what she had created and the income was good. Charlie’s Fix It, Clean It was the only service in Molena Point where a client could have all manner of small chores taken care of with one phone call, from a broken garden gate to planting spring flowers, from everyday housekeeping to ironing, shopping, helping with parties, or painting a room or two. She would feel like a traitor to her regular customers if she didn’t keep the service alive.

Though the rain had ceased early this morning and the sun had tried to shine, moving in and out of cloud, now the cloud cover was lowering heavily, laying a muted silver haze across the garden.Lucky that the ground was so wet,Charlie thought. The root structure of the pelargonium she was digging went deep. Even with the softened earth, she was making quite a pit getting the plant out without hurting it. And the weeds the two ladies were pulling had roots as big as turnips. Suddenly, as she dug deeper to free the last of the root, a chill slid down her spine, a coldness that left her shivering for no reason.

Where had that come from? Frowning, she slipped a pair of clippers from her jacket pocket. Pruning the giant geranium before she replanted it in a big plastic pot, she looked around her, puzzled.

Behind the two kneeling women, the old house rose up tall and awkward, its peeling exterior darker still where rain had soaked the siding. Its blackened roof shingles curled up as if surely rain would leak inside. What a dour old relic it was, hunched in the center of its ragged yard like some unkempt old man in worn-out, smelly garments. But the price had been right. This would be the ladies’ last home, a comfortable retirement residence for Mavity and Cora Lee, Gabrielle and Susan, and, perhaps later, Charlie’s aunt Wilma. Single, aging women banding together for comfort and security in their last years rather than seeking institutionalized living. Their buying a house together had seemed to be asking for trouble, but so far it had worked very well. Soon they would rent out the two basement apartments, though these, in the future, could accommodate caregivers. Potting the pelargonium, firming soil around its roots, she had set it aside and moved on to the next rangy plant when, again, icy fingers touched her.

And in the next flower bed, Cora Lee knelt among the weeds, suddenly very still. Frozen, her trowel in midair, her hands shaking. Her dark eyes were huge, staring at the earth before her.

9 [��������: pic_10.jpg]

Cora Lee didn’t move. She might have been molded into a frieze. The color of her face was no longer warm cafe au lait, but that of gray cardboard. Had she dug out a snake? Disturbed a rattlesnake? Or uncovered one of those huge potato bugs with the vicious pincers?

Slowly Cora Lee reached down, her hesitant, wary hand hovering above something hidden from Charlie’s view in the turned earth.

“Cora Lee?”

Cora Lee glanced up, then down again, staring at the earth before her.

“Cora Lee?”

Cora Lee looked up, focusing on Charlie, her face twisted, her dark eyes frightened and helpless. Her mouth moved in a soft, begging way, but no sound came. Down the row, Mavity was equally still, watching them. After what seemed hours, Cora Lee whispered, “In the storm, all the bodies floated up.”

Charlie rose and stepped closer.

Where Cora Lee had dug the soil away, she could see dark bones. Bare bones, stained by earth. The bones of a hand. A small human hand. A child’s hand.

Charlie had spent countless hours in art school drawing human bones, human hands. This was not an animal paw that might be mistaken for human, not a raccoon or a possum. She knew a child’s hand when she saw it.

A child’s hand, the fingers all in place as if the hand had been securely embedded in older, harder soil, allowing the loose, wet dirt above to come away. The stained bones were woven through with the little pale roots of the weeds. She could see the wrist bones, but the arm was still hidden by earth-if there was an arm. Cora Lee’s trowel lay abandoned atop the turned soil. Charlie wanted to pick it up and pull the dirt away, free the poor creature if indeed a body was buried there.Call Max. Don’t touch anything. Call him now.

Cora Lee’s thin, lovely face was crumpled with such distress that Charlie rose and gripped her arms, gently helping her up. She stood with her arms around Cora Lee, the frightened woman shivering against her. Charlie didn’t know what Cora Lee meant by bodies floating up, but Cora Lee was far more terrified than seemed reasonable. Charlie reached into her pocket for her cell phone, then drew her hand back and looked at Mavity.

“Go in the house, Mavity. Call nine-one-one. Tell them we need a detective up here; tell them what we found.” Mavity, too, was pale. She needed to do something, to take some action.

As the little wrinkled woman hurried away, the back of her white uniform stained with earth, Charlie held Cora Lee close. Cora Lee was not a weak person; last summer when she’d been attacked in the alley behind the charity shop and so badly hurt, when she’d spent that long time in the hospital, she had been as stoic and strong as rock.

This little hand had brought back something that touched Cora Lee in a way Charlie did not understand. Leading Cora Lee up to the picnic table, Charlie got her to sit down, and poured her the last of the lukewarm coffee from the thermos. They waited, not speaking, until Mavity came out again. She was scowling, her wrinkles multiplied, her fists clenched with annoyance. “Dispatcher had to go through the whole routine of what to do. Itoldheryouwere here, Charlie. That you already know what to do.” Turning, saying nothing more, she picked up the thermos and went back in the house.

She returned in only a few moments with a fresh thermos of coffee and clean mugs on a tray. Mavity’s response to any calamity was to keep busy. And even as Mavity poured coffee, they heard the police radio, heard the unit patrol pull into the drive. To Charlie, that harsh static cutting through the still morning was as reassuring as a hug. Eagerly she watched the corner of the house as hard shoes clicked on the concrete, coming around the side.

But it wasn’t Max; she knew his step. Officer Brennan swung into view coming down the overgrown walk, his high forehead catching the light, his generous stomach bulging over his uniform trousers. Brennan nodded to her. Charlie rose and led him down the yard to the lower flower beds.

She was standing with Brennan, describing how Cora Lee had found the hand, when she saw Dulcie leap from the neighbor’s roof to a tree, and back down, dropping into the tall grass. At the little cat’s questioning look, Charlie glanced down at the excavation. At Charlie’s questioning look, Dulcie twitched her whiskers and flicked her ears. Dulcie had not found the kit. Quietly Dulcie approached the flower bed.

When she saw the hand, her ears went back and her eyes grew huge and black, the way a cat’s eyes get when it is afraid or feels threatened, and Dulcie’s rumbling growl shocked Charlie. Officer Brennan spun around, waving a threatening hand at her.

“Get out of here, cat! What the hell doyouwant? Cat’s worse than a dog! Dig the bones right up! Get out, get away!”

“She didn’t do anything,” Charlie snapped. “She’s just curious. She won’t hurt anything!”

“More than curious,” Brennan growled. “Cat’ll dig up the bones and carry them off!” He stared at Charlie strangely. “How do you think the captain would like that?” When he raised his hand, Charlie snatched Dulcie up in her arms. Dulcie didn’t resist, but she was still growling, her enraged glare turned on Brennan. Charlie moved away from him quickly. What had gotten into Brennan? She’d never seen him so grouchy.

For that matter, what was with Dulcie? This wasn’t the little cat’s usual crime-scene behavior. Dulcie and Joe Grey always stayed out of sight, they had no desire to stir questions among the law. Surely the little tabby would not be so bold around Max or the detectives. Neither cat wanted to be seen near a crime scene, nor did they want paw prints or cat hairs fouling the evidence.

In Charlie’s arms, Dulcie seemed to shake herself. More cars were pulling in, the slam of car doors, the multiplied cacophony of police radios. Brennan was still looking surly as Detective Davis came down the drive, her hard shoes clicking on the concrete, three officers behind her. Exchanging a comfortable look with Charlie, Juana Davis moved carefully along the weedy path where Brennan indicated that he had already walked.

Juana Davis was in her fifties, a stocky Latina with a usually bland expression and a keen mind. She had been on the force since long before Max became captain. She was pushing retirement but not looking forward to it. Though few detectives wore a uniform, Davis preferred to do so. Maybe she felt that the uniform gave her more status, more clout-not that she needed it. Davis was a skilled and capable officer. Or maybe she thought black made her look thinner. Dressed in regulation jacket, skirt, and black oxfords, she stood a few minutes looking around the yard, seeing every detail. She studied the hand, the heaps of earth around it. She looked up at Charlie to ask the usual questions. Who had found the hand? Who was present? Would Charlie ask them to remain until they could be questioned? Then she readied her camera and got to work. First the immediate scene from a standing position, before she knelt to take close-ups. She looked up briefly when the chief arrived.

Max moved down the yard, giving Charlie a glance and a solemn wink. Staying to the broken, weedy walk, he didn’t speak or stop. Standing at the edge of the flower bed, above Juana, he studied Cora Lee’s excavation, the small, frail bones, the piles of earth and weeds. And Charlie studied Max, taking comfort in his tall, lean frame, his sun-weathered face, his thin, capable hands, and the hard breadth of his shoulders. Max Harper, particularly in uniform, made her feel so safe-and always made her heart skip.

Max stood studying the little hand, then stepped back out of Juana’s way. Behind them, Brennan and two other officers moved around the edge of the yard stringing yellow crime-scene tape. Everyone present would be asking the same questions. How long had the hand been buried? Was there a full body lying beneath the earth, or only the lone hand? Who was the victim? How old? Boy or girl? If a child was buried here, where had that child come from? How long dead? How many years alone beneath the cold earth? How many years had a report on this lost child been filed away, inactive? Where were the grieving parents, presumably suffering their loss without knowledge of the death, or closure?

Shivering, Charlie returned to the picnic table to sit beside Cora Lee. She looked up as Mavity returned balancing a tray with cocoa and fresh coffee cake and another pot of coffee, enough for an army. Not only was keeping busy a comfort to Mavity, she considered warm beverages and rich food a comfort for everyone in times of need. Charlie guessed she was no different, though, as she reached greedily when Mavity passed the tray, taking enough for herself and for Dulcie. Cora Lee took nothing, she simply squeezed Charlie’s hand in her cold one. Charlie poured hot cocoa for her and put the piece of coffee cake before her, hoping the sugar would help strengthen Cora Lee’s shaky, chilled spirit.

10 [��������: pic_11.jpg]

“Thebodies floating away�,” Cora Lee said, “the sight of that little hand brought it all back, from when we were children.”

“You needn’t talk about something painful,” Charlie said, putting her arm around Cora Lee where they sat at the picnic table.

Dulcie, crouching low on the bench, peered around Charlie, watching Cora Lee. She had never seen her friend so distressed. What had happened in her childhood?Let her talk, Charlie, I want to hear this.She knew that Cora Lee had grown up in New Orleans, on the Mississippi delta. She remembered Cora Lee telling about the vast city cemetery where, as a child, she would sneak inside the gate with her friends and race, terrified and screaming, among the rows of concrete boxes that all stood aboveground. Because of the shallow water table, no grave could be dug, no corpse could be buried; there they all stood, rows of granite and marble boxes with the dead inside.

“One year, we had a terrible flood,” Cora Lee said now. “The water rose so high, the caskets were washed out from under their raised tombs. Some coffins broke open and released the corpses, to float away down the streets of the city.” She looked up at Charlie. “That’s what I saw when I uncovered that little hand. I saw again those helpless, gruesome bodies floating, floating away, that had so terrified me.”

Charlie didn’t take her eyes from Cora Lee’s. She squeezed Cora Lee’s hand in her own freckled hand.

“And then,” Cora Lee said, “a year after the flood, Kathy’s bones�” She looked devastated. “My best friend� We were nine, we played together, were constantly together. Like sisters. She disappeared one night, three days before her tenth birthday.

“Her bedroom window was broken, the jagged pieces of glass scattered on the ground, and there was blood on her blanket. No note, no phone call. She was simply gone. It wasn’t as if her family had much money, to pay a fancy ransom. There was never a request for ransom. It took two years for the police to find her. They found�”

Cora Lee swallowed, and put her other hand on Charlie’s, in a hard grip. “They found Kathy’s bones washed up from a shallow grave in someone’s garden. That,” Cora Lee said, “that came back to me, too, this morning, seeing those newspaper pictures again. Pictures of her little bones. My mother hid the paper, but you can’t hide something like that, it was everywhere, Kathy’s bones strewn across a tiny yard in the French Quarter.” Cora Lee turned away, but Charlie drew her close again. After a moment, Cora Lee leaned her face against Charlie’s shoulder.

“I thought that life in the French Quarter had toughened me.” She looked down the garden, and was quiet. “I guess it didn’t.” She said nothing more. Beside them, Dulcie felt cold and sick, distressed not only for Cora Lee, but also for that long-ago dead child. And for the child who might be buried here, in the garden. And she was suddenly frightened for Lori, for the living child.Can that be why Lori’s hiding? Because she knows something about that grave down there? Because someone wants to keep her quiet? Oh, but this is only coincidence�

Sitting rigid on the picnic bench close to Charlie, Dulcie didn’t know what to think or what to do about Lori, but now, suddenly she was afraid to do nothing. Should she take Lori’s story to Captain Harper? An anonymous message such as she and Joe often managed, to tip the cops? She knew she could trust Harper-but trust him to do what? To follow the law, as he was sworn and committed to do? If there was something badly wrong in Lori’s home, and if Lori had no other family, Harper might have no choice but to petition the court to send Lori to child welfare-where Lori seemed afraid to go.

Watching the three officers drive their metal stakes into the lawn and string the last line of tape, she wondered how many miles of yellow tape she and Joe had seen strung in such a way, around some grisly scene. No crime scene they had yet encountered had been like this, with the shocking impact of that one small hand, a hand that seemed to reach out so beseechingly, like the victim in a nightmare come alive.

When another car arrived and Detective Garza came around the corner of the house, Dulcie felt an added sense of security and strength, much the way a cat feels when all her family is at home. They were here now, the chief and both detectives, and they would make things right.

Garza looked tired, his square, smooth face drawn into deep, serious planes, his dark eyes studying the cluster of officers as he moved down the garden. He walked slowly, looking everywhere, taking in every detail. He was still dressed in the sport coat and slacks he’d worn to the theater the night before, the slacks wrinkled; and his jaw was dark with stubble. Had he not been home at all, had he not slept? He moved to where Max Harper stood at the end of the garden watching Juana photograph the scene.

Garza studied the hand and looked up at Harper. “I finished up with the last witnesses. Not much more of value. Nine people heard the shots, no one saw a damn thing. Except one of the inn’s guests we had waiting. Said she saw a man running out through the side entrance to the patio, but she was vague about whether it was before or after the shots. Couldn’t describe him. I’ll talk with her again.

“Besides Lucinda Greenlaw, two more witnesses say they’ve seen a man hanging around the inn. Small man, much like Lucinda described. Lucinda thought he might be watching Patty, but said he was casual, laid-back, so meek and harmless looking she thought maybe he was a fan. She knew Patty had seen him, that Patty didn’t seem concerned. She never asked Patty, and Patty never mentioned him.” He looked at Max. “I’d like to use the newspaper, let theGazetterun a clip. See if anyone coming out of the theater last night saw him. Four blocks from the inn; he could’ve doubled over there, strolled out with the crowd. Someone might remember a car, or where he was headed.”

As the two officers stood talking, watching Detective Davis at work, Dulcie wondered if Davis would take this case, and leave Garza with Patty’s murder. She’d observed the department long enough to know that the two detectives meshed like clockwork, that Harper seldom told them what to do. When Captain Harper motioned to Charlie, Charlie went down to join him. Dulcie was tensed to leap down and follow quietly through the weeds, when she saw Wilma coming around the side of the house leading Susan Brittain’s standard poodle and dalmatian.

Rearing up on the bench, her paws on the table, Dulcie looked questioningly at Wilma. Wilma shook her head.No Kit. Nothing.Dulcie’s tall, silver-haired housemate studied the yard full of uniforms only briefly, then she hurried the big dogs inside the house, getting them out of the way. Lamb, the chocolate standard poodle, looked around with dignity at the action, but the young dalmatian pranced and huffed and pulled, wanting to join the fun. Dulcie imagined Wilma inside wiping paws and offering doggie treats; but Wilma was soon out again, having settled the dogs, probably where they could watch the action. Wilma sat down at the picnic table, between Mavity and Cora Lee. Apparently, she already knew what had happened.

Stepping into Wilma’s lap, Dulcie stood looking over the top of the table, watching the officers at work. Wilma’s faded jeans and sweatshirt smelled of dog and of the juniper she’d brushed in passing the overgrown neighborhood bushes. Dulcie could hear the dogs inside the nearest empty apartment, probably jockeying for position at the sliding door, with both noses pressed against the glass. She heard a car door slam out in front, but this time no police radio. In a moment the coroner, John Bern, come around the house.

Bern was a slight, bald man, his head as shiny as a clean supper bowl. His face was thin, fine boned. He wore rimless glasses that reflected glancing light. He was dressed in tan chinos, Dockers, and a pristine white lab coat buttoned over a bright-red polo shirt. He paused to speak with Captain Harper, then approached the dirt excavation to study the small, skeletal hand and to ask Juana the usual obligatory questions: had anything been removed or touched, that sort of thing, expecting Juana to answer in the negative. He made a few notes in a spiral binder, then adjusted his camera and began to take his own set of pictures. He took maybe two dozen shots very close up, then stepped away for longer angles, then turned to speak with Harper.

“We’ll want a forensic pathologist on this, Max. I’d prefer a forensic anthropologist. I’d like to get Hyden down here. Meantime, I can do some preliminary digging.”

Harper moved around so the noon sun was not directly in his face. “I have a call in for Hyden. We sure don’t want to ship the bones to Sacramento if we can help it. If Hyden’s not available, we’ll try for Anderson-maybe luck out and get them both.” Alan Hyden and James Anderson worked out of Sacramento. Dulcie supposed that, even if they left the state capital at once, the drive would take maybe four hours.

“I have a tent on the way,” Max said. “We could be getting more rain, and there are coyotes in the canyon. We’ll put guards on the site, of course.” It was at this moment-as if additional assistance might be needed-that Joe Grey strolled on the scene.

Dulcie considered with interest the gray tomcat’s bold entrance as, in plain sight, he sauntered across the cop-filled yard exhibiting all the casual authority of a high-ranking police detective. The tomcat made no effort to hide himself, and this was not Joe’s usual mode of operation. In fact, why were neither of them taking their usual secretive approach? Her own attitude puzzled her nearly as much as Joe’s brazen entrance.

Was it because there was such a crowd in the yard-cops, the senior ladies, Charlie and Wilma? But last night, even in that crowd, they had made some effort to keep out of sight. Or was it because this was a much more bucolic scene, the weedy yard, the open, wild canyon, where a cat would not seem out of place? A slower scene, too, and less frenetic. And because there was no hurried urgency, because a murder hadn’tjusthappened.

But even so, she thought, watching Joe, half annoyed and half amused, even ifshehad let herself be seen,shehadn’t swaggered. His in-your-face behavior around the cops was not in anyone’s best interest.

Yet there he was, tramping across the weedy grass, as bold as the detectives and taking in every detail-the crime-scene tape, the little hand, the coroner at his work. Strolling across the yard, Joe turned and looked up toward the picnic table, looked right at her, then moved on down the garden ignoring her. Well, he hadn’t found the kit, then. If he had, he’d be up there letting her know about it, no matter how miffed he was. Strolling on down across the trampled grass, he looked as if she didn’t exist.

Padding boldly beneath the yellow barrier, he picked his way with disdainful paws along the length of the retaining wall. Every movement, every line of his sleek gray body challenged the officers to chase him away, though he knew very well that if he took one step off that retaining wall, Dr. Bern and every cop within sight was going to shout and throw things, and that someone would snatch him up in swift eviction. Dallas Garza and Juana Davis stared at Joe. Dr. Bern waved his arms and rattled a paper bag at him. Coolly Joe looked back at them, and sat down to study the little hand in its earthy excavation.

Dulcie watched him until he rose at last and moved on down the wall of railroad ties and stretched out along the top. Joe’s questions would be the same as hers, as everyone’s, questions that couldn’t be answered until forensics had done its work. Questions that couldn’t be answered completely until Harper and the detectives had obtained countless old, dead files, until they had examined whatever unresolved cases of missing children lay half forgotten among California’s law-enforcement records.

When the answers did surface, Dulcie thought, she’d like to be lying on the dispatcher’s counter beside Joe, reading the computer printouts or fax dispatches. She wanted to share with Joe, she didn’t like this cold treatment.

He’d been fine last night as they searched for Kit, fine when she left him saying she’d just prowl the library, make sure the kit wasn’t in there, that she’d be out again within the hour and would keep searching-a bold lie she wasn’t proud of as she’d headed down to see Lori. She wanted so badly to tell Joe about Lori. She longed for Joe to gallop up the yard right now, leap on the picnic bench beside her, and give her a whisker kiss, let her know he was sorry for being angry.

But the tabby cat had to laugh at herself.ShewantedJoeto say he was sorry!Shewanted Joe to say he was sorry becauseshehad lied to him? Because she was keeping secrets from him? She knew she was being totally unreasonable.

If she wanted Joe to forgive her, she would have to grovel.

And groveling was not in her nature.

What human said the road to hell was paved with good intentions? She guessed, if humans could make a mess with their good intentions, so could a cat.

But now, knowing that Joe hadn’t found the kit, she grew edgy again worrying about the missing tattercoat. This, and her unease about Lori after the discovery of what could be a child’s grave, made her want to claw the plank table. She began to fidget and scratch nonexistent fleas, drawing a surprised frown from Wilma.

Contrary to popular human belief, all cats do not love, or gravitate to, dark, enclosed places. Not when that confining crawl space smells like an old sewer and is strewn with jagged rubble. Having scrambled back among the pipes and floor joists that formed the underside of the rental cottage, Kit was clawing to get back up through the rotted hole in the bathroom floor when she remembered about search warrants. Remembered Joe Grey’s admonishment regarding the laws surrounding police work.

“The cops can’t remove anything from a house without a search warrant, Kit. And they can’t get a warrant without seeing a judge, the judge has to sign the warrant. But we can, Kit. We can take anything we can carry, anything we can haul out.”

Leaping again at the hole, she dug her claws into the rotted wood, scrabbling and breaking off disintegrating splinters. Praying that Fenner hadn’t returned, to hear her, she hoisted herself up into the bathroom. She was making so much noise, she must sound like a battalion of giant rats clawing at the bathroom floor. But shecouldn’t leave the envelopes under the sink. If the cops couldn’t come into this house without a warrant, she had to move the evidence.

Surely an officer could casually slip into the yard when the house was empty, and happen to see the envelopes lying inside a floor vent-with the envelopes at the right angle, they would be visible; the department could say he’d just been walking by and seen that pale, smooth paper beyond the grid, and had wondered. And surely a cop could get those vent grids off. The use of tools, of screwdrivers and pliers, was a wonderful skill.

Such a story, for the law to use, sounded implausible even to Kit, but it was the best she could think of. They could do it, they could slip up to the vent and reach in for the envelopes. Slipping a paw under the linoleum, she clawed the two big brown envelopes out, her heart racing like a freight train, listening for Fenner to come back, listening for him in the next room.

Clawing the envelopes free, she had to bend each one double to force it down the hole. Silent and alone, she fought the evidence through the little hole, heard it drop onto the rubble below. She was so hungry and so very thirsty. But she wasn’t going to drink out of that toilet, no way. She wished the other cats were there with her, wished longingly for Joe Grey and Dulcie, someone to help her, someone to lean on. Someone to lovingly wash her face and lick her ears.

She wished, most of all, that she had some breakfast. Her stomach was so hollow it ached. Squirming, wriggling, she dropped down beside the envelopes. Between her clawing at them and dragging them over the dirt and rusty nails, they were going to look pretty strange.

Well, she couldn’t help that. Pulling them across to the far vent, one at a time, she listened and listened for his car. She still didn’t know how she was going to get out.

If she didn’t get out, if she didn’t let Captain Harper know where to find the evidence, it would rot under there. And so would she. But she daren’t dwell on that. Maybe when Fenner came back, if she went back up into his room and waited until he came in, maybe she could scorch out behind his heels, slide out through the door before he closed it. It was worth a try. She didn’t have much choice.

11 [��������: pic_12.jpg]

Dulcie couldn�t stand, any longer, the painful chill that separated her from Joe. Dropping from the picnic bench to the ragged grass, she started down the garden. She had never meant to hurt him; she was only keeping a secret she felt bound to keep. Trotting down through the rough grass, she crouched beside the low retaining wall just below where Joe stood brazenly watching the coroner photograph the little hand. Dr. Bern and every cop there was aware of Joe; they were all poised to chase him away.

Was it something about Joe’s bold attitude that kept them from shouting at him again or carrying him, clawing, out of the yard? If someone tried that, she thought, smiling, all hell would break loose. She couldn’t believe Joe was doing this. What was wrong with him? Slipping up onto the wall beside him, she crouched close. Was his nervy defiance the result of his anger with her?

But as much as she loved Joe, she wasn’t going to lay his problems on her own back. She was doing what she had to do about Lori, what she felt was right. When Joe turned to look at her, his yellow eyes fiery with challenge, she gave him a long, steady look in return. His stupid tomcat rage wasn’t going to cowher.

Joe stared, then returned his attention to the coroner. Had she seen a twitch of amusement, a willingness to make up? But she’d have to make the first gesture, Dulcie knew. Below them, John Bern worked with a teaspoon and a tiny, soft paintbrush, removing fragments of earth from the little bones. And then, working with tweezers, he pulled away thin, evasive roots and lifted any tiny fragments of unidentified debris.

Carefully Bern removed a bit of rotting cloth from the soil, then picked out what looked like a dirt-encrusted button. At intervals he stopped to take pictures, shooting close-ups from every angle. Both Dulcie and Joe, held by the scene, nearly forgot their differences. Bern, while waiting for the forensics people, was doing more than Dulcie had expected. Twice as he worked, the cats listened as he spoke on his cell phone with Drs. Hyden and Anderson, eager to follow their wishes. Apparently the two were on the road already, heading down from Sacramento. Had this discovery sparked an unusual eagerness in the two forensic anthropologists, to send them so quickly on their way? With the seeming age of the little hand, this grave might, for many investigators, mark the possible end to a long and discouraging search.

Within half an hour, Bern had freed the child’s lower arm, digging so slowly that Dulcie wanted to yowl with impatience. The arm was so frail and so entangled with roots that it had to be a touchy job. It was so darkly stained by the earth in which it had lain that it seemed almost fused with the ground. Bern tried once, carefully, to remove it, but then he left it in place. He continued slowly removing the softer soil around it, fragment by tiny fragment, until he reached the little shoulder.

Despite the heavy rains that had wet the garden, the deeper earth was not sodden but only damp. As if the rainwater had drained quickly through the topsoil and, perhaps forming rivulets through the lower clay, had run off between the timbers of the retaining wall to the canyon below. Joe lay with his front paws tucked over the edge of the wall, so fascinated with Bern’s work he seemed to have forgotten that the doctor might look up any minute. When he did remember, he jerked up quickly, turning to lick his shoulder. He looked straight at Dulcie, too, but now his look was gentler. She softened her own gaze, and lifted a paw to him.

Below them, Dr. Bern had uncovered the child’s shoulder bone, working so slowly, Dulcie thought she’d explode from impatience. Both cats waited, unmoving, as inch by excruciating inch Bern’s excavation revealed the child’s head and, much later, the little upper torso. Bern’s face and high forehead were slick with sweat, not from heavy digging but from tension. Twice more he talked with Dr. Hyden, following the anthropologist’s instructions. The cats stared down at the child’s rib cage, at the delicate bones, at the little thin neck bone and the child’s fragile skull, and the friction between them, the foolish misunderstanding, seemed pointless. Except, when Dulcie thought of Lori’s unnamed fears, she saw too sharply the shadow of Lori superimposed over those little bones.

She started when she heard Wilma’s voice, and turned to look back up the garden. Wilma was leaving, telling Cora Lee and Mavity, loud enough for Dulcie to hear, that she was going to look again for “that runaway cat, help Lucinda and Pedric look. That kit will be the undoing of us all.” Glancing down the garden, Wilma gave Dulcie a reassuring look, then was gone. Dulcie heard her car door slam, heard her pulling away.

It was perhaps four hours later, when the little body was fully revealed, that Hyden and Anderson arrived. The cats heard their car pull in, heard two doors slam and a trunk open, then close. The first softer light of evening was falling, not dark yet but softening, and though the wind had died to a whisper, it had turned colder. The two men came around the house, pausing to speak with Dallas Garza.

Hyden was tall, very thin, with brown receding hair. His long, smooth face seemed filled with quiet patience. He wore loose, faded jeans, a limp khaki shirt, and high-top tennis shoes. He carried a black leather camera bag. James Anderson was shorter, very square, with coal-black hair, and with his deep, vivid coloring and high cheekbones, looked like he might have American Indian blood. He was dressed in a faded blue jumpsuit that had seen many launderings, and he wore leather sandals over white crew socks. He carried a small canvas bag that he set carefully on top the wooden retaining wall. At their arrival, Dulcie and Joe had moved away from the dig-these two didn’t look like they would tolerate cats in the way. They had a good enough view from the bushes without incurring any more wrath.

The men stood studying the body. Hyden talked with John Bern for some time, asking questions and making notes, while Anderson took pictures. Kneeling close to the bones, he shot just a few inches away, apparently aiming at the surrounding as much as the body, working so close Dulcie thought he must have a special lens. It was some time later that the coroner took his leave and the two anthropologists began, with painstaking care, to remove the frail bones from their grave. Fascinated, the cats didn’t think of leaving, of missing the smallest detail. The day was nearly gone, and officers were bringing lights and drop cords from the squad cars, and two large canvas bundles.

The cats watched Hyden and Anderson place the bones, one by one, in a long wooden box like a coffin, carefully packing each in folds of clean, soft paper. As horrifying as was this child’s grave, Dulcie was heartened by the care with which the doctors handled the little skeleton, exhibiting not only skill and precision but respect for this little human who had so violently lost its life. She looked with distaste at the head wound that had possibly killed the child, though there could have been any number of soft flesh wounds that the doctors would never find. They watched as four officers erected two long tents over the site, and two more officers set up the spotlights on tall poles, running a hundred-foot drop cord into the lower apartment of the seniors’ house. Dulcie looked at Joe and laid her paw on his.

“Ihaveto talk to you. I couldn’t tell you before. But now� with that little grave� Now I have to tell you.” Her mutter was so low that no human could hear. Joe looked at her and twitched an ear, and for nearly the first time in two weeks, the two cats were easy with each other. Moving close together, they left the bushes and made their way up the garden, through the falling dark. And as they padded away from the seniors’ house, they watched every shadow, listened to every tiniest sound, searching for the kit. They glanced back only once, down at the lower garden where the spotlights shone bright within the tents.

“Will they work all night?” Dulcie asked.

“Maybe. There could be more bodies, those guys are feverish to find out.”

“What kind of person would murder a little child?”

“Maybe thereisjust the one child, maybe it wasn’t a murder, maybe an accident, and whoever caused it panicked. Buried the child and ran.”

“Maybe,” Dulcie said doubtfully. And she took off through the tangled neighborhood gardens, then scrambled up a vine to the rooftops, Joe racing close beside her. And they headed, without discussing the matter, for the courthouse tower, where, from its high platform, they could see nearly all of the village.

12 [��������: pic_13.jpg]

Galloping across the peaks and shingles, swerving to the edges of the roofs, the cats peered over, searching the darkening streets for the kit. Dodging between stone chimneys and roof gardens, they scanned the alleys and the courtyards below them. They saw no cats at all, not one. Skirting third-floor penthouses with their tiled stairways and jutting dormers, they peered into windows blinded by drawn curtains or revealing empty rooms. They gained the narrow steps that spiraled up the courthouse tower, raced up thinking that they might, from the tower’s high parapet, see Kit, a small speck on the streets or roofs below.

In this California village where occasional earthquakes were a given, only a few buildings rose over two stories. The taller clock tower was a singular exception; it provided for the cats, and for space-loving villagers and bold tourists, a dramatic view of the small village. Who knew how safe the tower was, how well it could withstand a really hard temblor? Such matters did not bother a feline; a cat could usually detect a shake some minutes before it hit, long enough to race down to solid earth again.

Now, circling ever higher through the deepening evening, Joe glanced back at Dulcie and looked down longingly at the red tile roof of Molena Point PD, almost directly below them. In the brightening light of the early half-moon, the department beckoned to Joe, distracted him from Dulcie’s problem and even from searching for the kit. Fixed on Max Harper’s domain, he wondered if the fax machine was already spitting out electronic information, or if the dispatcher’s computer was feeding her data from long-dead files, buried intelligence that would provide Max Harper and Dallas Garza, and Joe himself, access to the lives of missing children-and perhaps of that one dead child.

Gaining the parapet, the two cats leaped from its open piazza to the top of the brick rail, five stories above the streets. Crouched on the rail, they watched the moon-washed clouds above them, and the car lights below flicking in and out beneath the pine and cypress trees. Scanning the ever-changing shadows of the rooftops, their gazes sought any small, dark shape racing or lurking, but half Joe’s attention remained on Molena Point PD. On the files from across the western states and from archived FBI records that, combined with information the forensics team would develop, was all they would have to identify the small victim. Though Dulcie didn’t see how, in this very old case, she and Joe could be of help. Even if the department was able to identify the child, this wasn’t the kind of murder where a cat could track a suspect or toss his house. This killer was years gone, could be dead himself.

But, she thought, Lori was not an old, unsolved case. And she looked with speculation at Joe. She felt so strongly that Lori needed them now, needed their help now-if theyknewhow to help her, without stirring up trouble for the child.

Stretching along the top of the brick rail, in the slanting moonlight, she studied Joe, then studied the stark shadows below among the peaks and chimneys, the pale rivers of the streets, the dark pools of the crowding trees. The world below seemed totally empty of cats. From the other side of the parapet, Joe looked across at her, his gray coat gleaming silver in the moonlight, the white strip down his nose squeezed into a frown, his yellow eyes narrowed with impatience. “So, spill it, Dulcie. You’ve been as closemouthed as a crooked cop.”

Dulcie looked at him, her tail twitching with nerves. “If I tell you, this is our secret. You won’t tell anyone? Not Clyde, not Wilma or Charlie?” She wished with all her heart that the kit was there, so she could tell her, too.

“This can’t be about the grave,” Joe said, “about the dead child. So is it about Patty Rose? But why�?”

Dropping down to the parapet, Dulcie stared up at him as he began to pace the rail, spinning back and forth on the thin barrier five stories above the roofs, his white paws seeming at every step to slide away into the night. He knew she hated that, hated when he indulged in fancy footwork on the edge of space.

“Come down and I’ll tell you. Come down now.”

Smiling, Joe paused on the edge, moonlight catching along his muscled shoulder.

“Come down, please. I promise I’ll tell you if you won’t grandstand.”

He glared at her, but then he dropped to the bricks, a whiskery leer on his face.

“But you have to promise not-”

“I don’thaveto promiseanything.Don’t play games, Dulcie!” He crouched to leap up again.

She moved in front of him, stood nose to nose with him, her body drawn up tall, her paw lifted and her claws out, as sharp as razors. “If you want to hear, you’ll promise not to bring Harper or the detectives into this, or any human. Not until we know the whole story.”

Joe waited, his ears back, his whiskers tight to his tomcat cheeks, his yellow eyes wide with challenge.

“Promise?”

“Tentatively,” he snarled, more a predatory growl than consent.

“I found a child, Joe. A little girl hiding in the library basement, in a walled-off part like a cave. She’s around twelve, and so determined to keep herself hidden. She has food, a blanket, everything. But so alone.”

“So why couldn’t you tell me that? Where did she come from? How long has she been there? If she’s run away, we’ll have to-”

“That’swhy I didn’t tell you. Because you’d say we have to tell Harper, that we have to drag in the law. Harper will only call county welfare to take care of her. That’s what the law has to do. And I think that’s part of the problem, I think she’s afraid of someone in child welfare.”

“Then tell Wilma. If you tell her the kid’s afraid of someone in the juvenile system-”

“Joe, Wilma is service oriented. Family services, alcohol rehab, drug rehab, job placement. She depended on them all when she was a probation and parole officer.” Dulcie lashed her tail with frustration; Joe looked back at her, his yellow eyes slowly softening. “Tell me about her, Dulcie. Tell me why she’s locked herself in there; it has to be like a prison. Tell me why she’s afraid.”

But while Dulcie and Joe talked about Lori in her self-imposed confinement, the child was turning handsprings in the moonlight. Giddy with a few minutes of stolen freedom, she didn’t guess that she might soon take fate into her own hands, might set in motion her own salvation.

Tonight she had waited, as she did every night in her black concrete hole, until the front door thudded closed for the last time and she heard its heavy bolt lock slide home. Until the last muffled sound faded, of library patrons and staff moving away down the walk and across the garden. She never felt safe until the library closed and everyone had gone, until nothing larger than the library cat could get in. Then, she had two choices. Some nights she just lit her little lamp and curled up under her blanket to read. Some nights she ran through the empty rooms and did cartwheels and laughed out loud, celebrating her freedom.

Tonight she went up into the children’s room because she had finished the fourth book of Narnia and wanted the next one. She always hated finishing, no matter how many times she read them.

Moving the bricks and slipping out through the hole, she had pushed aside the little bookcase, leaving the space open for a quick return. Clutching her flashlight, she had hurried up the stairs. The library was hers, the big, empty, moonlit rooms were hers, all the thousands of books were hers. Lori had not the wildest idea that the library cat often had exactly the same thought. No notion that tabby Dulcie coveted the books as she did. That, like Lori, the library cat reveled in the fact that she could read whatever she chose, that she could read all night if she wanted.

Though if Lori ever discovered Dulcie’s true nature, she would have no trouble believing. She was only twelve, and she was a reader. Despite her ugly brushes with the adult world, Lori’s capacity for wonder had not yet been crippled; she was too strong for that. The powerful life-giving acknowledgment of wonder, that life force that should carry a child on through adulthood had not been twisted by the adults of the world. In Lori’s case, maybe it never would be; she was a stubborn child.

In the main reading room she turned off her little flashlight and shoved it in her jeans pocket. Moving across the carpet, she stretched up in the moonlight and danced; she turned handsprings swimming through wavering fingers of light thrown by the wind through the tall windows. She was filled with wild, giddy freedom; she ran, she shouted softly in a breathy mock of a shout. She attempted backflips and collapsed giggling, fell over giggling, rolling on the carpet as wild with release as any caged young creature, celebrating the only freedom she was able to gain. Handspringing between the stacks and whirling across the reading room between the long tables, surrounded by thousands of books, Lori thought of Mama saying, “Be happy, Lori.” Oh, Mama would laugh at her, Mama would love that she had hidden here, taking charge of her own life. Mama said you had to be a problem solver if you wanted to survive.

When Pa turned so strange, Mama did what she could for him, she talked to doctors and she got help from the county. But when nothing helped, when Pa started to lock Lori in the house, Mama waited until he left for work, then packed them up and they were out of there, heading for Greenville. She wished Mama was here to read with her. The first time she’d stepped into Narnia she was really little and Mama read to her,The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,and she wished Mama was here now, to share it. To love her and hold her, the two of them wrapped in Mama’s quilt, wished they could talk and talk like they used to do. Moving across to the big, soft chairs by the fireplace, she took theMolena Point Gazettefrom its shelf because Mama always read the paper and Lori didn’t like to miss Snoopy or Mutts. The everyday funnies in this paper were in color just like on Sunday. Kneeling on the chair, she hunkered over the table. She liked “For Better or Worse,” too, but sometimes that one made her feel lonely. How would it be to have brothers and sisters, to be a big family all together with so much going on all the time and a father who loved you? The page opposite the comics always had a boring list of notices like charity events and dance recitals, but Lori read everything-pill bottles, cereal boxes. Now, in last week’s paper, she was reading about a boy at a beach barbecue who thought he could walk on coals when another article caught her eye. She grew very still. The name “Vincent and Reed Electrical Contractors” held her; the name was twice mentioned and that made her feel both proud and lost.

Tea to Be Held for Genelle Yardley

A tea will be held on Wednesday at Otter Pine Inn to honor Genelle Yardley on her sixty-sixth birthday. The tea will be hosted by Friends of the Library and by actress Patty Rose, in the inn’s charming tearoom. Ms. Yardley has recently placed into trust for Molena Point Library her commercial building next door to the library. On her death, this will provide for a new children’s wing and an enlarged reference collection. For many years, Ms. Yardley was known for her storytelling, for charming and original children’s fantasies set on the central coast. A small edition was published locally. The book has long been out of print and is a collectors’ item.

For the last twenty years of her career, Ms. Yardley was office manager for Vincent and Reed Electrical Contractors. She left the firm four years ago. She has continued to write folk tales that she has never sought to publish. She has spent much of her time working with Friends of the Library.

This Genelle Yardley had worked for Vincent and Reed, for Pa’s company. She’d worked for them for ever so long, since before Lori herself was born. Lori had heard the librarians talk about a Genelle something, and about a tea party, when she was up in the children’s room. One of the librarians said Genelle had something terminal, that meant you were going to die, like Mama. In Greenville, the doctor told the social worker that Mama was terminal; he thought she, Lori, wouldn’t know what that meant.

The librarian said Genelle’s neighbors would take her to the party, put her folding wheelchair in the car along with her oxygen tank. Mama had had an oxygen tank. Lori guessed that tea party must be something this Genelle wanted very much before she died. Where do you go when you die?Mama, if you’re somewhere, can’t you tell me? Can’t you just give me a sign, like a seagull flying around my head three times when I go out in the dark morning? Or like a seal rising up out of the ocean to look at me in a special way? Something so I’llknowthere’s another place and you’re in it?

Or are you too far away to do that?

Or is there nothing? Are you just cold dead, rotting in the ground?But Lori wouldn’t let herself think that, she couldn’t think that Mama had just stopped being, disappeared into nothing. She had to be somewhere.

And this Genelle Yardley who was going to die like Mama. Was she scared? Had Mama been scared, underneath, and never told her? Or did Mama really know for sure where she was going? But how could anyone know?

And more important right now was the fact that Genelle Yardley knew Pa. She’d worked for Pa, had worked for him a long time. Maybe Genelle Yardley knew what happened to Pa to make him so different all of a sudden. Maybe she knew things that even Mama didn’t know?

Did Mama ever go to Genelle Yardley to ask questions? No matter how Mama tried to understand what made Pa change, he would never talk to her, he only shouted at her.

As far as Lori knew, Mama had never gone to any of their friends for help. Mama would have been ashamed to do that.

Sliding down from the chair, Lori headed across the reading room with a whole new plan flaring in her mind. Genelle Yardley knew about Pa. Genelle Yardley knew secrets that she, Lori, needed to find out.

Up the little half flight of seven steps, two at a time, she slipped behind the checkout desk. Shining her flashlight into the shelves beneath the counter, she hauled out the phone book and laid it on the floor. She found a pencil on the desk and a scrap of paper, and knelt on the carpet. Licking the end of the pencil, she found and wrote down Genelle Yardley’s address, then turned to the front of the phone book to find the village map. She tried to imagine what Genelle Yardley looked like. She was old. Lori didn’t know that people worked until they were over sixty. She wondered if Genelle Yardley had ever been to their house when she, Lori, was little, wondered if she’d ever seen her. She kept wondering if Mamahadever gone to ask that old lady what was wrong with Pa.

Maybe Genelle Yardley didn’t know, either. Maybe she couldn’t help her, but Lori had to try.

This would be the farthest she’d ever gone from the library since she came to live here like a hobbit in a hole. Like Mr. Baggins, she thought, smiling. Only his hobbit hole was a lot bigger, with all kinds of rooms, and was full of hams and bread and cider that she wished her hideout had, too.

She’d have to go before it got light. Even so, she likely wouldn’t get back from Genelle Yardley’s house until it was bright morning. She’d have to wait all day, until nine that night, before she could be safe in her cave again.

And she couldn’t hang around the library for too long, and draw attention from the librarians. Some of those women might remember her, from when she was little and Mama worked here. And she didn’t dare be seen during school hours.

She wrote down the streets that climbed the hills to Genelle Yardley’s, wrote where to turn and when to start looking for the number. The house was so high up the hills that ithada number. Those in the village didn’t. If someone told another person where they lived, it was like, “Third house on Lincoln north of Fourth.” People who lived in the village went to the post office to get their mail.

Going up the hills, she’d have to watch for Pa’s truck, out early going to some job. Hide if she saw him. But what worried her was the other man, the man she’d seen standing in the shadows one morning when she went out. She’d seen him later, too, when she slipped out before it was hardly light to walk on the beach. Probably she imagined he was watching her. Probably some homeless man with nowhere to go. Anyway, he was very thin and small, not much taller than she was, and Mama said she was strong for her age. Mama showed her things she could do to get away from someone, things that could hurt a person, so she wasn’t very scared of him.

Folding her slip of paper with the streets and address, she flicked off her flashlight and crossed the library to the stairs. As she headed down to the basement, the courthouse clock struck ten-two hours until midnight. She thought to set her alarm for really early, maybe four A.M. No one would see her on the streets then, it would be deep dark. Windy and cold, too. Pa sure wouldn’t be out at that hour.

But that man, he’d been out there early, before dawn. She looked out at the moonlight, bright now with the moon right overhead. She could go even earlier; he wouldn’t be out in the middle of the night, would he? Maybe no one would. She could hurry up the hills to Genelle Yardley’s house and hide in the bushes until the old lady woke up. Until Ms. Yardley turned on a light in the morning or came out to get the paper. If anyone bothered her she’d kick them in the groin, the way Mama taught her.

As Lori bricked herself back into the basement room again and set her little alarm for one in the morning, five blocks away the kit pressed the two brown envelopes up between a floor joist and a plumbing pipe. Secure just inside the vent grid where a cop could reach in, they would not be seen by the casual passerby. Now, with the envelopes safe, the kit circled the underhouse again, frantic to get out. She circled, pawing uselessly at the other two vents, but both were fixed tight to the wall. With screws, she thought. She hooked her claws in but couldn’t pull them out.

Studying the concrete foundation, wondering how deep it went, she found a soft place in the dirt where she could smell the old, dry scent of squirrels, where their digging had made the ground soft.

Thanking the little rodents that normally she would eat, she began to excavate the churned earth, kicking dirt behind her like a terrier. Her panic at being trapped was worst of all when she did nothing; she needed to move, it eased her to dig even if she had to dig to China. Listening for his car, she clawed down and down, wondering if he was coming back or if he was gone for good. She thought the time was past midnight. She dug straight down for nearly a foot, fighting the dirt away from the concrete wall, trying to find its bottom, scraping the skin from her paws until they bled again. And still the concrete went deeper.

After a long, long time of digging she found a straight edge to the concrete, where it turned under. Her paws hurt bad. She was very thirsty. And hungry. But the discovery of the bottom of that concrete filled her with terrible joy. Pausing, she thought she would just rest for a little while before she dug on through and up the other side. Soon enough she’d be free, be out of there and free.

13 [��������: pic_14.jpg]

Above the courthouse tower the clouds moved away; the full force of moonlight washed down across the parapet, caressing the two cats, etching Dulcie’s black and brown stripes like a black ink drawing. She lay licking her paw, watching Joe, her ears back in a thoughtful frown but trying to remain silent, letting Joe come to his own conclusion.

“Maybe you’re right about Harper,” he said at last. “If we tell the cops about the child, they’ll have little choice, they’re bound by law to call child welfare-if the kid’s really all alone, if there’s no family.” He studied Dulcie, his yellow eyes narrowed and appraising. “But Wilma’s retired, she’s a free agent, she’s not beholden to the law. She can do as she pleases.”

“But what would she do? You know how she feels about help from the proper officials, she’s all for it.”

“Maybe. But she isn’t stupid. She knows how twisted some of those agencies can be. You get one bad apple�”

Dulcie shrugged. “I suppose. So frustrating that I can’t ask Lori questions. That I can only hope she tells me more. I don’t know why she doesn’t want anything to do with child welfare. And the man she talks about, she just sayshe.I don’t know if someone’s stalking her, or if the man is family. I tried to find her last name in the library database for library cardholders, for children’s cards with the first name Lori. Took me all night, those computers are so temperamental. Why don’t they make a steadier machine, one that doesn’t go off in a hundred directions?”

“A cat-friendly computer.”

“Exactly. Someone ought to write to Bill Gates. Well, there’s no library card for Lori, not one Molena Point child named Lori in the system.” She told him how she had discovered Lori in the first place, when the scent of peanut butter and jelly drew her across the library basement to the bricked-up wall behind a little bookcase.

“It was late, after the library closed, ten days ago. That’s where I’ve been. She gets so lonely, especially at night. And it’s dark in there all day. It took a lot of resolve for the kid to hide there, and I think it takes a lot more to stay.”

Her green eyes were big with concern. “She’s not playing, Joe. She’s made a safe little home for herself; she’s thought it all out. She keeps her toothbrush and extra clothes and a bedroll in her backpack, and hides it in a rough niche in the wall-I think she must have dug the loose bricks out herself, maybe with a pair of scissors from the workroom. There are bits of concrete scattered on the floor, which she’s pushed into a heap. And the hole where she enters her little basement, she fits loose bricks back into that really carefully.”

Dulcie smiled, her pale whiskers gleaming in the moonlight. “She does her laundry in the ladies’ room after the library closes at night, hangs it in her basement from the rough, sticking-out bricks. Folds and hides the dried clothes when she wakes up in the morning, before the library opens, her little socks and panties, or a blouse, afraid someone might move the bricks and look in.

“It’s hard,” Dulcie said, “with librarians working just on the other side of the wall. Hard to stay there in the dark and cold, alone. To only come out at night and early in the morning to use the bathroom and get books. She has everything she needs, though. And she never lets herself look seedy, never misses brushing her teeth, combing her hair, keeping her clothes fresh. She took a little lamp from the library storeroom, and she has a big tin can she empties at night to use as a makeshift bathroom in the daytime. Most children wouldn’t do all that. There’s an electric plug in there, but her lamp is the battery kind. Maybe the room was part of the library basement once or of the basement across the alley.”

Joe frowned but said nothing.

“That room is underneath the alley, it has to be. I think it must have once joined the basement of the other building.”

“Why would someone build-”

“It was originally all one house, in the 1800s. Gardens, stables, a carriage house. A little estate that filled the whole block. I found pictures in a history of Molena Point. The alley was a carriageway between the big house and the servants’ quarters, where those apartments and the men’s shop are now. Genelle Yardley’s parents deeded the main house to the village for a library, but kept the servants’ building for rentals. Genelle has lived partly on that income since her husband died and she retired.

“Somewhere along the way, the lane became a paved service alley. Maybe it was then that the basement beneath was walled off. Maybe something to do with ownership or property rights. Or the weight of the garbage trucks on top of the basement, who knows.”

“You did a lot of research.”

“I wanted to know where that room came from. And where it might once have led.” She looked up past the little parapet roof at the slowly dropping moon. “I wanted to know if there might be another way in or out of there, but there doesn’t seem to be.” Talking about Lori made her sad. Lori, with her little heart-shaped face and the way her mouth tilted up at the corners, and her dark, huge eyes. Dulcie always wanted to touch her with a soft paw, rub her face against Lori and purr. When Lori’s tears came, Dulcie had to snuggle close; and when the child pressed her face into Dulcie’s fur, Dulcie licked her shining brown hair. “Somehow,” Dulcie said, “she got hold of someone’s library card, maybe stole it. With that she can open the card lock to the women’s bathroom. She brought a flashlight with her, and even extra batteries, and she has a little battery-operated clock. And sheknowsthat library, Joe. Knows her way around.

“Why has no one missed her?” Dulcie asked. “We’d have heard, if someone was looking for a lost child. When she slips outside, in the early morning before it’s light, sneaks out through the basement window, she makes sure no one is on the street or sitting in a car. Makes sure no police car’s parked around the corner.

“She’s really skittery; she startles if anything moves, stays in the shadows against the buildings. She must crave getting out. Every couple of days, she goes to walk the shore and drop her little bag of trash and wet paper towels in the public garbage cans.”

“And you follow her.”

Dulcie twitched her ear. “The child’s as clever as a cat herself.”

“The streets are lonely that time of morning, Dulcie. Have you thought about someone grabbing her? Even in Molena Point-”

“I’d rake and bite so hard he’d never grab another child.” Dulcie cut him a fierce green-eyed look. “The real problem is, Lori’s little stash of canned food won’t last much longer. Maybe another three or four days. I don’t know if she has any money to slip out and buy more, or if she’d dare go in the market in broad daylight. It’s so frustrating not to know who she’s hiding from, not to know what happened to her.”

“Maybe she has no one, maybe her parents are dead. A homeless child?”

“She doesn’t look homeless. There’ve been no reports of a homeless person found dead. And why suddenly move into the library? To get out of the cold and rain? But� I don’t know. It doesn’t add up. And if someone died recently in the village, a neighbor or school official would report that the child was alone. Everyone would be looking for her.”

“Maybe she ran away from home, and her parents think she’ll get over it and come back?”

“After nearly two weeks? What kind of parents wouldn’t report her missing?”

Joe shrugged. “The kind you know are out there. The no-good ones.” He looked hard at her. “So why didn’t you trust me enough to tell me?”

“I didn’t trust you not to go to the law.”

“That’s not saying much.”

“It’s saying a lot. It’s saying you think like a cop, Joe. That you’d start checking Captain Harper’s desk for fliers on a lost child, watching the computers, listening to every conversation.”

Joe shrugged. “The whole department will be looking now, with a body to identify. Checking the files for lost children.”

“They’ll be checking old cases, not recent ones.”

“And the kit? Why didn’t you tell the kit?”

She widened her eyes, and Joe grinned. Of course she wouldn’t tell the kit-Kit would be right down there in the basement making up to Lori, so fascinated that she would find it hard not to speak to the child. Or to blurt out Lori’s business to some trusted human.

“Anyway,” Dulcie said, “before Patty’s murder, Kit was too busy playing grand lady, living like a queen in her penthouse, letting Lucinda and Pedric spoil her. And now�,” she said, “now�”

“She’ll turn up, Dulcie. Kit always turns up.” But he leaped restlessly to the brick rail again, pacing, peering down at the moonlit streets for a small, dark feline shape hurrying along, and studying the darkly pooled treetops and shadows. Dulcie, leaping up to join him, wished with all her heart that Kit was at that moment safe in the penthouse, still being spoiled rotten, listening to Lucinda’s favorite Dixieland jazz records and ordering outrageous delicacies from room service.

“So what happens,” Joe said, “when Lori runs out of food? You plan to deliver takeout through the basement window?”

She looked at him bleakly.

“I’ll keep my mouth shut, Dulcie,” the tomcat said with unusual constraint. “I do promise. It’s your call. But where do we go from here?”

She smiled and nuzzled him, purring and loving him. “I don’t know where. Don’t know where to go from here.”

Joe licked his shoulder, then turned his yellow gaze on her. “You wouldn’t consider asking for help? Someone who won’t go to the law or to Harper.”

Dulcie drew away, alarmed. “Who? Not Charlie, she’s Harper’s wife, we can’t burden her. And Kate Osborne’s out of the picture, moving up to Seattle. And Clyde, besides being Harper’s best friend, really does think too much like a cop. And right now, Lucinda and Pedric are way too worried about the kit; I don’t feel like putting anything more on them. So who�?”

“But you’ve always trusted Wilma.”

She licked her paw. “I know. I’m ashamed not to trust her this time.”

“And it would be natural for her to discover Lori’s hiding place,” Joe said, “working in the library. Dulcie, Wilma won’t blow the whistle. Wilma raised you from a kitten, she’s your best friend.”

“You’re my best friend. Wilma’s second best.” She sat thinking. “But maybe you’re right. Maybe� she always does listen. Pays attention to me, to what I think.”

Joe studied again the angles and planes that tumbled below them, the jumble of rooftops and trees and balconies, and he dropped down to the parapet beside her. “You do what you think best. Meanwhile, I’ll just nose around the department, see if there are any recent fliers on runaway children.” And before she could reply, he was racing away down the tower’s spiraling stairs, heading for the PD.

She watched him from the rail. He was burning to get his teeth into the files on those old unsolved cases. He was a racing streak as he rounded each curve of the stairs, appearing, then vanishing until he burst out across the courthouse roof and into the oak tree above Molena Point PD. There she lost him as he scrabbled down the thick trunk; she glimpsed him for a second as he dropped to the sidewalk twisting in midair to crouch before the glass door. And even before the door was unlocked from within by the cat-friendly dispatcher, Dulcie herself was gone, racing down the brick steps to the icy sidewalk, heading out to search for Kit. As she watched the shadows and circled, peering into crevices, looking for the tattercoat, the courthouse clock struck midnight; she was glad they’d left the tower, the chimes were hellishly loud when you were right on top of them. In her search this time, she looked for silent little unmoving forms, and prayed she wouldn’t find one.

Turning to retrace an elusive scent, stopping to explore the blackness beneath steps and porches, she didn’t dare call the kit. Even in the middle of the night, who knew when some human might be out late, or standing sleepless at an open window? Or someone homeless asleep in a dark niche, who would wake to hear a cat shouting in his face. Her eyes burned into the night, searching silently, her ears rigid, the delicate antennae of her whiskers following every twist of air.

And as Dulcie fretted and worried, not four blocks away the kit lay curled up beneath the old rental house, sound asleep beside the hole she had dug. The hole to freedom that she had only half finished. Exhausted and thirsty, feeling weak from lack of supper, she slept deeply. She had no notion that both Joe and Dulcie were so near, Joe approaching Molena Point PD, and Dulcie just a few blocks away quietly looking for her.

14 [��������: pic_15.jpg]

Pawing at the heavy glass door of Molena Point PD, Joe pressed his nose against its cold surface, peering into the booking area. Except for the dispatcher, the small room was empty. To his left, the holding cell with its barred door was empty of prisoners, too. Behind the dispatcher’s U-shaped counter Mabel Farthy sat among her radios and phones and computers, half turned away from the door and busy with a call. He meowed loudly. Very likely she didn’t hear him through the thick bulletproof glass and over the noise of the phone and radio. Mabel was square, sturdy, blond, and in her mid-fifties. She must just have had her hair done because the color was brighter than usual, the short, layered cut neatly coiffed. She had a phone to her ear and was talking into the radio as well, apparently fielding a call and sending out a unit. Through the heavy glass, Joe couldn’t hear her words, but Mabel seemed well in control, keeping the caller on the line as she relayed information to a responding unit. From somewhere north of the village, a siren started to whoop, moving away fast into the hills. Mabel didn’t look up until the siren stopped, likely as the unit arrived.

As she hung up the phone and turned to the fax machine, Joe reared up, throwing all his weight against the glass. He was barely able to rattle the heavy lock in its metal frame; his violent effort elicited only a tiny thunk.

But that small sound was enough to bring Mabel straight up from her chair, reaching for the alarm button and touching her holstered automatic. Then she saw Joe peering in.

Hitting the remote instead of the alarm, she released the lock and came around the counter to pull the door open. She shook her head at him, grinning. “You are such a little freeloader.”

Smiling up at her, Joe sauntered in taking his sweet time, slow and unhurried, in the best feline tradition.

“Hurry it up, Joe! You want to let in the whole village?” She glanced up and down the street. “I haven’t got all night. What is it with cats!”

Mabel had cats at home and, apparently, a husband who was just about as indolent. As soon as Joe strolled through the door, she pressed it closed again and tested that it had locked. He looked up at her innocently and rubbed against her leg. Mabel gave him an impatient but amused sigh. Mabel was always good about letting them into the station; she had no idea how much he hated having to ask.

There had been a time when Joe and Dulcie could paw the unlocked station door open whenever they pleased, to wander in and out of the big squad room. That was before Max Harper remodeled the interior of the building, increasing department security. Before the more dangerous elements in the world had extended their influence quite so stubbornly into the small village�

Before Molena Point rocked with an explosion that blew up the village church; before a meth lab sprang up back in the woods and another north of the village, poisoning surrounding land and water; before the Medellin cartel increased its visits to these small coastal towns, cars full of thugs driving up from L.A. to break out plate-glass windows and steal millions in precious stones. Now Molena Point had joined the larger world. This village might be small, but it was a well-to-do tourist retreat. There were, among the upscale shops, twenty-three jewelry stores, and many times that in the surrounding towns of the county. Tourists meant money, and Molena Point lived on the largesse of happy shoppers.

The tomcat didn’t much like the increases necessary in departmental security that came with intensified village crime. But it didn’t matter what he liked, one cat can’t change the world. Though Joe had some thoughts on how to do just that, if ever the opportunity arose. In his view, if humans took a more feline stance in these matters, the crime rate would drop like a stone.

Meantime, he could fight the bad guys on his own terms, as much as he was able. And so far he and Dulcie and Kit had done all right. Over a dozen killers and assorted thieves were living very well at the expense of California taxpayers, including a couple of folks awaiting the state’s attention on death row.

Joe wondered if evil came in waves throughout history. If tides of evil grew powerful, as in the Dark Ages, and then eased off. Maybe good and evil were forever changing balance over the decades, each increasing, then waning.

But to what end? And why did he think about this stuff! These were matters for human deliberation, these abstractions didn’t worry most cats. Your ordinary everyday tomcat lived for the moment, lived to kill and make love, sleep in the sun, take happiness where he found it. Not waste his time pondering philosophical ambiguities. Your everyday garden-variety tomcat didn’t give a damn about the state of the world. He whiled away his nine lives manipulating humans when the occasion arose, and thoroughly enjoying himself.

So why am I different? Why are Dulcie and Kit different, why do we care about these things? Why do we spend our talents and energy so freely to cure the ills of the world?

Joe didn’t have the answer. That was the way he was made. His curiosity, his fierce predatory skills, and his natural ability to outsmart humans had combined in a new way. His enraged, often amused drive to set straight the flawed rejects of the human world seemed to Joe himself insatiable. Feline undercover work was a huge and fascinating chess game, with the highest possible stakes.

Leaping onto Mabel’s counter, Joe looked up into her round, motherly smile wondering what she’d brought for supper. Mabel Farthy was always pleased to see him. Mabel’s brown, laughing eyes and happy expression inspired total confidence from beast or child-just as her acumen with a.38 police special, when needed, could inspire respect from an assortment of miscreants who might misjudge her motherly appearance. A matronly lady with a little extra fat on the hips did not necessarily add up to ineptitude in the arts of law enforcement.

“So, you little bum.” Mabel scratched behind Joe’s ears in just the way he liked. “You hungry? When were you ever not hungry?” Reaching under the counter of her busy electronic cubicle, she drew forth the paper bag containing her lunch, which she’d stashed on a lower shelf. Mabel, in packing her lunches, seemed always to allow generous portions for any visiting felines.

Joe purred extravagantly as she unwrapped a piece of fried chicken. Mabel made the best fried chicken; Joe didn’t know what she did to it, but it smelled like the kind of chicken he imagined would be served in cat heaven. And Mabel Farthy well understood that a helpless little cat, wandering many blocks from home, would be hungry on these cold winter nights.

Removing the chicken from the bone, she tore it into small pieces, which she laid on one of a supply of paper plates that she kept beneath the counter for just this purpose. Next to Mr. Jolly, who owned the deli, Mabel had turned into the second-finest provider in the village in matters feline.

The chicken didn’t last long; Joe tore into Mabel’s offering as if he hadn’t eaten in months. When he’d finished, holding the plate down with his paw, he licked it as clean as would a ravenous dog. Mabel, tossing the empty plate in the wastebasket, wiped her hands on one of those damp paper squares that she pulled from a little cylinder, then stood stroking him for a few minutes.

When she returned to the fax machine, sorting through the pages it had spewed forth, Joe wandered along the counter to Harper’s report box. Still purring, he studied the fresh copy, smelling the faint aroma of the laser-jet toner. Reading the top sheet, he smiled.

He must be on a roll. He’d lucked out not only with fried chicken, but apparently with a full printout of the witness interviews from the murder of Patty Rose. Pretending to wash his shoulder, he sat reading, wanting badly to lift a paw and flip the top sheet away, restraining himself with difficulty.

But the top summary sheet said all that was really necessary. Max Harper’s and the two detectives’ interviews of the witnesses was one big ho-hum. One gigantic blank. Not one of those present in the bar or restaurant or in their rooms saw anything out of the ordinary. Half a dozen people heard shots, or what sounded like shots, but no onesawanything. Garza’s summary described interviews so negative that one had to wonder if these folks were hiding something.

But that was a paranoid thought.Nowwho was imagining things? Turning away with disgust, he pushed close to Mabel to have a look at the growing pile of faxes that she was sorting into neat stacks. Rubbing lovingly against her arm, Joe scanned the reports beneath her fast-moving hands.

Nice. Very nice. These were the missing-child cases; and more were coming in, in a steady production from the fax machine.

All were old cases, five years, ten, fifteen years. Unsolved cases that might have been brought out now and then, at infrequent intervals, when an officer had some new line on child abductions, some new hint at a solution. But cases that were filed away again, unsolved. One case in Portland was over twenty years old.

Picking up the stack, Mabel thumped it on the counter to align the edges, put the stack in the copier, and ran two more sets. So many children lost, no closure to their disappearance, no answers for their families. What was the background on these kids? Did they have something in common? Joe burned for a long look, undisturbed. What kind of kids were they, what kind of families? Did these kids come from stable households, or live with drunks or in broken homes? Where did they go to school? Were they problem students? Runaways who’d been picked up by some lowlife-disaster waiting to happen?

Which child was this, buried in the seniors’ garden? Was his or her background included among these cases? And would the forensics team, tonight or tomorrow, find more bodies? There was only one word for the murder of innocent children. Evil. Complete evil.

Licking his paw, he watched Mabel set up a cross-referencing chart on her computer, listing the cases by date and location, and by age of child. None seemed to have occurred any closer to Molena Point than Seattle to the north, and Orange County to the south. Dr. Hyden had said it would take some time to determine the age of the corpse but that, given the Molena Point climate, and if the body had been buried soon after death, it might date from four to ten years ago. When Mabel finished sorting, and no more faxes had come through, Joe curled up in her out box to await further electronically generated intelligence.

Yawning, he felt his eyes droop. It had been a long night. A long day and previous night; he had not had his cat’s share of sleep. Tucking his nose under his paw, shielding his eyes from the harsh overhead lights, he felt himself drop into a doze. Just a few minutes, he thought, to renew his energy, to prepare for future action. Yawning again, Joe slept.

15 [��������: pic_16.jpg]

Stretched across the dispatcher’s out box, his hind legs sticking out, Joe woke blearily. Beyond the glass doors, the big front parking lot was alive with headlights. Cars were pulling in, officers coming on for last watch. Private vehicles, and half a dozen police units, as well, returning from late watch. He yawned heavily. He could hear, out behind the building, several units leaving the smaller, fenced-in parking area that was reserved for official cars. Cold blasts of air ruffled his fur as officers trooped in by twos and threes. Retracting his hind paws and licking one pad, he sat up in the box yawning. But when Max Harper swung in, Joe leaped down to a shelf beneath Mabel’s counter. Mabel glanced at him sharply. Looking up, he yawned in her face and curled up for another nap as if the commotion had disturbed him.

But, listening to officers joking with Harper as they moved down the hall, Joe dropped to the floor and followed, pausing outside the squad room. Harper was saying, “� Brown and Wrigley will be posted. You have a be-on-the-lookout for a man Lucinda Greenlaw saw hanging around the inn.” Harper described the small man, the same description that would appear in the be-on-the-lookout notice. He gave them some particulars on the murder, and on the bullets that hadkilled Patty. “Likely a small caliber,” he said. “Could be a twenty-two.” He filled the officers in on the child’s grave. “Hyden and Anderson are down from Sacramento, may still be working. About an hour ago, they uncovered a second body�” In the hall, Joe’s ears pricked up sharply and he edged nearer the door. “� child about the same age,” Harper said.

A young rookie asked about the gender of the children, and how they’d died.

“Hard to tell what sex,” Harper said. “May never know. First child died, apparently, from a blow to the head. Second body, they’ve only uncovered a leg and part of the torso so far.”

There were a couple more questions, the chief discussed half a dozen more situations, and the officers filed out, heading for their units. Joe imagined them settling into the cold, black leather seats of their squad cars, their holstered guns and handcuffs and all the equipment they must wear pressing into their butts and backs, imagined them moving about into just the right worn position to get comfortable, some of them balancing coffee mugs. Imagined the late watch revving their adrenaline along with their engines, heading out on patrol not knowing whether they might have to use their handguns, might get shot tonight or have to shoot-or spend the shift bored out of their skulls.

They would be watching for Patty’s killer, though. Smiling, Joe trotted on down the hall and into Max Harper’s dark office, just beating Harper and Garza there. When they came in, he was curled up in the bookcase between two volumes of the California civil code. He watched Garza dump water in Harper’s coffeepot and drop in a prepacked filter. He liked the scent of coffee, it spoke to him of camaraderie, easy friendship-and of ready information.

Harper, tossing the three stacks of faxes and printouts on his desk, eased into his leather chair. The chief looked tired. Garza poured their coffee and picked up a set of the printouts. From the shelf, Joe had a fine view of Harper’s desk. On top the stack was the chart that Mabel had prepared.

Garza didn’t glance up into the bookshelves, but the detective knew he was there. A change in Garza’s body language and movement connected him to Joe almost as if he had looked straight up at the tomcat. Setting his coffee mug on the low table, he settled into the leather easy chair. And Joe settled down more comfortably among the books, thinking about the second body.

The officers were not surprised by the second grave. Nor was Joe. Nothing surprised a cop, and Joe had acquired much the same view of the world. That first grave had never really seemed like the cover-up for, say, a single accidental death. His natural tomcat cynicism, honed by close association with law enforcement, had left him expecting more bodies.

Now, with so many old, unsolved cases concentrated all in one area of the Northwest, his imagination had already jumped ahead to what he imagined Hyden and Anderson might yet find, and he shivered.

Though that preconception was not always wise police work, it was the way the tomcat operated; so far, it had worked for him. He looked around the office, waiting for Harper to flip through a stack of unrelated papers that had been left on his desk, checking for anything urgent, before he got down to the subject at hand. Joe liked Harper’s new office, he liked seeing the chief in a more comfortable environment. With the building’s renovation, the old, open squad room with its tangle of desks and noise and constant hustle was no more. The chief had had only a scarred old desk at the back of the busy, forty-by-forty-foot space, a habitat as spartan as that of a prison guard’s.

Now Harper and his two detectives had private offices, and all the officers had much-improved facilities. A more efficient report-writing room, an updated firing range in the basement, a larger and better-appointed coffee room. And thanks to Charlie, Harper’s own office was a welcome retreat, with its brown leather couch and matching chair and an oriental rug, all of which had been wedding presents from Charlie, items not considered essential by those city officials who spent the taxpayers’ money-though some of them hadn’t stinted on their own offices.

But the city had sprung for a new walnut desk for Max, and walnut bookcases, as well, unwittingly providing a convenient though unofficial satellite office, as it were, for certain feline operatives.

Charlie’s framed drawings of Max’s buckskin gelding hung on the pale walls, lending a handsome finishing touch to the room. Joe was sure that, if not for Charlie’s influence, Max would have moved into his new digs with the old battered desk that looked like some World War II government reject, the government-issue, service-grade vinyl-tile floor, and his dented and mismatched file cabinets. Max would likely have brought in a couple of hard chairs for visitors, and been perfectly happy with bare walls to look at-if the chief ever had time to simply look at the walls.

Below him, Max studied the faxes. “This one in Half Moon Bay is the only one in California.”

“Sure doesn’t fall in with the rest,” Garza said. “Newer, too. Two years.”

Juana Davis came in, poured herself a cup of coffee, picked up the other stack of copies from Harper’s desk, and sat down on the leather couch. Placing her coffee cup on the end table, she slipped off her shoes. “Hyden and Anderson all tucked in?” Juana yawned, looking as if she meant to head for home, too, very shortly.

“When I left,” Harper said, “they were still at it. They’ve uncovered a second body.”

Davis nodded, as if she was not surprised. She looked at the chart, remarked on the Santa Cruz case, then was quiet, studying the comparisons. Joe could see Max’s copy clearly, over the chief’s left shoulder. Mabel had laid it out in three time periods, giving not only date and place but the barest facts as well. For Joe, this was far more legible than the computer screen where, too often, the lights bounced and reflected. From the preliminary forensics information on the new grave, some of these cases were way too old.

In two instances, twenty years ago, the suspected abductor had been a father who did not have custody and was never apprehended. Fifteen years ago, a missing Oregon child was later found, washed up from the ocean. The time frame of the other cases, where children hadn’t been found, ran in three batches. The oldest three cases were children who had disappeared nearly fifty years ago. That seemed monstrous to Joe, that those cases had not been solved after half a century and, most likely, never would be. Their parents were dead and gone, their siblings growing old.

Seven cases in the Pacific Northwest had occurred between six and eight years ago. That would fit Hyden’s guess on this time of death. Those children had lived in an area that ran from Tacoma to Seattle. All had disappeared from schoolyards or from playgrounds near their own schools. None had been found. “Full cases on the way?” Davis asked. Harper nodded.

In the largest group of missing children, the bodies had been found; that was some thirty years ago, again not a match. But the officers knew this case, and read with deep interest, making Joe frown. Looking for some connection? Those deaths had occurred in the L.A. area, from 1971 to 1974. All twelve children were found in 1974. Harper looked up at Davis and Garza. “You knew that Patty Rose’s grandson was one of them.”

The officers nodded. From the report, the bodies had been buried in the walls of a condemned and boarded-up church that was waiting to be torn down. Four men were subsequently arrested. A Kendall Border and a Craig Vernon of Norwalk, a Harold Timmons of L.A., and an Irving Fenner of Glendale. The children were between the ages of four and seven, all from the greater L.A. area.

Harper said, “Patty’s daughter, the little boy’s mother, was killed soon afterward in what appeared to be a one-car wreck. Car went over a cliff, up in Canada. No one could ever prove it was other than an accident.” Harper had that intense, bird-dog look on his face that rang all kinds of alarms for Joe.

“Craig Vernon, the child’s father, got murder one, as did Border. Both were put to death. There was not enough evidence to convict Timmons or Fenner for murder. Timmons got fifteen on circumstantial evidence, Fenner twenty-five, same charge.

“They were members of a small, pseudo-religious cult led by Fenner. They met three or four times a week, without city permission, in the condemned church. Over the years, Patty told me quite a bit.

“Marlie and Craig Vernon had been married about seven years. They both worked in the film industry, Marlie as a secretary, Craig in the script department of MGM. He started staying out late, not telling Marlie where he’d been. She had the usual suspicions, that it was another woman. But then he began to look at and treat their little boy strangely. Asking him a lot of questions. Acting, Patty said, more like the child’s psychiatrist than his father. That’s the way she put it.

“When children in the L.A. area began to disappear, Marlie grew uneasy. Started putting things together-Craig’s actions, the newspaper stories. By the time she grew sufficiently alarmed to do anything, to report Craig, it was too late.” Harper shuffled the papers on his desk. “The sitter usually left at five and Craig would be there with the boy until Marlie got home around six-thirty.

“She got home from work on a Friday night, both Craig and the boy were gone. When Craig got home around midnight, she’d already called the police. He said he’d left around four, had to run some errands. Said he left the boy with the sitter, paid her extra to stay late.

“Sitter testified that she’d left at the usual time, that Craig was there, no discussion of her staying later, that nothing had seemed any different than usual.” When Harper moved his chair, Joe slipped along the bookcase so he could still see the reports.

“There were five additional cult members who were never tied directly to the murders. Timmons came out in 1990. The cult leader, Fenner, came out on parole in 1997. Two years later he was back inside on a molesting accusation, got out again just a few months ago.”

“Whatwasthe cult?” Davis asked. “Another sick religion like Manson’s?”

“Fenner started out as a schoolteacher,” Harper said. “Misfit, apparently. Lost his position at several schools, never made tenure. After that he worked as a social worker in a dozen cities under different names, forged credentials. Sure as hell, if we looked at it, we’d find missing children in those areas. And find he was gathering disciples, even then. A pretty sick religion, from what Patty told me. Fenner believed that unusually bright children were put here by the devil. Sent by the devil to destroy the world.”

Davis shook her head. “How were they supposed to do that?”

“Take over corporations, political groups. Slowly build up their own rule that would destroy mankind.”

“Too many bad trips,” Garza said. “Or maybe the bright kids in his classes got the best of him.”

Harper shrugged. “He thought if he could rid the world of all the brighter-than-average children, he could bring about universal peace.”

Davis looked sickened. She shuffled through the reports, scanning them, then looked up. “Patty Rose testified against Vernon.”

Harper nodded. “She didn’t like to talk about the trial. It was Marlie’s testimony that really incriminated Craig, and, apparently, Fenner. Patty believed Marlie was killed because of her testimony-Patty said her own testimony didn’t amount to anything, that she didn’t have much to tell.” Harper frowned. “Patty never described Fenner to me.

“I never asked her much about that time, just let her talk, vent when she wanted to.” He bent to the reports again, as did Davis and Garza. Behind Harper, Joe lay down, drooping his paws over the edge of the shelf. The be-on-the-lookout message would have gone on the computer as soon as Lucinda told Harper about the small man, and would have been read over the radio to officers on patrol. The fact that Fenner hadn’t been picked up likely meant he was long gone-if that man was Fenner. And if he did kill Patty, why would he hang around?

This line of thinking was a real long shot. That case was thirty years old. And yet�

After a few minutes, Davis rose. “I’ll get on the computer, get a description from L.A. Run Timmons and Fenner through NCI, see if there’s anything else. The little man Lucinda saw� We get a match, that’ll give us enough for a warrant.” Davis headed out the door, her midnight sleepiness gone, her dark eyes keen.

On the bookshelf, Joe lay thinking. Until ballistics was in, no one was going to know anything about the weapon. Only that Patty had been killed with soft-nosed bullets, probably small caliber, two lodged in the head, one in her throat. With this ammo, there really wasn’t much likelihood of identifying the weapon; that lead would spread out like a mushroom. The officers had found no casings. Curling deeper among the books, the tomcat closed his eyes, as if set for a long nap. He could hear Juana Davis down the hall in her office, talking. Maybe on the phone to NCI? Sometimes Davis liked to place a call rather than go through the computer. As Harper and Garza rose, moving toward the door, the chief’s phone buzzed. He nodded to Garza to wait.

Half sitting on his desk, Harper picked up. He was just inches from where Joe lay. Joe could hear the deep timbre of the male dispatcher’s voice-Mabel had gone home at shift change. “She is?” Harper said. “When did she get in?� Tell her� Yes, that should be fine. Hold on.” He glanced at Garza. “Patty’s secretary just landed, she’s calling from the terminal. You want to talk with her first thing in the morning?” He handed the phone across to Garza.

Joe listened as Garza was put through to Patty’s secretary; the detective made an appointment for seven the next morning. “No, not a bit too early. Yes, the tearoom’s fine. At that hour, we’ll have it to ourselves.” The tearoom of Otter Pine Inn, which wouldn’t be open until midafternoon, might offer, Joe thought, a less traumatic environment than Patty’s suite or office, where Dorothy had spent so much time with her employer and friend.

“No,” Garza said gently into the phone. “Apparently she didn’t. She died in just a few seconds, she couldn’t have felt pain for more than an instant.” They talked for a few moments longer, Garza quiet and attentive, asking about Dorothy’s new grandchild. Beside him, Harper waited.

“Tired,” Garza said when he’d hung up. “And hurting. Sounded wrung out. She tried to talk about Patty, but she couldn’t say much.

“Said her daughter had a long labor, fourteen hours. A little girl, seven pounds. They named her Patty. Patty Rose Street Anderson. Dorothy plans to go back down, help take care of the baby if she can get the preliminary work on Patty’s affairs in order, put her assistant in charge.”

Harper nodded. “She worked for Patty, what? Over twenty years. Patty was her daughter’s godmother.” He looked at Garza without expression. “You did check that Dorothy was in L.A.?”

“Talked with the daughter’s doctor around dinnertime. Dorothy was there all yesterday, last night, and the night before. He heard her calling her travel agent after she was notified of the murder, making plane reservations. You plan to be there in the morning?”

Harper shook his head. “She’ll be more comfortable one-on-one.”

A quiet, private interview, Joe thought. Just Detective Garza and Dorothy Street-and one gray tomcat dozing among the shadows.

Garza moved down the hall toward his own office. Harper, turning off the light, headed up the hall for the front door. In the dark behind the two men, Joe Grey dropped from the bookshelves to Harper’s desk.

He’d meant to trot on out, but now he paused.

He could hear Harper speak to the dispatcher on his way out, then heard the front door open and close. Lifting a silent paw, Joe knocked the headset off Harper’s phone, selected Harper’s private line, which didn’t go through the switchboard, and with squinched-up paw punched in a number.

The phone rang and rang. Wilma didn’t answer. He heard Harper’s truck pull out. Cutting off the call, he tried Lucinda.

She answered muzzily, coming out of a deep sleep.

“It’s me,” he said carefully. “Has Kit come home?”

“Not home yet,” Lucinda said after a moment, only slowly realizing it was Joe Grey. “We’re worn out.” She sounded sad, flat, both discouraged and angry. “The middle of the night, alone in places she shouldn’t be. We’ve walked the streets everywhere, called and called her. Pedric’s so hoarse he can hardly talk. We’ve been into every alley and yard. Where is she, Joe? Why is it that she’s always, always into trouble!”

Joe’s heart sank at her desolation. But he had to smile, too, at Lucinda’s temper. Even if it was only anger to hide her fear and worry. And the old lady was right, Kit did gravitate toward trouble. A brand of trouble that made everyone despair-yet made them love her all the more.

“So headstrong,” Lucinda said. “Look for her, Joe. We’ll be out again as soon as it’s light.”

Pushing the headset back onto Harper’s phone, Joe thought how simple life had been before the kit arrived in Molena Point with her insatiable curiosity and all four paws taking her where she shouldn’t be.

He didn’t remind himself that Kit had been a great help to the law in a number of cases. He only remembered that several times she’d nearly gotten herself hurt or killed. Now he told himself she was all right, that she was out there somewhere in the night having a ball while all her friends were sick with distress over her.Damn cat,Joe thought, just as on other occasions Clyde or Wilma had thought the same of him and Dulcie.

He left Harper’s office and the department stubbornly determined to hit the sidewalks and roofs again to search for Kit-yet certain that if he didn’t get another hour’s sleep, he’d drop on the spot like a limp cat skin. That short nap on the dispatcher’s desk had only left him yawning. Heavy with worry and exhaustion, Joe headed home, dragging his poor, tired paws.

16 [��������: pic_17.jpg]

By one in the morning the wind had scoured the village streets clean, scuttling odd bits of paper and debris against cottage steps and bushes; wind battered the gardens, sucking away dead leaves and bright flowers indiscriminately to pile them against fences and shops and in recessed doorways. Lori, in her concrete lair, listened to the wind slapping against the building and didn’t much want to go out, wanted to stay huddled in her cold bed. Even through the thick concrete walls, the wind moaned and cried. She thought about the times she had gone to the shore in the predawn dark, when the wind had swept the sand clean of footprints, the prints of humans and dogs, and the little forked prints of birds. All swept away, leaving the sand as smooth as if no living creature had ever passed there. As if she were the only one remaining in an empty world.

When she reached out beneath the blanket to silence her alarm, the damp cold pushed right into her, its icy fingers reaching to her bones. During the night she had thought about going up into the dark library to see if someone might have left a sweater or coat, but it was too cold even to do that. Mama used to say she could feel the cold right to her bones. That was after she got the cancer. She would huddle under the blankets shivering with cold that, she said, was not like any cold she’d ever known.

Lori thought about before Mama got sick, Mama tucking her in under their warm, thick quilts and snuggling close when it was snowing outside. She thought about Mama so hard that she thought she could smell Mama’s lavender soap and the scent of her tomato plants on Mama’s hands, and the sleepy scent of her nightie. She would never smell those smells again.

But she wouldnevergo back to Pa. So angry and silent and then shouting and swearing at her and smelling of whiskey. And if he didn’t smell of whiskey, he was just real quiet. She never knew if he was mad at her or so mad at someone else that he just had to shout. Maybe mad at the whole world. That’s what Mama said, that Pa hated the whole world and Mama didn’t know why. After Mama died, when child welfare brought her back to Pa, she thought it had to be better than those foster homes in Greenville but it wasn’t. When he got up in the mornings he didn’t talk to her; he drank coffee and locked her in the house and told her to eat peanut butter for lunch and not dare to go outside. She’d started school, but Pa made her stop. And their house was hot all the time. No way to open a window, he’d nailed them all shut.

He thought she couldn’t open the heavy bolts on the doors but she found a hammer and hid it under her mattress. She could open the back door bolt with that but she was scared he’d catch her, scared to run away. She only went in the backyard in the sunshine. When he got home after work he just sat in his chair, didn’t talk to her, and he never read books or the newspaper like when she was little. If he turned on the TV she didn’t think he saw or heard it, he just sat there and never moved except to drink whiskey. Except if she did anything he didn’t like. Then he yelled at her. He always heated a can of soup for their supper and made her sit at the table with him but he never said a word. If she went near the front or back door, he’d shout. And then one day he came home from work and she was in the backyard playing jacks. She’d forgot how late it was. He was real mad, and that night he found her hammer and he took it and nailed the back door shut. But he didn’t find the pliers she’d taken from the garage. The next day he put padlocks on both doors and that night she lay in her bed thinking about what Mama would do.

She had that social worker’s phone number. That lady that met her at the airport. Had it in her school notebook but she didn’t want to call that woman, she didn’t want to go to another foster home. When she knew he was asleep, when she could hear him snoring, she stuffed her clothes and toothbrush in her backpack, crammed in some cans of beans and plums from the kitchen, and a jar of jam and one of peanut butter. She used the pliers to open the kitchen door to the garage, where there were boxes of old, musty clothes from when she and Mama lived there.

She’d dug around real careful because there were spiders. She found the old plaid blanket and a rolled-up sun pad with a cord around it from when Mama used to lie in the sun. Both of them smelled like the boxes of clothes did. And when she was rooting around in the boxes, that was when she found the billfold-that was when everything changed.

That was when she really, really knew she couldn’t stay with Pa any longer.

She didn’t remember Uncle Hal very well except she didn’t like him much. He was always too nice to her. Always asking so many questions about school. “You’re finishing the first grade? Most girls your age are just going into kindergarten. Are you doing numbers yet? Do you like that? Do some sums for me, Lori. Or why don’t you read to me? Your mama says you can already read real well. Read to me from your little book.” Shehatedthat. Pa scolded her for being rude to Uncle Hal but she couldn’t help it. She was glad when he went away to British Columbia. To spend his days fishing, that’s what Pa said.

The morning she found the billfold, she was surprised Uncle Hal would go away without his driver’s license and credit cards. British Columbia was in Canada, but was that place so different that he didn’t need a license or credit cards? Not likely. His snakeskin belt, that Uncle Hal wore all the time, was with the billfold, and his gold ring shaped like a dragon; she’d never seen him without that ring on his middle finger. She didn’t know what made her take them when she found them, but she stuffed them in her backpack. She broke the garage window to get out. Hit it with a shovel then climbed on Pa’s work bench and jumped out.

It was after she ran away that she thought about the terrible argument Pa and Uncle Hal had the night before Uncle Hal left. The two of them shouting and swearing so bad that Mama took her out for a walk to get away from the house and they ended up at a late movie. When they got home real late Uncle Hal was gone fishing. And after that, he didn’t come over anymore. That was when Pa started being so cross all the time.

Had Pa been looking for her the day she saw him outside the library? She’d never seen him in the library, even if Mama used to work there; he didn’t like libraries. Anyway he didn’t know about the hidden room. She’d found it when Mama worked upstairs at the checkout desk. She was only six. She came down to the workroom to watch the library assistant, who was in high school, paste pockets for cards in the books. When the assistant went home for lunch and she, Lori, stayed there reading, that was when she found the loose bricks in the wall. She’d taken some of the bricks out and looked in. The hole was big and like a dark cave and smelled of old, dry concrete and mice.

Now, scowling at the silenced alarm clock, she sat up at last in the icy room and reached for her flashlight. In its thin glow she pulled on two sweatshirts and her jacket and then her jeans and jogging shoes, all the time keeping her blanket around her as much as she could, and listening to the wind howl around the library windows.

She didn’t eat anything. She was really tired of plums and cold beans. She could choose among plain red beans or navy beans or baked beans. That got old. And the peanut butter and jam were gone; she’d dropped the empty jars in a trash bin at the beach. Now, moving the bricks, stacking them where she could reach them from the other side, she crawled through, then put them back, arranging them carefully. She was getting tired of this, and her hands were scratched raw.

Mama would say she was lucky to have such a cozy place. But Mama would hug her and kiss her and rub on thick hand cream and bring her a nice, thick quilt to make her warm again.

Well, she was acting like a baby. Mama said you did what you had to do. And tonight, right now, she had to do this, had to talk with Genelle Yardley. Find out about Pa so she’d understand. Find out why Pa was so angry.

Pushing the bookcase in front of the bricks, careful to get it exactly where it had stood before, she hurried to the dark basement window that opened to the sidewalk.

Sliding open the glass, she looked up and down the dark street. Molena Point had no streetlights. Only the shop lights, to light the sidewalks real soft. The sky above her was lighter than the village streets. From the stars, she guessed, and from the crooked moon that was smeared by clouds. She couldn’tseeanyone on the street. Climbing out into the concrete well that was lower than the sidewalk, she slid the glass back in place. The lock, the way she had broken it with tools she’d found in the janitor’s closet, still looked like it was locked tight. She was proud of the way she’d done that. When she stood up out of the window well, the wind hit her hard, slapping her against the building. Climbing out, she stared up the street toward the hills to the north. She was scared to go way up there alone, she wished Mama could reach down and take her hand.

One morning when she’d slipped out of the library she’d stayed out too long. When she came back someone was already in the workroom. She hid in the bushes all day and was really hungry by nine that night when the library closed. She’d thought of going home and, if Pa’s truck was gone, trying to get more food, but she was afraid to try. And that night when she got back the cat was there, the library cat, waiting in the basement workroom for her, and real glad to see her. Dulcie stayed with her all that night, snuggled close. You could talk to a cat and it couldn’t repeat a thing. A cat couldn’t tell Pa where she was. Dulcie was someone to talk to while she ate her beans and then rolled out her bed and got under the blanket and pulled the lamp close. The cat had curled up on the blanket close to her while she read, then came right up to snuggle in her hair. And Dulcie had lain there beside her cheek looking at the pages, almost like she was reading, too.

Then when she woke up in the morning, the cat was gone. Likely went out its cat door in that librarian’s office, Ms. Getz. Strange that a cat would live in the library part of the time. Wouldn’t find nothing like that back in Greenville; if Mama saw a sight like that, she’d laugh. Lori could just hear her.A cat in the library? A library cat? What does it do, honey, read the books to the children?But everyone loved Dulcie, all the kids wanted to hold Dulcie at story hour.

Mama couldn’t make jokes anymore.

Mama couldn’t laugh anymore.

Or, Lori thought, hurrying through the dark, midnight village among the little shops with their softly lit windows,or couldMama still laugh? Wherever Mama was, could she still laugh and be happy? And if she could, then could Mama see and hear her? Where did you go when you died? She missed Mama so bad, and she missed their home place in Greenville with just the two of them, the little cabin all among the trees; she missed being there with Mama.

She was leaving the shops now and it was darker still. Leaving behind the glow of their windows was like stepping into her basement cave in the middle of the night with no light at all. Hurrying uphill shivering with the wind blowing at her back, she startled at every shadow. There was only a thin moon. She didn’t know whether to walk in the middle of the dark street away from the black pools of yards and gardens, or to slip along there where it was darkest and she might not be noticed. Pushing up into the village hills, she prayed hard that she was alone. She kept listening, but she heard no sound behind her except the scurrying sound of trees shaking in the wind. Glancing back every few steps, she saw nothing moving behind her but the faint, whipping shadows of blowing branches-until, over the sound of the wind, a soft and rhythmic hush, hush began.

The steady scuff of soft shoes? Tennis shoes or jogging shoes? She looked around, but saw no one.

But someone was following. Every few steps she could hear a little squeak, as of rubber soles on the concrete.

Glancing back into the shaking, shifting shadows, she stopped a minute, staring.

Then she ran.

He chased her, soft clump clump, squeak. Clump clump, squeak. He drew closer, louder. She dodged and twisted but couldn’t get away; he grabbed her, his hands as hard as steel. Jerked her around hard and held her. So small a man, but so strong. She fought and twisted but couldn’t move, couldn’t move at all, it was like being held by an iron robot. She didn’t know anyone was that strong, not to give at all. She tried to knee him where it hurt the most, but he threw her around off balance and tripped her, his foot pulling her leg out so she fell; she couldn’t break his grip, tried to twist and kick and couldn’t get loose from him. He dragged her down the street, his hand over her mouth, dragged her for blocks, then shoved her into a car, shoved her over, past the steering wheel, and got in. She was going to die. He was going to kill her. But why? What had she done? Or was he just a crazy, what adults called a predator? And that thought turned her truly sick with fear.

17 [��������: pic_18.jpg]

Hurrying home across the rooftops, Joe Grey peered down past the gutters to the streets below, then studied the rising, falling roofscape once more. Scanning the shingled valleys and peaks around him for the kit, he felt heavy with fear for her-and silently he cursed her. Nearly dead on his paws, his poor cat body wanted more than anything a deep restorative slumber among the warm blankets. A healing snooze until morning and then a nice rich omelet thick with cheese and sardines and kippers. Comfort food as only Clyde could create, heavy with life-giving fat and cholesterol.

Dulcie would say, “How can you think of your belly, with the kit missing?” But he couldn’t even search for a flea on his own back without sufficient fuel. Hunting for the kit was stressful at the best of times, and tonight, yawning and worn out, his belly as empty as a deflated balloon, he just wished the damn cat was at home, in bed, safe with Lucinda and Pedric.

But around him the night remained empty. The windswept rooftops were all deserted, no small shadow flicking through the cold blowing dark, not even a bat or a roof rat, the world as deserted as the mountains of the moon. Galloping across the last oak limb above the last narrow street, Joe headed for his own safe roof. Home looked mighty welcome, the new second story with its big windows and solid stone chimney, and Joe’s private tower sticking up atop the peak-as fine a sight as a tropical island to a lost sailor. Galloping across the new cedar shakes, loving the feel of them under his paws and their new-wood smell, he slipped through his plastic cat door into his private retreat. Into his window-walled, hexagonal, cushioned aerie-and collapsed exhausted among the pillows.

With the wind rattling outside, he was thankful for the heavy, double-glass windows. Ryan, when she designed his tower, had installed them so Clyde could open them from inside the study simply by climbing the sliding book ladder and reaching up through the cat door. She had no idea that Joe could slide those windows to suit himself, from inside or outside, as his mood dictated.

But all the same, she had created a perfect design for the tomcat. Joe’s retreat commanded a superior view of the village rooftops and of the sea beyond. It welcomed the ocean breezes on hot days and the low south sun in winter. And as the mean midsummer sun arced overhead, the generous overhang blocked its hottest rays.

Now, though, the winter rains had lashed wet leaves across his closed windows, dark red and brown leaves sticking as stubbornly as bugs stuck to a car’s windshield. Windows sure needed washing, he’d have to speak to Clyde.

After a short restorative rest he rose, padded across the cushions, and had a long drink from his water bowl. Clyde did keep that washed and filled with fresh water every day. Then he pushed through the cat door. Slipping down through the ceiling of the master suite, he paused on the rafter, looking down and around him.

Nothing stirred beneath him. Desk and easy chair and bookshelves stood dark and tranquil. From the master bedroom, he heard only Clyde’s snoring. Dropping onto Clyde’s desk, barely missing an empty coffee cup, he sniffed it. Colombian with a touch of brandy. The desk was littered with catalogs for automotive parts, and a neat stack of orders stood beside the cup, all filled out and weighted down with the stapler. Since Joe was a kitten, given to tobogganing across desktops on a stack of loose papers, Clyde always left his papers weighted. During Joe’s youth, Clyde’s orders and correspondence were usually wrinkled or ripped and always embossed with tooth and claw marks that, he had told Clyde recently, turned each into an original and endearing memento. Pity Clyde hadn’t saved them. Like those copper-encased baby shoes that little old ladies kept to remind them of when their aging children were babies. Imagine the joy of those trashed automotive orders, pasted in a scrapbook, to recall for Clyde Joe’s kittenhood.

Leaping from the desk to the carpet, he crossed the study, past the file cabinets and bookcases, past the squat legs of the leather chair and love seat, and through the open sliding doors into the master bedroom. There he paused before the hearth, soaking up the last warmth from the dying logs. When, yawning, he leaped onto the bed, Clyde groaned, and his snores grew ragged as a buzz saw. Joe pawed at Clyde’s cheek, politely keeping his claws in. Clyde jerked from sleep and sat straight up, swearing.

“Can’t you goaroundthe bed? To your own side? Why did you wake me?” Clyde stared at the clock. “It’s one in the morning, Joe! Do youhaveto wakemebeforeyoucan sleep? Do you have to ruin my night before you’re happy? You want to make sure I see every stain of blood and mud smear you’re leaving on the clean sheets?” Clyde’s dark hair went every which way. His cheeks and chin were rough with stubble, and there were shadows under his eyes.

“My paws are scrupulously clean. I am not smearing blood or mud on the sheets. I woke you to ask if you’d found the kit. Wilma doesn’t answer her phone. Lucinda and Pedric didn’t find her. I thought-”

“You think if I’d found her I’d be asleep? You think I wouldn’t have called Lucinda? I just got to sleep, Joe. I’vebeenlooking. Wilma’s fine. We’re all worn out looking for that damn cat. I just left Wilma.I just got to sleep after looking all night for the damned cat!”

“You can’t dance the light fantastic until all hours the way you did when you were twenty?”

“You woke me up to assess my physical condition?”

“I woke you to ask if you’d found the kit.”

“You woke me because you were hungry!” Clyde stared at him sharply. “Hungry! You can open the refrigerator. You know how to do that. So why wake me! Did it occur to you that I have to get up in the morning? Do you ever once think-”

“Spare me. I’ve heard it all. You have to get up and go to work. Someone in this family has to make a living. Someone has to pay for the kippers and smoked salmon with which certain cats insist on being provided.” Turning his back, Joe pawed his own pillow into the required configuration, kneading it energetically. He was too tired even to go downstairs and eat. Behind him, Clyde turned over. Joe looked around, regarding Clyde’s naked back. “You heard about the bodies, the buried bodies?”

Clyde rolled over, glaring. “I know about the graves. I know about the two buried children. I know that Hyden and Anderson are down from Sacramento. I know that they haven’t finished digging, that there are tents over the back garden and uniforms guarding the scene. I know that you and Dulcie were tramping all over the crime scene, right in plain sight, which was patently stupid. Have I missed anything? That’s not like you, Joe. It’s not like Dulcie. What got into you today? You cats have always been-”

“We werenottramping all over the crime scene. We were most diligent about staying out of the way, about not contaminating evidence. What do you think we-”

“And I know that earlier tonight you were on the dispatcher’s desk pawing through department faxes that are none of your business, and that Mabel Farthy fed you fried chicken that she took carefully off the bones before she gave it to you.”

Joe looked at Clyde for a long time before he turned away again and began to wash his paws. He felt Clyde roll over. He debated whether to go downstairs for a snack. That fried chicken seemed days ago. Already Clyde was snoring. Joe sat on his pillow, frowning.

Clyde would know about the graves from Max or one of the detectives or Wilma or Charlie. But Joe hadn’t thought Mabel Farthy would have occasion to blab. Why would she tell Clyde about something as casual as a little tete-a-tete that included fried chicken? You couldn’t do anything in this village; a cat had no privacy.

The fact that Clyde cared enough about him towantto know what he was doing did not excuse Clyde from snooping. Stretching out across his pillow, Joe yawned and, like Clyde, was gone at once into deep, untroubled sleep.

18 [��������: pic_19.jpg]

Thetortoiseshell kit woke to a harsh beam of light in her face; it brought her straight up, stiff and rigid, hissing and ready to fight, a light swinging in through a grate in the darkness above her, and the sound of a car, too, very close. Backing away, she didn’t know where to run, didn’t know where she was.

But then she smelled sour dirt, saw the loose dirt piled up, and remembered she’d been digging. Her paws hurt bad and were caked with damp soil and blood. She’d slept in the hole she’d dug; her fur was filled with dirt and smelled of sour dirt. Quickly she scrambled out, listening to the car outside scrunching on gravel, then heard the engine die. Fenner had come back. Now she might get out. Rearing up against the vent, she peered out into the yard, listening.

She couldn’t see the car for bushes. She heard the car door open, then slam closed. His footsteps crossed the gravel and started up the steps above her. The front door creaked open. He pounded across the room toward the bed and makeshift kitchen. Abandoning the hole, she scorched through blackness beneath the house, hurting her lacerated paws on the rubble.

Pausing beneath the hole in the bathroom floor, she listened, licking the grit from her hurt pads and washing the caked blood away. Her ears cocked to catch every sound above her, she listened to Irving Fenner move about near the makeshift kitchen. When he paused there, and did not enter the bathroom, she crouched to leap up through the hole. But first she looked for the gun, just to make sure. The space had been empty when she fetched the envelopes. She would not want to tangle with that gun.

But the dank space was still empty. Swinging herself up, she dug all her claws into the rough timber and hung there, then scrambled up beneath the sink.

She heard him in the bedroom dragging something heavy across the room. He was muttering and laughing. Was someone with him? He laughed once, very loud, a crazy cackle, and moved across toward the chair in the corner, that old upholstered chair.

He must have left whatever it was in the chair, because when he moved back across the room he wasn’t dragging it. She heard the bed creak, as if he’d sat down. Heard one shoe drop, then the other. She thought he’d lain down, but then he rose again, walking softly now, without his shoes.

He moved to the table; she heard glass clink against glass, then he set something down. In a minute she could smell liquor, its nose-tingling scent drifting in to her. Then softly he moved back to the bed.

His sudden voice came so clearly it shocked her. “You better sleep while you can. Lessons start early. If you do well, I might let you go home.” Kit heard a little creak, as if he’d lain down, a thunk as if he’d set something on the floor. Maybe his glass, or a bottle. Who was there with him? If he was drunk, maybe he’d sleep.

She waited a long time. All was silent above her. She heard no sound from the corner, no sound from the bed. Shivering, and so very thirsty and hungry, she thought about water in the sink. Maybe she could turn on a tap-if he slept deeply, and if it was the kind of handle she could move.

At long last, she heard his soft snoring. Pushing out through the cupboard door, she hopped noiselessly to the sink counter and peered into the basin.

Talk about filthy! Stains she didn’t want to identify, and grease. Long, black hairs, and short bits of black hair mixed with smears of shaving cream. Enough to make any cat lose her thirst.

But the handle was the lever kind. Pawing at it, she managed a small stream of water. Tilting her head, she drank the running water as best she could, wetting her whiskers and fur, unwilling to drink where the water settled in that mess. When she felt satisfied, she dropped down on silent paws, made sure he was still snoring, then nosed open the bathroom door.

She peered past the table legs to the bed. A faint haze of light from a pale night sky seeped in through the dirty windows. He lay sprawled on top the covers with the bottom part of the spread pulled up over his legs. And therewassomeone else in the room, a warmth, a presence, someone in the chair. A darkness curled up in the dark chair, in the darkest corner.

Encouraged by his steady snoring, she moved warily under the table and past the bed toward the lump in the chair. Sneaking across the room, belly to floor, she thought about the envelopes. If something happened to her, if she never got out, if he woke and caught her, the evidence she’d so carefully hidden would never be found. Who would think to look under the house, inside the vent, to feel around the joists for two brown envelopes jammed up under the floor among the spiderwebs and soggy insulation?

Oh, how sad. Captain Harper and Detective Garza might never have the pictures, and maybe Irving Fenner would go free, would never pay for Patty’s death. She had to tell the captain-but if Fenner killed her here, or this unknown person in the chair killed her, the law would never find those pictures and clippings. The gun was another matter. She didn’t know where it was. And likely the law would need a warrant for that. She turned to look back at the bed, wondering if the gun was on him, maybe in his pocket. Then she crept closer to the silent presence in the dim chair-and now she could smell fear, sharp and quick. She could smell the person, too: A child! A little girl! The kit reared up tall, looking. He’d brought a child here? Had kidnapped a child? She could see the child now all huddled up, and as she dropped down and moved toward the chair, she heard a muffled gulp. Then silence. Rising up again on her hind paws, she wanted to whisper,Don’t be afraid.And she could say nothing.

Lori hoped it was a cat creeping across the floor and not some other creature; the way this place smelled it could be a rat or anything. She drew her feet up as best she could, being tied like they were. Outside the dirty windows the sky was milky with clouds but not much light came in around the drawn drapes. The animal drew closer. Had some wild animal got in? Unable to move much, she could only watch, she couldn’t kick or fight back. The idea of rats scared her bad. The kids in one of the foster homes said there were rats, and she’d seen big rat droppings. They said if a rat bit you, you died. They’d threatened to catch one and put it in her bed but she’d run away before they did.

It was coming. A silent shadow slipping toward her. Shewouldn’tscream. It reared up, looking at her-and she saw it clearly. A cat. It was only a cat. Letting out her breath, chewing at the tight, dirty handkerchief that bound her mouth, she thought at first it was Dulcie.

But it had a fluffy tail, not smooth like Dulcie’s striped tail. Long, dark fur. It leaped to the chair arm, looked right into her face, then dropped into her lap, heavy and bold. And purring.

She couldn’t pet it or touch it. It stared at the ropes that bound her arms, and it bent its head over her arm.

It began to chew. To chew the rope. Lori couldn’t believe what she was watching, she felt her heart lift in wonderment. The cat had the rope right in its teeth, its teeth pressing against her skin but not hurting her. It chewed ever so carefully. Chewed and gnawed the rope, and all the time its purr rippling and singing really bold. And its furry warmth pressing against her. The cat smelled of sour earth but she didn’t care. Watching it gnaw on the rope, she thought of magical animals. In Narnia, in the fairy tales, in “Cinderella.” She thought of the mice nibbling the lion’s bonds and she wanted to laugh out loud.

But those were stories. That didn’t happen in real life.

Except, it was happening.

She wondered if she’d wanted someone to help her so much, she’d made up a dream. She’d been so scared all night since he grabbed her on the hill and tied her up and hoisted her in his car and made her have a lesson. An algebra lesson in the middle of the night in that cold, stinking car, and that was what scared her most. A school lesson, with her tied up. A flashlight and a workbook and he said they were in school and that he was a teacher and his eyes were crazy, all black and strange. A grown man playing school. What did he want? Why did he force her to answer questions? Said that if she answered all of them right, he’d let her go, but she knew he wouldn’t-yet she hoped he might. And then he’d brought her here, drunk in the car swigging on that bottle. From the time he’d first caught her, he’d stunk of booze. Well, maybe it was the booze that made him sleep.

And then the cat came.

She still thought maybe she was imagining the cat, that there was no cat, that maybe he’d drugged her, given her a shot when he tied her up and she didn’t feel it and she really was imagining the cat.

Except, the cat had chewed nearly through the rope. When she twisted her arm back, the rope gave and flew apart. Swallowing, she jerked her arm free.

Quickly she got the ropes off, around her body, her legs. She was free. She jerked the handkerchief down from her face. Free! She could breathe! The cat stared up at her once and leaped from her lap and went straight to the door.

Lori didn’t tell herself she was imagining anything. She slipped to the door shaking so much she could hardly grab the knob. So scared she thought she’d throw up. She turned the dead bolt real careful, turned the doorknob ever so slow, not to make a sound, and eased the door open.

The cat flew out between her feet, and Lori flew out after it. They were free. Free, together. Out in the cold black night free. She was certain, then, that the cat had been trapped in there, too.

Turning, silently she closed the door before the cold breath of night woke him. And they ran, away through the night, Lori on tiptoe on the gravelly rough walk, then faster when she hit the sidewalk. She ran straight back to the hills, but the cat swerved away in the other direction, seemed to know exactly where it wanted to go. How did you thank a cat, when it maybe saved your life? But, oh, she was free. Racing through the empty village and uphill in the cold night, running so hard she was warm, then sweating, she fled as fast as she could toward Genelle Yardley’s house. She knew no other living person to go to. She couldn’t go back to the library, he knew where she’d been, she was sure of it. She needed to be with someone, she needed a grownup, bad. Running and running, she knew that what had happened was impossible. But that ithadhappened, that a cat had saved her, that a little cat had chewed her ropes and freed her.

19 [��������: pic_20.jpg]

In the black predawn that enfolded the village, Lori slowed her running at last. Her heart was pounding hard, but pounding, now, more from her wild flight than from fear. Down in the village behind her, the courthouse clock struck five-thirty, its chimes wavering like underwater in the gusting wind. She ached with hunger. Mama wouldn’t have let her go out in the night without eating and without another sweater. Well, Mama wouldn’t havelether go out at one o’clock in the morning. No way. Mama would say, “You went out alone in the middle of the night, and look what happened!” But all the same Mama would hold her tight and be thankful she was home.

Except, she wasn’t home. She didn’t have a home.

She tried not to think about what that man might have done to her, what he meant to do. She’d never heard, not from Mama, not from the kids in foster care, of someone asking school questions before they did bad things to you. Those foster-care people in Greenville, after Mama died, they hadn’t told her nothing like that-but then, they hadn’t told her anything straight. And then that one welfare woman, she took the money from Mama’s purse, Lori saw her take it.

She’d still had almost ten dollars of her own, in her book bag, money that Mama gave her for an allowance. But then in that first home that was like a big jail, they took her book bag, too, and when they gave it back, her money was gone.

She’d pitched a fit, just like Mama would’ve done. And that made ‘em mad, they said she had some kind of mental disorder and shut her in a room by herself for a week. Of course they didn’t give her money back. It was five foster homes later that she told welfare she had a pa, and they put her on the plane and sent her home, had a welfare person meet her and take her home to Pa.

She’d been so excited that she’d be with Pa again; and it’d been nice at first, just her and Pa, but then he saw her talking to that man on the street, old Mr. Lummins from the shoe shop. Pa got real mad, told her not to talk to no one. Then he found out she had a man teacher that she liked and he kept asking her questions about him. She didn’t know what was wrong with Pa, he started getting real strange again, like before she and Mama left.

When she was little, before she and Mama moved away, Mama was so pale and didn’t talk much, and then they moved. Packed up Mama’s car and drove for five days to North Carolina where Mama had a friend, Bonnie, they could stay with and Mama went to work in the library in Greenville. After that, Mama was happy, she started to smile again and have fun; they were happy there, just the two of them.

Dawn was coming, the sky getting lighter. She kept looking behind her and listening for his footsteps or the car. She hoped he was dead drunk, out like a light-or better, that he was dead. There was no one on the street. The wind hit hard against her back, pushing her so hard uphill she could almost lean against it. Lights were coming on in a few houses. She wondered how long she’d have to wait until Ms. Yardley woke up. Wondered if she could be rude and ask for something to eat. Maybe old women slept really late and she’d have to hide in the bushes forever.

Was she crazy to come up here and try to ask that old lady questions?

In the yard of a tan frame house, she could see a faucet beside the steps. Crossing to it, she drank from it, getting her shoes wet, then ran because maybe they’d hear water banging in the pipes and come out. She thought she’d never reach Genelle Yardley’s number, but then at last there it was. She stood looking up at Ms. Yardley’s tall old house. It was the color of pale butter, its walls covered with round shingles like fish scales.

Above the windows were fancy decorations like a fussy old lady wearing lace. Victorian, Mama would say. The house stood close to the street and close to the house on its left. Its yard seemed to be all on the right behind a high wall that was shingled like the house, with fancy stuff on top. Gingerbread. A Victorian house with fish-scale shingles and gingerbread, but not a storybook house. Just strange, and different. Stepping close to the wrought-iron gate, she peered in-and caught her breath.

A faint glow washed across the garden from little lights down low among the flowers, mushroom-shaped lights like houses for tiny people, maybe forThe Borrowers.Maybe it was, after all, an enchanted place. She wanted to be in there. Safe, all safe like inThe Secret Garden,behind its locked wall. Far at the back, she could make out pale round boulders lining a little dry streambed. Suddenly, looking in, she felt a ripple down her back, and she spun around.

But there was no one on the street or in the other yards. Well, she’d heard nothing; just a feeling. She could make out no one standing in shadow, no movement, but she was not comfortable there.

Moving quickly, she lifted the wrought-iron latch. She felt a surge of excitement that it wasn’t locked. She slid inside, closing the gate behind her. Wishing shecouldlock it, she hurried down the stone walk between flowers and little trees. There were surprises everywhere, flowers among big boulders, benches tucked under the trees. A roofed stone terrace ran along the side of the house, and glass doors looked out on the garden. In one, a light shone. Did Ms. Yardley keep the light on all night? Maybe because she wasn’t well? When Mama was so sick, she didn’t sleep much except if she took pain pills, then she slept a lot.

The glass door was open, she could see the thin white curtain at the side blowing in and out. Maybe a nurse had come real early. When they took Mama to the hospital and Lori had to go to juvenile, she didn’t see Mama anymore. They wouldn’t take her to see Mama. Mama died alone. That hurt so bad. Approaching the glass, she paused.

Maybe the old lady was undressed in there, with nurses doing things to her that she didn’t want to see.

Maybe she should go away now. Go back to the library before it got light, hide in her cave again. She didn’t know what to say to Genelle Yardley, she didn’t know how to explain why she’d come.

Except, that old woman had worked for Pa for a long time before he got mean and silent. She would know things about Pa that she, Lori, didn’t know, that she needed to know. If she wasn’t too sick, maybe Genelle Yardley could help her understand why Pa had turned so mean. She wished her stomach would quit growling. She hoped Ms. Yardley wasn’t so sick thatshewas cross and wouldn’t talk, like Pa.

Drawing close enough to the glass to just peek in, she saw that the room was empty. The bedclothes thrown back, a wheelchair standing in the corner. She could smell bacon, and syrup warming. That made her stomach really rumble. Was Ms. Yardley in the kitchen eating breakfast? She stood looking in, wondering if she should knock.

“Good morning,” a voice said behind her. She spun around.

Down at the end of the terrace, in the shadows, there was a bench, and someone sitting there.

“Good morning,” the woman said again. “Have you come for breakfast, child?”

“I� I’m looking for Ms. Genelle Yardley.”

“I’m Genelle. Come sit down. Cora Lee’s cooking pancakes. She’ll make more than I can ever eat, she always does.”

The thought of pancakes was like a warm light in a dark cold room. Lori approached the woman. Drawing near, she saw the shiny metal tubing of a walker standing beside the bench where she sat, and a cart with an oxygen tank on it, like when Mama was sick. Was this Cora Lee a visiting nurse come to cook Ms. Yardley’s breakfast? Mama had had a visiting nurse, arranged for by the welfare people, but that nurse didn’t make breakfast, she’d been sour and unpleasant; Lori hadn’t liked her any better than that first welfare woman.

“Come, child. Come sit down.”

Lori went to sit beside the old lady. She was tall, you could tell that even when she was sitting, tall and very thin. She had dark hair with gray in it, cropped close to her head. Her eyes were so dark they looked black. Her face was lined and sagging and her eyes were red, as if she’d been crying. She was dressed in a pink satin robe and pink slippers. She had a wadded-up tissue in her hand.

Lori remembered her now, from the shop office. But she’d looked stronger then, not so frail. The old woman’s mention of pancakes and the smell of bacon cooking made her lick her lips. Ms. Yardley must have been weeping for a long time because there was a really big wad of tissues in the wastebasket beside the bench. Lori sat sideways on the bench, not quite facing her; she didn’t like to look at someone who was crying.

“I like to eat early,” Ms. Yardley said, tossing the tissue in the wastebasket. “I like to see the dawn come.” She looked hard at Lori. “Even this morning, I love the dawn. Especially this morning. You can call me Genelle.”

Lori looked at her with interest.

“You must like the morning, too, child, or you wouldn’t be out so early. Are you all right? Is something the matter?”

Lori nodded that she was all right, then shook her head. No, nothing was the matter. She thought it funny that Ms. Yardley didn’t askwhya child was out alone, so early, almost still the middle of the night.

“What is your name?”

“My� my name�” Lori could see, behind the old lady, a little table set for two, with a white cloth and wicker garden chairs. She listened to the comforting kitchen sounds from inside the house, the clink of plates and the scraping of a spoon on a pan.

The old woman squinted, leaning closer. “Could you be Lori? Lori Reed? Jack Reed’s child?”

Lori was so surprised she wanted to leap up and run away. “I� I’m Lori.” How did she know? Did Ms. Yardley remember her? She’d only been six, a baby. Now Genelle would start asking questions.

But she didn’t, she only smiled, and blew her nose, which was already red from blowing. “I’m sorry about the tears. A dear friend has died. But surely that isn’t why you have come?”

“Oh,” Lori said, embarrassed. “No, it isn’t. I’m sorry.”

“I’m not weeping for her, she was in her eighties. Though it was an ugly, terrible death. I’m weeping for me because I’ll miss her.”

Lori didn’t know what to say. She didn’t really know how to think about people dying. It was hard enough to think about Mama. She didn’t knowwhatto think about dying. Grownup talk about death made an emptiness come in her. “It’s a nice garden,” she said. “It’s likeThe Secret Garden.“Probably this old woman had never heard ofThe Secret Garden.

But Genelle’s face lit right up. Her wrinkles deepened into a smile and her eyes brightened. “That’s exactly what it’s like! That’s what I meant it to be when I planned this garden, when I had the wall built. A secret garden. You’re a reader, child.”

“I loveThe Secret Garden,I almost know it by heart. And have you read the Narnia books?”

“Oh, many times. I still read them every few years. I almost knowthemby heart! Sometimes Asian comforts me as no formal religion could ever do.” The old woman laughed. “I decided long ago that when I die, that’s the first place I’ll go. To sail with Reepicheep into Asian’s country and on, ‘beyond the end of the world.’”

“Through the water lilies,” Lori whispered, enchanted. “In a little coracle among the water lilies.”

“Exactly. ‘Where the waves grow sweet, there is the utter east.’” Reaching, Genelle took Lori’s hand. “Whyareyou out so early? I’ll tell Cora Lee to set another place.” She seemed not to expect an answer. Or maybe she’d forgotten her question. Lori remained quiet.

“There’s a little cat farther up in the garden,” Genelle said. “Do you see her? How intently she’s watching us. Up by the wall, among those white flowers.” Genelle pointed up among the round boulders.

Lori looked up the garden. In the first faint gleam of dawn, she could see a cat crouched among the shadowed rocks, a dark silhouette that at first had seemed only another shadow. It was definitely a cat, looking down at them. It made her think of the library cat. But Dulcie wouldn’t be way up here. There were cats all over the village, lots of cats.

“I used to have cats,” Genelle said, “I’d always had cats until my Melody died. When Melody went, I grieved so. I never let another cat into my life, not ever.” She reached for another tissue, but she wasn’t crying now. “I remember that you used to go to the library with your mother when you were little; you learned to read long before kindergarten. I used to tell stories to the children on Saturdays; do you remember? You used to come to listen, you were always there for Saturday-morning stories, curled up in a corner of the window seat.”

Lori remembered those story hours, sitting snug with the other children all among the cushions. How could she have forgotten that Genelle Yardley was the storyteller? Ms. Yardleymustn’ttell Pa that she was here.

But better she tell Pa than that horrible little man with his rope and scary questions. The memory of his hands snatching her and hurting her, the feel of the rope tight around her; being unable to move or get out of that place filled her again. Afraid she would die there; a drowning, falling emptiness, with no one to cling to.

Genelle squeezed Lori’s hand. “I’m sorry about your mama; I read it in the paper. I supposed you’d come back after she died, come to live with Jack.”

Shaken, Lori nodded.

“It’s hard to talk about death. My friend Patty wasn’t young, and she’d made a good life. But your mama was so young. She went before her time, and that was very hard for you.” Genelle touched Lori’s chin, lifting her face so their eyes met. “Death is not the end, child.”

Lori just looked at her. She didn’t know what to say. She squeezed Genelle’s hand. “The stories you used to read to us in the library, they were good stories. I liked Bran and the Celtic kings.”

Genelle smiled. “You remember the correct way to say Celtic. I hear Cora Lee coming with breakfast; she’ll be happy that we have company.” Reaching for her walker and pulling it to her, the old woman rose unsteadily, leaning into the metal cage. Lori wanted to steady it as she had for Mama, but the old woman seemed so self-sufficient that she was shy about offering help. And the old woman moved slowly to the table.

“Cora Lee lives down the street,” Genelle said as she swung herself from the walker into the wicker chair, shoving the walker aside. “She’s my neighbor, one of the four ladies who come to help me out. They’ve been very kind.” She hadn’t touched her oxygen cart. Mama, when she was so sick, if she got the least bit excited she had to put on the oxygen mask. “Cora Lee’s a singer, she’s with our Little Theater. She’s quite wonderful.”

Cora Lee appeared on the terrace carrying a tray. The smell of breakfast, of bacon and pancakes and syrup, wrapped around Lori like warm arms. Made her long for Mama and for their little pine kitchen in Greenville where they’d been so cozy. Lori knew Cora Lee, too, knew this tall woman, knew her from the library when she, Lori, was little. She was the first lady with darker skin that Lori had ever seen; she used to come in the reference room and talk with Mama. She was so beautiful with her close-cropped curly black hair and her dusky complexion, with her creamy silk dresses and long legs. Lori hoped Cora Lee wouldn’t remember her. She kept very quiet, and she breathed easier again when Cora Lee went back to the kitchen for another plate and silverware and a glass of milk.

“When I die,” Genelle said, “I’m leaving the household things to Cora Lee and her three friends to help pay for their new home. Oh, they know about it, it’s no secret.”

Lori squirmed and stared at her hands.

“Child, one can talk about death. Death is a natural thing. At my age, I have a special license to talk about anything I choose-I can say what I wish!”

That made Lori smile.

“I figure if the four ladies have an estate sale of my things, they can clean up. There are some fine old antiques and paintings, and my jewelry. The house and some other property I own go to the library. I have no one else.” Genelle looked at her, gently amused. “I’m quite matter-of-fact about death, it doesn’t scare me anymore. Now I’m more curious than afraid. Like Reepicheep, I keep wondering what exactly does come next. What that world will be like.”

“Doessomething come next?” Lori whispered. “How can you know that? How could anyone be sure?”

Cora Lee sat down at the table where she could see the garden, and served Genelle and Lori’s plates from a huge stack of pancakes. She took two small cakes for herself, passed the bacon around, and poured two cups of coffee.

“You can’t doubt that there’s more after this life?” Genelle said softly to Lori. “Sometimes, don’t you sense your mother nearby?”

“Maybe,” Lori whispered, glancing uneasily at Cora Lee. “I want to.”

Genelle put sugar and cream in her coffee, looking over at Lori as casually as if they were talking about the weather. “Someone once said that this world is a nursery for souls.”

“Like school lessons?” Lori said with dismay.

Genelle laughed, and slathered butter on her pancakes. “No, I don’t think of it like that.” Lori had already buttered her pancakes and poured on syrup; she tried to eat slowly, but they were so good. She couldn’t get them and the hot crisp bacon down fast enough. “I think we just dive into this world,” Genelle said, “and start swimming-among all its splendor and its pain. That we make the best strokes we can, swim the best we can. That we make a little glory around us, or we don’t. Does that make any sense to you?”

Lori nodded, chewing. She wasn’t sure. A picture came in her head of Mama diving down through green water to be with her, but then turning and flying away again too soon. Genelle looked up at Cora Lee. “You look tired, my dear.”

Cora Lee nodded. “I guess we’re both tired, grieving for Patty. Did you sleep at all?”

“Yes, my dear. I slept. My grieving is partly a celebration of Patty’s life and what she did. It� it’s the shock of how she died that’s so hard.”

Cora Lee nodded.

“But you did not sleep well,” Genelle said.

“There� there was� some excitement at our place. We were up late.” Cora Lee’s voice was soft as velvet. Instead of saying more, she opened the morning paper that she had brought on the breakfast tray and handed it to Genelle.

Large on the front page was the picture of a skull and part of a skeleton. A man in a white coat knelt over the small bones half buried in the dirt with weeds growing around them. The bones of a child. Shivering, Lori rose and stood behind Genelle where she could read over her shoulder.

The grave of a child was discovered yesterday at 2792 Willow Lane, when Cora Lee French, one of the four owners, was digging weeds intheback garden. Another resident, Mavity Flowers, was also present, along with the police chief’s wife, Charlie Harper. When Ms. French uncovered the child’s small hand�

The picture of the child’s skeleton shocked Lori so that she backed away. Cora Lee reached to take her hand. “It scared me,” Cora Lee said. “Reminded me of something that happened when I was a little girl. The police came-Captain Harper and both detectives and then the coroner. And later a forensic anthropologist. But the paper says that.” Cora Lee did not talk down to Lori, like in juvenile hall where some of the case workers had talked down to her because she was twelve. Like if you weren’t grown up, you couldn’t understand anything.

The identity of the child is not known, nor has the cause or date of death yet been determined. The child has a wound in the skull. Police have cordoned off the area and guards are posted. They request that residents stay away. Forensic anthropologist Dr. Alan Hyden has�

Lori read with more interest, her fear subsiding. No one knew how old the body was, or if it was a boy or a girl. Couldn’t they tell? The child was about nine,Younger than me,Lori thought. The police and anthropologists were still digging, as if there might be more bodies, when the paper went to press. As she read, Lori glanced up the garden at the cat among the boulders. It was still watching them, staring so hard that it almost seemed to be listening. And itdidlook like Dulcie. Same black, curving stripes, same tilt of its head. Beside Lori, Genelle watched the cat, too. When Lori thought about dead children, she thought about throwaway children in the foster homes. That was what the cook in juvenile called them, throwaway children that no one wanted. She watched Genelle pull her oxygen mask to her, and breathe deeply. She didn’t realize she was pressing against the old lady until she felt Genelle’s arm around her. She hoped she wouldn’t be afraid to walk back down the hill to the library now, after seeing that picture.

She’d be safe once she was inside, though. He wouldn’t dare come in there after her, would he? Hadhekilled that child, years ago? How long had that body been there? When she went into the library, if she put the screws back in the window lock, maybe he couldn’t get in. The rest of the library was locked tight. When she looked up, Cora Lee was watching her almost as if she knew what Lori was thinking-and as if she really cared.

20 [��������: pic_21.jpg]

Insistent fingers of icy dawn wind crept through the thinnest crack beneath the closed tearoom door, and across the pine floor, and rattled the windows; but bright flames snapped on the stone hearth, pressing back the dark, reflecting across the little table that was set before the fireplace. The welcome blaze warmed the faces of Detective Garza and dark-haired Dorothy Street, and warmed the gray tomcat, too, where he crouched above them, unseen, atop the tallest china cabinet. Firelight danced across the brightly flowered curtains and braided rugs, across the hand-rubbed blue walls and the flowery-papered walls, turning the small room into a retreat as cozy as a quilted cat basket. The brown wicker tables and wicker chairs gave the tearoom a homey charm that, Joe knew, Dulcie had always loved, an ambience that, until the tomcat had known Dulcie, he would never have thought about. Before both cats’ perceptions warped so inexplicably into a vastly wider view of the world, he’d had no eye for beauty, homey or otherwise.

Peering down at the two lone occupants of the quiet tearoom, he commanded, as well, a clear view through the leaded windows to the lighted patio and gardens and across them to the far wing of the inn. To the third-floor windows of the Greenlaws’ penthouse. But the kit’s bay window remained empty, nothing but cushions leaning against the glass, no dark little shadow to tell him the kit had come home.

Below him, Dallas Garza poured sugar in his coffee, his muscled bulk and square shoulders dwarfing the slight woman. Dorothy Street was maybe in her early forties. As far as Joe could tell, she wore no makeup. She had short, dark hair curling casually around her face as if she had given it a swipe or two with the brush, then let it find its own way. She was delicately built, fine boned. A pretty, athletic-looking woman whose jeans and sweatshirt gave off the cool aroma of salty sea and pine boughs, scents that must have clung to her clothes even during her absence. She looked up when a waiter came through the door of the little kitchen, a thin, gray-haired man bearing a tray of fresh coffee and cinnamon rolls. As he set down the tray, Dorothy laid her hand on his for a moment in a gesture of mutual grieving for Patty. Patty’s employees had been more than friends, they had been like family. After a moment, the waiter left, quietly shutting the door, proffering the needed privacy.

Dorothy’s eyes were red, and she clutched a damp tissue. A packet of tissues lay in her lap. Garza, beneath his relaxed demeanor, was tense and watchful. The smell of sugar and cinnamon made Joe lick his whiskers. Dorothy took a cinnamon roll and split and buttered it. They had been talking about Dorothy’s long friendship with Patty, since Dorothy was a little girl.

“Her daughter, Marlie, used to babysit me,” Dorothy said, “when she was in college. West L.A. was nicer then.” She looked at Dallas intently. “There was a man hanging around the inn, Detective Garza, for a few days before I left. I feel terrible about him, now. That I didn’t call you, call the station. Something about him bothered me. Patty was aware of him, and I asked her about him. She said she’d keep an eye on him.

She said nothing more. Left something unsaid, I thought. That wasn’t like her, to be less than open with me.

“She said at first that she hadn’t seen him. When I pressed her, she said she guessed maybe she had seen him, that she hadn’t paid much attention. She wanted to let it drop, didn’t want to talk about him. I said nothing more.

“Now I wish I’d checked on him myself. Do you know who he was? Did anyone see him that night? A really small man, like a boy.” She cupped her hands around her warm coffee cup. “I guess that’s why he didn’t really frighten me, because he was so small. I could-if that’s the man who shot her, I might have prevented what happened.” She looked up at Garza. “She might be alive if I hadn’t let that pass.”

Garza sat waiting for her to collect herself. At last she leaned forward, still cradling her cup. “After I saw him, I kept wondering about that terrible time in L.A. It was the only time in Patty’s life that there was any ugliness. Until now.”

Garza was quiet. Not, Joe knew, simply from courtesy, from wanting to give Dorothy time and space. If the interviewer was silent, didn’t respond, the interviewee experienced a powerful need to keep talking, a natural compulsion to fill the empty spaces.

“How much do you know about that time in L.A., Detective Garza? About what happened to Patty’s grandchild, and then to her daughter?”

“The child’s father was convicted for the murder?”

Dorothy nodded. “Yes, and for some of the other Sepulveda church killings.” She pushed back her short hair. Despite her healthy good looks, there were smudges under her eyes, and stress lines creased her forehead. “The murders filled the L.A. papers. Patty always found it hard to talk about it. But then sometimes she needed to talk.”

Listening to Dorothy’s version, Joe glanced out through the window, watching for the kit. Nothing in the third-floor window had changed, except that the sky was growing lighter so that it reflected a silver sheen across the glass. Not only had Patty helped Marlie get out of L.A. after the trial, after Craig Vernon was convicted, but she continued to have Vernon’s friends watched. She thought that Craig might send someone to hurt Marlie. She didn’t want him to know where Marlie had gone, didn’t want anyone snooping around.

“Patty was headed for France, on a short film shoot. When Marlie was safely out of the country, Patty flew on to Paris. She� It was all she could do to finish that film, the hardest thing she ever did. Marlie had insisted she go, had convinced her it would look better, might draw off anyone who meant to follow Marlie. They tried to make it look as if Marlie had gone with her mother, a plane reservation in Marlie’s name, a double for Marlie, a film standin.

“Marlie’s little boy had been just six, and so very bright. He� I loved that little boy. Those last weeks before� before he died, he’d started avoiding his father. Didn’t want to be alone with Craig, was nervous and cross with him. That was what first puzzled, then alerted, Marlie.”

Dallas poured fresh coffee for them from the carafe the waiter had left.

“That was what had prompted Patty to first hire a private investigator, have Craig followed. That was how they found out about the boarded-up church, the meetings there. The other people who slipped inside, same faces every night. The investigator never did see a child, only adults, but in the preceding weeks, several children had gone missing.

“Patty always felt that if she hadn’t had Craig followed, he might not have taken Conner there, that Conner and Marlie might both still be alive, that it all might have turned out differently.” Dorothy folded her hands together as if trying to keep them still. She was quiet for a moment, looking at Garza. “Think how that made Patty feel, that she had failed them.”

Crouched atop the china cabinet, Joe Grey thought about those murders, and about the small graves in the seniors’ backyard. The L.A. children were apparently all exceptionally bright. As were all the missing children in the reports from the Seattle area. But, cases thirty years apart, more than a generation apart, what did that mean? That was stretching for it, to assume that those thirty-year-old L.A. murders could have any connection with the two bodies in the seniors’ garden. And yet�

“Silly,” Dorothy said, “but I had the feeling, even when I was so young, that Fenner wanted those children dead out of some kind of, oh, jealous resentment. Some sick rage that, when I watched him during the trial, I really thought I felt. I went to part of the trial, against my mother’s wishes; she thought that was terrible. Well, my feeling was just a child’s reaction. Hehadkilled Conner, and I loved Conner. The whole thing affected me terribly. I was only about ten, but I had such a sense of evil about those events. I thought, not just from what happened but from watching Fenner, that I was seeing pure, dark evil.” She lifted her cup in both hands, looking up at Garza.

Caught in Dorothy Street’s description, Joe stared almost unaware across the patio at the empty windows where still no small shadow looked out, no lamp was lit against the dim morning. Above the penthouse the dawn sky was as gray as the stormy sea. When he heard scrabbling on the roof above the tearoom, he thought at first it was leaves or twigs blowing.

This wing of the inn, tearoom, dining room, and kitchens, was just one story, its sloping red tile roof a handy route that the cats often took when crossing the village. When the sound came again, a hard thud, then sharp scrabbling on the tiles, Joe stared hard up at the ceiling. The next moment, he saw through the window a dark small shape race across the garden and up a bougainvillea trellis and in through the Greenlaws’ third-floor window. Her fluffy tail lashing, she disappeared inside. Joe’s heart was thudding so hard with relief, it felt like kettledrums. She was home. The damn cat was home. He stared around the tearoom searching for a phone, looked off toward the little kitchen pantry trying to remember if he’d ever seen a phone in there. He wanted to call Dulcie, to tell Dulcie.

21 [��������: pic_22.jpg]

Dulcie was not near anyone�s phone, she was crouched in Genelle Yardley’s garden, the wind carrying the smell of bacon to her so powerfully that her pink tongue stuck out, tasting that lovely scent. Peering down from among the boulders, enduring her hunger with what she considered incredible fortitude, she studied the little group on the terrace. The child and the two women had taken forever to finish that lovely feast; and still they lingered, pushing back their empty plates. The morning was brightening, dawn chasing back the shadows, bringing up the bright yellows of the acacia trees and broom bushes so that, in spite of the gray and stormy sky, the garden appeared to be washed with the magic warmth of sunshine. How intently Cora Lee was watching Lori.

Surely Cora Lee was curious about this child who had made such an early visit to Genelle, but her interest seemed far more than that. Cora Lee seemed quite enchanted with the frail, brown-haired child whose dark eyes burned so very big and intense in that pale little face.

Did Cora Lee see herself in Lori? A gangling little girl adventuring out in the night all alone, as Cora Lee might have done when she was a child? Did Cora Lee see a child filled with her own bold spirit? But a child very frightened now.

Dulcie worried sometimes about Cora Lee. Since her friend had been attacked last year, and hurt so badly that her spleen had to be removed, she had seemed frail indeed. Cora Lee no longer had the stamina and strength that had sustained her when she could work most of the day at waitress jobs, paint stage sets in the evenings and on weekends, found time to rehearse, and at night had belted out wonderful songs in the productions of Molena Point Little Theater.

Watching Cora Lee rise at last to leave, Dulcie supposed that someone else from the seniors’ group would come later to clean up the dishes and help Genelle dress for the day. Without the assistance of those four ladies, and of Charlie’s cleaning service, Genelle would long ago have moved to a nursing home, an idea she detested. Dulcie wondered if Friends of the Library, and Charlie and Wilma and the older ladies, still meant to have the special tea for Genelle-and if Genelle would feel well enough to attend her own party.

Wilma said it seemed barbaric to enjoy a lovely party in the face of Patty’s death. But, she said, it was after all Patty Rose’s party; Patty and the volunteer group had planned it and, even from her grave, Patty would pitch a fit if the party was canceled; Wilma was quite certain of that.

As Cora Lee left the terrace and garden, slipping out through the front gate, Genelle glanced up to the back of the garden, not for the first time, and far too intently for Dulcie’s comfort. Genelle was watching her.

But why? To Genelle she was only an ordinary cat; the old lady could have no notion that she had followed Lori’s scent here to the garden and was listening to every word. She had, heading up through the night for the seniors’ house while searching for the kit, stumbled suddenly across Lori’s scent. A trail as clear as, to a human, would have been a path of stones. Leaping through the wrought-iron gate into Genelle’s garden, she’d had no idea why the child was out in the night. What could the child possibly want badly enough to disturb an old woman in the middle of the night, an old woman dying of lung cancer? Genelle’s fatigue was plain to see in her pale color, in her labored breathing and the slow clumsiness of her movements. Several times during breakfast she had turned on her oxygen and held the mask up to her face for a few moments, her body rigid with her distress.

But now down at the gate, Cora Lee was coming back, letting herself in again, hurrying across to the terrace. “Lori?”

Lori watched her apprehensively.

“You don’t really want to walk down that hill alone.” Cora Lee took Lori’s hand. “Have you run away, Lori?”

Lori didn’t answer.

“Okay. If we don’t ask questions,” Cora Lee said, “if we don’t pry, will you stay with us? You could come home with me; we have lots of room, and two nice dogs for company.”

Lori’s cheeks flushed; she looked and looked at Cora Lee, and lifted her hand as if to touch Cora Lee’s hand, but she didn’t reach out. “I have to go back. All my things are there, I have to go back. I� I’ll be fine.”

Dulcie wanted to race down the garden and shake the child, tell her to go with Cora Lee, tell her this might be her one opportunity to keep herself safe. Why was she so reluctant? What was she afraid of? At times, this morning, fear had seemed to spill out of the child so powerfully� and yet she did not want Cora Lee and Genelle to help her.

Surely coming here in the dark seeking out Genelle had not been, in any way, asking for grownup protection. There was something else involved, Dulcie was sure of it.

“Lori?” Cora Lee said softly. “You can get your things, I’ll come with you. You can stay with Genelle or with me.”

“I� I have to go back. I can’t� I have a nice place.”

Cora Lee looked steadily at Lori. “Then I’ll get my car, and take you there when you’re ready.”

“No, I�”

Genelle put her hand on Lori’s. “Cora Lee can keep a secret. And so can I. Child, it would be so nice having someone here with me. Someone who cares, to stay with me, read with me. And for you� Even if you were to go back, wouldn’t it be nice to have someone who knows you’re safe, someone who cares about you? Where is it, child? Where are you� hiding?”

Lori looked at Genelle for a long time. “The library basement,” she whispered at last, so faintly that Dulcie could barely hear her. “A hole in the basement.”

But Genelle laughed out loud, a shout of laughter that startled them all. She choked and coughed, and had to have oxygen again, and was still laughing.

When finally she was better, she looked at Lori. “I used to play there, that was my hiding place, that basement. When I was your age and younger. The hiding hole under the alley.”

Lori’s eyes had widened; she was very still.

“I grew up in that house, Lori. Before it was the library. I used to play in the basement. That little part under the alley was open then, with a door. It was a walkway long ago, even before my time. A walkway for the servants to go back and forth. But how are you getting in? It was all bricked up. Bricked up from both sides. How�?”

“I take the bricks out,” Lori said. “In the wall of the library workroom. They were loose, they were just fitted in.”

“And you just walk into the library through the front door? And go down and�?”

Lori shook her head. “I go in one of the sidewalk windows.” She looked up at the sky, which was now bright silver. “Before it gets light, though. Before the library opens.” She shifted nervously.

“I will take you down the hill when you want to go back,” Cora Lee said. She looked at her watch. “But itisgetting light, Lori.”

“Sometimes I go in when it’s open, then I hang around the children’s room.”

“If I’m with you, it will be different. We’ll get you safe inside. I’ll just get my car,” Cora Lee said, touching the child’s shoulder. “I’ll be a few minutes, time to shower and dress properly.”

But Cora Lee’s answer made Dulcie smile. Cora Lee hadn’t said she’d allow Lori to say there, and she hadn’t said she wouldn’t. Dulcie watched the little scene, wondering. Strange, Lori seemed far more frightened this morning. But maybe it was being so far away from the library, up here in the hills in the dark that had scared her. A journey into a strange neighborhood in the middle of the night would be far more stressful than slipping out to run the shore at dawn.

Down at the table, the child looked very nervous, as if she’d like to disappear before Cora Lee got back. Was she afraid Cora Lee wouldn’t let her stay there after all, wouldn’t let her return to her cave? Dulcie was fidgeting, herself, shifting from paw to paw with curiosity and with worry.

Lori settled down into her chair as if she had decided to cooperate. She looked as if she burned to ask Genelle something. Something that now, when Cora Lee would so soon return, filled her with anxiety. Genelle remained very still, watching Lori. Dulcie, fascinated, slipped closer.

After a little silence, Lori said, “You worked for my pa.”

“Yes, until I retired four years ago. You and your mama had already moved to North Carolina. I imagine you missed him, while you lived there.”

Lori didn’t answer.

“He was a quiet man.” Genelle studied the child. “Or he turned quiet.”

Lori looked at her with interest. Then, disconcerted, she speared the last two pancakes in a frenzy of movement, slathered on butter, and poured on a deep pool of syrup.

“Was he quiet when you were little, when you were together?”

Lori spoke with her mouth full. “He used to laugh and we went to the park and the beach and he played ball with me, helped me build sand castles. He and Mama laughed a lot.”

“When did he change?” Genelle said softly.

Watching them, Dulcie slipped closer still, down the garden through the bushes, to pause just above the terrace. Listening, she grew so intent that a beetle crawled across her paw in absolute safety, the tiny morsel totally ignored. When Lori didn’t answer her, Genelle said, “I worked for Vincent and Reed for thirty years. At the reception desk, just in front of Jack’s office. You used to come in, you and your mama. The three of you would go out to lunch.”

Lori nodded. “There was a tall plant in the room, like a tree, next to your desk, and that room had yellow walls, like butter. We always had our lunch at that little cabin place; I liked their spaghetti.”

Genelle nodded. “I took Jack’s dictation, typed his letters, did the billing. Learned to use the computer when we changed over.” The old lady seemed, in her own way, as hesitant as the child. Something unseen was sparking between them, some unspoken truth that made Dulcie’s heart pound.

Dulcie knew Vincent and Reed Electrical from seeing their trucks around the village, and because they had done some work for Wilma when she’d enclosed the carport; Jack Reed had put in their electric garage-door opener. He was a tall man, well over six feet, she thought, very thin, and he walked with a twisting limp. He always looked shy, and he was very quiet. He did work for Ryan Flannery Construction sometimes; she’d heard Ryan say he was reliable. Interesting, Dulcie thought, how much a cat could pick up hanging out with humans.

“I was sorry to see your dad’s brother leave so suddenly,” Genelle said. “I liked Hal, none of us had any idea he’d take off like that. I always wondered if they’d had a falling-out, he and Jack. But it would have to be a very serious matter for two brothers to remain parted for so long.”

When Lori didn’t answer, Genelle put her arm around the child. “I liked to think of the company as Reed, Reed, and Vincent, that was my private name for it. Your father is a good man, Lori. A gentle, good man. I haven’t seen much of Jack since I retired.”

“When did he� Why did he� He wasn’t always�”

“Angry?” Genelle asked.

“Yes, angry!” Lori said fiercely, her voice bursting out. “Like he hates me.”

“He doesn’t hate you, how could he hate you? You are his joy. He had pictures of you all over his office; he used to tell little stories about you, how you loved to chase the seagulls, how well you could read before you ever started kindergarten so they put you in first grade, how good you were at arithmetic, years ahead of the other kids.”

“It was after Uncle Hal left,” Lori said. “After that, Pa was always angry. Like he hated the world.”

“After your Uncle Hal left?”

Lori nodded. Genelle took Lori’s hand in both of hers. Lori looked up at her as if she wanted to say more, to tell her something she couldn’t bring herself to say.

“Do you remember their arguing, Lori? Do you remember anything about why Hal left?”

Lori shook her head quickly. “I was little. After he left, Pa didn’t talk much. He didn’t want me to go to school either, or go outdoors. That made Mama yell at him that I couldn’t be a captive. And then after a long time, we went away.”

“Did Hal ever phone your pa, or come back for a visit?”

Lori shook her head. “He was just gone. Before he went away, he used to always bring me candy. Once when no one else was in the room he wanted me to read to him but Pa came in and was real mad. I never did know why. I didn’t do anything wrong. When Uncle Hal went fishing, he brought home tons of fish; we had to eat fish for weeks. Sometimes Mama let me eat in my room with my dolls, made me a jelly sandwich.”

“He went fishing in the San Juan Islands,” Genelle said. “He used tobring mesmoked salmon, and I loved that. Jack said that’s where he went when he left, back where he went every year.

“He left in September,” Genelle said, “the year you were six. Seattle, Tacoma, or Canada, Jack said. He wasn’t sure.” And still there was something unspoken between Genelle and the child, something Lori was burning to tell the old woman, something she seemed afraid to tell.

Genelle breathed into her oxygen mask for a few moments, then pushed it away. “Now that Cora Lee has gone home, and before Mavity comes, do you want to tell me the rest of it? Tell me what you’re holding back?”

Startled, Lori looked at her, very still.

“Why did you run away, Lori? Did Jack hurt you?”

Lori let out a breath, as if letting something hard and hurting escape. “He didn’t hurt me, notthatway. But he didn’t talk to me, hardly. And he locked me in. Padlocked the doors and nailed plywood over the windows. And he was so angry all the time. I couldn’t stand being shut in; I took some food and got out through the garage window, I broke it with a shovel.”

Genelle nodded, as if this was not unusual behavior, as if she would have done the same. “Were you warm enough in the basement? It’s cold as sin down there.”

Lori nodded.

“How long have you been gone?”

“Ten days.”

“You must have planned very well. What did you take to eat?”

“Canned plums, and canned beans,” Lori said, making a face. “And peanut butter and jam.” She glanced down at her empty plate. “Nothing like this, nothing hot and good.”

Genelle looked harder at Lori. “And you came to me to learn why he locked you in?”

She nodded. “He took out the phone, too.”

“But he didn’t hurt you. Did he touch you in a bad way?”

“No. He never didthat.I know about that from kids in the homes, they told all that at night when the lights were out.”

“What does he do when he comes home from work? Does he go out again?”

“No, he stays in, locks the door, turns on the TV, but I don’t think he sees it or hears it. Makes dinner from a can, then lies on his bed in his clothes and stares at the ceiling. He locked me in my room at eight.” Her eyes grew huge, and very dark. “Why did he stop loving me? That’s what I came to find out.”

Farther up the garden, Dulcie licked at a tear. She could observe adult humans who had been maimed or killed and she might not turn a whisker. But to see this child, like a soft little kitten, hurt so in her spirit, that was a terrible thing. What did a child have if her spirit was shattered, if someone destroyed her true and living self?

And yet, Dulcie thought, Lori’s spirit seemed in pretty good shape, considering. Look at how the child had taken action on her own, to protect herself. She was taking care of herself very well. Lori was, Dulcie decided, fighting back just fine.

“And what else?” Genelle said, taking Lori’s hand in both of hers. “What else is it that so frightens you? That you can’t bring yourself to tell me?”

Again Lori was silent, watching Genelle. At last, “The billfold,” she whispered so softly that Dulcie wasn’t sure what she had heard. “Uncle Hal’s billfold.” The child touched Genelle’s hand. “And his belt and ring. I found them in the garage. The ring and belt that he always wore, that he never took off. His billfold that was always in his pocket. That, if he went away to go fishing, he would never leave behind.

“That’s what scared me most,” she said. “That those things of Uncle Hal’s were there in our garage, Pa’s garage, after Uncle Hall disap-After Uncle Hal was gone away.”

22 [��������: pic_23.jpg]

Leaping in through the third-floor window that Lucinda had left ajar for her, Kit burrowed among the pillows trying to get warm. She was freezing. She was hungry. Thirsty.Cold.Behind her out the window the sky was cold, was the color of ice cubes. Her poor bloody paws were all ice from the rooftops, so cold that every cut burned and ached. She wanted hugs. She wanted soft creamy stuff rubbed on her paws the way Lucinda would do. She wanted to tell Lucinda and Pedric that she was home and what she’d found and what had happened to her; she wanted so many things at once she was ready to explode, but she needed most of all to call Captain Harper.

Call him now. At once. Tell him about the pictures. About the man she had followed and who had captured that child. Tell him everything that raced around in her head, like trapped mice.

But where were Pedric and Lucinda?

She stopped wanting everything and listened. Sniffed to catch fresh scent.

They weren’t here? She did not smell coffee brewing in the little kitchen, and no lights were on, and there was no good breakfast waiting on a little cart by the fireplace. It was usually brought there by dawn because they all three liked to eat early. The room was still cold, so no one had turned the thermostat up the way they always did, even though dawn was brightening. Were Lucinda and Pedric still out looking for her? Had they searched all night? How hard it had been when she heard Lucinda last night calling and calling her and she couldn’t cry out.

But then the kit thought when she listened and sniffed again that the apartment didn’t quite feel empty. Had her dear old couple come home very late and gone sadly to bed defeated by not having found her, and were now still asleep?

Leaping off the window seat, she fled to the bedroom and stood in the doorway looking. And her pounding heart slowed at sight of the double lump in the bed, at the scent of their sleep and the lovely rhythm of their breathing. She wanted to leap up and wake them, tell them she was all right, tell them she loved them-but maybe she should let them sleep.

With uncommon restraint the kit turned away remembering that Lucinda and Pedric were not young and that sometimes they tired easily and that she had likely worn them right out making them search for her. Reluctantly she returned to the window seat and nosed down among the velvet and brocade, making a little nest in the pillows to let the heat build around her. And she thought about the child and wondered where she had gone, and prayed again very hard that she was all right.

It took only a few minutes until she was warm again, then she leaped to the arm of the easy chair by the phone. Pushing the headset off its cradle, she punched in the number of Max Harper’s cell phone. Lucinda was always amazed that she could remember so many numbers. But Kit had trained her wily memory on the ancient Celtic tales, and that delighted both Lucinda and Pedric. Kit had loved those stories when she was very small; they were the only wonder she knew in her miserable life. She had devoured every word the older cats told each other as she listened from the cold outer edges of that swift-clawed, bad-tempered crowd.

Settled down for the night among the garbage cans in some stinking alley, Kit had soaked up those stories as the only sustenance and the only warmth she knew. She had held the magic of those stories to her until they were a part of her and she knew every word, could repeat them all.

The phone rang four times before Captain Harper answered. Kit swallowed. She always found it hard to speak to him. “Captain Harper, the man who killed Patty Rose is staying in a cottage behind a house on Dolores. A brown-shingled house with a weedy yard, just south of Tenth. Peeling paint, his car and two other cars parked back at the end of the gravel drive. He is small, like a boy. His car is an old gray two-door Honda, 9FFL497,” Kit said, seeing the license plate in her head like a little picture. She knew Harper would be writing it down.

Was he taping her call? He’d told Wilma once that taping the snitches’ calls might be the only way he would ever learn who they were. Wilma had said, “Do you really want to know, Max? Seems to me you have a good thing going. You sure don’t want to blow it.”

Now, when Harper had been silent for too long, Kit said, “He had pictures of Patty Rose, Captain Harper. When she was young, a star. In every picture, there was a hole in her head like a bullet hole. And he had newspaper pictures of four men including him, so I think his name is Irving Fenner. After Patty was shot, someone ran away down into the parking garage. I think it was him, but I�” She couldn’t say that the fresh scent of a man on the stairs near Patty went down into the parking garage.

“The pictures are in two brown envelopes, but they’re not in the cottage anymore. They’re under it. Under the foundation jammed up in the floor joists just inside the front vent.”

So far, Harper had said nothing. But she could hear him breathing. The kit didn’t expect him to say anything, and she sure didn’t want him to ask questions. But then Harper said, “The cottage behind a brown house on Dolores. South of Tenth. We can retrieve the envelopes by reaching through the vent.”

“The vent’s on tight, though. Take some tools.”

“How did you�?”

“He has a gun, Captain.” She started to tell him to look under the bathroom sink, then she knew she couldn’t tell him that. He was already wondering how the envelopes got under the house. How could they, when the vents were jammed tight? She had to hope, when they searched the house, that they’d find the murder weapon under the sink but wouldn’t find cat hairs clinging to that ragged hole! Or paw prints and spatters of her blood-cat blood. She didn’t dare think about a lab report that would show cat blood.

Pushing the phone back on its cradle and leaping to the window seat, she snuggled down, shivering again, trying to get warm again, and looked out at the slowly brightening morning that, despite the hint of coming sun, was all gray winter colors. Why was the light on in the tearoom? It had been burning when she got home.

Who was there this early? Against the dancing firelight, she could see the silhouettes of two figures sitting at a little table; the woman had short hair, but the man was more in shadow. Was that Detective Garza, the broad shoulders, the hint of a square jaw? She watched the firelight shift and leap, reflected across the glass china cupboards-and atop the cupboards, a small, dark shape crouched, intently listening. The kit smiled. She could see the gleam of his white markings, too. Whatever was going on in the tearoom, she would hear about it, hear it in detail from Joe Grey.

She imagined Captain Harper going to retrieve the envelopes, and that warmed her. She thought about the child and was thankful they’d found each other-without her, the child would still be tied up. Without the child, she would still be locked in there, too, with that insane little man. And the little girl-who knew what would have happened to her? She wondered where the child had gone, all alone in the night and so frightened. She prayed he wouldn’t go looking for her, prayed she had a place to hide. She wondered, if Irving Fenner found the pictures missing, if he would think the little girl had taken them, and that could make everything worse for the child. From her window she watched an escaped newspaper twist and flap along the street like a live thing, then a flock of blowing leaves skitter; the hastening wind carried scraps of debris dancing and teasing and making her paws twitch-and the wild need to chase sent her leaping down again and racing for the bedroom.

She stopped at the doorway, looking in. The room was dim, the draperies still drawn. Lucinda hated closed draperies during daylight. The two lumps beneath the covers didn’t move. Alarmed, Kit leaped up.

But the minute she hit the bed, Lucinda woke with a cry.

“Kit! Oh, Kit!” The old woman grabbed her, hugging her so hard that Kit couldn’t breathe. Pedric woke and threw his arms around them both.“Oh, my,” Lucinda said. “Oh! So good to have you home. To hold you safe! Where were you? We were allso worried.Where have youbeen?”

“I found something,” Kit told her. “And then I got trapped in the bathroom and I was afraid he’d come back and find me and I�”

Lucinda laughed. “Slow down. You’re not making sense.” The old lady set Kit down on the bed, and rose, pulling on her robe. “Come on, let’s make some coffee, Kit, and warm milk, while Pedric gets dressed.”

Sitting on a kitchen chair at the tiny table, in the little bar/kitchen, lapping up warm milk and devouring leftover steak, she told about the man. Listening to the shower running and knowing she would have to tell it all again, and not caring, she told Lucinda about the pictures, the gun, the tied-up child. With the smell of coffee filling the apartment, and Lucinda dressed in her quilted robe with yellow buttercups on it, Kit told her all about the man who had killed Patty and how she’d followed his trail and lost it and found it again, and about the pictures of Patty with the holes in them and how she’d called Captain Harper. When she’d finished, Lucinda hugged and hugged her.

“It was a courageous thing to do, Kit. To chase him like that, to keep on until you found him and then to slip into that cottage behind him. Oh, I do love you.” She held Kit away. “And I do worry so about you. It was a courageous, dangerous, foolish thing to do. I’m so very glad you and the child are safe. Without that child�” Lucinda wiped at her eyes. “Without the two of you together, neither one alone might have left that place.”

Kit felt very warm, deeply content. Tucking her face down in the crook of Lucinda’s arm, she pressed against the old lady purring so hard that her reverberating body shook them both. But after a while, Lucinda got up and laid some logs in the fireplace and lit the starter, then carried her coffee to the window seat. Picking up the phone, she called Charlie. “I hope they’re awake,” she told Kit as the phone rang.

Kit crawled into her lap, listened to three rings, and then Charlie picked up.

“She’s home,” Lucinda said. “The kit’s home.”

“Oh, Lucinda. I’m so glad. Tell� Tell Pedric I worried all night about her.” Lucinda grinned down at Kit. Max must be right there, listening, not guessing at the disguised message meant for Kit. Charlie sounded as if she’d just woken up. They talked for only a few minutes, then Lucinda went out to the veranda to fetch the morning paper.

She spread it out on the coffee table as Kit lay across her lap yawning, watching the fire blaze up. Very soon now, Captain Harper would have the evidence that she hoped would fry Irving Fenner, fry him good. It was lovely here in their beautiful suite-so different from life when she was a kitten, before she knew that humans’ houses were wonderful, when she’d thought that all of life, for a cat, was dirty alleys, mean dogs, broken glass, jagged, empty tin cans, and mean boys with rocks. When she was little, running with that wild clowder of feral cats, she had thought every cat in the world grew up on the street scared and hungry and cold. That was the way life was. The big cats took the only warm sleeping places, and snarled and slashed when you tried to eat. She’d stayed with that wild band because they were the only cats like her, the only speaking cats she knew of. She’d stayed because she was little and alone and they were better protection than nothing. She’d run with them until they found their way to Hellhag Hill. But there she’d discovered Lucinda and Pedric, and life was suddenly all different. Now, as Lucinda read the paper, Kit snuggled closer. “What?” she said, looking up at the thin old lady. “What’s so fascinating?”

Lucinda turned the paper so Kit could see. The expression on her face was both sad and fascinated. “You’d better have a look, Kit. I knew this yesterday, but until now, I didn’t� Not until you told me about the little girl did I think there might be� more to the story.” Lucinda picked Kit up and held her on her knee so she could see the page better.

Old Graves Found in Village Garden

The graves of two young children have been discovered in the village, the first yesterday morning by Cora Lee French as she dug in the backyard of the home she shares with three other Molena Point women�

Kit read the article, and read it again. Yesterday while she was trapped in that house, Captain Harper and the detectives were all looking at the graves of those poor children. Surely Joe Grey and Dulcie were there, they would have been right in the middle. The article said that no one knew who the children were. It didn’t say they’d been murdered, but why else would someone bury them in secret? She looked up at Lucinda. “You knew all about this, while you were out hunting for me, you knew all about the dead children. Could the same man have done it, that Irving Fenner?”

“The man who we think killed Patty? But these bodies aren’t new, Kit, they’ve lain there a long time. Well,” she said, “I guess anything’s possible.”

“How could humans murder little children? That man will burn in hell, Lucinda,” Kit said, with no doubt in her mind.

Lucinda stroked Kit until Kit felt a little easier. “You don’t think,” Lucinda said, “that that killer should be forgiven?”

“No,” the kit said, hissing. “I don’t imagine that.” She looked up intently at Lucinda, at the old woman’s wrinkled face and lively blue eyes. “No, Lucinda, I don’t think that. Nor do you and Pedric.”

23 [��������: pic_24.jpg]

“When Patty’s daughter ran,” Dallas said, “could you tell me more about that?” The tearoom fire had burned low, the pastry plate was empty save for one lone cinnamon roll, the coffee in its thermos getting cold.

“Because Marlie had testified against Craig and Irving Fenner,” Dorothy said, “Patty was afraid for her. She got Marlie out of the country, had a driver take her to Vegas. Marlie flew out of there under an assumed name, headed for Canada, for Calgary, where Patty’s secretary had arranged for a new car to be waiting, and an apartment and a job. Marlie went to work as a secretary.

“Craig was in prison and would likely be executed. And Irving Fenner was in custody, awaiting trial. But Fenner was so enraged by Patty and Marlie’s testimonies, and so vindictive. Patty was convinced he would send someone to find Marlie and try to kill her. Patty didn’t worry too much about herself, she always had people around her.

“Everything was fine for about a year. Marlie stayed in Canada, working. Fenner was convicted and serving time. Then one night, when Marlie had taken a weekend to drive to Alberta, her car went over a cliff in the rain. She died in the wreck.

“Some people said she’d committed suicide, that she hadn’t been able to deal with life after Craig killed Conner. Patty knew different, she knew her daughter. She was certain that Irving Fenner had had Marlie killed.

“It could never be proved. No witnesses, no evidence that would hold up. When Fenner was released, Patty was more angry that he was free than afraid of him. Her friends convinced her to hire a bodyguard. She finally did; she kept him for about a year, then gave it up. Convinced herself that Fenner had left the state. Another of the group was already out, Harold Timmons. She heard rumors that he stayed in California, but she never found out where.”

Dorothy finished her coffee. “I don’t know, Detective Garza. I seem to be going on about this and I’m not sure I’m helping. I don’t know if those cases are connected to Patty’s murder. I just�” She snatched a tissue from the pack, a fit of weeping silencing her.

When Dorothy’s crying had subsided, Garza rose. She stood up and was pulling on her jacket when Garza’s cell phone rang.

He answered, and talked for a moment, growing very still. A slow smile touched his dark eyes. “Hold a minute, Max.”

He shook hands with Dorothy and hastily thanked her for her time. “Will you let me know when you’re leaving and how I can get in touch?”

“I will.” She gave him a watery smile and left the tearoom.

“Okay, Max. I’m in the tearoom, Dorothy just left.” Garza sat down at the table and, listening, poured the last of the coffee into his cup and picked up the last cinnamon roll. Above him atop the china cabinet, Joe Grey peered over, his silver ears sharp with interest, his claws silently flexing, every nerve in his tomcat body on alert. Harper had something, something was happening. He wished he could hear Harper’s side of the conversation.

Garza smiled. “Yes, I know the cottage, I’ll be right there. It takes two of us to collect evidence?” He listened again and shook his head. “Our woman snitch this time. Well, maybe she had a cold. How far in from the vent, did she say? Some of these old foundations-”

He was quiet, then, “I have tools in the car. I’ll be there ASAP.” Rising, he gulped the last of his coffee, wolfed the cinnamon roll, wiped some sticky sugar from his lips, and headed out. Joe didn’t know where Harper was going, but he didn’t intend to be far behind. There was no question, Harper’s caller had to be either Dulcie or Kit. Very likely the kit, who had just rushed home in such a swivet. He stared across the patio to her third-floor window, but he didn’t see her. As he leaped from the china cupboard to the table, he heard Garza’s car start, out front. Hitting the cold tile floor, Joe was out of there, pushing open the tearoom door, heading across the patio for the bougainvillea vine that would take him, faster than any stairs, up to the Greenlaw penthouse. Where was Garza headed? Under what house? If Dallas Garza and Max Harper were about to crawl under someone’s house, presumably without a search warrant, he sure didn’t mean to miss the entertainment.

Dulcie watched Lorileave the garden with Cora Lee, the child slipping through the gate as warily as if she expected that any minute someone would snatch her up. Dulcie looked after her, frowning. If Lori was in danger from more than a bad-tempered father, why hadn’t she told Genelle and Cora Lee what more was wrong? Probably, Dulcie thought, because the stubborn little kid didn’t want anything to do with the police. When they’d gone, Dulcie approached the terrace, watching Genelle Yardley with interest.

Genelle, pushing back the breakfast dishes, had spread out the front page and was reading about the little graves. Something drew Dulcie to the old woman, something about the way Genelle kept looking up the garden at her. Such a knowing look, so secretly amused. Shivering, Dulcie padded nearer, but she stayed beneath the bushes. This woman couldn’t know what she was, that wasn’t possible. But yet� Why that secret smile? Too many people knew already. Though those who shared the cats’ secret in friendship would never tell, the more who knew, the more chance there was of some unintended slip.

Genelle looked up from the paper, her faded blue eyes widening. Dulcie remained very still as the old woman studied her where she crouched in the bushes, looking straight into her eyes.

“Good morning,” Genelle said in much the same way she had greeted Lori.

Dulcie’s heart dropped. Warily she trotted across the bricks and smiled up at Genelle, as friendly as any neighborhood cat, waving her tail as if longing for a nice gentle pet and a bit of breakfast.

“You are Wilma’s cat, the library cat. I think your name is Dulcie?”

Dulcie purred and rolled over, waving her tail, pretending that she was used to people talking to her, carrying on one-sided conversations.

“You can speak to me, Dulcie. I know who you are.” The old woman smiled gently. “And I know what you are. You live with Wilma Getz. Oh, Wilma doesn’t know that I know the whole story. Wilma took you home from this garden, Dulcie, when you were very small.”

Dulcie tried not to stare at her.

“She had no idea what she was getting when she took one of our litter of kittens. Nor did I, I wasn’t sure. I only knew that my own dear Melody, your mother, was a very unusual cat, that she could speak,” Genelle said softly.

“Melody and I had many talks here in this garden, many long and fascinating discussions in this house. She was with me until she died,” Genelle said sadly.

Dulcie looked at the old woman as blankly as she could manage, dropping her ears as if she were shy or frightened. Genelle paid no attention; she kept talking.

“I didn’t know how her one litter of kittens would turn out, nor did Melody herself. She said that none of her six brothers and sisters could speak.” Genelle reached out to stroke Dulcie, but Dulcie backed away.

“This morning,” Genelle said, “you came here following the child. I gather you’ve been watching her.” She put out her hand, toward Dulcie. “I am terminal, my dear. In a few months, I’ll be dead. Your secret will be dead with me. I will tell no one.”

Dulcie could only watch her. Her heart skipped, as if it had lost all sense of timing.

“Melody had five kittens, three orange, one calico, and you, a dark, striped tabby. You were the tiniest. The others kept pushing you out. They didn’t seem to like you, didn’t want you to eat. I guess all young animals are that way with the runt, it’s the way of nature. But something about you�” Genelle shook her head. “Melody would carry you up onto an easy chair and feed you alone, so you did indeed thrive. But she worried over you.”

Genelle looked at Dulcie. “I kept the other four kittens. Neither I nor Melody knew-there was no way to guess-if you would be the most likely to speak. We thought you would, but we didn’t know. And I� I thought even then that I wasn’t well. We found the best home for you, where we could keep an eye on you. We chose Wilma with great care, but I told Wilma nothing.

“Your calico sister died when she was just six weeks old, a twisted intestine, the vet said. But you grew healthy, a wild, strong kitten. It was not until you began to steal your neighbors’ lingerie, when you were little, that I felt sure you were more than you appeared to be. Melody did that when she was small; she so loved beautiful things.”

Dulcie dared not speak. She couldn’t stop shivering.

“Melody was not a young cat. She seemed determined to have that one litter. She died four months later.” Genelle’s voice shook. “It was� it was as if she knew. She wanted to produce at least one kitten like herself.

“And you were the only one.” Genelle smiled and reached down to touch the peach-toned markings on Dulcie’s nose and ears. “A bit of the Irish orange,” she said with a fond, faraway look. “The other three cats are with me, orange tabbies, you’ve surely seen them around the village; they are dear, sweet cats, but they are normal, ordinary cats, not like you and Melody.” Genelle rose, gripped her walker, and slowly crossed the terrace to the edge of the garden.

“It has taken a lot of self-control not to speak to you until now, my dear, nor to speak about you with Wilma. I thought that best. You have both guarded your secret as well as you are able, considering your busy life-you and your two friends,” Genelle said softly.

Dulcie swallowed and backed away, slipping into the bushes again. That Genelle was aware of her ability was one thing. That Genelle knew about Joe Grey and Kit deeply alarmed her.

“Nor will I speak of them, to anyone,” Genelle assured her, peering after her into the bushes. “I promise that. But I have enjoyed observing from afar the adventures I imagine for you three. From bits of news, my dear. From glimpsing you in the village, very busy and intent. From news clips about the crimes that have occurred in the village, and from the anonymous tips the police often receive. I know a couple of officers in the department, Dulcie. And I know a reporter or two. I hear things, things no one else would put together.” The old woman laughed and winked. “And more power to you, my dear. The three of you are remarkable.”

This was too much. Crouching deeper among the bushes, Dulcie was filled with feelings of chagrin, of betrayal.

She had no reason to feel that way. Indeed, she felt she could trust Genelle Yardley. But for a stranger to know about them, to have known all this time, to have been watching them� To Dulcie, the implications were immense and terrifying.

Stepping away from the walker but still holding on to it, Genelle knelt at the edge of the bushes, an exercise that took a great effort. “Please come out, please indulge an old woman. Mavity won’t be here for another hour. Please come out so we can talk? And help me decide what to do about Lori?”

And Dulcie could do nothing else. She came out at last, her ears back, her tail switching.

“I don’t mean to tell anyone about Lori,” Genelle said. “It’s very clear that she’s afraid. But it seems to me that the child must go to the police on her own. Before her father knows she has the billfold.” She looked hard at Dulcie. “Have you thought about what that billfold could mean?” Genelle rose, the effort so tiring that Dulcie longed to help balance her. Clutching at her walker, she turned away, making for her chair. Dulcie came out from the bushes then and leaped into the chair opposite, eyeing the last crumbs of bacon; crumbs were all that Lori had left.

Pushing the plate across to her, Genelle said, “It would be far safer for Lori if she’d go to the police now, of her own volition. Before Jack Reed knows what the child suspects, and that she has what could be damning evidence.”

As the sun lifted above the eastern hills, and Dallas Garza hurried away from Otter Pine Inn to meet Max Harper, Joe Grey leaped into the bougainvillea vine, heading up to the kit’s window. He wanted some answers. He halted halfway up, as, below him, Lucinda and Pedric emerged from the stairs into the gardens. Looking down, he watched the kit race ahead of them, all fizz and ginger and switching tail. The old couple, in the first cold light of dawn, was headed for the dining patio. Quickly Joe dropped down again to the bricks and followed.

No one else was out there at the garden tables; it was too early and too cold. Bundled in fleece coats and sheepskin boots and caps as if they were at the north pole, the Greenlaws seemed fixed on indulging their young runaway with a welcome-home patio breakfast. Even beneath the patio heaters, and seated beside the fire pit where flames danced, they had to be freezing. The moment they were seated beside the warming blaze, Joe trotted over and, before Kit could leap into a chair, he pressed against her, nosing her toward the far end of the garden, away where nosy waiters wouldn’t overhear.

She followed him, scowling, but wide eyed with questions, glancing back at Lucinda and Pedric with a be-back-in-a-minute look. Lucinda and Pedric, watching the little drama, could say nothing, observed by an approaching waiter.

Deep beneath a pyracantha bush whose branches hung heavy with red berries, Joe stood looking at the kit. “I see you got home.”

She hung her head, ashamed that she had worried everyone, but then smiled with smug delight. “I found him, Joe, I found the man who killed Patty and I went in his old dirty cottage and watched him and saw his car, too, and all the garbage like he’s been there awhile and I-”

“Will you slow down, Kit? Tell me where. Does Harper know? Did you�?”

“I called Captain Harper just now from upstairs and told him it was an old gray Honda two-door all dented and the license number and told him where to find the newspaper clippings and the pictures of Patty and I put them where he can get them without a warrant like you told me and I told him about the gun but I don’t know where that is except he might have it on him and I-”

“Kit!”

She tried to slow down, tried to be coherent. She told Joe what she had found and where, and the names of the four men in the clipping, and where she had hidden the envelopes. “Captain Harper said he was on his way.”

Joe nodded. “So is Garza, he just left the tearoom.” He was about to race away, when she raised a paw.

“The worst thing was the little girl�”

Joe stiffened.

“I chewed her ropes through like in that fairy tale and we got out all right and she ran and-”

“Whatlittle girl!”

“Idon’t know, Joe. I don’t know her name, I couldn’ttalkto her. She got out with me,sheopened the door, I couldn’t, and we both ran in different directions.”

“How old was she?”

Kit thought about this. “Maybe eleven or twelve, I guess. Brown hair.”

“Lori?“Had this guy gone into the library and found Lori? Was this the guy she was hiding from? Patty Rose’s killer, and not her own father? He didn’t know what to think; this wasn’t making sense. He nosed the kit’s ear by way of thanks, and glanced toward the patio and the Greenlaws’ table. “Your breakfast’s getting cold,” he said softly. And as Kit raced away to her eggs Benedict, Joe scorched out of the patio fast, his own stomach as empty as a drum. Taking to the rooftops, he headed across the village. His own breakfast seemed eons ago. Well before dawn, Clyde had fixed him a memorable omelet, tossing in some leftover salami and a slice of goat cheese, a delicacy to which Ryan had introduced their household-one of the benefits of a new woman in Clyde’s life.

Joe was beyond suggesting that Clyde marry his current romantic interest. He’d done that with Charlie, and Charlie ended up with Max, though they were all three still the best of friends. But Joe was through with matchmaking, Clyde and Ryan would have to work out their own scenario. Which was at present more platonic than wildly romantic, but he guessed they had their moments. Just in case, Joe was careful about returning home late at night through his rooftop cat door.

He came down from the roofs just up the block from the brown-shingled cottage Kit had described. It stood back from the street behind the two-story house and some crowding pine and cypress trees. Joe had wondered about that house; who would let even a rental look so decrepit in this high-priced market? The place had a lurking, secretive air, as unappealing as the set for an old horror film. Max Harper’s Chevy pickup was parked at the curb. Across the street, facing the other direction, was Dallas Garza’s Ford. Joe paused beneath a tangle of overgrown oleander bushes, observing a scene that made him smile.

24 [��������: pic_25.jpg]

Joe approached the cottage behind the old house, concealed beneath overgrown bushes, padding through a morass of rotting leaves. The whole yard smelled of rot and mildew. Keeping out of sight, he watched Max Harper, standing on the cottage porch talking with a hefty woman in a red muumuu. Landlady. She was rattling off a list of complaints about her tenant. On the gravelly parking space before the cottage stood a black Ford sedan and a blue Plymouth. He could smell the faintest whiff of exhaust, as if a car had left within the past hour. The front door stood open. The landlady was so frowsy she matched the cottage exactly, and matched what Joe could see of the grim interior. He’d seen her around the village. Had Harper gotten a search warrant, just on Kit’s phone tip? That would be unusual.

But if the landlady invited him inside, that was another matter; he could search then. And indeed, in a moment Dallas Garza emerged from within the cottage as if perhaps he had finished a search. Joe listened to Harper wrap up the conversation, to the effect that if her tenant returned she was to call him, and that he had just a little more checking to do; the old doll seemed fine with that. Waddling down the steps, she headed for the larger house and disappeared inside. Joe watched Harper and Garza walk along the foundation and kneel before the first of two ventilation grids.

Producing an electric drill that he’d shoved into his belt beside his black holstered radio, Garza removed four screws from the grill and pulled off the rusty grid, revealing a hole large enough for a small terrier. The detective looked up at Max. Max Harper smiled. “Be my guest.”

Garza gave Harper a patient look, and pulled on a pair of worn work gloves. Lying down on his belly in the mud and wet leaves, he reached in through the hole. Pushing in and twisting, he felt around blindly, probably even with the gloves, praying he didn’t disturb one of the more deadly varieties of poisonous spiders for which California was known. Thebite of a brown recluse would dissolve the flesh from within like ice melting in a warm kitchen.

“Not a damn thing,” he grumbled, adding a Spanish expletive. Groping farther into the darkness for whatever evidence the phantom snitch had found or deposited, he twisted onto his back to explore above him among the floor joists. Harper, standing over him, was highly entertained-as was Joe Grey. As Garza searched, he had to be wondering about protruding rusty nails as well as unfriendly spiders. After some moments, he withdrew from the underpinnings of the house and stood up. Scowling at Harper, he moved to the other vent and knelt again.

Removing the second grid from its frame, he lay down again reaching, groping and searching up among the floor joists until suddenly he shot out of the hole.

Swinging to a standing position, grinning, he clutched in his gloved hands a pair of large brown envelopes. Handing them to Harper, he was just replacing and screwing down the vent grids when Harper’s radio squawked. Max picked up and listened.

Then, “No, just watch it. Put a man on it. With luck, maybe he’ll come back for it.” He glanced at Garza. “The Honda’s parked up on Drake, behind a vacant house.”

Garza looked pleased. Harper nodded toward his truck, perhaps not wanting to attract further attention from the neighbors and morning joggers. And as Garza followed the chief to his Chevy pickup, Joe, in a swift but maybe foolish move, sped behind them.

At the moment they opened their doors and thus were turned away, he slipped up like a flying gray shadow into the open truck bed. Onto the cold, hard metal floor. Sliding between an old saddle blanket and a fifty-pound bag of dog kibble, Joe braced himself as Harper started the engine. Likely the chief was heading back to the station, to his office where they could examine the contents with added privacy. Very good. In Harper’s comfortable office, a cat wouldn’t freeze his tail. The sea wind scudding into the truck bed felt like an arctic blizzard.

Getting soft, Joe thought as Harper eased the truck around the corner and down a block. But then the chief parked again, in a red zone beneath the branches of a Monterey pine. Joe, hearing him rattle one of the envelopes, wondered if he dared rear up for a look through the back window.

Sure he could. Right in line with the rearview mirror.

Glancing overhead at the spreading branches of the pine, he slipped up real quiet onto the metal roof of the cab, keeping away from the back window, out of sight behind the wide metal post, then up onto an overhanging branch. Its foliage was thick and concealing. But the branch was so limber that it rocked and swayed under his weight, dragging across the door frame and roof, alerting the two cops like a gunshot. Garza stuck his head out, glaring up into the tree and up and down the sidewalk. Cops never rode with their windows up, even in freezing weather. Their inferior human hearing, impeded by the thick glass, might block all manner of sounds they should hear, from a faint cry for help to a distant car crash to a muffled gunshot. Perched precariously above Garza, Joe was barely out of sight as the detective scanned the tree. Squeezing his eyes shut and tucking his white nose down, he was perched so unsteadily that he thought any minute he’d be forced to take a flying leap. He held his breath until Garza ducked back inside the cab.

“Probably a squirrel.”

Harper grunted, opened the envelopes, and produced a third brown envelope from behind the seat. Removing from this a sheaf of clear plastic folders, he opened the first envelope and carefully shook out its contents. Using tweezers, he inserted each piece of paper into a plastic folder before they examined it.

From among the pine needles, the tomcat peered down at the old, yellowed newspaper clippings of strangers, and at the brighter magazine pictures and photographs of Patty Rose. Fidgeting, Joe edged this way and that on the branch, trying to see better. Were they going to go through the entire contents sitting out here in the cold? The officers were silent for some time, passing the plastic sleeves back and forth. The newspaper pages were creased where they’d been folded, and darkly discolored with age. Considering that feline eyesight was superior to that of humans, Joe wondered just how much facial detail the officers were able to discern in those old newspaper photographs. All were of the same four men, though. Three were in profile to the camera, one facing it. It was certainly not a posed shot. In fact, it was so casually candid that it might have been taken without their knowledge. The one man facing the camera full on was a head shorter than the others.

The chief glanced at Garza. “Fenner. Little creep should have burned long ago.” Then he smiled. “Fenner turns out to be our man, you can chalk up one more for the snitch.”

“Makes you feel pretty lame,” Garza said. “Some civilian comes up with this stuff, we don’t even know who she is.”

“They,” Harper said. “I’m pretty sure the guy and the gal work together. And don’t knock it.” His thin, sun-lined face was thoughtful. “Weird as it is, so far they’ve been a hundred percent. So far,” he said thoughtfully, “they’ve produced information that we had no authority to look for. No reason for a warrant. Stuff we might have found farther down the line, or might not. Might never have had cause to search for.”

“Some of that stuff,” Garza said, “who knows how they knew about it? That’s what’s weird. That’s what gives me the willies.”

Harper said nothing more. Above the officers’ heads, Joe Grey peered hard at the old, yellowed newspaper. Even in the blurred clipping, Fenner’s face looked sour and pinched; not an appealing fellow. After some minutes, Harper said, “Guy on the left, Kendall Border. I remember him from that San Diego case two years before L.A. And Craig Vernon, Patty’s son-in-law, he was on death row for three years before he died.”

Watching a mouse hole for hours was nothing compared to Joe’s tension of the moment. He was so wired with questions that every muscle twitched. Edging closer along the frail branch, he watched Harper tilt the paper to the light.

“Those are the four,” Harper said. “The great guru and his disciples.” In the truck, the two men crowded shoulder to shoulder, reading, as Joe teetered on the thin branch above them.

“There were eight or nine women in the group,” Harper said. “L.A. couldn’t make any of them. Guess the men did the dirty work.”

Dallas examined the last clipping, and looked up at Harper. “Mighty damned strange the snitch found these; I have way too many questions about this woman.”

Max shrugged. “You can get used to anything if it works. “

“So what does she� what do they get out of it?”

Max shrugged again. “Ego trip. Moral satisfaction, the thrill of the hunt, who knows? Maybe they’re a couple of frustrated cops?”

Garza grinned, shook his head, and let the subject drop. He opened the truck door. “I’ll get on the computer, get started on Fenner; hope L.A. kept good files.”

As Garza swung out of the truck and headed up the street, Joe backed up the branch to a more solid perch, and sat thinking. Kit had tracked this guy, all alone. Had made his car, and had surely moved the evidence from inside that shack to where the cops could find it, in case the landlady wasn’t home or didn’t want to let them in. Fenner was as good as behind bars, Joe thought, thanks to the kit.

It remained to be seen if this might wrap up the other deaths as well, the little unmarked graves. Might. Might not. But plenty was falling into place, making Joe smile. Falling into place as neat as a mouse into waiting claws. Backing down the trunk to the sidewalk, into the stinking exhaust from Harper’s pickup as the chief headed for the station, the tomcat took off to find Dulcie. To bring Dulcie up to speed, and then to find and praise the kit-if the little tattercoat wasn’t already feeling too high to reach. Knowing Lucinda and Pedric, Kit was probably getting all the extravagant praise she could handle.

25 [��������: pic_26.jpg]

Juana Davis set the deli bag on her desk, filled her coffeepot, and switched it on. Glancing through a stack of fresh memos and reports, she signed three routine forms requesting information, returned four phone calls, which she kept as brief as possible, signed three requests to the DA. Shoving the rest of the stack aside, she carried the forms and requests up to the dispatcher. Returning to her office, she poured a mug of coffee, added creamer and sugar, and shut the door.

Placing the new stack of faxes on a tilted holder for easy reading, she opened the deli bag and unwrapped her breakfast sandwich. Eating Jolly’s bacon, cheese, and egg on sourdough, she studied the more detailed background reports that had just come in on five of the missing children in the Seattle area.

Benjamin Alden was only seven. He had skipped the second grade. The two color pictures of Benjamin showed a freckled, redheaded little boy with a tooth missing in a wide grin. He was so advanced in arithmetic and English that he did not belong in third grade, either, but the school had been reluctant to let him skip another grade so soon, afraid this would create a social misfit. The kid didn’t look to Juana like a misfit. Just full of high jinks, maybe. He had the same devilish twinkle as her own boys when they were small.

Benjamin’s mother had transferred him to a private Catholic school in Seattle where he could advance at his own speed. She told the investigator that she had never pushed the child, that he ate up arithmetic and English grammar the way other kids did puzzles. Benjamin disappeared from the play yard of his new school around three P.M. during his third week in attendance. School had just let out. The other kids had waited for the bus or for their parents. No one saw Benjamin leave or saw him with anyone. His backpack and school books were on the steps when his mother arrived to pick him up. She searched the school and grounds for him, asked a few children. Drove home again watching the streets, checked the house and neighbors, then called the police. Police waived the requisite time of delay before the child was declared missing. Benjamin was not the first child to disappear that fall.

Officers found the fresh prints of a man’s shoes in the woods that bordered the schoolyard, and signs of a struggle where the prints went deeper and were churned up. Police made casts of the prints, including the cast of a partial that turned out to match Benjamin’s shoe size.

In the days preceding the disappearance, no one had seen anyone watching or following Benjamin. The child had not seemed disturbed about anything. After his disappearance, there were no phone calls or letters. No communication. Tracking dogs found a trail across the woods, which ended at the street. No one had seen a car parked there. Tire marks were photographed. Police had not turned up any suspects.

Juana finished her breakfast, which now tasted like cardboard, and swilled more coffee. Nancy Barker of Eugene was nine; she was in the fifth grade, two grades ahead of her peers. She excelled in gymnastics and world history. She was the youngest child on the elementary school’s history debating team. She had disappeared from a sleepover with five other girls at approximately two in the morning. Her friends, asleep all around her, heard nothing. No child woke. In the morning, the window was open and Nancy was gone. The girls were to go swimming that morning at a neighborhood pool. Nancy’s overnight bag with a change of clothes and her bathing suit was missing. This was found later in an irrigation ditch north of Eugene. All the girls at the sleepover were neighborhood children, all from her school. Her absence was discovered about six A.M.

Police found traces of acepromazine, a tranquilizer used for animals, on her pillow, and on the carpet flecks of grass that matched the lawn. There were no fingerprints other than those of the girls and the sleepover family. No one saw a car, no neighbors heard or saw anything. No one heard a dog bark. The family dog, who slept in the fenced yard, and three dogs on the same street had been tranquilized. There were no follow-up sightings of the child. There was no request for ransom.

Juana rose to refill her coffee mug. Unusually bright children and no request for ransom. A dangerous nutcase; dangerous, irreparably twisted. If these were the children found in the senior ladies’ garden, they had to consider that the killer had lived in or near Molena Point. She sat looking at the reports, wondering. Could he have lived in the house that now belonged to the seniors? She had already been through the old tax records, she had the names of the two previous owners. That took her back twenty years. There was no record of the tenants; most of those rentals were illegal. All such small illegal apartments, termed granny flats, were presumably kept for family members. She planned to talk with the neighbors this morning. Rising, she was headed out, had stopped at the dispatcher’s counter when Garza and Harper came in, the chief carrying a couple of full-size brown envelopes and both of them wearing smug grins.

“Come on,” Harper told her, and moved down the hall to Garza’s office. Davis followed. Garza sat down at his desk and booted up the computer. Davis and Harper stood in the doorway. Both the chief and Dallas were still grinning. Harper said, “Those old L.A. cases, when Patty’s grandchild was murdered?”

Juana nodded.

Harper opened the two brown envelopes, shook the contents out on the desk. She looked down at the newspaper clippings, read them, picked up the photographs. Patty, young and smiling. Looked again at the small man in the clippings, then was grinning like the two of them. Like the cat that ate the canary.

“Sick,” she said. “Those poor, bright children. All five, way ahead in school.” She picked up one of the old newspaper photographs of Irving Fenner.

Harper said, “We have Fenner’s car. He’s staying in a rental cottage. Envelopes were under the foundation.”

Juana looked at him. “The snitch?”

Harper nodded. “Landlady says Fenner was there last night, at least she heard him come in. Place reeks of booze. And there’s more,” he said, frowning. “You had breakfast?”

She nodded.

Harper picked up a single doughnut from beside Garza’s empty coffeepot, stared at it, entombed in its plastic wrap, and tapped it on the desk. It sounded like a rock. Picking up Garza’s phone, he asked Mabel to call Jolly’s, see if they could send over some breakfast. He looked at Juana. “Anything from Hyden this morning?”

She shook her head.

He told Mabel, “If Hyden or Anderson calls, put them through.”

Juana went down the hall, brought back her pot of fresh coffee. Pouring three mugs, she settled across from the chief in one of Dallas’s two worn leather chairs. Reaching to Dallas’s desk for the news clippings, she began to read them as Dallas set in motion retrieval of the files from L.A.

Searching for Dulcie, Joe found not the smallest scent of his tabby lady, no hint of a trail until, giving up and heading for the seniors’ backyard, he stopped suddenly, sniffing the black iron grill work of a wrought-iron gate.

Yes, Dulcie had gone in there, sometime early this morning; had leaped through the gate into Genelle Yardley’s garden. And a child had gone in, too, a little girl. He caught Cora Lee’s scent, and then he found Dulcie’s second trail, very fresh, coming out again. He followed it up the street toward the seniors’ house, and it vanished up a jasmine vine two doors away. When, staring up at the rooftops, he didn’t see her, he trotted into the seniors’ garden, down the cracked driveway, and around the house. Looking around for her, he approached the tent that had been erected over the dig; he preferred thinking of this crime scene as a dig. He’d never before felt this revulsion at a scene of human death. He didn’t see Dulcie. Approaching the tent, he could hear the two scientists inside, softly digging. And a faint swishing sound that told him they were brushing earth from the buried bones.

The first child had been taken away, so he guessed they were still working on the second. Sticking his nose under the canvas, hunched low beneath its heavy folds, he peered at Dr. Anderson’s thin, denim-clad posterior where the scientist knelt brushing away earth with a small paintbrush. Joe tried to see around him. Looked like they’d found a third grave. Slipping out and moving farther to the side, peering under again, he could see that two little skeletons lay there. The one that was still here from last night, after the first body was taken away, and now a new victim. Most of the child’s side had been uncovered. Anderson was brushing soil from the leg and the little foot. Hyden crouched just a few feet away also using a small paintbrush, removing loose soil from the child’s shoulder. This body was smaller than the others. Compared to the heft of the two grown men, it seemed as frail as a baby mouse.

Joe had seldom seen a baby mouse clearly before he gulped it-until recently. The last nest of baby mice he’d encountered, he had turned away, leaving them. Leaving them to grow big, he told himself. Sensible game management, more for later. He did not acknowledge the more compassionate, human side of his nature, except to snarl at his own foolishness and tell himself he was getting soft. Now, when suddenly something pressed against his flank, he went rigid.

A breath tickled his ear.

He turned his head slowly, so not to attract the doctors’ attention. Even though he was crouched behind them, he still felt as conspicuous as an elephant in a fishbowl; and these guys were not fond of cats. As he turned, Dulcie’s green eyes met his so intently that he had a sharp memory flash of the first time he’d ever seen her. Her green gaze was just as wide then, and intent. That moment when they’d first met, the gleam in her eyes had turned him giddy; it was at that instant that he fell head over paws in love.

Now her little pink mouth curved up in the same secret smile, that smile that still turned him helpless. She nuzzled his shoulder, but then gave him a very businesslike stare, and backed out from under the tent.

He followed her toward the far bushes where they wouldn’t be heard. Beneath a bottlebrush bush, they crouched together in the chill shadows. Her voice was faint, but tense with excitement. “Did you check at the PD? Are the reports in yet on those old cases? Any fix on when these children died?”

“You’re in a hell of a swivet. What�?”

She didn’t answer him, but plunged on, her tail lashing, her paws shifting, her ears and whiskers rigid. “What about the old case files? Surely by this time they-”

“What,Dulcie?”

Her eyes blazed.

“The reports are coming in,” Joe said patiently. “I don’t think these forensics guys’ll have any kind of fix on the dates until they do the lab work.What, Dulcie?What do you have?”

“Were there missing cases, say, around six to eight years ago?”

“Yes. Quite a few.” He stared hard at her.“What?”

She was dancing from paw to paw, her green eyes like searchlights, nearly exploding with excitement. “Children from the Pacific Northwest?Seattle? Tacoma?“She was so wired that her tail lashed against the twiggy bushes like a high-powered weed eater.

“Yes, that area.”

“Didhekill those children, and then run?”

“Did who kill them? Slow down.” He glared at her until she calmed, slowed her lashing tail, and turned away to wash.

Sitting with her back to him, she had a thorough wash before she was cool again, before she turned to look at him once more. “Lori has been to visit Genelle Yardley,” she said. “To the old lady’s house.”

“I know that. I caught your scent, coming up the hill. And a little girl’s scent.”

“Lori. She went up there to find out about her pa. Find out why he was so mean to her, why he locked her in.”

“You’re saying her pa killed those children?”

“No. Let me finish.”

“And what could an old woman-”

“Genelle Yardley worked for him, Joe. For years and years. She was his office manager. She didn’t know why he’d turned so strange. But she and Lori hit it off right away.”

Impatiently, Joe chewed at his left-front claws, pulling off the loose sheaths, leaving the claws bright and knife-sharp.

“Joe, they were so� Genelle said Lori’s pa turned peculiar after his brother went away.” She looked at him smugly. “Hal Reed went away suddenly, six years ago. Never came back. Story was, Hal moved to Seattle, to spend his time fishing.”

“You’re saying Lori’s uncle killed those children, then left? Come on, Dulcie. Why-”

She hissed at him, her ears back, her tail lashing. “Just listen, Joe. Lori found his billfold, Hal’s billfold with his driver’s license and credit cards. And with it, his favorite belt and a gold ring that Lori says he always wore. Found them in her pa’s garage, in a box of old clothes. She has them,” Dulcie said, “in the library basement, in her backpack. Why would he go away and leave his billfold and driver’s license and credit cards?”

“Why, indeed,” Joe said, licking her ear. “Very nice, Dulcie. You had an interesting morning. And what else might be found hidden in Jack Reed’s house?”

“Exactly,” she said softly, and gave him a sly smile. And the cats rose together and slipped out of the bushes. They were galloping up the cracked drive, their minds on tossing Jack Reed’s house, when a startled”Whoa!“from down inside the tent stopped them as if they’d been snatched back by their tails. Alan Hyden’s voice was so excited, the cats nearly fell over each other racing back to the tent.

“Hand me the camera,” Hyden said. “Get Harper or Garza on the phone.”

Dulcie, because she had no white on her face, slid under first to look. She was there for only an instant, just her striped haunches visible, her striped tail twitching. She backed out suddenly from under the canvas, whirled around wild eyed, and fled for the bushes. Alarmed, Joe raced close beside her.

Peering out, they didn’t breathe. Joe wanted to scorch away, but Dulcie remained frozen, watching as Hyden stepped out the tent door and began to circle the big canvas shelter, studying the ground and the surrounding bushes. As Hyden approached their hiding place, his footsteps squished though the wet leaves, his trouser legs rattling the branches as he knelt to examine Joe’s paw print in the mud. Leave it to a forensics detective. At his approach, they backed deeper in, pressing hard against the heavy branches. Crouched to run, both cats told themselves,So what? What if he sees us? We’re cats! Cats creep around under bushes all the time. What’s the big deal? We’re hunting. So we looked under the tent, so we’re nosy. So catsarenosy!

But Hyden did not like cats, did not want cats anywhere near to contaminate his work. Who knew what he would do? They kept their eyes squeezed shut, and their pale parts hidden, Joe knotted so tightly into a gray ball that he felt like a hedgehog. They listened for some time to Hyden poking around and under the bushes. At last he turned away, parting the shrubs farther on, making Dulcie smile. Had the great cat god once again given them a little help? Or was Alan Hyden, despite his superior professional reputation, beginning to need glasses?

Hyden stood for a moment in the garden looking down into the ravine before he returned to the tent. Watching him, Dulcie wondered if he was more concerned about paw prints among the evidence, or about some cat making off with the bones. Some feral cat, or a neighbor’s cat leaving chew marks on the bones, marks the anthropologist would have to sort out and account for. In a few minutes, both men came out and began pounding additional stakes around the edges of the canvas. The cats listened to Hyden call the station, leaving a message for either Harper or Garza, an urgent message that gave no information, just said to be in touch ASAP; a message that made the cats glance at each other, wondering if they should risk another look under the flap.

“What did you see?” Joe asked.

“Nothing! He was in the way. But they sure were excited.”

“Come on, let’s try again for a look.”

“It’s too risky,” Dulcie said. “These guys’ minds are way too inquisitive. You can find out later, at the station.” And, their own inquisitive minds totally frustrated, they slipped away at last to Jack Reed’s house for a quiet break-and-enter.

26 [��������: pic_27.jpg]

Looking out at the bright morning, Charlie switched on the coffeepot. Standing beside her at the counter, Ryan cut a coffee cake she’d brought for their morning break, from Jolly’s Deli, a confection of dates, pecans, and honey. “That’ll put on the pounds,” Charlie said. “Not at all. Work it off by the end of the day.” “Maybe you will.” Charlie took an experimental bite, and closed her eyes with pleasure. “That is purely sinful. I have to save some for Max, he didn’t eat breakfast. He got a call before we were up; I guess we slept in, a little. He left right away, didn’t say what it was.” She glanced at Ryan uneasily. “Just-another message where the informer won’t give a name.” She reached to pour the coffee. “Guess I shouldn’t knock it, that pair is good. It was the fe-the woman’s voice this time.”

Ryan took four plates fromthecupboard, doling out generous slices of coffee cake. She looked Charlie over, laughing. “You used to be a redhead. There’s so much Sheetrock dust in your hair, you’ve gone prematurely gray.” Charlie’s green T-shirt, too, was white with dust. Reaching up, she felt the grit on her face. “Are my freckles gone?”

“Almost. I like you better with.”

Turning on the tap, Charlie ducked her face under and scrubbed. She was glad she’d covered the kitchen floor with a tarp to keep from tracking the white dust; it got into everything. She’d been sanding the taped and mudded Sheetrock intently for two hours, needing to keep working, to do something after Max left. She’d skipped her own breakfast and gotten right to work, her mind filled with the kit.

Hadthat been the kit who called this morning, after she was safely home? Or had it been Dulcie? Max said it was a woman, that was all. “Gotta go. Damned snitch-claims to have a lead. Some kind of evidence.” Hanging up, he’d called Dallas on his cell, given him directions to some cottage in the heart of the village, then taken off. He’d been cross, the snitch always made him cross, Charlie thought, smiling. But he’d been wired, too, with a satisfied excitement.

She hated lying to Max, keeping secrets from him that, in her mind, amounted to the same thing as lying. Though it did amuse her that he hadn’t a clue who his informants were. And it surely amused the cats. But now she stood seeing again Patty Rose lying dead, imagining the blaze of the firing gun as Patty must have seen it in the last seconds of her life. And then seeing the little graves, too, and wondering if there was any place in the world where ugliness no longer happened. Since yesterday when Cora Lee uncovered that little hand she kept imagining the faces of those children, and of their frantic parents.

Setting down her coffee cup so hard she nearly broke it, she watched Ryan carry coffee cake in to Scotty and Dillon. It was Saturday, and young Dillon Thurwell worked every weekend. Though the child had arrived for work this morning so silent and pale that Charlie had thought she was sick. Dillon had gotten right to work, though. No one said anything about the graves, but maybe Dillon had seen the morning paper, maybe the death of those children had upset her.

Charlie had wanted to speak to her about the tea party for Genelle Yardley, to make sure Dillon would join them. It seemed barbaric, to go ahead with such a celebration. But when Dorothy Street called last night, she’d assured them Patty would want them to, that the tea party was Patty’s final gesture of friendship for Genelle. That if Patty was anything, she was hardheaded, that Dorothy wouldn’t be surprised to see Patty’s ghost striding across the inn’s patio giving orders for the tea, telling the staff exactly what to serve and where everyone was to be seated. Charlie looked up at Ryan. “I’ve never been to a proper tea.”

Ryan shook her head. “Nor I. Would you call this high tea?”

Charlie shrugged. “I haven’t the vaguest. It can be what we want, now that it’s smaller, just close friends.”

“Whatever, we’re going to make it lovely for Genelle. What are you wearing?”

“Something warm. Maybe that paisley cashmere sweater, and that smashing India necklace Max bought me. And a long wool skirt and boots. You think Dillon really will go? Patty so wanted her to.”

Dillon had said several times that she wasn’t going to any tea party. Ryan told her shewasgoing. That, as Dillon’s boss, she required it. Dillon said that was a lot of horse hockey. Of course Ryan hadn’t wanted to go either; she viewed afternoon tea with as much disdain as did Dillon, but she hadn’t expressed that opinion in front of the fourteen-year-old. “The experience will do you good. Maybe you’ll learn some manners.”

Dillon had looked hard at Ryan. “I have manners, when I care to use them.” They had been working at the back of the house, tearing out a wall.“You’llhave to put on a skirt for ateaparty,” Dillon had told Ryan.“You’llhave to put on panty hose,you’llhave to get all cleaned up.”

“So? That won’t kill either of us. That old woman is dying. This is something she’s looked forward to, a lovely, cozy tea among her friends, at an elegant inn. The only element missing will be Patty, and she’ll be there in spirit.Youcan at least be there in person, Dillon, and put on a happy face.”

“You are so sentimental. How can Patty be there in spirit, after some guy blew her away! Besides, I don’t even know Genelle. You hardly know her. Why should-”

“You knew Patty, and Patty liked you, though I don’t know why. Patty wanted you there, Dillon.”

“I don’t see-”

Ryan’s look had silenced Dillon, that fierce green-eyed stare that came from growing up around cops. Charlie, who had been sitting on a sawhorse among the torn-out walls, had watched the two, highly amused. But she’d kept her mouth shut. The thirty-something contractor and the quicksilver girl had been going at each other like this since before Christmas, when Dillon, who had fallen into shoplifting and running with a bad crowd, had made the mistake of sassing Ryan.

Ryan Flannery, cop’s kid, excellent carpenter, crack shot, was not intimidated by a sassy fourteen-year-old. She had thrown Dillon’s challenge back in her face, told Dillon to straighten up. And Ryan had offered her a job.

Dillon had sneered at the suggestion of working for Ryan, but a month later she was doing just that, as carpenter’s apprentice. Working over Christmas vacation. She had dropped the truant, thieving girls she was running with and was getting her act together.

Dillon’s sea change was, however, not entirely Ryan’s doing. Dillon had straightened up quickly, too, when her mother began to put her own life back together after a more-than-foolish affair. Now, finishing her coffee cake and wishing for more but not taking it, Charlie rose. Rinsing her plate and cup, she headed back to work. Her mind was too full this morning, full of fear and death. She needed to drown her thoughts in the simple routine of sanding Sheetrock, put life to rest for an hour or two and get herself centered.

Lori left Genelle Yardley’s with Cora Lee, her stomach full of pancakes and bacon, and her mind in a turmoil of questions. Had she done right to tell Ms. Yardley about Uncle Hal’s billfold? She was certain the old lady would keep her secret, but what if she didn’t? What if Genelle Yardley went straight to the police after all and they arrested Pa because Uncle Hal was gone? Arrested Pa formurder}She didn’t want to think that word, Pa wouldn’t do that. There had to be another explanation. Uncle Hal was his brother.

Genelle Yardley said there might be any number of reasons that Pa had Uncle Hal’s billfold and belt and ring. But Lori could tell that she really didn’t believe that. And why, when Genelle first read the newspaper about the little graves, did she glance at Lori and go so quiet?

Sitting in the car beside Cora Lee, they were halfway down the hill, almost to the first shops, when she thought she saw the little man, but he was turned away, she couldn’t be sure; he was standing in the doorway of the village grocery. She glanced at Cora Lee, but said nothing, just looked straight ahead watching the streets, praying she was wrong. Cora Lee turned toward the library looking for a parking place, and let out a little yip of pleasure.

“All right!” Cora Lee said, pulling into a twenty-minute green zone just in front of the library. “The parking gods are with us.” Cora Lee laughed, and winked at her, and they got out. “I’m going to take you inside,” Cora Lee said softly. “You can get your things.”

Lori’s anger flared. “You said-”

“I didn’t say I’d bring you back to stay.” Cora Lee took her hand. “I won’t leave you here, Lori. It’s dangerous. Do you understand that I can’t leave you with no one to help you, that I’d be sick with fear, and so would Genelle?”

“But you-”

“I did not promise to leave you here. Think back to what I said-only that I’d bring you down.”

Lori stared, scowling. But Cora Lee was right, she spoke truly. That was all she had said.

“Come on, then, let’s get your things.”

Lori didn’t like standing out in the open, and she did feel safer with Cora Lee as they hurried up the stone walk through the library garden. Together they slipped in through the big double doors, and headed down the stairs to the lower floor. They had turned toward the basement workroom when Lori glanced behind her, up to the main floor, and saw him.

He stood just at the top of the half flight of stairs, near the circulation desk. Catching her breath, she drew back into the stacks pulling Cora Lee with her. Cora Lee looked at him, and her eyes widened. “You’re afraid, Lori. Of that man.”

Lori nodded.

“Go into the ladies’ room. Quick. You have your card? Wait for me.” Cora Lee’s dark eyes were steady on hers. “Whatever this is, I’ll get rid of him. Wait there for me, and don’t unlock the door. Promise me!”

Lori nodded. “I promise.”

Cora Lee gave her a gentle shove toward the door of the ladies’ room, and watched while Lori fished her card from her pocket; she didn’t start up the stairs until Lori had slipped into the ladies’ room. Lori peered out as Cora Lee moved away, then locked the door and leaned against it, listening.

She could hear little through the thick door and walls. What would Cora Lee do? She waited for a long time. She washed her face, then brushed her hair with her fingers. She brushed her teeth with soap and her finger. There was no soft knock to say that Cora Lee was back. She put down the toilet lid and sat on it. She thought about Mama, and about Pa. Thought about Genelle all alone in that big house. Where was Cora Lee? She had to get her things, she didn’t want to leave Uncle Hal’s billfold in the basement, in her pack. She drank water from her cupped hands, and then at last she unlocked the door and cracked it open.

Peering out, she heard Cora Lee talking to someone, heard the end of Cora Lee’s words, but couldn’t see her, up beyond the steps. “�mustbe there, Ican’tstay. Oh, this is dreadful. Where is Wilma? Where is Ms. Getz?”

“She comes in late today. Noon. Sometimes she comes in earlier to do some things on her own time, but�” It was that Ms. Wahl, a dumpy, bossy little woman who was always hushing everyone and thought that children should be allowed to read only stupid baby books.

“Please, Nora. Please� There’s a little girl in the ladies’ room. Lori. Please, before you do anything else, go get her, keep her with you. Don’t let her leave the library; I’ll be back for her.” Cora Lee sounded like she was holding the woman by the shoulders, trying to get her full attention. “Lori could be in danger, do you understand? Tell Wilma, the minute she comes in. See that Lori stays with her.” They were moving away now; the woman said something Lori couldn’t make out, her voice soft and faint; they were beyond the steps, among other voices. When Lori slipped farther out to look, she saw Cora Lee hurrying away out the door.

What was wrong? Something was very wrong. Was it Genelle? Was she worse? Oh, it mustn’t be Genelle, and she hoped it was nothing bad for Cora Lee. She wondered what time it was. If it was coffee-break time, maybe the workroom would be empty, maybe she could slip in before that Ms. Wahl started looking for her. What had happened, to take Cora Lee away like that? She didn’t like that Ms. Wahl, she didn’t like being passed around, either, from one grownup to another. She was headed along beside the stacks, for the workroom door, when she saw him again, up on the main floor. As if he had been waiting for Cora Lee to leave?

Ducking between the stacks, she saw Ms. Wahl turn away from the stairs and walk right past him. Trembling, Lori looked around her. Would he dare grab her in here? She could yell, or run to Ms. Wahl. But what could that rabbity little woman do? And now Ms. Wahl was gone again, and he was coming down. The soft sound of his shoes and a little squeak every few steps, rubber against the hard steps. Lori knew she could make a scene, bring everyone running.

Right. And someone would call the cops. And the cops would call Pa. She turned and fled, racing through the stacks and up the back stairs, her heart pounding hard.Stay here in the library,she thought,don’t go out!But she was too afraid to stay. Racing past the circulation desk to the front door, she burst out across the garden and dodged across the street between cars. Slipping into a narrow walkway between two shops, she fled down the little lane and around the back into a courtyard. Then through a shop of model trains and out its front door to the next street. Across that, across another street, another courtyard, running, running until she was among the cottages on the south side of the village. Ducking through the bushes along the side of a tall stucco house, she fled into its backyard praying there wasn’t a fence.

Finding only bushes, she scrambled through into the next yard, bloodying her legs and arms and tearing her shirt. Dodging into the shadows beside a little shed, she paused to stare in through its open door.

Clay pots, bags of fertilizer, garden tools, a bucket. She could hide in there, pull the door closed and maybe lock it.

Yes, and be trapped there.

Slipping out again, she pushed the door shut. Maybe he’d think she was in there, waste a few minutes looking.

Zigzagging through a tangle of trees and bushes, she raced for the next street and the next; and she heard him behind her, running. Making for the next block, she doubled back toward the shops where there were people. A snapping sound behind her, like a branch breaking. Dodging between houses, she crawled under a porch, squeezed back under the steps and out of sight. The street before her was busy with traffic, and lined with parked cars. He was coming, his feet squinching the wet leaves.

Slipping out from under the porch again, she fled between the parked cars and into the middle of the street. Running down the street between the two lanes of slow-moving cars, he didn’t dare grab her. Horns honked. A woman yelled at her to get out of the street. She couldn’t hear, in the traffic, if he was behind her. She was across Ocean again. What did he want? Dodging between the northbound line of cars, she ducked into the brick-paved alley behind the deli. Swerving around the little benches and potted trees, she startled a group of cats and they scattered everywhere, some into the street, some up a vine. He was still coming, running, his footsteps squeak, squeak, squeaking on the pavement. She considered the wooden trellis. Would it hold her? Racing past the closed back door where the cats had been gathered, she leaped at the frail trellis slats and climbed fast.

But he swerved into the alley, lunging for the trellis. Grabbed her foot, jerked so hard she fell. At the same instant the door was flung open and a fat man appeared. Round, shiny face, round, smooth head, and dressed all in white. He stood, startled, staring. The small man froze in place holding her, his face all sharp lines and dark stubble. “Keen.” That was Mama’s word. Keen with hate. Why? Through the open door, the shop smelled of spice and sugar, cinnamon, hot cheese browning in ovens. The small man stared past her at the round man. When the round man grabbed for Fenner, as if he’d squish him, Fenner twitched and backed away, dragging her; then he dropped her and ran, pelting through the alley and into the street. Her heart was pounding so hard she wanted to throw up. She stood with her head down until the feeling passed.

When she looked up, the man in white took her hand. “Come into the deli. I’ll call the police.”

“No! Oh, no!”

“The deli’s safe enough.”

“Please. Don’t call anyone.”

“I� All right.” He looked surprised, but he didn’t fuss like most grownups. He led her inside, into a big bright room filled with little tables and wire chairs, long windows all facing the street. A tall counter along the back with a glass front was crowded with cakes and pies and roast beef and sliced ham and salads.

He led her to a table in the corner, away from the windows. Sitting down, she stared out at the sidewalk but didn’t see the small man. Only cars moving, and tourists, some with dogs on leashes, and locals going to work in jeans and sweatshirts. The round man disappeared into the back. There were people at three of the tables. Two women in jeans drinking coffee and eating something that smelled of bacon and onions and cheese, three men in sport coats and jeans, and a young pale woman drinking tea and reading a paperback book. They all glanced up at her and then turned politely away. The round man returned with a glass of milk and a slice of cake. She wasn’t hungry but when she started to eat she devoured everything-the cake was carrot like Mama made, and the milk was cold and good. Maybe she was making up for lost meals. When she had finished, the fat man sat down across from her.

“I’m George Jolly, this is my shop,” he said with pride. “You know that man?”

“No! I� He just� He just chased me.”

“I thought maybe you didn’t want to get him in trouble.”

She shook her head. “I just� I don’t want the police.”

“Okay. But shall I call someone else? Your mother? To come and take you home, safe?”

My mother’s dead. Mama can’t take me home.“I’ll be all right now.” She knew she was being foolish. Mama would scold her for being so foolish. He could call Cora Lee. When she first got in the car, Cora Lee had slipped a piece of paper into Lori’s pocket, with her house phone and cell phone numbers. Now, when Lori hesitated, he said, “Who should I call?’

She shook her head. “No one. He won’t dare follow me again, not in the middle of the village, with so many tourists and cars.”

He started to speak.

“I’ll be fine. Some weirdo, that’s all. When� when I’ve gone, you could call the police then, if you want. Tell them what he looked like.”

“I can do that,” George Jolly said, brightening.

“Just don’t tell them what I look like.”

Mr. Jolly grinned at her.“Helooked like a little, hard beetle, all angles and as if he had a hard shell.”

Lori grinned back at him. “That’s exactly what he looked like! Hard, beady eyes, too, like a beetle.” Like a beetle you’d find in the garden that the kids in Greenville liked to squish under their boots to hear it pop. She rose and took George Jolly’s hand. “Thank you,” she said softly. She left Jolly’s Deli telling him she’d be fine, but the minute she was on the street she was scared again. That cold, falling feeling again, in the pit of her stomach.

She could go to Genelle’s, but the library was closer. Hurrying along the street among window-shopping grownups, she wanted, now, only to get back into her cave.

And she knew something more about the beetle man. She knew, now, she’d seen this man when she was little. It was the same man, she was sure. He came in the schoolyard when she was six. In the second grade. In the schoolyard, standing inside the fence by the drinking fountain. They were playing kickball. Every time she ran near him, he watched her. He was there again the next day. She was eating lunch alone on a bench, reading. He sat down next to her and asked her what grade she was in and could he see her arithmetic and spelling papers that she had in her backpack. She stared at him and ran, back into the building. She’d called Mama, and Mama came for her. Mama didn’t know who he was. That day had scared them both.

Uncle Hal always wanted to see her schoolwork, too. Or wanted her to play numbers games and do puzzles. At first she’d liked that. But Pa would make him stop, Pa didn’t like those games. Andthatmade Mama mad. Mama said, “What’s wrong with her being smart? Why are you so set against a girl being smart? What if she were a boy?” Pa said it wouldn’t make no difference, and then they’d fight and she, Lori, would go in her room and turn on her little radio loud and read a fairy tale that ended up happy.

Now, hurrying along the sidewalk staying in a crowd of people, she looked across at a shop window where a shadow moved, then jerked away suddenly behind the china and glassware. Fenner? She stopped for only an instant to look, but now there was nothing. Two women inside; she saw no one else. Hurrying across the library garden and in through the library’s front door, she glanced back at the street. When she didn’t see him, she slipped into the children’s room.

The librarian was starting story hour. He didn’t dare come here, among the children. She sat down on a floor cushion beside the crowded window seat, leaned against its cushioned edge beside the dangling feet of a four-year-old who was in turn snuggled up to an older child. She looked at the kind face of the librarian and listened to her quiet voice, and slowly she let the story take her away, saw the goats and the mountain and the grandfather and let the story become real, let the ugliness fade away until it was gone. Almost gone. He couldn’t get her here, not in this safe place.

27 [��������: pic_28.jpg]

Jack Reed’s house stood five blocks below the home of the senior ladies, and Genelle Yardley’s, but seven blocks over the crest of the hill, closer to the sea. The two cats, leaving the seniors’ garden and Drs. Hyden and Anderson to their dig, stopped only once, when a yapping terrier chased them. Spinning to face the frenetic animal, they smiled, and Joe Grey lifted an armored paw. The little dog stopped. Dulcie flattened her ears and crouched to spring. The dog backed up a step. Joe’s burning yellow eyes and Dulcie’s poison-green gaze made the terrier tremble right down to his hard little paws. Tucking his tail between cringing haunches, he moved back three steps more, let out a screeching challenge, then spun around and beat it out of there yipping for human protection.

Enjoying his retreat, the two cats smiled at each other and trotted on through the crowded backyard gardens, their path following the rocky ridge that began in Genelle’s garden. An outcropping that ran for half a mile, cresting the hill in a ragged, stony spine. The yards through which it thrust were, for the most part, planted to enhance its sculpted curves. The ridge ended across the street from Jack Reed’s bungalow, in an unbuildable jutting shoulder of stone. The cats paused among the boulders. They had seen this house many times, and they had never liked it.

None of these homes had much front yard, and little more backyard. A second row of roofs could be seen close behind them. The house was stark, forbidding, without any of the welcoming air of a beloved retreat, like most of the village cottages. Against the front of the one-story gray frame, with its dull-brown trim, was a line of dead or dying shrubs. The rest of the yard, where there might once have been flower beds, was covered with brick-colored gravel uglier than a parking lot.

The concrete driveway was empty, and Jack’s white pickup with its neat side boxes and “Vincent and Reed” logo wasn’t parked on the street. The two cats, padding up the concrete drive to avoid the gravel, stood for a moment assessing the windows and vents, looking for the easiest route of entry.

The foundation vents were so big that Lori could have gotten out through there, if ever she’d found a way down from the house above. The cats circled the house, but all seven vents were nailed shut. Slipping along between the bushes, they leaped up to the sill of the garage window and peered in.

No room in there for a vehicle; the place was stacked with cardboard boxes of clothes and other items spilling out, castoffs that looked too old and tired even to give to charity. The window itself was new and clean but nailed shut, a dozen nails angled into the inside molding.

“What kind of man is this?” Joe Grey said irritably.

“Paranoid.”

“All this to lock in one little girl?”

“Nutcase.”

“You think he hurt her?”

“She’s never said that, and she talks to me a lot. When Genelle asked her if he’d done anything ugly, any kind of touching, Lori said no. That she’d heard all about those things from the other kids in the foster homes.” She turned to look at him, the late-morning light catching across her green eyes and peach-tinted ears. “She’s really afraid of going back to those foster places. I think, if she trusted the foster-care people, she would have called them, gotten some help.”

“But help from what? What did he do to her?”

She turned on the branch. “He locked her in, Joe! Nailed the windows shut! How would you feel? You detest being locked in! Took her out of school, and she loved school. She was a prisoner!” Leaping from the narrow sill into the oak tree that towered above them, she trotted along a branch to examine an attic vent.

It was stuck tight. She examined the other vent on that side, then leaped to the roof and across it, into another oak. There appeared to be two vents on each side. All were stuck, but no new nails were visible. These vents were too small for a child to get through, and who would fear that a cat might enter or even want to. It was not until they were pawing at the last vent that they were able to rattle the wooden grid.

Pressing harder, then pulling with hooked claws, they loosened the hinges in the rotting frame where it had succumbed to dampness and maybe termites. Digging in harder, Dulcie flung herself backward on the branch, pulling with all her might-just as she would jerk a giant rat from its hole. The grid flew off, nearly taking her with it. In midair, she fought her paw loose, snatching at the branch. Teetering, grabbing for balance, she watched the grid spin away to the ground. She realized only then that Joe had his teeth in her shoulder, a mouthful of fur and skin to keep her steady. Turning, ignoring the pain from his teeth, she gave him a whisker kiss.

Joe released her and leaped to the edge of the hole, peering in. Dulcie edged up beside him. The attic was black and stunk of dead spiders and insects and mouse droppings, filling Dulcie with visions of black-widow spiders and the brown recluse arachnids and surly raccoons waiting in the dark to defend their lair. She wanted no truck with raccoons, better to face tigers. In Molena Point, raccoons were so well protected by the do-gooders of the village that they had grown unnaturally bold. Pet dogs had been attacked in their own yards, and just this winter, raccoons had badly bitten not only several family dogs but two different women, and a child, who tried to rescue their screaming pets. And only a few blocks from the Reed house, she and Joe and Kit had barely escaped a predatory band of raccoons in just such a black attic as this. That escapade had ended with gunshots. Dulcie still woke from nightmares in which she and Joe and Kit had been blown away instead of the raccoons.

“Dulcie?” Crouched on the branch beside her, Joe nosed at her impatiently.

She flicked an ear at him.

“You going to hang there all day? Is there a problem?”

Fixing her back claws in the molding, she gave a tail lash and bolted into the unknown dark, onto a soft surface that gave unpleasantly until she realized it was a matt of dust-embedded fiberglass insulation between two rafters. The faint echo as she scrambled in implied that the attic was empty, she didn’t even hear mice, though her nose tickled with the smell of dry mouse droppings and the leavings of generations of squirrels. She was peering around her as Joe landed behind her. “Go on, Dulcie.Whatisthe matter?“He pushed hard against her. She moved on hesitantly, picking her way along a rafter and watching through the blackness for the trapdoor that every house must have to give access to the attic-prayingthatwasn’t nailed shut.

It would be just their luck if Lori’s pa was at home after all, lying motionless on the bed below them, as Lori had described.

Morosely staring up at the ceiling just where she and Joe might emerge. This was, after all, the weekend, when most folks didn’t work. Maybe he’d loaned his truck to someone.

But, she thought, it was only Saturday. Contractors did often work on Saturday, catching up on an ever more demanding building market. Maybe he was on some extensive job or some difficult old remodel, or maybe, hopefully, deep into a tangle of ancient, frustrating wiring that would take him the better part of the day. She watched Joe leap across the rafters searching for a way down, his white nose, chest, and paws in the blackness seeming disembodied.

“Here,” he said softly. “Here it is. Come on, Dulcie, shake a paw.”

Leaping after him, she crouched beside him at the edge of the trapdoor. His head was bent over the plywood square, his ears sharply forward, listening to the house below.

When they had listened for some time and had heard nothing, he clawed at the edge of the door. He was able, just barely, to wiggle it in its molding. “Comeon,Dulcie.” He turned to look at her, his patience wearing thin. “I’ve never seen you so reluctant.”

She’d seldom felt so reluctant. All Lori’s unhappiness in this house seemed to have collected like a chill around Dulcie’s own heart, and she didn’t want to go down there.

Well, the trapdoor was probably bolted, anyway. Padlocked maybe, from the inside. She set her claws in, and on his count of three, she jerked upward.

The door lifted an inch, then dropped back.

Again they listened, Joe as still as a snake about to strike, Dulcie’s heart pounding.

When the house remained silent they tried again. With their back paws well under them, and their front claws deeply engaged over the lip of the door, Joe whispered, “One, two, three, heave.”

The door flew up-but then dropped back again, forcing some swift paw work to leap clear.

On the next try, they were able to lift it far enough to get their shoulders under it. Cats were not built for this stuff, for using their bodies like wedges. But they heaved, heaved again, and finally with their backs under it, the rest was kitten play. A last heave and the door fell backward onto the rafters. They flew cringing away, out of the sight of anyone below.

But they saw then why the door had given.

“We pulled the hasp out,” Joe said, amazed.

Dulcie stared at the softer wood where the hasp had pulled loose. Splinters had flicked off, scattering on the carpet below. When there was no sound, when the house remained as still as death itself, they crouched on the edge, looking down.

Below them down the dim hallway, they could see a living room at one end and next to it a kitchen. Along the hall were four narrow doors that probably led to a bath and three bedrooms. All the doors stood ajar. The rooms beyond were dark. The place reeked of stale air. They could see, inside the door to the farthest bedroom, stacks of newspapers and an unmade bed that even from this distance smelled of unwashed human. Glancing at Dulcie, Joe dropped the eight feet to the worn carpet, his heavy landing causing a muffled thunk. Dulcie, flehming at the smells, dropped down beside him, her legs and shoulders jolted by her landing. And, staring high above her at the attic crawl hole, which was now unreachable, she felt her courage drained away. Without a ladder or a tall piece of furniture, they were not going back out that way. And maybe, with the windows all boarded up, there was no other way out. Crouching on the stained carpet, breathing in the stale smells, Dulcie was filled with the terror of being trapped, unable to escape, a feeling so debilitating that it turned the little tabby cold and weak.

28 [��������: pic_29.jpg]

In the children’s reading room, Lori had concealed herself as best she could, tucked up among the pillows at the end of the window seat. Story hour was over. She had fetched a book from the shelves and was pretending to read, holding the book in front of her face, glancing out the library window every few minutes watching for the beetle man. The children’s librarian was right there at the desk, and another librarian at the circulation desk, two more in the reference room, so she felt safe enough. Ms. Wahl did not come looking for her, and no one said anything to her. She guessed Ms. Wahl didn’t really care about what Cora Lee had said, or hadn’t believed Cora Lee. Being a grownup didn’t automatically make you real smart, or turn you into a nice person.

Beyond the glass, the library’s peaceful garden made a strange contrast with the turmoil in her mind, with the dark shadow of the beetle man, and with worry over what had taken Cora Lee away. Then, when she did read a few pages, the pictures in her head of Harry Potter were equally dark, all among the gloomy caverns.

And when she looked up suddenly, she saw him. The beetle man, standing across the street. Standing inside the door of the china shop, his back to her, standing in shadow and talking with someone inside.

Pressing deeper among the bright pillows, she was mostly hidden behind the wall where it met the window. She could see him gesturing, his hands making stiff movements. She didn’t know whether to slip away again, out of the library, to run again, or to stay where she was. Stay here and watch him, see what he would do. It would be worse not to see him, not know where he was. He was waiting for her to come out; why else would he be there in a china shop?

Mama would always stop at a china shop window and stand dreaming, setting in her mind some lovely pattern of plates and silver, imagining them laid out on an embroidered cloth. She and Mama, they ate their meals on Melmac and flowered oilcloth-pretty oilcloth, though, and pale-yellow Melmac. But not china and linen like Mama loved. Their silverware was from the Greenville Woolworth’s. He was coming out, turning to look straight across to the library window. Cringing deeper into the cushions, she was telling herself she was safer here, when she saw Pa. Saw his white truck coming around the corner. “Vincent and Reed” on the side. Pa driving real slow, looking out at the street. “Oh!” she said aloud, sucking in her breath.

The librarian looked up, startled. Lori smiled quickly and held up the thick copyof Harry Potter.“I’m sorry,” she mouthed in silence. The librarian smiled at her and nodded-she was the children’s librarian, she loved Harry Potter, too. She understood how you could get caught up in that world and forget your own. How you could get lost in a world so you just shouted out when you didn’t mean to.

Out on the street, Pa had slammed on his brakes and swung out of the pickup, right in the middle of the street with all the cars stopped behind him. Pa ran across, Pa, tall and thin, reaching and grabbing the beetle man by the shoulders, swinging him around.

The beetle man fought him, trying to get away. Pa had on his dark uniform jacket with the red-and-white “Vincent and Reed” emblem on the pocket, his brown hair slicked down under his baseball cap. He shook the beetle man, shouting at him so violently that people crossed the street to get away. Any minute, someone would call the cops. Pa’s anger scared her, and excited her, too. Pressing hard against the glass, she watched him shove the smaller man into the cab of his white truck, Pa still shouting in his face as if threatening him. Pa slammed the truck door. The man cowered, crouching down as Pa went around the front, watching him, and swung into the driver’s seat. Pa pulled away in a chirp of tires. In a moment they were gone, turning away at the next corner.

Pulling the pillows closer around her, she felt hot, then ice cold. She wanted with all her heart to believe that Pa had come to find her and protect her.

But why would he care, after he’d kept her a prisoner? If Pa hated the beetle man, he hated her, too. He didn’t care for no one. She longed to be down in her cave alone but she couldn’t go there now in the middle of the day. When she looked back across the street, she saw a cat on the roof of the china shop. Dulcie?

But no, it wasn’t Dulcie. A little dark cat, though. This cat had long fur and was darker than Dulcie, with a huge fluffy tail lashing, really comical. It stared down from the gutter, looking after Pa’s truck.

It was the cat that had saved her, had chewed her ropes and freed her. Sliding off the window seat, she wanted to run out to it. She was safe now from the beetle man and from Pa, she felt suddenly so free she wanted to race into the street shouting and spinning cartwheels, she could run across to the little cat, she could race away up the street, free.

But first she had to get her backpack, in case she might not come back. She didn’t think about what Pa might be doing to the beetle man, she didn’t want to know. She waited until the children’s librarian rose and headed for the reference room, then she crossed to the stairs. Hurrying down the half flight to the basement, she paused beside the workroom door, looking in, making up an excuse to go in there, feeling bolder than she ever had.

There was only one librarian, with her back to Lori. Lori watched her, puzzled, then alarmed.

The thin, blond woman had pulled the little bookcase aside and was sweeping up bits of broken brick scattered across the floor. Lori watched her edge the bookcase out farther and peer around it. Where Lori had always fit the bricks neatly into the hole, now they stuck out all ragged, with big gaps, bricks every which way. Someone had been there, someone�

Had the beetle man come here last night, before he found her? Come in through the basement window, throughherwindow? He must have followed her, known she was hiding in the library. Then had come in at night in the dark after she left, thinking to find her alone in the middle of the night. To find her where, if she cried out, there would be no one to hear her? That thought filled her with a fear far deeper than when he tied her up and locked her in that house.

That time, he hadn’t touched her in a bad way. And she’d thought there might be neighbors close, thought if she had to, she could yell. Had thought if she could escape she could come back here to the library, to her own hiding place, and be safe. But all the time, it wasn’t safe? All the time, he’d known about the basement?

And there in the beetle man’s room, tied up in that chair, she’d been more mad than scared.Deep, cold angry,Mama would say. But now she was only scared, now that he’d found her cave she was real scared. He knew her one last secret, her one secret place to hide.

As the blond woman finished sweeping and started to turn, Lori drew away into the shadows and fled, nipped silently up the stairs and out. Leaving her hideaway for the last time. Leaving her backpack, her blanket, Uncle Hal’s billfold. Now she daren’t come back. If the beetle man knew where she’d hidden, maybe Pa knew, too. And Pa would come looking. Even if Pa did mean to save her from the beetle man, she still couldn’t go home with him, not and be locked up again. Sick with the pounding of her heart, she fled away through the village and into the hills knowing where she must go, the only place she had to go, the only place to put her trust.

Padding down Jack Reed’s hall, their noses filled with the sour, musty smell of the boarded-up house, their ears swiveling at every tiny creak that was probably only a house noise, the two cats pressed in through the first door. A small, dim bedroom hardly big enough to hold a little girl’s delicately carved ivory-colored bed, neatly made up with a faded pink spread, a little matching desk and chair, and a narrow chest of drawers. The windows, covered on the outside with plywood and darkened with grime, were veiled within by dingy lace curtains hanging limp and tired. They had been lovely once. Lori’s mother had taken great care to make a pretty room for the child, but now, with the thick dust, and the boarded-over windows, how grim it was. Windows were the eyes of a house; windows should be bright, should look out with joy on the world. But the eyes of this house, turned inward, were as sightless as if squeezed closed in shame. She watched Joe leap to the sill and put his nose to the glass, inspecting the nails in the plywood. He dropped down again, disgusted, and headed for the hall and the next door. “We’ll come back,” Joe said, nervously moving on, looking intently for a way out, trotting into each room to check the windows. They had entered this house gambling that somewhere there would be a route of quick escape. Now they’d better find it.

The next room was just as tiny a cubicle. No lace curtains here. Faded plaid draperies and, again, plywood covering the dirty glass. A scarred oak desk nearly filled the room, one of those ancient government-surplus models from World War II that, Wilma said, were beginning to go for respectable prices. On the walls hung cheap landscape reproductions that Dulcie imagined a budget-conscious young homemaker might have picked up cheap from the discount table at Kmart. The pale rectangles between the pictures, where other frames had been removed, were more interesting than what had been left.

“Maybe he removed family pictures,” Dulcie said. “Pictures of Lori and her mother? Because he didn’t want to be reminded of them? Strange, though, to hang landscapes and family photographs all mixed up.” Joe shrugged. He wasn’t into the subtler aspects of interior design.

The third and largest was the master bedroom, Jack’s bedroom now. Dusty and neglected, the pitiful remnants of female occupancy were depressing: a pretty three-sided mirror over a wicker dressing table, and a little wicker chair, all thick with dust grimed into the white woven surface. A picture of red poppies on the wall beside the mirror, perfectly positioned between two pale, bare rectangles. In the drawers a comb, hair curlers, a faded valentine excessively sentimental and signed “Jack.” Four pairs of delicate, lace-edged silk panties that perhaps Natalie had thought would not be in keeping with her new life. The bed was unmade, the sheets and blanket tossed half on the floor, the white sheets yellowed and smelling sourly of sleep. The stacks of newspapers and dog-eared paperback books near the door leaned drunkenly against a cardboard box filled with electricians’ catalogs. Joe stopped, in his search for an escape, to fight open the top dresser drawer, pulling the knob with his front paws while bracing his hind paws against the lower drawer. Dulcie, growing more concerned about a way out, headed for the kitchen.

There, leaping up on the kitchen counter, she pawed at the window. It, too, was nailed closed and boarded over. The man was crazy as a rabid coon. When, trotting into the musty bathroom to try the smaller window, she found it just as immovable, a cold panic filled Dulcie. Padding nervously to the living room, she paused in the archway, looking.

Grim. The tired upholstered couch and matching chair and scarred end tables looked as if they had been recently hauled in and plunked down with no thought to arrangement or comfort. This couldn’t be how Lori’s mother had left her home. The fireplace smelled of old, wet ashes. On the bookshelves that flanked the fireplace, a few cheap paperback books lay bent and bedraggled, their yellowed pages dog-eared, their cheap covers filmed with dust. The two small windows above the bookcases were as heavily boarded over as the others.

But in this room she could smell the scents of more recent human occupancy-male sweat, unwashed hair, stale beer and cheese. The old, faded easy chair directly across from the TV was creased with use, its ottoman standing at an angle as if someone had just risen and left the room. She prowled tensely, all her instincts keeping her ready to run or fade under the nearest chair.

On the end table by the easy chair lay the remote, its buttons dust free from use, but the spaces between the buttons sticky with grime. Last night’s newspaper lay crumpled on thefloorbeside the chair, on top of it an empty cup smelling of stale coffee. She imagined Jack sitting here hour after hour mindlessly watching TV, shutting his child out of his life, effectively abandoning her.

The coffee table and two small end tables held no accessory. She imagined small figurines arranged on the coffee table, little porcelain boxes or ashtrays, delicate treasures in keeping with the little group of oval-framed flower prints that remained on the wall at one end of the couch. The other three walls were decorated with a variety of oval and rectangular blanks where the small floral print of the wallpaper was brighter. The woman’s touch had been removed; the house was a shell. On the lower shelf of one end table, a little white-and-pink vase stood forgotten. When Dulcie stuck her nose in, it smelled of sour, evaporated water and wet, decayed leaves. At the bottom, in a thick brown residue, lay three dried-up flower stems.

She prowled the windowsills peering out at the solidly nailed plywood. She checked the bathroom and kitchen windows again, then approached a door at the end of the kitchen that must lead to the garage. Sniffing underneath, she breathed in the damp smell of sour, musty boxes and old clothes. Leaping at the knob, she swung and kicked.

Beneath her swinging weight, the knob turned. She kicked against the molding and, to her amazement, the door swung into the room, creaking with rusty complaint, carrying her with it. Not locked at all! Jack had grown careless since Lori ran away. Dropping down, she leaped down the two steps into the garage, into the musty stink.

The concrete floor was icy beneath her paws. She considered the smelly boxes piled against the walls, with their contents spilling out. Atop one box lay an abandoned toaster and an old hot plate caked with grease. Leaping onto the workbench among a clutter of string and rope, three six-packs of beer, and scattered tools, she reared up to paw at the window with its new glass.

It was locked, as well as nailed shut. She dropped down to the floor again and studied the side door, but it was secured by a dead bolt, she could see the metal through the crack. Staring above her, she considered the electric garage-door opener that was mounted on the center of the ceiling. The usual small metal box with its long metal track. Lori said Jack had disconnected it.

Now that Lori was gone, was it working again? Had he reconnected it, after Lori left? But why would he? It wasn’t like he could park in there. Caught apparently in deep depression or something worse, why would he even remember the garage door?

Just below the light switch beside the inner door was the little button that should operate the mechanism. No trick at all, with the cardboard boxes piled against the wall, to reach the button and press it. Leaping atop the stacked boxes, she crouched until they stopped teetering, then pressed.

Nothing. Not even a click to indicate a flow of electricity. She pressed the button three more times, bruising her paw. She was about to drop down again when she thought to scan the ceiling directly above her.

And there it was, in the smooth ceiling. A second attic door, leading to the space above the garage, a rectangle of plywood set into a wooden molding.

The other attic door had been loose, Jack Reed knew Lori couldn’t get out through the attic, so why would he nail this one shut? And she could see no new nails at the edges. Maybe Reed had even taken cruel pleasure in imagining Lori climbing unsteadily up onto the flimsy cardboard boxes, reaching up, straining to move the plywood and climb through-only to discover that the crawl space led nowhere. That, after searching among the dark and the spiders, there was, after all, no way out. And Dulcie hated Jack Reed. If he had appeared before her just now, she would have leaped in his face clawing and biting.

Instead, she leaped up as powerfully as she could, striking the door with her front paws. She felt it give before she dropped back, and she saw a little line of unpainted wood where it had shifted position. She leaped again, and again it moved, leaving a wider crack. Apparently this one had no hinges. Crouched atop the musty boxes, waiting for her skipping heart to slow, she leaped and pushed it one more time, opening a crack as big as her paw.

Certain that they could get through, she dropped down again, feeling relieved and smug, and returned to find Joe.

He was still in Jack Reed’s bedroom, pawing into the stacks of newspapers and paperback books and catalogs. She knew better than to ask what he was looking for; neither cat knew. Glancing at Joe, she padded past him to search through a pile of Reed’s folded jeans, patting at the pockets and slipping her paw in.

All the pockets were empty. Together they searched Jack’s dresser drawers, working as efficiently as any pair of thieves, then investigated the high closet shelf. They snooped along in the dark beneath Jack’s hanging clothes and prowled among his shoes and heavy work boots. They searched under the bed among the dust mice and peered up at the cheap flat bedsprings, poking their paws in among them. They found nothing. Coming out again to study the electric plugs above the baseboards, they reared up to sniff at those possible hiding places. The lack of opposing thumbs, their inability to use a screwdriver to remove a switch plate or pry off a fascia board, was maddening. In their attempt to detect some hollowed-out secret cache, and not knowing what kind of evidence they were looking for, they could only sniff those suspicious areas and thump them with a paw, listening to the faint, empty echo.

But a cache of what? Drugs? Weapons? Whatwerethey looking for? If Jack had killed his brother, he hadn’t taken much care with Hal’s billfold and belt and ring. Why would he be careful about hiding anything else? Moving on to Lori’s dark little room, with its one small, boarded-up window, again Dulcie imagined Lori as a prisoner there, locked inside her own house. She imagined the child curled up on her bed reading the fairy tales that stood on her bookshelf. Perhaps in her imagination trying to invent an exciting adventure story to cloak her father’s mistreatment.

Except that Lori, despite her love of fantasy, or perhaps because of it, was at heart a true realist.

Feeling enraged for and weepy about Lori, she watched Joe fight open the top drawer of the little chest. Leaping onto the chest to look, she waited while he opened each of the three drawers in turn. The first yielded only the child’s tattered Tshirts, some little socks, one with a hole in the heel, and two pairs of jeans so small that Lori must long ago have outgrown them. The other two drawers offered little more. A nightie, a heavy sweater, some spelling and arithmetic papers that were graded A or B.

But then in the bookcase, on the bottom shelf beneath a stack of oversize picture books, three shoe boxes were lined up. Nosing the books aside, they pawed the lids off.

The first held an old rag doll, a tiny battered teddy bear no bigger than a newborn kitten, and the picture of a woman who was surely Lori’s mother. Natalie Reed, it said on the back. She had dark brown hair like her daughter, and the same huge dark eyes. Beneath the picture, wrapped with tissue paper, were a faded cotton apron printed with blue flowers and a dime-store strand of pearls with a flimsy bit of bent wire for a clasp. Was this Natalie’s legacy to her daughter? Was this all that Lori had left from Natalie Reed’s life?

But Lori herself was Natalie’s legacy. In Lori, Natalie Reed had created, with her love and caring and teaching, a treasure of great value, a treasure to be cherished.

In the second box was a small album, the kind with old-fashioned black pages. Joe, lifting the pages one at a time with his claws, adeptly flipped them. Pausing before four photographs arranged on a single page, he let out a chittering hunting cry, raucous and loud. His yellow eyes had grown huge, his muscled crouch over the pictures as predatory as a stalking lion.“Voila, Dulcie!Look at this! Wait until Harper and Garza see this!” He stared at her, all sparks and fire, his paw pressing on the page. “Talk about the heart of the matter! Talk about cracking the case!” Shifting from paw to paw, the tomcat rumbled with crazy purrs. “I think,” Joe said, hardly able to be still, “I think we just cracked both cases!”

29 [��������: pic_30.jpg]

The minute the weather cleared, Ryan’s building crew began to work again on the Harpers’ new living room, leaving Charlie and young Dillon finishing up Charlie’s studio. Having installed and mudded the drywall, Charlie couldn’t wait to paint the walls and move into her new space.

Now it was nearly noon; Ryan’s crew had the living room walls framed and were waiting for a lumber delivery, and for the crane to lift the heavy beams into place. She and the four carpenters and her uncle Scotty were kneeling beside the corner of the new foundation where she’d spread out the blueprints when she heard the lumber truck turn into the long drive. Rising, walking out to show them where to drop the load, she was only vaguely aware of the phone ringing inside the house.

Waiting for the truck to back around, she scanned the pasture to make sure the three dogs were safely confined before the lumber was dropped. Rock stood at the fence huffing softly, watching every move in the yard. The big silver Weimaraner was protective of Ryan even in a work situation, and that was all right with her. But the big dog was consumed with interest, too. As curious as any cat, she thought, grinning.

Rock had been a stray, abandoned and uncared for. A beautiful, purebred dog who should have been treasured. She was still amazed by her good luck in finding him-or, in Rock finding her. Motioning the truck into position, she was watching its bed lift and tilt to drop its load when Charlie came out the back door looking distressed, her freckles dark across her pale cheeks. Ryan nodded to Scotty to take over, and turned to see what was wrong.

“It’s Genelle Yardley, they took her to the hospital. She fell. Wilma found her unconscious, on the floor by the bookcases. Sprawled out of her walker as if she’d been reaching for a book. Wilma called nine-one-one, and started CPR.” Charlie had a large, flat package under her arm.

“No one was with her? I thought the senior ladies-”

“They’re in and out all day, they never leave her for long. Susan and Gabrielle are still in the city. Cora Lee fixed her breakfast this morning and ate with her, then left. She said Genelle had unexpected company, a little girl, a neighbor child, I guess. When Mavity went down half an hour later to clear up the breakfast things and make her bed, the child had gone. Mavity left Genelle resting on her chaise on the porch with a comforter over her. She always wants to be outside. See as much of the world as she can, I guess,” Charlie said sadly. “Little things, her flowers, the birds�

“Wilma stopped by about forty-five minutes after Mavity left; she found Genelle, lying by the bookcases. She hadn’t wheeled her oxygen over with her, so when she fell, she couldn’t reach it. Half a dozen books were scattered on the floor around her, volumes of Celtic myth.”

Charlie looked at the newly delivered lumber and beams, at the framed walls. “It’s going to be a wonderful room, Ryan. I’m going into the village to mail these drawings, then by the hospital, see if I can lend any moral support. Dillon’s in my studio, sanding.”

“I’ll look in, make sure she doesn’t sand the paper off the board. Give Genelle my love. I guess she won’t get her tea party on Monday.”

“I wouldn’t bank on that. Genelle’s tougher than she looks. That woman wants a tea party, she’ll have a tea party. Though she might prefer a smaller group, notallthe Friends of the Library.”

“What if she doesn’t leave the hospital?”

Charlie shook her head. “Then we’ll have the party there. If these are Genelle’s last few days, then we’ll have a catered tea in the hospital. All the fixings, all the flowers and goodies the inn can put together.” Clutching the flat package between her knees while she pulled on her coat, she turned away to her van.

Pulling away up their long, private lane, Charlie thought about Genelle trapped in a hospital bed when she’d rather be tucked up under a comforter on her own terrace, the sea breeze on her face, the color and smell of her garden around her. She wondered which of the neighbor children had come visiting. Most kids didn’t want to be around sick people, didn’t know what to say to them. Turning onto the hillside highway that led down to the village, she looked out at the sea, thinking about death. Thinking about Genelle’s tenuous tie to life. And fear touched Charlie, fear of what came after.

What are we?she thought, chilled.Do you just go out like a light when you die? Oristhere something more?

If there was an eternal life, was it like that great rolling sea that stretched away below her? Flowing forever to endless shores, carrying uncountable dead souls like swarms of plankton to new lands? Carrying each one to a new challenge beyond their old, discarded life? And she had to laugh at herself. She’d never thought that any one religion was the only right one, that all others were misinformed. That seemed so silly. But she guessed that no doctrine was going to call departing souls “plankton.”

Well, her own soul wouldn’t be lost just because of her irreverent imaginings, she’d never believe that, either. Any intelligence vast enough to create this world and all in it had to be more easily amused than angered.

Below her the hills were like emerald from the heavy rains. She never tired of their brilliant green curves, which dropped and rolled below her. At home, the horses couldn’t wait to get out into the pasture to gobble up the new grass-Max would let them have just so much, then shut them in their stalls again. Horses, like some people, would indulge themselves until they were sick.Like I am with chocolate,she thought. And she thought about the kit, also with a sometimes obsessive appetite, and she smiled and said another little prayer that the kit kept safe.

Crouching over the black page of the album, Joe and Dulcie studied the photographs of Lori’s family. Joe was still grinning, like the Cheshire cat. But this wasn’t Alice’s fantasy, this was real. What they had found was real. Shocking. Amazing. Very real.

The four names were neatly captioned in white ink on the black paper. The photograph showed Lori at about five or six, an elfin child with big, dark eyes. Natalie and Jack were young, a handsome couple with their arms around each other. “That must have been a while before Lori and her mother moved away,” Dulcie said. “But who’s the other man? Who’s Hal?”

“Jack’s brother,” Joe said. Hal Reed stood with Jack beside a company truck emblazoned with “Reed, Reed, and Vincent.” Below the company name was painted “Jack and Hal Reed. Bruce Vincent.” Vincent, the third partner, was not in the picture.

Joe looked at Dulcie, his whiskers and ears close to his head, his yellow eyes slitted with triumph. “You didn’t see the other pictures, the ones the kit found, that Harper and Garza dug out from under that cottage.”

She looked at him, trying to be patient.

“Harold Timmons, Dulcie! I swear, Hal Reed is Harold Timmons. He was in the pictures that Kit found, standing next to Irving Fenner.”

“I don’t-”

“It’s the same guy. Harold Timmons served time in those L.A. killings. Harold Timmons is Hal Reed. Jack’s brother.”

She stared at him. “Lori’s uncle Hal.”

“Lori’s uncle Hal. Convicted in the L.A. killings.”

“Is that� Is that why Jack locked her up? Not to keep her captive?” She looked at Joe, her green eyes huge. “But to keep her safe from Hal? But Hal’s gone. Jack-”

“And maybe,” Joe said, “to keep her safe from Irving Fenner, too?”

The two cats were quiet, thinking about that. “Where is she?” Dulcie whispered. “Where’s Lori? Alone, in the library? And Fenner’s out there.”

Closing the album and gripping it in his teeth, Joe lifted it back into the box and nosed the lid into place. “Let’s get out of here. We can-”

“Call from my place,” she said. “Now, Joe. I want out of here now.”

Galloping beside her to the garage, Joe was acutely aware of Dulcie’s sudden uneasy feelings. Slipping into the garage beside her, he watched her leap to the top of the piled boxes, leap again, and he followed her up and through. Clawing at the plywood, pulling it back into place behind them, he was tense to get to a phone, get Harper over there to toss the Reed house-before Jack Reed, too, developed a sense of impending crisis.

Within minutes they were out the attic vent hole and into the oak tree. Even as they sailed from the tree to the ground, the hairs along Joe’s back hadn’t stopped bristling. But they were out of there, thank the great cat god for that, and were racing for a phone. They were scorching through the bushes when Dulcie stopped, stood looking at him.

“I’ll make the call,” she said softly. “If you’ll hightail it over to the station, be there when Harper picks up.”

“What’s the difference?”

“I don’t know. See what this call stirs up,” she said softly. “Maybe we’ll find out what Hyden was so excited about.” She didn’t know why, but she wanted him to be there. This case was Joe’s baby, Joe had followed the cops when they retrieved the newspaper clippings, he was the one who had seen Harold Timmons’s picture. “This is your party. Well, and Kit’s party, big time. Go on, Joe. Go on over to the station.”

Joe grinned, nosed her ear, and took off up a pine tree to the rooftops, heading fast for Molena Point PD. And Dulcie, watching him disappear across the roofs, turned and raced away through the tangled gardens, heading home. She had no idea the kit could have used their help just then. No idea that as they had fought their way out of Jack Reed’s house, the kit was holding another lone vigil-that Kit wasn’t finished with her surprises.

Kit was trotting across the roofs when she heard loud, angry voices on the sidewalk below. The sounds of two men arguing, plenty of shouting. Racing to the edge, leaning over with her paws in the gutter in a morass of rotting leaves, she peered down over the china shop’s sign.

Two men stood below her, toe to toe. The tall man was really angry, shaking the little man: It wasIrving Fenner.The kit froze, watching. She still didn’t understand why, after he’d killed Patty, Fenner hadn’t run away. Except, he’d wanted Lori. Now that he’d lost Lori, was he again looking for the child? But surely Fenner didn’t think he could stay in this small town for very long without the cops finding him. That he’d been able to hide until she found him quite amazed the kit. Peering closer at the logo on the tall man’s uniform, she realized that was Jack Reed. Her ears sharply forward, her whiskers bristling, Kit listened. Reed was saying, “You came up here to kill Patty, you bastard! I hope the cops-”

“You going to turn me in, Reed? Like you did in L.A.?”

“What’re you doing here, what’re you after?” Jack looked across the street at the library. “You watching someone, Fenner?Lori!“He grabbed Fenner and shook him. “What have you done with Lori?”

“You think I’d fool with your kid, Reed, after you blew the whistle on me?”

Reed shook him harder. “You were after Lori, even back then. Sick, Fenner. You’re sick.” He pulled his fist back. “Where is she? Where’s Lori? What’ve you done with her!” He twisted Fenner’s arm behind his back and marched him to a white truck. A pickup truck, a “Vincent and Reed” truck. People on the street just stood, looking.

Kit swallowed, trembling. Crouching, with her paws in the leaves getting soaked, she watched Reed shove Fenner in the truck, then swing around into the driver’s seat. The next instant, they were gone. And Kit took off over the rooftops, heading for the nearest phone.

Atop Wilma’s cherry desk besidethesunny window, shielded from the neighbors’ view by the white shutters, Dulcie spoke into the speaker of Wilma’s phone. The deep-toned living room, with its crowded bookcases, stone fireplace, rich paintings, and oriental rugs, always eased her, always calmed her anxieties. As she described for Max Harper the photographs of Jack Reed and his family, she imagined Joe Grey crouched above Harper’s desk, listening. Imagined Harper and the gray tomcat joined in spirit by their mutual and intense objective. Giving Harper the location of the album in Jack’s bedroom, she wondered how long it would take him to get a warrant. If the judge was in his chambers, maybe not long.

“Will you tell me your name?” Harper said, as he always did. “Tell me how to get in touch?” This was a ritual question to which Harper no longer expected an answer. Likely he’d never stop asking. Giddily, Dulcie wanted to tell him her name, wanted to say,Oh, you can reach me at Wilma’s. If I’m not home, leave a message. Or call Clyde, Joe will pass it on.

Right. Having said all that was necessary for the case at hand, she terminated the call, pressing the speaker button, then sat staring at the electronic instrument, already feeling lonesome. She loved hearing Max Harper’s voice right in her ear, close and personal. Loved the feeling that Molena Point’s police chief was her secret friend, loved the giddy amusement of mystifying him. Loved knowing that he would never learn the identity of his two snitches. Seeing Captain Harper nearly every day, when she was in her dumb-animal guise, she always felt such a delicious high. She loved knowing that she and Joe and Kit had passed on to him the latest secret intelligence; for Dulcie, these were among life’s most amazing moments.

Gloating over her morning’s work, she had turned to leap down when, from the kitchen, she heard her cat door flapping, and then the thudding gallop of Kit racing through. Kit burst into the dining room and under the table as if bees were after her, nearly decapitating herself on the chair rungs. Through the living room like a runaway freight train and up on the desk-a streak of dark fur and streaming tail that nearly knocked Dulcie off the edge of the desk.

Crouched on the blotter, the kit pawed at the phone in a frenzy, pawed at the speaker button nearly exploding with impatience, and punched in the number that Dulcie had just dialed.

Lori, hurrying up into the hills, heard the courthouse clock strike noon. She was hungry again, in spite of her big breakfast with Cora Lee and Genelle and her cake and milk at Jolly’s. Mama would say she was making up for lost time. When she thought about Pa snatching that man up and into his truck, she still didn’t know what to make of it. What did Pa know? Did he know the beetle man had kidnapped her? Or was it something else? But she had to smile, because Pa was sure mad. She didn’t like to think about what was going on, maybe she didn’t want to know.

It was nicer going up the hills in the daytime, among the pretty cottages and with the sun so warm on her back. Seemed like forever since she’d felt really warm. The way seemed shorter, too, than when she’d climbed up in the cold dark with the wind pushing at her, and afraid of every shadow. When she saw the tall Victorian house ahead, with its gingerbread and itsSecret Gardenwall, she ran the last block, could hardly wait to be inside.

Letting herself in the gate, she didn’t see Genelle down on the terrace. Maybe she was inside, maybe Cora Lee had come back to make lunch. Something nice and hot. Mama used to make bean soup and corn bread with cracklings. Crossing through Genelle’s tangled garden, her stomach gurgled. Pushing through between tall clumps of brown grasses that were all frondy on top, stepping carefully around clumps of bright-red flowers, she listened. The garden was very quiet now, even the birds were still. Along the stone walk that wandered down to the terrace, tiny butter-yellow flowers bloomed. They had been closed this morning. And all across the garden, among the other plants, there were bushes of bright-yellow daisies that didn’t seem to mind the cold. There was no one on the terrace.

The long stone veranda was empty, the little round table was bare. Not a cup or dish, and the chairs were pushed carefully in. On the chaise, Genelle’s quilted comforter was wadded up and abandoned. Where was Genelle? Was it Genelle for whom Cora Lee had gone off in such a hurry, had something happened to Genelle? Quickly Lori moved to the glass doors, peering in.

The glass doors were closed, and there was no light within. When she tried the door, it was locked. She knocked, then put her ear to the glass.

No sound, nothing. Had Genelle gone back to sleep, maybe on a couch? Shivering, she knocked again, then moved down the terrace to the end and tried the heavy wooden door that must be the front entrance. She rang the bell first, then knocked. When no one came, she tried that door, but it, too, was locked. Lori shivered, turned, and made her way up the garden ducking under small trees and tall bushes, working her way around the house until she found a back door, and then another sliding one on the far side. Both were locked. She would not ordinarily try to get into someone’s house, but something was wrong, something had happened to Genelle. Was this why Cora Lee had left so upset and not come back?

When she was certain that she couldn’t get in, she returned to the terrace and curled up on Genelle’s chaise under the comforter, covering herself totally, wondering what to do. She worried about Genelle and thought about her wanting a secret garden. She didn’t know where else to go. Even outdoors, in the garden, she felt safer than on the street. Genelle had to come back sometime-if she was all right. Or else Cora Lee would come, she thought with a chill. But beneath the quilt she grew warm at last, deliciously warm. Waiting for Genelle, Lori slept.

30 [��������: pic_31.jpg]

Slipping into Molena Point PD on the heels of a hurrying rookie, Joe was poised to gallop down the hall to Harper’s office when he was treated to sounds of revelry. Loud male laughter from the direction of the coffee room, then Detective Davis’s sharp retort. His nose twitched to a medley of deli-rich scents. Hot pastrami and melted cheese, and the herbs and spices that so distinguished George Jolly’s pizzas. As Harper made some remark about Detective Davis’s birthday that drew laughter, Joe trotted down the hall to the coffee room.

He peered in among a forest of uniformed legs, mirror-polished black shoes, and a few dark skirts above black shoes and stockings. He was crouched to race on down the hall to Harper’s office when he was snatched up, lifted into the air by strong hands. He caught the scent of dogs and gunpowder as he was swung up to Detective Garza’s shoulder.

“Hold still, tomcat. I’ll fix you a snack; otherwise, you’ll get stepped on.”

Joe was so amazed, he couldn’t have moved if he’d wanted to. He even kept his claws in. Dallas Garza was not a cat person, Garza was a dog man deeply enamored of fine English pointers. Though Joe had to admit that since Garza had joined the department, the detective’s attitude toward cats had undergone something of a sea change. Joe’s week spent freeloading in the Garza cottage while he eavesdropped, and of course made nice with purrs and good manners, had softened the detective considerably. Now, giving Garza a friendly sidelong glance, Joe lay across his shoulder, limp and obliging, as the detective headed for the buffet table where Max Harper was talking with Davis. Several officers grinned and reached to pet Joe. He had, he thought modestly, made some real inroads in departmental attitude. For tough cops, these guys did have a soft side. Dallas had started to fill a small paper plate for Joe when Harper’s cell phone buzzed.

Harper picked up, listened for a moment, and nodded. “I’ll take it in my office, Mabel.” He left the coffee room quickly, double-timing it down the hall. Joe glanced at the offering that Garza was so thoughtfully preparing. If he dropped down from the detective’s shoulder now and followed Harper, Garza was going to wonder.

He waited impatiently as Garza prepared the plate, deliberating between roast beef with garlic or roast chicken.Come on,Joe thought, fidgeting. The detective glanced at him. “Keep your shirt on, tomcat.” Finally settling on a little of each, Garza was headed across the crowded room, drawing amused glances, one hand on Joe to steady him, when his pager went off. He glanced down at it, then headed down the hall and into Harper’s office, where he swung Joe unceremoniously to the floor and set down the plate. Talk about service. Right where he wanted to be, a ringside seat, complete with lunch. Harper, glancing up at Garza, switched on the speaker.

Over the speaker, Dulcie’s voice was soft and clear. Whenever he heard Dulcie on the phone talking to an officer, he got the belly-dropping feeling that they’d recognize her voice, but then logic would kick in and he’d relax.

Wolfing his buffet selections, he belched delicately and stretched out on Harper’s leather couch. This was just too good, this was the way an undercover type should do his work, waited on by the law, even down to a fine lunch. Lying in comfort and in plain sight listening to his partner’s sweet voice as she relayed vital information, he thought that even the selection of the couch itself, and its placement, had been accomplished with his personal influence. Charlie had picked a model that stood high enough off the floor so a cat didn’t have to rupture himself scrunching underneath, and she had placed it near enough to the door so he and Dulcie or Kit could scoot under with a minimum of fuss. Charlie and Joe together had worked out the furniture plan. This was the only police chief’s office in the country, to Joe’s knowledge, that had been designed to accommodate feline surveillance.

At the desk, the captain was very still, his lean, leathery face keen as, listening to Dulcie, he scribbled notes. When Dulcie had told him where to find the photo album, she ended with, “I’ll be waiting, Captain Harper, to see how this shakes out.” There was a little click that left Joe scowling. Dulcie was getting nervy, too arrogant in her attitude. Who did she think she was, Kinsey Millhone?

But it was Harper’s response to the call that caused Joe to become rigid, that made him stare at Harper, wide eyed, before he caught himself and turned away to diligently wash his hind foot.

“Harold Timmons!” Harper repeated, grinning. “Harold Timmons, aka Hal Reed! What do you bet our caller has just IDed the latest body for Hyden?”

What body?Joethought. Those were children up there. Was that what Hyden had found just before he and Dulcie raced away? An adult corpse?

Garza’s square Latino face was solemn. “I’ll call California State Prison, get Timmons’s dental records, let Hyden know. See how soon the lab can take a look. You want to bring Jack Reed in for questioning?”

“Let’s see what the lab gets. We can keep an eye on him. What I want now, with this connection to Fenner, is-”

The phone rang again. Mabel said, “You’ll want this one, Captain. A woman again. Won’t give her name.” Mabel sounded only faintly irritated. Joe gave a little prayer of thanks that Wilma’s caller-ID blocking was working. Wilma had had some trouble with it, until she raised sufficient hell with the phone company. He expected Dulcie’s voice again, but it wasn’t Dulcie.

“I just saw that little man again, the one who killed Patty Rose. The man who left the pictures that you got from under that house.” Kit’s voice was not as low or modulated as Dulcie’s, she was nearly shouting into the phone. So wired that, over her feverish message, did he detect the hint of a purr? Harper and Garza stared hard at the phone.

“He was talking with Jack Reed, right there on the street. In plain sight. Arguing, and Reed was really angry. Reed said, You came up here to kill Patty! What a fool.’ And he thought Fenner had hurt someone named Lori. Fenner said, ‘You think I’d fool with your kid, Reed, after you blew the whistle on me?’ Then Reed grabbed Fenner, shouting that he was sick, and twisted Fenner’s arm behind him and shoved him in his truck, a white truck, a ‘Vincent and Reed’ truck.”

“How-”

“Captain, Lori means a lot to Jack Reed. Find that man, Captain. Find Fenner. I hope he burns for what he did to Patty Rose.” There was a click, and the line went dead.

Joe lay on the couch, heart pounding, trying to look half asleep. What was it about females? Did they have to make editorial comments?

So Jack Reed had Fenner. But where? He tensed when Harper called for four units to watch Reed’s warehouse and shop. As the captain and detective hurried out, double-timing it down the hall and out the back door to police parking, Joe raced out the front on the heels of another officer and around the side of the building.

He was crouched to leap up an oak tree and across the rooftops to Jack Reed’s when he was rudely snatched up-for the second time that day. Jerked right off the ground. Yowling and snarling, Joe twisted around to face his housemate and lifted an armored paw. Clyde wasn’t going to stop him, there was no way he was going to miss seeing this one come down.

”Oh,child! It’s freezing out here!“The words came through Lori’s dream as soft as velvet. Pulling the quilt tighter around her, she was propelled suddenly through her dark, alarming dream into the safe place she’d been trying so hard to reach. She felt herself lifted up, wrapped in the soft comforter. Warm arms held her safe, and she smelled Cora Lee’s jasmine scent.

Safe in Cora Lee’s arms, she woke fully. Cora Lee carried her into Genelle’s house, out of the cold, bright wind, and set her down on a sofa and tucked the comforter around her. Kneeling beside the couch, Cora Lee looked at Lori, her dark eyes worried. “Oh, child. I looked everywhere for you. No one found you in the library!No one looked for you!“she said, biting every word. “I went straight there from the hospital to get you. That woman-that Nora Wahl! She did nothing! She told no one. Didn’t even look for you. I can’t believe she�” Cora Lee’s dark brown eyes flashed with such anger that Lori had to swallow a laugh. The tall, honey-skinned woman was even more beautiful when she was mad.

“Oh, Lori! You came to Genelle running from that man, you didn’t tell us, and now� Who is he? He’s out there somewhere looking for you? And you were waiting here all alone.” Cora Lee grabbed her up again, hugging and rocking her as if she was a tiny little girl.

“What happened?” Lori said softly, dreading to hear what Cora Lee would say. “Why did you-”

“It was Genelle, they took her to the hospital. She fell, and was unconscious. I’ve just come from there.”

Lori pulled away, staring at Cora Lee.

“She’s feeling stronger already,” Cora Lee said. “They think she’ll be all right. She� She insists she wants to come home.”

“How did she fall?”

“She had stepped away from her walker, couldn’t reach it or her oxygen. There, by the bookcase, maybe ten minutes after Mavity left. Mavity Flowers is my housemate, one of them. When our friend Wilma got here, she found Genelle on the floor, and she called nine-one-one.”

“My mother� She had oxygen,” Lori said. Then, “Genelle is going to die?” The emptiness was all inside her. Like the hollow dark dropping away in her dream.

Cora Lee hugged her again, speaking into her hair. “It will soon be Genelle’s time, Lori, but maybe not quite yet. We all have our own time. I don’t think that’s the end of us at all, how could it be?” She looked intently at Lori.

Lori swallowed, trying to push back the hollow darkness. She managed a watery smile. “Genelle said she can talk about death if she wants, she can say anything she wants. She� told me� she keeps wondering what’s next.”

Cora Lee nodded.

“She told me� this world is a nursery,” Lori said.

“A nursery for souls,” Cora Lee said. “That when we’re born we dive down into this world and swim the best we can. Does that seem logical to you?”

Lori didn’t answer.

“She says that it’s here we learn how and why,” Cora Lee said. “That makes sense to me. I find it comforting.”

“Can I see her? Can I go to the hospital?”

“Genelle would like that very much.”

Lori didn’t realize until she said it that she couldn’t do that, that Pa might find her. Except, if he’d taken that beetle man somewhere and was so angry, maybe he wasn’t looking for her at all right now. Maybe he was too busy.

Maybe that man would tell Pa about the basement, she thought, her heart sinking. And Pa would go back to the library looking for her and find Uncle Hal’s billfold. Then he would be mad.

“What?” Cora Lee said. “You don’t want to see her?”

“Would we go in a car, and right into the hospital?”

Cora Lee nodded. “We will. Just let me get her things together. You don’t have a cold or the sniffles? They won’t let you in if you’re sick.”

“I’m okay. Cora Lee? I don’t want her to die.”

Cora Lee turned away, not speaking. And Lori thought, Ididn’t want Mama to die. But that didn’tmake any difference.

Joe dug his claws hard through Clyde’s jacket into his tender flesh. “What the hell are you doing!” he hissed in Clyde’s ear. “Drop me. Put me down.” He couldn’t remember when he’d clawed Clyde like this, and he wasn’t sorry, not even with Clyde’s blood on his claws. Clyde pulled him off fast and held him away as if holding a bomb about to explode. His expression was shocked, embarrassed. He looked around to see if anyone could hear them, but they were alone. “I wanted� I guess I interrupted something important?”

“Damn right you did. They’re about to bust Patty’s killer, he could be the same guy who did those kids.” Behind Clyde, Max Harper’s police unit sped out from behind the station headed in the direction of Jack Reed’s house. “Hurry up, Clyde. Where’s your car?”

Clyde didn’t move.

“You have wheels?Where’s yourcar!“Joe looked across the parking lot until he spotted a flash of red nearly hidden between two trucks. “Come on! You can drop me off, you can at least do that. Comeon, Clyde.This is the guy who shot Patty-”

“I’m not taking you where there’s shooting.”

“I didn’t say there’d be shooting. Put me down, then!” He started to fight again, ready to leap onto the oak tree. Clyde grabbed the nape of his neck like a kitten, so enraging Joe that he screamed and yowled and was about to bloody Clyde’s face.

“Stop it! Stop it, Joe! This is me, Clyde!”

“Put me down or I swear you’re hamburger!”

Clyde stared at him, shocked, then took off running, clutching him, swinging into his car. He dumped Joe on the seat. “Where�?”

“Jack Reed’s place.”

“Why would-”

“Will you hurry! My god, Clyde�”

Clyde started the car, spun out of the lot. “Hang on. And keep your claws out of the upholstery.”

Joe considered the expensive white leather beneath his paws, brand new, as soft as velvet and far more costly. The cherry red 1926 Rio was worth enough to keep Joe in smoked salmon for twenty decades; even one claw mark, according to Clyde, would decrease its value. Swinging a U-turn, Clyde followed the police units at a decorous pace that drove Joe crazy. “Could you step it up a bit?”

“You want me to get stopped for speeding?”

“If I can’t slip in behind those guys’ heels, I’ll have to go through the attic, drop out of the crawl space right in their faces.”

“How do you know?”

“Already been in there. Already done that. There’s no other way in. Damned house is boarded up like a prison.”

“I’ll take you in through the front door.”

“This is a bust, Clyde, not a Saturday-afternoon ball game. You’re not going in through the front door.”

Clyde just looked at him.

“Keep your eyes on the road. You’re a civilian. Even if you are Harper’s best friend you can’t go charging into a police bust. Even if you were carrying, you-”

Slowing for a stop sign, Clyde looked at him hard. Joe wished sometimes hecouldcarry, that a cat was equipped with more effective weaponry than claws and teeth. Clyde slowed at Jack Reed’s street, looked up toward Reed’s house. The block was dominated by police units. They could see Reed’s truck parked farther on; Reed was just getting out. Harper and Garza stood on the walk waiting for him, Max’s hands at his sides.

Pulling around the corner, Clyde slid to the curb. Joe was pawing at the door handle when Clyde snatched him up again. “You can go under the house, I’ll pull a vent cover off. You can-”

“Won’t work,” Joe said. “Grids are nailed tight; Dulcie and I already checked.” This was amazing, this was for the record, that after their San Francisco caper, Clyde would even think to help him again.

Hauling Joe out of the car, clutching him close, Clyde cut through the neighbor’s backyards, approaching the blinded Reed house with its plywood-sealed windows. Moving along the side of the house, they could see, out front, the tail end of one police unit.

“Just drop me, Clyde, and get out of here. I can hear all I want from the bushes,” he lied. Feeling Clyde’s distracted grip loosen, he made a powerful leap and was free, diving for cover.

From deep in the bushes he hissed, “Get out of here before one of those cops sees you. You could never explain this to Max.”

Clyde gave him a look, but he turned and left. Joe didn’t relax until he heard the Rio pull away, the sound of its engine fading in the direction of the village.

31 [��������: pic_32.jpg]

“Genelle’s asleep,” Wilma Getz said, taking Lori’s hand. Lori watched the former parole officer uncertainly, then glanced up at Cora Lee. She’d seen Ms. Getz in the library. Did Ms. Getz remember her from when she was little and she had gone there with Mama? Did Ms. Getz know who she was? A parole officer had to be nosy, had to be the kind to ask questions.

There were two other women with her, a small wrinkled woman who always wore a white maid’s uniform-Lori had seen her around the village-and a tall, redheaded woman who was younger and had freckles. They were sitting in a small waiting room at one end of the hospital corridor, a flowery room with magazines, nothing like the empty, medicine-smelling corridors. Cora Lee drew Lori to a couch and introduced them, using only Lori’s first name. Lori tried to mind her manners. Mavity Flowers lived with Cora Lee. The redheaded woman’s last name was Harper; Lori was sure she was the wife of the chief of police. Oh boy, she’d really stepped in it. Even if Pa hadn’t told anyone else that she was gone, by now he might have asked the cops if a runaway child had been found. And the chief’s wife would likely know all about that.

Mrs. Harper wasn’t dressed like Lori thought of a cop’s wife; she wore faded jeans and a pale-blue sweatshirt over a green turtleneck, and muddy, scuffed boots that smelled of horse. Her hair was really red, long and kinky, and was held back with a piece of brown yarn crookedly tied. When she rose and left the room, Lori was afraid she’d call the station. She’dsaidshe was going for coffee, and to see if Genelle was still sleeping.

“Sometimes,” Mrs. Harper said, “the nurses get busy and forget to come tell you when someone’s awake.” She looked at Lori. “They have cocoa. Or a Coke if you’d like.”

“Cocoa, please,” Lori said, swallowing.

Cora Lee said, “Mavity and Wilma and Charlie and I have already seen her. She got sleepy, but we thought we’d stay in case she wanted company again, or maybe a malt from the cafeteria, something besides hospital food.” The waiting room was like a pretty parlor you’d see in North Carolina, with peach-colored walls and a flowered couch and matching flowery chairs. The only thing missing to make it into a little southern parlor, like their Greenville neighbors who had nicer houses than they did, was doilies on the arms or little figurines on a shelf. Sitting on the couch between Cora Lee and Ms. Getz, Lori didn’t like to think that Genelle might not go home again. Mama died in a hospital. Alone.

“She asked for you,” Ms. Getz said softly. “She’s already stronger than when we brought her in.”

“She was by the bookcase when she fell?” Lori asked.

Ms. Getz nodded.

“Why was she by the books, all alone, and without her oxygen?” Lori had such a sinking feeling Genelle might have been searching for a book for her, because they’d been talking about books. Because Genelle had asked if she’d readRoller Skates,and Lori had said no. “What book was she looking for?”

“She� I don’t know,” Ms. Getz said quickly. “Quite a few books had fallen.”

Cora Lee was studying Lori, her brown eyes deep and caring. “You know she has a lung disease, one that cannot be cured. It makes her weak, Lori. Easy to take a fall.”

Lori nodded. “Cancer,” she said softly. And she thought,Like Mama.

Cora Lee said, “As pressure in the lungs increases, oneisapt to faint. It’s not surprising that she fell. But what the doctors are looking at now is an increased pressure in the heart, too-pulmonary hypertension.

“Genelle doesn’t want to do anything radical. She’s willing to take her medication, but�” Cora Lee put her slim hand gently on Lori’s arm. Her nails were perfect ovals, not too long, prettily rounded, and polished a pale coral. “Does it make sense to you, Lori, that Genelle doesn’t want surgery? Doesn’t want any huge and cumbersome effort to prolong her life? That she doesn’t want to linger when it’s so hard for her to breathe, and will become harder?”

“It makes sense,” Lori said, hurting inside. “Whatcouldthe doctors do? What do they want to do?”

“They could put a shunt in her heart, to open the vein wider so there’s less pressure. Genelle doesn’t want to do that.”

Lori tried to understand how Genelle felt. “I guess� I guess she’s not afraid.”

“No,” Cora Lee said. “She’s not afraid. Genelle holds a clear vision of what she believes comes next, when we leave this world. I can only believe her, I have no reason not to.”

“Nor do I,” Ms. Getz said. She smoothed Lori’s hair with a surprisingly gentle hand. She was a tall woman, and slim. She had what Mama would call good bones. She was wearing faded jeans, freshly washed and creased, a white turtleneck sweater that looked soft enough to be cashmere, and a tweed blazer with little flecks of pale blue among the tan and cream. Her brown boots were well polished. Though she had more than enough wrinkles to be a grandmother, she didn’t look like a grandmother. She looked tougher and stronger than grandmothers in books and movies. Lori had never known either of her own grandmothers.

“Over the years,” Ms. Getz said, “Genelle has collected works written by many scholars and medical people about an afterlife. Well, you can find proof of anything if you try; there’s no way to know until we get there-but I’ll throw in with Genelle.”

Lori liked Ms. Getz. She talked to her, as did Genelle and Cora Lee, not as a child. They didn’t talk down to her the way that welfare woman did. The little wrinkled lady in her white uniform, Mavity something, watched them and said nothing. Lori couldn’t guess what she was thinking. She had no idea that there was another presence in the room until she heard a deep and steady purr. Looking around her and then down into Ms. Getz’s shopping bag, she laughed out loud.

A pair of green eyes looked up at her from the depths of the bag, and Dulcie purred louder. Ms. Getz said, “Genelle was asking for my little cat, so I smuggled her in. You won’t tell?”

Lori laughed again. “I won’t tell.” And as Lori leaned over to pet Dulcie, Mrs. Harper returned to say that Genelle was awake and they could see her, one or two at a time. “You go,” Mrs. Harper said, touching Lori’s shoulder.

Following Cora Lee, Lori felt cold and afraid. Afraid to see Genelle here in this hospital that, beyond the pretty parlor, was chill and unfriendly and smelled of medicine and sick people. Passing the partly open doors of the rooms, she could see people propped up in metal beds, or lying flat and pale with tubes sticking out, as if they were already half dead. Some were watching TV,though, and that was nicer.

Genelle Yardley was sitting up in bed beneath a white blanket and white sheets, reading a little paperback book that looked like all the weight she could hold in her pale hands. But when she saw Lori, she smiled, laid her book open across her lap, and put out her hand. Her smile shone bright, and her faded brown eyes looked so pleased that Lori didn’t dare be afraid or uneasy.

“Will you read to me?” Genelle said when Lori sat down beside the bed in a straight wooden chair. “My eyes grow tired, even my hand gets tired. Do you know this book?”

Lori shook her head.

Genelle handed the thin volume to Lori, her finger marking the place. “I’m not very far, you could start again, I’d like that. It’s a story written for grownups, but maybe you’ll like a bit of it.”

Lori opened to the first page, and was at once drawn into the story, “‘The baloney weighted the raven down,’” she read, ” ‘and the shopkeeper almost caught him as he whisked out the delicatessen door. Frantically he beat his wings to gain altitude, looking like a small black electric fan. An updraft caught him and threw him into the sky. He circled�’”

Cora Lee Watched the child and the old woman for a moment, then slipped away, quickly returning to the waiting room, to Wilma and Charlie and Mavity.

“I don’t think she needs us anymore, for the moment. Moral support is wonderful, but a child with a book is better. Except�” She looked at Wilma. “Genelle was asking earlier for your little cat again. Maybe she and Lori would both like to have her there.”

Amused, sharing a secret look with Charlie, Wilma rose with her shopping bag. “I’ll just hang the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on the door so no nurse walks in and finds a cat in the hospital. Who knows what that would stir up.”

In Genelle’s room, Wilma settled into a small upholstered chair and set Dulcie’s shopping bag by the bed. Dulcie, looking out, met Lori’s pleased glance, but Lori didn’t stop reading. When the door was securely closed, Dulcie reared up out of the bag and jumped onto the bed.

Genelle wasn’t as pale as Dulcie had expected. Lori sat close beside her on a straight chair, her feet dangling, her voice soft but clear. ” ‘One mausoleum was set away from the others by a short path. It was an old building�‘“As Lori read, Dulcie nosed the blanket and slipped underneath, out of sight. Gently Genelle reached under and stroked her ears.

“The front door itself was open,” Lori read, “and on the steps there sat a small man in slippers. He waved at the raven as the bird swept down�”

Dulcie purred and dozed, listening. This story always made her smile. Genelle was smiling, too.

‘The raven was puffing for breath a little and he looked at the small man rather bitterly. “Corn flakes weren’t good enough,” he said hoarsely. “Bernard Baruch eats corn flakes, but you have to have baloney.”

“Did you have trouble bringing it?” asked the small man, whose name was Jonathan Rebeck.

“Damn near ruptured myself.” The raven grunted.

“Birds don’t get ruptured,” said Mr. Rebeck a little uncertainly.

“Hell of an ornithologistyou’dmake.”

Dulcie thought Lori seemed to like the story, and surely she liked being allowed to read swear words. Dulcie put her head on Genelle’s hand, purring. The sound of the child’s voice and of a good story cheered them all, made the sterile room seem less like a hospital.

And it wasn’t until much later, until Genelle slept again and Lori and Cora Lee had left, until Dulcie and Wilma were alone in the car that Wilma said, “She’s been hiding in the library, right? That’s what you didn’t want to tell me.”

Dulcie looked innocently at Wilma.

Turning out of the parking lot, Wilma reached to stroke the little tabby. “That’s where you’ve been going, when you disappeared downstairs into the library basement. When I couldn’t find you anywhere. That’s where you’ve been when I thought you’d gone on out your cat door, then you would appear so suddenly, among the stacks.”

Dulcie practiced making her green eyes wide, and knew she was fooling no one.

“I found tabby hairs on the basement air vent,” Wilma told her. “Tabby hairs on the bricks behind the little bookcase. I wondered what you were up to. And then, I’ve seen Lori in the library carrying armloads of books, but she hasn’t checked out any books. I didn’t think too much about that until just a little while ago, when one of the staff called me.

“She didn’t want to tell the head librarian. She’d found the bricks in the wall poked in every which way, and some of them out on the floor, leaving a gaping hole. When she got a flashlight and looked in, someone had hidden a blanket in there, and a thin mattress and a backpack.”

Wilma looked sternly at Dulcie. “Had to be either a very clever homeless person or a child.”

Dulcie licked her shoulder and said nothing.

Wilma turned onto their street. “No one has reported a child missing. I would have heard that. Nancy Barker also said she saw a man in the basement as she went down. He said he was looking for the large-print books, but something about him made her uneasy.”

She looked hard at Dulcie. “Does Cora Lee know anything about that man, know who Lori’s hiding from? Does Genelle? Whatever’s going on with that child, Dulcie, whatever you’ve been keeping from me, it’s time to spill it.”

Wilma’s tone let Dulcie know that her patience was at an end. That Dulcie had no further choice but to tell her.

32 [��������: pic_33.jpg]

Jack Reed watched cop cars approach the house from both ends of the street. Sitting in his truck, he had a wild thought to bail out and take off running, get away through the backyards and up into the hills.

But they’d have him, he couldn’t keep running forever. Soon as they got in the house, saw what was there, it would be over. He didn’t know how much they knew about the buried bodies, or, in fact, what they knew about Fenner. He was tired, so damn tired. Tired for a long, long time. Settling back in the seat, he watched two squad cars pull to the curb and two more come up behind them. Harper was in the lead car. Jack knew he had to get out of the truck and go let them in. No point doing anything else. A sour relief filled him, heavy as lead. But a feeling that eased him, too. Maybe he could sleep now. Maybe.

But what would happen to Lori?

If he hadn’t swung by the house after lunch to pick up some light-fixture catalogs for a client, would Harper have broken in? Did he have a warrant? Likely he did, Harper pretty much went by the book. He sure as hell hadn’t brought half the department out there without a warrant just to knock on the door and question him. What did they know? What were they after, exactly? He watched Harper step out of his unit. The tall, thin chief was in uniform, not in his usual jeans and boots. He stood on the sidewalk looking toward Jack, waiting for him. Harper’s hands were at his sides, calm and relaxed, but ready, his thin face drawn. Slowly Jack got out.

As he headed cross the yard, his work shoes crunched on the gravel as loud as gunshots. There was a detective with Harper, guy in jeans and tweed sport coat. Dallas Garza. Jack knew who he was, moved down from San Francisco PD. Square, smooth Latino face as solemn as death. Jack felt nothing but exhausted, he’d forgotten how to feel anything much, really didn’t care anymore.

Even if he’d seen them before he turned onto the street, they’d have found him. You want to run, you had to make plans. Money, food. Cover your tracks. Even Lori had made better plans. Harper and Garza stood on the porch waiting, both men grim. He got out, wondering, if he ran, would they draw on him? A crazy, light-headed excitement filled him.That was the answer. Do it. Run, end it here! End it now!

Suicide by the cop, they called it. He stood at the bottom of the three steps looking up at Harper and Garza; then he moved on up, his keys in plain sight in his hand, stepped past them to unlock the door. He’d known Max Harper ever since he moved to the village. He’d thought sometimes of going to Max, telling him the whole thing. But he didn’t have the guts. It was when Natalie left and took Lori that he shut down.

Before that he’d done the only thing he knew to do. Shut the kid in. Natalie hated him for that. When he heard that Fenner was out on good time, he’d locked her in, locked Lori in the house. But then he had to look at the two of them, Lori and Natalie, their dark eyes hating him. He’d run the business, done his work, come home at night to that. But he’d had no choice, the law couldn’t protect Lori even if they knew, even if they tried. Natalie thought he could do something different. But what? There was nowhere to send Lori where Fenner wouldn’t find her if he wanted. What could either of them do? And then Natalie took Lori and left him, the two of them, and he thought maybe they’d get away all right. It was best that Natalie did that. Wasn’t his burden no more.

But after they ran away he shut down for good. And then Natalie died and Lori was back and it started all over again. What could he do but keep the kid in? Live with her hate. Because Fenner knew about her, Hal’d told Fenner she was smart, the letters Hal got while Fenner was in prison, Fenner knew. Didn’t they censor that stuff? Then Fenner got out the second time; he saw Fenner in the village and then Patty Rose was shot�

Unlocking the door, he pushed it back and stepped inside, moved back against the open door so the law could enter. He’d thought, when Patty was killed, of going to Harper. But he’d kept looking for Lori, real worried, didn’t want to put Lori in more danger, with Fenner out there somewhere. Then that morning early he saw her go in through the library window, and he knew she was all right, knew where she was hiding. And then he saw Fenner watching the library, and that put the fear in him.

Harper and Garza had moved on into the room, stood facing the couch where Fenner sprawled facedown in splattered blood. Spinning around, Harper drew on Jack and backed him away from the open door, backed him against the wall.

Garza checked Fenner for dead, but they all knew he was. Jack stood cold and silent while Harper cuffed him and then called the coroner. He wondered if he’d get life. Didn’t want that, he’d rather die. He prayed for Lori, though, couldn’t remember praying since he was a kid.

Little Lori, she’d been hiding in the library all that time. Bright. Maybe she’d do all right, in spite of the mess he’d made.

Likely hid there in that walled-up place that went under the alley. When he and Hal first started the business they’d worked in the other building rewiring the two apartments and the store. Pulled old dead wires out, had to go in the library basement to make sure they were already cut loose.

Four more cops came in, men he knew. Stood around him while Harper snapped a leg chain on him. What did they think? He wasn’t fighting no cops. He watched Garza and a uniform move away to clear the house.Clear the house of who? They know it was me.He guessed cops had to follow procedure. Harper stood looking at him like he expected him to say something. He looked at Harper and felt nothing. What was the point of anything? You were born, stuff happened to you, and you died. What was it all for? Natalie had said,You don’t care about anything! You don’t care about your own child.

He cared about Lori, but she wouldn’t believe that. And what difference had it made? Except, Lori was still alive. He never knew why Fenner wanted Lori or those other kids. He knew what Fenner said, what Hal’d said. But he never could figure the rage that filled Fenner.

Coroner’s car was pulling up. Harper had left the front door open. Jack stood with his back to it, his cuffed hands behind him rubbing against the rough wood. In a minute they’d put him in a squad car, take him over to the jail. Maybe he’d get a private cell, not have to talk to anyone.

He didn’t feel Fenner’s kind of rage when he beat Fenner, he just wanted Fenner to end. And he didn’t want no farting around with some sharp public defender, either, trial strung out forever trying to get him off with a couple of years. He’d never been cuffed before, never been in jail, let alone prison. He didn’t look forward to that, to the gangs, the harassment. He moved aside as two medics came in, and the coroner behind them. As they knelt over Fenner, Harper nodded toward the door.

Jack moved outside ahead of the chief and down the walk and slid into the squad car ducking his head under Harper’s firm push. Cops didn’t want you to hit your head, didn’t want a charge of brutality. He waited unmoving as Harper snapped his leg chain to the floor. Wanted to make some remark about all this security, but he remembered about the guy in Sacramento, slipped over the seat back of a CHP unit while he was handcuffed, cop left the key in the ignition. Guy took off with the black-and-white, and that left the CHP boys red faced, and that made him start to smile. Not much made him smile anymore.

Driving him to the station, Harper didn’t say a word. Marched him inside, took him right on into an interrogation room-room the size of a walk-in closet, no windows, and a barred door. Small table where you could lean your elbows, and two folding chairs. Surveillance camera mounted high in one corner. Whoop-de-do, he was on TV He didn’t think they could use a recorded interview in court. But what difference? Didn’t make no difference. Harper sat down across from him.

He studied Harper’s quiet brown eyes. Wished he could face the man not as he now was, but as the old Jack Reed. He and Harper’d played poker together once in a while, killed a few beers when he, Jack, did some wiring up at Harper’s place. Wired his little barn, four stalls facing each other across a covered alleyway. Put in lights in the alleyway and the one stall Harper used for a tack room, and floods outside.

That was the old Jack Reed, drinking beer with the police chief. Jack Reed with a beautiful wife and a beautiful little girl. Harper sat waiting. Jack looked back at him feeling nothing until Harper began with the questions. Started off talking soft and easy, then when Jack didn’t say much, Harper shot the questions at him. Jack was answering as best he could, trying not to get mad, when a big gray cat came down the hall, stood looking in through the barred door. Big gray cat with white markings. When Harper turned to see what he was looking at, the cat slipped away, was gone like it had never been there.

Harper turned back, looking steadily at Jack. Jack couldn’t tell if Harper knew Lori’d run off, but he started asking about Lori.

“It’s the weekend, Jack. There’s no school. She playing with friends? You want to tell me where?”

“They’re out somewhere, a bunch of kids. I don’t know where. They came by for her.”

“Kids from school? You just let her run around in the village without telling you where she’s going? Does she go to school every day?” Harper must know she didn’t.

“What is this, Max? If you brought me down here to book me for Fenner, then get on with it.” Though of course Harper would ask questions, seeing the windows all boarded up. As little as Jack cared anymore, he could see the tangle he was making. Maybe better just to lay it out for Harper, why the plywood over the windows, why he’d killed Fenner. He was going to burn anyway, if not for Hal, then, sure, for Fenner.

And then Lori would be alone and she’d have to go to child welfare, she’d have no choice. Well, they’d take care of her, state paid them to do that.

“Why the plywood, Jack? What’s that all about?”

He was thinking where to start, how to start, when the cat appeared again pressing against the bars peering in. Gave him a shiver down his spine, that cat, so he found it hard to talk.

Reed doesn’t want to talkin front of me,Joe thought.Was I staring? Made him nervous? Dulcie says I stare at people so hard they get shaky. Oh, right, one little cat can make a grown man shaky. Well, he’s not going to talk with me watching him. Whatever the reason, the guy’s tongue-tied.Backing away out of sight again, Joe lay down on the cold tile floor. He could hear, behind him up the hall, Mabel Farthy dispatching a patrol car to a drunk fight. No one needed a drunk fight in the middle of the day, in this village. It wasn’t like they had any real bars, just restaurants that served drinks. He thought Mabel probably had Fenner and Harper on her monitor, maybe with the sound turned down.

In the other direction, on down the hall past the interrogation room in Dallas Garza’s office, he could hear the faint echo of Harper’s voice where Garza and Detective Davis were watching on the closed-circuit TV. Clyde would give a nickel to be here, Joe thought, would be as anxious to hear Reed’s story as Joe himself.

It was only after Clyde was convinced there wouldn’t be any shooting at Reed’s place that he’d loosed his grip on Joe and let him out of the car-with the usual sigh of resignation. Clyde had had no way, though, to gracefully hang around, with cops all over the place; Joe guessed he’d gone on back to the shop to work on one of his vintage cars.

Well, Clyde could hear the story tonight when Max and Charlie came over for dinner. That was why Clyde had shown up at the station in the first place, when he’d snatched Joe up from outside the front door-to invite Max and Charlie to dinner because Charlie’s new car had arrived.

Everyone but Charlie knew that Max was shopping for a new vehicle for her, one she could use for her cleaning business, for ranch work, or for hauling paintings to exhibits. Max was as anxious as a kid, wanting to surprise her. The small red SUV had been delivered yesterday to Clyde’s shop, and would be sitting in Clyde’s driveway when they got there for dinner.

Slipping to the bars of the interrogation room again, Joe peered in. Immediately Reed stopped talking and stared at him. Joe, even before Harper swung around to look, bolted away down the hall toward Garza’s office and inside beneath the detective’s printer stand, where he made himself comfortable on a small rug that Garza had brought from home and that smelled like dog. Both Garza and Davis had their backs to him, watching the monitor that was mounted high in the far corner.

Davis, curled up in the tweed easy chair, had her shoes off and her feet tucked under her. The chair had also come from Garza’s house-the city of Molena Point didn’t pay for luxuries; the chair, too, smelled like dog, the smell so immediate that it was as if the framed photographs of Garza’s English pointers that hung on the walls had acquired an additional dimension. On the screen, Jack Reed was saying, “� almost from the time Fenner began that group in L.A. Don’t know what it was about those people that drew Hal to their ideas. He was never strange, as a kid. Shy, maybe. A sort of misfit in school, a follower-”

“And that’s why you killed Fenner, because he’d influenced Hal, involved Hal in the killings. And Hal�?”

“I killed Fenner to keep him away from Lori, keep him from killing Lori like he did the others. And Hal� that was rage. I saw that dead child, Hal standing over her� a black rage. I purely lost it.

“But I wasn’t sorry afterward. I knew� felt like� there was more than one body down under that garden. I thought back about Hal’s fishing trips, and was sure of it.” Jack looked at Harper. “Fenner� I don’t know if he was ever sane. I don’t know why that L.A. judge didn’t give him life. Lock him up or fry him, keep him off the street. Just because those others wouldn’t testify against him, would never say he was involved� The cops knew he was.”

Davis mumbled something to Garza, and shook her head. As if she agreed, as if LAPD or the DA should have tried harder. Maybe Fenner was free to kill Patty Rose because some squirming L.A. judge didn’t have theballsto make the DA dig farther, and to lock Fenner up for life. Joe wondered how many more kidnapped children and young women were murdered because of an unrealistic attitude on the part of a few state and federal judges or inept juries.

Certainly neither detective looked like they were sorry that Jack Reed had done Fenner. Garza rose and poured two mugs of coffee, handed one to Juana, and sat down again. On the screen, Reed was describing, as best he knew, Irving Fenner’s history, and Reed’s view of Fenner’s twisted motives. For over an hour, Joe lay beneath the printer table fitting Reed’s story together with the facts he already knew.

To believe that extra-bright children would grow up to force the world into some kind of slavery dictated by geniuses was so twisted that it made Joe want to claw everything in sight. To believe those children should be eliminated or forcefully diverted from their intense interests made him wish he’d done Fenner himself. No one ever said Joe Grey was an altruistic do-gooder. In his view, the very children Fenner had killed might have accomplished great and wonderful things in the world.

He knew from his own metamorphosis, from ordinary cat to a speaking, sentient being, the value and wonder of clear and perceptive thought. To kill a child who had a sharper, clearer view of the world was to kill what life was all about. When the interrogation was finished, when Jack Reed was led away to be locked in a cell, Joe left the station still out of sorts. So grouchy that even that night as Clyde prepared dinner, he felt snappish and bad tempered.

“What’s with you? What happened after I left Reed’s?” Clyde said, tearing up greens for a salad.

“They arrested Reed. What else?”

Clyde turned to look at him. “I provide you with taxi service direct to an in-progress police raid. Chauffeur you right to the scene. Don’t tell me, ‘They arrested Reed’! What happened?”

“I hardly saw any action. Place was swarming with cops. Medics. The coroner.”

“Medics, Joe? The coroner?” Clyde waited, his hand raised as if he’d swat Joe.

Joe grinned. “Reed killed the little bastard, killed Fenner dead. I only got a glimpse of Fenner as they carried him out, limp as a dead rat, blood all over, before they pulled the sheet over him.”

Clyde smiled, lowered his threatening hand, and opened the oven to test the corn bread. “And they took Reed in?” Joe nodded. Clyde pulled out the oven rack, slipped a knife down into the middle of one golden mound, and held the knife up to the light. “And I suppose you hightailed it right on back to the department, heard the whole interrogation.” Joe glanced at Dulcie, crouched beside him on the deep windowsill. She smiled, and kept her silence.

Clyde turned around to look at Joe. “Well? What did Reed say?” He checked the other loaf, then removed them, setting them on a rack to cool.

Joe shrugged. “Jack talked about Fenner, his sick mind, why he killed those kids. It’s too bad Fenner won’t stand trial-for Patty, for those dead children.” He turned to wash a hind paw. “His death will save the state a lot of money. But a lot more information would come forth if he stood trial. Make people think a little. Where’s the kit? She’s the one who found Fenner, she ought to be in on this.”

“She’s with Lucinda and Pedric,” Dulcie said. “They’ll be along. They brought us down from Harper’s earlier. No one wants to miss the fun; Charlie doesn’t get a new car every day.” Charlie had needed reliable wheels for a long time. When her crew used her cleaning van, which was fitted out with every possible cleaning apparatus and with tools for household repairs, Charlie had to drive an ancient car of Max’s that was less than dependable.

“I wonder,” Dulcie said, “without the kit,wouldthe cops have found Fenner? It’s amazing that Fenner was able to move around the village for two days after he killed Patty.”

“Slick,” Joe said, watching Clyde toss the salad. “Or lucky. He must have ducked every time he smelled a uniform.”

Clyde smiled knowingly.

“What?” Joe said.

“Street patrol picked up Fenner’s car. I talked with Max. They found a kid’s baseball uniform in the trunk, with the insignia of the junior high on it. A kid’s jacket emblazoned with fluorescent pictures of Michael Jackson, and a kid’s school backpack.”

“Kit sure didn’t see him in those duds,” Joe said. “She’d have told Harper that.”

But Dulcie was shifting impatiently from paw to paw. “You said you heard it all, the whole interrogation. What else did he Reed say?”

Joe watched Clyde stir the bean soup. It smelled good on this cold winter night. “Harper’s going to tell you, he’ll walk you through the whole interrogation. Doesn’t he always? I’d just be repeating it.”

“Come on, Joe.”

Joe sighed. “He killed Fenner because he was afraid for Lori. He killed Hal in a fit of rage because Hal had killed a child. Can’t say I blame him. They were crazy, criminally insane. That cult� Sick minds who thought they were saving the world.” He considered Clyde’s scowl. “No one said I have to take a moderate view of the world. I’m a cat, no one expects me to temper my judgment with civility. I sometimes wish the courts could see the world through feline eyes. Sure would simplify life. In a cat’s view, Jack Reed would get a medal for killing Fenner, not be subjected to endless police interrogation and prison.” And he turned to wash his hind paw.

Clyde was still scowling. “You have to balance civilized human law against the fire in your belly, Joe. If we all went by the fire inyourbelly, we’d be living like cavemen. Look at some countries-torture and rape because there’s more corruption than civil-” A loud knocking at the door caused Clyde to immediately turn on the kitchen TV in case anyone had noticed voices; they heard the front door open. “Dinner ready?” Max shouted.

“In the kitchen,” Clyde yelled over a newscast. And their friends came crowding in, bringing the wet, icy wind in with them, pulling off boots and coats in the kitchen. Max and Charlie, and Dallas, then Lucinda and Pedric and Wilma directly behind them, Lucinda carrying the kit inside her coat, warm and snug. Joe heard Ryan Flannery’s truck pull up, then Davis’s VW. Ryan and Davis were last through the door, Davis bringing wine, Ryan bearing a large bakery box. Shutting the door, shutting out the wind, they hurried into the kitchen. Ryan set the box on the counter, giving Clyde a hug and a kiss on the cheek that made Dulcie smile.

“New project?” Charlie said to Clyde, nodding toward the front drive where a canvas-covered vehicle sat, presumably a newly purchased antique car in need of tender attention. Clyde was always buying a “new” relic-rusty, neglected, begging to be restored.

Clyde nodded. “New baby. Didn’t have room at the shop.” He turned away, setting a covered tureen on the table. The newly remodeled kitchen was twice the size of the old one, and a great place for company. Ryan had not only torn out the wall to the unused dining room, she had added a handsome Mexican tile floor, redone the kitchen cabinets, and installed a bay window over the sink where the cats could supervise the cooking while remaining out of the way.

Joe watched his friends fixing drinks-wine for Lucinda and Pedric-and wondered when Max would unveil Charlie’s new car. Watched them gather around the big table to dish up bean soup and salad and corn bread. Joe and Dulcie and Kit, settled in the bay window with their three bowls of soup and crumbled corn bread, glanced at each other with satisfaction.

Lori Reed was safe again, and Fenner was dead. And maybe Jack Reed would get an easy sentence if the court was sympathetic. Dulcie and Kit looked at each other, both lady cats wishing Lori Reed was there with them, among their friends, with her own place at Clyde’s table-though Lori was enjoying her own hot supper tonight with Cora Lee and Mavity and the two dogs. Lori would sleep in a warm bed tonight, before the fire in Cora Lee’s upstairs bedroom in a home where, if she chose, she might enjoy a far longer welcome.

33 [��������: pic_34.jpg]

“Whatwillhappen to Lori Reed?” Lucinda asked after supper, as the little party crowded around the warming blaze in Clyde’s living room. “If Jack Reed gets life, or the death sentence, does she have anyone else?”

“No other family,” Wilma said. “And I don’t think the child will tolerate being sucked back into the welfare system.” This statement from Wilma drew startled looks. “But,” Wilma said, “I don’t think she’ll have to; I think Cora Lee would be delighted to give Lori a home.”

“What kind of sentence is Reed likely to get?” Lucinda said.

Wilma shook her head, as did Max and Dallas. There was no telling, given the circumstances. “Anything from ten years,” Harper said, “for manslaughter, to life for two counts of second-degree murder.”

“How’s Lori taking it?” Charlie said.

“Stoic,” Wilma said. “Quiet. She’s with Cora Lee now, but when Genelle is out of the hospital, Lori wants to stay with her.” Wilma had chosen to sit just beside the hearth, in Joe’s personal, clawed chair that Clyde had covered with a blanket for the occasion. “Lori knows the whole story,” Wilma said. “Hal’s fishing trips, the L.A. murders. But she seems all right about it; she’s a strong child.”

Max settled back into the leather couch, close to Charlie. “Patty would be pleased to know Fenner’s dead, that her daughter and grandchild are, to some degree, vindicated.

“Maybe she knows,” Lucinda said. Full of supper, Lucinda and Pedric had cozied down together on the leather love seat, while Ryan and Clyde and Dallas sat on floor pillows before the hearth. Detective Davis had curled up at the end of the couch, next to Charlie, pulling off her shoes, tucking her feet under.

Harper shook his head. “Twisted, bitter people, all with some kind of vendetta against society-against children. The idea that children with superior intelligence are against God’s law. Crazy as a pet coon. And that guy was teaching elementary school. First school let him go in the middle of the first semester; that was in Orange County. He moved up north to Redding, started again as if he was just out of graduate school. All forged degrees. Lasted a full semester before they dumped him. DA’s been on the phone all afternoon talking with school districts. Fenner’s background fell through the cracks until a school in San Bernardino began to ask questions, did some checking. That’s when he moved to Denver, changed his name, went to work for children’s services, another string of forged degrees and references. No one checked. They needed help, and he sounded too good to question.

“There, four children disappeared from outlying towns. Never found. Investigating officer looked at Fenner but dismissed him. These kids weren’t on Fenner’s caseload, and they seemed to have no connection to children’s services. Officer had no real reason to investigate Fenner. And with no bodies, no blood work, no lab� Fenner remained in Denver for another two years, then we lose track of him.

“Now Denver is looking at those cases again, pulling those old files. Next we know of him so far, he’s in L.A. Marlie’s husband, Craig, gets involved with him.” Max had told them over dinner about the L.A. case. “Stories filled the front page for weeks.” When Harper glanced idly up at the bookcase, Joe slit his eyes nearly closed and laid his chin on his paws, as if dozing. Dulcie had curled up next to Joe, her eyes closed. Kit faked a yawn, but at the back of the bookcase her tail was twitching with interest.

“The L.A. bodies were found early on a Sunday morning, someone had seen a light in the church the night before, inside the boarded-up windows. Called the police. L.A. checked it out and left, but were back the next morning. Twelve children buried together in the wall of the church, Conner among them. His shirt was gone, and his shoes. He’d died of strangulation.”

Atop the bookcase, Kit nuzzled closer to Dulcie and Joe.

“When Hal got out of prison, Jack thought that if he got him away from L.A. and into their own business, he’d straighten out, forget his crazy notions. When he realized Hal hadn’t forgotten, he was wild with fear of what Hal would do. And he didn’t know where Fenner was. Prosecution couldn’t make Fenner, not one of his followers would testify-not for the murders, not for influencing them, or for any involvement with the cult. Refused to say he was the cult leader. Every one of them protected Fenner right down to the end. Best the DA could do was accessory, based on circumstantial evidence.

“Dorothy Street was about ten at the time of the murders, a family friend. After Marlie was killed, I think that in many ways Dorothy took her place for Patty. Patty badly needed someone.

“When Fenner was released, Patty knew but didn’t think he’d come here. Parole department in L.A. is grossly overworked. Even if he’d failed to report, they might have had no reason to believe he would head up here, after Patty.” Max finished his coffee, set his cup on the coffee table, and put his arm around Charlie, drawing her close.

Lucinda said, “If they proved that Harold Timmons-Hal Reed-killed one of the L.A. children, why did he get only a few years?”

“They didn’t prove that Timmons killed any of the children; no one in that group would testify against another. Only Craig Vernon and Kendall Border got murder one, through fingerprint identification.”

Pedric said, “So when Harold Timmons had done his time, he and his brother, Jules, moved up the coast to Molena Point and changed their names to Hal and Jack Reed.”

Harper nodded. “Jack thought Hal would be all right if he could keep him away from groups like that, that he’d be okay without Fenner. I guess he was, for a while.

“Jack met Natalie, married her. Two years later, they had Lori. Jack says he really believed Hal had thrown himself into the business and was through with anything related to offbeat religions-but said he kept a close eye on him.

“Several years after they started the business, Hal started going salmon fishing up around Seattle and Tacoma, at first booking trips with a local travel group. Jack thought that was good for Hal, a different kind of interest, and he encouraged it.

“Hal wasn’t living with Jack and Natalie then, but in a small apartment a few blocks over-the house the senior ladies now own. When Lori was not quite six, Jack went over there one night during a bad storm. All the electricity in the village was out. One of their customers had a flood, wet wires, a mess, wanted someone to get that part of the building cut off before the power came back on. Jack needed some help, and when he couldn’t reach Hal on the phone, he went over to see if he was home yet from Seattle.

“He found Hal out in back digging in the garden. He shone his flashlight on Hal, and on a child’s mutilated body. Jack said he grabbed the shovel from Hal, hit him and hit him, just beat him and wouldn’t stop.

“When he finally did stop, he stood in the pouring rain staring at Hal and at the dead child. He knelt by Hal, by his dead brother.” Max looked around at his friends, leathery face drawn into lines of sadness. “Jack stood there awhile, then buried Hal, and buried the child.”

The three cats, atop the bookcase, were as still as stone, imagining the grisly scene.

“He didn’t know if there were other graves. Thought there must be, but said he didn’t want to know. He went home and threw up. For about a week, he couldn’t keep any food down, didn’t sleep, wouldn’t talk to Natalie. That was the beginning of his strangeness, his fear and depression. He began to worry about Lori. If she went down the street to play, she had to tell him exactly where she was going, who she’d be with, which yard. He’d always ask if she’d talked to any strangers-had begun to worry that Fenner was somewhere near. He checked with L.A. probation and parole, learned that Fenner wasn’t out yet and when they expected he would be. And all the time, he was eaten up by guilt, guilt that he hadn’t suspected Hal, that a child, maybe more, had died. Guilt that he’d killed his brother. He began to buy the Tacoma and Seattle papers, and soon knew there was more than one missing child.

“He knew he could ease the parents, that he could put an end to their uncertainty. But he did nothing. And as Fenner’s release time drew near, Jack was consumed by fear for Lori. He knew if he told police where to find the missing children, they’d find Hal as well. Not only would Jack go to prison, he imagined that Fenner would hear about the case, figure out why Jack had killed Hal, and that as vindictive as Fenner was, he’d be sure to come after Lori. Also, four of the L.A. cult members had not been charged; they were on the street and Jack worried that Hal might have been involved with them in Seattle, that they might come after Lori, too, as retribution for Hal’s death.

“When Fenner was released, Jack says he was a basket case, eaten up with fear. Didn’t want to go out in the evening and leave Lori with a sitter, didn’t want Lori to go to school. Natalie insisted on school, but Jack insisted that Lori had to be driven and picked up, nothing after school, no playing with friends.

“When Natalie lost patience with this, she left him, taking the child with her. It was about then that Fenner went back to jail on another charge.

“When Natalie died six years later of cancer, Lori was sent to a dozen foster homes before she told her caseworker she had a father. Shortly after she gets back to Molena Point, Fenner is out again. Jack thought he saw him once, in the village, and that’s when he boarded up the house.

“This was about three weeks before Fenner killed Patty. As unstable as Jack had become, he may have saved Lori. But then, about a week after Jack boarded up the windows, Lori ran away. Hid in the library basement.”

Joe glanced at Dulcie.You found her,his look said.You helped her, Dulcie.Below them, Lucinda wiped away a tear. “Fenner might have been a mental case,” she said, “but he was also pure evil.”

“Jack has Fenner’s letters to Hal, from prison,” Max said. “Hal had told him Lori was extra bright. Hal grinding his own ax, I guess. Getting back at Jack for whatever imagined reason, or maybe to impress Fenner.”

No one asked how the department had known that Jack had found Fenner. Everyone present was either law enforcement, so knew Harper had received a tip, or if not with the department, then was conversant with other information regarding certain anonymous sources.

But Harper looked around at his friends and frowned. “We have a witness,” he said, and he waited.

No one said anything.

“Witness who heard Jack and Fenner arguing on the street, saw Jack rough up Fenner and shove him in his truck. A young woman,” Harper said, studying each of his civilian friends. He looked at Clyde, at Wilma, at Lucinda, at Dallas’s niece Ryan. He glanced down at Charlie. “A witness who, I’m sure, will refuse to come forward.”

Davis said, “These two snitches are starting to make me nervous.”

Harper looked at her. “A lot of cases won, Juana. A lot of convictions.” He leaned back, stretching out his long legs. “And however this plays out for Jack Reed, he seems easier in his mind.”

“So many deaths,” Lucinda said.

“Patty fought Fenner’s kind in her own way,” Harper said. “Most of Patty’s holdings go to enlarge her children’s shelter and add an accelerated school. Her trust will set up a scholarship system where any child who is bored in school and unchallenged can come there to learn, tuition free.” He looked at Lucinda and Pedric, at Wilma. “I’ve told Jack there are several people who want to take Lori, give her a home in case he gets a long sentence. He’ll be arraigned in a day or two. After that, until the trial, he’ll be out on bail, under electronic home confinement. The judge was very understanding about setting that up. Lori can be with him during that time.

“Who knows, he may get a short sentence and parole. Meantime, Cora Lee French is there for her. Cora Lee spoke to me this afternoon. Cora Lee loves that child.”

“We haven’t had dessert,” Ryan said, swiping at a tear as she rose and moved toward the kitchen. But Max pulled Charlie up from the couch and headed out the front door.

“Hey,” Charlie said. “I want dessert.”

“Don’t worry, you won’t miss dessert.”

She let herself be guided outside and down the steps, to the drive. Behind them, everyone crowded out onto the porch, but Clyde moved quickly past them, to flip the canvas cover off the hidden vehicle.

Charlie looked at Clyde, puzzled. She stared at the shiny new red Blazer. “This doesn’t need restoring.Thisis your new project?”

Clyde smiled. Max stood watching her. A card was stuck under the windshield wiper. She removed it and opened it, then looked up at Max. ” ‘Happy early birthday’? What-”

“It arrived early.” He handed her the key.

Clyde, watching them, was almost as pleased as Max. He and Max had considered a four-year-old Jaguar convertible trade-in, a vehicle that both men had greatly admired. Maybe during a light moment, Max had imagined himself tooling around the village in Charlie’s flashy Jaguar. But both admitted that Charlie couldn’t haul her paintings or half a dozen bales of hay or two big dogs or extra housecleaning equipment in a Jag convertible. Then Clyde had found the two-year-old Chevy Blazer that, while not quite politically correct, got good gas mileage and gave Charlie ample hauling space.

Charlie spent the next half hour hugging Max, examining the car inside and out, and ended up bawling on his shoulder. The three cats, crouched on the porch, had to shut their mouths tight to keep from laughing. Their loud purrs did attract several glances. It was only later, alone in the kitchen, that Charlie tweaked Joe’s ear and stroked Kit and Dulcie. “You knew!” she whispered. “All three of you. You little stool pigeons knew, but you never once let on! How can you be such snitches, but you never say a word to me!”

Joe looked up at Charlie, his yellow eyes innocent and round. Kit lashed her tail and smiled. Dulcie said softly, “But it wasn’t really a secret at all, everyone knew. Ryan and Dallas. Wilma. Lucinda and Pedric. Davis, the entire department. Everyone knew but you, Charlie.”

34 [��������: pic_35.jpg]

Lori had never been in a jail or even a police station, only in the reception lobby of Greenville juvenile, and that was as ugly as a hospital and stank of disinfectant. This police station, though, smelled like fresh coffee. Cora Lee took her inside and left her there and said she’d come back to get her.

She’d washed her hair before she came to see Pa, and Cora Lee had loaned her a brand-new red sweatshirt and even bought her a pair of new sneakers. The little lobby had counters on two sides with a green plant on each of them. There was a barred door at one side, the door of a little cell; she could see the cot inside. She looked in thinking Pa would be there, but the cop who let her in said that was just a holding cell.

She didn’t want to go back into the real jail. But it turned out she didn’t have to. He told her to wait, and two officers brought Pa up to the front. Pa looked thinner, and whiter. Like maybe he hadn’t eaten or slept very much. He didn’t have on special prison clothes like in the movies.Not yet,she thought, getting scared. Just his own jeans and plaid shirt and work shoes. She stood looking at him and didn’t know what to say. But Pa knelt right down and put out his arms, so she had to hug him, and she felt all funny inside.

The officer took them into the holding cell and shut them in. She didn’t know if the door locked when he closed it. He stood outside the bars, and another cop came to stand with him. There was a woman officer behind the counter. What did they think, that Pa would make a break for it? Lori wondered how Pa liked being locked up the way he’d locked her up. Then she was ashamed of herself, ashamed of thinking that. Pa sat down on the bunk on the stained mattress, and put out his hand to her. “Lori?”

She sat down where he could take her hand but couldn’t put his arm around her. She looked at him and didn’t know what to say. He said, “I’m sorry, Lori. Sorry I locked you in.” He tilted up her chin so he could look at her. “I was scared for you. Scared that man would find you, the man who killed other children. I didn’t know what else to do. Didn’t know how else to keep you safe. Then when you ran away, I was more scared. I looked for you, and looked for Fenner. I had no one to go to. Or thought I didn’t,” he said sadly.

“I know. I’m sorry, Pa. That I ran away. Maybe if you’d told me�” She looked at him then, and felt all teary. “I thought�”

“You thought I didn’t love you.”

She couldn’t talk.

He pulled her over almost roughly and held her, and she started to cry and couldn’t stop. He handed her the big red handkerchief he carried in his pocket to wipe his hands on the job. She blew her nose, then sat hiccupping. Pa pulled her close again, held her safe, like when she was little.

“I think the judge will give me home confinement, Lori. After arraignment, until the trial. If I can come home until the trial, will you help me take the plywood off? And wash the windows?”

“Yes, Pa! And clean the house. We can do that together.”

“We can. I’ve been gone a long time, haven’t I?”

“Yes, Pa.”

“And now, I don’t know how long I’ll be home. You know I’ll have to go to prison.”

She nodded. She knew it but she didn’t want to know it. “For how long, Pa?”

“No one will know until after the trial. Until I’m sentenced. I have to stop thinking of you as a little girl. We’re going to have to make some decisions.”

“What decisions, Pa?” She looked hard at him. “I’m not going back to juvenile. I’m not.”

“What, then?”

“Cora Lee French wants me to live with her. Until� until you come home again.”

“Cora Lee French. The Little Theater singer.”

She nodded. “Cora Lee, and Mavity Flowers and two other ladies. In-”

“Inthathouse,” Pa said, his light brown eyes wide with surprised. “Would you be all right with that?”

“I� I think so. I don’t have to think about� those children.” She shivered, but she wanted to make him understand. “They’re not there, Pa. They’re somewhere else, those children. Somewhere new and bright. They don’t care about that place. Even if they did care,” she said, “even if they came back sometimes, it would be all right.”

“I see,” he said, as if he didn’t see at all.

“And Cora Lee and Mavity, I would be happy in that big house with them. They even have two dogs, Pa. Two nice big dogs.”

Pa smiled for the first time, and hugged her and rumpled her hair like when she was little. And she thought maybe itwouldbe all right. She meant for it to be all right. Maybe Pa wouldn’t be in prison very long. Cora Lee said that when you were twelve, life was a tangle of choices. That sometimes you had to make really hard choices, that that’s what growing up was all about. Lori guessed that Pa was right, she couldn’t be a little child anymore. At least not all the time.

Pots of cyclamens lined the tearoom windows, red and pink brighter than Christmas candy, their colors shutting out the stormy sky. A blustery wind rattled the glass but within the cozy, paneled room firelight blazed. Before the licking flames on the brick hearth, a table had been set with high tea. The aroma of hot, savory party fare, of broiled crab sandwiches and little broiled sausages on toast, and of rum cake and other rich sweets mingled with the scent of brewing tea. The guest of honor sat at the head of the table. She had come directly from the hospital. She wore a red cashmere dress, warm and soft and becoming. Her white hair was freshly washed. She was tucked into a wheelchair, a red blanket over her knees, her oxygen tank hooked rakishly to the side of the chair in the manner of a ranger’s rifle carelessly slung from the saddle.

The party was smaller than originally planned, cozier, less formal. Wilma Getz represented Friends of the Library but she did not plan to make a speech. On Genelle’s left, Lori was seated where she could see the fire; on her right, with her back warmed by the blaze, was Lucinda Greenlaw. On down the table from Lucinda were Mavity Flowers, Wilma, and Cora Lee French. Down from Lori sat Ryan Flannery and Charlie Harper, both the younger women polished and scrubbed and wearing the first skirts either had had on since New Year’s-and Dillon Thurwell, who was all cleaned up, too. Dillon wore a pale blue cashmere sweater, a matching skirt, pumps, and sheer stockings. The ladies were all decked out in party finery and Genelle was enjoying every minute, though she often had to hold up her oxygen mask to breathe at all comfortably.

Genelle watched the waiter, in his white crisp jacket, refill her teacup. This young, strapping fellow looked like he spent his off hours surfing, maybe lived for surfing, supporting his habit with this steady job. It made her both frightened and glad that this young man would be surfing and partying in Molena Point long after she was gone. She watched the three cats, tucked up complacently on the window seat among a tangle of bright brocade cushions. Frowning, she studied the far corner, where the cats were looking, all three very still, their ears sharp, their eyes wide with some secret excitement. Dulcie’s green eyes blazed suddenly, then slit closed with a little smile; and Genelle thought that a warmth touched the room more compelling than the heat of the fire, a presence as powerful as had, once, so graced the silver screen. This did not frighten Genelle, but made her glad.

She thought about Patty planning the menu long before she died, and she wished she could eat more to please Patty, wished her digestion along with all her bodily functions had not turned so delicate.Part of the process,she told herself. And she told Patty,You were lucky in that respect.No sense being sentimental. Surely this life, as seen now from Patty’s side of the veil, occupied only a tiny moment, a fraction of a second compared to the unknowable eternity that lay beyond.

The waiter went on around the table filling teacups, then turned away. Genelle sugared her tea, breathing in the delicate, steamy scent. Beside her, Lori laid a hand on hers. “It’s not as formal as I thought. I didn’t want to come, in my jeans and all, and not know how to act.”

“Your red sweatshirt is elegant!” Genelle said, laughing. “And your manners are elegant, too. Iam soglad you came!” Even laughing made her weak. She took a breath of oxygen, like some old wino, she thought, nipping at his bottle.

“It’s Cora Lee’s sweatshirt. It smells of jasmine. Cora Lee wants me to live with her after� while my father’s away. But now, before the arraignment hearing, until they let him leave the jail, I could stay with you. If you’d want me. If I could maybe help out.”

“I’d like that,” Genelle said. “Our friends are taking turns staying at night, but you could help a lot. You could read to me, too. And as for your living with Cora Lee, I think that’s a fine plan.” She looked hard at Lori. “Would you like to live there?”

“I’d love it.” Lori grinned. “And I sure am tired of camping in that basement.”

Genelle helped herself to oxygen again. “Your pa loves you, Lori. He was terrified for you, he felt he had no other choice than what he did.”

“I know. But if he’d told me-”

“What would you have done? If he’d told you?”

“I don’t know,” she said, surprised. She’d have to think about that. “I guess Pa didn’t have much faith in the law to protect me, though.”

“Sometimes the law can’t do as much as they’d like. Your pa did the best he knew how. And he does love you. No matter where your pa is or what happens, he will keep on loving you.” Genelle reached from her wheelchair to put her arm around Lori.

“At Cora Lee’s,” Lori said, “there’s a window seat looking down. On the canyon where� I told Pa it didn’t make any difference. But I guess maybe it does.”

“Only you can decide that,” Genelle said. “Whether you want to live where you can see that gravesite. Only you can know how that will make you feel.”

“That’s what Cora Lee said.” She looked up at the waiter as he offered a tray, and she took four tiny crab sandwiches. “I guess it would be all right,” she said stoicly. “I guess you learn to live with stuff.” When a second waiter appeared, she took six little sausage sandwiches.

Grinning, Genelle thought,Shell be all right, Lori will be all right.And when she looked down the table at Cora Lee, Cora Lee smiled, watching Lori with true affection. Across the table, Charlie and Ryan shared a satisfied grin.

But Wilma was watching the cats. As was Lucinda. And Genelle understood clearly the look that flashed between the two women and the cats: Joe and Dulcie and Kit were just as pleased for Lori as were their human friends. And Genelle thought, certainly not for the first time, that there was more in the universe, far more, than most folks imagined-or cared to know. She sipped her tea, and nibbled a sandwich, and when again she looked into the shadows, she imagined that she heard Patty laughing.

Genelle Yardley died three days after her tea party, died quietly in her bed in the middle of the night. At the moment of her passing, a warm and gentle breath moved through her house and garden, pushing away the windy gusts that rocked the night. For a moment, it seemed, the wind was still. In the next room, where Wilma and Lori slept, the windows stopped rattling. Lori woke and sat up in bed, reaching for Dulcie. The little cat stood on the bed looking out to the garden, then turned to look at Lori and pushed her head against Lori, purring.

Taking Dulcie in her arms, Lori held the tabby cat tight. Across the room, Wilma woke. She saw the child sitting up clutching Dulcie, and she knew. Even across the village, the kit, sleeping between Lucinda and Pedric, woke and sat up. With one soft paw, Kit woke the old couple and looked at them and could say nothing.

And, blocks away in Clyde Damen’s upstairs bedroom, Joe Grey woke hissing and backing into the pillow and into Clyde.

“What?” Clyde said, rolling over staring at the tomcat. “You have a pain? I told you, you ate too much shrimp.”

Joe only looked at him. He didn’t know what was wrong, didn’t know what to think. Didn’t know how to look at what he had sensed in his dreams.

In Genelle’s house, Lori and Wilma listened, then rose and went to Genelle’s room. She lay unmoving. There was no hiss of oxygen. Reaching out a gentle hand, Wilma felt Genelle’s pulse; she waited a long time, trying Genelle’s wrist and then the artery in her neck. Bending, laying her face against Genelle’s ribs, she listened for a heartbeat. At last she shook her head, covered Genelle more warmly, and gently covered her face.

Genelle Yardley was laid to rest on a little hill at the edge of Molena Point cemetery. It was midday, and sunny, with a brisk wind off the sea. Genelle’s view would be down over the rooftops of the village to the sea, if anyone thought she would linger to enjoy that earthly vista. After everyone who had gathered had at last turned away and gone, after the grave had been covered and the sod laid over, and it was evening and growing dark, the three cats came down from the oak tree.

They had waited a long time for the tractor to fill in the grave, a utilitarian process they didn’t much care for, and for three workmen to lay the squares of sod. But they had still felt the sense of Genelle there with them. Almost, Dulcie said later, as if she laid a gentle hand on Dulcie’s head. Now the cats, backing down out of the oak tree, stepped right onto Genelle’s grave, onto the freshly laid new grass. They stood very still, listening. Facing into the wind. And they said their own cattish prayers for Genelle Yardley.

Though they knew she didn’t need prayers. They looked up at the darkening sky and at each other and wondered not only where Genelle would go now and where life had come from in the first place, but wondered about themselves. Wheretheyhad come from, and who they were, and where they would go at some future time.

“Wonders,” Dulcie said softly, “that we are not yet meant to know.”

Kit stared at Dulcie, round eyed. Joe Grey licked his paw and fidgeted and didn’t like to think about this stuff.

But suddenly the wind died again. All was totally still, the wind still. The cats waited.

They felt warm; they felt loved; they felt like laughing. And then at last they turned away, moving as one, and padded solemnly down the grassy hill, toward the village. Toward this life again, toward their own warm hearth fires; and they walked close together, so close that their shoulders touched, and their whiskers and ears touched, and their very cat souls joined with something huge that moved with them as they slipped away through the falling dark.

11. CAT BREAKING FREE

1

We don’t need that bimbo living next door,” the tomcat hissed. “Why would they rent to the likes of her?” His ears were back, his yellow eyes narrowed, his sleek gray body tense with disgust as he paced the top of the long brick barbecue, looking down at his human housemate. He kept his voice low, so not to alarm curious neighbors.

Joe Grey and Clyde had been together since Joe was a kitten, though it was just four years ago this summer that he discovered he could speak. He didn’t know whether that revelation had been more shocking to him or to Clyde. For a human, to wake up one morning and find that his cat could argue back couldn’t be easy. Joe paused now in his irritable pacing to study Clyde, then glanced toward the high patio wall behind him. Peering as intently as if he could see right through the white plaster barrier to the house next door, he considered the backroom of their neighbors’ vacation cottage where Clyde’s old flame had taken up residence.

“Bimbo,” the tomcat repeated, muttering. “Why did they rent to her?”

“They only just bought the house,” Clyde said. “Maybe they need the money.”

“But why Chichi? And how did she find you?”

“Leave it, Joe. Don’t get worked up.” Clyde sat on the back steps with his first cup of coffee, enjoying the early-morning sunshine. He scratched his bare knee and smoothed his dark, neat hair. “Call it coincidence.”

The tomcat replied with a hiss. Chichi Barbi was not among his favorite humans; “bimbo” was too polite a word for the thieving little chit. “Maybe they don’t know she moved in. Maybe she broke in, a squatter, like that homeless guy who�”

“Don’t start, Joe. Don’t make a federal case. That’s so way out, even for your wild imagination!”

“Not at all,” Joe said haughtily. “Look around you, that stuff happens. That homeless guy last winter spent three months crashing in other people’s houses before anyone noticed. Three months of free bed and board, free food from the cupboards, use of all the facilities-five houses before a neighbor started asking questions, then called the cops. Moved from house to house as innocent as you please and no one�”

“Chichi Barbi might be a lot of things, but she’s not a housebreaker. That guy was a transient, half-gone on drugs. You knew the Mannings were going to rent the place. Chichi might live a little loose, but she wouldn’t�”

“Wouldn’t what?” Joe’s ears were back, his whiskers flat. He showed formidable teeth. “In San Francisco she rips you off for five hundred bucks, but she wouldn’t rip off your neighbors? You want to tell me why not?”

Clyde stared at the tomcat and silently sipped his coffee. Clyde’s work-hardened hands were permanently stained with traces of grease from his automotive shop. Otherwise, he looked pretty good for a Saturday morning, not his usual ragged cutoffs and stained T-shirt; almost respectable, the tomcat thought. He had showered and shaved before breakfast, blow-dried his short, dark, freshly cut hair, and was dressed in clean tan walking shorts and a good-looking ivory velour shirt. He was even wearing the handsome new Rockports that Ryan had admired in a shop window. “Pretty snazzy,” Joe said, looking his housemate over. “Ryan’s been a positive influence. She’s right, you know-with a little incentive, you clean up pretty good.”

“Ryan Flannery has nothing to do with how I look in the morning. I simply felt like showering before I made coffee. There some law against that? And we weren’t talking about Ryan, we were talking about Chichi Barbi.”

“And I was wondering why Chichi has pushed herself off on you again. Wondering what she has in mind this time.”

“You are so suspicious, I never saw a cat so suspicious. Maybe she didn’t even know we lived here.”

“Right.” Joe Grey twitched a whisker.

“Maybe sheishere for a vacation,” Clyde said. “A few weeks at the beach, and to shop, just as she said.”

Dropping down from the barbecue to the chaise, Joe stretched out along the green cushion in a shaft of sunshine, and began to indolently wash his white paws, effectively dismissing Clyde. Around man and cat, the early-morning light was cool and golden. Within the patio’s high, plastered walls, their little world was private and serene-a far cry from the scruffy, weedy plot this backyard had been some months ago, with its half-dead grass and open to the neighbors’ inquisitive stares through the rotting, broken fence.

Above them, sunlight filtered gently down through the new young leaves of the maple tree to the brick paving, and around them, the raised planters were bright with spring flowers, the plastered benches scattered with comfortable cushions. Beyond the trellis roof that shaded the barbecue, they could see only a glimpse of the neighbors’ rooftop, which now sheltered Chichi Barbi. Despite his dislike of the woman, Joe Grey had to smile. Chichi’s sudden appearance might be innocent or might not, but for the two weeks since she’d moved in, she’d made Clyde’s life miserable. He’d started locking the patio gate and kept the draperies pulled on that side of the house. He locked the front door when he was home and he studiously avoided the front yard, slipping around the far side of the house to the driveway, sliding quietly into his yellow Chevy roadster and pulling out with as little noise as he could manage.

“Anyway,” Clyde said, “the morning’s too nice to waste it thinking about some neighbor. How much damage can one airhead do?”

The gray tomcat’s yellow-eyed glance telegraphed a world of ideas on the subject. “You have a short memory-andan amazing tolerance.”

“Come on, Joe.”

Joe kneaded the chaise pad in a satisfying rhythm. “One airhead bimbo with a big mouth and a nonstop talent for trouble, to say nothing of amazingly sticky fingers. One thieving bimbo who will rip a guy off for five hundred bucks and never once act guilty or ashamed. Who shows up here crawling all over you like she never stole a thing, all smiles and kisses.” Joe stretched, enjoying the brightening caress of the sun. The golden morning light gleaming across the tomcat’s short gray coat made it shine like velvet and delineated every sleek muscle. Joe’s white paws and white chest were washed and immaculate; the white stripe down his nose shone as pristine as new porcelain. There was no stain of blood from last night’s hunting, no smallest speck of grime to mar his perfection. Watching Clyde, he yawned with bored contentment-but his yellow eyes were appraising and, looking up again at the patio wall, he imagined

Chichi spying on their conversation. He envisioned the brassy blonde climbing up on a ladder to peer over, could almost hear her brash and bubbling “good morning,” almost see her flashing, flirty smile.

No, Chichi Barbi hadn’t driven down here from San Francisco for an innocent vacation, with no idea that she’d be living next door to Clyde Damen. No way he’d believe that degree of coincidence.

There had been a time when the sight of curvaceous Chichi Barbi had sent Clyde straight to the moon. But now, Joe thought, smiling, Chichi hadn’t counted on Ryan Flannery. Ryan had a stake in Clyde Damen that she wouldn’t abandon to the likes of that little gold digger; and Ryan Flannery was a fighter.

Clyde had been dating Ryan for nearly a year, since she moved down to Molena Point from San Francisco. Escaping a difficult marriage, she had started life over in her mid-thirties, establishing her own building contracting business in the village.

Ryan had not only brought out the best in Clyde, had not only accomplished marked improvements in Clyde’s appearance and attitude, but, with her impressive talents, she had brightened their lives in other ways. She had turned their dull little bachelor pad into a spacious, handsome dwelling, had changed their boxy, single-story Cape Cod cottage into an imaginative two-story residence with a new facade, new kitchen, new upstairs, to say nothing of the handsome and private outdoor living area where they were now enjoying the morning. She had even designed a private cat tower atop the new second-floor master suite, had built for Joe his own retreat, a six-sided glassed house with shingled roof and an unbroken view of the village rooftops and the sea beyond. A singularly private pad with soft cushions, a water dish, and easy access over the roofs to the peaks and upper balconies of the entire village.

“Say you’re right about her deliberately finding me,” Clyde said, tentatively abandoning the coincidence theory. “Why would she look for me here? I could have moved anywhere when you and I left San Francisco. Palm Springs. Malibu. Cucamunga. I sure as hell never told anyone where I was going. Well, a few close friends, but no one who’d tell Chichi. And how�?”

“The woman can read,” Joe said. “She can get on the Web, punch up the directories and cross-references. These days, you can find anyone. A human has no private life-better you should be a cat. Even for us, it’s getting harder. Microchips and these new electronic devices�” But he licked his paw, thinking with anticipation of cell phones for cats�

Though that tempting prospect was a way off yet, and surely would have its downside. He looked levelly at Clyde. “Easy enough for her to find you, and that’s what she did.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Thisisa famous tourist destination, everyone comes to Molena Point. She heads down here for a luxurious vacation, gets settled, and just happens across my address.” “Oh, right. And purely by accident, she rents the house next door.”

“She isn’t renting, she’s working for those people. I told you that. House-sitting’s a big deal, to ward off breakins and burglaries. People want house sitters, someone on the premises. And with rents through the roof, people who can’t afford to stay here are eager for the job. Those people who bought next door, they’ve only owned that house a few months. Living in San Francisco, they don’t know anyone here in the village. They hire a friend in the city, someone who wants a free vacation.”

Joe snorted.

“Makes sense to me,” Clyde said. “Chichi is nothing more than the caretaker.”

Joe watched Clyde narrowly, then turned his back, washing diligently. Chichi worried him. Clyde didn’t need that little baggage back in his life. Chichi Barbi was still as gorgeous as she had been when she’d dazzled Clyde years ago, when the buxom blonde had seemed the answer to a bachelor’s dreams.

Joe had been just a young cat then, not full grown but not innocent. He’d hated when Chichi made over him with her sickly sweet “Kitty, kitty, kitty,” all fake and gushing. And now Clyde couldn’t step out the front door without Chichi appearing from nowhere, wearing a tiny little bikini or some equally revealing scrap, prancing out to get something from her car or to change the sprinkler. And she was at their front door at least once a day, simpering at Clyde, wanting to borrow milk, flour, or a hammer and nails to hang a picture-at least Clyde didn’t offer to help with her little carpentry ruses. So far, every time she rang the bell, Clyde shut the door in her face while he fetched the required item, left her standing on the porch. That had heartened Joe considerably. But Clyde’s rudeness turned Chichi sulky for only a few minutes, then she was all over him again, all smiles and glossy pink lipstick and slick hair spray and enough perfume to gas a platoon of marines-how much of that could a guy take and still keep his hands off her?

“Maybe you’re right,” Joe said tentatively. “Maybe she isn’t after you, maybe she came down to fleece the tourists-or fleece our rich celebrities.” Molena Point was crawling with money. “She finds out you’re here, thinks you’d make good cover for whatever she’s up to.

“Or maybe she reads the want ads looking for a patsy, sees the Mannings’ ad for a caretaker, checks the cross-reference to get a line on the Mannings’ neighbors.”

“Come on, Joe. That’s�”

“She discovers you live next door, and voila! Opportunities she hadn’t dreamed of. She interviews, gets the job, and moves in. What could be simpler. Set up her little schemes, maybe set up the Mannings for some kindofrip-off, checks their financial ratings� And comes on to you at the same time, to set you up as an alibi.”

Clyde’s usually agreeable square face and brown eyes were dark and foreboding. “What the hell have you been smoking? You’ve got a whole complicated crime scene going, and she hasn’tdoneanything. This snooping into�”

“Hasn’t done anythingyet.””

“Anyway, she wouldn’t believe that she could suck me in again, that I’d fall for a second scam.”

“How much did she take you for, the first time? Without a whimper? When you thought she was the love goddess incarnate? Easy as snatching a sparrow from the bird feeder, and in those days, five hundred bucks was like five thousand today-then, you could hardly afford the price of a hamburger!”

“Come on Joe. I was only a mechanic then, I didn’t have my own shop, but I had savings, and if I wanted to�”

“If you wanted to be a sucker then, that was your business? Well, whatever you give her this time, Clyde, I swear, if you let her mess up your relationship with Ryan, I’ll kill her with my bare claws, then come after you.”

Though in fact, Joe thought Ryan had nothing to worry about. Ryan Flannery had everything Chichi didn’t. A real, warm beauty. Keen intelligence. Wit. Talent. How many women were excellent carpenters and designers, had a sense of humor, and could cook, too?

Compare that with an artificial size 38C and hair bleached to the color of straw, and it was no contest.

“If Ryan were jealousofChichi,” Clyde said, “it wouldn’t say much for Ryan, or for what Ryan thinks of me.”

“You’re right, there.”

“Unless�” Clyde looked suddenly stricken.“That can’tbe why Ryan went off on that pack trip this week with Charlie and Hanni? Not because she’s mad at me, because sheisjealous?”

Charlie Harper, the wife of Molena Point’s chief of police, far preferred time on horseback or at her easel to a formal social life. Partly because of this, she and Ryan had hit it off at once. When Ryan’s sister, Hanni, moved down from the city, too, to start her own interior design studio, the three women soon became fast friends. The fact that Ryan and Hanni were from a law-enforcement family cemented the bond. Their uncle Dallas worked for the Molena Point Police Department, Dallas and his nieces comprising a family exodus that amused the tomcat. Though why should it? Who wouldn’t leave San Francisco with its increasing crime? Molena Point was small, friendly, and comfortable. And the family had had a vacation cottage in the village since the two sisters were children.

Joe said, “If Ryan were worried, you think she’d leave you alone with Chichi for a week? You think she’d go off on horseback, letting Chichi have her way with you?”

“Put that way, you make me sound like a real wimp.”

“Anyway,” Joe said, “Ryan and Charlie and Hanni have planned for that trip all year, getting their horses in shape, calling the blacksmith, checking their gear�”

Clyde smiled. “I’m playing second fiddle to a couple of lady equestrians and a sorrel mare.”

Joe yawned. “I’m surprised Chichi keeps pushing you, though, after seeing the chief of police over here two or three times a week.” Chief Harper and Clyde had grown up together. Max and one other friend were as close to family as Clyde had. “Unless,” Joe said, his yellow eyes narrowing, “unlessthatfits into her plan.”

Clyde stared at him. “She’s going to pull a scam on Max Harper?”

The tomcat licked his white paws. “Why not? That woman would try to scam anyone. She even tried to make up to Rube, just because he’s your dog. Just like she used to baby-talk me in San Francisco.”

“She backed off Rube fast enough,” Clyde said, smiling. Chichi had been mad as hell when Rube growled at her. In Joe’s opinion, the old black Lab was sometimes smarter than Clyde. He looked down at Rube, stretched out across the bricks, his aging black bulk soaking up the sunshine. “Rube knows his women. He should, he’s lived with you since he was a pup.” Joe watched the elderly Labrador roll over onto a warmer patch of paving.

“Slowing down,” Clyde said sadly, setting down his coffee cup and kneeling beside Rube to stroke and talk to the old dog. Rube lifted his head to lick Clyde’s hand, his tail flopping on the bricks. But Clyde and the tomcat exchanged a look. Rube hadn’t been himself for some time; they were both worried about him. Dr. Firetti had prescribed a heart medication, but he hadn’t been encouraging.

Joe was thinking it a blessing that the morning was quiet so the old dog could rest, a silky calm Saturday morning, when their peace was suddenly broken. Loud rock music shattered the silence, jolting all three of them, hard rock coming from next door where they heard a car pulling up the drive on the far side of the neighbors’ house. They could hear nothing but the car radio blasting. What ever happened to real music? the tomcat thought. In Clyde’s house, the old Basin Street jazz was king; and, since Clyde and Ryan started dating, a certain amount of classical music that even a tomcat could learn to like.

The radio went silent. They heard two car doors slam, then two men’s voices, one speaking Spanish as they headed down the drive, to the entry to Chichi’s back bedroom. They heard the men knock, heard the door open, heard Chichi’s high giggle as the door closed again, then silence. Rising, his ears pressed back with annoyance, the tomcat leaped from the chaise to the barbecue to the top of the plastered wall, where he could see the door and the drive.

An older brown Plymouth coupe stood in the drive. Stretching out along the top of the wall, Joe watched the one bedroom window he could see; the other was around the corner facing a strip of garden and the drive. Inside, Chichi was sitting on the bed facing the two men who sat in straight chairs, their backs to Joe. The three had pulled the night table between them and were studying some kind of papers they had spread out. Frowning, the tomcat dropped from the wall down into the neighbors’ scruffy yard. Racing across the rough grass and around the corner, he leaped into the little lemon tree that stood just outside Chichi’s other window.

Scorching up into its branches he tried to avoid the tree’s nasty little thorns, but one caught him in the paw. Pausing to lick the blood away, he tried to keep his white markings out of sight, hidden among the sparse foliage. What were they looking at? A map? He climbed higher, stretching out along a brittle limb, peering down.

Yes. A street map of the village. He could see the words “Molena Point” slanted across one corner. One man was Latino, with collar-length black hair. The other was a gringo, with sandy-red hair and short beard. Of what significance were the streets and intersections that the Latino man traced so intently with one stubby finger? Joe could not see the notes Chichi was making, where she had propped a small spiral pad on the corner of the table. He tried to peer around her shoulder but couldn’t stretch far enough without risking a fall out of the spindly little tree. He caught a few words, but they were doing more tracing than talking. They seemed to be working out some scenario. It was clear to the tomcat that these three were not, by the wildest stretch, planning a Sunday church picnic.

2 [��������: pic_3.jpg]

Nothing could be seen on the vast green hills but the three riders, their horses jogging across the rising slopes high above the sea; they were pursued only by swift cloud shadows as ephemeral as ghosts slipping along behind them. Far below them where the hills dropped away, a carpet of fog hung suspended, hiding the cold Pacific. California weather, Charlie thought, loving the swiftly changing contrasts of light and shadow and the damp smell of iodine and salt. The chill wind was refreshing after a good night’s sleep and a big breakfast; she was deliriously warm inside her leather jacket; her mass of wild red hair, held back with a leather band, kept her neck warm. She sat the big buckskin easily; she was watching a gull swoop low to disappear below the fog when her attention turned suddenly to the pine forest that followed on her right, deeper inland.

Something moved there, something small and quick. Many somethings, she thought, frowning. Small creatures slipping along fast among the shadows as if secretly following them. In the shifting patterns of sun and shade she tried to make them out, but could see nothing clearly. She didn’t want to move Bucky closer and alert her two companions. Uneasily, she studied the woods. She had been watching for some time when, behind her, Ryan put the sorrel mare to a gallop and moved up beside her.

“What are you watching?” the dark-haired young woman said. “What’s in there, what are the horses looking at?” Both horses were looking toward the woods, their ears flicking nervously as they stared into the tangled shadows.

“Maybe rabbits,” Charlie said. “I really can’t see what it is. This time of year, maybe baby rabbits.” Though none of their horses was in the habit of shying at rabbits.

Ryan frowned. With her dark Latin beauty and startling green eyes, Ryan Flannery looked, in Charlie’s opinion, more like a model than a building contractor. Even this morning with her short dark hair tucked beneath a battered slouch hat and wearing faded jeans and faded sweatshirt, Ryan Flannery was striking, her mix of Irish and Latino blood creating a stunning and singular beauty. Riding Charlie’s sorrel mare, turned in the saddle, Ryan peered into the shadows of the woods with curiosity but warily. She looked ready to act if action was needed.

Ryan’s sister, moving up beside them so not to miss anything, watched the woods intently. Mounted on a dappled gray gelding whose coat exactly matched her short, well-styled silver hair, Hanni Coon was the glamorous one of the three. Hanni’s designer jeans, this morning, were of a skillfully faded shade that dramatically set off her hand-knit coral-and-blue sweater. Her Western boots were too new to look natural; they sported rattlesnake insets and had been handmade by Tony Lama. Hanni’s roping saddle was plain but expensive, elegantly understated, with a soft, elk-suede seat. The saddle blanket was hand-woven llama wool from Peru. Even the temperament of Hanni’s gray gelding matched her own. He was as flamboyant as Hanni, a flashy, meddlesome Arab who would rather prance and sidestep than take the trail at a sensible walk. As the three women watched the woods, Ryan and Hanni perhaps envisioning baby rabbits, Charlie knew that what she had seen wasn’t rabbits. As they crested the next hill, she deliberately turned away.

“I guess it’s gone,” she said, hiding her nervousness. Ryan and Hanni didn’t need to see what was there. The three women rode quietly for some time, caught in the beauty of the rolling green land and the muffled thunder of the waves crashing against the cliffs far below. The piping of a meadowlark shattered the air, as bright as tinkling glass. A hawk dropped from the clouds screaming, circling close above them; but the meadowlark was gone. In all the world, at this moment, there seemed no other presence but the birds and the innocent beasts of the forest. Of the creatures that followed them, only Charlie guessed their true nature. She told herself she was wrong, that probably those small, swift shadowswereonly rabbits.

Ryan and Hanni soon strung out behind Charlie again into a comfortable riding distance. She looked down at the fog far below her, the fog she had loved since she was a child, imagining hidden worlds among the mist’s pale curtains. Even when she was grown, in art school in San Francisco, she had indulged herself in fantasies as she walked the city’s steep streets where fog lay thick. Peering into mist-curtained courtyards and gardens, she had imagined all manner of wonders; as if, if she looked hard enough, she would glimpse unknown and enchanted realms.

Now below her hidden beneath the fog lay her own village, her home of two years-her home forevermore, Charlie thought, smiling. Molena Point was her own enchanted village-enchanted if one didn’t look too closely, at the dark side that any idyllic setting could reveal.

Stroking Bucky’s neck, she thought how lucky she was to have moved to Molena Point. She was certain that fate had led her to Max. To have married Max Harper was more than a dream come true. She wished he were here, riding beside her instead of home at the station slugging it out with the bad guys, with the dregs of the world.

So strange that she, eternal dreamer and optimist, had married a hardheaded cop. A man who, by the very nature of his work, was forced to be a cynic-at least in most matters.

But not a cynic when it came to her, or to his horses and dogs. There was not, in Max Harper’s view, any reason to be a cynic regarding the nature of animals, for they were the innocent of the world.

Max had promised that they’d take this trip together, soon. A belated honeymoon, to make up for their original honeymoon plans a year ago, when their wonderful cruise to Alaska was aborted by the bomb at their wedding. A bomb that was meant to kill them.

That didn’t matter now; though the bitter aftertaste was there. They were together, that was what mattered. And despite the perfection of this weeklong journey, she could hardly wait to get home.

She and Ryan and Hanni had ridden for three days down the coast, with a day’s layover at the Hellman ranch to get the sorrel mare shod when she threw a shoe. It had been an easy trip, no roughing it, no camping out in the rain, no pack animal to lead, though they had carried survival gear, just in case. They had stayed each night at a welcoming ranch, dining before a hearth fire, sleeping between clean sheets and stabling their horses in comfort; had experienced nothing like what the first explorers and settlers had known traveling these hills, sleeping beneath drenching rain, eating what they could shoot or gather, fighting off marauding grizzly bears with muzzle loaders. It was hard to imagine grizzlies on these gentle hills; but this had beengrizzlycountry then. The early accounts told of bear and bullfights, too, staged by the Spanish vaqueros and American cowboys in makeshift arenas; and Charlie shivered at the cruelty.

Now that they were nearing home again a bittersweet sadness touched her, but a completeness, too. Her soul was filled with a hugeness she could not describe; she felt washed clean. No religious retreat could ever, for Charlie, be as healing and inspiring as this open freedom, on the back of a good mount, wandering through God’s country away from the evils of the world. As the sun began to burn through the fog, she could see the rooftops of Molena Point far ahead, a montage of red and brown peaks, hints of white walls softened by the deep green oaks and pines that rose between the cottages and shops. Soon she would be able to see their ranch, too, the white fences and oak trees of their own few acres. All three women were silent, drinking in the first sight of home, all with the same mix of sadness.

Hanni said, “I feel like an eighteenth-century traveler roundingthehills in a strange land, amazed to suddenly see my own rooftops.” That made Charlie smile; but then she pulled Bucky up, again looking at increased movement in the woods. Had she heard a plaintive sound? A soft cry mixed with the wind and the crashing of the surf against the cliffs? Or maybe she’d heard only the faraway cry of the hawk? Dropping the reins across Bucky’s neck, she sat listening.

The wind struck more sharply, hiding any sound. Above the pine woods a sliver of sun grew brighter as the clouds parted again. Pushing back her kinky red hair, Charlie brushed loose strands off her forehead and buttoned the throat of her jacket. Very likely she had heard nothing; she was as foolish as Hanni’s gray gelding.

But no. Bucky had heard; he was watching the woods and he began to fuss, flicking his ears and rolling his eyes. Bucky, unlike the gray gelding, wasn’t given to fantasies. Steady as a rock, the buckskin did not shy without good reason. Apprehensively Charlie studied the dark tangles among the pine trunks and deadfalls. She had not imagined that stealthy running, low to the ground among the dry branches and scrub bushes; had not imagined something intently following them. And she did not want-must not-let Ryan and Hanni know its true nature.

3 [��������: pic_4.jpg]

The lemon tree outside Chichi Barbi’s window was useless for cover, and Joe had another thorn in his paw. He didn’t like blood on his paws-not his own blood. Mouse blood or rabbit blood was fine. Now he had no choice if he wanted to learn anything, unless he clawed at Chichi’s door and joined the party. Easing his position in the little tree he stayed on its far side, trying to conceal his white markings as he peered between the leafy twigs and in through Chichi’s dirty window.

Her room was not as glitzy as Joe would have expected. But she was only house-sitting. The bedroom had pale blue walls and scarred, cream-colored Victorian furniture arranged on a worn, brown carpet. Chichi and the two men sat bent over the small night table, engrossed in the map. He couldn’t see much; wherever he moved, one of the men was in his way. Both had their backs to him, so he had only to feel nervous at Chichi’s possible glances.

Both men were fairly young. Smooth necks, smooth arms, smooth, strong hands. Both looked strong, hard-muscled. The gringo had styled his red hair in a harsh, spiky crew cut. He had masses of freckles on his neck and arms, more freckles even than Charlie Harper. On Charlie, the little confetti spots were bright and charming. On this guy, combined with the spiked hair and macho body language, they were blemishes. He wore a powder-blue T-shirt, and jeans. The back of his shirt proclaimed, “One Sweet Irish Lad.” The Latino guy had straight black hair over his collar, and was the heftier of the two-a Peterbilt truck with legs. His red T-shirt advertised a brand of Mexican beer and had a picture of a cactus. The window glass must be single pane, because now that they had settled back to talk more normally, Joe could catch most of the conversation, which was centered on the map of Molena Point.

The redheaded man pointed to the intersection of Dolores Street and Seventh. “Little restaurant there,” he said. “And a good view from inside the drugstore.”

Good view of what? Joe tried to remember what else was on that corner. A country furniture store, one of those with faux country antiques. A bakery. And an expensive leather and silver shop. When Chichi leaned over to make a little mark at the intersection, she exhibited alarming cleavage. “That’s seven,” she said, sitting up. She glanced toward the window, making Joe wince, making him wish for the thousandth time that he was gray all over. Even among the tangle of twiggy branches he had to perch all hunched over to hide his white parts.

Well, but he was only a cat. So she saw him. So who would suspect a cat? And suspect him of what?

When Chichi kept looking, Joe began to fidget. Casually he turned away to wash, watching her obliquely. Only when she seemed to lose interest did he relax.

“You have it all laid out?” she was saying. “You’re all set-sure you can handle this?”

The dark man’s shoulders stiffened, and he raised his head in defiance. Chichi gave him a fetching smile. “Well of course you can handle it, Luis. You’re a pro. A professional.”

Luis’s shoulders relaxed. “It’s all worked out. Nothingyouneed to worry over.”

Joe saw her temper flare, but it was immediately hidden as she glanced down. The redhead said, “The test run won’t hurt nothing.”

Luis glared at him, glancing in the direction of Clyde’s house. “Keep your voice down.”

“He won’t hear you,” Chichi said. “I don’t hear a thing from over there, even when he has company-that woman carpenter. What kind of guy dates a carpenter? She doesn’t have any clothes but jeans and muddy boots. So, what do I do for the test run?”

“The usual,” Luis said. “You and Tommie.” He nodded at the redhead. “Watch, listen. Keep count-numbers, direction. You know the drill.”

Tommie punched at the map, picking out another intersection. “There’s an alley here, north side of the street. One of them fancy alleys, a bench halfway down it, out of the way.”

Chichi nodded. “I can’t wait for the big one.”

Luis laughed. “Just like old times.”

“Better,” she said softly. Joe saw a flicker of impatience cross her face, but it was gone at once. She gave Luis another dazzling smile and touched his hand. “What a blast.” When Chichi looked up at the window again, Joe pretended interest in a branch above him, stealthily moving higher as if stalking a bird. What was the woman staring at? But then she looked away, and leaned for a moment on Tommie’s shoulder. “Just like old times.” That made both men smile.

Joe watched Luis fold the map and stuff it in his pocket. The men rose. He didn’t want to leave the tree until they were gone. When at last they swung out the door, he leaped to the roof above them, peering over. Chichi stood in the doorway then moved to the drive, watching them approach their car. Joe followed above them, trotting along beside the metal roof gutter. When they turned to get into the car, he got a better look at their faces.

The redhead, Tommie, might be thirty, his face sharply sculpted, sharp nose, sharply pointed chin, angled cheekbones, his features as harsh as his stiff crew cut. The Latino guy was about the same age, but his broad, tanned face was more pleasant. He seemed to have a built-in smile, the kind of smile that would encourage anyone to like him, the kind of smile Joe seldom trusted. They swung into the brown Plymouth and backed out. As they pulled away, Joe headed back across the roof to the lemon tree, ignoring the voice in his head that said, “Watch your step, tomcat. Keep your eye on Chichi.” Dropping down among the brittle twigs and sparse leaves, he glanced into Chichi’s bedroom.

She had moved the night table back into place beside the bed. She was sitting on the bed with two pillows behind her, her feet tucked up, her eyes closed, her face so sad that Joe stared, amazed. What was she thinking? What sad memory filled her?

Likely some scam that went wrong, some crime left uncommitted. But for a long moment, as Joe watched her, his critical judgment almost softened. For one instant, he almost began to like the woman-until common sense kicked in once more, until the tomcat was himself again, suspicious and judgmental. Well, hewasa cat, he could be as judgmental as he chose. That was his God-given feline prerogative.

Chichi was quiet for a long time, sitting with her eyes closed, lost in some scenario he’d give a brace of mice to understand. When at last she rose and left the room, moving away through an inner door toward the front of the house, he remained in the tree, thinking.

What was this plan involving the village? What he’d heard could mean anything. Some con game, maybe during a sports event? An onslaught of pickpockets? Nothing he had heard clearly indicated a crime in the planning, but what else could it be? He heard the TV come on from the living room. The daytime soaps? Oh, spare us, he thought irritably.

Butthesound of those inane and tasteless melodramas would serve him well enough; and he studied Chichi’s window, below him.

It was old, of the double-hung kind. Most such windows had old, round locks, frail or long ago broken.

Clyde would say he was overreacting, that Chichi had committed no crime nor had the trio actually talked about a crime. And maybe he would be right.

Or not, Joe thought. Whatever the truth, in the tomcat’s view it was best to have a look, see what he could see.

He had leaped to the sill, his face pressed to the glass when the distant TV went silent. As he sailed back into the tree, she returned to the bedroom carrying a cup of coffee. Setting down the cup, Chichi looked right at him, right smack into his eyes. Panicked, Joe dropped into the scruffy grass and fled, his macho dignity forgotten.

Slipping around the corner of the house, he sailed to the top of his own wall and dropped to his own safe patio. That woman scared him, gave him the creeps. Crouched on the barbecue, he looked down at Clyde who was kneeling beside Rube, feeding him bits of the special diet the doctor had prescribed. The old Lab was not fond of what was best for him. Joe had to agree; most often, anything really good for you tasted like shredded bank statements. Clyde looked up, scowling.

“I take it you were eavesdropping, given your usual nosiness.”

Joe fixed Clyde with a cool yellow gaze.

“Can’t she have company without you spying on her? What did you do, watch them through the window?” Clyde would never admit that he, too, might be curious.

Joe shrugged and twitched his whiskers. “Probably tourists, friends visiting, deciding where they want to go, what sights they want to see.” He didn’t say any more. He wished the conversation had been more explicit. Why were humans so vague? Whatever was going on, he would prefer not to drag Clyde in. Clyde could be so opinionated.

At Joe’s silence, Clyde raised an eyebrow and returned to feeding Rube, giving the sick old dog his full attention, making it clear that he thought Joe was imagining misdeeds where none existed.

It made no difference that Joe, his tabby lady Dulcie, and their young pal Kit had solved innumerable crimes in the village. With Clyde there was always that preliminary unwillingness to accept their skill and expertise, an inborn reluctance to face facts. Giving Clyde a cool glance, Joe considered Rube. At the moment, the old Labrador was far more in need of true understanding than was Joe himself.

“He’s hurting, Clyde. I don’t like the way he’s breathing, don’t like the way he smells.”

“I just gave him his medication. You know it takes a while to kick in. I called Dr. Firetti again. He’s increased the dose by a fourth. Said to watch him, see if I can get him to drink more. I made him some broth, he drank half a cup. Firetti said if he seems no better in an hour, bring him in.”

Joe nodded and curled up next to Rube, pressing against the Lab’s warm, black shoulder. Even the feel of Rube’s body was different, more rigid and ungiving. The prognosis was not good, he knew that. Death would come; the old dog was dying, and there was onlysomuch any human could do,nomatter how skilled and attentive.

He thought about death, about their animal friends and human friends who had died. At one time he’d found the concept one of total emptiness, found it easy to fall into a deep malaise over a loved one’s death. Dulcie had taught him differently, Dulcie and her housemate, Wilma. Plus a lot of thinking on his own, a lot of observation-and a few very strange experiences. Yet now when he thought about Rube’s impending death, trying to come to terms with it, it was a very long time before he turned his attention again to Chichi Barbi.

4 [��������: pic_5.jpg]

When, within the pine woods, the fleeting shadows grew bolder, Bucky snorted and bowed his neck, nervously staring. Another sprint of shadows flashed among the trees to vanish behind a tumble of deadfalls; then across the leafy carpet, a stealthy creeping so subtle it might be only light shifting among the foliage as the sun rose. If there was something there, it was small and quick. But what kindofsmall animals would follow them? If they were in Ireland, Charlie thought, she’d imagine being tracked by some impossible mythical creature. Beside her, Ryan and Hanni watched intently. She was glad Ryan hadn’t brought her big Weimaraner. Rock was becoming well trained, considering his uncontrolled first-year running wild and unwanted. But he still had moments when his highly bred hunting instincts and keen sense of smell-and his macho nature-tore him away from all commands and sent him, defiant and disobedient, racing maybe fifteen miles or more before Ryan could find him and bring him home again, the big silver dog worn out, deliciously happy, and not at all contrite. If Rock were here, he’d be runningnow,chasing those mysterious cats-and cats they were, she felt certain.

Though Rock would not normally hurt a cat, if they ran from him he would chase them. Any dog would. And who knew how far? This wilderness land went on for many miles.

Another shadow flashed through the mottled light, small and swift. If thesewerecats, they were not the three cats Charlie knew. Those three would not follow them secretly, they’d be right out in the open running beside the horses, begging a ride home across their saddles. Charlie had taken the young tortoiseshell up on the saddle with her several times, and the kit quite liked that excitement. Anyway, those three wouldn’t be clear out here, miles south of Molena Point. Even on horseback, the riders were still a good hour from home. They were well south of Hellhag Hill, which was as far south, she thought, as Joe Grey or Dulcie ever ventured. Though the kit had come from much farther south when she first found the village, escaping from just such a band of feral cats. Small and hungry and troubled, Kit had taken refuge on Hellhag Hill and there, frightened and nearly starved, she had found the first two humans she’d ever been willing to trust.

Edging Bucky off the trail, Charlie looked back at Ryan and Hanni. “Go on. Whatever is there is small, I don’t want to frighten it. I’m just curious. I’ll catch up.” And she headed alone into the woods, the buckskin stepping with exaggerated care and snorting. Behind her, the two women moved away, their horses’ sorrel and gray rumps bright in the morning. Ryan glanced back at her once, frowning, then moved her mare up to match the gray’s hurrying walk.

Charlie was glad Max wasn’t there. If this was the feral band, Molena Point’s police chief didn’t need any more close encounters with speaking cats. He got plenty of that at home, though all unknowing. It was hard enough to keep the three cats’ secret from him, without other sentient cats appearing. Approaching the dense woods, Bucky continued to stare and fuss, but he moved ahead sensibly. Bucky was Max’s gelding, he was well trained and reliable. Though he would not so willingly have approached a band of coyotes or an unusually bold cougar. Cougars had attacked several hikers this year and, in one instance, a lone rider, raking and tearing the horse badly before the wounded rider shot him.

The three womenwerearmed against that kind of danger. Three females traveling alone did not, to Max Harper’s way of thinking, go into the California wilderness unprotected from some strange quirk of nature or a marauding human. These days, there could be a nutcase anywhere, the wild hills no exception. Particularly with marijuana growers squatting on state land, angry men who would kill to protect their lucrative illegal crops.

Charlie was police-trained in the use of a weapon and not, in any way, hasty or hot-headed. And Ryan and Hanni, having grown up in a law-enforcement family, had been well schooled from an early age. All three carried cell phones, but it would take a while for outside help to reach them. A Jeep could manage these hills, but they were riding the old original highway that had deteriorated over sixty years into a rough dirt track with patches of broken, washed-out blacktop-an impossible road for any car with only two-wheel drive. She entered the wood where the trees grew thick, the gelding picking his way among deadfalls, dry, rotting invitations to forest fire. Around them, nothing moved.

Where the trees parted sufficiently, thin shafts of light grew brighter as the sun rose. Away at the far side of the hill, the woods dropped into a ravine. Bucky’s ears flicked and twisted, and his skin rippled with shivers. She could hear behind her the faint hush of the sea, then a distant click as one of the retreating horses stepped on a pebble. The pine forest was cold; she drew her jacket close. And suddenly for no reason she wanted to turn back. At the same moment, Bucky froze.

Something shone ahead, unnaturally bright between the trees, something glinting like metal. She frowned at the long silver streaks half hidden within the dark bushes.

No rock would glint like that, with those long, straight flashes where the sun shot down. Pushing Bucky closer, booting him deeper in among the crowding pines, she approached the bright gleams where a shaft of slanting sun picked out metal bars.

An animal cage. A trap. A humane trap, made of thin steel bars, not wire mesh as were most such cages. Its top, sides, and back had been covered with a heavy towel so that a trapped beast would settle down in the darkness and not harm itself lunging and fighting. A friend who worked for a cat-rescue group had told her that a trapped cat would fight its cage until it tore off hanks of its own skin, injuring itself sometimes so severely that it must be destroyed. The towel did not cover the front of the cage. She could see a cat inside, a big cat, crouching and silently hissing, its eyes dark with fear and hate.

Sliding off Bucky, she knelt to look. The cat fixed her with an enraged glare, a furious stare from keenly intelligent eyes. This was no ordinary cat. He watched her with intent human comprehension, and everything about him was demanding. Much as Joe Grey would have stared if he were caught in a trap. Though she could not imagine such a thing happening. Joe was far too wary.

How had this obviously intelligent creature let himself be caught? The huge, broad-shouldered tom exhibited such a deep and violent rage. This was a wild, rebellious intellect trapped not only in the cage but in a feline body with physical limitations that had betrayed him. With no hands to manipulate that complicated lock, he had no hope of escape. He glared at Charlie as if he would tear her leg off.

His rough coat was a mix of gray and tan and dirty white; his broad, boxy head scarred as if from fighting, his ears torn, his yellow eyes fierce. She had no desire to touch her fingers to the cage to see if this might be a domestic cat, an angry lost soul who might be longing to trust her. There was nothing lost about this soul. Enflamed, bedeviled, not to trust or be trusted.

His eyes never left her. His teeth remained bared in a snarl as lethal as that of any cougar, eyes like an imprisoned convict. She could see him debating how he could best use her, how he could force her to free him. Stepping away from the cage, she put her hand on Bucky’s shoulder, steadying herself against the solid buckskin gelding. She stood silently for a long time watching the cat as he continued his careful assessment of her.

At last she knelt again, and spoke softly, though the other riders were on down the trail. “You run with the wild band. With the band that, almost two years ago, came to Hellhag Hill.” Even as she said it, she thought, alarmed, that if he was one of that band, they might have come back searching for the kit.

But why would they? To take the little tattercoat back into their clowder? Why would they want her back? She had been nothing but an outcast.

Would they want to remove any cat of their kind from human company? Would they hurt Kit to keep their secret?

But that didn’t make sense. If that was the case, why had they ever let her stay in the village? Why hadn’t they taken her away at once?

Or was this a new and stricter leader? Charlie knew from Kit that the band had been ruled by a tyrant. Was there now a worse dictator, a beast even more predatory and controlling? Kit had said the leaders changed whenever a stronger male killed the old one. Was this tom even more anxious to keep his kind from being discovered? The cat continued to glare.

“If you will talk to me,” she said, “if you will tell me why they trapped you-tell me how they managed to trap you-and if you’ll tell me why you are here, I’ll set you free.”

His snarl rumbled.

“I promise I’ll free you,” she whispered.

In order to free him, she would have to handle the cage. If he chose, he could slash her fingers to ribbons through the bars before she could ever release the door and push it in.

Rising, she slipped her hoof pick from its little case on the saddle and fished her knife from her pocket. Because Bucky was tense and snorting, she was afraid he wouldn’t stay ground-tied. She undid her rope from the saddle and tied him to a deadfall.

Opening her saddle bags, she found her leather gloves and slipped them on. Crouched again before the cage, studying how best to spring the latch, she heard Ryan call her from far up the trail. Oh, they mustn’t come back.

“I’m fine,” she shouted. “I’m coming. Give me a minute.”

She had thought at first the cage belonged to one of the animal-rescue groups that trapped feral cats, that gave the cats shots and “the operation,” then turned them loose again. But this cage wasn’t like theirs. Though of the same humane design, it had stainless steel bars instead of wire mesh, and a different kind of tripping mechanism, too. A different way to release the door, and a far more complicated latch. But what gave her chills was the bungee cord.

The strong elastic cord was used to keep a trap open for many days so the victim would grow used to going inside for food. Normally, the cord was then removed, and the trap set. An ordinary cat would not realize the difference, but would go on in and trip the trigger, slamming the door shut before it could escape.

But this bungee cord hung in three pieces, frayed apart. It did not look chewed, but tampered with. The door had been sprung while the weakened cord was still in place, and it had pulled apart.

She looked into the tom’s blazing eyes. “Was the cord on when you went in? So you thought it still held the door?”

The cat blinked, as if to say yes. It glared, and would not speak.

“You didn’t chew it in two? It doesn’t look chewed.”

He lashed his tail, reluctantly letting her know he understood, but still unwilling to speak. This was too bizarre, kneeling in the wilderness talking to a trapped cat from whom she fully expected answers. This was a scene out ofAlice,crazyand impossible.

But it indeed was quite possible.

“Tell me,” she said impatiently. “Just tell me, and I’ll free you! There are two more riders, they’ll be over here in a minute. We can’t talk in front of them.”

The big cat studied her, ears back, teeth glinting.

She said, “This trap was not set by the rescue people. Whoever set it knew you, knew that he was setting it for an animal as smart as himself.” She was studying the heavy, complicated latch when Ryan began calling again.

“Tell me now! Quickly! Speak to me now, and I’ll free you. Otherwise I’ll leave you. I swear I will.”

The cat smiled with teeth like ivory daggers. His look said, Isn’t this proof enough? My smile, my cognizance? That is all the proof you need, so get on with it.

Rising, she turned and swung onto Bucky and headed out, meaning to stop Ryan. She could feel, behind her, the cat’s alarm.

Ryan had left the trail. Behind her, Hanni waited. “Go back,” Charlie said. “It’s all right. A feral cat in a cage, I don’t want to frighten it. Looks like it’s been there a long time. I’m going to free it; I think I can spring it all right.”

“Let me help, I’ll be gentle.” Ryan booted her horse, moving beside Charlie before Charlie could stop her, and sliding from the mare. The cat, now crouched at the back of the cage, snarled and spit. Now its eyes were shuttered, giving away nothing. Charlie, opening her folding hoof pick and knife, began to work on the lock.

No cat could have opened this, it was hard even for her, with the simple tools she had. As she wedged the pick into place, Ryan forced her own knife into the moving part of the mechanism; Ryan’s knife was heavier and sturdier than Charlie’s. By wedging in both knives, they were able at last to spring it. The moment they did, the cat surged forward against the closed door. But then, realizing he must get out of the way for it to be pushed open, he moved back. Ryan stared at him, puzzled. Immediately, he began hissing and growling as if frightened, trying to hide his too-intelligent behavior.

“I must have scared him,” Charlie said, “when I stood up.” Retrieving a fallen branch, she lifted the cage door.

As Ryan, using a second stick, pressed the door back into its open position, the cat moved a step toward the opening. He paused, looking fiercely up at them. Neither woman moved. He took another step. Another, toward freedom. His eyes never left them. He watched them secure the door open, wedging the branches in. Watched them back away from the cage. And he streaked out and through the woods-a flash and he was gone, they were looking at empty woods.

But then, from the shadows where he had vanished, the whole woods seemed to shake and shift, a violent stirring that came from every direction like silent small explosions. And then gone, the woods utterly still.

“What was that?” Ryan said, swallowing.

“I don’t know,” Charlie whispered, seeing in her mind’s eye the swift, cat-shaped shadows vanishing among the trees. She watched the woods as Hanni joined them, her gray gelding prancing and fussing. Hanni took in the scene, the empty trap, and the woods beyond. The widening shafts of sunlight showed nothing alive, not even a bird flitting.

“I didn’t know there were trappers up here,” Hanni said. “But why a humane trap? If they’re trapping for fur�?”

“Cat trap,” Charlie said. “Surely a ‘trap and neuter’ group.”

“Why would they work way up here? How often do they check their cages? To leave a cat like that� No food, no water�” Hanni knew as well as Charlie that no animal-rescue group would have left a trap there unattended. “How long was it in that cage?”

Leaving Bucky tied, Charlie walked deeper into the woods, searching until she found a large stone. Returning, she knelt and began to hammer the cage, bending the bars as best she could; the metal was thick, hellishly strong. When her arm grew tired, Ryan took the stone. Stronger, from years of carpentry work, Ryan struck with a force that soon collapsed the sides and sprung the door. When the cage lay bent beyond use, its lock and hinges broken, its door twisted into folds, Charlie carried it through the brush to where the land fell sharply, and heaved it down the ravine into steep, jagged rocks among a tangle of bushes.

By the time it rusted and the bushes grew over, it might never be noticed. Who knew what was hidden down in these draws? A rancher could lose a wily steer down there, or an old cow hiding her calf-a smart cow who would bring her calf out again only when the riders were long gone. Charlie wasn’t sure why she had thrown the trap down there. It made more sense to leave it for whomever had set it, let them see it crushed. Yet she felt, for some reason she couldn’t name, that she didn’t want the cage found.

Behind them when they left the woods, there was no trace of the trap, only the trampled grass that would soon right itself; and their hoofprints, which Charlie wished she could brush away. She would not do that in front of Ryan and Hanni, drawing questions to which she had no answers.

Back on the trail, Charlie rode nearest the woods, but saw no further movement. Maybe the cats, having regained their own, had headed away into the wild interior. She hoped they stayed away, prayed they wouldn’t come down into Molena Point. Now, beneath the horses’ hooves, where pieces of the macadam had washed away leaving only dirt, they found themselves following fresh tire marks. A single track, like that of a motorcycle.

Ryan frowned. “Do ranchers use motorcycles these days?” As they descended a steep slope, down into the blanket of fog, the horses began to shy and wanted to turn back. It was not the mist that made them spooky. Urging Bucky on into the thick mist, Charlie smelled the stench that had Bucky snorting and rearing.

Holding their breath, the riders forced their horses to the lip of the narrow ravine, and sat studying a swath of broken bushes and torn-out grass that led from the edge down to the bottom.

A motorcycle lay down there, flung onto its back, its bent front wheel pointing toward the sky, its rear tire stripped away in shreds leaving bare, twisted metal. The sweet stink of rotting flesh made Charlie want to throw up. A man lay beneath the bike, his black leathers dulled with dirt, his body swollen with the gases that form after death, his long black hair tangled in the ruined tire. The three riders reached for their cell phones.

“I’ll call,” Charlie said, leaning over Bucky, letting him spin away from the ravine as she dialed, giving him his head. She felt ice-cold. She prayed they had moved back into the coastal calling area. Listening to the first ring, she pulled Bucky up, and turned to scan the ravine and the land above it. She felt as if they were being watched. She was so unsettled that when Mabel Farthy picked up the call, Charlie had trouble finding her voice. Glancing at Ryan, tasting the sick, sweet smell, she told Mabel their location and what they had found.

Max came on the line almost at once. Her tears welled at the sound of his voice. All she could say was, “I need you up here, we need you.” She could hardly talk. She felt so stupid, so weak and inadequate. You’re a cop’s wife, Charlie! Straighten up! “Can you get the cars up here?” she said. “On this old road? We could bring the horses down for you�”

“That’s the sheriff’s jurisdiction,” Max said. “He has four-wheel, we’ll be with them or in my pickup. You okay?”

Charlie nodded. “Fine.”

“Hang on, we’re on our way,” he said. Was he laughing at her? Then, in a softer voice, “I love you, Charlie.”

But Charlie, clicking off the phone, sliding off Bucky to hurry away and throw up in the bushes, felt like a failure, like she’d been no use at all to Max.

5 [��������: pic_6.jpg]

Twilight lasted longer on the rooftops than among the cottages below. Down along the narrow village streets dusk settled quickly beneath the wide oaks and around the crowded shops; as night settled in, the gleam of the shop windows seemed to brighten, casting darker the concealing shadows.

But up on the roofs, the evening’s silken brilliance clung to the precipitous, shingled peaks and across little leaded dormers and copper-clad domes. Twilight washing across small balconies echoed the silver sea that lapped the village shore; and in the last glow, the gray tomcat racing across the rooftops seemed to fly from peak to peak.

Leaping shadowed clefts, dodging heat vents and chimneys, Joe Grey was not running simply for pure joy tonight, nor was he chasing criminals or the little brown bats that darted among the chimneys. He was heading across the village to supper, drinking in the heady scents of roasted chili peppers, of cilantro and garlic and onions and roasting meats-food that would put down most cats. Whiskers twitching with greedy anticipation, he sailed across the open chasm of a narrow alley and headed fast for the dining patio of Lupe’s Playa. It was green corn tamale night at Lupe’s.

He was approaching Lupe’s rooftop, licking his whiskers, when suddenly from behind a chimney something leaped on him hissing and swatting him-and the tortoiseshell kit dodged away from him again, sparring. Behind her, tabby Dulcie appeared from around a chimney, her green eyes sly with amusement.

The kit rolled over, laughing.

Dulcie rubbed her face against his; and the three cats headed eagerly for Lupe’s. Green corn tamales were a delicacy available only when the corn was young.

This early in the spring, they supposed the fresh corn must be coming up from Mexico, or maybe the hotter fields of southern California. It was still far too cold to expect fresh corn from California’s nearby central valley. Racing past second-floor offices, it was all the three cats could do not to yowl with greed. Set apart so singularly from their feline cousins, these three had, along with human perceptions and human speech, stomachs as versatile as those of their human friends. Cast-iron stomachs, Joe’s housemate said. Clyde told Joe often enough that their veterinarian would be shocked at what Joe ate. But there was a whole world about Joe Grey, and Dulcie, and Kit that Dr. Firetti didn’t know.

Flying across the last narrow oak branch to the jumbled roofs of Lupe’s Playa, they peered down among the overhanging oaks into the walled and lantern-lit patio. Lupe’s was constructed of three old houses joined to surround a central patio, and closed on the fourth side by a high brick wall that offered diners privacy and warmth against the chill ocean wind. Within the patio, the pierced tin lanterns swinging from the twisted oak branches cast a soft, flickering light. The brightly painted tables with their red and green and blue chairs were already full of happy diners lifting beer mugs white with frost, and merrily chatting. Guitars played a Mexican melody sweet enough to bring tears. The dishes carried by hurrying waiters steamed and bubbled. The cats, dropping down to the wall, crouched just above their friends’ regular table that stood like King Arthur’s round table in the patio’s sheltered northeast corner. Hidden within the wall’s bougainvillea vine, the cats had a wide view of both patio and street.

Beneath them at the curb, having apparently taken the last nearby parking place, stood Captain Harper’s king cab pickup, smelling strongly of the sweet scent of horses. Within the patio, at the round table, Max and redheaded Charlie sipped Mexican beer with Detective Garza and his niece, Hanni. Clyde and Ryan’s chairs were still empty. Harper and Garza sat with their backs to the wall, with a clear view of the patio and the dining room to their left. Max Harper was not in uniform but dressed in the clothes that suited him best-soft jeans, a frontier shirt, and well-used Western boots-which set off his tall, lean, weathered frame.

The Latino detective wore jeans and his favorite old, soft corduroy sport coat, which, on anyone less handsome than Dallas Garza, might look like it just came off the rack at the Goodwill.

Beside Max, Charlie glanced up, sensing the cats on the wall above her or hearing them stir in the vine. With a little smile, she pushed back her mop of kinky red hair and began to prepare an appetizer plate for them, tearing up a soft tortilla and dribbling it with mild, melted cheese. Max didn’t miss her busy preoccupation, nor did Dallas and Hanni. Rising, Charlie set the plate atop the wall, chucking Kit under the chin and gently stroking Dulcie. The lady cats smiled and purred and rubbed their faces against her hand. Joe Grey gave her a twitch of the whiskers by way of thanks, and tucked into the rich appetizer.

Dulcie thought Charlie looked stunning tonight; the little cat did love beautiful clothes. Charlie was wearing a simple cotton print dress splashed with all the colors of summer, a combination of shades that made her hair look even redder. She’d tied her hair back tonight, with a tangle of multicolored ribbons. Even gorgeous Hanni Coon with her premature and startling white hair and dark Latin eyes, in her flamboyant and glittering silver stole over a low-cut black T-shirt, couldn’t outshine Charlie.

“Up until this morning,” Dallas was saying, “sounds like you had a good trip.”

The cats stopped eating, they were all pricked ears. What happened this morning? They stared, listening, until Dallas glanced up at them. Immediately they lowered their faces again over their plates-though their ears remained cocked, their tails still, every fiber rigid with interest.

“A wonderful trip,” Hanni said. “Nothing as restful as a few days away from people, just the horses and the open land.” Hanni’s interior design studio and large clientele allowed her little time when she wasn’t “on stage,” when she could relax with her family or close friends. Even when she was at home with her husband, their two boys created demands that kept her on her toes, that didn’t give her much downtime.

“Beautiful country,” Charlie said. “Not a house, just the few ranches. So green, after the rains.” The land would turn brown in the summer when the rains stopped, when it lay burned by the California sun. “Next time,” Charlie said, “maybe we’ll take Lori and Dillon; Lori is doing well at her riding lessons, and the two girls get along fine. Cora Lee’s right, Lori needs a challenge and some real freedom.”

Twelve-year-old Lori Reed had gone to live with their good friend, Cora Lee French, after Lori’s father went to prison on two counts of murder, both killings of such pain and passion that no one really blamed him. It had been a hard year for Lori. Now, with the child settled in, Cora Lee was deeply aware that a twelve-year-old girl without her father needed to experience a different kind of discipline and strength than she would enjoy in a household of four older women, that she needed to be outdoors doing something bold and new and demanding. She had asked Max if he’d teach Lori to ride, as he had taught Dillon Thurwell two years ago, when she was twelve. Dillon, too, had seemed at loose ends and needed some positive challenge in her life.

Of course Max had agreed to Lori’s lessons, and the Harpers had borrowed a wise, gentle pony for her. Oh, Dulcie thought, Lori did love that pony. She had seen Lori and the pony together up at the Harper ranch, and even Joe said that child and pony were a perfect match.

“I’m glad Lori wasn’t with us this morning,” Charlie said, “when we found the body. She doesn’t need that, after all the death last year.”

The cats were rigid as stones.What body?The tortoiseshell kit was so curious she began to fidget from paw to paw, and couldn’t be still. And Dulcie could see in Joe’s eyes exactly what he was thinking: If the riders had found a body this morning before they arrived home, Max and his whole department knew about it, had known all day. So Joe’s human housemate had to know. Clyde and Max Harper were like brothers. Why the big secret? Why didn’t Clyde tellme}Joe would be thinking. And when Dulcie glanced at Joe, he looked mad enough to fight a pack of Rottweilers-almost mad enough to slash the hand that fed him-the moment Clyde walked into the restaurant.

Dulcie knew whyshehadn’t heard: her own housemate was in the hospital. Two days ago, Wilma had some routine surgery. Wilma had had to fight like a maddened cat herself to get Charlie to go on with her trip. “You have cell phones,” Wilma had pointed out. “If I need you, you’ll know it. It’s a simple, routine operation. With Clyde here fussing over me, to say nothing of Max and Dallas and the senior ladies, I’ll be smothered in attention. Go, Charlie! A few gallstones, for heaven’s sake.”

Even if Wilma called it minor surgery, Dulcie hadn’t slept well, worrying. If she’d had her way, she’d have sneaked into the hospital and stayed there. Instead, she’d followed Wilma’s stubborn instructions and gone to stay with Kit in the second-floor apartment above Ocean Avenue, which Kit’s own two humans had rented.

When the cats heard Clyde’s voice from down the street, Joe’s eyes narrowed. In a moment, Clyde and Ryan appeared from around the corner, their footfalls quick on the sidewalk. Ryan would have left her truck at Clyde and Joe’s house, where she would have shut her big silver Weimaraner in the patio. Likely, Clyde had put old Rube in the house where the ailing dog would have some peace, away from the energetic young hunting dog. The couple passed just a few feet below the cats. If they’d not had an audience, Dulcie was sure Joe would have leaped on Clyde, all teeth and claws and a lot of swearing. Kit reached out a paw as if to snatch at Ryan’s hair, but Dulcie gave her a look that made her back off. Kit sat down again, looking innocent. If Clyde glimpsed the cats above him, he gave no sign. The couple disappeared around the corner, then appeared again, coming in through the front entry. They spoke with the hostess, then crossed the crowded patio, studying their friends’ serious faces.

“What?” Clyde said as they sat down. “This is supposed to be a celebration that the girls are home-no one bucked off or kicked or itching with poison oak.” He fixed on Charlie and Hanni. “Ryan told me about the body. Was it that bad? You’ve seen bodies before.”

Ryan looked at her uncle Dallas. “Do you have anything yet on the prints?”

Dallas laughed. “You expect miracles? Eight hours, and you think NCI’s going to snap to with an ID?”

“But if you told them�”

“You know them better than that. We put on as much pressure as we could; you know the lab’s always jammed up. Everyone wants everything ASAP. It isn’t like this guy just died, he’d been down there a while.”

“Weknow he was dead for a while,” Ryan said, making a face. Ryan Flannery’s fine Latino features mirrored her uncle’s, though his face was more square; same expression, same faint dimples, same stern, serious look that hid a smile. Ryan’s stare could be just as intimidating as detective Garza’s. She had the same dark hair, but where Dallas’s eyes were nearly black, often seeming unreadable, Ryan had her father’s eyes, Irish eyes as green and changeable as the sea.

“Maybe by tonight,” Dallas said, “we’ll have something.” The detective scowled comfortably at his niece. “The ID we found on the body, driver’s license, social security card, belonged to a Mario Salgado. Denver resident, died some ten years back.

“Good job of forgery,” Dallas added. “He even paid into social security, a couple of quarters, to make it seem legit.” The detective looked around the table. “Coroner wouldn’t commit as to the wounds on the face and throat. Said theymightbe scratches from blackberry vines, but he doesn’t think so. Therewereheavy brambles in the ditch, but the scratches were too deep. They seemed more like wounds from some kind of weapon-but they sure looked like claw marks.”

Clyde was very still. The cats could see Charlie’s hands clench beneath the table. What had Charlie seen that maybe Ryan and Hanni hadn’t? The cats watched her intently. Careful, Joe thought. She had gone way too tense. Careful, Charlie. Be careful. No human in the world noticed as much about a person’s reactions as a cop did, no one was as perceptive to another’s emotions. A good cop was nearly as keen as a cat at picking up the smallest hint of unease, the faintest change of expression.

In Joe’s opinion, there was not a psychiatrist in the world who had half a cop’s ability to correctly read a disturbed subject, who had the knowledge and skill to see through deception. You wouldn’t catch a cat wasting his time on a psychiatrist’s couch when all one really needed, for most emotional problems, was hardheaded logic, a dose of cop-style straight thinking.

Clyde would say he was inexcusably opinionated, that he didn’t have a trace of compassion. Well, he was acat!Cats weren’t supposed to be socially correct. Cats could be as biased as they chose-or as right as they chose. Acatshould be able to hold an unbiased opinion without fear of social censure.

But what was Charlie hiding? What had happened, up in the hills?

And what was making the kit so nervous? Beside Joe, Kit’s eyes had grown huge. She looked so stricken and uneasy that Dulcie had to nudge her and lick her ears, trying to settle her down.

“No labels on the clothes,” Dallas said. “No license on the bike. And those scratches�” The detective frowned. “Almost as if something leaped at him from the trail. Strange as it seems, I keep thinking he was attacked, that his bike was moving fast, something jumped on him, he swerved, lost control and went over the edge.”

The detective looked at his friends. “But what? Not likely a bobcat would leap at a cyclist. Though a fast-moving bike would be a pretty tempting target, fast like a deer, and even the noise of a bike might not deter a hungry cougar if it was already used to such sounds.

“But those marks weren’t made by a cougar; this was something smaller. Anyway, a cougar would have gone down into the ravine after him, would have finished him.”

“Guy apparently died of a broken neck,” Max said. “Forensics should have their report in a few days.” He looked around the table. “Sheriff’s been up there all day, going over the area.”

Dallas said, “Scratches of a domestic cat? No small cat would attack a man, no small animal would be so bold.”

Up on the wall, the cats glanced discreetly at each other. There was one kind of cat that might attack a grown man, if it cared enough about who the cyclist was, or what he had done. If it wanted him dead.

But what had the guy done to enrage his attacker? And where had such a cat come from? There should be no other cat like themselves anywhere near the village.

Joe wondered it the attacker could possibly be Azrael. That evil Panamanian feline had first shown up in the village nearly two years ago, with his thieving human companion, and had returned a couple of times later without the disreputable safecracker. When Azrael disappeared the last time, into a seemingly bottomless cavern, carrying an emerald bracelet in his mouth, Joe had hoped they had seen the last of him, that he had ended up too far away ever to return.

Joe was washing his whiskers, listening intently but keeping his eyes half closed as if sleepy, when he saw Chichi Barbi crossing the patio, making her way between the tables following the Latino host, the curvy young blond bimbo swiveling her hips provocatively. She was alone, accompanied by neither of the men who had visited her that morning. Swishing between the tables she played the room, giving the eye to every male within view. Max and Dallas and Clyde exchanged a glance that the cats couldn’t read. Ryan and Charlie and Hanni watched her with quiet amusement. Heading for a small table beneath the farthest oak, Chichi sat down with her back to the wall and immediately raised her menu, pretending not to see Clyde, pretending not to stare across to their table.

Dallas gave her a dismissive look, and turned to his niece. “We haven’t talked since you got back from the city, you ladies were out of here the next morning. How did the legal stuff go?”

“Fine,” Ryan said. “It went fine. Beautiful weather in the city, the tide was in, and the coast�”

Dallas scowled impatiently, making Ryan grin. She had gone up to San Francisco to complete the sale of their house and the construction business she’d inherited from her philandering husband when he was murdered. “I wrapped up all the loose ends,” she told Dallas, growing serious. “Sold the last of the furniture, cleared out the safe deposit box. Yes, deposited the checks,” she said, giving him an unreadable look. Joe read her glance as a bit frightened.

Frightened of what? Of having all that money? Well, Joe had to admit, with the completed sale of the San Francisco firm, she would be rolling in cash. Maybe he’d be scared, too.

But it was money she could put into her new Molena Point construction business, and plenty left over to invest. Ryan could handle that. She should be as pleased as a kitten in the cream bowl. Yet he was sharply aware of her unease-as was everyone at the table.

“What?” Dallas said.

“Do you remember a Roman Slayter? A tall, handsome, dark-haired�”

“I remember him,” Dallas said sharply. “I remember you sent him packing more than once while you and Rupert were married.”

“He called me while I was in the city. Got the name of my hotel from a new secretary at the firm, who didn’t know any better.”

“Came on to you.”

She nodded. “Wanted me to go out to dinner, then demanded to see me.” Her green eyes blazed. “I blew him off, but� I don’t know. He left me uneasy.”

“The smell of money,” Dallas said. “He knows everyone in the company, sure he knew how much you got for the business. Knew when the sale closed escrow. I thought he’d moved to L.A.”

“Guess he’s back. Nothing fazes him. I told him I was busy with job contracts, that I was working long hours with a new business, that I was involved with someone,” she said, glancing shyly at Clyde. Clyde grinned.

“Told him I was just leaving the city, that I didn’t havetimefor him. He knew I’d moved down here to the village. Finally told him my live-in was a weight lifter and a hot-tempered gun enthusiast.”

That got a laugh. “And that shut him up?” Dallas said.

“Nothing shuts him up. Doesn’t matter what you say. Showed up in the office anyway, tried to kiss me right there in the reception room. I nearly punched him. When he grew really stubborn and refused to leave, I called security.

“As they dragged him out,” Ryan said, laughing, “he said he’d see me in Molena Point, that he’d just run down to the village for a few days, get reacquainted. I told him, he showed his face here I’d file charges of harassment.” She was half angry, half amused. She had balled up her napkin and was stabbing it with her fork. Her uncle leaned back in his chair, grinning, but he put his arm around her.

All the while they talked, Chichi watched them from across the patio, glancing over the top of her menu; she never looked straight their way, but her full attention was on them. Surely she couldn’t hear them at that distance, with so many diners in between, talking and laughing; but her rapt concentration was unsettling. Then, just after the waiter arrived with their orders, Chichi left her table and came across to theirs, all smiles and swivels. She paused beside Clyde’s chair, resting her hand possessively on his shoulder.

“Dear me, I couldn’t help it, I had to see what you’re having, it smelled so good when your waiter passed my table.” She gave Clyde a four-star smile and beamed around the table. “Hi, I’m Chichi Barbi! I just ran over for a little supper, it gets boring, eating alone. I’m living in the house next to Clyde’s. You’re Captain Harper! Well, I’ve heard great things about you! And you must be Detective Garza! It’s so nice to meet you-you ladies, too.” She looked down at Clyde’s plate. “My goodness, is that on the menu? Green corn tamales?” She looked winsomely around the table. Clyde was still scowling.

“Well, I’ll surely order the same,” she gushed, waiting for an invitation to join them. When none was forthcoming, she stepped back, her hand lingering on Clyde’s shoulder. “It’s such an honor to meet you all. It does get lonely in that little back room, I just thought a nice dinner out, for a change�” Still she stood waiting, trying to look uncertain as she glanced from one to the other, managing the little girl act so well that even Joe began to feel sorry for her-or almost sorry.

The round table was, after all, plenty big enough if everyone slid their chairs around to make room. No one did, no one said a word. Cops in particular don’t like pushy. At last Clyde rose, took Chichi by the arm, and headed her back to her table. The curvy blonde moved along close to him, brushing against him.

At her little table she sat down heavily, under what was clearly a forceful pressure. Picking up Chichi’s menu, Clyde spent some moments pointing to the page as if picking out the green corn tamales and the other specials.

Beside Clyde’s empty chair, Ryan sat with her fist pressed to her mouth, trying not to laugh at his predicament. Above, on the wall, the cats pushed their faces into the vine, swallowing back their own yowls ofglee.When Clyde returned to their table, still scowling, Ryan nearly choked with laughter. Clyde glanced up and saw the cats’ amusement, gave them a cautionary frown and began hastily to break up a tamale for them, to distract them-and everyone grew silent, giving full attention to their fine dinner.

At her own table, Chichi fidgeted, waiting for her order; when it arrived, she finished her tamales quickly, not looking again in their direction. She left the restaurant long before they did.

The cats watched her from atop the wall, heading home, Joe swallowing back a growl. That woman was more than brash. Chichi Barbi made the tomcat as jumpy as a mouse on a hot stove.

“So, what did she want?” Dulcie said, when their own party had left the restaurant, Clyde and Ryan heading down the block hand in hand, and Max, Charlie, and Dallas squeezing into Max’s king cab. “This Chichi Barbi,” Dulcie hissed, “what is she all about?”

Joe wished he knew what Chichi was all about, what she wanted with Clyde; though half his thoughts were on the dead man and the suspicious scratches. “More important,” he said softly, “what did Charlie see that she couldn’t talk about?”

But the kit knew. She looked at them intently. “Cats like us,” she said, her yellow eyes huge. “They’re out there, the feral band is out there again, I know they are.” She shivered and pressed close against Dulcie. “Those cats I ran with when I was little, they’re out there again.” She looked in the direction of the wild coastal hills where Hellhag Hill rose. “But why? And why did they kill that man?

“Those few, like me,” Kit said, “the gentler cats, they could never stop the mean ones. Some of us only traveled with them for safety. Cruel as they were, they were better than bobcats and coyotes.”

Dulcie licked the kit’s ear and glanced up at the sky, where the moon had not yet risen; and soon she and Kit headed off to the kit’s own rooftop terrace. Joe watched the two cats’ dark, mottled tails disappearing into the moonlit night; and not one of the three had a clue to the excitement that would soon explode across the small village. Not one of the three cats glimpsed the shadowy figures many blocks away, slipping among the shops and dark streets. Nothing seemed to disrupt the peace of the evening. Nor did Max Harper’s officers in their patrol cars glimpse the perps-until it was too late.

6 [��������: pic_7.jpg]

Approaching home across the rooftops, Joe slipped into his private tower, into the elegant construction that rose atop the new upstairs. Hexagonal in design and glass-sided, the tower afforded him a wide view of the village roofs and the shore beyond. Yawning, his belly full of Mexican dinner, he considered the soft cushions and the joys of a short nap. Glancing down at the drive, he saw that Ryan’s truck still stood beside Clyde’s car.

Though Ryan had designed and built his tower, it was Clyde who had put the idea to her; and Joe himself was responsible for the overall concept. One could say that the tower was a collaboration between the three of them, though of course Ryan didn’t know that. She gave the credit to Clyde, actually believing in Clyde’s perceptive understanding of feline psychology and desires.

“I want to see in all directions,” Joe had told Clyde. “Not just the ocean. I want to look down on the entire village. I want windows I can open and close by myself without spraining a paw. I want a fresh bowl of water every day, a soft blanket, and plenty of soft pillows.”

“You want the pillows hand-embroidered? How about a refrigerator? A TV? A telephone, maybe?”

“A telephone would be nice.”

“And tell me how I explain to Ryan that a tomcat needs a phone line into his private retreat.”

“You’re so cheap,” Joe had said, rolling over. “You don’t want to pay for a second line.” He had looked upside down at Clyde. “I would be perfectly happy to share the existing house line with you. But I guess you don’t want to share. Did you know,” he said, flipping to his feet and fixing Clyde with a steady gaze, “that there is already a manufacturer making cell phones for dogs, to be attached to their collars? So why not cats? I don’t see why�”

“Joe, it’s lies like that that really set me off.”

“Not a lie at all. The honest truth, I swear. It’s a company called PetsCell. I don’t know any more about it than that; Dulcie found a mention on the Web, an old newspaper article. If you would just� I’ll get you a copy, you can read it for yourself. If you would just stretch your mind a little, Clyde, not let yourself become so hidebound. That really isn’t�”

Clyde had only glared at him. And no phone had been forthcoming, house phoneorcellular. But even so, his tower was an elegant retreat, rising as it did atop the slanted shake roof of the new second floor. His private aerie that could be entered from the rooftops or from Clyde’s office below. Ryan, in her innocence, had designed the layout so that Clyde could easily step up on the moveable library ladder in his study, reach through the ceiling cat door, and open or close the tower windows. She had no notion that Joe could do that himself. Now, as he pawed at his cushions, preparing to nap, the faint sound of a TV sent him back over the roof, to peer down at the house next door.

Chichi must have hurried right home after her pushy performance at Lupe’s Playa. The light of the TV danced across the living room shades, picking out her shadow sharp as a lounging cameo. Maybe she’d felt logy from her big supper, headed home to curl up before the tube. He couldn’t say much for her taste, he thought, listening to the canned laughter of a sleazy sitcom, a series that he particularly hated.

It all came down to taste. Some humans had it, some didn’t. Deciding against a nap, and wondering if Clyde had checked on Rube, he slipped down through his cat door onto the ceiling beam, and dropped to Clyde’s desk.

Around him, the house sounded empty; and it felt empty. Maybe Clyde and Ryan were walking the beach, giving Rock a run. Galloping down the stairs, suddenly worried about the aging retriever, he found Rube in bed, lying quietly among his blankets in the laundry, on the bottom mattress of the two-tiered bunk. He could smell Clyde’s scent, and Ryan’s, on Rube’s ears and face, as if they’d given the old dog a good petting before going out again. When Joe spoke, Rube opened a tired eye, sighed, licked Joe’s nose, then went back to sleep. Above Rube, on the top bunk, the two older cats were curled together, softly snoring. But the young white cat lay curled against Rube, with her paws around his foreleg. She, in particular, loved Rube, and Joe knew she was hurting for him.

Easing onto the bunk beside the two animals, and speaking softly to the old retriever, Joe tried to reassure him. He was thus occupied, snuggled against Rube, listening to the Lab’s rough breathing, when he heard Rock bark, and heard Ryan open the patio gate. Clyde and Ryan came in the back door joking and laughing; they grew quiet as they turned into the laundry, the way a person would enter the hospital room of a very sick patient. Outside the kitchen door, Rock whined and sniffed, but the big dog didn’t bark now, he knew better.

Clyde started to speak, then caught himself. Joe could see on his face the clear question: How is he? Clyde blinked at his near blunder, looked embarrassed, and knelt beside Ryan, to stroke Rube. As the two talked to the old dog, the white cat looked up at them, purring. Ryan laid her ear to Rube’s chest, her dark hair blending with the Lab’s black coat; then she smelled Rube’s breath in a very personal manner. Ryan had grown up with Dallas’s gun dogs, she had helped to train the pointers, had hunted with them and had tended to more than a few ailing canines. She looked up at Clyde with the same look, Joe was sure, that Dr. Firetti would have given him. The time was coming when Clyde must make the big decision, when he could no longer let Rube suffer but must give him ease and a deserved rest.

No one that Joe knew would keep an animal suffering for their own selfish human reasons. He’d heard of people who did, but neither Ryan nor Clyde, nor any of their friends, thought that death was the end for the animals they loved, any more than it was for humans. They were sensible enough to give an animal ease when there was no other solution to its distress. Joe nosed at Rube, wishing very much that he could make the old dog better, and knowing he could do nothing. And soon he left the laundry and headed upstairs feeling incredibly sad. He wished he had as powerful a faith in the wonders that came in the next life as did Dulcie.

Leaping to Clyde’s desk, disturbing a stack of auto parts orders, he sailed up into the rafters and slipped out through his cat door into the tower, where he curled forlornly among the pillows and closed his eyes.

After a long time of feeling miserable, he slept. At some point he woke smelling coffee brewing and heard the faint clink of cups from down in the kitchen; and when he slept again, his dreams were uneasy. The next time he woke, the house was silent and Ryan’s truck was gone-workday tomorrow. He imagined Clyde would be giving Rube his medicine and sitting quietly with the old dog.

Rube seemed to have aged quickly after his golden retriever pal, Barney, died. Joe thought the household cats missed Barney, too. Certainly the cats felt a true tenderness for Rube, they spent a lot of time washing his rough black coat and sleeping close to him or on top of him. Two of the cats were getting old, up in the high teens. Someday there would be only the young white female, the shy, frightened little one, Joe thought sadly.

Such thoughts made him feel pretty low; he didn’t like to dwell on that stuff. But, ithappens,he told himself sternly. That’s how life is, life doesn’t last forever.

He wondered how much ordinary cats thought about death, or if they thought about it at all. He didn’t remember any such thoughts before he discovered his extended talents-but he’d been pretty young. The thoughts of a young tom in his prime were not on death and the hereafter, he was too busy living life with irresponsible abandon.

Joe did not like to think about his own age. He and Dulcie hoped that, along with their humanlike digestive systems capable of handing food that would put down an ordinary cat, and with their more complicated thought processes, maybe their aging would follow a pattern closer to that of humans. This life was such a blast that neither cat wanted to toss in the towel, they were too busy fighting crime, putting down the no-goods. Who knew what came next time around, who knew if they’d like it half as much.

Scowling at this infrequent turn of mind, he dropped into sleep again, and this time he slept deeply and without dreams, floating in a restorative slumber-until sirens brought him straight up, rigid. Their screams jerked him from sleep so suddenly he thought he’d been snatched out of his own skin.

Half awake, he backed away from the ear-bursting commotion, from the ululating harbingers of disaster. The walls of his tower fairly shook with vibrations. He could feel through his paws, through his whole body, the banging ramble of the fire trucks. Then the shriller scream of a rescue unit joined in, then the whoop-whoop of Harper’s police units. Sounded to Joe like every emergency vehicle in the village was streaking through the night, rumbling up the narrow streets heading toward the hills. Rearing up in his tower, all he could see was the racing red glow of their lights running along the undersides of the trees.

Slipping out of the tower and leaping up onto its hexagonal roof, he reared up like a weather vane, watching the wild race of red-lit vehicles hurtling between the cottages, heading up the hills-and he could hear, from up the hills, faint shouting, men shouting. Rearing taller, he could see an eerie red glow flickering. Fire. Fire, up around the high school. A tongue of flame licked at the sky, and another, and a twisting cloud of red burst into the night. He was poised to leap away across the roofs to follow when, below him on the dark street, three unlighted police cars slipped past him as silent as hunting sharks.

But these cats were not headed for the high school, they made straight for the center of the village, moving fast and quietly. He glimpsed them once, crossing Ocean, then lost them among the roofs and night shadows. He stood studying the silent village looking for some disturbance, but saw nothing, no one running, no swift escaping movement. He heard no shouts, no sound at all. Saw no sudden cops’ spotlights reflecting against the sky. What the hell was happening? He was crouched to race across the roofs for a look when, from below in the study, Clyde began shouting. Joe stared down toward the study and bedroom, and dropped down to the shingles again and through the tower and cat door, peering down from the rafter.

Clyde’s shouts came from the bottom of the stairs. “He’s worse, Joe. His breathing’s bad-we’re off to the vet. Call him, Joe. Punch code two. Call him now, tell him you’re a houseguest, that I’m on my way.” And Clyde was gone, Joe heard the front door slam, then the car doors, and the roadster roared to a start and skidded out of the drive, took off burning rubber.

Leaping down to the desk, Joe hit the speaker button and the digit for Dr. Firetti; he felt dizzy and sick inside.

“Firetti.” The doctor answered sleepily, on the first ring. Joe imagined him jerking awake in his little stucco cottage next to the clinic, pulling himself from sleep. “Yes? What?” Firetti said.

“This� I’m a friend of Clyde Damen, Clyde’s on his way. Rube’s worse, really sick. He should be�”

“Just pulled in,” Firetti shouted from a distance as if he’d laid down the phone to pull on his pants. Joe heard a door click open, heard faintly Firetti shouting to Clyde; then the silence of an open line.

Seeing in his mind the familiar clinic with its cold metal tables, but with friendly pictures of cats and dogs on the walls, seeing old Rube lying prone on a metal table gasping for breath, Joe clicked off the phone. And he sat among the papers he’d scattered, thinking about Rube. Seeing Dr. Firetti’s caring face peering down the way he did, leaning over you while you shivered on the table. Seeing Clyde’s worried face, beside Firetti. And Joe prayed hard for Rube.

Then there was nothing else he could do. He hated idle waiting. He was crouched to leap back to the roof, when the white cat came up the stairs announcing her distress with tiny, forlorn mewls. She padded into the study and stood shakily below the desk staring up at him, crying.

Dropping to the floor, Joe licked Snowball’s face, trying to ease her. She knew Rube was in trouble, this little cat knew very well what was happening. Snowball was, of all three household cats, by far the most intelligent and sensitive.

“It’s all right, Snowball. He has good care. He’ll be� he’ll be the best he can be,” Joe said gently.

Snowball looked up at him trustingly, the way she always trusted him, this innocent, delicate little cat. “It’s all right,” he said. “You have to trust Clyde, you have to trust the doctor.”

Joe nudged her up into the big leather chair, where she obediently curled down into a little ball. He was tucking the woolen throw around her with careful paws when a muffled report, sharp as gunfire, exploded from the center of the village: a shot echoing between the shops. Distant tires chirped and squealed, racing away, then silence. But Joe, as hungry for action as any cop, couldn’t bring himself to leave Snowball.

Licking her ears, he snuggled close, purring to her until at last she dropped off into sleep. The poor little cat was worn out, done in from stress and worry, from her pain over Rube. I guess, Joe thought, that ordinary cats-the kind of cat I was long ago-I guess there’s a lot more understanding there than I remember having. I guess that even a regular cat is far more than he appears to be.

And that was the end of the night’s philosophizing. He licked Snowball’s ear again, though she was deep under, relaxed at last. “Stay here,” Joe told her uselessly. “Stay right here, Clyde’ll be back soon. And Rube will be� Rube will be the best he can be.” As a second shot rang out, he leaped to the desk and was out of there, desk to rafter to tower and to the shingles, where he stood listening.

But all was silence now. He could see no lights moving beneath the trees. Only up at the high school was there increasing commotion as the fire licked higher across the night sky, heralded by the faint echoes of shouting men and by car lights appearing and disappearing as if moving back and forth behind the buildings.

Had kids set the fire? Students? That would be a first for this village. But he guessed every town had its troublemakers. Watching the red stain in the sky, he couldn’t decide whether to take off up the hills to see what was happening, or seek out the mysterious events occurring somewhere on the dim village streets.

The decision took care of itself, quite suddenly.

The tomcat was crouched to leap away, when a figure appeared from the shadows in the neighbors’ dark yard, a black-clad figure slipping swiftly through the bushes and around the far side of the house.

Sailing across to the neighbors’ roof, Joe stood with his paws in the gutter peering down as the figure moved silently along the drive toward the back, heading for Chichi’s door.

As much as he disliked Chichi Barbi, he didn’t want to see something ugly happen to her. There she was, watching TV at the front of the house, and had likely heard nothing. Above the raucous canned laughter, what could she hear? The woman was a sitting duck in there.

Slipping along the edge of the roof to follow the intruder, the tomcat had to laugh. Black leggings, black sweatshirt, black hood pulled up, and even black gloves, a character straight out of a cheap movie.

But that didn’t make him any less dangerous. Joe watched him slip up the steps into the shadows beside the door. In a moment the door opened, the figure slipped inside, the door closed softly, then all was still.

Trotting across the roof again to the front of the house, he hung out over the gutter looking down through the front window.

Chichi’s sharp silhouette hadn’t moved; she appeared totally entranced by the insipid sitcom. Backing up and kneading his claws on the shingles, he trotted away to the pine tree between the houses. Leaping onto its trunk, clinging, he backed down to where he could jump into the little lemon tree-slashing his paws again on its wicked thorns. Why the hell did lemon trees have thorns! No cat could avoid them.

Looking into the dark room, trying to spot the intruder, he saw nothing at first but shadows. Nothing moved until� Yes. There. Black within black, slipping stealthily along beside the dresser. For a brief moment, Joe Grey was uncertain what to do. Shout at Chichi through the window to warn her? And jeopardize his own neck? Or wait, bide his time, try to see what the burglar would take, or what he was up to?

If this was only theft, and not the precursor of an attack on Chichi herself, his instinct was to stay put, to watch, and let this come down as it would. Tonight every cop was busy, the intruder had to know that. Joe thought he’d better play it by ear, maybe go for the evidence. With every cop in the department either up at the fire or chasing unseen miscreants through the dark streets, it was, indeed, a hard call.

7 [��������: pic_8.jpg]

Crouched among the thin, brittle branches, his nose tickling with the sharp smell of lemons, Joe stared in through the dark window watching the housebreaker’s stealthy movements. In the inky-black room, he could make out very little even with his superior night vision. But suddenly he was blinded. Light blazed on, right in his eyes. Backing away, nearly falling, his every nerve jumping with shock, he was caught in the brilliance like a deer in a speeder’s headlights.

Hunching down, trying to hide his white parts, he had no real cover. Light pooled in through the skinny branches and scruffy leaves. In its glare he couldn’t see the intruder’s face, the hood was pulled nearly together. Black might be melodramatic, but it was effective. There was a bulge in the intruder’s right pocket. A weapon? Skinny guy, even in the oversized black sweatshirt. Opening the dresser drawers, real bold now. What was he looking for? Something in particular, or just any valuables he could find, money, credit cards, jewelry? Or was he putting something in the drawers? He seemed very casual and unhurried.

Either the lock on this back door had been easy to breach, a credit card lock, or the guy was mighty fast with the lock picks. Or Chichi had left it unlocked? Had she forgotten to lock it? Or did this person have a key?

Maybe the new owners hadn’t changed the locks, some people just didn’t think of those things. Or had Chichi given someone a key? From the front of the house, Joe could still hear dialogue and canned laughter. The way the burglar was bundled in the dark sweatshirt, it was hard to tell whether this was a man or a woman-until suddenly his quarry flipped back the hood, unzipped the sweatshirt, and tossed it on a chair-and Joe gulped back a yowl of surprise.

Chichi. It was Chichi. She smiled lazily, fluffed her frazzled blond hair, and ran her hand down her slim waist, pulling down her tight black T-shirt, showing plenty of cleavage. What was she doing sneaking into her own house under cover of darkness, sliding silently into the darkened room?

And who was out there in the living room watching the tube? Did she have company? Why hadn’t he seen someone before? Those two guys who came to see her, neither acted like he was living here. Suspicions formed in Joe’s mind faster than he could process them; but they added up to nothing. Zilch.

As Chichi pulled off the tight black jeans and slipped into a red satin robe, he wanted to race around to the front window and have a closer look at that one-person audience. Maybe he could peer under the blind. But he wanted, more, to stay where he was clinging to the skinny branch. He watched her slip a black cloth bag from the pocket of the sweatshirt where it lay on the chair; and she stood looking around the room. It seemed like the kind of waterproof silk bag that expensive raincoats come folded into, for easy travel.

Kneeling, she opened the bottom dresser drawer and reached up underneath, making Joe want to laugh out loud. If she was hiding something, that was the first place a cop-or a burglar-would look.

But then Chichi seemed to realize this, too. She rose, clutching the bag, and stood considering the mattress-another laughable choice. Go ahead, Joe thought, twitching a whisker. The moment you leave, lady, or go to take a shower, I’ll be in there slashing through the mattress, and out again with the loot�

But what loot? What did she have in the bag? And could he even get into the place?

Well, hell, he’d never seen a house he couldn’t break into.

Kneeling, Chichi slipped the bag between the two mattresses. She didn’t shove it very deep, she didn’t slit the mattress ticking. Good show, Joe thought, itching to get his paws under there, get his claws into that black silk. For a long moment, she just knelt there. Then, almost as if she’d read his mind, she pulled the bag out again and set it on the bed, as if she meant to hide it somewhere more secure, harder to discover.

But maybe, Joe thought, he wouldn’t have to retrieve it. Maybe he’dknowwhat she’d hidden, as soon as he found out what had happened in the village. Chichi’s stealthy arrival home while the sirens were still shrieking, plus the unanswered puzzle of who was watching TV, had to add up to trouble.

The thin branch was cutting into his belly, and its thorns had stuck his hind paw so deeply he could smell his own blood. Hurt like hell to back away when, within the bright room, Chichi turned suddenly and approached the window.

She stood looking out, her eyes on a level with his own, which were slitted closed, his white parts hidden in an uncomfortable crouch. Did the bedroom light pick him out like a possum on a leafless branch?

But so what? What difference? So there was a cat in the tree, a neighborhood cat. Clyde Damen’s cat, harassing the sleeping birds, maybe snatching baby birds from their nests.

She didn’t remain long at the window, but bent down to root around in a suitcase that lay open on a chair beside the dresser. Hadn’t she unpacked? She’d been there two weeks. That spoke of a transient, fly-by-night attitude that made Joe smile with satisfaction at his own astute character assessment.

But when she drew from the suitcase a long, sharp-looking bread knife, and looked up directly through the glass, he swallowed back a yelp of surprise and nearly fell out of the tree. Backing away into the tiniest twiggy branches, he lacerated two more paws and bent the limbs so far that he swung and wobbled wildly before he righted himself, nonchalantly licked a paw as if he hadn’t seen anything frightening but had just lost his balance, and crept back to a safer perch. Maybe, with the inside light reflecting against the glass, she had only seen her own reflection.

But why the knife? What made her pick it up and peer out so intently?

And what, in the next instant, made her draw the shade?

Maybe she’d heard something, the soft hush of his scrabbling among the brittle branches; maybe that was all. There was no reason for her, even if she’d seen him, to feel threatened. By a cat? Why would she?

Annoyed at his own cowardice, Joe dropped from the lemon tree and sped for the front of the house. Rearing up with his paws on the sill, he peered through beneath the shade, stretching and tilting his head, his nose pressed against the cold glass.

Studying the dim room in the TV’s flickering light, Joe laughed softly. Little Chichi had some artistic flair, some talent as a sculptor.

Maybe she had worked in department store window display, or maybe on stage sets. Or maybe she was simply talented. She had created a very lifelike silhouette using a mop and several other common household items.

The mop formed the body; it was one of those old-fashioned mops with twisted rags on a stick; these were the woman’s tresses, tangled like Chichi’s blond coiffure. The figure wore a blue sweat suit, artfully padded out in just the right places. The head itself was made of wadded and pasted newspapers. A small table lamp behind the figure gave off the weak glow that helped, with the flicker of the TV, to silhouette her against the shade. The creative dummy was, at the moment, being treated to an old rerun ofLassie,a series Joe found particularly disgusting.

It was one thing to see animal stories that were obviously imaginary takeoffs, likeAlice in Wonderland,or the Narnia series, orThe Lion King.Children knew this was make-believe, and they loved it. It was quite another matter to subject children to animal tales that purported to present impossible animal behavior as real life. The things Lassie understood and did were not at all how dogs really acted or thought, and yet the series wasn’t presented as fantasy The result, in Joe’s opinion, was generations of children who hadn’t a clue how to train and deal with their new Christmas puppies or kittens, and generations of parents who were just as ignorant.

When Joe compared those tawdry stories to the very real and wonderful feats of well-trained police and drug dogs, and of herding and search-and-rescue dogs, Lassie’s idiocy came off as dangerously and foolishly misleading. No wonder children grew up knowing nothing about the animals with whom they shared the earth.

Clyde would once have said he was grossly opinionated. But Clyde’s views on the subject had undergone some serious changes, and were now pretty much the same as Joe’s own. As for Joe and Dulcie and Kit’s situation, the cats themselves understood thattheywere far beyond the pale. That no sensible adult could easily believe that a cat could talk, and for this they were eternally grateful.

Continuing to admire Chichi’s display-window handiwork, he wondered if this figure had been here before Clyde went off to dinner. Clyde and Ryan must have walked right by it, passing this window as they headed for Lupe’s Playa. Clyde, seeing what he thought was Chichi in there, should have wondered at seeing her so shortly afterward walking into Lupe’s.

But maybe not. It was only a few blocks. Or maybe she’d had this figure all set up within the darkened room, had watched through the front window until Clyde and Ryan left the house walking up toward the village, and then had turned on the lamp and TV, and had slipped out of the house to follow them.

But why? To establish an alibi to her whereabouts, tonight? But dinner was a long time before whatever came down in the village. How could her appearance at Lupe’s afford her a tight alibi?

Maybe she’d wanted to get friendly with the Molena Point cops, make nice to Harper and Garza. She’d tried hard enough to get herself invited to join them. To gain their goodwill, while at the same time establishing an alibi. Fat chance, with cops. Anyway, that really didn’t wash. How would she know Clyde was having dinner with Max and Dallas?

Unless Clyde had told her? Quite possible. She often came knocking; maybe earlier this evening he’d used dinner as an excuse to get rid of her. Or maybe, seeing Ryan arrive and the two of them go off, Chichi took a chance and followed?

Whatever, they’d all left the restaurant long before the sirens started. She’d had plenty of time to take care of whatever business involved the little black bag.

Filled with questions, he considered waiting until her lights went out and she was in bed asleep, then find a way inside; try to wriggle under the mattress without waking her.

Right. And end up backed into a corner by that businesslike bread knife.

But again, he was only a cat. She shouldn’t be overly alarmed by his presence; when she saw him in the yard or on his own porch, she looked at him with distaste, but not with fear; she didn’t go pale and back away as a real ailurophobe would be likely to do, exhibiting shortness of breath and possible heart palpitations. A person like that, you really couldn’t con them with purrs, with face rubs against a stockinged ankle. And long ago, in San Francisco, she’d played up to him big time.

Now, probably the worst Chichi would do if she found him in her room would be fling open the back door and chase him out into the night.

Right. With the bread knife.

Dulcie would say his plan was more than stupid, she’d call him totally insane, say he’d abandoned the last shred of his previously astute feline mind. Maybe he’d wait until tomorrow, take the sensible route, lay low until Chichi walked into the village early, as she often did, carrying her big canvas tote.

Leaving Chichi’s front window, scorching up the pine tree to his own roof, he shouldered into his tower and through his cat door, dropped down to Clyde’s desk, and went straight to Snowball in the big leather chair.

She was awake, looking small and lonely, just a frightened wisp of white fluff. Charlie had said once that cats, when they were sick or hurt or afraid or grieving, seemed to shrink to half their size, to collapse right in on themselves. Slipping up into the chair beside Snowball, he began to lick her ear and to talk gently to her.

Of the three household cats, Snowball had been the first to get used to his human speech. Her initial shock hadn’t lasted long, and then she’d been more fascinated than appalled.

“It’s all right, Snowball,” he told her now. “Rube will be all right, he’s in good hands now, he’s not in pain now.” But even as he said it, Joe shuddered. What did he mean, he’ll be fine? What did that mean, in good hands now? What did that mean, not in pain now?

He didn’t want to think what those expressions might really mean.

Giving the grieving little cat a gentle wash, he sat with her snuggled close, waiting until she dozed again, tired out with missing Rube. Only then did Joe leave her. Leaping from desk to rafter and through to the roofs, he headed fast for the center of the village, his gaze focused on the reflection of slow-moving car lights and handheld spotlights that now glanced skyward, bouncing against the edges of the roof gutters and flickering along the undersides of the oaks. Cops with spotlights, moving fast and silent.

He approached the scene expecting any second to hear sirens blast; but none did. Just the silent racing lights and the whisper of voices that, from a distance, only a cat could hear; and then, soon, the muted static of police radios turned low. As he neared the scene he could make out more clearly the soft resonance of the cops’ voices, the voices of men he knew. There were no sirens, no staccato sounds of men running, no cars taking off with squealing tires; no more shots fired.

But suddenly just below him four patrol cars took off fast in four directions, racing silent and swift along the narrow streets. Joe knew the sound of the big Chevys that Molena Point PD drove, knew their purr as well as he knew his own. Approaching the scene over the shingles, he paused, waiting and watching, half his mind even now on old Rube, on Clyde and on Snowball.

Clyde would be alarmed when he got home and Snowball wasn’t in her bed, when she wasn’t anywhere downstairs or in the patio. Eventually he’d look upstairs, where she sometimes went when she was very upset, when the other two household cats took her toys or took all the food. Clyde would find her in the leather chair and would likely take her into bed with him, to comfort her-to comfort each other. Clyde would be feeling low himself, maybe very low, Joe thought forlornly.

Long before the first alarm sounded on the police switchboard, before any call came in to the dispatcher, Max and Charlie Harper had settled in for the evening, replete with their good Mexican dinner. They had made a pot of coffee and brought the two dogs in for a relaxed evening before the fire. Charlie, tired and happy after her pack trip, lay on the rug before the blazing logs, lulled by the fire’s crackle, by the faint crashing of the distant surf, and the music from an Ella Fitzgerald CD. The two big dogs lay near her, eyeing her coffee, though they didn’t like that bitter brew. Max sat sprawled in one of the two red leather chairs, enjoying the beauty and peace of their home and admiring Charlie’s neat butt in her snug jeans.

Above them the ceiling of the great room rose to a high peak that towered over the rest of the house, its cedar rafters perfuming the room. In the daytime the long glass wall offered a wide sweep down across the pastures to the open hills and to the sea beyond and, off to the right, the rooftops and dark oaks of the village. The thin, pleated blinds pulled high and the lamps unlit they enjoyed the night sky. As yet there was no hint of trouble, no faint finger of red touching the sky, no faint, distant sounds of unrest in the small village.

The furnishings of the room were simple, the red leather chairs, the bright primitive colors of the Turkish Konya rug that Charlie had found at an estate sale, the long wicker couch with its fluffy pillows. Opposite the windows, the fireplace wall was faced, floor to ceiling, with round river stones and flanked by tall bookcases. The other two walls of the room were stark white, setting off Charlie’s framed drawings of horses, dogs, wild animals, and of the three cats. One wall was broken by a sliding glass door that led to the wide stone terrace; the terrace, in turn, joined the kitchen. Charlie was telling Max about the quarter horse ranch where she and Ryan and Hanni had spent two nights, when Max’s cell phone buzzed. “Damn!” she said violently.

“Maybe it’s nothing,” Max said, flipping the phone open.

The next moment, she could tell by his face that it was the end of their quiet evening. He listened, asked several questions, then rose. Neither said anything. Charlie got up from the floor and kissed him. He hugged her hard, grabbed his jacket and was out the door-gone while she stood there wondering, for the thousandth time, why she had married a cop.

But she knew why.

Pouring another cup of coffee from the pot by the fireplace, she lay down again among the cushions, thinking that she should pull the shades now that she was alone. Thinking she really ought to turn the police scanner on, find out what was happening. But she was far too comfortable to do either. She’d know what was happening soon enough. Rolling over on the rug, snuggling between the two dogs, she said a prayer for Max, as she always did. He would not like knowing that she prayed for him; this was his job. But she prayed anyway. What could it hurt; she couldn’t help how she felt, no matter how she tried-and then she began to worry about the three cats.

They’d be right in the middle, you could bet on it, drawn to the crime scene like kids to a fire. Three little cats, so small, three rare little souls, so strangely blessed with human talents, out in the night peering down from the trees or rooftops, keen with predatory enthusiasm for whatever crime was coming down.

Though her prayers might not make anyone safe, and though she would not change the cats any more than she would change Max, Charlie prayed for them all.

8 [��������: pic_9.jpg]

As Max headed down the hills to the village, their friends listened to the sirens that he hadn’t heard from his distant position, and saw the reflections of flames up around the high school, and they paid attention. Max and Dallas would be heading up there, as would their other friends on the force. In the hospital, Wilma Getz woke from dozing before her TV, turned off the set, and listened. The tall, thin, wrinkled woman wished she had the little police scanner she had bought recently for just such occasions, for times when she knew Dulcie would race off into the middle of danger.

Dressed in her own red flannel nightgown instead of the hospital gown that had left her chilled and irritable, Wilma was comfortable enough despite the fact that she didn’t like hospitals. Her long, silver-white hair had, until tonight, been bound into a bun in an effort to keep it confined under the cap they put on you before surgery. Now that she had been allowed to wash and blow-dry it, she felt better. Her clean hair lay smooth and comfortable, pulled neatly back in a ponytail.

Reaching for the little mouse that would allow her to raise the back of her bed, she tried to track more precisely the scream of the sirens as they hurried up the hills. Swinging her feet to the floor, wincing at the pulling pains, she made her way to the window, supporting herself on the night table, then along the back of the visitors’ chair.

It hurt to raise the Venetian blind. Lifting her arm high and pulling hard sent a sharper pain cutting along her incision. Time to start exercising, get herself back in working order. Her young, enthusiastic surgeon, Jim Hallorhan, had only this morning pronounced her ready to start some serious rehabilitation.

It hurt less to slide the window open. The chill night air felt fresh and good on her flushed face. Her room faced east, away from the village, toward the hills. High up, cutting the blackness, she could see a thin smear of red dancing against the sky, very near the high school. She made out the whirling red lights of the patrol cars and fire rig and what was probably a rescue unit. She prayed that the three cats, if they insisted on racing up there, would keep to the residential rooftops and out of the way. She thought it wasn’t a big fire, maybe trash cans or an outbuilding. Very likely the units would quickly get it under control. She had been watching for some time when something else alerted her. She stood still, listening in the other direction, from the village beyond the hall and the opposite line of rooms. Had she heard a shot, faint and muffled?

Crossing the hall, she slipped into an empty room where the blinds were open to the village below, to the dim, narrow streets and little shops that lay snug beneath the leafy canopies. She watched the moving beams of police torches flashing along the faces of the buildings, and shadowy uniforms searching among the shops; farther away along the darkest streets she sensed, as much as saw, occasional swift movement. This was a strange, phantom kind of search. She stood for a long time, making little sense of it. What had gone down? Burglary? Robbery? Murder? There would be nothing on TV until it was over. She stood worrying about the cats, knowing that if they weren’t already down there, they soon would be. She wished she had her binoculars. She tried to spot Joe Grey’s stark white markings stalking the roofs; he was so much easier to see than her own Dulcie or the kit.

Perhaps it had been a breakin that the officer in charge had decided to handle with a quick canvassing search, while the perps had successfully fled or were hiding nearby. She could only pray the cats kept clear. After a lifetime of considerable control over the criminals she handled, she felt helpless as a civilian. Helpless, indeed, when the action involved the three cats.

Worrying but knowing there was nothing she could do, she returned at last to her room, chilled, and slipped into bed. She wished they gave you more than two thin blankets. Well, Dulcie was with Lucinda and Kit; maybe, somehow, the Greenlaws would manage to keep the two in.

Fat chance, Wilma thought.

But the Greenlaw terrace was so close to the action that maybe the two cats would be content to watch from that vantage. Maybe. She turned over, wincing at the pain, reminding herself that the surgery was over, that her gall bladder was gone and that was no big deal. A few minor changes in her diet, a small price to pay for a cessation of sudden pain. Tomorrow she’d be up at Charlie and Max’s, able to start exercising again-while Charlie waited on her, she thought, amused. She ought to be home in her own house, making her own meals, but Charlie wouldn’t hear it. Charlie said it was the only excuse she had to enjoy her aunt as a houseguest.

As if Charlie needed a houseguest right now, with the new addition barely finished and a hundred chores and details to tend to, trying to get settled into her new studio so she could get on with her several commissions for animal portraits, and with the children’s book she was writing.

That, for Wilma, would be the biggest treat, to tuck up with Dulcie before Charlie’s fire on these chill days, after Max went off to work, when Kit could speak freely, telling the fascinating tales of her kittenhood when she traveled with the wild band of ferals.

Charlie’s book would include no speaking, sentient cats. Just the story of a band of feral cats trying to survive. Even so, it was turning into a magical tale, as the best realistic story should be. Magical, too, when illustrated with Charlie’s drawings. Not long ago, Charlie had cursed her art education, calling it a total waste of time and money, a squandering of four years of her young life. Now, look at her, Wilma thought, grinning.

It was earlier, ten minutes before the first siren shrieked heading up the hills to the high school, the village streets still quiet and nearly deserted when Dulcie and Kit arrived on the terrace of the Greenlaws’ second-floor apartment. Full of Mexican supper, they had taken their time meandering home over the rooftops, detouring to lazily chase a little bat, then to sit by a warm chimney and have a nice wash and enjoy the evening.

Their dawdling, circuitous route brought them, yawning, to the tall pine tree beside the Greenlaw terrace. As they dropped to the terrace, they could smell coffee; Lucinda stood in the shadows, her cup balanced on the terrace wall, as she, too, enjoyed the evening.

But as the two cats landed on the terrace, a siren screamed only blocks away, heading away from the fire station up toward the hills. And another siren, another. Fire trucks and then an ambulance, then patrol cars racing by nearly bursting their eardrums. Dulcie and Kit leaped to the low terrace wall, ready to follow.

“Wait,” Lucinda said.

“But�” Dulcie began, looking up the far hills where a red glow was beginning to lick at the sky. The cats, not seeing Pedric, thought he’d likely gone to bed early, aching with arthritis.

“Wait, you two!” Lucinda said with urgency.

“What?” Kit said. “You never want us to go. We’ll stay to the rooftops, we’re safe there.” Both cats crouched to run, staring up to the hills at the brightening flames, both ready to bolt and follow the fire trucks. Below them the village was still, the streets quiet. Imperatively, Lucinda put her hand on Kit’s back.

Kit stared up at her. “You never want�”

The old woman spoke softly but with harsh command. “You’ve missed something. Look down! Something else is happening! Help me look, quick, you two can see in the dark better than I!” She pointed down across the street to the corner shop opposite their building; looking, the cats went tense.

Molena Point had no streetlights; only the soft glow from the shop windows. Between these, the sidewalk was shadowed and dim. They all three watched the dark windows of Marineau’s Jewelry store; Lucinda could see little within, but the cats’ eyes grew round, and they crouched, their tails lashing. “Two shadows,” Dulcie said softly. “Moving inside. How�?” Then a thin, shielded light flicked on, as if from a miniature flashlight. The next instant a sharp tinkling, almost like music, and tiny jagged glints of light flickered and fell.

“Before the sirens headed up the hills,” Lucinda said softly, “I heard the faintest sound. The little light flashed once, and went out. I thought I heard glass break then, too, but muffled. As if by a towel.” She held up her cell phone. “I called the station. What else can you see?” Even as she spoke, the tiny light flickered again, and they heard a sharper crack as of heavier glass breaking, more bright shards fell.

“Why doesn’t the city put in some decent lighting?” Lucinda snapped irritably. “Ambiance is all very well, until something ugly happens.”

Max Harper had tried to get the city to install decorative, soft-glowing streetlamps. The city council said that would spoil the quaint sense of Old World mystery that the tourists liked. Max had pointed out that there was plenty of crime on the dark medieval streets, that robbery and murder were common during those times. He said modern tourists didn’t needthatmuch ambiance. Several members of the city council had laughed at him. But the shopkeepers hadn’t laughed, particularly the jewelry store owners.

The lighting Max wanted would not have spoiled the atmosphere, but it sure would have hindered such stealthy breakins as was occurring below. Lucinda and Dulcie and Kit watched as a dark figure slipped out the broken glass door and fled, vanishing among the street’s shadows.

“Two are still in the store,” Dulcie said, watching the pair of black-clad figures barely visible in the blackness, even to a cat’s eyes; watching them moving about at their work. Then, “Oh!” Dulcie hissed. The thieves came bolting out and took off up the street, disappearing-and before Lucinda could grab Kit, the cats were after them, racing away unheeding of the old lady’s cries.

Sailing from the rooftop terrace into an oak, they crossed the street on bending branches into another tree, leaped four feet to the shingled roof of the jewelry store and raced across it following the thieves. Running, the cats heard the purr of an engine; a car swerved around the corner and skidded to a stop, and the two figures piled in and were gone.

Lucinda stood looking after the cats, half annoyed, half filled with fear for them. But she couldn’t stop them, couldn’t change them; they were doing what, according to their rules, theymustdo. As the little cats were swallowed by the night, two squad cars slipped around the corner without lights. Four darkly uniformed officers emerged, moving to cover the door and the broken display window. She cursed herself for calling the cats’ attention to the burglary, for putting them in danger. If she’d kept her mouth shut.

But it would have made no difference. If they hadn’t seen the burglars, they’d be off to the fire, and that could be worse. Or, if they had paused before they raced away to the hills, they would have heard the jewelry store breakin for themselves, the tinkle of shattered glass.

For a long moment Lucinda stood envying the cats, wishing she, too, could race across the rooftops leaping from peak to peak as free and sure of herself as they. She caught a glimpse of movement down the alley where other officers were approaching, friendly shadows slipping silently through the dark streets. How many men could Harper spare, with something happening up in the hills, too, where the red glow bloomed brighter and another siren screamed?

9 [��������: pic_10.jpg]

It was some time later that two more patrol cars pulled to the curb facing the jewelry store and switched on their lights to blaze in through the broken window. Now, in the harsh glare, Lucinda could see every detail, the glitter of scattered glass as bright as spilled diamonds, the smashed display cases gaping empty, stripped of a fortune in jewels-surely a large portion of James Marineau’s livelihood. She could see, now, that the front-window glass had been secured, before breaking, with wide strips of silver duct tape. Maybe that was the thunk she’d heard, the sound of a hard object striking a dull blow into the taped glass. Several blocks away, two more squad cars raced by while three others cruised more slowly, shining their spotlights into doorways and alleys.

She heard, farther up Ocean, the screech of tires as a car braked, then another car skidded behind it. Both sets of lights came racing down Ocean and onto the side street, to stop before Marineau’s: Max Harper’s truck followed by Dallas Garza’s green sedan. Had the burglars escaped? Had there been silent arrests?

She wished she’d been able to see more clearly, to offer up some description of the men. How many had there been? Maybe even the two cats hadn’t seen the robbers clearly. Thank goodness they were on the roofs now, and not down there! Safety, with those three, never seemed a prime concern.

As Lucinda watched the captain and detective enter the jewelry store, up the hills north of the village two of the thieves, free of danger now, slipped into a darkened house. They carried no loot from the job, no little bags filled with diamonds, no pockets bulging with Carrier watches, though Marineau’s was the most prestigious jewelry store in Molena Point, the kind of shop where every entering patron was treated with courteous respect but even the most elegantly dressed among them, if they were not regulars, were carefully observed.

The house they entered was dark, tall, built against the hillside, the drive climbing steeply up beside it. The thieves had not emerged from a car-there was no car in the drive or on the street. They appeared out of the shadows, moved halfway up the drive and onto the little porch, and slid noiselessly in through the front door. They did not speak until the door had closed softly behind them, then the two resumed arguing, but quietly; dark-haired Luis angry and cursing in whispers, his redheaded partner snickering until Luis turned on him with cold rage, grabbing him by the collar.

“Shut up, Tommie! He’s not your brother!”

“You said you’d as soon be rid of him! You’ve said it a hundred times, he’s a damn screwup! Now he’s out of your way. What trouble can he get into, in jail? Safest place for him!”

“We don’t need a screwup in the hands of the cops, you dummy!” Luis pulled off his dark windbreaker, dropped it on a chair, and headed down the hall through the dim house toward the kitchen. “Cops hassle Dufio enough, he’ll spill everything.”

“Nah. He knows better. Even Dufio ain’t that stupid.”

“Keep your voice down.”

“Knows damn well,” Tommie muttered, “stoolies die in jail.” He followed Luis into the kitchen, shutting the door behind them as Luis turned on the light. Luis didn’t call his sister to the kitchen as he usually did, to fix their meal. They stood at the counter, eating what Maria had left out for them-cold beans, cold tortillas, a dozen small cold tamales, a twelve-pack of beer. Around them in the silent house the other residents slept, or pretended to sleep.

Only in the back of the house, in the smaller bedroom, did anyone make a sound. There, from within a cage, came the faintest mewl as one of the captive cats woke. The men didn’t hear her, nor would they have paid any attention as long as the beast didn’t yowl loud enough to wake the neighbors. In the shadowed bedroom, the cat looked around her. She listened to the two women’s breathing. She listened to the men’s harsh arguing from the kitchen, her ears catching small sounds that the women, even awake, would not have heard.

She stared at the crusting food dish in the corner of the cage, but she didn’t approach it. She drank a little water, listened shivering to the voices, then curled up tightly again on the wadded cotton towel and stuck her nose under her tail, trying to get warm.

She was a pale calico color, her white coat marked with bleached gray like pussy willow buds, and with pale orange, a subtly colored cat with a rather long, distinctive face, and a look of distrust in her green eyes. The three cats had been in the cage for two weeks. They kept careful count of the days, not that it did them much good. In all that time, they had not been able to breach the lock. They had tried every way they could think of, but no cat, not even one with their talents, could open a padlock. Even if they’d had the key that Luis kept in his pocket, even though they understood the functions of lock and key, they could not have manipulated such a tool. It would take fingers to do that, and opposable thumbs; these were among the few blessings they wished they possessed along with their ability to speak and understand human language.

The hinges and joints of the cage were welded, too, so there was no way they could force them apart. Their only chance of escape was when, once a day, Luis’s sister, Maria, removed and changed the litter box-except that Luis was always there, watching her. Luis would unlock the cage, then slam the door shut the instant Maria pulled out the litter box. He would slam and lock the door again when she’d put the box back inside. She seldom changed the sand, just scooped out the wet and dirty part, so the box stunk bad. That made the food and water taste bad. Even the air tasted like poop. Willow felt sick all the time, confined so. All she wanted to do was growl and hiss and hunch to herself and not eat. She thought they’d die there. She longed for the green hills and fresh winds, for cold fresh water.

She even longed for the clowder of cats they had run with, even as mean as those cats were, even as much as she feared the leaders. She was not a brave cat; she felt safer in the clowder than trying to survive alone.

From the kitchen came the clatter of dishes, then the men’s voices rose, and they went stumping down the hall to the front bedroom. She could smell their stink of beer beneath the closed door like a sour wind, she could taste the beer smell.

She heard Maria come awake in one of the two beds, her breathing suddenly quicker and shallower. But, wary of the men’s approach just as Willow herself was, Maria lay still and made no sound. Only when both men had used the bathroom and gone back into the bedroom and shut the door, only when at last they could be heard snoring, did Maria settle down once more, pull the covers over her face, and go back to sleep.

Willow didn’t sleep. She paced the cage, stepping around the sleeping forms of white Cotton, and dark tabby Coyote of the long, canine-like ears. Ever since they’d been trapped, she didn’t sleep until she was so exhausted she could no longer hold her eyes open. Pacing, she thought about where this house must be in relation to the hills south of the village where they were captured. How foolish they had been to get caught, to trust those spliced bungee cords that had come apart and let the three traps spring closed. Their only excuse was that those traps had been rigged like no other they’d ever seen.

Usually, the door to a cage-trap was held open for a week or more with a brightly colored, elastic bungee cord, and new food would be added every day. This was meant to lure a cat inside again and again, they all knew that. They all knew it was safe to snatch out the food when a bungee cord was in place-but that when the bungee was gone, no matter how delicious the bait smelled, no sensible cat would go near.

How unfair, that these three traps had been rigged differently. Once the doors had sprung closed behind them, they’d been as helpless as mice skewered in their own claws.

Someone had known what kind of cats they were. But why did these humans want them? Willow’s fears combined with the stink and the sour food and the crowding, were becoming nearly intolerable. She had never known, until she was caged, how very dear was her freedom. How precious was their ability to run free across the grassy hills, to curl down at night in the leaves or bushes in the cool wind, looking up at the vast sky and endless stars.

All that was gone now, and Willow was afraid.

She thought about that horrible noisy ride down the hills in a tiny cage tied on the back of the motorcycle, its roar so loud that their ears nearly burst. They had been shaken, thrown against each other, and miserably cold in the sharp wind. That terrible fear and noise and cold had left her shivering for hours after they were brought into this room and locked in here.

But coming down the hills, flung about in the bouncing cage, they had seen clearly where they were going. They had recorded every scent, every change in the wind, had looked down on the village rooftops and the crowded hills on the north, and looked back at the hills from which they had come. They had learned about the house as they were carried through.

The house had two bedrooms and a lower floor of some kind. At night she could hear Hernando and Dufio descending the stairs; she thought they slept down there. She hadn’t heard Hernando in a day or two, though. Alone down there, Dufio had been quiet, except for a TV. Dufio didn’t like cats, none of the men did, and that made their capture all the more frightening; they didn’t like to think what Hernando and Luis intended for them.

Maria was kind to them, though, when her brother wasn’t around. She brought them nicer food and even milk sometimes. But she was afraid of Luis. Maria was, Willow thought, almost as much a prisoner as were they.

Of course, they did not speak in front of Maria; they whispered among themselves only late at night, when they were certain that Maria and the old lady slept. Maria called her Abuela. Willow watched Maria sleeping now, and the calico cat was filled with questions about the young woman who seemed more Luis’s servant than his sister; questions she supposed would never be answered.

Maria woke when she heard the men come in. As usual, they were arguing. They always made a mess in the kitchen for her to clean up in the morning. She prayed their job had gone okay, so that Luis would be in a decent mood. Her arm and back were still black and blue from the last beating. To Luis she was property, not good for much.

One of the cats was fussing around in its cage. She hated seeing those cats there, pacing like wild animals. She fed them through the bars. And when Luis unlocked the cage door so she could clean the sand box, they always looked like they’d bolt. She didn’t know what would happen if they tried and Luis grabbed them. She had no idea why Luis and Hernando had trapped cats or what they meant to do with them. She’d heard them talking and whispering, but what they said didn’t make sense. Maybe Hernando had been drunk, or smoking a joint. She hated when he did that. But no cat could talk, that was what she’d thought Hernando said. And something about the cats knowing something, having seen something. Crazy talk, as crazy as Dufio, but in a mean way, not just dumb like Dufio.

Maybe Luis was just doing what Hernando wanted; Luis treated his older brother with more respect than he treated poor Dufio. She wondered where Hernando was, gone so long. It angered Maria that Luis and Tommie had taken the big front room, Abuela’s room. That Luis made Abuela sleep back here with her and the stinking cage. She was, after all, his grandmother, and he should show respect.

Until Maria came, Abuela had lived here alone. But after she fell twice, once tripping on the worn carpet, once on the stairs, she asked Maria to come live with her. She was afraid of breaking a hip, of lying there unable to call for help. Maria was her only granddaughter.

Maria had been eager to get away from Luis. Estrella Nava was ninety-three; God knew she needed someone to take care of her. Maria had been so happy to be off by herself, to take the bus up from Irvine. But then, months later, Luis and their two brothers and Tommie McCord had decided to come here. Maria thought they were ditching the L.A. cops. They didn’t ask Abuela if they could come, they just moved in, greedy for the free rent and a new territory to make trouble.

Well, at least Hernando had gone off somewhere with his noisy motorcycle. Luis didn’t look for him, so probably he was with a woman. And Dufio� Sometimes she thought Luis felt sorry for Dufio, because Dufio was so different.

Luis had nailed the bedroom windows so she could only open them a few inches. What did he think? That she’d run away and leave Abuela, leave her grandmother? Or that she’d haul the frail old woman out through the window? And take her where?

But as crude as they were, they were her brothers, they were family. She would not have considered trying to call the police to report that she and Abuela were prisoners or nearly so. Maria had no clear notion of alternate choices, she trusted fate and God. Her decision to get on the bus and come to Abuela had been a singular and frightening moment, she might never again do such a brave thing.

Though she had gone to American schools, though she had been in Los Estados Unidos since she was ten, she was nothing but a poor Mexican girl in a strange country. Luis told her that over and over. In a country she could not understand and that would never understand her, Luis said, no authority would care what happened to her.

When she heard the three-colored cat’s tiny little mewl, she got out of bed and poured some kibble through the bars into the bowl, on top of the stinking canned food. There was nowhere else to put it, they were crowded in there with the two bowls and the sandbox. The cat mewed again; it always sounded like a kitten; it looked at her for a long time, a look that made her feel strange-as if it was asking why she didn’t free it.

“I can’t!” she whispered, shivering. Then she hurriedly crossed herself and moved away. She was getting as crazy as Hernando.

Returning to her bed, she listened to the cat picking kibble off the top of the little heap, and crunching it. In the other bed, Abuela snored with the harsh breathing of old age. When the calico cat finished eating it stared out at her again. She could see the shine of its eyes from the window where the night clouds reflected pale light. The cat looked and looked at her, then closed its eyes. As if, like Maria, it had no hope left. As if it could never expect anything different from this imprisonment.

ButWillow had not lost hope. She was determined they would get out of there, she did not mean to die there. Despite her kittenish voice and her terrible fears, she was a stubborn cat, and in her own way, she was bold.

She only suspected what these men wanted: they talked about selling them for money, or putting them on television or in the movies. Then, they said, they would drive fancy cars. But they wanted, as well, to make sure that she and Cotton and Coyote did not tell other humans about the money they stole. And about the men they had killed.

But who would she and Coyote and Cotton tell? And why? All they wanted was their freedom.

They had discussed a dozen plans for getting out of the cage, had talked late at night, in whispers. But no plan seemed to be the right one. Cotton wanted to attack Luis the minute he opened the cage, leap on him, rake and bite him and streak past him to freedom. Coyote wanted to pretend to be sick, but she thought if they did that, Luis would indeed kill them.

Thinking fearful thoughts, for a long time she didn’t sleep. She huddled into herself thinking of possible new ways to escape that would be less violent. She was not a brash warrior like the two males; she was the kind of hunter who liked to run her prey down and trip them, then make a quick and humane kill. She hunted because she had to eat, not because she enjoyed killing. Praying for sleep, she worried and planned until at last she dropped into exhausted dreams, into the only escape she knew.

10 [��������: pic_11.jpg]

The roof was so steep it was all Dulcie and Kit could do to keep from sliding down the shingles into the face of the cop below. Claws were no good at this angle. Bracing their paws as best they could, they watched Officer Brennan fasten a belly chain on a handcuffed Latino guy dressed in dark jeans, black T-shirt and black sneakers. He was maybe thirty, with a scruffy little beard and one earring, his expression a strange mix of anger, puzzlement and guilt. Brennan and his partner had chased him for blocks, as Dulcie and Kit raced along above them over the rooftops. The arrestee was small and light, and was a fast runner, zigzagging through back streets and alleys. Three times the cats had nearly lost him, as had Brennan. But then at the corner of Fifth and Dolores, where a low roof dropped nearer the sidewalk, Kit had skidded on a loose shingle, knocking it off right in the guy’s face. Scared him so bad he spun back swearing in Spanish-into Brennan’s hands.

Brennan was just as surprised as the perp. Nearly as surprised as the kit who, Dulcie told her later, had made her first arrest, or nearly so. “This,” Dulcie said, licking the kit’s ear, “should make you an honorary officer.”

Kit, watching Brennan cuff the guy, had shivered with mirth and with smug triumph, though she was glad Brennan hadn’t seen her. On the roof, they followed Brennan and his captive back to Brennan’s squad car where he forced the belly-chained prisoner into the back seat, pushing his head down so he wouldn’t crack his skull. No one wanted an inmate suing the department. Seemed like cuffs and belly chain were a lot, Dulcie thought, when the distance to the station was only a few blocks. But Brennan, with the extra weight he packed, sure wouldn’t want to chase this one again. As Brennan headed for the station, Dulcie and Kit were still laughing; and as they dropped down from the roof to a little bench that stood in the shadows, they could see into the jewelry store where officers’ lights flashed.

The exploding brilliance of strobes made them shutter their eyes as Detective Garza photographed the broken, empty display cases. Max Harper stood talking with two officers and with Garza, but soon he left the scene again, swinging into his pickup, driving off in the direction of the high school. Dulcie thought about the lovely chokers and bracelets the cases had held, and how often she had reared up to peer in through Marineau’s windows, admiring those treasures-wondering how she would look in platinum or emeralds. Except that the idea of a confining collar gave her the shivers; even such a multimillion-dollar confection as a sapphire choker from Tiffany’s would scare her if she couldn’t claw it off and free herself.

Both cats felt sad looking in at the ruined shop, at the shattered glass cases, at the silk-covered walls now scarred with ugly gouges. An inner door had been torn off its hinges. The thick, creamy carpet had been ripped back as if the thieves were searching for a floor safe. Such destruction by humans sickened them.

If Dulcie had her way, the people who did this would be cooling their heels for a lifetime. And not in a cushy cell with freeTV,three hot meals, laundry service, ample medical care, and unlimited phone privileges. In her view, the universal need for freedom ended when it was used to destroy the lives and livelihood of others.

“How much do you suppose they got?” Kit said.

“In value?” Dulcie said, surprised by Kit’s uncharacteristically practical turn of mind. “Whatever they got, they didn’t get what they deserved. Come on,” she whispered, dropping down into deeper shadows beneath the bench as Detective Garza turned in their direction.

The Latino detective had finished photographing and was putting away his camera equipment. They waited, very still, until he turned away again and, with his back to them, began to dust showcase and door surfaces with black powder. As Garza lifted prints, two officers approached along the sidewalk, stopping before the window.

Wearing thin surgical gloves, the uniforms began collecting broken glass from the sidewalk and the little garden that ran along the front of the shop, sealing each piece in an individual evidence bag. And as the officers drew close, the cats backed away around the edge of the building, into a bed of begonias.

When Dulcie glanced up, Joe Grey stood on a rooftop across the street watching the scene, his white parts clearly visible, white chest, the long white triangle down his nose. His white paws were hidden in the roof gutter. He studied the scene, then leaped into an awning, dropped down onto a bench, and trotted across the street toward them, between half a dozen police units that were parked to block approaching traffic. Pushing in among the begonias, he gave Dulcie a whisker kiss. “What did I miss?”

“Tell us what happened at the high school,” Dulcie said.

“I haven’t the faintest, I wasn’t up there. I was� watching someone.”

“Watching who?”

Joe ignored her, teasing; so it had to be important. He glanced casually away in the direction of the PD. “Maybe Mabel Farthy’s on duty. We’ll hear something there, or maybe we can cadge a look at the report.”

Dulcie held her tongue; she wasn’t begging for answers; he’d tell her quicker if she didn’t prod him; and she followed him across the roofs to the courthouse and down the oak tree to the door of Molena Point PD. Joe’s expression was so smug it was all she could do not to belt him.

While the cats were waiting for the dispatcher to open the heavy glass door, Clyde arrived home from the vet’s. He arrived alone, without old Rube. He was feeling very low. He wanted to talk with Joe, he wanted Joe’s company, wanted to stroke Joe and hold him-though he would never tell the tomcat how much he needed him at that moment.

Coming in the house alone, he turned on some lights and called to Joe. Called the tomcat again and again, until he was certain Joe wasn’t home. Hurrying into the laundry, he looked for Snowball. She wasn’t in the bunk bed. With an unaccustomed feeling of dread for her, too, he hurried upstairs.

There she was, the little white creature curled up in his study, in the big leather chair. Someone had tucked the woolen throw warm around her.

Ryan wasn’t there, there was no note as she would have left on the kitchen table if she’d come in. Only Joe had been here in the house, to fold the throw gently around Snowball like that, and that touched Clyde deeply. Kneeling before the chair, he stroked Snowball and put his face down against her. She looked up at him pitifully. As if she knew very well what had happened. Just ordinary cats, Clyde thought, know a lot more than we suspect of them.

Snowball sniffed his hands for a long time, smelling each finger, then she dropped her head into Clyde’s hand. He remained very still, holding her.

It was a long time later that he rose, picking Snowball up, cuddling her in his arms. Carrying her to the desk, he sat down, making the little cat comfortable in the crook of his arm; and he called Ryan.

He told her about Rube. They talked for a long time. Her gentle voice, and her own tears, eased him. When at last he hung up, he felt better.

But he was still lonely, so lonely that he did something he’d never done before. He dialed the dispatcher on the nonemergency number, asking innocently if his cat was there. He told Mabel he’d heard a terrible cat fight, off in that direction, and he just wondered�

Mabel Farthy had cats, she was a sucker for cats. She wouldn’t think his call was odd. Everyone knew that Joe often hung out at the station. Harper complained bitterly about cats wandering so casually in and out, but Clyde thought Max was secretly growing fond of Joe. He tried not to think how mad Joe was going to be. The tomcat would give him hell for making this call. Right now he didn’t care, he just wanted Joe to come home.

Mabel’s raspy voice was amused. “All three cats are here, Clyde. Sitting on the counter eating pastrami on rye.”

“Withmustard?”

“Of course not. I know cats don’t like mustard.”

Clyde repeated how much the catfight had alarmed him, and said he hoped Mabel got some of her dinner and didn’t go hungry. “You could throw the little beggars out. You don’t have to feed them.”

Mabel laughed. “You know I’d go hungry to see the satisfied smirks on their furry faces and hear the little freeloaders purr.”

On Mabel’s counter, lolling between two stacks of reports, Joe heard Clyde’s voice on the phone, and went rigid. They were talking about cats, abouthim,and he was wild with anger. Clyde had called abouthim.But the next minute his anger vanished, and he knew.

Rube. This was about Rube.

Clyde wouldn’t have called if this were good news. Joe’s stomach felt like it had dropped to the cellar, he was cold all over and lost, felt sick all the way to his paws.

He was about to take off for home when Officer Blake came in. The tall, thin officer tossed a handful of Polaroids on the desk, color shots of the fire at the high school. Slipping closer again, between Dulcie and Kit, Joe stared at candid studies of smoke and flame licking up a building, and of the burned interior of a classroom. It was the kind of mess you’d see in some L.A. street riot, not in Molena Point. What was coming down here?

There had been no trouble at the school, no student unrest or complaints building up to this, and no hot issue that might draw outside agitators. Keen with predatory curiosity, longing to paw the photos out across the desk to see every detail, Joe turned away instead. He was too torn by Clyde’s need, too conscious of Clyde’s pain to attend even to this perplexing crime.

Glancing at Dulcie with a look he hoped she would understand, he leaped from Mabel’s counter to the front door and reared up against the glass, pawing impatiently until Mabel came around the counter and let him out. And he headed fast for home, a wild gray streak racing over the rooftops and across the highest oak branches above the narrow streets, heading home. Going home, where Clyde needed him.

11 [��������: pic_12.jpg]

Dulcie seldom hung around Molena Point PD, spying and picking up intelligence, without Joe Grey by her side. Sitting with Kit on the dispatcher’s counter, with cops milling all around them, she tried her best not to look interested in the pictures of the fire. The four officers who had just returned from the high school smelled nose-itchingly of smoke. Their faces and hands were smeared black, their uniforms torn and wet.

Dulcie did not want to appear to be reading their reports; but she could hardly look away. A schoolroom had been deliberately set afire, as well as some trash cans under the wooden grandstand. Kit kept crowding her, staring so intently at the pictures that Dulcie could not distract her. This kit did not know the meaning of finesse. As much as Kit hung around the station, as many cases as she’d helped to solve, some spectacularly, the little tortoiseshell still was impetuous to the point of alarm. Terrified that any minute Kit would forget herself and blurt out some burning question, Dulcie hissed softly at her and pressed a paw on her paw.

But only when, glancing up through the glass door, they saw Dallas Garza approaching across the parking lot, did Kit back off and curl up as if for a nap, tucking her nose under her tail. Dulcie washed her own hind paw, then feigned great interest when a rookie dropped a wadded-up gum wrapper on the floor; she made a show of creeping along the counter peering down, lashing her tail.

Dallas Garza swung in through the heavy glass door looking sour and angry. He said very little but double-timed on down the hall, followed silently by the officers around the desk and half a dozen who came in behind him. They turned into the coffee room-cum-squad room. The cats waited a moment, then leaped down, wandered along behind them, and crouched outside the door. The room smelled of overcooked coffee.

“Store window was already broken when the call came in,” Garza said. “Security alarm disabled. They were in and out before the first car arrived. Cameron’s in the hospital, shot in the leg. Lucky as hell it missed the bone. She should be out in a few days.” Jane Cameron had been on the force only a few months. She had come down from San Jose PD where she’d graduated from the police academy. “She didn’t want to fire her weapon in that neighborhood. Guy doubled back on her. His first shot took her down, hit her twice before she fired and killed him,” Garza said. “She’s feeling more mental pain than pain from the leg wound.” It was doubly hard for a rookie to live with having killed someone. There would be a routine investigation, which would surely amount to nothing.

Dulcie was just glad that Cameron was alive. The tall, soft-spoken blonde always had a smile and a pet for a visiting cat. The cats listened with switching tails as Garza described the action.

“Besides the man Cameron killed, we have one arrest and the make on two cars.” He glanced at Officer McFarland.

“McFarland pursued a black Ford Neon, no lights, forced it into an alley against the brick wall of The Patio restaurant. Car took out three feet of wall. McFarland might never have spotted it-but the license plate flat fell off.”

McFarland grinned. “Bounced and rattled like a barrelful of tin cans.” McFarland was a young, fresh-faced cop with soft brown hair that, when freed from his cap, immediately fell over his forehead. “Puny little guy. Fought me like a nut case, bit me twice. Flailed around until I shoved my gun in his ribs. Little twerp, Latino. Dark eyes, dark complexion. Long bleached hair and a nose ring. Made me want to lead him along like a ringed bull. We’re towing the car in.

“We ran the plates,” McFarland said. “Stolen off a ‘99 Cadillac DeVille, West L.A. address. There was ID on him, driver’s license, couple of credit cards. Likely turn up fake.”

Detective Garza read off the jewelry store inventory of stolen items, which the store’s efficient assistant had prepared for him. “She’ll have pictures of some of the pieces by morning.”

Dulcie was wondering why the elderly owner of the jewelry store hadn’t shown up after the breakin, when Garza said, “Sam Marineau’s visiting his daughter in Tacoma, be gone a week. Left Nancy Huffman in charge, she’s over there now, with Davis.” Juana Davis was the department’s other detective, a solid, no-nonsense Latina with a quiet, reassuring way that could quickly calm an upset victim. She and Nancy Huffman must both have arrived just after Dulcie and Kit and Joe raced away from the demolished store. Garza unfolded Nancy’s inventory and began to read, listing the items. Their value added up to a sum large enough to keep every village cat in caviar through the next century. Garza said, “We’ve contacted all departments in the Western states.” The wonders of electronics, of the department’s ability to contact all those offices within seconds, still impressed Dulcie, as did so many of the accomplishments of human civilization.

She expected that if the insurance company offered a sizeable reward, the fence might cooperate, too. Maybe give them a line on the crooks. When the cats heard Captain Harper come in the front door, they vanished from the hall, slipping into the first darkened office.

Harper stopped to speak to the dispatcher, then passed their shadowed door, heading for the squad room. His shoes and pant legs reeked of smoke and wet ashes. They crept out behind him to crouch, again, outside the door.

Harper stopped just inside to pour himself a cup of coffee, then moved to the front to face his men. His thin, tanned face was drawn into long, angry lines. “It was arson,” he said. “Payson and Brown picked up oily rags, two empty gas cans.

“One classroom trashed and set afire. The amount of smoke and flame, I thought at first the whole school was burning. Books pulled from the shelves, desks overturned, stuff pulled out of cupboards. The other fires were on the grounds. Two in trash barrels near bushes and trees-we got them before they spread. Fire on the football field under the stands, in trash bins. Another few minutes, those wooden stands would have gone up, as well as the pine trees in the greenbelt, and then the buildings.

“Williams Construction is boarding up the burned classroom.” He looked around the room. “We have no arrests. Fire alarms were deactivated. They were in and out before the neighbors heard anything or anyone saw flames. Crowley? That’s your patrol.”

Officer Crowley’s square, jowled face reddened. One big bony hand came up, then rested again on his lap; his broad shoulders seemed to hunch lower. “We were south of the village on a drunk and disorderly when the call came. We’d just left the high school. Ten minutes. Didn’t see or hear a thing. Maybe they were waiting, hiding in there? And when we pulled out, they cut loose? There were no trash cans turned over, trash cans were standing in a row outside the maintenance room, the lids on. Maintenance door was padlocked, I got out and checked. Nothing under the grandstand, we swept our lights in like always.

“We always circle the classrooms. That room they set afire, it backs on the parking lot. We look in those windows, shine a light in. Looked in there tonight, room was tidy as an old maid’s bedroom. Nothing, no one. They had it all worked out, had to. Went to work the minute we pulled out.” Crowley looked at Harper. “You think the high school was a diversion?”

“It’s possible,” Harper said. “But that makes a good number of players, a big coordinated group. Whatever the story, we’ve got egg on our faces.” He gave the men a sour smile. “One dead perp. Make on two cars that got away. Two arrests.” But in the chief’s long, thin face, there was a spark of satisfaction, too. “Lab is lifting prints, collecting clothing particles. Let’s see what we get.”

Dulcie wanted badly to hear Harper and Garza interrogate the prisoner. But she thought maybe they wouldn’t do that until they had a make on the prints, a little ammunition to nail him in his lies, to turn his untruths back on him.Ifthey got a make on the prints, if the guy had a driver’s license or a prison record. He might just have come into the country; if he were illegal, he might have no identification at all.

The thought of arson made the tabby shiver. Fire, to a small animal, was a horrifying thing, more terrible even than to a human. An animal had no way to fight a fire. An ordinary beast had no concept of the sophisticated technology to control and subdue killing flames. All an animal could do was run, driven by panic. When Dulcie thought about the millions of animals and people killed and injured in deliberately set fires, it seemed to her that arson-as well as rape and murder and child molestation-deserved the most severe and ultimate punishment.

But Dulcie was a cat. Her concepts of right and wrong were clear and precise. A cat’s code of justice had no use for the subtle and nuanced, not when it came to deliberately destroyed and crippled lives. To a cat, hunting and killing to be able to eat, or to teach one’s kittens what they must learn, those matters were necessary to survival. But maiming and killing to see others suffer, that hunger stemmed from a pure dark evil for which Dulcie had no smallest shred of sympathy.

As the officers rose, Dulcie and Kit galloped up the hall to mew stridently at Mabel, dragging her out from behind her electronic domain again.

“You cats are mighty demanding tonight! Bad as lawyers, snapping your fingers and expecting me to jump!” But the hefty blonde was grinning as she opened the front door and obligingly set them free, into the night.

Trotting away waving their tails, Dulcie and Kit heard Mabel rattle the door behind them making sure it was locked. Glancing back, Dulcie felt a warm spot for Mabel. For some minutes, the stocky blond dispatcher stood inside the glass, watching them with as tender a look as that of a mother sending her children out to play.

But then, hurrying away in the chill wind, Dulcie let her thoughts return to Joe.

She’d put the thought aside, but she knew something was very wrong at home. Why else would Clyde call the station looking for his cat? He’d never before done such a thing. What had Clyde said to Mabel that had jerked Joe away so fast, his ears down and his stub tail tucked under? A deep chill filled Dulcie. Was it Rube? The old dog hadn’t been well, not for a long time. She shivered suddenly, and a heavy sadness filled her. But on she went, following Kit. Slipping past the jewelry store that was now being boarded up, they watched two carpenters nail plywood over the broken window and broken glass door. Dulcie watched Kit sniffing along the sidewalk and around the carpenters’ feet, her ears sharply forward, her body suddenly tense.

“What?” Dulcie whispered.

Kit turned to Dulcie, phleming and hissing. “Cats. Other cats,” she said quietly.

“So? There are cats all over the village.Whatcats? Whatisthe matter?” Of course there were cats-housecats, shop cats, even an occasional tourist’s cat on a leash like a confused standin for a toy poodle. “What is it, Kit?”

Kit looked at her strangely.

“What?” Dulcie repeated.

“I� I don’t know,” Kit said uncertainly. She nudged against Dulcie, quiet and still. “It’s gone now,” she said. “Now all I can smell is raw plywood.” Lashing her fluffy tail, she leaped away across the empty street, and into the jasmine vine that led up to her own terrace.

Suddenly Kit wanted her warm bed, she wanted her own human family and safety.

Dulcie heard her race across the terrace above and into the apartment. What had Kit smelled back there? What kind of cat would so upset her? She didn’t know whether she should follow Kit or go to Joe.

But if something bad had happened to Rube, Joe and Clyde would be comforting each other. Maybe this was a time just for family.

Slowly and sadly, certain in her little cat soul about what had happened, she made her way up the jasmine vine, to the Greenlaws’ terrace. She wished Wilma were home, out of the hospital.

Lucinda had left a light on for them. Dulcie heard, from the bedroom, the old lady’s slow, even breathing and Pedric’s faint snores. The Greenlaws were, after all, in their eighties; and it had been a busy night.

She found Kit in the kitchen, lapping up a lovely custard. Kit had, in a rare fit of generosity, left Dulcie’s custard untouched. Kit looked up with custard smeared on her whiskers, and yawned; both cats yawned.

Dulcie ate her custard slowly, thinking about Joe and about Rube; then she curled up on the couch, watching Kit trot away to the bedroom. Tomorrow, she thought. Tomorrow morning early I’ll find out what happened to Rube. Though I really don’t want to know.

Tomorrow! Oh, tomorrow Wilma will be home. And at once, her spirits lifted. No matter that Wilma had said the operation was routine and simple, she had been very worried. No operation was without pain and without risk. Dulcie wanted Wilma home again, home and safe.

She guessed she wanted, too, to be spoiled a little; to snuggle close at night as they shared the pages of a favorite book. The two of them would be up at Charlie’s tomorrow night, and Charlie would spoil them both just as she would spoil Kit. At Charlie’s house, Kit would tell more of her tales for Charlie to write down, and Wilma could be cosseted and cared for even if she said she didn’t need that. In Dulcie’s opinion, a little spoiling never hurt anyone. Ask a cat, spoiling was what made the rest of life worthwhile.

And maybe tomorrow Charlie would tell them what had happened on the pack trip. Tell them what she had left out of her story, over dinner at Lupe’s Playa-what she hadnottold everyone else, about the dead cyclist. Tell them what had caused the nervous twitch of her hands under the table, and her evasive glance. Maybe tomorrow, after Captain Harper had gone off to work, they would learn Charlie’s secret.

12 [��������: pic_13.jpg]

Joe had dreaded going home. He felt in every bone that old Rube was gone. Leaving Dulcie and Kit stealthily gathering information within the offices of Molena Point PD, he scrambled up to the rooftops, worried by Clyde’s call, heading home fast and feeling heavy as lead; he was already mourning for his old pal, was sure that Rube was gone or close to it. There was no other reason Clyde would have called the station asking for him. He needed to be with Clyde, needed to comfort him and to be comforted.

He’d known Rube since he himself was a kitten, when Rube was a young, strong dog. When Joe was half grown and feisty, it was Rube who had mothered him. Already mourning Rube, Joe felt like half of him had dropped away into an empty abyss; life would be very strange, with Rube gone.

Dulcie had read something to him once, in the library late at night as he lounged on a table among the books she had dragged off the shelves, something about part of your life suddenly breaking away, sliding away, forever gone. Even then, the words had stirred a huge emptiness in him. He was filled with that same dropping feeling now as he raced over the rooftops toward home.

The thin moon and stars were hidden, the sky gone dark and dense with clouds, and the sea wind blew harsher, too, and more cruel. Jumping wearily across the last chasm from an overhanging cypress branch to the rooftops of his own block, Joe glanced down automatically at Chichi Barbi’s small front yard.

There were lights reflected there, no light from the living room window and no flickering from the TV The house beneath him was silent, and when he looked around the side, down the drive, no light reflected from her bedroom. Making one last mournful jump from Chichi’s roof to his own, landing heavily on the fresh cedar shingles, Joe padded into his cat tower dreading what lay ahead.

“Joe?” Clyde spoke from the study just below him. Joe studied the flicker of firelight that reflected through his plastic cat door, sniffed the nose-twitching scent of burning oak logs, and pushed through under the plastic flap flinching as it slid down his spine. Padding out along the rafter, he dropped down to the desk, trying hard not to scatter Clyde’s papers.

Clyde sat in the leather chair holding Snowball, stroking and cuddling her. They were alone. He had not carried the invalid dog upstairs. Joe thought Clyde would not have left Rube downstairs alone.

Clyde looked up at him, and there was no need to explain.

“I brought his body home,” Clyde said sadly. “So the cats could see him, so maybe they’d know and understand. He’s downstairs, tucked up on the loveseat on the back porch, as if� so they can see him there.”

Joe nodded. If animal companions were not allowed to see the dead one when he passed, their grieving was far worse; they never understood where their friend had gone. The finality of death was, for an animal, far kinder than thinking a loved one had simply gone away, far less stressful than waiting for the rest of their own lives for that pet or human to return.

“I wrapped him in his blanket. I’ll take him in the morning, to be cremated.”

Again, Joe nodded. They would bury Rube’s ashes beside old Barney’s ashes, at the foot of the high patio wall beneath the yellow rosebush. There was room there for all the animals. Room for me someday, Joe thought, and felt his paws go cold. Leaping from the desk to the arm of Clyde’s chair, Joe rubbed his whiskers against Clyde’s cheek, then crawled into Clyde’s lap and curled down beside Snowball. And for a while he was only cat, safe in Clyde’s arms, at one with Snowball and with Clyde in the pain of their grieving.

Only after a very long time, when the fire had burned to ashes and the moon had come out again gleaming down through the skylight, did Clyde get up and warm some milk for all four cats, and break up bits of cornbread into the bowls, a special treat they all enjoyed. He waited at the kitchen table while the cats ate, then settled the two older cats cozily among the blankets in their bunk. He made himself a rum toddy. Carrying Snowball and his toddy, he headed upstairs behind Joe, and the three of them tucked up in bed.

But as Snowball slept in Clyde’s arms huffing softly, all worn out, and Joe’s eyes drooped and jerked open, Clyde insisted on hashing over Rube and Barney’s puppyhood in a maudlin display of memories that Joe found more than painful. Clyde reminisced about how he would take the young dogs to the beach to chase sticks in the ocean, how he judged his girlfriends by how they related to the two dogs. On and on, trying to get rid of the pain. The red numbers on the bedside clock flipped ahead steadily toward morning. It was after four when Clyde finally drifted off. Exhausted, Joe curled down deeper in the blankets, but he couldn’t sleep. All the joyful and irritating and funny memories of Rube crowded in to nearly smother him. Long after Clyde was snoring, Joe lay atop the pillow wide awake, his teeming thoughts too busy to settle.

He tried to pull his mind from Rube, to examine again the jewelry store scenario, to see Chichi all dressed in black slipping into her dark house carrying that small black bag, hiding something important, while a dressed-up kitchen broom sat in her easy chair watching sitcoms. Thinking about anything was better than lying there wide awake, thinking about Rube.

Right now, was Chichi asleep over there? How deeply did the woman sleep? Frantic for distraction, Joe rose and leaped off the bed.

What was the best way inside?

He considered the tried-and-true methods: check all the windows; if he couldn’t claw one open, then try a roof vent and go in through the attic.

Except that moving those plywood doors that opened from an attic could get noisy, and they were heavy as hell. Most weren’t even hinged, and you had to lift them away Usually, Dulcie was there to lend some muscle.

But who knew, maybe Chichi had left a window unlocked and he could claw right on through the screen. Worth a try. He wasn’t doing himself any good lying there fretting, listening to Clyde and Snowball snore.

Trotting across the little Persian rug into Clyde’s study, he leaped to the desk, so preoccupied he sent the stapler clattering to the floor. Cursing his clumsiness, he sprang to the rafter and pushed out through his cat door.

Scorching across the shingles to Chichi’s roof, he backed down the jasmine vine and dropped to the scruffy yard. First thing, he tried the front door just to make sure, swinging like a monkey with his paws locked around the knob. When the knob turned, he kicked hard with both hind paws.

But it was bolted, all right. The door didn’t budge. Well, what did he expect? Trotting around the side of the house he peered up at the evenly spaced roof vents.

They all looked pretty solid, as if they were not only nailed but sealed with several generations of paint. Circling the house, he pawed at the eight underhouse vents, shaking them as hard as he could. All were screwed down tight. His nose was filled with the damp smell of earth and moldy wood, and of the dusty old bushes that pressed around him.

Making his way around to the door of Chichi’s bedroom, he swung on that knob, kicking vigorously while trying to make no noise. Of course it was locked. But hey! From the power of her sleeping scent, and the tiny sounds of her slow, even breathing that came from the far window beyond the door, he knew that window had to be open.

Leaping up onto the narrow sill, Joe smiled. She had locked the window open six inches, a space no human burglar could breach. Pressing his nose to the screen, he looked in sideways at the bolt that locked the sliding glass in place. Lifting a paw, claws rigidly extended, he ripped down the old, rusty screen wincing at the dry scraping sensation as it gave way under his pad. The long, jagged tear jerked and caught at his paw, then at his fur as he slipped through.

The room smelled of dust and of Chichi, that distinctive sleeping-woman smell, as rich as baking bread. In the dim room, Chichi lay curled up around her pillow. She slept naked, with the covers thrown back, even on this chill night. She was tan all over, no strap or bikini marks. Maybe a salon tan. Or maybe sunbathing on her San Francisco rooftop? When he and Clyde lived in the city, Clyde always hurried home on sunny days, to enjoy the view from their apartment window.

Stepping down onto the dresser among a mass of bristly hair curlers, loose change, and wadded tissues, he reached down a paw, to pry gently at the top dresser drawer. Not likely she’d hide anything of value in the first place a burglar would look, but you never knew. Silently he slid the drawer open.

A jumble of panties and panty hose, a box of tampons, an open box of Hershey bars with almonds. He pawed underneath the clutter but found nothing of interest. Dropping down to the carpet he reared up to close the drawer, then clawed open the next two. His search netted him a pile of folded Tshirts, more panty hose, a lacy slip, balled-up socks. No little black bag, no package, mysterious or otherwise. No precious jewels tucked beneath her lingerie. No faintest scent of metal, no hint that such items had been there and had been moved. The drawers smelled only of old, sour wood, of Chichi’s sweet perfume, and of Hershey’s chocolate.

Making quick work of the lowest drawer, rummaging between and under half a dozen folded sweatshirts, he checked the undersides of all the drawers, then squirmed inside the dresser itself, to paw around behind the drawers. Maybe the jewelry was taped inside the back.

He found nothing but dust. He was growing edgy. He crawled beneath the dresser to look up under the bottom.

Again, nothing. He tackled the rest of the room, the cushions, the underside of the upholstered chair, the undersides of two straight chairs, the small drawers in the little dressing table, and, carefully, the night table, working not a foot from Chichi’s face. She slept on. The deep sleep of innocence? Or of someone without conscience? Stopping to scratch his shoulder with a hind paw, he had turned toward the closet when suddenly she came awake. He had his back to her when he heard a movement of the sheet, a tiny hushing that jerked him around, wanting to run.

She was sitting up in bed, the sheet pulled tight around her. She stared down at him, frowning. She looked at the torn screen, then looked again at Joe. In her eyes he saw fear and rising anger. He was starting to pant, he had to get out of there. He was crouched to leap to the dresser, but then thought better of that. Instead, he smiled up at her.

“Meow?” he said weakly, trying to look cute. “Meow?” He tried hard not to glance toward the window. It took all his willpower to roll over on the rug giving her the round-eyed innocent-kitty look. He purred as loud as he could manage, given the way his heart was thundering. Something about Chichi scared him, scared him bad. He had the feeling that this woman would grab him, that she didn’t like nor trust cats-that Chichi Barbi could hurt a little cat.

Her hands looked strong. Long, capable fingers. Lean, well-muscled arms. Chichi Barbi was, Joe thought, not all curves and bleached hair and girlie giggles.

He wondered if hecould makeit to the top of the dresser and out before she swung out of bed. Somehow, he was afraid to try, that might really set her off. Instead, he continued his rolling-over, inane-purring routine.

“Hi, kitty, kitty. Nice kitty.” Chichi threw back the covers and approached him, half crouching, her hand out as if to stroke him. Or to grab him. He didn’t relish being attacked by a naked woman. She looked far too predatory, too intent. Staring into her eyes, Joe lost it. Filled with terror, he bolted to the dresser, sliding on the jumble of loose change, and flew through the screen snagging his fur, its metal fingers snatching him.

But he was out of there. Out. Free. Leaping to the grass and scorching away through the graying early shadows, his heart banging like kettledrums. Beating it for his own front porch; he crouched before his cat door, shivering and looking back, he half expected her to come racing around the corner chasing him. Above the rooftops dawn had turned the sky the color of faded asphalt. What was wrong with the woman? Why was he so afraid of her? Why was she so intent on grabbing him? Particularly when, during past encounters as she passed him in the yard or came to Clyde’s door, she had avoided him as if she did not want to be near a cat-not at all like she’d been in San Francisco.

But that didn’t necessarily make her a cat abuser, that didn’t mean she would hurt a little cat. Did it?

Watching her house, he could see no bright reflection on the grass or in the branches of the pine tree as if a light had come on inside. He heard no stealthy sounds, no creaking floors, no stirring at the windows.

Maybe he should have stayed, kept on playing friendly kitty. Maybe he’d only imagined her cruel intent. Maybe she would have knelt on the carpet petting him and baby-talking him, even offering him a midnight snack. If he’d made friends with her, gotten cozy, he could have tossed her place at his leisure. Could have pretended he was bored living at Clyde’s house, started hanging out at Chichi’s. He would soon have the run of the place, have her leaving the window open so he could come and go at his pleasure.

And why not? Dulcie had once played lost, starving kitty for over a week. Moved right in with a murder suspect and come away with information that nailed the killer.

But Joe shivered, remembering the look in Chichi Barbi’s eyes, and he knew he couldn’t have done that. That woman put a cat off, big time. Even Dulcie would hesitate to play easy with Chichi Barbi.

Yet no matter his fear, no matter how he distrusted her, Joe fully intended to find out what she had stashed in that black silk bag.

13 [��������: pic_14.jpg]

The big family kitchen of the Harper ranch smelled of freshly baked shortbread and fresh coffee, and of homemade custard for Wilma. She sat at the round kitchen table in her best tartan robe and new slippers, having come straight from the hospital where Lucinda and Pedric had picked her up. They had brought Dulcie to be with her, and brought Kit so she could continue telling Charlie her story. On the window seat Dulcie lay curled among the quilted pillows. But Kit sat straight and alert, her fluffy tail twitching. She was very much onstage and she had a most attentive audience as she told about her early life running with the wild band. At the table, Charlie was writing it all down.

Writing a book aboutme,Kit thought with excitement. And she’s making the pictures, too. Pictures ofme!\Charlie had already collaborated-that was a new word for Kit-on a big, thick novel, so Kit guessed she knew how to write a book by herself, and she even had an agent who said it wasn’t wise to make pictures for your own story except if you were a real artist, which Charlie was, so that was all right.

This story wouldn’t have anything about how Kit could speak or was in any way different from other cats. Nothing about how the wild band was different, just a wonderful story about the adventures of a band of feral cats and an orphan kitten that they didn’t want, that no one wanted but who tagged along with them because she had nowhere else to go.

“I was always hungry,” Kit said, “and we were always moving on and on. I ate the scraps from the garbage cans, if they left any. They stole other cats’ food from yards and porches but they never left any for me. The best place we ever came to was all among the green hills where there were rabbits under the bushes and in the little hollows and the big cats could catch them. I tried but I couldn’t, they were too big and fast and the big cats didn’t want to teach me to hunt, no one wanted to teach me like a mother cat would. My mother was dead. On the hills sometimes the coyotes came hunting us but there were oak trees to go up, and once I found a bird nest in the branches and I ate the baby birds but the big birds flapped their wings at me and swooped and pushed me out of the tree and I fell.” The kit sighed. “I wanted to stay on the green hills but the others moved on, no one cared what I wanted, I was only a dumb kitten and I was scared to go off on my own.”

Sometimes Kit felt shy telling her own story out loud, but she was excited, too. The same kind of excitement she’d felt when she’d sneaked onstage that time when Cora Lee was playing the lead in little theater and the whole audience watchedher,Kit, the whole theater was still and she and Cora Lee did the whole scene together with Cora Lee singing, and they were stars that night, stars together for the whole play.Thorns of Goldran for weeks and weeks andherpicture was in the paper right there with Cora Lee, and Wilma and Clyde wanted to take her away and hide her and hide Joe and Dulcie too before anyone figured out that they were more than ordinary cats, but then Wilma thought of a way to make it all right, to make her, Kit, seem like just a trained cat that didn’t talk but just had learned to do tricks.

Now telling her story she felt like she had felt on that stage in the bright lights; and her human friends listened and sipped their coffee and Dulcie purred. “When summer got real hot,” Kit told them, “there was no more water in the hills and the grass turned all brown and more coyotes came real hungry all hunting us. We moved on then and I got so tired and so hot and hungry and thirsty. When I thought I couldn’t go another step we came to a city with garbage in the alleys falling out of big metal cans and thrown away wrappers with bits of pizza and hot dogs still in them and the leaders ate and ate but they would never share. There were some empty houses with boarded-up basements, too, that we could get in when boys chased us or it rained, but once two boys shot at us with a gun and we ran and ran into a canyon and never went back there except to sneak food and run again. Arroyo Secco the canyon was called and it had bamboo jungles and broken concrete water pipes to hide in and we livedtherea long time and came up among the houses at night to get food and to drink from the puddles where people watered their lawns. I was getting bigger and I learned to fight for something to eat but once I got bit and clawed real bad and that hurt for a long time so I could hardly walk.”

Kit stopped for breath and for Charlie to catch up. Charlie was writing as fast as she could. When Kit looked out through the wide window, Ryan Flannery’s big Weimaraner, Rock, looked in at her wagging his short tail. Beyond him across the grassy side yard, Ryan knelt on the roof of the stable tearing off the shingles, getting ready to raise up the roof the way she did on Clyde’s house. Ryan would jack the roof’s two sides right up to make new walls for a second floor. Kit thought that was amazing, what humans could do-what they would think of to do.

Ryan’s uncle Scotty and her other carpenters would help her lift the two halves of the roof and nail them in place and then, like magic, they would put on a new roof, way high up, and there would be a whole new room up there, a big guest room right over the stable.

But right now there was just a lot of screeingandscritchingas Ryan pulled out nails, andchunkingsounds as she tossed the shingles down on the bed of her big red pickup.

Kit turned back when Charlie set two bowls of warm milk and a plate of shortbread down on the window seat for her and Dulcie. Everyone kept watching the side yard in case Ryan came down the ladder and headed for the house because Ryan didn’t know that she and Dulcie could talk. They would be silent then like ordinary cats having a nap on the window seat. And they all watched the long drive, too, that came from the main road in case Captain Harper came home unexpectedly because he didn’t know, either. How complicated life could be. Kit looked up at Charlie.

“What happened, Charlie, up on the hills? That you couldn’t tell when we all had Mexican dinner?” Though she thought she already knew. She thought she knew very well what had made those scratches on the dead man’s throat and sent him careening over the cliff to die crumpled under his heavy motorcycle.

Charlie looked at Kit a long time, and sipped her coffee. “I think your wild band has returned, Kit.”

Kit shivered again and licked milk from her whiskers. When her wild clowder came there before to Hellhag Hill when she was little, that was when she saw Lucinda and Pedric there having a picnic and the Greenlaws knew right away that she was not an ordinary cat. They had shared their picnic with her and told her stories of her ancestors and she loved them right away, they belonged to one another right away and she left the wild band for this new life with the most wonderful people in the world. Now she looked at Lucinda and Pedric and purred and purred and they looked back at her all warm and happy. But even though she was safe with them, when she thought of the wild band so near, she trembled. Why would they come back? Why had they come here?

Oh, they couldn’t wanther}Why would they wanther?They’d been happy to be rid of her.

But Charlie was telling how she’d freed the big tomcat from the trap, and when Charlie described him, Kit felt cold and scared. “That was Stone Eye,” Kit whispered. “That big gray-and-brown tom with eyes the color of rust. He runs everything. He bosses everyone. He always slashed and bit me. He did worse to the older female kittens.” Thinking about Stone Eye, Kit wanted to crawl under the pillows into the dark where nothing would find her, but of course that was silly. That was how she felt, though. She wished Charlie had left him in that cage.

But Charlie would never do that. And when Charlie said she thought maybe other cats had been trapped and taken away prisoner, Kit remembered something scary, and she hunched down deeper next to Dulcie.

“What, Kit?” Dulcie and Lucinda said together. Lucinda rose and came to sit on the window seat beside her and to stroke her. “What is it?” the thin old lady said. “What did you remember?” Lucinda always knew how she felt.

“There was a man,” Kit said. “In one town, when I was little, watching us when we were eating garbage in an alley. He watched us from the back door of a shoe shop and he had canned baked beans maybe for his lunches and every day he put out some beans for us and the hungriest of us sneaked up after dark and ate but always the man was there behind the screen watching and watching us. Stone Eye told us not to go there, and drove us away. He said we had to go away from that city but we went back anyway one more time the next day and there were other men there too and they put out those big traps for us with food in, humane traps they’re called but we knew what they were and we left those streets. We stayed in the ravine and didn’t ever go back there again.”

Kit sighed. “There were three ordinary cats that traveled with us that couldn’t talk but felt safe in the big clowder and they went back, they went in the traps every day and ate the food. Stone Eye didn’t drivethemaway. When they got caught, he said what did it matter? When those men took the bungies off and the ordinary cats got caught, Stone Eye laughed and said they were just stupid beasts, but some of us�”

She paused to peer through the window toward the main road, where a car had turned into the drive, moving way too fast toward the house. Charlie rose angrily and hurried to the door, and ran out to tell the driver to slow down. Pedric got up and stood at the kitchen window, looking out.

“A black Alpha Romeo,” he said crossly. “Damn fool.” They watched the car skid to a stop right in Charlie’s face, and the driver’s door opened.

Kit could hear Charlie through the closed window, but Pedric slid the glass open so he could hear. “You don’t drive like that on my property!” Charlie snapped. “What do you want?”

The driver was dark-haired and handsome. He stepped boldly out of the car. “Your property? I thought this was Chief Harper’s property.”

“I am Mrs. Harper. What do you want?”

He looked past her to the stable roof, where Ryan had paused in her work, kneeling on the roof. “It’s really none of your business. I came to see Ryan.”

“Everything on my property is my business.” Charlie looked at his license plate. “Go on over there if you have business with Ms. Flannery. When you leave you will drive slowly.” Kit and Dulcie smiled. Everyone said redheads had a temper. The man looked amused. Charlie’s eyes flashed as he turned away. In the kitchen, Pedric glared as if he wanted to barge out and protect Charlie. Kit thought that wasn’t smart at his eighty-plus frail years. Dulcie’s ears were back and her tail lashed. Kit was fascinated, her nose pressed to the glass, watching.

The man was tall and indeed very handsome, with a smooth, angled face and short, well-styled black hair that, Lucinda would say, had been artfully blow-dried. He wore a pale tan shirt, powder blue tie, and a beautiful cream-colored suit. His sleek loafers looked like the handmade Italian shoes that Pedric liked to admire in the most elegant village shops. Beautiful shoes that were dulled now with dust from the yard. He approached the stables, smiling up at Ryan, but stopped abruptly when Rock burst out of the shadows growling, moving toward him stiff-legged.

Beyond the Weimaraner at the pasture fence the Harpers’ two big dogs stood with ears flattened and lips drawn back in twin snarls. Ryan shouted at Rock from the roof, and swung on to the ladder; the silver hound backed off a step, his head lowered, teeth still bared.

Charlie had returned to the kitchen; she came to the window seat where she could watch, and she had her cell phone open. Kit thought, from the bulge in her pocket, that she might have additional protection, too.

Ryan came down the ladder, scowling. “What do you want, Roman?” Rock approached the man stiff-legged, snarling-but then the dog paused, sniffing. He glanced up at his mistress uncertainly, sniffed again at the man, and his short, docked tail began to wag.

The stranger smiled wryly, and knelt in the dust, knelt right down, facing Rock, and began talking to him, making little lovey sounds, kissy-baby sounds to the big Weimaraner. Kit and Dulcie watched Rock, amazed. The big dog had gone totally mushy, smiling and wagging and pushing right up to the man. Dulcie was so irritated she was shifting from paw to paw, growling-as if she’d like to race out there and tackle the man herself-and give Rock a whack on the nose. Pedric and the three women watched the scene, unbelieving.

Ryan took in the scene without expression and commanded Rock to heel. The cats knew she would deal with Rock later, in a little training session. Her voice was cold and clipped.

“What do youwant,Roman?”

“It’s Sunday, Ryan. I’m amazed to see you working on Sunday.”

“Why would you come here? I didn’t ask you here.”

“I came by to see if you’d have dinner with me. For old times’ sake?”

“There are no old times. I told you in the city I don’t have the time or patience for you. Nor the inclination. I am involved, Roman. Do you understand that? Do I need to spell that out?”

In the kitchen, the little party glanced at each other. Too bad Ryan’s lovely big bodyguard had suckered up to the man. No one could understand what was wrong with Rock; this was not his way, Rock was fierce as tigers when it came to Ryan. Dulcie and Kit looked at each other wishing, not for the first time, that the big, beautiful, intelligent hound could speak, that Rock could tell them what was going through that incomprehensible doggy mind.

14 [��������: pic_15.jpg]

Clyde liked to fix a big Sunday breakfast for himself and Joe and the household animals, preparing special, vet-approved treats for Rube and the three cats, who could not eat the exotic foods on which Joe Grey thrived. This morning he cooked, but his heart wasn’t in it. Rube was not in his usual place on the throw rug before the kitchen sink, drooling as he waited; he would never be there again.

Sitting on the breakfast table in the middle of the Sunday paper, Joe looked sadly at Rube’s empty place on the rug, which the cats had left between them. Despite Clyde’s presence at the stove and the good smell of scrambled eggs and bacon and sauteed chicken livers, everything in the kitchen seemed flat and off-key. Joe felt so low that he hadn’t even clawed the funnies and front page to enliven Clyde’s morning.

He looked at Clyde hopefully. “Will Ryan be coming for breakfast?” Ryan could always cheer them up.

“You can see I only set two plates,” Clyde snapped. “She’s working up at Harper’s, getting the barn roof ready to lift.” Joe looked at Clyde and shrugged. He looked at the nicely prepared breakfast plate that Clyde set before him, the bacon artfully arranged between the scrambled eggs and the golden chicken livers. Clyde had even grated cheese on his eggs, a nice morning start with plenty of comforting cholesterol.

But he didn’t feel like eating.

Setting his own plate on the table, Clyde put the cats’ dishes aside to cool, then set them down on the rug. The cats looked up at him, then the two older cats turned away, headed back into the laundry, and crawled up into Rube’s lower bunk. Snowball just sat, hunched and miserable.

“He’s out of pain,” Clyde said. “You wouldn’t have kept him here when he was so tired out. When he looked at you, he was all but saying he was ready.”

Joe nodded. “I know. I know he’s better off. But they don’t understand. We all miss him.”

Clyde looked hard at Joe. “You’re down about more than Rube, too.” He looked into Joe’s eyes. “When you went out early, I thought� What happened? You’re ready to claw the world apart.”

Joe didn’t usually share with Clyde the early stages of an investigation. Clyde could be so judgmental. And talk about worry, talk about overprotective. But this morning�

“That woman�“Joe began.

“What woman? What woman would you see before daylight, before� Chichi? What?” Clyde set down his coffee cup. “What did she do to you?

“Or what did you do to her? What have you done, now?”

Thatwas the reason he didn’t share crime investigations with his housemate. “Eat your breakfast,” Joe said. “Then we’ll talk.”

Clyde reached into his shirt pocket and produced a slip of paper. “Message,” he said. “Almost forgot. You had a message.”

He said this with that bemused expression that drove Joe up the wall. Joe waited, trying to be patient.

“Lucinda called. Early, before they picked up Wilma at the hospital and headed for Charlie’s.” Clyde glanced at the scrap of paper. “These are Lucinda’s exact words, exactly as Dulcie told her. ‘The prints haven’t come in yet, on either man. Harper and Garza both think the high school was a diversion.’”

Clyde sat looking at Joe. “You want to fill me in? I heard the sirens last night, I saw the fire, but I� my mind was on Rube.”

“It’s part of what I have to tell you,” Joe said. “Eat your breakfast.” He knew he’d have to give Clyde the whole story. The minute Clyde picked up the paper he’d see it-the high school fire and the jewelry store burglary were smeared all over the front page. Pawing at the front section, Joe turned it around and shoved it over in front of Clyde: color pictures of the broken store window and showcases; and spectacular, bright flames licking up from the high school.

“Read it,” Joe said. “Then I’ll tell you about Chichi.”

Clyde glanced at the headlines then quickly skimmed the articles, giving Joe an incredulous look. “You’re telling me Chichi was part of this? Come on, Joe. The woman might be�”

Joe licked cheese from his whiskers. “She might be what? Only a small-time thief because she only stole five hundred bucks from you? She wouldn’t do anything worse?” He sat looking at Clyde, one paw lifted. “Some people will just steal a little, but not a lot? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Well she didn’t exactly steal the money from me, she�”

Joe stared, silent and unblinking.

“Well,” Clyde said. “Well� maybe she stole it.” He returned his attention to the front page. Joe returned to his breakfast. Clyde could be annoyingly argumentative and opinionated, but if properly directed he usually managed, after a little time, to face facts and be reasonable.

�So,� Dulcie said when Ryan’s visitor had gone, spinning out of the yard in his black Alpha Romeo, leaving a cyclone of dust clouding the kitchen windows. “What did he want? Who is he? Why did he come here and force himself on Ryan?”

Charlie shrugged. “Roman Slayter. Ryan and her husband knew him in San Francisco before their marriage broke up; their construction firm did some work for him. Remember what she said at Lupe’s that night? She thinks he’d like to get his hands on her money from the sale of the firm.”

Dulcie rolled over among the cushions, her peach-tinted paws waving idly in the air, her dark, ringed tail lashing. “Or maybe he wants something even more than money?”

“Like what?” Charlie said, coming to sit on the window seat beside the two cats.

“I don’t know,” Dulcie said uneasily. Beyond them, out the window, all that was left of the Alpha Romeo was a long snake of dust hanging over the yard like a murky jet trail. “That man’s up to no good,” the tabby said. “He gives me the twitches. I can’t believe Rock would make up to him like that! Rock’s only a simple dog, but�”

Charlie wanted to tell Dulcie that sometimes she imagined too much, let her imagination run wild; but Dulcie’s speculations, and those of Joe and Kit, were too often on target, their perceptions about humans as keen as the instincts of a seasoned detective.

“She told me this morning,” Charlie said, “that he called her last night, she’d hardly gotten in the door after dinner. Insisted she go out for a drink, was really pushy.” Charlie grinned. “She hung up on him.

“When Ryan was in the city, when Slayter showed up at the construction office� Well, she says Slayter can smell money like a bloodhound.” She glanced at the phone pad where she’d written his license number; and they watched Ryan storm back up the ladder, scowling.

“Ryan says he worked in real estate for a while, but she thinks he was into a lot of things, most of them shady, including some questionable stints as a private investigator of sorts, probably unlicensed.

“I guess, though, the men he represented in the real estate ventures paid their bills, if the firm kept building for them.” Charlie shrugged. “If I know Ryan, he’d play hell getting any of her money.” She looked at Wilma. “Are you getting tired, ready to tuck up in bed for a while?”

Wilma laughed. “I don’t need to be in bed, I won’t heal lying in bed, I need to walk.” Refusing more coffee, she rose, her long silver hair bright beneath the glow of the soft overhead lights. Charlie and her aunt looked a lot alike, with their lean, angled faces and tall, lean figures. Only their coloring was different: Charlie’s red hair vivid against Wilma’s pale silver mane. Wilma had wrinkles instead of freckles, and her eyes were dark where Charlie’s were green; but their comfortable, reassuring smiles were the same.

Though Wilma’s career had been in federal probation, her master’s was in library science. She had, just out of college and before she went with the federal courts, worked two years in state probation. During that time she’d gotten her master’s degree, taking courses at night. Her plan, which she had made early in her life, had been to fall back on her library degree when she was forced to retire from probation work, a retirement that then had been mandatory at fifty-five. “Way too young,” Wilma had told Clyde, “too young to stop working.”

Ever since Dulcie came to live with Wilma as a kitten, Wilma had worked in the library, and Dulcie was glad of that; the little cat had had wonderful adventures among that wealth of books, to which she would otherwise never have had such easy access.

Wilma and Clyde had been friends since he was eight, when she was his neighbor; she had been his first love, Dulcie knew. A beautiful blond graduate student. Now, Wilma was the only family Clyde had left, Dulcie thought sadly.

Wilma had her niece, Charlie. But of course Wilma and Charlie and Max, Clyde, and Dallas and Ryan and Hanni, had one another, so close that they were like family.

Dulcie glanced out to the back patio where Wilma, walking briskly in her robe, knew she would not be seen from the front drive. At the moment Dulcie was more interested in the yard by the stable, where Roman Slayter had stood harassing Ryan.

Slipping out, the two cats wandered the yard where Slayter had walked, picking up a distinctive medley of shoe polish and musky aftershave that masked subtler scents. But then both cats caught a whiff that made them laugh.

Somewhere, on his shoes, Roman Slayter had picked up the scent of female dog, female in heat.

That was what Rock had been making up to! Dulcie looked at Kit and smirked. What a timely accident�

Or was it an accident?

Dulcie sat down, staring at the dirt beneath her paws.

Had Slayter acquired that scent on his shoes on purpose? Though the aroma was partially destroyed by shoe polish, it had certainly been strong enough to charm the young Weimaraner.

But now Rock, having found no lady dog to go with the distinctive message, lay in the sun, watching Ryan tear off shingles. Approaching him, Dulcie sniffed noses with him in a friendly way and lay down beside him. She so wished he could tell them what had gone through his thoughts when he’d snarled at Roman Slayter. As Kit uselessly chased a bird, Dulcie lay considering the accumulated puzzles of the last twenty-four hours: The jewelry store robbery, the high school fires, the dead cyclist, the return of the feral cats and their capture.

She thought how deeply afraid Kit was of that wild band, and how cruel they had been to her. Kit still had scars under her fur from their teeth and claws. In the car this morning, while Lucinda and Pedric went into the hospital to get Wilma, Kit had sat silent and worrying. “They haven’t come back looking for me,” she had said. “They wouldn’t want me, Dulcie! Why would they?”

“They wouldn’t want you, Kit. They didn’t want you before, when you ran with them!” But Dulcie wondered.

Would the leader want to prevent any speaking cat from being out in the world, a cat that might give them away, might let someone know their secret?

She didn’t want to consider such matters. Why would they wait until now? Kit had been in Molena Point for nearly two years. Dulcie tried to force her thoughts back to the fire at the high school, and the broken store windows. But it was hard not to worry and not to be frightened for the kit.

She made herself think about what they had learned at the PD, trying to tie the scattered facts together. Except that nothing wanted to go together. Too many pieces were still missing, so nothing made much sense. And it was not until that evening when the chief got home that they learned any more about the investigation-or, for that matter, about the feral cats.

15 [��������: pic_16.jpg]

The wind off the sea had calmed. Beneath the dropping sun, the water gleamed with an iridescent sheen; the Harpers’ stone terrace and the green pastures beyond were stained with golden light. The cool air smelled of burning hickory chips and spicy sauce. Charlie stood at the barbecue, turning racks of ribs on the grill, their sweet-vinegar aroma prompting the two cats’ noses to twitch and their pink tongues to tip out.

On the chaise Wilma sat tucked under a blanket, sipping a weak bourbon and water, possibly against doctor’s orders. She could see Ryan through the kitchen window, tossing a salad and gathering silverware and plates onto a tray, and assembling Wilma’s own supper. She’d be glad when she could eat more solid food. Well, it wouldn’t be long. In Wilma’s lap, Dulcie reared up as Max’s truck turned onto the drive. Behind it Clyde’s yellow roadster appeared, coming over the crest, its top down. Joe was standing up on the passenger seat of the Model A, his white paws on the dash, the white strip down his nose bright in the evening glow.

As Clyde parked by the house, Dallas’s car turned in behind them. The scent of exhaust from the vehicles battled with the good barbecue aroma. As the cars killed their engines, the kit woke blearily, tangled in the blanket at Wilma’s feet. She looked around her, fighting her way out of the folds, and her first thought was of disappointment that Lucinda and Pedric had not stayed for supper.

The older couple meant to look at four houses the next day. Lucinda said, at eightysome, one tired more easily. Kit did not like to think about them tiring, could not bear to think about them growing older. She wanted to be with them all the time, but she just couldn’t stand the house hunting. All those strange unfamiliar spaces with unfamiliar smells, where other people and animals lived. House after house after house, with the Realtor going on about the new roof and the hot-water heater. Who cared? Realtors had no notion of the important things-a nice tangled garden with sprawling oak trees to climb, plenty of deep windows with wide sills to lie on, a clean thick carpet to roll on and maybe a few hardwood floors for sliding. A nice warm fireplace and tall bookcases to sleep on, and a comfortable rooftop with a wide view down onto the village. Was that too much for a little cat to ask?

Lucinda and Pedric knew what kind of house she liked. And of course it should not be too far from Joe’s and Dulcie’s houses. Lucky they wanted much the same-except for the climbing part. Kit longed for them to find the perfect home and for the three of them to be settled in. Though Kit’s true homewasLucinda and Pedric themselves; life with the old couple was the only real home she’d ever known.

Kit watched Max Harper and Clyde come across the patio, talking about hunting dogs. They both bent down and hugged Wilma, and drew chairs close to her chaise. Max said, “About time you got out of the hospital.”

“Two days.” Wilma laughed. “I’m a tough old bird. Is Jane Cameron out yet? I went to see her twice while I was there, she wasn’t far down the hall. She wasn’t sure when they’d release her.”

“She should be out tomorrow,” Max said. “She’ll be tied to a desk for a couple of months, before she can go back on the street. Right now, I could use every officer. She’ll be able to drive, though. And she can fire a weapon just fine.”

Wilma looked a question at him, but said nothing. Across the patio, Dallas turned away into the kitchen to join Ryan and Charlie. Through the glass doors, the cats could see him hugging his niece, then petting and talking to Rock. He said something that made the two women laugh, and in a few moments he came out onto the terrace with Rock trotting beside him, the big Weimaraner pressing close to the squarely built detective. At sight of Joe Grey, Rock barked and bowed and gave the tomcat a lick on the face. Joe grimaced and hissed, but Dulcie knew he liked it. The tomcat, stubbornly extricating himself from the big silver dog, leaped to the arm of Wilma’s chaise and settled near Dulcie, giving them both an inquiring look.

Dulcie looked back at him wide-eyed. So frustrating, that they couldn’t talk in front of Max and Dallas and with Ryan there in the kitchen.

But really, she had nothing to tell him. She and Kit had learned nothing new at the station after Joe left. Now, all three cats waited impatiently for some news. The subject of hunting dogs could get old fast. But it was not until everyone was seated for dinner around the big patio table that Max and Dallas returned to the burglary and the school fires-sharing information unknowingly with their snitches. It was Wilma, glancing at the fidgeting cats, who nudged the conversation.

Setting down her drink, she straightened her robe, looking a bit embarrassed that she had not dressed properly. “Do you have anything yet on the prints from the jewelry store? Or an ID on the men you arrested?”

Max’s leathery face creased into lines of amusement. “One is Dufio Rivas. Does that ring a bell? We have nothing on the other.”

Wilma frowned, pushed back a pale strand of hair. “Does he have brothers? A Luis Rivas? Short, square, heavyset?”

Max nodded.

She said, “There were three brothers. Luis, Dufio, and I didn’t know the third one.”

“Hernando,” Harper said. “Information came in about an hour ago. All three have long rap sheets, mostly around L.A. Petty burglary-small stores, home breakins. Hernando is our John Doe, the body from up the hills.”

“Well,” Wilma said softly. “The murder and the burglary are connected.”

“Dufio, our arrestee, he’s a strange little man. Apparently a total screwup. The bad penny. Amazing, his brothers let him run with them. Apparently, every now and then, they try to dump him. Never seems to last, I guess they feel sorry for him.”

Charlie brought more ribs to the table and sat down again.

“In Indio,” Max said, “Dufio robs a 7-Eleven at gunpoint, red bandana over his face, knit hat and gloves, the whole rig. Gets the cash, runs into the backyard of a nearby house and hides the money in the bushes. So he won’t get caught with it on him, means to come back for it. He hides everything incriminating-bandana, gloves, hat,.357 Magnum, and his jacket, and takes off.

“Cops arrive with a dog, find the stash. Find, in the jacket pocket, Dufio’s property identification card from county jail. Name, photograph, fingerprints, date of birth, jail booking number.”

Everyone smiled. Max took a sip of beer, ate a few bites of his dinner. “Dufio does his time, gets out. Two weeks later he’s waiting in the car with his cell phone while Hernando, a block away, is robbing a small bank. Dufio is supposed to swing around at Hernando’s call, pick him up and take off. He sees this guy come out of a luggage shop, out the back door with one of those canvas cash bags, heading away toward the bank. Dufio decides while Hernando’s grabbing the bank money, he’ll make a second hit.”

Harper took another slice of garlic bread. “This is noon, rainy midweek day. There’s not much foot traffic. In the process of knocking out the luggage-store guy, Dufio drops his phone, messes it up so it doesn’t ring, and misses Hernando’s call.

“Hernando comes careening around the corner with the bank money, mad as hell. The alarm is going in the bank-and Dufio, when he got out of the car� He’d locked their only set of keys inside.”

Chuckles exploded all around; and on the chaise the cats turned their faces away, hiding their own amusement. There was something deeply satisfying about the bad guys screwing up, even the clumsy ones.

Dallas said, “Dufio might be inept, but he has survived. You have to give him that.”

Max nodded. “Just as Luis has. Luis seems always the first to slip away, leave the others on the hot seat. The other two dozen hoods who have run with them at various times are either serving time, or dead.”

Charlie rose to pour the coffee. Wilma said, “I remember two jobs with maybe eight or nine guys, some kind of car insurance scam.”

“They ran that for over a year,” Max said. “Again, around L.A. Did pretty well until they hit on an unmarked car carrying four drug agents. When they tried to maneuver the car in between them, to rear-end it, all hell broke loose. The agents were armed and knew what was coming down and were mad as hornets.

“Now,” Max said, “Luis has likely added new blood. Last job they pulled, in Thousand Oaks, they had five new recruits, and they got away clean. Next job, four of them pose as DEA agents. Two o’clock in the morning, burst into a private residence carrying handguns, a shotgun and a rifle. Said they were searching for drugs, on a tip. Tied up six people, hit one in the face with the shotgun, and broke a woman’s arm. Swept the house, got off with eight thousand dollars in jewelry, couple thousand cash. Used handheld radios to communicate with those outside the house. That’s the most sophisticated job they pulled, that we know of.”

“What do they look like?” Clyde said, glancing only for a split second toward the chaise where Joe lay washing his paws, apparently half asleep after his big supper.

“Luis Rivas is thirty-five,” Max said. “Maybe five-foot-five, hundred and eighty pounds. Broad and heavy-boned. Coarse features, broad nose, fairly dark skin. Hernando was taller, thinner. Dufio is slight, lighter complexion, pale brown eyes. Long hair, bleached blond at the moment.

“Tommie McCord runs with them. Five-ten, hundred and sixty. Red hair-even brighter red than Charlie’s hair,” Max said, grinning. “Wall-to-wall freckles, blue eyes. No idea yet who else might be with them. They have a sister, sometimes travels with them. Maria Rivas. About seventeen. Apparently does their cooking and laundry. She’s never been in trouble, never been arrested even as an accessory. Couple of the reports imply that she thinks she has nowhere else to go, no choice but to run with them, as their maid.”

Immediately after supper, the three cats broke into a wild chase out across the pasture, where they could talk, heading for the tallest spring grass, where only the grazing horses could hear them. Rock didn’t follow them, he’d been scolded too many times for chasing the cats, both by Ryan and by the cats themselves. Rock meant only to play, but a big dog’s playful enthusiasm could get out of hand.

Crouched in a forest of grass, Dulcie and Kit told Joe about the caged cat up in the hills that Charlie had freed. “Charlie thinks Hernando was trapping cats. The cat wouldn’t speak, but clearly he understood her.”

Kit said, “He is the leader of the clowder that I ran with. Stone Eye. He’s mean as snakes. Charlie should have left him to rot.”

Joe looked at her, surprised. Dulcie said, “Question is, did Hernando know whatkindof cats? Charlie thinks he did, and that he’s trapped others.”

“And he died for it,” Kit said darkly.

“If he did trap others,” Joe said, “where are they?” His yellow eyes narrowed. “And does his brother Luis know? Could Luis have them, hidden somewhere?” The tomcat sat considering. “I think I’ve seen Luis and that Tommie McCord, next door in Chichi’s room.”

“Chichi?” Dulcie said.

Joe smiled. “Little Chichi Barbi, sitting in her room with those two hoods, going over a map of the village.”

Dulcie’s and Kit’s eyes widened; they were considering the ramifications of this when Clyde started calling them.

“He’s getting ready to leave,” Dulcie said, rearing up to look over the tops of the tall grass. “Hurry up, Joe. You know how impatient he gets.” Joe was reluctant to head home, but the cats took off for the house. Dulcie and Kit would stay with the Harpers, settling in with Wilma in Charlie’s studio. The minute they hit the patio, Clyde scooped Joe up and headed for his car.

Ryan walked beside them for a moment. “I’ll be by, then, first thing in the morning.”

Clyde nodded, and tossed Joe onto the leather seat. He was silent starting the car, silent heading away up the drive. Then, “The water faucets were delivered. Ryan’s going to install one, to see how it works.”

“To see ifI can work it.” Clyde glanced at him, and shrugged. When Ryan was working on Clyde’s extensive remodel, adding the second-story study and master bedroom, Clyde had asked if she could get faucets that a cat could turn on, but that would turn off by themselves. He’d spent a lot of time explaining how he planned to train Joe and the other three cats to turn the faucets on for a drink of fresh water. “I can train them to turn the water on,” Clyde had explained. “But you can’t expect a cat to turn the water off. A cat doesn’t pay the water bill. He would see no reason to do that.”

“I think you’re crazy,” Ryan said. But she’d searched until she found the proper faucet, in the catalog of a North Carolina specialty shop. She had ordered five.

Joe said, “She coming for breakfast? She does like your ham and cheese scramble.”

Clyde shook his head. “She said she’d have a quick bite somewhere before she picks up Dillon and Lori so they can ride. Lori’s taken really well to that pony.” He glanced at Joe. “It’s a teacher’s day or something, kids’ll be out of school. No wonder kids don’t get an education.”

Joe had his own thoughts about childhood education. But at the moment, his mind was on the Rivas brothers and Tommie McCord, and on that band of feral cats. Had some of those cats been captured? Were there speaking cats somewhere, shut miserably in a cage? And that night, he lay awake worrying about the feral cats. About cats like himself and Dulcie and Kit locked up in cages. Why? What did Luis mean to do with them? Sell them? Force them into some kind of animal act? He didn’t want to consider clearly what those crooks might attempt. The thought of animal prisoners and how they might be treated made him shaky.

But one thing sure. If Luis knew those cats could speak, he wouldn’t hurt them; they were too valuable to be harmed.

And if therewerecaptive cats, and if Chichi knew about them� He sat straight up on the bed. If Chichi knew what those cats were, knew they could speak, had she guessed that he was the same?

Was that why she had looked at him so strangely, the night he “happened to wander” into her bedroom? He sat shivering and terrified, and he did not sleep anymore that night.

16 [��������: pic_17.jpg]

Ryan Flannery loved the dawn. The world seemed cleanest then, before people cluttered it up with roaring engines, exhaust fumes and shouting voices. Waking in her high-ceilinged studio apartment, as the first pale glow touched the white walls and rafters, she gave Rock a good-morning hug and let him out into the fenced backyard. Plugging in the coffeepot, which she had set up the night before, she showered quickly, pulled on jeans and a T-shirt, let Rock in again.

Outside, a gull landed on the railing, peered in through the wide windows, then flew off again. Since Rock had come to live with her, she hadn’t bothered to draw the draperies at night. Rock would let her know if anyone came up the stairs onto the deck, in the small hours. The duplex studio belonged to Charlie Harper. Ryan paid her rent, in part, with carpentry and maintenance work, a nice arrangement all around-except perhaps in the eyes of the IRS, a governmental leviathan which, in Ryan’s opinion, was badly in need of a severe overhaul.

While Rock was crunching his kibble, she took her coffee out on the front deck to enjoy the brightening sky and sea. High, creamy clouds floated above the village rooftops, catching reflections of the sun’s first gleam from the hills behind her. The world, at dawn, seemed to belong only to her and Rock, and to the screaming gulls and the seals that were barking happily out on the rocks.

But while Ryan sat relaxed enjoying the fresh beginning of a new day, Rock pushed the door open and paced the deck looking up at her, wanting to start the day, hungering for action. He was so insistent that soon she gave it up, grabbed her gloves and battered briefcase that was jammed with house plans and receipts and work orders, snatched up her car keys, and they hit the road for a quick breakfast.

As she and Rock entered the patio of the Swiss Cafe, the big dog wagged his tail madly and surged ahead toward the back wall. Bringing him quickly to heel with a sharp command, she looked across the brick terrace to a small table where Lucinda and Pedric Greenlaw waved at her. Grinning, she moved to join them, keeping Rock close. Making her way between the tables, she took the one empty chair. “You don’t mind company? This isn’t a private tete-a-tete?”

Lucinda laughed. “We’re celebrating-or almost celebrating. We think� we may have found the right house. We haven’t seen it yet, but from the brochure� We’re meeting the Realtor first thing this morning.” The old couple was just finishing their pancakes and bacon and coffee. “It’s just a stone’s throw from Wilma’s,” Lucinda said. “You can see her roof from the deck.”

“That’ll be handy. You can walk right over.”

Lucinda nodded. She had an almost secretive smile, and Pedric’s blue eyes twinkled-both looked as if this house included something very special. “Tell me what it’s like,” Ryan said, intrigued. The Greenlaws were such a lively couple; their venerable age had not dimmed the intellectual sharpness and enthusiasm that made their friends treasure them.

“Everything we’ll want is on the main level,” Lucinda said. “Huge living room with a freestanding fireplace you can see from the dining room. High rafters, much like your studio. All one side is tall windows looking down on the village. One nice big bedroom on the main floor, with a big dressing room and bath, and two closets. It even has a double garage!” Garages, in the heart of the village among the crowded cottages, were at a premium, a big selling point for any house. As they talked, the waitress appeared and Ryan gave her order.

“Downstairs,” Pedric said, “is a big family room, two bedrooms and a bath and laundry.”

“Will you want all that?”

“We thought,” Lucinda said, “to remove the inner stairs. Turn the downstairs into a separate apartment for a live-in housekeeper. If this is the house, we hope you’ll take a look at the job.” She glanced across the patio, watching someone.

“That blond young woman,” Lucinda said, “in the pale blue sweat suit. She was finishing breakfast as we came in.” She glanced at her watch. “Over forty-five minutes ago. She’s been sitting there ever since, sipping coffee and watching something out the window, and making some kind of notes.”

Ryan reached down to adjust Rock’s leash where he lay under the table. Bent over, she managed a quick look. She straightened up, shrugging. “That’s Clyde’s new neighbor, Chichi something. She was in Lupe’s the other night. Nervy. She came over to our table, tried to join us. Clyde hustled her away, back to her own table. She was alone and maybe she was lonesome, I get that she doesn’t know anyone in the village. But she was pushy.”

Lucinda said, “You can see that the waitress would like to clear her table. What can she be watching, of such interest?”

Ryan turned her chair then, fussing with Rock’s collar. Across the street from the restaurant were two galleries, a leather boutique, an antique clock and watch repair, and a small bookstore specializing in local history. The waitress came quickly with her order, setting down a stack of thin Swedish pancakes, a side order of ham, and a paper plate. She leaned down to give Rock a pat. The young brunette kept two lovely boxers, and Ryan asked her about them.

“They’re fine, but they’re wild in this cold weather. They’d run the beach all day if I had time.” She refilled Ryan’s coffee cup. “At least they have each other to play with, and a big backyard.” As she turned away, Pedric looked at his watch, laid some bills on the table with their check, and he and Lucinda rose.

Lucinda’s eyes were bright with excitement, looking forward to yet another house to consider. Maybe this would be the one, Ryan thought. They had been house hunting for weeks. Having spent the first year of their late-life marriage traveling up and down the coast in their RV, they were anxious now to get settled, as impatient as a young pair of first-time home buyers. As Ryan watched the tall, thin couple make their way across the patio, Chichi watched them, too.

The young woman avoided looking in Ryan’s direction, though they had met Saturday night at Lupe’s. She probably doesn’t remember me, Ryan thought. Except� Iwaswith Clyde. And with Dallas and Max, and she was pretty interested in them, in getting to know them. She was all over Clyde. And Ryan’s sudden shock of jealousy dismayed her.

She didn’t like jealousy, it was a constricting and enervating emotion. If Chichi was after Clyde, if she had moved next door to get close to Clyde, that was Clyde’s problem.

None of the three men at their table that night had seemed particularly drawn to the young woman. She might be good for a one-night stand, but she didn’t seem to be a person who would wear well. Sipping her coffee, Ryan studied Chichi then turned away. Taking her notebook from her purse, she began making a list of hardware for the Harper loft. She loved this kind of project, turning unused space into somethingofvalue. Creating a spacious and cozy guest room where there had been nothing but stored feedbags and breeding mice.

As she completed her list, Danielle brought her the check. She just had time to pick up Lori and Dillon then swing by Clyde’s and install one faucet-see if that one worked as he hoped. By the time she got up to the ranch, Scotty should have the rest of the shingles off the roof, and have the big metal jacks in place. She was fishing out small bills for the check when Rock stirred restlessly.

“I’m about ready,” she told him, reaching down to scratch his ear. He settled, looking up at her expectantly for another treat, though he’d had a third of her order. “That’s all,” she told him. “No more.” Less than a year ago, when she first adopted him, Rock had been running wild in the hills, a beautiful, unwanted stray. It had taken her some time to manner him. He’d been so unruly that she’d been on guard every moment in a public place, never sure how he’d behave. She was digging for change when Rock came out from under the table, growling. Startled, she looked up.

Roman Slayter was approaching her table. She was pleased that Rock’s reaction today was totally different.

“What a nice surprise,” Slayter said, raising an eyebrow at Rock’s growls, but giving her that charming, boyish, brown-eyed smile. Without asking, he pulled out a chair. When Rock’s growl deepened, Slayter paused. “May I join you? Are you alone?”

“Sorry, I’m just leaving. I have an appointment.”

Roman sat down anyway, stretching his legs out under the table. Rock sniffed at his shoes, and at once he began to wag his tail.

What was wrong with the dog?

Roman smiled, looking up when the waitress arrived. “I’ll have whatever Ryan had.”

Ryan rose, shrugging on her jacket. Slayter gave her a pleading, lost look designed to gentle the meanest female. “Just for once, Ryan, indulge me. I have something of interest to tell you.”

“I don’t have time to talk.” Slipping her cell phone from her belt, she flipped it open. “You show up in San Francisco asking questions about the money from the sale. You were all over me with questions that were none of your business. How much did I get, where did I bank it? You weren’t even subtle. And you barged into the Harper place, pushy and uninvited. Why would I want to be friendly?”

Roman’s smile was innocent and charming. “I’m sorry, Ryan. I only wanted to help-about the money. You know I’ve done financial advising, that I worked for Thompson and Marrick for a while. I never meant to pry, I just thought� Well, with so much sudden money dumped in your lap, that you might�”

“That I might not know what to do with it? That I might not know how to handle my own money? That I’m too dumb to protect it?” She was so angry she thought her face must be flaming red. She stood staring down at him, wanting to hit him. But then she smiled.

“If it’s of any interest to you,” she lied, “I’ve put all the money in annuities and trusts. Where no one, no one on earth can touch it, Roman.” Speaking to Rock, she turned on her heel. But Roman’s next words stopped her.

“Before you go, Ryan, I have information about the recent jewel robbery.”

She spun around to face him. “Tell it to the cops, Roman. Why would you tell me? Go down to the station.” She heard, beneath the table, the soft crunching and smacking that told her Roman had slipped Rock some treat. Leaning down, she snatched a Milk-Bone from his mouth. “And don’t ever, ever feed my dog!”

Calling Rock to heel, she held up the slobbery Milk-Bone and gently dropped it in Roman’s coffee.

With Rock at heel, she stalked out. Her heart was pounding. What the hell did he want? Let him pick on someone else! Driving over to get Dillon and Lori, she fumed. Rock was quiet, watching her. She felt only a little ashamed that she had snatched his treat. She began to think seriously about giving him poison training, where he would not accept food from anyone but herself, or would accept it only with a particular command.

At Dillon’s place, she had to honk for the girls. They came hurrying out, Lori carrying her little overnight bag and a piece of toast, the brown-haired, big-eyed child wiping egg from the corner of her mouth. Redheaded Dillon Thurwell, two years older, took one look at Ryan’s angry face and climbed silently into the back seat of the king cab.

Taking off, Ryan resisted the urge to burn rubber. In the back seat, Dillon gave Lori an amused glance. All the way to Clyde’s, neither girl spoke. She must look mad enough to chew nails. Beside her, Rock looked back at the girls with a hangdog expression that made her want to laugh, and that shamed her.

But she was still puzzled by the change in Rock’s reaction. Why growl at Roman, and the next minute cozy up to him? And the fact that he would so eagerly take food from a stranger frightened her badly. Looking into the rearview mirror, she tried to make small talk. “What did you have for breakfast?”

“Pancakes,” Lori said hesitantly. “With a gallon of syrup,” she said, rubbing her tummy. “Bacon, two eggs. A piece of chocolate cake.”

“That should keep you until midmorning.” These two would burn it off riding, cleaning stalls and doing chores for Charlie, burn it off just with the energy of their wild young spirits. Lori had so blossomed since she came out of hiding in her cave in the library basement, since going to live with Cora Lee French and the senior ladies. She was such a bright, eager child, and so resourceful and ready for adventure, now that she was among caring friends. Ryan hoped her adventures would remain positive.

“I’ll only be a minute,” she said, parking in front of Clyde’s house. She grabbed the bag of faucets, took Rock with her, and left the girls in the truck. This project did make her laugh. Just thinking about it soothed her anger. The idea that Clyde’s cats liked to drink from the bathroom sink and he was tired of waiting on them-and that he could teach four cats to turn on the water faucet by themselves. How many men would even have the patience to try? How many men wouldcarewhere their cats drank?

She really didn’t think this would work, but Clyde did. They had a dinner bet on the success of the project, steak and champagne at any upscale restaurant of the winner’s choice. The whole project was a belly laugh.

But who knew? Maybe hecouldteach them; what did she know about cats? Swinging out of the truck, she stopped still.

The scene on Clyde’s front porch amazed her. Made her angry all over again. Apparently, Chichi had left the cafe right after she did. The blond bimbo stood on Clyde’s porch snuggling up to him, or trying to. She was all over him, petting his face and laughing with a high giggle that set Ryan right on edge; all that pulchritude and sex thrown at Clyde was just too much, made her feel like a jealous schoolgirl.

But then Ryan’s commonsense took hold. Looking Chichi over, her sense of humor returned with an explosion that made her want to double over laughing. This was pitiful! The woman was more than a joke, this was a scene straight out of the daytime soaps or out of the cheapest comedy. Clyde’s face was red with embarrassment or with anger, or both. Glancing past Chichi to Ryan, he looked so uncomfortable she thought he might expire right there on the porch. Even Clyde’s cat seemed amused, staring out at them through the front window with, Ryan could swear, a malicious grin on his gray and white face.

17 [��������: pic_18.jpg]

Much earlier that morning, before Ryan left her apartment and before the Greenlaws entered the Swiss Cafe, Joe Grey was jerked from sleep. He’d been dozing in his tower after a little hunt. He woke to the sound of water pounding in the pipes, from the house next door-a sound for which he’d been listening, even as he slept. Chichi was up early again.

Slipping out from among the warm pillows and out of the tower, he sat down on the roof. Night was just drawing back, in the wake of a clear, silvered dawn. He gave himself a quick wash, working fastidiously on his front paws until he heard the rumbling in the pipes stop, then the faintest rustling from within the house next door, a sound no human would hear. Then, louder, an inner door closing, maybe the closet door. He waited until he heard Chichi’s outer door open and close, and heard the lock turn. He listened to her walking through the grass below him, her footsteps softly swishing. Heard her hit the sidewalk in her soft shoes, walking quickly. Only then did he follow across the shingles, peering over.

Wearing a pale blue sweat suit and what looked like good running shoes, she was headed toward the heart of the village. Joe didn’t picture Chichi as a runner, certainly not a serious one. As, above him, the silvered sky brightened, he watched her cross Ocean beneath its shelter of eucalyptus trees. He hungered to follow her. But he wished, far more, that he knew how long she’d be gone.

He’d heard her leave early like this on several mornings, but until the night of the robbery he hadn’t paid much attention. He thought that those times she’d been gone for at least an hour. Dropping into the pine tree on the far side of her house, he backed down, sprang into the little lemon tree, cursing the sting of its thorns, and leaped to the sill, hoping she hadn’t repaired the screen.

When he examined his recent handiwork, he almost laughed out loud.

Tape? She’d put duct tape on the torn screen? Smiling, Joe took a corner of the tape in his teeth and gently pulled, peeling it back neater than skinning a gopher.

But then, pressing his paw sideways against the glass and exerting all the force he could muster, he was unable to slide it.

Where before she’d had the slider locked open a few inches with a little peg, now she had secured the window completely closed. Had shut it tight so he wouldn’t come back? He felt a chill course down through his fur.

But how likely was it that Chichi knew his special talents? He was just a cat; and she didn’t like cats. He pressed his face against the glass, mashing his whiskers, to peer in.

He could just see the lock protruding. It was one of those that slid up or down along the metal frame when one closed the window, the kind that usually locked but not always. That sometimes, in these old windows, didn’t work at all.

This one had caught, though. Hadn’t it?

Pressing against the window, he shook and rattled the moveable section as hard as he could.

And at last, slowly, the little lock slid down the metal frame and dropped to the bottom. Now, with sufficient body pressure, he was able to slide the window back as far as the little peg, which was still in place. And in a nanosecond he was in, searching her room, his ears cocked for her approach through the overgrown yard.

Carefully, he went through every dresser drawer again, searching for the little black bag, flinching at every faintest sound. He didn’t want to be caught in the closed room with her again. He told himself he was magnifying the danger, but there was something totally focused about Chichi Barbi, a singular determination that unnerved him.

He searched the closet among her few clothes and shoes, searched the top closet shelf, leaping up stubbornly forcing open three suitcases and badly bruising his paws. All were empty. The latches weren’t as bad, though, as zippers, which were hell on the claws. He searched under the bed and in between the mattresses as far as his paw would reach, then as far as he could crawl without smothering. He’d hate like hell for her to catch him in that position. He searched the under-sink bathroom cabinet, the night-table drawer, peered into the two empty wastebaskets, checked the carpet for a loose corner under which she might have loosened a board.

He found nothing, nada. He was nosing with curiosity at the back of the little television set when he heard her coming, brushing past the overgrown bushes.

Leaping to the dresser he crouched, ready to bolt. He watched her pass the window, heading for the door. As the door handle turned, he slid out through the window and shouldered the glass closed behind him.

He hardly had time to paw the tape back over the torn screen when the inside light went on. Praying she wouldn’t notice that the tape was wrinkled, not smooth the way she’d left it, he dropped down to the scruffy grass.

He was crouched in the dark bushes beside the foundation of the house, poised to scorch for home, when he thought about those two empty wastebaskets. And a sure feline instinct, or maybe acquired cop sense, stopped him in his tracks.

Waiting in the bushes until he heard her cross the room to the bathroom, he beat it past her door and past the kitchen door, to the tall plastic garbage can that stood at the rear of the house.

The lid was on tight. He tried leaping atop Clyde’s plastered wall and reaching down with one paw to dislodge it, but the distance was too far, he could get no purchase without falling on his head. Stretching farther, he lost his balance and dropped to the top of the lid-embarrassing himself, though there was no one to see him.

Dropping to the ground, he hung one paw in the can’s plastic handle and pressed up on the lid with the other. He should have done that in the first place. The lid popped right off and felt silently to the grass.

Leaping up to perch across the mouth of the can, his hind paws on one side, his left front paw bracing him on the other, he hung down into the dim stinking world of Chichi’s rotting garbage: sour grass cuttings, moldy food cans, and a sour milk carton, and he sorted through Chichi Barbi’s trash like a common alley cat.

Well, hell, FBI agents did this stuff. So did DEA. If those guys could stomach the stink and indignity, so could he.

Surprisingly, the moldering grass was the worst. It stuck to him all over, clung to his sleek fur, got into his ears and in his nose and eyes. Part of Chichi’s job as house sitter was to mow the tiny scrap of weedy lawn. She used a hand mower that was kept in the narrow one-car garage, which occupied the south side, between her living room and Joe’s house. As he balanced, pawing and searching, he was painfully aware that he was in plain sight of Clyde’s guest room window, not six feet away.

If Clyde saw his gray posterior protruding from Chichi Barbi’s garbage can, he’d never hear the last of it. He sorted through food cans and wrappers, wadded tissues, run panty hose, used emery boards, empty spray bottles of various smelly cosmetics, and a dozen other items too gross to think about. Pawing through a layer of discarded papers, he retrieved a dozen store bills and cash register receipts, stuffing them into an empty peanut can. They’d absorb some oily stains but they should still be legible. He did not find the black bag itself, and could catch no scent of metal jewelry. But in this melange of garbage, who could smell anything? The most talented bloodhound would be challenged.

At least there wasn’t too much sticky stuff, thanks to garbage disposals; not like San Francisco garbage when he was a homeless kitten. Rooting in those overflowing bins for something to eat, that had been a real mess.

Taking the peanut can in his teeth, he backed out, pausing for an instant balanced on the edge of the garbage can. He was tensed to drop down when a faint noise made him glance up, at the window of his own house.

Clyde stood at the glass, his expression a mix of amazed amusement and harsh disapproval. The next minute he burst into a belly laugh that made Joe leap away nearly dropping the can.

He heard Clyde come out the back door heading for the patio wall, as if to look over at him. Racing away around Chichi’s house, gripping the metal can in his teeth, he headed for his cat door. He would never hear the end of this one.

But then as he was approaching his cat door, his nose twitched with the smell of burning bacon wafting out from the kitchen, and he smiled. Clyde’s unwelcome curiosity had created a small and satisfying disaster.

Spinning in under the plastic flap, he dodged behind his clawed and be-furred easy chair, set the can down, and crouched, silent and still. While Clyde dealt with the bacon, he would just dump the receipts out on the rug and have a look.

But even as he reached a paw in, Clyde rushed into the room, flinging open the windows, turning the house into a wind tunnel that would scatter those papers clear to hell.

Taking the can in his mouth again, he raced away behind Clyde’s back through the living room and up the stairs to the master suite. The smell of burned bacon followed him up along the steps. Bolting into Clyde’s study and behind the leather love seat, he dumped the papers on the carpet and began to paw through them-until Clyde went racing into the master bedroom, opening those windows, too, then headed for the study.

“Don’t open the windows in here!” Joe shouted, leaping to the back of the love seat. “Stop! Don’t do that!”

Clyde stared at him. He took two steps toward the love seat. Joe dropped down again behind it. Clyde knelt on the love seat, peering over the back. “What have you got? What did you take out of her garbage? What the hell did you steal this time?”

“You don’t steal trash. Things that have already been thrown away are�”

“What do you have, Joe?” Clyde frowned at the wadded papers. “Bills? Cash register receipts?” Despite his attempt at anger, Clyde eyed the little collection with interest.

Resignedly, Joe spread out the little bits of paper. Together, they studied a drugstore receipt that included two disposable cameras and a spiral notebook. He pulled out a Kinko’s receipt for twenty machine copies. He put aside the wrinkled phone bills. It was the receipt from Kinko’s that held him. “What did she make copies of?”

“Well I don’t know, Joe. Business papers? How would I know? Just because you saw her slip into her house the night of the jewel burglary, just because�” A knock downstairs at the front door stopped Clyde. “That’ll be Ryan with the faucets.” And he headed for the stairs.

Pawing the papers back into the peanut can, Joe pushed it safely into the corner between the love seat and chair. And he followed Clyde. Twenty copies of what? It wasn’t as if Chichi ran a business. And this was February, no one wrote Christmas letters in February. He could hear Clyde’s voice, but not Ryan’s. Hurrying down the stairs, hitting the last step, he froze.

That wasn’t Ryan. It was Chichi.

Had she seen him in her room or in her garbage can, and come over to complain? Swerving into the kitchen, out of sight, he stood listening.

Sounded like Clyde had moved out onto the porch. Well, at least he hadn’t let her in. Hurry up, Clyde. Blow her off, send her packing. Joe could hear her cooing sweet enough to make a cat throw up, and softly laughing in an insinuating way. Disgusted, but as fascinated as any eavesdropper, Joe trotted into the living room and peered out through the partly open front door.

18 [��������: pic_19.jpg]

Joe could see little more than Clyde’s back, and their two pairs of feet on the porch-Clyde’s old, dirty jogging shoes, and Chichi’s little high-heeled sandals. She had taken time to change? He wondered what else she had put on, to vamp Clyde. Those shoes had to be cold and uncomfortable, had to hurt like hell if she walked a block in them. Her feet were very close to Clyde’s-until, suddenly, Clyde backed away and turned as if to slip inside. Chichi laughed softly and moved against him again. Joe stared up indignantly as she tenderly stroked Clyde’s cheek, petting him in a way that sickened the tomcat.

“Just to use your phone, Clyde? What’s the matter? Just to report my phone out of order� What do you have in there that your neighbor can’t see? I’ll just be a minute, and I�”

“Don’t you have a cell phone? Go on down to the corner and use the pay phone.” Clyde went silent as Ryan’s truck pulled up.

Slipping up to the windowsill where he could see better, Joe was glad he had a front seat for this one. Chichi glanced at the big red king cab, scowling. Ryan’s lumber rack was stacked with big beams and two-by-fours, ready to build the end walls and place the rafters for the Harpers’ new guest room. As Ryan swung out of the truck, Chichi snuggled. Clyde backed off like he’d been burned. Joe could see Dillon and Lori in the back seat staring out, wide-eyed. He watched Ryan hold the door for Rock to leap out. The big dog always rode in the cab, never in the truck bed. Ryan said it was barbaric to subject a dog to the dangers of riding in an open truck where he could easily be thrown out in case of a wreck, and cruel to leave him in a truck for hours tied up in the beating hot sun.

Ryan came up the walk, barely hiding a grin at Clyde’s predicament and at Chichi’s low-cut pink sweater, her big boobs half out, and her tight black pants riding up her crotch. Under Ryan’s amused glance, Chichi looked uncertain and unsure of herself. Ryan was swinging a heavy paper bag bearing the hardware store logo, and her toolbox. She pushed past Chichi, giving her a cool, green-eyed look-over, and headed through the house as if she lived there, making for the upstairs bath. Joe rumbled with purrs. He was not only getting his own personal, cat-friendly water faucet, he was witnessing an entertaining moment of defeat for Chichi Barbi that made his day. The woman looked mad enough to chew off the old faucet for Ryan-or chew Ryan’s hand off. As Ryan disappeared upstairs, Clyde fended off Chichi with frustrated finality, and closed the door in her face.

Watching her stalk away, Joe could hear Ryan upstairs unscrewing the faucet. From the bottom of the stairs, Clyde shouted, “Need to turn off the water?”

“Turned it off under the basin. I’ll be just a few minutes.” Ryan had installed the two upstairs basins, so Joe guessed she knew how to cut off the water. He had dropped off the sill and was heading for the kitchen when there was another knock on the door. Clyde stared at the closed door in disbelief.

Joe gave him a look that said, Don’t open it. Clyde looked at him and shrugged. And the minute he foolishly cracked the door open. Chichi pushed inside.

“I never heard of a woman plumber,” she said. “She’s been around here beforeyou must have a lot of plumbing problems.”

“If you want to report your phone out of order, go in the kitchen. Make it quick, I have to get to work.”

“You’re leaving a plumber in the house alone? Aren’t you�”

Clyde just looked at her. “Where is your cell phone?”

“The battery�” she said, helplessly gesturing with upturned hands. Scowling, Clyde led her into the kitchen. Following them, Joe watched Chichi slip a scrap of paper from her pocket and punch in a number, then enter a series of numbers as a tape gave her instructions. Joe hated those taped replies. Though heseldom had reason to call a number that employed that particular form of dehumanization. Your highly skilled, undercover snitch didn’t waste time on taped messages. Most of Joe’s calls were directly to Molena Point PD, clandestine, short, and conducted directly between himself and the law, usually the chief.

When Chichi had reported her out-of-order number she moved to the kitchen sink, draping her hand on Clyde’s shoulder, and at the same time taking in every detail of the kitchen. Joe swallowed back a growl. She’d love to be left alone to snoop. The tomcat said a prayer of thanks that he’d carried the little can of her purloined bills upstairs, out of sight. “Could I have a drink of water?”

Patiently, Clyde poured Chichi a glass of tap water, pushed it at her, and stared pointedly in the direction of the front door. Joe listened to a series of small metallic clicks from above, then a short rumble as water surged back through the pipes. He was eager to try the new faucet. As Clyde took Chichi’s arm and headed her out toward the front door, Ryan came down the stairs.

At the foot of the stairs, the two women looked at each other like lady cats sparring for territory. Joe waited for the fur to fly, but Clyde shoved Chichi on through the living room and out the door, and locked it behind her. He leaned with his back against the door, trying to collect his temper. Ryan looked at him for a long moment, the corner of her mouth twitching.

“Come on,” Clyde said stiffly. “It’s not funny. Come have a cup of coffee, help me calm my temper.”

Ryan chucked him under the chin. “Your temper? Or your libido? I can’t stay for coffee, the girls are in the truck and I’m late, Scotty’s waiting.” And she was gone before Clyde could point out, with sarcasm, thatRyanwas the boss, that she made her own hours.

Clyde didn�t see Ryan again for three days, during which time he grew increasingly irritable. “You think she’s mad? Because of Chichi, because Chichi was here?”

Joe just looked at him. They were in the kitchen having breakfast, waffles and fried ham, with kippers on the side for Joe.

“She didn’t give me a chance to explain.” Clyde looked across at Joe. “If she’s jealous, you think she’s seeing that guy who came up to the ranch? This Roman something?” That was two days after Ryan installed the faucet. That night, Clyde paced the house for an hour, before Joe got him to settle down. “If she’s not jealous, why hasn’t she called?”

Joe had licked a smear of Brie off his paw, a late-night snack, as Clyde waited, fidgeting, for the phone to ring. “So call her,” the tomcat had said impatiently. “What’s the big deal?” But maybe he shouldn’t have laid it on so thick, shouldn’t have repeated everything that Dulcie had told him about how handsome this Roman Slayter was and how stubbornly Slayter had pressed Ryan to go out with him. And maybe he shouldn’t have ribbed Clyde so much about Chichi.

“Doesn’t Ryan know I can’t stand the woman?”

“Callher!”

Instead of calling, Clyde poured himself a double whiskey, and kept pacing. “What’s with you,” Joe said. “Call her! There was a time when men did all the calling!” Clyde was so damn stubborn. And then two nights later as Clyde was passing Binnie’s Italian on his way home from work, he saw Ryan going into the cozy restaurant with a tall, handsome fashion plate who had to be Roman Slayter.

Clyde got home mad as hornets-and found Rock in the back patio, complete with his bed, a rubber bone and a bowl of kibble. And a cryptic message on the phone from Ryan, saying she was leaving the dog there for a little while, that she wouldn’t be late, that it was all very strange and she would explain when she came to get Rock.

“I’ll just bet she’ll explain! She goes out with this guy like it’s a big secret, can’t tell me where she’s going or who with, just brings Rock over here like I’m some kind of paid babysitting service!”

Joetriedto talk to him. “Maybe she had a reason for not telling you, maybe she was in a hurry and didn’t want to take time to explain. Why don’t you�”

“Why don’t Iwhat}” Clyde didn’t pet Rock, didn’t let him in the house. He shut the door in Rock’s face, and fastened the cover over the big dog door, leaving the Rock alone in the patio, looking hurt indeed. When Joe peered down at him through the kitchen window, Rock looked up at him, devastated. Never before had Clyde shut him out. His yellow eyes were incredibly sad, his ears down, his short tail tucked under in misery.

That wasn’t like Clyde, to be mean to a dog. Clyde loved Rock. Incensed at Clyde’s unfair attitude, Joe waited until Clyde had settled down in the living room with a book, then slipped out to the kitchen, slid the cover of the dog door open a few inches, and went out to snuggle down with Rock on his big, cedar-stuffed bed. Sighing, Rock laid his head over Joe, badly needing sympathy. It wasn’t Rock’s fault that Ryan had gone out with someone else when Clyde didn’t call her, Joe thought indignantly. Nor was it Rock’s fault that Clyde had let Chichi make an ass of him in front of Ryan.

19 [��������: pic_20.jpg]

Maria was bringing the newspaper in for Luis, before she put his eggs on, when she stopped in the doorway to sound out the English headlines. The words made her feel weak. She leaned against the door, her heart starting to pound. Dufio was in jail. Again. Oh, poor Dufio. That was why Luis was so angry last night.

Dufio was always getting arrested. And every time, it made her feel worse.

Closing the front door she headed down the hall for the kitchen, slowly reading the front page, frowning over the words. She wished she hadn’t had to go to a bilingual school, that they’d made her learn English better. Luis said she didn’t need English, except kitchen words. He’d never wanted her to learn anything.

She could make out, in the paper, enough about last night’s burglary to know they had stolen jewels worth more than a hundred thousand dollars American. That would be a huge fortune to a family in Mexico, enough to keep cousins and uncles and all the children for the rest of their lives. The police had spotted two of the cars, but Luis didn’t have any identification on them, just the stolen plates. Luis had been real mad when they came in last night, maybe because Dufio let the cops get him. She hadn’t been able to hear much from her bedroom, they’d had the kitchen door closed. Whatever happened now, there would be trouble. She wished she had the nerve to run, before the police came. Take Abuela away now. Run away now.

But where would they go? Abuela was an old woman, she was slow and she wore out easily, even when she was in the wheelchair. And wherever they went, Luis would find them.

She wouldn’t have the heart to leave those poor cats behind, in that cage. She would have to free them, too. And she didn’t have the key. Maybe theywereonly dumb beasts. In Mexico, people would laugh at her. But she didn’t think she could leave those helpless cats to Luis. She wished she had the nerve to take the key from Luis’s pocket while he slept.

But even if she could, he’d know she did it, and his beatings hurt bad. It didn’t matter that she was his sister. To Luis, women were for cooking and beating and for the bed. Though even Luis wouldn’t do that with his sister.

Well, he did keep the others off her. Even if he didn’t go to mass anymore, Luis knew that if he let them touch her, or touched her himself, he’d surely burn in hell.

Returning down the hall to the kitchen, she gave Luis the paper, cooked his and Tommie’s eggs with the chorizo, then stood at the sink scrubbing the skillet. Behind her at the table Luis and Tommie ate silently as they read the paper. She thought about when she and her three brothers were children, in Mexico. When Mamacita made breakfast for them and dressed them nice and took them to mass. Thought of them all crowded into the pew, her and Dufio and Hernando and Luis lined up on the bench, and her feet didn’t touch the floor. She was the smallest. They all wore shoes on Sunday. Her brothers had feared the word of God, then. And feared the anger of the priest, too.

But when the boys were bigger they got smart-mouthed and started stealing and didn’t care what the priest said. That was after Mamacita died, and they lived with their aunt and her drunk husband. The boys stopped going to confession. Then they all three went away to make money in Los Estados Unidos and she was left there alone with her aunt and uncle.

She was eleven when Luis came back for her and they crowded into the back of a vegetable truck and crossed the border into California and lived with a third cousin’s family in San Diego, ten to a room. Luis was stealing big and fancy then, and she worried all the time. Then the three boys moved into a room of their own and she cleaned and cooked for them and kept her little suitcase packed like Luis said. She was only twelve, and she did what Luis told her.

But then they were arrested, were all three in jail. She ran, then. Went to work for a Mexican woman who cleaned houses; slept on a pallet in the woman’s kitchen-until Luis got out of jail and found her. After that it was one town after another, living out of his rattley old car, all their life was robberies and leaving town in a hurry, late at night. Not like in Mexico, when the boys had no car and couldn’t get away fast. They weren’t in so much trouble then.

When Luis and Tommie finished breakfast and went to bed because they’d been up all night, she picked up their plates, folded the newspaper, and wiped egg and crumbs from the table. She didn’t want to read any more of that paper.

She made Abuela’s breakfast and went to bring her into the kitchen. While Abuela was eating, Maria returned to her and Abuela’s bedroom and fed the cats, scooping the dry food through the bars into the dirty bowl. She couldn’t clean the sandbox until Luis got up again, with the key, until he stood right over her, making a face and telling her to hurry up.

As she spooned the dry food through the bars, the three cats looked up at her, then at the cage door. They looked like they were asking her to open it; quickly she crossed herself.

“Luis has the key,” she told them; but it scared her even more that she was speaking to them. As if some voodoo spell was on her. The biggest cat’s eyes burned into hers like he understood her, too. As if he wanted to say, “Can’t youtakethe key?Can’tyou let us out?” She grew frightened, indeed, watching him. It did no good to remind herself that they were only cats, only stray cats.

There were stray cats all over Mexico, they hunted rats and mice, and they died. In Mexico, there were always more cats.

It was Hernando who trapped the cats, away in the green hills beyond the village, which she could see from the window. Some of the cats had gotten away, slipped out of the traps. Then Hernando bought different ones. He said those cats knew how to open traps, but no cat could do that. Someone had let them loose.

Hernando believed it, though; he said they weren’t regular cats. He talked real crazy, said they were worth money. But now that Hernando had gone away somewhere, why didn’t Luis turn the cats loose, get rid of them?

She wished, with Hernando gone and Dufio in jail, that Luis would go away, too. She wanted to pray to the Virgin that Luis and his men would all go to jail for the jewel robbery and she and Abuela would be free. But she guessed she would go to hell if she prayed for such a thing. When she looked at the biggest cat, his eyes were so like a person’s that she backed away from him, whispering her Hail Marys.

Binnie�s italian was a small, family-operated cafe that had been a fixture in Molena Point for three generations. The Gianinni family had been a part of the village since the dirt streets of Molena Point were traversed by horse and buggy. In the early days, many Italian families had emigrated from the old country to California’s central coast, to farm and work and open businesses, to become doctors and lawyers and bankers, to settle in and help create the lively economy that now existed.

Other, fancier restaurants than Binnie’s came and went, but Binnie’s was part of the community, a constant favorite with its roasted-vegetable pizzas and seafood pastas and locally made wines and beers. A few years ago, Binnie’s had redecorated, shocking the old-timers with bright abstract murals that covered the walls and ceiling and even the tabletops. Every surface became a feast of color, every chair a work of art painted differently. The effect was cozy and welcoming, a warm and cheerful retreat.

On this chill spring evening, Ryan Flannery entered Binnie’s as Roman Slayter held the door for her in his most courteous manner. Having erased a dozen of Slayter’s messages from her machine over the last four days, Ryan had at last given in, driven by curiosity at Slayter’s latest message. She knew the taped message was a ruse, but she couldn’t resist: “I think I know something about this burglary, Ryan. The jewelry store? Some facts� Well, I don’t want to go to the police myself. I can’t explain exactly why. You’d have to trust me on that. I thought if you passed on the information, it might be helpful�”

Oh, right, she thought. What kind of scam is this? But still, she had to know what he would say.

He’d reserved a table at the back, complete with a little bowl of flowers and a candle. Pulling out her chair for her, then folding his slim six-foot-four frame onto a red-and-blue ladderback bench, Roman grinned at her, his brown eyes more familiar than she liked. He was wearing a tan cashmere sport coat over a black shirt and cream slacks. A flashy gold Rolex watch gleamed on his tanned wrist, and he wore some kind of gold signet ring with an onyx stone.

Up at the ranch, she hadn’t noticed his jewelry, she’d been too angry and then too shocked at Rock’s chameleon behavior. She still didn’t understand what had gotten into Rock. She’d seen him, too many times, threaten to attack strange men who approached her. Tonight, she’d dropped the big dog off at Clyde’s before Clyde got home from work. Had left a message on Clyde’s machine. She hoped he didn’t mind keeping Rock. It had been days since she’d seen him, and he hadn’t once called her. She probably could have left Rock at home, he was much more dependable than when she’d first taken him in. But even now, when left alone, he was still inclined to panic and tear up the yard or the furniture.

Slayter had ordered wine as they were seated. Now she glanced briefly at her menu, then sat watching him. “What did you have to tell me? What was so urgent?”

Slayter had begun to speak when the waiter approached, uncorking a nice merlot. He remained silent, nodding and tasting at the right moments. Ryan watched the little ritual impatiently The dark-haired young waiter was nervous, was probably new at this-one of Binnie’s many nephews, young men who had, over the years, worked in the restaurant while they were in high school or college. She kept a cool gaze on Roman.

When the waiter left, Slayter lifted a little toast to her, which she ignored. “The night of the burglary,” he said, “I saw a woman running� Not from the store itself, but from that direction, that block.” His brown eyes never left her, a soft, disingenuous look, concerned and innocent. He’d apparently just had a haircut, she could see the tiny white line below his neat, dark hair-and he smelled of some expensive, musky aftershave. “Just as the sirens started, I saw her running down the street from the direction of the jewelry store, keeping to the shadows. She was carrying a small black bag, a shapeless cloth pouch that bulged at the bottom. She was darkly dressed, with a hood pulled around her face. Running south, away from Ocean.

“Two blocks south of Ocean she ducked into a driveway, old shingled cottage next to a two-story house on Doris, that Spanish-style place with a new shake roof.”

Ryan startled. That was Clyde’s house, Slayter had to know that. It was the only two-story house for several blocks south of Ocean, the only house with a new shake roof. She looked at Slayter, frowning.

Could the woman he saw, if he had seen anyone, could that be Clyde’s blond neighbor? She didn’t know what Slayter was up to, but she didn’t think she wanted to hear this.

No matter how much she disliked that woman, she liked even less what she was hearing.

“I was just headed back to the motel after dinner,” Roman said. “Heard the sirens and turned up there instead.” He gave her a boyish smile. “Idle curiosity. Rubbernecking, I guess. She ran into the driveway of the brown house, disappeared at the back, I heard a door close somewhere at the back. There was a woman in the front of the house, watchingTV,I could see her silhouette through the shade.”

Ryan frowned. She’d thought Chichi was staying there alone, that the owners were up in the city. “If you thought she was running from the burglary, why didn’t you call the police? Why are you telling me?”

“I� I was in some trouble not long ago,” Roman said diffidently. “Not of my doing, but the police thought it was. I� didn’t want to get involved. The police�”

“You could have called them anonymously. They might have caught her. Might even have recovered the jewels.” She watched him intently. “What is this, Roman? What kind of scam is this?”

“It isn’t a scam, Ryan. What would I get out of tipping youoff?I saw her and thought I’d pass it on. Well�” Roman leaned closer over the table, “I think she’s a friend of your friend, I think she lives next door to him. I didn’t want to make trouble for someone you’re fond of.”

The hell you wouldn’t, she thought. “Why would that make trouble for him? Are you implying that Clyde’s involved?” Ryan did her best not to laugh in his face. “You’re going to have to spell it out.” What scared her was that he’d taken great pains to learn about Clyde, to learn who she was seeing. She watched the waiter set down their antipasto and salad and refill their wineglasses.

“I thought maybe your friend� That this might touch you in some way, that you wouldn’t want to�”

She rose, shoving back her chair so hard it fell clattering to the floor. “Call the police, Roman! Tellthem.This has nothing to do with Clyde, or with me! If you have information, call the department!

“Unless you want to be charged with withholding information,” she added hotly. And she stormed out of the restaurant, her stomach churning with anger-and with disappointment at abandoning Binnie’s shrimp-and-ham linguini.

Heading for Clyde’s to pick up Rock, she did her best to simmer down; but she was still steaming when she knocked softly on Clyde’s door. One light was on in the living room; looked like the reading light by Clyde’s chair. She could hear a Dixieland CD playing. At her knock, she expected Rock to bark and then to catch her scent and whine, but she heard neither. “Clyde? It’s me, it’s Ryan.”

He opened the door, scowling. He didn’t move back out of her way, but stood blocking her entry.

“Where’s Rock? I�”

“Have a nice evening?”

“What’s wrong? Is there� Clyde, where’s Rock? I brought him� Is he all right? Did you get my message?”

“He’s in the backyard where you left him.”

She stared at him. “What’s he done? What are you mad about?”

There was a long silence. Clyde stood frowning. She stared at him, and began to laugh. “You’re mad! Mad because I�” She pushed past him into the room, and turned to look at him. She took his hand and, against his mild resistance, led him to the couch, pulled him down to sit beside her. She was still holding his hand.

“Listen to me, Clyde. I met Roman Slayter for dinner because he said he had some kind of evidence about the jewel burglary. He called and called.”

“Right.”

“Just listen�”

From the kitchen, Joe Grey listened, too. Having slipped back inside through the dog door, he’d slid it shut in Rock’s face, had left Rock outside pawing and scratching at the plywood. Joe stood in the kitchen, engrossed in Clyde’s anger and Ryan’s amusement, and in her explanation of why she’d agreed to have dinner with Slayter. He was heartened that she’d left the restaurant in a rage before dinner was served. Surely Clyde would be pleased at that.

When Ryan repeated Slayter’s “information” about Chichi, Clyde played dumb, as if Chichi’s stealthy behavior was news to him-as it should be. They made up with a lot of mushy talk that embarrassed Joe, then Clyde opened a bottle of Chablis and made Ryan a grilled shrimp sandwich that was, she said, far superior to Binnie’s linguini. They let Rock in before he tore up the door; and Joe went up to his tower and curled down among the cushions, leaving the lovebirds alone. Below him the house was quiet, except for the romantic forties music that Clyde had loaded onto the CD player. Joe must have been asleep when Ryan and Rock left, he didn’t hear her truck pull away.

About the same time that Ryan left Binnie’s so abruptly, abandoning her dinner, Lucinda Greenlaw called Charlie. Charlie and Wilma were tucked up by the fire in the Harpers’ new living room, with Dulcie and the kit, having had an early dinner before Max went back to the station.

“We’ve found a house,” Lucinda said, her voice bright with excitement. “We waited to call until our offer was accepted. Tell Kit� Is Max there�? Could I�”

“Max is at work,” Charlie said, laughing. “You can talk to Kit. She’s all over me, pawing at the phone.” Kit had sprung to her lap and was rearing up, paws on Charlie’s shoulder, pressing her ear to the phone, her long, fluffy tail lashing. She was so excited that when Charlie turned the speaker on, she yowled twice like a little wild cat before she could get a word out. “A house, Lucinda? A house! What kind of house! Does it have a tower like Joe Grey’s? Is it near Dulcie’s? With a big garden and trees and a window seat with pillows and a nice fireplace and�?”

“Stop, Kit! Stop and listen! Window seats, yes. Trees and a tangle of garden just the way you like. There’s no tower but it does have a surprise�”

“What surprise, Lucinda? What?”

“Would it be a surprise if I told you? You’ll have to wait and see. Of course there’s a fireplace. You’ll love this house. We’ll pick you up first thing in the morning, seven-thirty, have breakfast in the village, then meet the Realtor at nine. Oh, Kit, we can hardly wait for you to see it.”

Kit was purring so loud that it was hard for Charlie to get a word in. “Shhh, Kit.” She stroked the excited tortoiseshell. “Lucinda, have breakfast here! A mushroom omelet and fresh mangoes?”

“That sounds wonderful, Charlie, but that’s way too early to be entertaining company.”

“No it isn’t. You’re not company, you’re family. Ryan’s bringing the girls, to ride. They can help me before they saddle their horses.”

When Lucinda said they’d come, Charlie clicked the phone off, and looked into Kit’s wide, yellow eyes. The little cat was seething with anticipation, so wired that Charlie thought she’d fly apart. It took a long time for Kit to settle down again and to resume telling the story she had begun.

Charlie felt certain that Kit’s early life, with a judicious retelling to remove the little cat’s unusual talents, could be a wonderful book-if she could do the story justice. Wilma had read the first five chapters, which were in rough draft, and she thought the story was as compelling and as real asWatership Down.Charlie knew it was foolhardy to ask the opinion of one’s friends when it came to creative matters, whether to the written word or to a painting. But Wilma was, after all, a well-read librarian with a keen perception of what her own readers loved. The fact that both Wilma, and Charlie’s agent, were excited about the beginning chapters had left Charlie amazed and even more eager to write the finest book she could. Life was, indeed, full of wonders.

Now, long after Max got home and they were tucked up in bed, and both cats were settled in with Wilma in Charlie’s studio, Charlie lay awake, filled with too many thoughts to find sleep. The fire in the master bedroom had burned to coals, and still she lay thinking about the book and about the pictures she was doing for it; seeing the newest drawing clearly, as she liked to do before she began it. Beside her, Max tossed restlessly. Even in sleep, his mind would be busy with police matters.

She thought about the jewel theft and the increasing complexity of the suspects; profiles that Max and Dallas had put together. About their growing suspicion of a larger scenario, perhaps a dozen burglaries to hit the village at one time. Though she tried never to succumb to fear, the more she learned about this little nondescript Luis Rivas and his men, the more uneasy she felt. She turned over, shivering, pressing close to Max, clinging to the comforting sense of his goodness and strong capability. He and Dallas and Davis had the situation well under control, she told herself, or they soon would have.

But still the worries were there, silly, disjointed fears about matters that probably meant nothing, like Ryan’s dinner with Roman Slayter and his accusation of Clyde’s neighbor.

Ryan had called her when she left the restaurant, so mad she could hardly talk. Charlie lay puzzling over what Slayter had told Ryan, puzzling over Slayter’s arrival in the village at just this time, as well as Chichi’s sudden appearance right next door to Clyde. And she began to wonder why Max had received no anonymous phone tips on this case.

Still, though, Max and Dallas were gathering information and biding their time, waiting for more police files to come in from L.A. So maybe Joe and Dulcie were doing that, too.

She was smiling to herself in the dark, thinking about two little cats wandering the station, pawing through reports, tucking away sensitive facts, when she heard, in the still night, one of the cats in the kitchen crunching kibble.

That would be the kit, she thought, grinning. In a little while, she saw the little cat’s shadow prowling the patio, restlessly stalking, her long, fluffy tail twitching. Was Kit, too, thinking about the jewel robbery? More likely, about the new house. Charlie thought about the amazing accident that had brought Kit here, to the Greenlaws. That wild band had never before, in Kit’s lifetime, traveled this far north. What had drawn the clowder to Hellhag Hill, and drawn the Greenlaws to picnic there? Surely that had been a wonderfully happy accident. Or had it been more than an accident?

That meeting between Kit and the Greenlaws, then Charlie herself moving to Molena Point, had resulted in Charlie’s book in progress. Serendipity? A happy accident? Or a gift of grace? A gift she would do her best to honor.

Snuggled close to Max, Charlie promised herself that she would produce, in this book, the best work she could create, an adventure to touch the heart of every reader. She lay smiling, lost again in the story-and the next thing she knew the alarm was buzzing and she was out of bed before she came fully awake. Pulling on her jeans and sweatshirt and boots, she went to feed the horses and dogs and then to start breakfast.

20 [��������: pic_21.jpg]

Picking up the two girls again the next morning, Ryan headed straight for the ranch, no stopping this morning for breakfast; she and Rock had shared a bowl of cereal; though he’d had his dog food to himself. She wanted to get the upstairs dried in before any chance of rain. Early spring on the central coast could be temperamental, California wasn’t all sunshine and warm beaches. The roughing in was finished, the roof raised and the new studs in place. Today they would get the exterior sheeting and roof sheeting on. The flooring was being delivered this morning, too, and the drywall, all of which needed to be stacked under cover before bad weather hit. When she stopped for the girls, they climbed in the back seat sleepy and quiet; they were silent until, in the center of the village, Dillon came alert, suddenly glued to the window.

“There she is again!” They were passing a small cafe patio that was half filled with early breakfast customers. “What does she do, at the crack of dawn? For hours, like that? Looking up and down the street and writing things down. She’s spying on someone. How long’s she been sitting there?”

Ryan glanced in her rearview mirror. “What?’

“That same blonde,” Dillon said, “that lives next door to Clyde, that bimbo who was all over him yesterday when we pulled up at his house. Who is she?”

“That cheap blonde with the tight sweaters and big boobs,” Lori specified.

Ryan glanced at Lori, amused, and turned off Ocean up the highway, heading for the Harper place.

“We’ve seen her four times,” Lori said, “sitting in different restaurants early in the morning. For hours, alone, watching the street. Writing something in a notebook. She’s never eating, just coffee. How much coffee can a person drink?”

“Hours, Lori? How would you know that?’ “We’ve been taking the dogs to the beach,” Lori said. “Susan Brittain’s dogs.” Susan was one of the four senior ladies Lori had lived with since her father went to prison. Lori loved the standard poodle and the Dalmatian, and got along well with them. “I don’t like that woman, she’s a tramp.”

Ryan gave her a stern look in the mirror, trying not to laugh.

“Well she is. She’s there when we go down, real early before school, and she’s there when we come back. Once was later, Saturday. We were in the library.” She glanced at Dillon, who grinned sheepishly.

Dillon’s current English teacher was assigning long, detailed papers, and would not let the kids go online to do their research. It had to be from books, with the sources properly noted, all footnotes in correct form-and no adult help.

Dillon had never worked this way, she said all the kids complained. Two dozen parents were so angry they were trying to get the teacher fired. But a dozen more applauded her. Dillon found the new method very hard and demanding. She didn’t care, at the moment, that the training would put her in the top ranks when applying for college. She didn’t care that she was learning to do far more thorough and accurate research than anyone could ever do online, or that you couldn’t do adequate college work without those basics. But while Dillon wasn’t happy with the assignments, Lori was having a ball.

Two years younger, Lori tried not to be smug that she knew her way among the reference books. Before Lori’s mother died, she’d often taken Lori to work with her in the library, and had often let her help with reference projects.

No one had said Dillon couldn’t have help from a younger child. Surely her teacher had never imagined that a twelve-year-old would have those skills. And while Lori was hugely enjoying the challenge, and Dillon was learning, the situation deeply embarrassed the older girl.

Below the highway, the sea gleamed in the brightening morning, the little waves flashing silver up at them. The tide was in, the surf pounding high against the black rocks, the smell of the sea sharp with salt and iodine and little dead sea-creatures. Ryan glanced at the girls. “So what do you think she was watching?”

Dillon shrugged. “Hard to tell. I didn’t see anything very interesting. A man from the shop across the street watering his garden. Cars creeping by. Couple of tourists walking their dogs.”

“Which shop, Dillon?”

“That posh leather one,” Lori said. “With the Gucci bags.”

“And the other times?”

“Dormeyer’s Jewelry once,” Lori said. “When we took the dogs down before supper, and were coming home. Sunday night, gray-haired man closing up, locking the door.”

“That was Mr. Dormeyer,” Dillon said. “He owns the shop.”

“Was anyone with him?” Ryan asked. “His wife?”

“A woman left about an hour before,” Lori said. “Gray hair, a long skirt and sandals. He left last, locked the door.”

Ryan nodded. Gray-haired Mena Dormeyer usually wore long, flowered skirts, and sandals, even on cold winter days, varying her wardrobe only with a heavy, hand-knit sweater. And maybe with wool tights under the skirt, she thought. She slowed for a car to pass in the opposite direction, then turned left onto the Harpers’ lane. Moving slowly between the white pasture fences, approaching the barn, she studied the new end walls of the second story, their skeletons pale in the early light. The side walls had been stripped of the old roofing shingles but were still covered with age-darkened plywood. Scotty’s truck was parked in the yard. She caught a flash of his red hair and beard as he disappeared around the back of the barn, where they had stashed their ladders and equipment out of the way of the horses. Parking the truck, she watched the girls head into the house to get permission before they saddled the horses.

Ordinarily, Dillon would have been welcome to work on the construction, doing odd jobs, but Ryan didn’t want her on the second floor, balancing on open joists. Dillon’s work permit spelled out clearly the safety precautions Ryan would take. Ryan had not only signed the agreement but had of course promised Dillon’s parents that she would be closely supervised. This was not medieval England, where a fourteen-year-old was expected to do adult work and was paid a bit of stale bread and a lump of coal.

Swinging out of the truck, she gave Rock his command to jump out behind her; and as the girls hurried out, she headed for the barn.

She was up on the beams when the Greenlaws’ car pulled in. They were gone again when, at midmorning, she went in to have coffee with Charlie and Wilma. Sitting at the kitchen table, she mentioned the two girls watching Chichi and commenting on Chichi’s early-morning vigils. On the window seat, Wilma’s tabby cat lay stretched among the pillows, next to Wilma’s overnight bag. Like a patient traveler waiting to depart, Ryan thought, amused. Wilma was going home this morning, after several days’ pampering, but how could the cat know? The familiarity of the overnight bag? Knowing that where it went, Wilma went? That had to be the explanation.

Though this cat often gave Ryan a sense of the unreal. All three cats did. Well, but cats were strange little creatures, she didn’t understand cats.

Yet even Rock seemed to view these particular cats in a strange way. With unusual respect? Yes, that was it. And often with a puzzled look that seemed almost to be amazement.

Maybe the cats had clawed Rock at some time, had put him in his place, and he was unusually wary of them. Rock was, after all, a very big dog. He was daunting to most cats, so maybe it surprised him that these three would stand up to him-as they surely had, in the beginning. Now they were the best of friends.

“But what do you think she was doing, what was she watching?” Wilma said.

“Chichi?” Ryan shook her head. “I haven’t a clue.” She grinned. “The girls decided she was spying on the shopkeepers. Leave it to kids to find the most dramatic spin.”

Charlie said, “Maybe what Slayter told you wasn’t so far off, what he said when you had dinner with him last night-or started to have dinner.”

When Wilma looked inquisitive, Ryan told her what Slayter had said about Chichi running from the scene of the burglary. “That could be a figment of his imagination,” she said carefully. “Or could be a lie-Slayter’s the kind who would lie for no good reason, just to entertain himself.” She glanced out the window, saw that Scotty was back at work carrying two-by-fours up the ladder, and she rose, hurrying out.

She was on the roof again when Charlie and Wilma came out, Charlie carrying Wilma’s overnight bag. She watched Wilma’s cat gallop by them, heading straight for Charlie’s SUV The minute Charlie opened the door, the cat leaped up onto the seat in what, Ryan was certain, was surely not normal feline behavior.

But then, what did she know? Maybe catswereas smart as dogs.

The kit, full of Charlie’s lovely mushroom omelet and warm milk, prowled the empty house ahead of Lucinda and Pedric, far too impatient to give the old couple a chance to show her around. Leaping to every sill to look out, nosing into every corner lashing her tail with interest, leaping atop every bookshelf catching cobwebs in her whiskers, she decided she liked this house. Liked it quite a lot.

The two-story dwelling was on such a steep hill that, even after the Greenlaws had made their offer and given the agent a check, the conscientious agent was uncertain about the old couple living on such a slope. But to Lucinda and Pedric, the house was perfect.

The high rafters of the great room filled Kit with delight as she leaped from one to the next. But where was the surprise? She could not ask in front of the real estate agent. Even if Mrs. Thurwell was a friend, she didn’t know Kit’s secret. The old couple had chosen her because she was Dillon’s mother, and had decided to work with her exclusively because she was a quiet, sensible agent who didn’t push. Who had, during all their weeks of searching, left them alone to prowl each house as they pleased, without comment. Unless of course, they asked a question. Neither one of the Greenlaws could abide a pushy Realtor, and neither could Kit.

Now, even though she must remain mute, she raced about eagerly looking, her tail lashing, drawing Luanda’s frown because she was not behaving like a normal cat, making Mrs. Thurwell glance at her, puzzled.

“She’s always been like that,” Lucinda said. “As hyper as a terrier. The vet says she has a thyroid problem. Makes her wild. We worry about her, we keep hoping she’ll settle down. She’s such a dear, when she’s quiet. But anything new sets her off-new people, new places�”

Lucinda laughed, as guileless as a cat herself. “I guess everyone thinks their pet is special. Do you have figures on the utility costs?”

Managing to divert Mrs. Thurwell, going over the utility figures and then leading the slim brunette into the kitchen to discuss the dishwasher, Lucinda freed the kit-and freed Pedric to lead Kit to a dining room window and open the latched shutters.

Leaping up to the sill of the open window, Kit looked and looked, then she turned to look at Pedric. The thin old man held his finger to his lips. Kit stared at him, then sailed out the window into the oak tree-into a realm that took her breath. Into a little house right among the tall branches. This was the surprise! A little house, hugged within the branches of the oak.

Scorching from the branch in through a small, open door, Kit was beyond speech. Lucinda and Pedric had never hinted that there was a tree house! She looked back to the window, to Pedric. Her tall, wrinkled friend grinned, his eyes sparkling. “It’s yours,” he whispered, mouthing the words. “Yours, Kit.”

Oh, the wonder!

Joe Grey had a tower on his roof butshehad a tree house! A tree house sturdily made of thick cedar boards, a beautiful tree house with its own little deck and door and windows. She imagined beautiful India cushions inside, a tumble of pillows in which to snuggle; it was a retreat far cozier and more elegant even than Joe Grey’s wonderful tower.

At the moment, there was a lovely pile of dry oak leaves that had blown into the corner. Flopping among them she rolled and wriggled, lay upside down purring, looking up at her own raftered ceiling. She prowled her own deck, sniffing the salty sea wind and looking away to the hills where scattered cottages rose, half hidden among pines and oaks. She looked down to the south, to Wilma’s house, and could see Wilma’s roof! When she looked to the center of the village, she could pick out Joe Grey’s tower. She looked through the branches down into the window of the dining room where Pedric stood looking up at her, his eyes bright, his wrinkles curved with pleasure. “Yours,” he mouthed again. He turned away as Mrs. Thurwell joined him.

21 [��������: pic_22.jpg]

In her cozy living room, Wilma paused from serving drinks, set her tray on the desk, and placed three saucers of milk on the blotter. Beyond the open shutters sunset stained the sky, as bright red as the rooftops in the painting hanging above the fireplace behind her. A reflection of sunset played faintly across her long, silver hair. As she passed drinks to Lucinda and Pedric, the three cats set to lapping warm milk, their own version of before-dinner cocktails.

Charlie had brought Wilma home at midmorning and ordered her to rest. Wilma, after a half-hour nap, had grown so restless she began to call her friends to tell them she was home and on the mend, ready to go back to work. Now, this evening, an impromptu dinner to celebrate her homecoming, as if she’d been gone for months. The Greenlaws had brought a salad, and Clyde was picking up takeout on his way to get Ryan. Charlie had promised a dessert.

Joe Grey had left the station before Harper did, galloping across the rooftops burning with information on the Rivas brothers, with statistics from arrest sheets and reports that had just come in by fax. He was tense with news to share; but with Kit so excited, he hadn’t been able to get in a word.

“It’s a real tree house, it was a child’s tree house and it’s so beautiful all hidden in the tree and it’s mine! Wait until you see!” She was lapping milk and talking so fast that she spluttered most of the milk across the blotter and on Dulcie’s ears. Joe waited patiently. With Kit’s nonstop narration, Dulcie and Joe and Wilma soon knew more about the Greenlaws’ new house than the real estate agent who had sold it.

“There will be cushions,” Lucinda said. “And a water bowl on the windowsill that Kit can easily reach. We thought maybe Lori or Dillon would take the pillows up, with a sturdy ladder. That is,” she said, “if they understand that the tree house belongs to Kit.”

Kit purred with contentment. Life was indeed wonderful. But beside her Joe Grey fidgeted and laid his ears back until at last she paid attention and shut up and let him talk before he exploded like a wildcat.

“Faxes are coming in, on the Rivas brothers,” Joe said, twitching an ear. “Twenty-seven burglaries and street robberies in two years, and those are just the arrests. Who knows how many when they weren’t caught? Luis has a rap sheet long enough to paper this room, and so did Hernando.

“Most of the time, Luis and Hernando worked together, apparently kept Dufio out of the way.” Joe licked his paw. “Poor Dufio. By the time Dallas finished reading off the details of his arrests, half the department was standing around the fax machine, grinning. I had to crawl under Mabel’s counter to keep from breaking up laughing.

“Dufio’s full name’s Delfino. I guess he’s been clumsy like this all his life. Last year he robbed an Arby’s in Arcadia, two o’clock in the afternoon, got out with the money okay. But for the second time, he locked his keys in the car. Can’t the poor guy learn? When he couldn’t get in, he dropped the paper bag full of money and took off running.

“Two blocks from Arby’s, three patrol cars were on him, bundled him off to jail. But, as they recovered the money, the judge went easy on him. He did seven months, got out, his brothers wouldn’t have anything to do with him. On his own again, he broke the padlock on a storage locker in Anaheim, backed his truck up to it, and somehow in the process he set off the alarm. Chain-link gate swung closed, and he was trapped.”

Lucinda and Pedric looked a bit sorry for Dufio, but Wilma was laughing. Whatever embarrassment Dufio Rivas had suffered at his own mistakes, the entertainment he afforded those in law enforcement was deeply satisfying.

“When he got out of L.A. County jail,” Joe said, “he pulled a holdup on a 7-Eleven. He had his keys in his pocket this time. But he flashed a holdup note at the guy. He got away all right, for six blocks, then a customer ID’d his car. A patrol car stopped him, asked for identification and registration.” Joe purred, twitching a whisker. “I love when humans do this stuff. He opened the glove compartment, handed them all the papers in it, including the holdup note.”

This made Lucinda and Pedric chuckle, too. They were still smiling when Clyde and Ryan pulled to the curb out front, Clyde’s yellow Model A roadster gleaming in the falling evening. Charlie’s new, red SUV parked behind them, then Max’s truck. They all crowded in through the back door, setting their bags of takeout on the kitchen table.

Now, with Ryan and Max present, the cats must remain mute; they turned their attention to supper, committing themselves fully to a dozen Oriental delicacies that Clyde and Charlie served for them on paper plates. The highlight was the golden shrimp tempura. Clyde had brought three extra servings. Kit ate so much shrimp that everyone, human and cat alike, thought she’d be sick. She slept so soundly after supper that when Pedric lifted her up into a soft blanket and carried her out to the car to head home, she didn’t wiggle a whisker.

And it was not until Joe and Dulcie had wandered away to the rooftops, alone in the chill evening, that they discussed the Rivas brothers again. Then they laid out a businesslike schedule for shadowing Chichi Barbi, to discover what she found of such interest during her long, solitary vigils.

Joe could see her leave the house in the mornings, so he would follow her until noon. Dulcie would prowl the rooftops in the evenings when most of the shops were closing. Kit would be going back to Charlie’s in the morning for a few more days of storytelling; she had no desire to accompany Lucinda and Pedric on a spree of furniture shopping, any more than she’d wanted to look at houses. She might revel in a velvet love seat or a silk chaise, but she didn’t care for the shopping.

The Greenlaws had no furniture, they’d sold everything before they moved into their RV to travel the California coast. After the RV was wrecked and burned, the old couple, though safe, had owned little more than the sweatshirts and jeans they were dressed in; plus their ample bank accounts. The task of furnishing a whole house seemed monstrous to Kit; the only shopping that interested her was a nice trip to the deli. Besides, she was so looking forward to sharing more of her adventures with Charlie. Charlie’s book aboutherwas far more exciting than furniture stores and pushy salesmen.

“She’s getting big-headed,” Joe told Dulcie as they wandered the rooftops. He rolled over on a patch of tarpaper that still held the heat of the day. “You think it’s a good thing, for Charlie to be writing about her?”

“Charlie’s not putting in anything she shouldn’t. No talking cats.” Dulcie twitched her whiskers. “Kit’ll calm down. How many cats have their life story written in a book for all kinds of people to read, and with such beautiful portraits of her? You wouldn’t spoil that for the kit.”

“I guess I wouldn’t.” Joe nuzzled Dulcie’s cheek. “But you have to admit, she does get full of herself.”

Dulcie shrugged. “That’s her nature.” And the two cats trotted on across the rooftops, thinking about Kit’s mercurial temperament as they headed for the courthouse tower-until Joe came suddenly alert, stopping to watch below them.

Some of the restaurants and shops were still open, the drugstore, the little grocery that catered to late-shopping tourists. From the edge of a steep, shingled roof, they looked across the street to the grocery’s side door. “That’s�“Joe hissed, and the next instant he was gone, scrambling backward down a thorny bougainvillea vine and racing across the empty street. Dulcie fled close behind him.

Slipping into the shadowed store, they followed the short, stocky Hispanic man along the aisles, their noses immediately confused by a hundred scents: onions-coffee-oranges-sweet rolls-raw meat-spices, a tangle of smells they had to sort through to pick out the man’s personal scent-which, at last, was recorded in their scent-memories: a melange of Mexican food, sweat, and too much cheap aftershave. They flinched as an occasional tourist glanced down and reached to pet them; though the locals paid no attention. This family grocery store had cats, it was not unusual to see a cat in the aisles. Quickly down past cereal and bread they followed Luis, then down between shelves of canned vegetables and canned soup and then soft drinks. At pet food, Luis stopped. Pet food?

He began to fill his cart with the cheapest tins of cat food. He tossed in a fifty-pound bag of cat litter as if it were a little bag of peanuts. They watched him add a large bag of cheap kibble. He didn’t seem to give a damn for favorite brands or flavors, for what his cats might like or what might be good for them.

Hiscats? Luis Rivas did not seem to them to be a cat person. Dulcie’s green eyes were wide, her voice no more than a breath. “Are you sure this is Luis Rivas?”

Joe wouldn’t forget the scowling, burly Latino who had visited Chichi the morning before the burglary. And as Luis filled his rolling cart and joined the checkout line, it became more than clear that this man was, indeed, no cat lover.

The checker was a pretty, young brunette, probably still in high school. She looked at Luis’s purchases, and gave him a sunny smile. “You must surely love your cats. How many do you have?”

“Not my cats!” Luis snapped. “Far as I’m concerned, every cat in the world should be drowned or strangled.”

In the shadowed aisle, Dulcie’s eyes narrowed with rage, and Joe flexed his claws; but patiently they waited, filled with escalating excitement.

They followed as he slipped out the side door. He stood with his grocery cart, looking around, then headed up the sidewalk.

Following, they kept away from the shop lights, clinging within the black shadows of steps and curbside plantings. Two blocks away, on a narrow side street, Luis tossed the bags into the back seat of an old, white Toyota. Swinging in, he took off in a cloud of black exhaust. Phew. The car was one of the last square models, a rusted vehicle with a loose front bumper and a dent in the right front fender.

Committing the license number to memory was a no-brainer, and made them smile. Luis’s plate, in the standard succession of letters and numbers issued by California DMV, read 7CAT277.

Scrambling up the nearest tree to the rooftops, they took off after him, watching his lights for as long as they were visible.

Before they lost him among the hills and trees, they heard his radio come on. They followed the loud Mexican music for several blocks more, up into the residential hills. As the brass and guitar grew fainter, they could catch an occasional glimpse of headlights high up the hill, flashing between the branches of oaks and pines. Far up the hills they caught one last flash as the car turned abruptly, and then the light was gone; the blast of trumpet stopped in midsquall.

“Ridgeview Road,” Joe said, studying the narrow ribbon that snaked along the far crest. “He turned off Ridgeview, maybe a quarter mile up, that’s the only road that goes along the side of that hill.”

“Come on!” Dulcie flew from the last roof into a willow tree and dropped down to a little hiking trail. Racing along the greenbelt above the sea, the cats dodged into the bushes whenever they met a nighttime jogger or biker; and prayed they wouldn’t meet anything wilder; there were coyotes up here, and bobcats.

Dallas Garza’s cottage lay to the east of them, the senior ladies’ house to the northeast. The houses far ahead crowded ever closer as they rose higher, half hidden among overgrown oaks and shrubs. And suddenly, Dulcie didn’t like it up here.

She pushed on stubbornly, but this was not their regular hunting territory. Even in daylight the meanly crowded houses on this part of the hills seemed to her somber and forbidding; not friendly like the good-natured crowding of the village cottages, with their exuberant gardens. She slowed to catch her breath, shivering with an inexplicable fear. “We’ll never find it at night, with no scent trail. If he put the car in a garage�”

“You’re tired,” Joe said softly. “You feel okay?”

“I’m fine. I just�”

“Let’s go home,” he said, untypically. “We’ll come up in the morning. If they’re cooking breakfast maybe it’ll be chorizo, smell up the whole length of Ridgeview with Mexican spices.” She leaned against him, yawning, imagining the kit at home snug and safe in her bed, and wanting to be in her own bed. Joe studied her, concerned. “We’ll find the car in the morning,” he repeated, and together they headed toward home, down the long, lonely path through the chill night, then up to the roofs again, Joe’s thoughts seething half with concern for Dulcie, and half with tangled questions surrounding Luis Rivas.

22 [��������: pic_23.jpg]

But while Joe and Dulcie hurried home, each thinking of a midnight nap, Kit was not in her bed at all, but out in the night on her own mission. Having left the rooftop apartment after Lucinda and Pedric slept, much too wide-awake to stay in, Kit lay on a copper awning above a little cigar shop, watching Chichi Barbi across the street in the Patio Cafe.

Chichi sat at an outdoor table, observing the shops that flanked the cigar store just below Kit. I’m a spy spying on a spy, Kit thought. That’s what Dulcie would say. The curvy blonde, pretending to read the newspaper by the soft patio lights, glanced up every few seconds then wrote something down in the small spiral notebook half hidden beneath the sports section. Kit stretched out to see, but felt too impatient to remain still.

Dropping from the awning to the low-hanging cigar sign then to a raised planter, she landed among a tangle of bright cyclamens. Choosing a pair of late shoppers, she padded across the street behind them: a bare-legged woman in flat sandals and a man who smelled of the leather jacket he wore. Once across, she sprang atop the two-foot brick wall that defined the patio and approached Chichi from the rear.

She could not see the pages of the notebook until she was up on the next table, behind Chichi. Most of the other diners had left, their tables stacked with dirty plates waiting to be cleared. She had time only to glimpse Chichi’s odd notations when a dark-haired waiter double-timed across the patio, his black, hard-soled shoes ringing on the bricks, and waved to shoo her away.

“Scat! Get down! Cats on the bricks, that’s allowed! Cat on the table, bad, bad! You village cats know better!” Swiping at her with a dish towel, he picked up a plate that contained several scraps of leftover shrimp, set it under a chair, picked her up and set her down beside it, then began to gather up dishes. Laughing to herself, Kit scoffed up the shrimp.

Chichi glanced down, frowning at her, but then returned to her notebook. When the waiter left, Kit returned to the cleared table, to peer around Chichi’s shoulder.

She got a good look at the page before Chichi turned and saw her. But Kit was gone, racing away up a trellis to the roofs, where she disappeared from view.

Hidden among the chimneys she closed her eyes, concentrating until she saw Chichi’s scribbles again, clearly in the blackness; and she held them there, committing them to a strange kind of memory that even Joe Grey and Dulcie couldn’t match.

As a kitten, her one joy and wonder in life was to hide in the cold shadows where the wild band had gathered for the night, and listen to the old Celtic tales they told, the stories of their beginnings. To listen, and to remember so she could tell the stories later to herself when she was alone and frightened.

Now she saw sharply in memory Chichi’s mysterious notes, as strange as the hieroglyphs from some ancient Celtic tomb.

She needed Lucinda, Lucinda could write them down. Whatever this was, it was important. Holding that clear picture in her head, Kit bolted desperately for home.

Racing across her own terrace and into the bedroom, leaping onto the bed, she mewled at Lucinda and lashed her tail and patted at Lucinda’s face. “Wake up! Wake up, Lucinda. Now! Wake up now!” Dropping down again, she raced to the living room and onto the desk to snatch a pad of paper and a pen in her mouth. Carrying them clumsily, she flew back to the bedroom.

Lucinda had flipped on the bedside lamp. She sat muzzily against the tumbled pillows. Beside her, Pedric still snored; he had heard nothing. “What, Kit!” Lucinda demanded. “What happened?”

Dropping the pad and pen in Lucinda’s lap, Kit said, “Write. Write what I tell you� try to tell you� Oh, please.”

Obediently, Lucinda wrote as Kit spelled out the senseless words.

“Dn lv, dot.”

“Period?”

Kit nodded. “Then eight double dot forty, period. Next line, 2 cust. Then Bev dn shds lts off, period.” Kit had to spell it all, it was very difficult. Had to talk with her eyes closed to see it all clearly.

“Next line, nine oh four period out lock, period, then, wlk wst period. Then, Dn period. Eight double dot forty, period.

“2 cust. Bev dwn shds lts off, one sec in.

“Nine double dot oh four out lock wlk wst.

“That’s all,” Kit said at last, collapsing among the covers.

“What kind of codeisthis? Where were you, Kit? Where did you get this?”

Kit told her where she’d been and how she’d watched Chichi making notes.

Lucinda frowned, then slowly began to translate. “Don. That would be Don Blake-Blake’s Watch Shop? Don leaves the shop at eight-forty? Then�” Lucinda scanned the page, “then two more customers. Then fifteen minutes later, Beverly Blake pulls the shades and turns off the lights?”

Kit licked her whiskers, thinking. “Yes, that happened. I saw from the awning, I saw the lights go off, I saw the woman leave. I didn’t see the man. I guess he’d already gone?”

“Bev leaves one security light on inside?” Lucinda said, frowning. “She leaves the shop at four after nine, locks the door, and walks west?”

“Yes, she did that!” the kit whispered, pleased that Lucinda was quick at these matters. To her, the little squiggles were maddening. She hoped she’d gotten them right.

But Lucinda looked at Kit and stroked her. “You are quite amazing. Do you know that you are amazing?”

Kit rubbed her head against Lucinda’s hand and purred and purred. She looked up at Lucinda. “Why is all that so important that she has to write it down?”

“I’m not sure. But, Kit, maybe we’re both thinking the same.” Lucinda frowned. “When Beverly leaves a little later like that, she often meets Don at the grocery. They like pastrami hoagies for supper. He sometimes leaves earlier to order and pick them up. My goodness, Kit.” Lucinda touched Kit’s shoulder. “Chichi? Is this from Chichi Barbi?”

Kit nodded.

Lucinda’s eyes widened. “Blake’s Watch Shop is known for its Rolex watches and valuable antique clocks.” She reached for her robe. “Maybe it isn’t urgent enough to call, at night, but I�”

But Kit was already streaking for the living room. Leaping to the desk, she hit the phone’s speaker button and punched in the station. In seconds she had Dallas Garza on the line and was describing what she had seen and what Chichi Barbi had written in her little notebook. She did not want Lucinda to call, Lucinda could never explain how she knew Chichi’s secret.

The old stucco house stood jammed into the steep hillside as if it had been pressed into the earth by giant hands. It was two-storied in front, on the downhill side, one story at the rear where it pushed into the earth. This early in the spring the rising sun still hung in the south, casting a rich amber glow across the front of the worn stucco box, bringing to life patches of faded tan paint that had worn away to reveal the ancient gray plaster. The asphalt roof shingles were curled and mossy; the low picket fence beside the steep drive had perhaps never seen paint. But the rosebushes along the fence were lovingly tended, heavy with huge pink and red blooms.

The basement appeared to be a bedroom, the blinds drawn down halfway to reveal the crooked hems of limp lace curtains. The windows of the upper-floor living room were dressed with lace, too, giving the house an appearance of having not changed in decades, as if its residents had been settled within its dated rooms for a lifetime. The kind of house occupied by aging folks trying to exist on an ever-shrinking income that was eaten away by inflation and rising medical costs. The kind of house where an elderly widow might be too settled in emotionally to sell for a nice profit and move on. Such a widow might have few options, when all California real estate was out of reach for a person on a fixed income.

Joe and Dulcie had already circled the dwelling, leaping from tree to tree, peering in past lace tiebacks above the shorter lace curtains that covered the lower panes. They could see an oversized velour couch and chairs, their backs draped with Mexican weavings. And a dining table of the old-fashioned waterfall style, same as the end tables, the bedroom dressers and a round-topped radio. They saw no TV They saw no human occupant until they reached the back bedroom.

There by the window sat a lean, wrinkled old woman with graying black hair tied back severely. Her gnarled hands were folded together in her lap. A Bible lay closed on the table beside her, next to another round-topped old-fashioned radio. This room did have a TV, an ancient box set on a little table in the far corner, facing two narrow beds. Dulcie imagined the old woman holding a rosary; though at the moment her wrinkled hands clutched only a fold of her faded apron. She sat facing the dulled glass and the backyard rose garden, but apparently was asleep in her chair. At least, she had her eyes shut. If she had spied the cats in the pepper tree, she gave no indication. Facing the bedroom door stood a cage set up on a table.

All along Dulcie had hoped it wasn’t true, that there were no trapped cats. They peered in past the frilly pepper leaves and lace tiebacks at the three captives, feeling scared and sick.

The cage was made not of wire but of thin, strong bars, impenetrable as a jail cell, and was closed with a heavy padlock. The three cats slept inside huddled together, filling the small space. The white cat’s tail lay across the dirty sandbox. The dark tabby with the long ears had his hind feet pressed against a dish of stale food. The bleached calico huddled miserably between them, her eyes squeezed shut.

Swallowing back a growl, Joe studied the window.

It was an old, double-hung casement. Joe’s eyes widened when he saw it wasn’t locked, that the round metal lock, in plain sight, was disengaged. He tried to determine if the old woman was indeed asleep. If they dropped to the sill and slipped through, would she wake and shout for Luis? She seemed, dozing in her rocker, totally unaware of them.

23 [��������: pic_24.jpg]

Estrella Nava sat admiring her rose garden, waiting for Maria to make breakfast, when two cats appeared in the pepper tree outside her window. Wanting to watch them but not scare them away, she pretended to be asleep. No animal liked to be stared at. They crouched among the pepper tree’s delicate leaves, peering in at her through the glass. Nosy little creatures. Dark gray cat with white markings, and a dark-brown striped tabby. Not neighborhood cats, she knew every cat for blocks, they all came into her yard to pee. Hundreds of cats over the years. What were they staring at? She remained still and kept her eyes shuttered. They were looking at the cats in the cage, the cats Hernando had caught before he went away. Likely off again with some woman. Grandson or no, Hernando wasn’t her concern. She hadn’t asked him and his brothers to come here. They might be family, but she didn’t like them much and didn’t want them here. She had asked only Maria. Had meant for only Maria to come. She needed Maria. She didn’t need those three.

This house had been her home since she came as a bride. She’d buried Manuel from this house twenty years ago, he had lain right there in his own parlor, for the viewing. She had lost their five children, but only one from this house, laid out properly with mass said over him. The others had died far away. She had only herself now, hanging onto life like a cockroach clinging to the wall, and she had Maria. Maria’s brothers didn’t count. Maria was the only grandchild she could trust. She didn’t know how to get rid of those boys. She didn’t know enough about their comings and goings to call the police, but she suspected plenty.

That would be very hard indeed, to report her dead daughter’s boys, no matter what they had done. That would deeply shame her.

At least Hernando was gone, for a while. And now Delfino gone, too. From the way Luis and that Tommie McCord talked, she guessed Delfino was in jail again. Though he never seemed to stay there long. She wished they were all three in jail. Then she would let those cats free and not have to smell that cage anymore. And Maria would not have to take care of them. Crazy. Hernando and Luis trapping cats.Muy loco.

And now, more cats, looking in the window. What could they be looking at? If they had any sense, they’d get away before Luis saw them and caught them, too. Glancing under her lashes at her old, frail Bible that was written comfortably in her own language and that had been her own grandmother’s, she wondered what life had come to. She was eighty-two years old, was losing control of her own life, and was still wondering what life was really about. Wondering what God had in store for her. She’d borne and raised and buried five children, and that was God’s will, but she kept wondering if there wasn’t something more. Father Mahoney would be shocked that she did not always cling to the thoughts the Church expected of her.

She did not like sharing her bedroom, even with Maria, though she loved Maria. Nor did she like that those cats in the cage watched her-as if they thought she could let them out of there. Estrella Nava crossed herself. She could only go to sleep at night with her back to them, and even then she could feel them watching.

Luis slept with the key in his pocket. Maria had already slipped into his room at night to try to get it, but Luis kept his pants under his pillow. If Maria got caught, he’d beat her, maybe beat them both. It was shameful for a man to beat his own sister. He would surely burn in hell for that-not that Luis cared.

He never went to confession. Wouldn’t drive her to mass, either. If Maria took one of the cars, he checked the mileage before they left and again when they returned. They’d rather walk, but it was fifteen blocks to the mission.

She startled when, outside the window, those cats leaped suddenly onto the sill, peering in at her. But when she struggled up out of her chair to chase them away, they spun around before she could reach the window and leaped to the pepper tree, shaking its branches, and again to the roof, and were gone. She was dozing when Maria called her to breakfast.

Maria had made fresh coffee and had baked empanadas for the two of them. It was nice when Luis and Tommie didn’t eat with them. Maria didn’t like to cook properly for Tommie and her brothers, she bought things in cans and packages. How would they know the difference when they washed everything down with beer?

Estrella said grace with Maria, and she said to herself a little prayer of her own, regarding Maria’s fate. But her prayer for Maria’s brothers was a different matter, a different kind of fate. Maria didn’t need to hear that.

Whenthe old woman had left the room, Joe and Dulcie returned to the windowsill to press against the glass, studying the cage and the three cats. The cats had waked when the old woman came to the window; they looked steadily back at them through the bars, with an intelligence and pleading that left no doubt of their true nature.

With swift claws Joe ripped a hole in the screen. Reaching through, catching his fur along the torn wire, he flipped the screen’s latch free of its little ring. Pulling the screen out a few inches and slipping underneath, he and Dulcie clawed and pushed at the double-hung window. It stuck so hard they thought it must be nailed.

“More!” Joe hissed. “Push harder!” She pushed, they fought the double-hung panel until at last they were able to slide it up a few inches-but no farther. Something was stopping it; when they examined the molding, they could see where nails had been driven in to prevent it from rising higher. No human could get through, but fresh air could blow in.

Slipping under, they hit the floor as softly as they could, and leaped to the table that held the cage. They stood nose to nose with the three captives.

None of the three cringed away in fear or charged the bars with territorial rage as an ordinary cat might do, on first meeting. No one made a sound; no hiss, no threatening yowl. No claws or teeth bared in confrontation. But no one spoke. The three captives glanced toward the partially open door where at any moment the old woman or Luis might appear.

The one male was as white as snow, his long fur surprisingly fluffed and clean despite the crowded conditions. His blue eyes stared back at Joe with challenge, but it was only a good-natured tomcat challenge. The tabby male was darker than Dulcie, and long-furred, with a huge, fluffy tail. His ears were as tall and erect as those of a coyote. A strange cat, with eyes that were black-rimmed and then circled with palest cream. The female did not approach Joe and Dulcie, but pressed away against the bars as if she was afraid. She was a lovely, faded calico with a long face and a questioning look in her green eyes, the look of a cat who trusts no one.

For a long time, the three feral cats stood silently assessing Joe and Dulcie, taking their measure. The look in their eyes was a hunger for freedom, as powerful as that of three convicts on death row. It was Joe who spoke.

“Where is the key?” he said softly. “Tell me quickly.” They could hear the two women talking out in the kitchen, could hear their cups clink on their saucers.

“He keeps the key in his pocket,” the white tom said. “I am Cotton. I would kill him, if I could get my claws on him. The key is always there in his pocket. Maria says he puts his pants under his pillow when he goes to bed.” The cat sneezed with disgust. “Can youget the key? Or get the lock open?” Intently, he studied Joe. “Would you dare to free us?”

The tabby tom said, “I hear them talking late at night, Maria and the old woman.Theywould free us, if Maria wasn’t so afraid of her brother.”

Joe and Dulcie circled the cage, examining the lock and hinges, and how the bars were set in place. Every joint was securely soldered, and there was no way those strong, thin bars could be bent or broken. Not without human hands and the right tools. There was no way to separate the barred walls at the corners; the hinges were soldered or welded, just as was the hasp. No way out of that prison, except with the key.

“Bolt cutters?” Dulcie said.

“If we had a pair of bolt cutters, how do you propose to lift them?” Joe snapped. “Let alone put enough pressure on them!” He stared in frustration at his paws. It wasn’t fair, this human ability to use tools, while a clever and intelligent cat was so cruelly hampered.

“Maybe there’s a second key,” Dulcie said. She had that determined, stubborn look. “If there isn’t, then we have to toss Luis’s bedroom, slip his pants out from under the pillow.”

Joe looked at her. “Is Luis someone you’d want to catch you while you’re stealing his pants?”

Dulcie flicked a nonchalant whisker. “Bring him on, I’ll shred him.” But her green eyes reflected fear. The truth was, this Luis Rivas, with his interest in speaking cats, left her chilled and cringing.

24 [��������: pic_25.jpg]

Hanni Coon’s Interiors occupied a handsome, used brick storefront two blocks off Ocean, the shop’s softly tinted windows displaying unique and intriguing fabrics and accessories. This week Hanni had arranged a lush tangle of hand-woven cottons and carved furniture from the coast of Africa. Some weeks, it was all silks and damasks and period pieces; other times, an esoteric collection from Italy or Latin America. As flamboyant and self-assured as Hanni herself, the shop could exhibit any number of elegant personas.

It was barely seven in the morning when Charlie and Ryan parked Ryan’s truck in front of the design studio. Approaching the elegant entry with its potted trees and theatrical displays, the two women looked out of place indeed dressed in their old, worn jeans and wrinkled boots; but neither cared, nor did Hanni. Peering in through the leaded-glass door, Ryan grinned at her sister. Hanni unlocked the door and opened it to the wonderful smells of freshly brewed coffee, something with onions and cheese, and the warm French rolls for which the corner bakery was famous. She was dressed in persimmon silk pants and flowing tunic, and sandals, with dangling gold circle earrings setting off her vivid complexion and short white hair. Ryan and Charlie moved quickly to the blazing fire and stood rubbing their cold hands.

Locking the door behind them, Hanni sat down at the end of the couch to pour coffee from a silver carafe into flowered porcelain mugs.

“You are a gem!” Ryan said. “I’m starved.”

“You’re always starved. Come sit.” Hanni flipped back a lock of white hair, and passed them plates of miniature quiches, of fresh mango and papaya with lime wedges, and the basket of warm French rolls cosseted in a linen napkin. “You can’t pick out rugs on an empty stomach.”

“You sure you want to do this?” Charlie said. “Sell me rugs with no markup? Your rugs�”

“It’s a fair trade. I take no markup. You let me ride Redwing whenever you don’t have the time. Now, while you two fill your tummies, I’ll just flip through the rack, find a few pieces you can study while you’re eating.” Rising, she began to slowly swing the metal arms of the ceiling-high rack that occupied the far wall, bringing the handmade rugs into view one at a time. Charlie could hardly eat for admiring the bright, primitive patterns. She wanted them all; she was asking Hanni the prices of several when she glanced out through the shop window and grew still.

“What?” Ryan and Hanni said together, craning to look.

“Don’t turn around, Ryan. She’s looking right in here. I can’t believe this.”

“Who?” they chorused. Ryan paused with her cup raised, glancing up sideways. Hanni stood unmoving beside the hanging rugs.

“Chichi Barbi,” Charlie said. “Across the street in front of the drugstore, sitting on that bench. Staring right across at us, bold as brass. Staring right in! How much can she see, in here?”

“Can’t see much, with no lights,” Hanni said. “That blonde? Oh, of course-that woman who barged up to our table�”

Charlie nodded. “I� We think� Wilma and I think she’s casing the shops for burglaries. We� My God, Hanni. With this new line of imported rugs, you have one of the most expensive inventories in the village.”

Hanni looked alarmed for only a moment, then she grinned and shook her head.

“What?” Charlie said.

Hanni laughed. “I’m not a cop’s kid for nothing. I won’t show you, in case shecansee in. I just had this baby installed, when I ordered the rugs and new rack. I can slide metal doors out from behind the walls, across the rack, and lock them. That, and the sophisticated alarm system� Someone could break a window, but they won’t get the rugs.” Leaving one of the most beautiful weavings facing Charlie, Hanni returned to the table, helped herself to breakfast, and sat down where she had a clear view of Chichi. “Does she always dress like a streetwalker?”

Ryan said, “She’s making notes.” She looked up at her sister. “Dallas and Max have gotten a call, one of those anonymous calls, that she’s casing the more expensive shops. They think she might be part of the jewelry store bunch, that they could be planning one big hit, multiple stores all at one time.”

“Chichi Barbi is part of that?” Hanni said. “I’ve been gone so much, I haven’t talked with Dallas.”

“They’re working on backup,” Ryan said. “Contacting other districts, to borrow officers. You know Uncle Dallas and Max! They’ll have more men than they need, never doubt it.”

Hanni took another quiche and wolfed it. “That’s the kind of thing that makes me think about sleeping in the shop for a few nights, even with my new security.”

“Dallas would have your hide,” Ryan said. “Putting yourself in that kind of danger.”

“We’re not Dallas and Scotty’s little girls anymore.” Hanni reached for a second helping of mangoes.

“I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” Ryan told her. “Can you imagine their rage, or Dad’s, if they caught you hiding out in your own shop waiting for armed robbers-or if you got shot?” But as the two talked, Charlie’s attention was no longer on Chichi but on the dark little shadow crouched on the roof above her as Chichi made her mysterious notes.

Kit had been sittingon the roof for some time, intent on Chichi, who, in turn, was intent on the shops across the street, particularly on Hanni Coon’s Interiors. Kit had seen Charlie and Ryan go in, and guessed they were shopping for Charlie’s rugs. Next door to Hanni’s, the owner of the antique shop had the front door open, and the round, elderly woman was sweeping the entry and sidewalk. Next to her at the Tweed Shop, the driver of a brown UPS truck was unloading several large brown boxes. On down the street at the Gucci shop with its diamond-paned windows and small, elegant garden, the tall, slim, bald owner was watering his miniature roses and ferns. Chichi, making notes behind a newspaper that she pretended to be reading, was watching them all. And she was making the same kind of cryptic notes in her spiral-bound notebook as she had before. Kit wished she’d spell it all out; that stuff was hard to remember. Occasionally Chichi glanced at her watch as if recording the time of each occurrence. Kit did her best to commit the entries to memory-that seemed easier since Lucinda had written out the first batch for her last night, when she’d spied on Chichi in the Patio Cafe. Now Chichi’s scribbles made sense; now all she had to do was call the station.

In Hanni’s firelit shop, the three women polished off breakfast while they watched Chichi.

“I wonder if that’s her real name,” Hanni said. She glanced at Ryan. “Have you seen her around the village with anyone, any strangers? Has Clyde? She’s living right next door to Clyde.”

Ryan shrugged, and said nothing.

“Well, she has your back up,” Hanni said, grinning. She glanced at Charlie. “Could she be a writer? Doing some kind of research? Whydidshe move in next to Clyde? She was so friendly, that night at Lupe’s.” But then Hanni frowned. “Wanting to get friendly with Dallas and Max? To get on their good side? Or to draw their attention away from someone or something?” Her eyes widened. “Distract them from the burglary that night?”

Charlie said, “It was more than an hour between dinner and the burglary. But� she makes me uneasy, too.” She studied Ryan, her dark-lashed green eyes, her clear tan and bouncy dark hair. “You needn’t be jealous over Clyde, certainly not jealous of the likes of her.”

Charlie left the shop with Ryan, having selected three beautiful primitive rugs that would set her back a bundle, even at wholesale prices. Picking up her own car, she headed up the hills to inspect a new job and a new cleaning crew. Pulling out into light village traffic and turning up into the north hills, she was glad she’d have little, wizened Mavity Flowers to oversee the two new crew members.

This was the fourth year for Charlie’s Fix It, Clean It, and the business she’d built had grown to be nearly more than she could handle. But she was proud of what she had created, and it was too successful to let go; she didn’t want to sell. For one thing, her customers had come to depend on her. Hers was the only service in the village where the same crew would clean the house, make all the minor household repairs, even fix fences and roofs, run errands and feed the dog.

She would feel ashamed at discontinuing the service, at letting down her regulars-to say nothing of the very nice income. She was helping to pay for the new construction on their house, and would, in turn, take a tax write-off on her new office-studio. What she badly needed was a manager for the cleaning business; so far she’d found no one she trusted who wanted to take on the extra work and responsibility.

Winding up into the hills, checking her map to make sure of the address, she was a block from the new job when she hit the brakes. Stopping dead in the empty residential street, she stared up a long, steep driveway.

But then hastily she pulled on past; she didn’t stop again until she’d parked a block away, pulling in behind her old blue van with CHARLIE’S FIX IT, CLEAN IT lettered on the side. She sat a moment behind the wheel, smiling, then flipped open her cell phone.

How often did this happen? She could hardly believe what she’d seen.

The house she had passed was a tall, old stucco badly in need of paint, two stories in front, one story behind, old-fashioned lace curtains at the windows, unpainted picket fence along the steep drive. Halfway up the drive, pulled to the side into some concealing bushes, or perhaps so another car could go past into the closed garage, stood a brown Toyota pickup.

It was maybe ten years old, dull and battered and with a dented tailgate and a missing back bumper. It was without doubt one of the two getaway cars the department had ID’d. Glancing in her rearview mirror, she hit the button for the station.

25 [��������: pic_26.jpg]

Max Harper was headed downstairs to the department’s indoor firing range when the dispatcher came out from behind her counter and called down the hall to him. “You might want to take this, Captain. Caller won’t give her name.” Mabel smiled; she knew that voice. She didn’t know who it belonged to, no one did, but this was a caller the chief always found of interest. “I tried to take the message,” she said, amused. “She wasn’t about to do that.”

Harper turned into his office and pushed the door closed, shutting out the joking and laughing of several officers heading downstairs. As he sat down at his cluttered desk, he could hear through the floor the faint, random popping of the first group as they fired at the moving targets. With his usual wariness at talking with this particular snitch, he picked up the phone.

“Captain Harper, I watched that woman again. She was making notes about the shopkeepers again early this morning before opening time. Just after seven. The Gucci shop, and Hanni Coon’s studio. Maybe it isn’t important, but�”

“I’m always interested,” Harper said softly. She sounded hesitant this morning, as if she thought he might not like her calling. “I always welcome your calls.” He sure didn’t want to lose her; this snitch and her partner had been responsible for a considerable number of arrests and prosecutions. Hitting the RECORD button, he snatched up a pen and pad. Harper liked to hedge his bets, not rely totally on electronic equipment.

“That same blond woman, writing down when people get to their shops or when they close up, if they open the door early to sweep or take deliveries. This morning she wrote down that Mrs. Harkins swept the front walk and watered the flowers then locked the front door again and went down the street for a cup of coffee at Ronnie’s Bakery. She wrote down the time that she left, and how long she was gone.”

Where had the snitch been, to see all thatandto see what Chichi had written? He burned to ask her how she’d done that, ask her some details of her own movements, but she’d hung up on him.

She told him she had seen Charlie and Ryan inside Hanni’s studio, looking at rugs, and that made him smile. Charlie would be high just looking at those rugs-the soul of an artist, he thought. Same kind of kickhegot from locking up some skuzzy felon.

When the snitch had hung up, he sat at his desk trying to put down the uneasy feeling her calls gave him.

Yet every one of these calls, though they made him squirm, had supplied the department with valuable leads. Facts and evidence they might otherwise never have uncovered; or would have done so only after a long and expensive, drawn-out series of searches. Dallas called it uncanny. Max didn’t like the word “uncanny.”

Pouring the last of his cold, overcooked coffee into a mug, he sipped the bitter brew, studying the notes he had made, taking advantage of a moment of seclusion that his private space and closed door offered.

This kind of solitude had been unavailable when the department was one big open squad room with its clatter and bantering officers and constantly ringing phones. He didn’t miss the busy friction and din. His new, well-organized space added up to a welcome sense of ease. The tall oak bookcases, Charlie’s drawings of Bucky on the paneled walls, the leather couch and chair and the handsome Oriental rug-Charlie had combined the furnishings to create a comfortable retreat where he could enjoy a few moments of peace-except for, as at the moment, whatever edgy feeling he brought in with him.

Chewing over his notes, he at last gave up wondering how she’d gotten the information, and rose to head downstairs. He stopped when Mabel put through another call. “It’s your wife, Captain. It’s Charlie.”

He returned to his office, picking up the phone to Charlie’s excited voice.

“I think I found the second car, the brown truck. Toyota pickup, maybe 1980 or so. No back bumper, and a dented tailgate.” She gave him the address up in the north hills, described the house and how the car was parked.

“How close are you? Get away from it, Charlie. Did you see the plate?”

“I couldn’t see the plate for bushes. I didn’t want to get out and be seen from the house. I drove on past.”

“Good. We’ll take a look. Don’t go back there, for any reason.”

When they’d hung up, he called for two cars to meet him several blocks away from where the truck was parked. As he headed out, Dallas met him by the front desk.

Joe and Dulcie crouched beside the metal cage describing for the three captives how Charlie had freed the brindled tom from the humane trap. “That’s Stone Eye,” Coyote said, narrowing his ringed eyes and flattening his long, tufted ears. “Stone Eye, our self-appointed leader. Your friend should have let him rot. How didheget himself caught?”

“Hitler with claws,” Cotton said, hissing. Both the white tom, and the dark, striped tom lashed their tails and kneaded their claws, crouched as if for battle.

But the bleached calico female clung in the corner of the cage looking as fearful as if she faced Stone Eye himself. “Brute,” Willow hissed. “His henchmen are just as bad. I’m not going back there. If� if we get out,” she said, with a frightened mewl.

“We’ll get you out,” Dulcie whispered, pressing against the bars to nuzzle Willow. “But if Hernando’s dead, why are they keeping you?” Dulcie’s green eyes widened. “Do theyknowhe’s dead? Or do they think he’s coming back?”

“They know,” Cotton said. “They saw it in the paper. They haven’t told Maria and the old lady-not that there’s any love lost.”

“Then why are they keeping you here?” Dulcie repeated, frowning.

“Hernando talked wild,” Coyote said. “His brothers believed him. Foolish talk about performing cats on TV and in the movies, about Hollywood and big houses and expensive cars. Tons of money, like in the newspapers and on TV we hear through people’s windows. He could never make us do those things; no cat I know would want to live like that.” Coyote licked his striped shoulder, his circled eyes narrowed with rage.

“He mightmakeyou do those things,” Joe said.

“What, torture us?” Cotton hissed. “What kind of performers would he have, if we were half dead?”

Dulcie said, “Maybe he thought that soft beds and servants and gourmet food�”

“He wouldn’t ply me with such things,” Willow mewed. She had a small little voice that didn’t seem to match her elegant stature and markings. “I would not be slave to some hoodlum!”

“Luis has to know that’s a foolish dream,” Joe said.

“There’s more to it,” Cotton said, licking his silky white paw. “Hernando thought we knew something about them stealing cars and about two old murders, in L.A., wherever that is.”

“We don’t know anything,” Willow said, growing bolder and coming to press against the bars. “We couldn’t make much of what we heard. And what would we do about it? Go to the police?”

Dulcie and Joe exchanged a glance; they said nothing.

Cotton’s blue eyes were filled with disgust. “They have wild ideas about us. But the truth is, wearedifferent. Given their greed, and their superstitious fears that we could tell what they’ve done, they have no intention of letting us go.”

Coyote flicked his tall, canine-like ears at a sound from the front of the house. They all listened. A car was pulling up the drive. Dulcie glanced toward the window, but Joe headed for the shadowed hall. Dulcie pressed close to him as he made for the front bedroom.

The unoccupied room stunk of male human and stale cigarette smoke. With its little damask chair and delicately carved dresser and vanity, clearly this room belonged to the old lady. Looked as if the men had evicted her, taken it for their own. Smelling fresh cigarette smoke from outside the open window, they slipped up onto the sill.

A blue Camry stood in the drive behind an old brown Toyota truck that was pulled off into the bushes. The windows of the Camry were open; cigarette smoke drifted out, and in through the bedroom window. Luis and Tommie sat in the front seat, their voices sharp and angry.

“Those dummies,” Tommie said almost in a whisper. “Bringing the truck back here, parking it in plain sight! If the cops made that truck�”

“They didn’t make the truck. No one saw the truck!” Luis snapped. “Dumb bastards. What was Anselmo thinking. Get over here and drive!”

“But if we can get it in the garage�”

“No damn room in the garage, old woman has junk in there up the wazoo.”

“If I shove everything over, I can squeeze it in. Ought to set a match to that stuff.”

“Shut up, Tommie. Go on, back the car out! Meet me over there!” Luis swung out of the car and into the truck, leaning down, apparently to fish the keys from under the seat. Tommie backed down the drive, hit the brakes, and squealed off down the street. Luis started the truck, swung a sharp U-turn in the drive, plowing down three rosebushes, and took off after him.

From the windowsill, the cats glanced down the hall in case Maria stopped clattering dishes and came out of the kitchen. “Theywerethe ones,” Dulcie said with satisfaction. “How many more men are there? Harper needs to know where they are.”

“Let’s see how much more we can pick up,” Joe said, “before we call the station.” And he dropped to the floor, to search the room.

The men were gone maybe ten minutes. When the blue car came scorching back and Luis and Tommie headed in the house, the cats were under the Victorian dresser, crouching at the back among the cobwebby shadows.

Luis hated that drive down from San Francisco. Too many damn trucks. They’d been up all night and he needed sleep. This stupidity with Anselmo and the truck didn’t help his mood. Stepping out of the car, he hustled on into the house, Tommie behind him. He’dtoldAnselmo to keep the damn truck out of sight. Just because Anselmo’s landlady came snooping was no excuse. Well, he’d knocked Anselmo around before, it was good for morale, let them know who was boss.

“Four men crammed in one room,” Tommie said, “they were bound to get edgy.”

“Edgy’s not all they’ll get.” Luis wanted his breakfast. Shouldering down the hall, he yelled for Maria, then saw the light on in the kitchen, saw the dirty plates in the sink. He picked up the coffeepot and shook it. Still hot but nearly empty. Damn woman, lounging around in the kitchen when he was out, but never there when he wanted her. Shouting again for her, he sat down at the table and pulled a roll of bills from his pocket. Tommie had gone to wash, always had to wash when he got home, said staying up all night made him feel skuzzy. Said his hair itched. Well, red hair wasn’t healthy, he ought to know that. Tommy’d said he didn’t want a spicy Mexican breakfast. But he had no say in the matter. It was his choice to run with them, not theirs. If he didn’t like it, he could cut out.

“Maria! Get your tail out here! Get us some breakfast.” Man was up all night, driving half the night, he needed to eat. Why didn’t she think of that!

Maria came into the kitchen sullenly, scowling at him. She jerked open the refrigerator, pulled out a box of eggs, a package of chorizo, pepper sauce, tortillas. As the frying pan heated and the kitchen filled with the spicy smell of frying chorizo, Luis counted the money.

On the floor beside the dresser under which the cats crouched was an overflowing wastebasket. Stuffed inside, among the crumpled candy and cigarette packs, was a wad of crocheted doilies that must have covered the dresser and vanity and chair arms. The cats pawed through these and through the trash but found no gas receipts, no receipts or bills of any kind. In the closet, jeans and shirts were tossed on the floor with a tangle of men’s shoes. The twin beds were unmade, the blankets half on the floor. Dulcie imagined the room as it must once have been, with the care that Maria’s abuela would have given it.

She had seen in Maria’s room photographs of several generations, from Abuela down to babies and small children. She imagined this house full of children and grandchildren. Maybe little Luis and his two brothers before they grew big and mean, and the child Maria still innocent. She imagined them growing up and drifting away. It seemed strange for a good Latino family to wander apart. Dulcie preferred the loud, quarreling, close and happy Latino families who lived around Molena Point. From beneath the dresser, the cats could see straight down the hall, the kitchen table in their direct line of sight.

Dulcie’s eyes widened as Luis removed a large bundle of greenbacks from his jacket pocket. “That’s some bundle,” she whispered to Joe. “How much has he got? There was no cash taken during the burglary.”

“You want a closer look? Ask him a few questions?” Joe whispered back dryly.

Maria stood at the stove cooking breakfast; the house was redolent of frying chorizo. She glanced at Luis several times, her eyes wide at the stash of money. As if she, too, was wondering.

“Fence,” Joe said softly. “I’ll bet he fenced the jewels. Maybe he just got home.”

Tommie emerged from the bathroom and went on down the hall to the kitchen. He looked unhappily at his plate of eggs and chorizo, ignored the tortillas, and took a slice of white bread from the package Maria handed him. Luis and Maria began to argue in Spanish. The cats knew only a few words, not enough to make sense of it. Tommie replied to Luis in Spanish; but he spoke the language without grace, with a flat American accent.

Dulcie didn’t like being in the house with these men. She didn’t see how they were going to get the key when it was in Luis’s pocket and then under his pillow. But they had to try, they had to free the caged cats. Luis was complaining about being up all night, so maybe theyhadbeen to a fence, maybe in the city. Maybe, tired and full of breakfast, they’d sleep.

And, yes! The next minute, when Maria asked Luis if he wanted more eggs, he snapped at her and rose, shoving back his chair. “I’m going to bed! Keep the damned house quiet.” Dulcie glanced at Joe, excited because they could get on with searching. But scared out of her paws to try for the key. When Luis went to bed, would he take his pants off? In the daytime?

No cat would be fool enough to slip a paw into Luis’s pocket when Luis was still in the pants.

Or would he? She looked at Joe, and wasn’t so sure.

They drew deeper under the dresser as Luis headed down the hall-and as another car pulled up the drive. They heard its door open, and then the click of high heels. The front door opened. A woman called out: “Luis? Maria? You home?” Chichi’s voice. The cats listened to her strident, whisker-wilting giggle as her high heels clicked across the entry. Luis, coming down the hall, quickly stuffed the roll of bills in his pocket and pulled his shirt out to hang loose. The implications of the blonde’s easy, familiar entrance, the affirmation that she was tight with this family-but not totally so-held Joe and Dulcie tense with interest.

26 [��������: pic_27.jpg]

“Thelist is shaping up,” Chichisang out, waving a notebook at Luis and taking his arm to turn him back toward the kitchen. They sat down at the table across from Tommie; she dropped her purse on an empty chair. Silently Maria set a cup of coffee before her, then returned to shoving dishes into the ancient dishwasher. Their voices lowered, as if not wanting Abuela to hear, Luis and Tommie studied the notebook.

Listening, Joe slipped out from under the dresser, heading for the hall. Dulcie grabbed the skin of his rump in her teeth. “Let me,” she said through jaws clenched firmly onto his hide. “I don’t have white markings, I can fade into the carpet. And Chichi’s seen you. I could be any stray that wandered in.”

Joe looked at her doubtfully, but he drew back. His look said clearly that if anyone laid a hand on her, he’d skin them with his bare claws.

Creeping down the hall, Dulcie hugged the baseboard, her belly sliding along the faded runner. Just outside the kitchen she melted into the shadow cast by the partially closed door. The room smelled of chorizo and sour dishes. Luis sat with his elbows on the table where he had spread out a large sheet of paper that must be the map. As Chichi read off her notes, he repeated the names of several village streets and shops, which she helped him find. Dulcie peered up at the tall refrigerator, longing for a higher perch from which she could see.

Was this woman the brains of their burglaries, or only the messenger gathering information? Listening to Chichi’s detailed rundown of the times that the jewelry stores and other shops opened, of how many employees were there to both start and end the day, whether male or female and approximate age, Dulcie was soon so wired she could hardly be still. They were taking great care with their plans.

Chichi had run her surveillance both morning and evening, as if the thieves had not yet decided the best times for the burglaries.Werethey planning multiple burglaries all at one time? They were smug indeed to think they’d get away with that. With the information Dallas and Harper now had, and would soon have, these hoods would be in jail before they broke the first window.

“People will be coming in all week,” Chichi said. “Cluttering up the streets. And a jazz parade on Saturday. I don’t think�”

“Cops’ll be up to their ears,” Luis said, smiling with satisfaction. “Snarled traffic, a real mess. Their minds’ll be on tourists and crowd control.”

“You want traffic and crowds, why not wait until the big antique car show instead of this local yokel jazz festival. I don’t see�”

“That’s months away. I’ve got twenty idle guys about to go nuts. You think they’re going to wait all summer?”

“Give them something else to do. Take them up the coast, hit a few beach resorts.”

“You want to pay their gas and rent and food bills? Twenty guys? And that antique car show, they’ll bring in every cop on the coastandthe whole damn CHP. Those cars are worth a mint. Cops cluttering the streets everywhere. That’s the trouble, working with a woman!”

“I got the information, didn’t I? And I’ll tell you this, Luis,” she said sullenly. “You’re going to use the jazz festival, you better look at the early evening closings, when the town’s jammed. Some of those stores’ll stay open, but the jewelry stores won’t. And your cover’s no good, first thing in the morning. No one’ll be on thestreetsin the morning. All the mornings I’ve wasted getting up early�”

“This stuff’s none of your business anyway. You do what you’re told, you don’t tellmewhat to do. It was different in L.A.” He looked her up and down, taking in her tight pink sweater that offered plenty of cleavage, her skintight black jeans. “Half of these, you got no closing time. I said to�”

“I got closing times on the jewelry stores. I’m not finished.” She flipped the notebook page. “Here’s the frigging closings.” But, confronted with Luis’s rising rage, she seemed to draw back, turning suddenly as docile as Maria.

When Luis finished marking his map, Chichi tore out the pages, handed them to him, and put the empty notebook in her purse. Where had her spunk gone, all of a sudden? The woman’s brassy nerve seemed just to have vanished.

Did Luis beat her? Dulcie could see no marks on her, but that didn’t prove anything. The puzzled tabby cat remained crouched on the faded hall runner until the men began yawning again and started to rise; then she streaked for the bedroom.

Their shoes scuffed down the hall as she fled under the dresser, ramming into Joe. She was barely hidden when they came in. Luis sat down on the unmade bed nearest the door and pulled off his shoes, dropping them on the floor on a tangle of blanket. His feet smelled awful. How often did he wash those socks? Was he going to take off his pants and shove them under his pillow, or keep them on? The cats grew so nervous, waiting, that they could hardly breathe. From the kitchen they could hear Chichi and Maria talking softly among the clicking sounds of cutlery and plates and running water.

What would they be talking about, dumpy little Maria who looked so browbeaten, and brazen Chichi Barbi with her carefully collected hit list-brazen until a few minutes ago? Yet the two women seemed close; there was a gentle sympathy in their voices, which intrigued Dulcie.

Joe laid his ears back in annoyance when Luis lay down on the bed fully clothed, tucking his feet under a lump of the blanket. Well, Dulcie thought, so much for that. How comfortable could it be to sleep with one’s pants on? That was another plus to being a cat: no confining pants and shoes. Tommie pulled down the yellowed blinds under the lace curtains, stripped down to his shorts, and dropped his clothes on the floor, grumbling as he pulled up the tangle of covers and crawled underneath. The cats waited some time before both men were snoring. Then they slipped out from under the dresser and, despite any fear Dulcie might harbor, Joe reared up against Luis’s bed, looking.

He was just reaching out a paw when Chichi came down the hall.

Quick as a pair of terrified mice the cats were under the dresser again, crouching in the dusty dark peering out at her. She stood in the doorway observing the sleeping men.

When she was satisfied that their snores were indeed real, she came on in and began to toss the room. The cats looked at each other, fascinated and amazed. What was coming down, here?

Chichi was as methodical as a cat herself as she searched in and under every piece of furniture. When she approached the dresser, they nearly smothered each other, pressing back into the darkest corner. She slid open the drawers above them almost soundlessly, and rifled through. Then, in the closet, she investigated every garment, felt into every pocket. She didn’t approach Luis, but she went hastily through Tommie’s pockets, lifting his heaped clothes with distaste.

Only then, dropping Tommie’s wrinkled shirt back atop his pants, she approached Luis’s sleeping form.

When she was two feet from him, Luis snorted. She jerked her hand back. She waited, then stepped near again. She wouldn’t be looking for the key. Did she mean to take the money? He muttered and turned over, throwing out his arm, and she was gone, backing out of the room, apparently losing her nerve. She was halfway down the hall when Luis opened his eyes blearily. But then he only grunted and turned over, and was soon snoring once more.

Chichi did not return.

Dulcie had thought Chichi Barbi was a nervy, brazen young woman who wasn’t afraid of much. Who maybe hadn’t the sensibilities to be afraid. Now, she wasn’t sure. She didn’t know what to make of Chichi-brassy and confrontational one minute, cowed and uncertain the next.

But whatever the truth, Chichiwasconspiring with these crooks, was diligently helping them. Dulcie watched warily as Joe approached Luis again, his paw reaching; and she moved close behind him. If Luis woke and snatched Joe, the more teeth and claws the better.

Luis lay on his back, his snores loud and rhythmic. The cats were so close that their noses stung not only with the smell of his feet but with his garlic breath. Rearing up with his left paw against the edge of the mattress, Joe eased his right paw toward Luis’s pants pocket. And Dulcie slipped silently up onto the nightstand, ready to spring into Luis’s face if he grabbed for Joe.

Ready to defend her tomcat, she looked as lethal as a coiled snake.

Faster than she could blink, Joe’s paw slipped into Luis’s pocket.

Reaching delicately to the bottom of the pocket, Joe felt two car keys on their chain. Then, among a tangle of loose change, he could feel another key fob. Round, with some kind of raised emblem, attached by its short chain to a lone, fat, stubby key. That sure felt like a padlock key.

Soft as butterfly wings, his paw caressed the hard metal. Gently he hooked his claws into the chain. Luis grunted, stopped snoring and scratched his leg. He turned over, reaching automatically to his pocket, in his sleep. He nearly touched Joe. The tomcat panicked, reared away from him and dropped off the bed-without the key.

Angry at his own clumsiness, Joe wondered if he had tickled Luis. He crouched beside the bed, scowling, until Luis began snoring again with little uneven huffs, then he slipped up for another try.

Luis’s snores continued unbroken until Joe’s paw was again in his pocket; but suddenly Luis jerked upright, thrashing his arm, flailing out, then rubbing his eyes. Joe was gone, vanished beneath the bed, Dulcie beside him.

Directly above them, Luis sat up, bouncing the springs so close to their heads they ducked. Swinging his legs to the floor, he sat on the edge of the bed yawning, then, in his socks and his pants but no shirt, he headed down the hall to the bathroom. Not until they heard the shower running did the cats come out from under the bed, to crouch before the closed bathroom door.

Dulcie didn’t want to go into that small closed space with Luis. Joe leaped, grabbing at the knob until he had a secure grip between his clutching paws. Swinging with all his weight, he turned the knob. Beside him, Dulcie pushed the door open.

The shower water pounded, its thunder hiding whatever noise they might make, its steam and the mottled shower door hiding them from Luis’s view-they hoped. The room was like a sauna, steam blurring the porcelain fixtures. Behind the obscure glass door, the ghost of Luis’s squat, broad figure genuflected and scrubbed.

On the closed toilet seat lay Luis’s wadded-up pants. Faster than the speed of the pounding water, Joe’s paw was into the pocket among the tangle of keys and loose change. This time he knew what he was looking for. Beyond the shower door Luis bent one knee as if washing his feet-an indication to Joe that he was about to finish up and step out, that any minute he would slide the door open and snatch a towel from the rod. Glancing at Dulcie, he saw a sharp mix of fear and predatory determination in her wide green eyes.

Pawing deeper into the pocket, he tried to separate the little fob with its single fat key from the other keys, and to catch its chain in his claws. At last, with it securely hooked, he drew it out.

The fob at the other end of the chain held the carved picture of a long-tailed quetzal bird, its image half worn away from use. Gripping the bird in his teeth, he pushed quickly out the door, Dulcie by his side. When, behind them, the shower door slid open, Dulcie swallowed a mewl. They shouldered the bathroom door closed and were gone, twin shadows streaking down the hall into the empty living room and behind the couch, the first piece of furniture they encountered.

Crouched in the shadows, they listened to the two women in the kitchen. “� Must be tired, Maria,” Chichi was saying. “Abuela to take care of, Luis and Tommie to cook for, and those cats to tend, cleaning their cages� Would you like to get out for a while?” There was a jingle of keys. “Go on, take some time for yourself. Bring home some groceries, you can say you were doing the shopping. Go have a sundae, a look in the store windows. I’ll take care of Abuela, see that she’s comfortable, make her a nice cup of tea.”

Slipping through the living room and into the dining room, the cats peered through a second door into the kitchen. Maria stood by the table, pulling on a red jacket over her blue sweat suit. “You sure you don’t mind?”

“Go while you have the chance.” Chichi hugged Maria. “Before Luis comes out of the shower. I’ll tell them you had to go to the store.”

“That we were out of beans and milk,” Maria said quickly. “Chorizo. Onions. And sand, that cat sand.”

“Why does he keep them? What’s he mean to do with them, now that Hernando’s�” pausing, Chichi glanced toward Abuela’s bedroom.

Maria’s expression went solemn. “He� Hernando said they were worth money. Luis believed him. He’s too stubborn to turn them loose, he’s sure he can sell them, make a bundle. I guess that’s all,” she said uncertainly.

“Stray cats! Not worth shooting. And the poor things stuffed in that cage. I’ll clean the cage before I go, so it won’t smell so bad.”

“You can’t clean it, Luis has the key. Can’t clean it properly. You can reach the scoop in between the bars, though.”

Chichi sighed. “How can a grown man be so stupid?” She gave Maria a little shove. “Go on, before he comes out.” The two women looked at each other with a bond of friendship, and Maria slipped away, out the front door. The cats heard her start the car and back down the drive.

In the kitchen, Chichi immediately resumed her search, going through the pockets of Luis’s windbreaker that he’d left hanging over a chair. When she pulled out a small, empty, black silk bag, Joe swallowed back a hiss of surprise that almost gave them away.

“So,” the tomcat said when they were behind the couch again, “she did give the bag to Luis. And Luis came in this morning counting money.” Luis had gone back to bed, they could hear his snores chorusing off-key with Tommie’s.“Isshe looking for the money? Or something else, too? Go on, Dulcie. Follow her. I’ll go in Abuela’s room; if she’s asleep I’ll open the lock.”

Dulcie looked at him uncertainly. She didn’t like to split up. And she was afraid of Chichi.

But what was the woman going to do if she saw her? She was a cat, totally innocent; and she was faster and more agile than Chichi. Not liking to act the coward in front of Joe, she slipped quickly away following Chichi, padding down the shadowed hall toward the stairs with only a small shiver, only a few beads of sweat on her paws.

27 [��������: pic_28.jpg]

Dallas Garza was preparing to release Dufio Rivas. The detective had sent three men up the hills to watch the old house where Charlie had spotted the brown pickup. Two officers were wearing gray fatigues marked with Molena Point Gas Service logos, and were driving a gas company truck. The third officer, stationed just down the block, was dressed in greasy jeans and was changing the tire on an old car he had pulled to the curb. Dallas had a fourth man waiting near the jail to follow Dufio when he left.

He had checked the ownership of the hillside house, and knew it belonged to an Estrella Nava, an eighty-two-year-old village resident who had lived there alone since her husband died twenty years before. The detective had run the Washington state plates of the truck Charlie spotted, and had run the Nevada plates of the car they picked up the night of the burglary. That night, the truck’s plate had not been visible. Both plates came up stolen. Neither belonged to the vehicle to which it was affixed. Dallas had some concern that when they released Dufio, he would spot the tails they had on him. Max didn’t think so. “We could probably send him home with a chaperone, he wouldn’t catch on.”

“He’s stayed out of jail better than his brothers,” Dallas said. “Just hope he hightails it for the Nava house, gives us reason to get a search warrant. Charlie’s pretty sure that was the truck?”

“I’ve never known Charlie to be wrong about what she’s seen. She’s an artist, she looks and she remembers.”

“Let’s get Dufio moving, maybe we’ll see some action.”

Harper rose, grinning at Garza’s unrest, and they headed down the hall and out the back door. Crossing the officers’ parking lot within its chain-link fence, they entered the small village jail.

Molena Point jail was a holding facility for short-term detainees and for prisoners awaiting trial or being tried. Once a sentence was imposed, those sentenced were moved to the county jail or to a state facility. There were four small cells, two on either side of the concrete hall. Four bunks to each cell. Down at the end were two large tanks, one on either side, each built to accommodate ten prisoners. The right-hand tank was empty except for Dufio. Its other three occupants had been released an hour earlier, when they had sobered up sufficiently and been bailed out by their wives. Dufio Rivas lay stretched out on his back on a top bunk under a rough prison blanket, his face turned slightly to the wall. Maybe the drunks had kept him awake all night, maybe now in the welcome silence he was trying to catch up on his sleep. Dallas unlocked the door.

“Come on, Dufio. You’re free to go home.”

Dufio didn’t stir.

“Wake up Dufio,” Garza said. “Get the hell out of here.” When Dufio didn’t move, Dallas drew his weapon and stepped over to shake the prisoner’s shoulder. Before reaching him, he swung around.

“Call the medics!” He rolled Dufio over fast, generating a last few spurts of blood. The man’s face and neck were torn, a mass of blood. Dallas reached uselessly for the carotid artery; he couldn’t be breathing.

There was a bullet hole through Dufio’s neck, and two in his head. Small holes, as if from a.22-but big enough for the purpose. Max, having called for medical assistance, glanced up at the cell window studying the bars.

The bars were all in place. He looked at the branches of the oak tree outside, but nothing seemed different. Activating his radio again, he put out an arrest order for the three sobered-up drunks who had, an hour earlier, been released to their wives. In seconds, they heard the back door open, heard officers running out to their units and taking off. The same action would be occurring at the front of the building. The emergency van came screaming through the chain-link gate, and two medics ran in with their emergency packs.

Climbing up to stand on the lower bunk, they began to work on Dufio, stanching the last trickle of blood and checking for a heartbeat. But soon they turned away, shaking their heads. “You call the coroner, Captain?”

Max nodded, looking up as the coroner arrived, stepping into the long hall and heading for the back cell. John Bern was a slight, balding man with glasses. He glanced at Max and Dallas, stepped up on the bottom bunk as the medics had, and began to examine Dufio.

“Shot from the back,” he said, turning to look down at Max. He glanced around the cell, then up at the window as the other officers had done. He asked about the position of the body before the officers moved it, then he readied his camera and began to take pictures.

He ended with several close-ups of the hole in the mattress and, once the body was removed, he employed forceps to carefully pick out the one bullet he could locate, from the thick cotton padding.

“Twenty-two,” Bern said. “Guess the other slugs are still in him.” The overhead light reflected off Bern’s glasses, off his bald spot, and off the fragment of lead he held in his forceps. “Good shooting, to kill him with a twenty-two.” He glanced up again at the barred window. “Like hunting deer from a tree stand, the way they do in the South. Only this was more like shooting fish in a barrel. Quarry can’t run, can’t get away. Was probably sound asleep, never knew what hit him.”

They searched the cell but found no casing. They heard two more squad cars leave. Garza sent Brennan to search the yard, meaning to join him. He wanted to get up in that tree, maybe lift some fiber samples. Max turned and was gone, they heard him double-timing across the parking lot and into the building, heading for the control center.

Garza remained with Bern until Dufio, tucked into a body bag, was taken away to the morgue. Strange, Garza thought, watching the medics carry Dufio away. He had an almost tender feeling for the poor sucker with his long list of screwups. Strange, too, that it wasn’t a screwup that finally got him. Not directly, anyway.

But who would want to kill the poor guy? He watched Bern collecting lint and hair samples, giving the cell and bunk a thorough but probably fruitless going-over. This cell housed a vast turnover of men, all of whom would have left traces of themselves. But John Bern was more than meticulous. At last Dallas turned away, his square, tanned face pulled into unhappy lines, his black-brown eyes dark with annoyance that someone had committed a murder in their jail.

With Maria gone in Chichi’s car, Chichi herself downstairs, and Luis and Tommie asleep, Joe approached Abuela’s room, the key clutched uncomfortably between his incisors, making him drool. Crouching beside the bedroom door, he looked across at Abuela. Sound asleep in her rocking chair, softly huffing. Her cane leaned against the chair arm. The window was closed now, and the shades pulled down to soften the harsh morning light.

The three cats looked down at him through the bars so forlornly they made Joe’s stomach flip. But then Coyote saw the key, and his yellow eyes blazed. At once the other two pushed against the bars, in their terrible hunger for freedom. He only hoped he could manage this. He had never yet been able to manipulate a key; not that he hadn’t tried. This time, he had to pull it off.

Shouldering the bedroom door nearly closed, hoping no one would hear the tiny squeak of its hinges, he waited, listening. No sound from the hall. Abuela slept on. He leaped to the table beside the cage, the metal key and chain dangling from his teeth like the intestines of a metal mouse.

All three captives nosed against the bars sniffing at the key, their eyes wide and expectant. None of the three spoke.

Bending his head, Joe placed a paw on the dangling key fob and fumbled the key into position between his front teeth. He had the key in position-but when he guided the key into the hole in the dangling padlock, immediately the lock swung away.

He looked at his three silent observers. But how could they help? The bars of the cage door were too close together to allow even a paw through, to steady the lock. And the way the lock dangled, every tiny movement sent it shifting.

Rolling down onto his shoulder, on the four-inch strip of table, he peered up from that angle, hoping he didn’t swallow the key. Reaching up with careful paws, humping up as close as he could get, he tried to line up the key.

Voila! It was in position! Carefully he eased the key in, his heart pounding. He was starting to turn the key when it fell out, fell into his mouth and nearly into his throat, scaring him so badly he flipped over, coughing and hacking.

Spitting the key out, he sat trying to calm his shattered nerves. But he took the key up again, tried again. Again it fell, again he nearly choked. Again and again, a half dozen frightening failures before, on the seventh try, slowly, carefully twisting his head with the key in place in the lock, it turned!

The lock snapped open. He wanted to yowl with triumph. Employing his claws in a far more natural operation, he hooked the padlock, lifted it, and twisted it out. It fell with a thud, the key still in it. Six round eyes stared at it, and stared at him with wonder. Eagerly they pressed against the door, as Joe clawed to free the hasp.

A sound in the hall; a shuffle behind him. The bedroom door flew open, banging against the wall. Hands grabbed him, big, hard hands. He flipped over fast and sunk his teeth and twenty claws into Luis Rivas’s arm, biting, raking, tearing him, tasting Luis’s blood.

Dulcie padded soundlessly behind Chichi down the stairs to the lower floor. She watched the blonde in her tight sweater and tight jeans stretch up to the highest bookshelves and closet shelves, searching, then crouch to peer under chairs and dressers, to feel beneath cushions and to open drawers. What was she looking for? If Chichi’s job was to help Luis and Tommie scope out their hits, to assess the number of staff and the best times to make those hits, then what was this stealthy search? Chichi seemed most interested in small niches, small drawers, cubbyholes. Not until Chichi had entered the small laundry room did Dulcie catch a whiff of what she might be seeking.

Dulcie did not want to go into the laundry and be trapped in that tiny space with only one way out. She crouched in the shadows beside the door. The concrete room stunk of dirty laundry from the overflowing hamper that stood beside the washer, and of laundry soap and a whiff of bleach. But Dulcie caught, as well, another scent. A pungent oil, a smell she knew. She sniffed deeply.

As sure as she had whiskers, that was gun oil. The same as Wilma used to clean her.38, the same smell that was always present around the PD, the smell of well-oiled handguns.

The smell came from beneath the washer. Chichi was crouched on the concrete floor looking under, pressing her face against the washer, squinting into the dark; she was bound to smell it.

But apparently not, with the other stinks in the room, and with Chichi’s own sweet perfume, which carried considerable heft. Dulcie waited, tensed to race away. Chichi squinted and looked, but at last she rose and left the room, heading down the hall. Slipping into the laundry behind her, Dulcie peered under washer and dryer into the same shadows Chichi had scanned.

The gun lay far back beneath the washer, where maybe only a cat would be able to make out its dim shape. So far back that a human, even if he found it with a flashlight or knew it was there, could only fish it out with a stick.

Slipping behind the dryer, pressed in between it and the wall, she crept back behind the washer. Making sure the gun was pointed away from her, she lay down and reached a paw in, and gingerly fished it out by the grip, careful not to turn it toward her or touch the trigger.

There it lay, under her nose, in the dusty dark space between the wall and the washer. A blue-black revolver with a roughly textured wooden grip and, on the side of the grip, a round embossed metal seal that showed a rearing horse and readColt.A revolver very like Wilma’s Colt.38 special.

This had to be what Chichi was searching for. What crime had the revolver been used for? How did she know, or suspect, that it was here in this house? And what had she intended to do with it? Or, after all, was she searching for something else, and not the gun?

Carefully pushing it out of sight again, as far under as she could, she backed out of the tight space, shook off the dust, and hurried to catch up with Chichi.

Like two mimes, one silently mimicking the other, she followed the young woman in her futile search. Padding unseen through the dim rooms, Dulcie was Chichi’s shadow.

Only when the blonde had exhausted every crevice, or thought she had, did she head back upstairs. She was halfway up when shouting erupted from above: Luis’s enraged yells coming from Abuela’s bedroom, accompanied by furious tomcat yowls as if Joe was being strangled.

28 [��������: pic_29.jpg]

Streaking past Chichi up the stairs, Dulcie fled for Abuela’s bedroom, which rang with Joe’s yowls and Luis’s screams. She burst through the open door into a storm of swinging arms, flying fur, and Spanish swearing. Pausing for only an instant to sort out the action, she leaped straight into Luis’s face, clawing, clamping her teeth on his ear, trying to make him drop Joe.

Luis tried to pull Joe off his arm, but the enraged tomcat clung and slashed and bit. As Luis fought to knock him loose, Dulcie glimpsed the cage door where the three cats pressed frantically. It was unlocked, the padlock was gone, but the hasp was still in place, held tight by the swivel eye where the lock had hung.

The three cats were so close to the swivel eye, just inches from it. But they could not reach through, no paw could fit between those tight bars. She was crouched to leap to the table when the old lady joined the fray. Estrella Nava, with a cry of dismay, rose from her rocker and flew into action, beating at Luis with her cane, shouting Spanish expletives that sounded as vile as those Luis was yelling. Luis turned on her, lunging against the cage so it rattled and slid, and Dulcie and Joe clung to him raking flesh, bloodying Luis with claws and teeth-until the bedroom door banged open, hitting the wall, and Tommie burst into the room.

He grabbed Dulcie, tore Joe off Luis, making Luis scream with pain. Jerking open the cage door, Tommie shoved Joe and Dulcie in, forcing the captives back against the bars.

Slamming the door, Tommie turned the swivel, effectively locking it. The five of them were jammed inside like kippers in a sealed can.

But Tommie couldn’t find the lock. He searched the floor and under the table and in the corners, swearing; then he ripped off his belt and stuffed it through the swivel eye.

Standing back, he smiled. Not his carefree Irish grin, but a cold leer, his red hair on end, his freckles hardly visible in his red, excited face. Tommie stared at Luis, and turned to look at Abuela.

Estrella Nava had slipped back to her rocking chair; she sat glaring at the two men, her eyes, defiant and angry, reflecting passions Dulcie wished she could read. But as the old woman turned in her chair to look out the window-as if dismissing the two men-Dulcie glimpsed a flash of metal in her hand. She saw it for only a second, then it was gone.

“Where’s the lock?” Luis was shouting, crawling beneath the table. “Where’s the lock and key?” He was so covered with blood he could hardly see; he looked like butcher’s meat. Backing out from under the table, he swung up to face Tommie. “Where’s the damn lock? Where’s thekey}Who took my key?”

“I don’t have it!” Tommie snapped. “Look under the bed, maybe it got kicked away� Wait!” He spied the padlock underneath Abuela’s chair.

Following his gaze, Luis snatched it up. The key wasn’t in it. He stood holding the lock, staring angrily at Abuela. “Where’s the key! Give me the key!”

“I don’t have your key, Luis. Leave me alone.” Her voice was quiet, cold and disdainful. From within the cage, Dulcie watched her with interest. Abuela Nava was, despite her frail age, a woman of strength and dignity. Her eyes on Luis showed plainly her hatred of her grandson. “Why would I want your key? I don’t want it, or you, in my house, Luis.”

Luis was snapping the lock on the cage door when Chichi appeared behind him. Stepping into the bedroom, she took in the scene with disgust. “Get yourself cleaned up, Luis. You have bandages? Get some, and a towel and a wet washcloth.” She saw Abuela then, and went across to the old woman. “What did they do to you? Did they hurt you?”

“They hurt only the cats,” Abuela whispered. “They hurt the cats.”

Chichi’s eyes widened at the sight of more cats in the cage. She stared hard at Joe-at Clyde Damen’s cat-but said nothing. She laid a hand on the old woman’s arm. “Maria will be back soon. I�”

“Quit messing with her!” Luis screamed. “Where’s the damnkey!”

“Idon’t have your key! I just came in! How could I have it! Get some stuff to clean yourself up!”

Luis hit her a glancing blow across the face. She didn’t flinch, didn’t step back. Stood staring at him until he backed off, then she turned and stormed out of the room. They heard the front door open and slam. Dulcie wondered if Chichi would wait outside for Maria, for her car. Or if she was so mad she’d go off without it, and come for it later. She stared at the bars trapping them, and out at the two men. Joe looked sick, his ears down, his short tail tucked under, his whiskers limp. She couldn’t bear the pain and defeat in his eyes, she wanted to nuzzle him, but she would make no such show of emotion in front of this human scum. The five cats were pressed so hard against one another that Coyote and Cotton were pushed into the dirty sandbox, and Willow stood with three paws in the water dish. It wouldn’t be long, they’d be hissing and striking each other, frantic with their confinement. Closing her eyes, she tried to calm herself, to get centered, to not give herself to defeat. She was so miserable she hardly heard the sound of a car in the drive, or Chichi and Maria’s voices, or the car pull away again. All she could think of was their frantic need to be out of there, to be free.

It was noon when Charlie finished looking over the new job, near where she’d seen the brown pickup. She had reset the hinges on the sagging gate, checked on the work of the two new cleaning girls, and told them she was pleased. One of the girls had horses and needed to work to take care of them. She was a lean, strong young woman, more than used to hard work. An employee Charlie would like to keep. The young man who was doing the yard was a musician, a bass player working to support his music, which was not yet supporting him. He did the gardening wearing heavy gloves to protect his hands. He’d last until he got a regular gig, then he’d leave her. That was the trouble with owning this kind of company-or maybe any small business, these days. That, and all the forms she had to fill out, all the details and red tape. To say nothing of the insurance rates! She thought again about selling the business.

Her best, most dependable employees were, like Mavity Flowers, past middle age. Up in their years and settled in; but the sort of folk who truly liked cleaning houses. There were not many of those anymore. All the young people wanted top-flight jobs the minute they were out of school; no climbing the ladder for them, they deserved to start at the top-or thought they did.

She hadn’t grown up like that, she’d done all kinds of odd jobs to get through art school. Had come out of school glad to find any beginning art job. Her first year, she’d washed brushes in a small commercial-art studio, then done rough layouts for wastebasket designs and frozen-lemonade cans, work far more tedious than scrubbing floors. She’d had no chance to design anything. When she was “promoted” to painting finished art for a set of willow-ware canisters and metal kitchen items, that was the most tedious of all. All those tiny Crosshatch lines and little details nearly drove her mad. She still couldn’t stand willow ware. But she’d paid the rent, that was what mattered. Today, a kid coming out of art school expected to step right in doing layouts for major magazine advertising, or to be offered a top position with some prestigious interior design studio in New York or San Francisco. Few got the chance. If those kids, when they were still in grammar school or high school, had had to work at menial jobs every summer, they’d take a different view. And that made her smile. Opinions like that, bemoaning the lack of work ethic in the young, sure as heck showed her age.

Well, maybe not being a kid anymore wasn’t a bad thing, maybe what she knew now, about the world, served her better than the feel-good illogic of her youth. Turning into the courthouse parking lot, she swung into the red zone before the glass doors of the police station to wait for Max. Strange that he’d called her to have lunch, he seldom had time to do that. He’d said only that he and Dallas needed to get away from the shop.

She and Max had been married for not yet a year, but she’d learned a lot about being a cop’s wife-how to hold back her questions, curb her curiosity, wait and bide her time until Max was ready to share with her. That was not always easy, it was not in her nature to be patient.

It hadn’t been easy, either, to keep her fear for him at bay. Nor, she thought, amused, to learn to make dinners that would hold for hours.

Parked beneath the sprawling oak before the door of the PD, she sat enjoying the gardens that flanked the courthouse. Molena Point PD occupied a one-story wing at the south end of the two-story courthouse, a handsome Mediterranean complex with red tile roofs, deep windows, and flowering shrubs bright against the pale stucco walls. An island of garden filled the center of the parking area, which was shaded by live oaks. The huge tree under which she sat served not only for shade over the station door, but also as a quick route to the roof for the department’s three feline snitches. To the roof and to the small, high window that looked down into the holding cell, into the temporary lockup where arrestees were confined until they were booked and taken back to the jail or were led off to the interrogation room for questioning.

Joe and Dulcie and Kit could easily spy through the holding cell window, or slide the window open and drop through the bars down into the cell-then slip out through the barred door to the dispatcher’s desk. Though on most occasions it was easier for the cats to simply claw at the glass front doors until the dispatcher, usually Mabel Farthy, came out from her electronic world and let them in. Mabel hadn’t a clue she was admitting the department’s secret informants.

Charlie was idly watching the parking lot when a white Neon pulled in, not twenty feet away. Chichi Barbi got out, dressed in tight black jeans, a low-cut pink sweater, and high heels. She stood leaning against the car, watching the street. Charlie pulled her sun visor down, hoping not to be noticed; she watched as a black Alpha Romeo turned off the side street, pulling in to park beside Chichi. Well!

Ryan hadn’t mentioned that Roman Slayter and Chichi were connected. Maybe she didn’t know. Chichi was from San Francisco, and Roman was, she thought, from L.A. Chichi stood leaning against his car, leaning down talking with him. They knew each other well enough to argue. Charlie’s windows were down, but with the breeze rattling the oak leaves it was hard to hear much.

Roman said something that sounded like,Not in front of the station, for Christ’s sake!Chichi’s answer was lost, but her reply made Roman laugh. She turned away to her own car, and in a moment they were both gone, the black Alpha Romeo following Chichi’s Neon out between the bright gardens, surely headed somewhere together. When she turned back, Max and Dallas were coming out of the station.

“Been waiting long?” Max swung in beside her. Dallas got in the back. “Clyde and Ryan are meeting us,” Max said. “Tony’s okay?”

“More than okay. What’s the occasion? What are we celebrating? You make a reservation?”

“Of course I made a reservation.” He put his arm around her and blew in her ear, dangerously hindering her driving. “Have you forgotten this is our six-month anniversary?”

Charlie blushed. She loved it when he was this romantic. He was so down-to-earth, so much of the time a hard-nosed cop, that such moments were special.

“Well it almost is,” he said. “Close enough to celebrate. There’s a parking place, guy ready to pull out.”

She waited for an SUV to leave, then slipped into the space. The meter maid was just leaving, she had just missed them.

Tony’s was a popular lunch place for the locals, a high-ceilinged structure of heavy timbers and glass, decorated with ferns and other lush plants in huge ceramic pots. Medleys of ferns in baskets hung from the rafters. The dining room seemed as much a garden as did the patio beyond. They followed the waiter to a table in the back patio where Ryan and Clyde waited, Rock stretched out under the table at their feet. Several other dogs lay beneath the tables, all on their best behavior, seeming hardly to notice one another. Restaurant dogs, Charlie thought, would make a nice series of drawings. They had ordered and were talking about the Harpers’ new addition, when Charlie glanced across the patio into the restaurant, and saw Chichi and Roman Slayter being seated.

“What?” Max said. Though his back was to the wall, his view in toward the dining room was partially blocked by the ferns.

“Chichi Barbi and Roman Slayter. They met in front of the courthouse while I was waiting for you. I didn’t know they knew each other.”

Ryan said, “I didn’t either; but they’re a perfect match.” “Maybe Slayter will keep her occupied,” Clyde said hopefully. “I wonder if she’s a pickup.”

“I don’t think so,” Charlie said. “They know each other well enough to be arguing, she seemed really angry.”

“How long were they there?” Dallas asked. “Could you hear any of it?”

“Only that he didn’t like meeting in that particular location.” Charlie studied Dallas. He nodded offhandedly, and said no more.

Max asked for the French bread and sipped his O’Doul’s. He didn’t seem interested in what Chichi Barbi did or who she met. He seemed, Charlie thought, strangely miffed at Dallas for his own interest.

But he could be annoyed over anything, could have had a bad morning. Some small problem in the department. Both men seemed edgy.

“They’re still arguing,” Ryan said with interest. “They do know each other well.”

“I’d like to be a fly on the wall,” Charlie said. She thought Chichi could be really attractive with less makeup and better taste in clothes. She longed to know what they were talking about.

But even as she wondered, she saw that a spy was already on the scene.

Crouched between two tall pots of ferns beside Roman and Chichi’s table, the kit, with her dark fur, was nearly lost among the fern’s lacy shadows. How intensely she was watching them, ears sharp, tail very still, her whole being fixed on the couple-as intent as if she were crouched over a mouse hole.

29 [��������: pic_30.jpg]

The tiles beneath Kit’s paws felt smooth and cool. The potted ferns helped hide her; their shadows blended with her darkly mottled coat, providing a nice disguise. But the restaurant’s delicious smells distracted her, made her want to leap onto the next table, into the middle of that broiled lobster or into that great brimming bowl of meaty spaghetti. It took all her strength to resist. But then the conversation directly above her became so fascinating that she forgot her hunger.

“That time in L.A. was hard on you,” Roman Slayter was saying. He was very handsome, lean and tall, his dark short hair blow-dried just so, and those gorgeous brown eyes-like a movie star, Kit thought. Yet he scared her.

“I’m glad to be out of that friggin’ town,” Chichi said. “I’m never going back there, damn L.A. cops are a bunch of hoods.”

Slayter’s voice turned serious and gentle. “I know you miss him, Chichi. We all do.”

“They murdered him! Damn cops murdered him-friggin’ cops never pay for what they do. Cheap, lying Gestapo. ‘Line of duty,’ my ass.Hewasn’t in the damn bank,noway they could put him there!”

Slayter gave a sympathetic murmur, patting her hand and looking around them like he hoped no one was listening. Quietly he sipped his wine as the waiter appeared with a bowl of French-fried onion rings. Their scent made Kit’s claws itch with a powerful need to snatch a pawful. Slayter took some onion rings onto his bread plate and sat munching one, watching Chichi; Kit could not read his expression. She wouldn’t want to be trapped with this man. If she were a human lady, she’d stay away from Roman Slayter.

“Never even had a proper funeral,” Chichi said. “Stuffed in that vault like a side of meat.” She looked up accusingly at Slayter. “And everyone ran, saved your own skins. You vanished quick enough, Slayter.”

“What could we do, Chichi? Getourselveskilled? You didn’t hang around!”

“Luis dragged me! Luis�”

“Bank guards and cops all over. What the hellcouldwe do but run?”

Kit’s heart was pounding. Slayterwaspart of that gang with the two men Joe Grey saw in Chichi’s room. A gang that had robbed an L.A. bank, and the village jewelry store.

Roman stroked Chichi’s hand. “Why did you come up here with us? Frank was dead. You could have�”

“I guess I came because Frank would have. I guess,” Chichi said softly, “I just did what Frank would do.”

Kit itched to find a phone. Captain Harper and Detective Garza needed to know about this. Chichi had started to cry-the kind of crying when a person doesn’t want to talk about something, when a woman hides her silence with tears and most men think they’re real tears. “And� I didn’t have any money. That’s part of why I came. Nowhere else to go. That’s why I found that house-sitting job, a free place to live. I didn’t want to stay up there with Luis�” She looked at Roman. “I’m still pretty broke, Roman. Could you�?”

“I have men in place, Chichi. Rent to pay, food. Those guys don’t live on air!”

Chichi reached to stroke his cheek. “Butyou’reliving in a nice place, the Gardenview is really nice, I could stay with you. It wouldn’t�”

“It’s a tiny room, Chichi. The cheapest they had. And right now�” Roman shook his head. “Wouldn’t work. You’re better off where you are.”

He had men in place? Rent to pay, and food? What men? A whole gang of men? And why was Chichi so interested in moving in with him?

To get in his bed? Was she feeling like a queen in heat? Kit thought, shocked. Or did she want to snoop, search his room? Kit’s imagination soared, she could hardly be still. She had to tell Captain Harper, had to tell him now.

She looked across the dining room into the patio where Captain Harper and Detective Garza sat. They would have their cell phones, and if she could tell them now..

But she couldn’t use a phone in this public place. The idea made her laugh. She had to go home, to call him. And this person named Frank who was killed by the cops, who was he? She was so excited she had to put a paw on her tail to keep it from lashing. She watched Slayter move his chair closer to Chichi’s.

“It hurts me to see how you miss Frank, I wish there weresomethingI could do.” He took Chichi’s hand again, in both of his. “There’s nothing either of us can do about cops,” he said angrily. He removed his hand only when the waiter appeared, bearing elegant plates of pasta. The smell of shrimp and scallops made Kit lick her whiskers.

There was only silence, then, as the couple occupied themselves with their lunch. She looked around the restaurant. All the tables were full, and people were waiting, too. Those who’d been served were happily enjoying lovely things to eat. And it was not until she looked again into the patio at the Harpers’ table, that she saw Charlie staring at her. Staring right into her eyes, trying not to smile.

I’mnot doing anything! Kit thought fiercely, giving Charlie a flick of her tail. Cats are born curious! But then she smiled, too, because Charlie only wanted to know what Chichi and Roman Slayter were saying; Charlie was just as curious as she was.

The caged cats were very hungry. Even Joe and Dulcie were growing hungry, and they’d been eating better than the prisoners. The kibble, which had been old and dry anyway, was all gone. To Joe and Dulcie, kitty kibble was meant for a dire emergency. The stale cat food at the bottom of the bowl stunk so bad it made them all flehmen, baring their teeth and pulling faces. Joe thought the three ferals must surely be longing for fresh game, for freshly killed squirrel or rabbit; Joe thought lovingly of the delicacies that Clyde regularly provided, and of the fresh selections that might be waiting in the alley behind Jolly’s Deli, gourmet fare laid out for any village cat who cared to partake-who was free to enjoy George Jolly’s largesse.

Maria had returned from shopping just after Chichi went flying out the door. They could hear her in the kitchen putting away groceries, and then soon they could smell searing meat. The three captives sniffed the good scent and looked hopelessly at each other. And Cotton pressed his white face to the bars, searching the floor. “Where did they drop the key? You think it’s really lost?”

“It’s lost,” Coyote said. He smiled a wolfish smile. “That Luis was mad as a rabid raccoon.”

“But didn’t you see?” Willow said softly. She glanced across at Abuela, but the old woman slept. “Grandma took the key, I saw her.”

“Abuela?” Cotton said. “Are you sure?”

Willow twitched her whiskers. “She slipped it out of the lock and into her pocket. She slid the lock under the cushion of her chair, but when she moved, it fell.”

Even as they spoke, Abuela came awake. She looked around the room, looked at the closed door. She slipped her hand under the cushion of her rocker and drew out the key. They stared at each other, rigid. Had she heard them?

She rose, dragging her cane along with her. Was she going to let them out? They were frozen, watching, their five hearts pounding so hard Joe thought everyone in the house would hear them.

She moved to the double-hung window, which was open the few inches from the bottom. Finding the screen unlatched, she frowned. But she reached through. Bending down awkwardly, she managed to reach her arm through and swing. They saw the bright flash as she tossed the key in the direction of the far bushes.

She returned to her chair. The cats were silent until they were sure she slept again, her mouth a little open, a tiny glisten of drool appearing at the corner.

“Oh, my,” Willow said softly. “No one will ever find it now.” She looked at Joe and Dulcie, a tear running down her pale calico nose. “Now there’s no way out.”

“Not so,” Joe said.

The three cats looked at him.

“We have friends,” Joe said.

Dulcie licked her whiskers. “Do you remember a scrawny tortoiseshell kitten who once traveled with your clowder? Who came to Hellhag Hill with you, and stayed there?”

“That scraggy kitten?” Cotton said haughtily.

Willow said, “So that’s what happened to her! She went away with you!”

“Sort of,” Dulcie said. “She found two humans who� who knew what she was without her telling them. Without her ever speaking.”

“Oh, my,” Willow said. “How very strange.” Her look said that she’d like to find such a human, but that she would be too shy and afraid to make friends.

“That scrap of tortoiseshell,” Cotton said. “I thought she went down Hellhag Cave and the ghost got her.”

“She’s alive and well,” Joe said. “If no one else finds us, she will.”

Coyote sneezed. His eyes danced with amusement within their cream-and-black circles. “That tortoiseshell� always nosing into everything, asking a million questions.” He shook his whiskers, flicked his tall ears. “You don’t believethatskinny scrap will save us?”

Dulcie smiled. “When we’ve been gone long enough, she’ll come looking.”

“So?” Cotton said. “She’ll find you, just like that? And then what?”

“Kit has her ways,” Dulcie said. She hoped Kit would be as stubbornly curious as she usually was. Hoped she wasn’t preoccupied with some other matter, too busy to notice how long it was since she’d seen them-that soon Kit would indeed decide they were in trouble, and come searching for them.

Charlie had the horses groomed and saddled when Max’s truck turned in off the main road and headed down their long dirt drive. What a lovely day, she thought, tightening Bucky’s cinch. Lunch with Max, and now a long evening ride together. This was how a happy, newly married couple was supposed to live. Shrugging into her heavy jacket, she led Bucky and Redwing out into the stable yard and slid the main barn door closed behind them. She’d fed them early and lightly, and would feed them again when they got home; they were used to evening rides when the weather was bright. Waiting for Max to take his papers in the house and get a jacket, she stood looking down over their pastures to the sea, filled with a deep contentment.

In the setting sun, the green hills were awash with golden light, and the evening air chill and clear. Calling to the dogs, she let them out the pasture gate. The two fawn-colored half-Danes bowed and danced around her, eager to be off, though they’d been running in the pasture most of the afternoon. She needed the exercise more than they did, after that huge lunch at Tony’s. Waiting for Max, she stood thinking about Kit, there in Tony’s, crouched among the ferns, spying. What had Kit heard? What had Chichi and Roman Slayter been talking about?

After lunch, when she’d dropped Max and Dallas at the station, she’d stopped by Lucinda’s hoping Kit might have come home, but she hadn’t. Lucinda hadn’t seen her since breakfast. It was an exercise in futility to try to keep track of Kit, she was worse than Joe or Dulcie. Watching Max come out and lock the door behind him, she was filled with dismay that she couldn’t share with him the cats’ secret. It hurt her that she must lie to Max.

But she could never tell him. Not only would she breach the cats’ trust, she had no idea how this particular truth would affect him. Max Harper was a realist, a down-to-earth man who believed in clear and objective thinking, in statements that could be proven. Yet if the cats’ secret were proven to him, in the only way it could be, if he were to see and hear his three best snitches speak to him� She didn’t like to consider his possible reaction. That truth, to a hardheaded realist, could be more than unsettling. Yet, though such a thought frightened her, there were times when she was so deeply amused at the situation that she had to turn away from him to hide a smile.

Watching Max cross the yard, she admired his long, easy stride, his lean body and leathery face. His brown eyes were fully on her.

As he swung onto Bucky, he gave her a grin that made her stomach twist with love for him-and because there must be this one secret between them. The only secret except, of course, for occasional police business. Winking at her, he moved Bucky out at a fast walk.

The chilly evening made the horses immediately want to run, fussing and rattling their bits. Ahead, the sea shone deep gold as the sun settled into it, the sea’s swells reflecting fire. The hills seemed aflame, too; but their long shadows darkened then vanished as the sun dropped. Who needed to fly to Italy or France or the English downs? It was all right here, a perfect world. As long as Max was in it.

When the horses had warmed up, they gave them a nice gallop across the south pasture, and moved on through their locked gate and out onto open land high above the Pacific. Both horses were fast walkers, eating up the miles. As dusk thickened, they trotted along beside fenced acreage, skirting their neighbors’ pastures. Max was quiet tonight, as he was when his mind was on department business. He looked over at Charlie quite suddenly.

“What do you think of Clyde’s blond bimbo?”

“Chichi?” she said, surprised.

“Give me your impression, a woman’s impression.”

“Well, she’s� First off, I don’t think she’s Clyde’s bimbo. Maybe she was once. Now he seems to want to avoid her at all costs. She’s� she seems cheap, but I don’t know her well.” She laughed. “Even his cat doesn’t like her. Don’t animals always know?”

“Know what, Charlie?”

The question startled her. “If a person’s to be trusted. Dogs seem to know, don’t they? Know if a person is threatening, if they should keep away.” She looked hard at him. “Surely dogs sense those things? Why wouldn’t all animals?”

“Animal sense,” he said, and shrugged. “They do sometimes.”

She said, “You told me Chichi was watching the village shops, keeping a record of who opens up and what time, of who closes up, how many clerks. What’s she up to?” He’d said the snitch had told him what Chichi was doing. “Well,” she said, “I guess you can’t arrest her for� as an accessory?”

“Accessory to what? Nothing more has happened.”

“Arrest her on suspicion? Or on some kind of drummed-up charge, before there are any more breakins?”

He laughed and shook his head. “We’d really have to stretch, to do that.”

“But if there are more burglaries, and she has the list of those places�?”

“When and if that happens, yes. You know that, she’d be an accessory, then.” But he was brief, as if holding back. There was something he wasn’t saying, that he didn’t feel free to tell her. Of course that was sometimes necessary, but it always made her burn with curiosity. She guessed she was as nosy as the cats.

“Meanwhile,” she said, “at least the list your informant gave you helps know what shops to watch, doesn’t it? Helps you know what places they might rob?”

Max nodded. “Particularly if they’re planning one grand snatch-and-grab, all the shops at once. Get out fast, head for some prearranged destination.”

Charlie watched him. “Would you have enough men?”

“If they’re planning this in conjunction with some kind of diversion, where we’re busy with crowd control, for instance, we might not.”

“But what kind of diversion? Oh� the jazz festival’s next week.”

“Or maybe this growing dispute over water control. If there’s a full-blown protest, if someone were to bring in a hundred or so protesters to clutter up the streets, slow down traffic�”

She shook her head. She’d hardly paid attention to the battle over the area’s water supply, it seemed a part of central coast life, seemed to go on and on.

“It’s been done before,” Max said. “Bringing in professional protesters for various causes-so far, never in Molena Point.”

She eased in the saddle and flicked a hank of Redwing’s mane straight. “A diversion? A protest? The jazz festival? Or why not the big classic car gala? Except that’s months away. Oh,” she said, “and you bring in extra police, then. And CHP”

“Exactly. I don’t think this little group is that high-powered. And now, with Luis Rivas’s brothers dead, maybe Luis will change his plans. But still there’s Tommie McCord and I’d guess a dozen others.” He looked intently at her. “How much is Ryan seeing of this Roman Slayter?”

“Slayteris part of this?”

“I don’t know, Charlie. Just a hunch.”

“The snitch, again?”

Max grinned. “Maybe. How much is Ryan seeing of him?”

“She’s not seeing him at all, if she can avoid it. She hates Slayter. She had dinner with him a night or two ago, because he told her he had information about the jewel burglary. She said she stormed out of the restaurant before their dinner was served.”

“She told me about that,” he said. “In L.A. the Rivas brothers ran with a dozen men. They could all be here, holed up in motels, rented rooms.”

She looked bleakly at Max. “That’s not a pleasant thought. That house where I saw that truck�”

“That house belongs to an elderly widow, Estrella Nava. She’s the Rivas boys’ grandmother. Dallas dug that out this afternoon after you found the truck.”

“Can’t you get a search warrant on that?”

“We’ll search at the right time. Dallas and Davis are talking with the jewelry store and shop owners, the ones Chichi’s been watching.” He shifted in the saddle, looked down at the sea, then back at her. “Store owners are pretty much in agreement.” He let it lie and busied himself leaning forward over Bucky’s neck to straighten Bucky’s mane under his headstall.

“Agreement on what?” she pressed. “What can they do?”

He smoothed Bucky’s mane all the way down the withers, exasperating her.

“You’re such a tease! What are the store owners planning? What are you planning?”

“The owners like the idea of a sting,” he said. “There are eighteen stores on Chichi’s list. If it’s the jazz festival, some of the streets will be closed off, curb-to-curb crowds. Hard to get a squad car through in a hurry. If the robbers come in on foot, and if they have enough men to hit all the stores at once, they’ll grab and vanish in the crowd while we’re cruising traffic and keeping order.

“Or they could plan to hit in early morning, just before or during opening time when there’s maybe only one person in most shops. Or even the middle of the night, two or three a.m., if they can get a handle on the stores’ security systems. We’re not sure these guys are sophisticated enough to deactivate many of the alarm systems, but we don’t know that.”

“So what’s the sting? What are you and the shop owners planning?”

He gave her a look that needed no words, that said this was totally off-the-record confidential, and that made her nervous. If she promised not to share what Max told her, she was promising not to tell Joe Grey and Dulcie and Kit-not to tell the three snitches who relayed to Max the very information he was relying on.

There were times, Charlie felt, when promisesmustbe broken, no matter how shabby that made her feel. It could be far shabbier not to tell the cats, to leave them only half informed, and thus perhaps in twice as much danger.

30 [��������: pic_31.jpg]

At the same time that Charlie and Max set out on their evening ride across the hills, Kit began to miss Joe and Dulcie. She hadn’t seen them since the night before, at Wilma’s house, hadn’t seen them all day while she was spying on Chichi Barbi and then racing home to Lucinda to call the station. Where were they, all that time? Where were they now? As evening settled onto the Greenlaws’ terrace, throwing soft shadows across the rooftops, Kit fidgeted and paced, increasingly uneasy until at last, losing patience, she sped away, hit the roofs, and went to search.

Kit seldom worried about the two older cats;theywere usually looking forher.She might wander away or she might get angry and go off in a snit, but that was different,sheknew where she was. Now, in the falling dusk, muttering softly to herself, she prowled among the shadows of balconies and peered down into the streets and alleys. Had they gone off to the hills hunting without her? Oh, they wouldn’t! She did not choose to remember that she herself had recently vanished for several days, that she had worried not only Joe and Dulcie but all their human friends, that they’d all gone searching for her. Well,shecouldn’t helpthat,she’d been locked in. Locked up in that old rental house and she couldn’t get out and that wasn’therfault. Locked in, trapped in there and scared out of her kitty mind.

Locked in? Kit thought, and felt her fur ripple with unease. That idea gave her a very bad feeling�

But Joe and Dulcie wouldn’t be locked in. Where could they be locked in? Who would lock them in, and why? That couldn’t happen to them.

Yet why this terrible, sinking feeling? Now that she’d thought of such a thing, she got so nervous she had shivers in her belly and her paws began to sweat.

She searched every inch of the village rooftops, or tried to; she looked and searched until it was deep dark. There were clouds over the moon, low and heavy. Were they at home by now? Maybe Clyde was cooking something special or maybe Wilma was making chicken pie? The slightest scent of chicken pie on the breeze would always draw Dulcie home. Well, she’d just trot by Clyde’s and then by Wilma’s and sniff the air. She was all alone anyway; Lucinda and Pedric had gone off with Ryan’s sister, Hanni, the gorgeous interior designer, to look at furniture-instructing her to go to Wilma’s if they were very late, to stay there with Dulcie-leaving a poor little cat to fend for herself.

Well, Lucindahadleft an elegant supper in the apartment for her, laid out on the kitchen table with creamed sardines and kippers set into a double bowl of ice. Kit licked her whiskers. She would look a little more for Joe and Dulcie and then return to the rest of the creamed sardines; and she headed first for Clyde and Joe’s house.

Approaching across the roofs, she saw Clyde’s car in the drive. The living room lights were on and she could smell something nice, a deep slow beefy smell, like maybe a roast in the oven. With that good aroma filling the evening, Joe would surely be home. She was headed for Joe’s tower when she heard Clyde’s voice yelling, blocks away behind her, calling, calling Joe Grey.

But at the same moment two other voices exploded, closer, ringing out from the house next door, from Chichi Barbi’s bedroom: a man shouting and swearing and Chichi shouting back at him.

“The hell you don’t have it! Give it over, Chichi! Why the hell would you take the key! What the hell would youwantwith the damn key! You said you didn’t want nothing to do with them. Hand it over!”

“I don’thaveyour key, Luis! Why wouldI take it!”

Shivering with the violence of the man’s anger, but keening with curiosity, Eat sped across Clyde’s roof for the back of Chichi’s house and dropped down into the twiggy branches of the lemon tree. Clinging among its thorns and leaves, she peered in through Chichi Barbi’s window.

Max and Charlie returned to the ranch well after dark: the cloud cover was breaking apart, and the full moon picked out new details across the pastures and fence lines, making the horses shy. Bucky was more teasing than startled, having fun with Max. Redwing was naturally more nervous, she bowed her neck and snorted but she didn’t try to bolt.

“Just being a female,” Charlie said. “Likes a little drama.” “And you?” Max said, riding close to her. “How do you like your drama?” In the moonlight he couldn’t see her blush, but he knew she was; it didn’t take much. He loved that about her, that she blushed so easily, that he could gently embarrass her.

“Don’t try to distract me with your ways, Captain. I want to hear the rest of the plan-if you want to tell me.”

“The jewelry store owners have been meeting, getting together two or three at a time, in someone’s shop at odd hours. Making their plans as quietly as possible.” He moved Bucky aside from some ground squirrel holes, though Bucky was perfectly aware of where he was stepping and cocked an ear back at Max in annoyance.

“But whatistheir plan?” Charlie said patiently.

Max eased Bucky against their own pasture gate so he could open the latch. “Fake jewels,” he said, looking up at Charlie. “John Simmons and Leon Blake suggested it.” He swung the gate wide. They rode through, and he closed it. “They’re collecting every realistic piece of imitation jewelry they can lay hands on to replace the real stuff. They’ve already begun to switch the jewelry in the cases every night, using pieces as much like what they have in the daytime as they can manage. In the heat of the break-and-enter, they’re counting on no one taking the time to examine the take closely.”

He had lowered his voice as they approached their own stable yard, watching the lighted sweep of yard and barn, the shadows beneath the trees and around his truck and around her SUV, though the dogs sensed nothing amiss; they raced ahead sniffing and checking the territory in their untrained, rowdy way. When dismounting, Max slid open the stable door, the dogs raced in, circled the open alleyway between the stalls, then shoved their black-and-tan noses deep into their bowls of kibble.

As Charlie slid off Redwing and undid the girth, her thoughts were full of elegant jewelry cases lined with fakes. She was still smiling as she walked Redwing to cool her down, then led her into her stall, took her halter off, filled her water bucket and tossed her a couple of flakes of hay. Butwouldthose men notice the switch? Would one of them think to put a jeweler’s glass on a diamond, or take a careful look at the rich settings?

She began to worry about what she would tell the cats-what she dare tell them. And to wonder what danger she might put them in if they weren’t told, if they didn’t fully understand the operation. And she knew she had no choice.

Besides, when she promised Max to tell no one, in Max’s mind the meaning was that she would tell no human. Max had made no mention of cats.

The short, dark, square man was roaring drunk. The stink of secondhand alcohol through Chichi’s open window made Kit want to retch. What was wrong with his face? He had adhesive bandages on it and on his hands, under his long-sleeved shirt.

Chichi stood facing him, very angry. “I don’thavethe key to your cage! What would I want with those stinking cats! I don’t even know what youwant with them!”

Cats?Kit’s heart was pounding.Cats in a cage? What cats?

“There was no one else to take the friggin’ key! Them cats couldn’t!”

Kit’s whole body was rigid. Only her tail moved, lashing wildly against the branches. She concentrated hard to make it still. Sometimes her tail was like a stranger, all out of control.What cats? In what cage?Andwhere?

“And now them two others,” Luis said with triumph. “They’re the same, you can bet! Why else would they be in there?”

Kit began to shiver. She had to find out where, and fast! She pressed against the screen, drawing in a great breath, sniffing Luis as he rounded on Chichi, trying to smell past the whiskey for some other scent, for cat scent-for the scent of Joe Grey and Dulcie.

But she could smell only the booze.

“Did you search Abuela?” Chichi asked suspiciously.

“Of course I searched her.Shedon’t have the damn key.”

“You searched Abuela!” Chichi screamed. “You pig, you searched your own grandmother! You are scum, Luis. Pure scum!” Chichi lunged at him and slapped him. Luis grabbed her hands, twisted her arm behind her until she screamed. As he turned, forcing her against the dresser and raised his arm as if to hit her, his sleeve brushed the screen right across Kit’s nose.

And there it was: Joe Grey’s smell. Sharp on Luis’s sleeve. The smell of the enraged tomcat, mixed with the smell of blood and medicine.

Kit was shaking so hard that for a moment she couldn’t move. A cage� Trapped in a cage�

Where? She had to find out where.

She moved fast, springing out of the tree and across the damp grass and weeds and around the house to the front and across Clyde’s yard onto the porch. She was crouched to bolt through Joe’s cat door, when she stopped.

He wasn’t in there; she could still hear him far away, calling for Joe.Oh, Clyde, he’s in a cage, they’re in a cage and no one knows where, no one hut Luis and Chichi-if they’re in a cage, how long before�.before�? But Chichi knows where, she knows this Abuela so she must know where�Kit needed Clyde. She needed him bad, right now. Clyde could make Chichi take them to where Joe and Dulcie were in a cage. Chichi had been there,sheknew where, Chichi would have to lead them�

But if the key was lost? Well, Kit thought, then Clyde would have to break the cage. Clyde was strong, he’d know how to do that�

Rearing up on the porch, she looked down the street where Clyde was shouting for Joe, and she streaked away through the night toward his impatient voice�

31 [��������: pic_32.jpg]

Clyde was headed home when something bounded at him out of the night, hitting him in the chest like a bullet; and Kit was clinging to his sweater, blathering in his face trying to tell him something about Joe and Dulcie. In a cage? What cage?

“Slow down, Kit. Take it slow.” He undid her claws and pulled her off, and cradled her in his arms. “Shhhh, Kit! Don’t talk out here, wait until we’re inside.” He double-timed home, and they were hardly through the door when she blurted it all out, talking nonstop, in a panic.

“In a cage, Joe and Dulcie, and no one knows where but Luis and Chichi. Chichi must know where, she saw them there! Hurry, Clyde! You have to make her take us there. Oh, hurry! Locked in a cage and Luis lost the key and maybe someonetookthe key so you’ll have to take a saw or some kind of cutters. Oh hurry before Chichi leaves because she has to take us there she’s the only one who knows except Luis. But Luis�” She stared in the direction of Chichi’s house praying that Luis would go away and Chichi wouldn’t, so Clyde could make her help them. Rearing up in his arms she stared nose-to-nose at Clyde.

He was deathly white, as if she’d scared him bad, landing smack on him out of the night and then telling him about the cage. “Locked in a cage, Clyde, and Chichi can take us, you have to make her take us before she goes away again, oh, hurry!”

Clyde unhooked her claws again, held her close, and swung out the door, heading for Chichi’s house. “You are not to talk, Kit! Not a word!”

“I won’t talk but Luis is in there and he’s mean, he’s drunk and mean.”

He set her down on the drive. “Go get in my car, Kit. Right now. In the back.” He jogged around the corner of the house, heading for Chichi’s door.

Of course Kit didn’t go to his car, she followed him, scorching up into the lemon tree again, expecting to hear Luis shouting. But there was nothing. Not a sound at all, not of fighting, not anything. Dead silence. Were they gone?

But then a door slammed, and Luis came charging out along the side of the house and up the drive to the street, then up the street to a dark blue sedan. As he ground the car to a start and spun away with tires squealing, Clyde headed up the steps for Chichi’s door.

Abuela’s house was dark. The old woman’s bedroom was dark except for the thin wavering light of the TV bouncing and receding as Maria and Abuela watched a movie. They were tucked up in their beds, laughing out loud.

“What are they watching?” Dulcie whispered. She was surprised she could think about anything else but being crammed into the stinking cage maybe never to get out again. But Maria and Abuela were having such a good time.

“Secondhand Lions,“Joe whispered. Both women seemed comforted, watching those two old men in their rocking chairs on their front porch laughing as they blasted away at traveling salesmen with their shotguns. Maybe, Joe thought, Maria and Abuela would like to do the same to Luis. A thin drift of pale light filtered in through the window, too, from the full moon. In the locked cage beside Joe and Dulcie, the three ferals slept or seemed to sleep, tangled miserably together, tabby head on white flank, calico nose under Coyote’s front paw in the kibble dish.

Maria had done nothing to try to find the key. Joe had hoped that, once Luis left, she would go out to the backyard and look for it, where Abuela had thrown it. He guessed she was too afraid of Luis to do that.

He didn’t know how long the five of them would last, crowded in there, before they’d all get sick or start to fight, seriously harm one another in their panic to be free. The crowding and stink, combined with the flashing light and noise from the TV, had Joe himself ready to claw anything within reach. He was trying to lie down without waking Cotton when a looming shadow darkened the moonlit window: a man’s shadow, a broad-shouldered figure with a lump on his shoulder. Joe went rigid with disbelief and then with excitement.

A man looking in, a man with a cat on his shoulder, its fat, fluffy tail switching. And on the night breeze that filtered in through the four-inch crack at the bottom of the window Joe could smell Clyde. That familiar miasma of automotive shop gas-oil-grease-metal-paint-primer and the sweet smell of industrial hand-cleaner; all this mixed with Clyde’s aftershave and with Kit’s own scent. Rearing up against the bars, it was all he could do not to shout and cheer.

He waited for Clyde to open the window wider, then remembered that it was fixed closed at four inches. As Clyde leaned into the glass, looking in, examining the molding, Kit’s dark little face came clear beside his, her round yellow eyes taking in the scene.

But out of the dark behind them, Chichi appeared, and Joe knew that all was lost.

Pushing Clyde aside, Chichi bent down, looking through the open part of the window. “Maria? Maria! It’s me.” Beside her, Clyde produced a small electric screwdriver. The music from the movie was loud, and the women were laughing. No one heard her.

Clyde pushed a bigger hole in the screen where Joe had made a small one. He unlatched it and removed it and leaned it against the house. Reaching in, he found the screws that held the window in position, and began to remove them. In less than a minute he slid the glass up.

Joe was pretty sure Luis had gone out, but he didn’t know where Tommie was. The men had left Abuela’s bedroom door ajar, and a person could see down the hall. There was no light on from the living room or bedroom or kitchen. Either Tommie had gone out, too, or had gone to bed early. Kit leaped in and pressed against the cage, licking Dulcie through the bars. Clyde climbed into the room, and then Chichi. What could Clyde have done, to make Chichi bring him here? How had he known where they were? Joe had no idea what had happened, but from Kit’s smug look he could see she’d had a paw in the matter. Maria had seen them, she watched, wide eyed.

Kit licked and licked Dulcie’s ear, and she stared at the three feral cats. The cats looked back at her, their eyes merry with recognition. Their looks seemed to say, See how she’s grown. Look how beautiful she’s become, that skinny little waif. Joe watched Chichi shake Maria gently by the shoulders.

“Where’s the key, Maria? What did he do with the key?”

“You can’t, Chichi. Luis will be� He’ll kill me. He would beat Abuela. He thinks she took the key. If you�”

Chichi shook her harder. “You have rope? Cord? Your belts� the belt on your robe, on Abuela’s robe. Take them off. Get belts, all you can find.” She looked at Clyde. “Forget the key. Use that saw. Get busy�”

Clyde got to work with the hacksaw, jamming the padlock at an angle to hold it steady. The saw’s rasping was incredibly loud even over the sounds from the TV Joe pressed against Dulcie tight between the captive cats, watching Chichi tie up Maria and Abuela with a bright collection of belts, binding them to the curved bars of their antique iron beds like a scene in some Western melodrama. Abuela was grinning ear to ear, as if the cats’ impending escape filled her with wicked delight, now that she and Maria would not be blamed for it. Chichi, tying knots, glanced nervously at the bedroom door watching for Luis or Tommie to come barging through. The minute she had the two women secure, she headed for the window and safety.

“I’ll be in your car!” she hissed, and she was through the window and gone. Clyde calmly removed the lock and opened the cage door. Coyote and Cotton squeezed through both at once, their tails lashing. Coyote’s ears were erect and eager as he sniffed the fresh outdoor air. Cotton pushed past him and they leaped to the sill. Both toms turned to look at Clyde, a silent moment of thanks, then they were gone, racing away through the moonlight. Willow followed more slowly, pausing on the sill for a long moment, looking back at Joe and Dulcie and Clyde, a deep and loving look. Then she exploded away behind the others.

When the captives were gone, Joe and Dulcie came out from the cage, licked Kit to thank her, and rubbed against Clyde’s hand. But as Clyde scooped them up in his arms and reached for the kit, prepared to climb back out the window, Kit drew away.

Racing ahead of them, she stopped in the bushes and lifted a paw, but backed away when Clyde stooped to reach for her. “I heard something, I have to tell�”

“Come on,” Clyde said. “We’re out of here, you can tell us later.”

“Now!” Kit said with an imperative yowl that startled them all. “Right now! That man� Slayter, that handsome obnoxious man? He’s part of this gang, with Luis, it’s a big gang.Theybroke in the jewelry store. He’s part of it and he’s staying in the Gardenview Inn and Chichi wants to get in there and search for something, I don’t know what. She�”

A sound from the house, a hush of muffled footsteps in the bedroom, made Clyde snatch at her again. He missed and she leaped away and Clyde could only follow, clutching Joe and Dulcie. When they heard the bedroom door bang open Clyde ran, Joe and Dulcie clinging to him with all forty claws. But Kit was gone, racing away through the night.

“Kit, come back!” Dulcie hissed. “Kit, wait�” They heard her leaping away through the bushes, following the wild ones.

Shocked, Clyde clutched Joe and Dulcie closer as he rounded the house, heading fast for the car. No one said what they were all thinking-that Kit might stay with the feral band. Might race away with them into the hills to take up that old life once more. Swinging into the car, Clyde still watched the bushes, but Joe and Dulcie knew she was gone. Kit’s wild streak had taken her, Kit’s longings that could never be tamed.

They were all three strung with nerves as Clyde dropped the two cats in the back of the roadster and slid in beside Chichi and headed home. They were all three hearing Kit’s words�Slayter� staying in the Gardenview� Chichi wants to search…

Chichi, all scowls and fidgets, watched warily for Luis’s car, as if it would appear at any instant racing after them or waiting on some dark side street. Joe considered her with interest.

She did not look like a vamp now, but like a lost soul. She sat hunched and miserable, perhaps imagining what Luis would do to her when he found the cats gone, certain that she was responsible. All her lipstick had worn off, and her pale hair hung limp and lifeless. She seemed not to care. There wasn’t, at this moment, much pizzazz left to Chichi, and Joe liked her better this way.

But then the next minute she whipped out a comb and lipstick and got to work fixing herself up in the dark. She seemed to be skilled in such matters. Fishing out a little vial of perfume, she had soon restored the old Chichi. She watched Clyde with speculation.

In the back seat, Dulcie peered out, longing for a glimpse of Kit and feeling cold inside and lost and frightened. She was far more upset than she wanted to let on. Oh, Kit, she thought, youwon’tgo with them, not forever. Not back to the clowder. You won’t go for good, you won’t do that, you can’t.

But when she looked at Joe, his whiskers drooped and his yellow eyes were filled with misery, and she could smell fear on him. Fear that Kithadgone for good with the ferals, that the little tattercoat had let her hunger for crazy new adventures magic her away-that the unfettered wildness of her kittenhood had filled her right up again so she could think of nothing else.

Clyde’s yellow convertible, having no power steering or power brakes, took his full attention-or he let Chichi think it did as he negotiated the dark, narrow, hilly streets down into the village. Three times Chichi asked him how he knew Luis had his cat, when he hadn’t known anything about Luis.

“Damn, that was lucky,” Clyde said. “I was just coming home from walking the streets shouting for Joe-he’ll usually come when I call him. I was getting madandworried. I guess you think it’s foolish, to be that fond of a cat, but I’ve had him a long time. I’d about given up, and was going in the house when I passed that guy leaving your place.” Clyde looked across at her. “I heard himmuttering.Talking to himself about cats. Something about a cage, a key. Muttering about cats in a damned cage.”

Joe, crouched in the back seat with Dulcie, glanced at her with amusement. Clyde wasn’t the greatest liar. Still, it wasn’t bad. He watched Chichi sidle closer to Clyde, looking up at him engagingly.

Ignoring her advances, Clyde parked across the street from her place, didn’t pull into his own drive. He glanced at her. “You know how cat lovers are. The guy looked� I just had this feeling he was talking aboutmycat! That he was some nutcase, had caught my cat here in the yard, and put him in a cage.” He left the engine running, glancing at Chichi. “This time, my hunch was right. Thanks, Chichi. I really owe you.” He swung out to open her door. “You want me to walk you back? That driveway’s dark.”

Chichi looked at him with speculation. “You want a cup of coffee? Or a drink?”

Clyde shook his head. “I need to run Dulcie home, her owner’s worried, too. She called me twice.”

“Could you walk me in, though? It is dark back there. If Luis-if he’s come back�” She shivered. “If he got home and saw the empty cage�” She did look frightened. Joe wished he knew what she was thinking, wished he could read her thoughts.

He’d been startled at how tender she was with Abuela, as if she really cared for the old woman. Strange, he thought as he watched Clyde walking Chichi down the drive. He hoped Clyde wouldn’t go in, wouldn’t succumb to this out-of-character side of Chichi Barbi, and to the charms that would likely follow.

32 [��������: pic_33.jpg]

As Clyde walked Chichi down the dark drive, Joe leaped to the front seat and reared up, looking out the window. He heard Chichi’s key turn the lock, and her soft “I’ll just check my room�” Heard her door squeak open. Dulcie hopped over the back of the seat and stretched out beside him, her dark tabby stripes tiger-rich in the gleam of the moon. “I’m bummed, after that cage.”

“We were in there only a few hours.” But Joe felt much the same, wrung out with the stress of being locked up. He couldn’t half imagine how the others had felt. He’d never before been in a cage, except at the vet’s, and he could open those cages if he wanted. Besides, Dr. Firetti treated him royally. Well, he guessed his cat carrier was a sort of cage, but of course he knew how to open that.

Dulcie’s pink tongue tipped out, licking nervously at her front paws. “The padlock and those heavy bars, the awful crowding. And the stink.” Her emerald eyes were round with stress. “I was really scared. I never felt like that before.”

Joe lay down and put his head against her. “I knew we’d get out. If not Clyde or Wilma or Charlie, if not Kit, then we’d find some way.”

“I wasn’t so sure. Thank God for Kit.” But she looked at him mournfully. “Where is she? I couldn’t stand it if she never came back.”

Joe licked her ear. “She’ll come back.” He only wished he believed that. “Kit likes her luxuries too well. She won’t get filet mignon and Alaskan salmon and imported cheeses up on those wild hills. Or silk pillows and cashmere blankets. Anyway, she loves Lucinda and Pedric far too much to leave them, or to hurt them.”

“But she�” Dulcie sighed, and shivered, and was silent.

“She’s just having a lark. She’ll be home. I never dreamed Chichi would help us.”

“You really think she’ll come home, that she won’t stay with that wild band?”

Joe listened to the hush of Clyde’s step coming back up the drive and crossing the street. “She’d be crazy to do that. All the time she was a kitten, running with them, she longed for someone to love her.” He nuzzled Dulcie’s shoulder. “Kit might go off for a while. But it won’t last.”

Clyde slipped into the car and started the engine. “What won’t last?”

“Kit wouldn’t stay with them.”

Clyde glanced at him. “Maybe she’s already home with Lucinda and Pedric.”

“Maybe,” Dulcie said hopefully. “Tucked up warm, with a tummy full of goodies. Maybe she just showed the ferals the best way out of the village, where to cross, to avoid the traffic�” Trying to convince herself, she rolled over on her back, watching the treetops swing by upside down as Clyde headed across Ocean for Wilma’s. She could smell home, smell the scents of her neighborhood, before ever Clyde slowed the car.

Wilma Getz’s low, stone house stood so close to the hill that it had no backyard, just a narrow walkway before the hill rose steeply up. Wilma had made up for this lack by turning her deep front yard into a lush English garden with rock paths, great tangles of flowers and ferns beneath the sprawling oaks. A rich floral gallery that thrived under Wilma’s care.

Both the front and back doors faced the street, the back door at the south end near the garage, the front door near the north end of the low Norman structure. Clyde killed the engine and sat staring at the dark house. “Where is she?” He turned to look at Dulcie. “Out searching for you? And she’s just out of the hospital.”

“She can go out if she wants,” Dulcie said, standing with her paws on the window. “The light’s on in the back, in the bedroom-the reflection against the hill. She’s tucked up in bed, reading, that’s all. She knows I’m all right.”

“You damn near weren’t all right!” Clyde snapped. He glared at the thin glow of light washing up the hill behind the house brightening the tall grass, and glanced at his watch. “It’s only seven.”

“She just got out of the hospital,” Dulcie hissed. “At sixty-some years old, she can go to bed early and read if she wants.”

Clyde opened the driver’s door. As he stepped out, the cats leaped out over their own side of the open car and headed for Dulcie’s cat door. The air smelled of woodsmoke: a fire would be dancing in the little red stove in Wilma’s bedroom.Home!Dulcie thought. Wilma would be reading Bailey White’s magical stories. Dulcie, able to think of nothing but snuggling down with her housemate beneath the flowered quilt, bolted away through her plastic door far ahead of Joe.

Before Clyde could ring the doorbell, Dulcie heard Wilma at the front door. She must have swung out of bed the minute she heard his car. Oh, Dulcie thought as she raced across the laundry, shemustsurely have been worrying. Looking through to the living room, she watched Wilma shut the door behind Clyde, and the two of them head for the kitchen. How lovely to be home, with Wilma all cozy in her red plaid robe, barefoot, her long gray-white hair hanging loose down her back.

In the kitchen, Wilma said not a word to Dulcie or to Joe. She and Clyde exchanged a long look, then stood watching as the cats fought the refrigerator door open. No one helped them.

Wilma had been worried all evening, and was feeling grumpy. She didn’t know why she’d been so uneasy, since the cats were often gone for long periods. Somehow, today had been different. Dulcie could at least have called.

That thought made her want to giggle. Though it was perfectly true, the tabby cat could have called and saved her endless worry.

As to opening the refrigerator, already the cats were dragging out Dulcie’s plastic dishes from the bottom shelf, which belonged exclusively to her. Hauling the covered bowls onto the kitchen rug, flipping off the lids with practiced claws, they devoted their full attention to the sliced roast chicken, the homemade custard, and cold beef Stroganoff that Wilma had left for them. They heard Wilma ask Clyde if he wanted coffee or a drink, glanced up to see Clyde open the lower cabinet where Wilma kept her meager supply of bourbon and brandy, retrieve the bourbon, and fetch two glasses. But everything tasted so good they could think of little else but their supper. They hardly paid attention until Wilma sat down at the table, saying to Clyde, “You look as angry as I feel. What have they done this time?”

Dulcie and Joe stopped eating and glared up at her.

“I swear you two have taken twenty years off my life,” Wilma told them. “The idiot who said that living with a cat lowered your blood pressure didn’t have a clue.”

Dulcie’s tail switched with annoyance. Clyde poured a double bourbon and water for himself and a light one for Wilma. “Tonight,” he said, “I guess we shouldn’t hassle them.” He sat down opposite Wilma. Wilma’s eyes filled with uneasy questions.

“So what happened?” she asked tensely. “And where’s Kit? Is Kit all right?”

“It was Kit who saved the day,” Clyde said. “But�”

“What happened? Lucinda’s so worried. It’s as if�” She looked down at the two cats. “Lucinda and I have been edgy all evening, for no real reason.”

Joe and Dulcie looked at each other. Clyde waited for them to answer.

“Where’s the kit?“Wilma demanded.

Dulcie looked up at her quietly, her green eyes round.

“What?” Wilma said.

“She’s all right,” Dulcie said around a mouthful of Stroganoff. She leaped into a chair, looking up at Wilma. Wilma put out a hand but didn’t touch her; she sat tense and waiting.

Dulcie tried to begin at the beginning but had trouble deciding where the beginning was. She didn’t want to tell Wilma all of it. Though Wilma had experienced plenty of danger, herself, before she retired from the federal probation system, when danger threatened Dulcie or any of the three cats, that was another matter. She told Wilma how they found the caged cats, but left out that they had tossed Abuela’s house while the crooks slept. Immediately, Wilma saw there were omissions.

“What’s the rest of it, Dulcie? You’re leaving things out.”

Dulcie sighed. It was no good living with an ex-parole officer; Wilma saw everything. She told her housemate about their search, but did not make much of it. Then told how Clyde and Chichi and Kit had gone in through Abuela’s window and Clyde had cut the padlock and freed three captive cats. But Wilma sensed another lie of omission, and made her tell the rest, how she and Joe were locked in the cage, too. Then Clyde told how Kit had discovered where they were and brought him to rescue them. When they’d finished, Wilma poured herself another drink, stronger this time.

Sipping her bourbon, Wilma absently bound back her long hair into its usual ponytail and tied it with a piece of string from a kitchen drawer. “And they meant tosellthose poor cats? Theyknewwhat they were, and meant to sell them! And to sell you!”

“We think it was more than that, too,” Dulcie said. “The captives heard the men talking. Luis seemed to think they would tell someone about their robberies, and about some murder.”

Wilma swirled the ice in her drink. “Could it be Dufio’s murder? Oh, did Luis kill his own brother?”

Joe said, “Maybe Luis was afraid Dallas or Harper would trap Dufio into telling their plans, or into naming the gang members. Dufio wasn’t famous for his quick wit.” Joe licked up the last of the custard, and leaped into the fourth chair, rubbing his face against the edge of the table, smearing custard. Dulcie gave him a chiding look.

Joe licked his paw and cleaned his whiskers. “Luis and Tommie talked about ‘the others.’ Men apparently staying in half a dozen places around the village, rented rooms, the cheaper motels. Later, Kit heard it, too. From Chichi and Roman Slayter. Kit says Slayter is part of the gang.”

“And Chichi, too.” Wilma said. “Doing their surveillance.”

Dulcie said, “If Chichi hadn’t helped Clyde find us, we’d still be locked up. She didn’t have to do that. And she was kind to Abuela.” Hunching down in her chair, the little tabby sighed.

“Even if Kit did see Chichi spying, and heard them talking about the burglaries� Chichi did help us.”

“Chichi had a close friend in L.A.,” Joe said. “Frank something. I guess he was part of the L.A. gang. He was killed during that bank job Harper was talking about.” The tomcat scowled. “It’s frustrating when all you can do is listen, and can’taskHarper or Dallas what you want to know. Sometimes�”

Clyde set down his drink. “If you two start asking questions! If you�”

Joe smiled. He loved steaming Clyde, he could always get a rise, even when Clyde knew he was only goading him.

Clyde poured himself another drink. Wilma shook her head. “No more, I won’t sleep.” She looked at the cats and thought about what they had told her and wondered if she’d sleep anyway. She wondered how much more they hadn’t told her. Though Joe and Dulcie were seldom as secretive as her parolees, she was too often aware that the two cats did not share everything, that too often they kept their own counsel.

Or, she thought generously, maybe they just wanted to clarify unanswered questions before they shared their information.

She was certain that, first thing in the morning, the cats would show up in Harper’s office, to try to fill in the facts. She imagined them crouching high in Max’s bookcase, listening or reading over Max’s shoulder. She said, “Whereisthe kit? You haven’t told me, and I need to call Lucinda.”

But immediately she saw the dismay on all three faces.

“She didn’t� She didn’t come back from that house with you,” she said slowly. She looked intently at Dulcie. “She� she went away with the ferals? Oh, she didn’t go off with the ferals, with the wild ones?”

“They wouldn’t run far,” Dulcie said. “Not tonight. Those three were exhausted. They wouldn’t take off into the cold night and the dangers of the hills without rest and food and fresh water. Kit wouldn’t let them do that, they can’t be far away. They were weak with stress, from being in that cage.” She put a soft paw on Wilma’s hand. “She’s just gone along for a little while, to take care of them, find them a safe place to rest. And maybe,” she said, smiling, “maybe to Jolly’s Deli?”

Wilma said, “Would she take them home to Lucinda? To her own safe haven, to eat and rest before they run again?” And before Dulcie could answer, Wilma picked up the phone.

Lucinda answered out of breath, as if she’d been hurrying. Wilma punched the speaker button as Lucinda was saying, “� out on the veranda calling Kit. I swear, that cat� Is she there, Wilma? Have you seen her? Have Joe and Dulcie�?”

Immediately Wilma was sorry she’d called. What was she going to say? But now her foot was in it.

It took her a while to fill Lucinda in. Lucinda took it better than Wilma thought she might. The older woman was silent only a second. “The tree house,” Lucinda said. “Our new house is empty, there’s no one around. It would be safe there. Kit loves that tree house, she�”

Before Lucinda had finished, Clyde and the cats were out the door. “I’ll call you,” Clyde shouted back at Wilma; and they piled in the car and took off up the hills.

Wilma, alone in the house and strung with nerves, considered making herself another drink. Instead, she got a piece of cheesecake from the freezer and fixed herself a cup of cocoa. Sitting at the kitchen table waiting for Clyde’s call, she could only think how incredible life was. Since Dulcie and Joe discovered their latent talents, and Kit appeared out of the wild, life was more amazing than she had ever dreamed.

She thought, amused, that one way or another, those three cats with their keen intelligence and insatiable hunger for criminal investigation would destroy the last of her sanity. Drive them all mad, either with the stress of keeping their secret, or with worry and fear for them.

But she couldn’t be angry. She could only shake her head and smile.

33 [��������: pic_34.jpg]

From her wheelchair, Abuela stared defiantly up at Luis, her angry scowl matching his own. “They’re gone! What could we do? We could do nothing. The man broke in, came through the window bold as brass and started sawing at the lock. When Maria tried to get out the door to get help, he swore and tied us up. Where was Tommie? Why didn’t he hear us!Hedidn’t come to help! That man threatened to kill us, and no one to help us. All that, over your mangy stray cats!”

“You’re lying, old woman!”

“Who then tied us up? We didn’t tie each other. And what do you think that is?” Abuela pointed at the severed padlock that lay on the floor among a scatter of cat litter. “Pulled those cats out, stuffed them in a bag and hauled them out the window. Said if we yelled or tried to use the phone, he’d do us, whatever that means. What did he want with cats? Why would he break in here, for cats? What didyouwant with them? Even you don’t know!”

Behind Abuela, Maria remained silent. She was very pale, rubbing her arms where the belts had bound her. Luis stared at his sister and at his grandmother, picked up the lock and studied the severed pieces. “Where’s the saw, Maria? What did you do with the saw! Why would you do this thing! You threw a fortune out the window! I swear,I should kill you both.”

“I didn’t cut the lock! Where would I get a saw! What did I do, cut the lock and then tie myself up?” Maria glared at Luis until she saw a spark of uncertainty. “Get out of here, Luis! Give us some peace! That was not a pleasant experience. There’s not an ounce of sympathy in you.” Putting her arm around Estrella, she peered down into the old woman’s face as if afraid her abuela would collapse from fear and shock. “Go away, Luis, and leave her alone. You’ve done enough harm.”

Luis turned away, muttering, and left them. Maria shut the bedroom door and leaned against it. She was amazed that she’d stood up to Luis.

It was the man who had come in the window and freed the cats, it was his boldness that had given her the strength to face Luis like that. Imagine, that man going to so much trouble to save a cage full of cats. Why would he do that? Maybe, Maria thought, therewassomething valuable about those cats. Or could it be, she wondered, that there really was such gentle goodness in the world that a man would risk his own safety to free the miserable beasts?

She could hear Luis and Tommie arguing out in the hall, then the front door slammed. She heard them tramping around the house through the bushes as the beams of their flashlights careened across the blinds. “Run, cats!” Maria whispered. “Run!”

At last they heard Luis’s defeated swearing, heard his car doors slam, heard the car start and peel out into the street. As if they’d gone to search elsewhere. That made them both laugh, that Luis thought they could find terrified cats running scared out in the night.

But Abuela touched her rosary and closed her eyes, her lips moving. And Maria prayed, too, prayed for that good man. Then she crawled back into bed and lay imagining those cats racing free, far away from Luis. And she smiled.

�My tree house,” Kit said, scorching up the thick trunk of the oak tree ahead of the three ragged-looking escapees. “My house, where you can hide and rest.”

Willow and Coyote paused on the threshold, looking in at Kit, taking in the snug shelter. But Cotton pushed right in past them, bold and curious.

There were no cushions yet on the cedar floor, but the pile of dry oak leaves that had drifted into the corner of the cozy, square room provided a soft, warm bed. There was no ladder leading up the thick trunk of the oak to alert a human to the presence of the little house hidden high among the leaves. And though the cedar walls broke the wind, providing welcome warmth, there was nothing to confine them. The three open windows and open door offered easy escape in all directions.

Yawning, their stomachs full of kippers and smoked salmon, of imported cheeses, shrimp salad, and rare roast beef from the alley behind George Jolly’s Deli, the three escapees curled up among the leaves in purring contentment. They were deep down into the most welcome sleep when a lone car woke them, slowing on the street below and pulling to the curb.

“Clyde’s car!” Kit hissed, peering out the door as Dulcie and Joe leaped out and looked immediately up into the tree. “Wake up,” she hissed. “Run!” This was not the time to be found though the three ferals so badly needed rest. Kit, herself, did not want to be found; but she didn’t want to think about why she didn’t. Clyde was getting out.

Swiftly she led the ferals out the window and into the next oak tree, and the next and the next until at last far away they scrambled down to a distant yard. And they ran.

Maybe Joe and Dulcie didn’t hear us, Kit thought. When they go up in the tree house-which they would surely do-maybe they won’t smell us. The ferals, coming through the village gardens, had rubbed against and rolled on every strongly scented bush they could find, to hide their own scent that was so strong and ugly after that stinking cage. So maybe Joe and Dulcie would discover only a windy miasma of garden smells that could easily have blown in from the surrounding yards, and no smell at all of cats.

Maybe.

But now they were safely away, hiding among the far houses, and Kit looked back to her treetop.

There was Dulcie looking out.

But with the tree house empty, surely they would leave soon. She thought she would make up to them later, for their useless search.

And it was there in her heart, what she meant to do. The thrill had been there all along, waiting inside her. The wild free days from her kittenhood. Forgetting all the hunger and cold and pain of that time, she remembered only that unfettered running, traveling on and on across the empty hills running with the ferals. Those wild and giddy feelings filled her right up; and with her little entourage, Kit leaped away through the dark gardens mad with pleasure, heading for the far hills.

In the treehouse, though Joe and Dulcie could smell the medley of scents the cats had collected on their fur, those aromas did not hide completely the sour stink of caged cats. They could smell, too, that Kit had led the cats here by way of Jolly’s alley, could detect a faint but delectable melange of salmon and fine cheeses. Dulcie, looking down into the dark gardens, felt incredibly hurt. “Why did she leave? Why did she lead them away?” She looked at Joe, sad and worried.

“They’ll be watching us,” Joe said.

“But why�?”

“Kit doesn’t want to be found, Dulcie. Kit is having a lark.”

“But she knows we would worry.”

“Best thing we can do is leave her alone, let those cats get on with their escape and their own lives. Then,” he said, “Kit will come home.” He wished he believed that.

“Will she? She isn’t� She won’t�”

“The kit,” Joe said, “will do exactly what she wants to do. We can’t change her. She’s crazy with the excitement of the rescue, she feels big and powerful, invincible. These are her old clowder mates, Dulcie.” His yellow eyes burned. “We can’t run her life. Let her be, and she’ll come home.” But he looked away and licked his paw, hoping he was right.

“If she doesn’t�” Dulcie said miserably, “if she goes off with them�”

Joe just looked at her. “There is nothing we can do. The kit must decide this for herself.” And he turned away and left the tree house, backing swiftly down the oak with clinging claws and leaping into Clyde’s car.

Reluctantly Dulcie followed, silent and worrying. What would they tell Lucinda, tell Pedric? That Kit had been there and gone again, that she didn’t want to be found? What could they tell the old couple that would not break their hearts?

Dulcie knew that Joe was right. Kit had a powerful wild streak, a crazy headlong hunger for freedom, and they could only let her be.

But Kit hadchosento live with Lucinda and Pedric because she loved them. Now, would she at last return to them?

I’m worrying too soon. She isn’t gone yet, not for good. She’s only leading the ferals through the village, showing them the best way, how to avoid heavy traffic. If Joe and I try to force her back now, we would only bully her. We can’t force her to be safe and loved, we can only trust in her judgment. And miserably Dulcie curled up on the cold seat of the car, ignoring Joe and Clyde. She remained lost and sad as Clyde carried her into Wilma’s house and put her in Wilma’s arms.

For a long time after Dulcie went to sleep beside Wilma, beneath the flowered quilt, Wilma lay in the warm glow from the bedroom fire, not reading the book she held but seeing the ferals and Kit racing away through the chill wind.

“Something in Kit’s eyes,” Dulcie had said. “When Clyde freed us and Kit went out that window, when she turned and looked back at me, something so wild-that look she gets�” And Dulcie had sighed, and hidden her face in the crook of Wilma’s elbow. Then later, just before she slept, Dulcie had roused and looked up at her. “I would miss her so. I don’t want her togoback.” And long after Dulcie did sleep, long after Wilma put her book on the night table and switched off the lamp and curled up around Dulcie, still she kept seeing Kit out there running in the night beside those untamed, joyous cats.

WhenClyde and Dulcieand Joe had gone, the car gone, the street empty and the night silent again, Kit and the ferals returned to the tree house. There the ferals curled up once more, deep within the pile of oak leaves, and they slept. They needed to rest, needed to heal, before they made that last frenzied dash up into the open hills. For the first time in weeks they truly did rest; no crowding against each other and into a dirty sandbox, no shouting human voices to alarm them, no bars, no padlock. It was well past midnight when they left Kit’s sanctuary, moving swiftly through the village shying away from the glow of shop windows, the fleeing cats no more than shadows. Above them behind reflecting glass golden light illuminated worlds of human artifacts, Gucci handbags, Western boots, red satin nighties and candied cactus, items of which these cats knew nothing. With the cats’ shadows flashing across pale walls like the ghosts of long-dead cougars, Kit led them on a circuitous route avoiding the brighter streets. Surely Luis and Tommie wouldn’t come looking, but still she was nervous. She guided them up to the rooftops among the chimneys and penthouses where they glanced into high windows and down through skylights into strange human worlds. They left the roofs at the little park that crossed over Highway One.

Racing up through tame residential gardens, they at last fled beneath fences into pastures where cattle slept. The full moon was setting when they bolted across Highway One and into the tall forests of grass that blew across Hellhag Hill.

Up through the windy grass racing and leaping, the ferals knew their way here; but still they followed Kit. They heard no threatening sounds, and no swift shadows paced them. Above them the sky grew darker as the moon set, and far below, the silver sea darkened. They were back in their own wild world, and still Kit ran with them. No one asked her why. Cotton, white as a ghost in the dark night, bolted ahead of the others wild for the far, empty reaches. Coyote waited for Willow; his long ears and encircledeyes,in the darkness, making him look indeed like a strange and uncatlike predator. It was Willow who kept glancing at Kit, wondering. Wondering if Kit meant to stay with them or go back. Willow thought that even Kit didn’t know the answer. High on Hellhag Hill, the four cats paused.

Below them gleamed the endless sea with its drowned mountains. Kit said, “Does the sea run on to eternity? Humans don’t think so. Whatiseternity?” But then she looked up at Hellhag Cave, looming black, high above them. If that was eternity, she didn’t want any part of it. Cotton and Coyote were staring as if they wanted to go in there, but Kit pushed quickly on. “I don’t like it there, it’s all elder there.” She made a flehmen face and they galloped away to a happier verge where they rolled on gentler turf and groomed themselves. There Kit curled up to rest against a boulder watching the others, her thoughts teeming with daydreams and uncertainties.

We could have our own clowder, we don’t have to go back to Stone Eye. The four of us, off on our own. We don’t need Stone Eye.

The night’s siren song of freedom sang loud in her heart, running unfettered beneath the moon and wind turning her drunk with excitement. They would have their own clowder, beyond Stone Eye and beyond the world of humans.

But then she curled smaller against the boulder. I would never again see Lucinda and Pedric. I would never again be loved like they love me. Like Joe and Dulcie love me and all my human friends. Pressed tight against the boulder, steeped in a fugue of uncertainly, Kit did not know what she wanted.

A thin, dawn fog began to rise hiding the sea; lights appeared on the road far below, careening around the verge of the hill: two cars with spotlights blazing out of their windows to sweep the hill-the kind of spots a hunter would use to shine and confuse a deer, freeze it in its tracks before he shot it. The four cats closed their eyes and melted away up the hill where a stand of boulders offered shelter.

Kit thought of hiding in Hellhag Cave where they would never be found, slip deep into the earth where no human would ever see them. Yes, so deep they might never get out again.

Lucinda, who knew so well the world of Celtic myth, thought Hellhag Cave might lead to places where no sensible cat would want to go. The idea that Hellhag Cave’s fissures might drop away forever had once thrilled Kit. Not anymore.

The two cars had pulled onto the shoulder. The headlights went out. The doors opened and five men emerged. As they crossed the road and began to run up the hill swinging their searching beams, the gusting sea wind carried the faint scent of Luis and of Tommie McCord.

The cats fled up the high precipice that rose above Hellhag’s grassy slopes, up into steep rocky verges that would slow or stop a man. Up cliffs that could, on this dark night, be dangerously deceptive to a human. Kit was drunk with excitement-she was feral, born to fear and escape. Heady memories filled her as the spotlights gained on them, violent bright shafts knifing close. She scrambled up the cliffs panting so hard she could hardly breathe; and on they raced, drawing away at last to lose their pursuers in steep, rocky blackness.

Three of the men stopped and stood arguing and at last turned back, heading down toward their cars. Only Luis still climbed. Behind him Tommie McCord stood halfway up the hill shouting, “Enough! Not chasing cats anymore.” They heard a tiny scratch as Tommie stopped to light a cigarette; they saw the flame and smelled the smoke. Luis pushed on, grunting.

“Don’t care what kind of money they’re worth!” Tommie yelled. “I’m not climbing any more hills.”

“Do what you want!”

But Tommie raced up at him suddenly, lunged and grabbed Luis by the shoulders. “This crazy idea of Hernando’s! Get your mind on business.” Pulling Luis close, Tommie stared into his face. “I don’t care what they’re worth, to the movies, to God Himself. I don’t care what they know. I’m not messing with any more cats!”

Luis hit him, hard. They fought across the hill pounding each other, reeling and punching until Luis sent Tommie sprawling. And Luis raced on uphill, leaving McCord groaning on the ground. The cats fled up the stony crest and skidded and tumbled into a rocky canyon too steep for any man; loose gravel scudded down around them.

But the danger didn’t stop Luis. He came crashing down between the boulders sliding so precipitously the cats were certain he’d fall; they prayed he would fall, that they’d be done with him. As he came sliding down like an avalanche they leaped to the narrow rocky bottom of the ravine and up the other side, scrabbled up between hanging rocks and over the next crest into deep woods.

Swiftly they climbed a tall pine up into dense foliage. From among the concealing branches they watched Luis circle below them until at last he turned away and, swearing, started his slow progress back down the cliffs.

Exhausted, the cats curled among the branches and closed their eyes. They slept so deeply they hardly heard, far away, Luis’s car start and head, alone, back toward the village.

34 [��������: pic_35.jpg]

The chill February morning was still dark. Max, having kissed Charlie goodbye as she worked at her computer, shrugged on his jacket and headed out to his truck. Over Charlie’s protests, he’d been eating breakfast in the village all week so she could work. For two weeks she’d been out of bed by four, was showered and at the computer within twenty minutes, a cup of coffee by her side. She always brought a thermos of coffee into the bedroom for him to enjoy when he woke.

Heading across the stable yard to his truck, he glanced to the pasture where he had turned the three horses out, smiling at the way they tore at the fresh spring grass. Since Charlie started on the book, he had returned to his old routine of feeding the dogs and horses as he had done before they were married. In the last six months, Charlie had royally spoiled him.

The book she was working on pleased him very much; she knew animals, but this story was amazing. And it and the illustrations totally absorbed her. Turning onto the main road, he looked off across the pasture again where Bucky and Redwing had begun to play, chasing the two dogs.

Charlie’s project had started out as a short, children’s book, but was turning into a much longer and more complicated story, into a book for all ages; it reminded him of the horse and dog stories he’d read as a boy. He wouldn’t have chosen cats to write about, but Charlie understood them amazingly well, her words rang so true that he had begun, himself, to understand the small felines better. As he reached the end of the drive he was surprised to glimpse a cat tearing across the pasture as if terrified, as if racing for its life. Stopping the truck, he tried to see what was chasing it, half expecting a coyote or bobcat. It must be a cat from one of the small ranches. Swinging the door open he stepped out thinking to turn the predator aside. Or, if it was a cougar, he’d run it off and go back to tell Charlie and to shut the horses and dogs in the barn.

But behind the fleeing cat, nothing else moved in the green grass; and suddenly the preoccupied cat saw him. It disappeared at once. It would be crouching low in the grassyes, he could just make out its dark shape, deadly still; as if it was more afraid of him than of whatever chased it. He watched until he was certain nothing approached it, then headed on down to the village. Maybe the cat had, like the horses and the two pups on this chill morning, only been playing-running for pure joy in the cold, early dawn.

Parking near the Swiss Cafe he moved in across the patio to the back table to join Dallas and Juana Davis. Clyde was there this morning, too. Stopping to give the waiter his order, he sat down with his back to the wall; he reflexively glanced above him.

From within the thick jasmine vine Clyde’s gray tomcat peered down at him, his yellow eyes returning his stare as bold as some skilled confidence man.

Clyde grinned. “He was hungry. I get tired of cooking for him.”

Max looked at the cat, and looked at Clyde. “You order yet? I’m surprised the cat doesn’t order for himself.”

“He orders too much. Gets expensive.”

Dallas laughed, then went silent while their orders were served. Max thought the cook must have seen him walk in the door; he nearly always ordered pancakes. He watched Clyde set a small plate up on the wall. Clyde said, “Slayter called Ryan again last night, wanted her to meet him again, was really pushy. She turned the speaker on so I could listen, told him she was busy. He said he desperately needed her help.” Clyde grinned. “She told him to call 911.” He glanced at the other tables, but the people around them were deep into their own conversations, a bunch of guys arguing about baseball, one couple so involved with each other they wouldn’t have known if an earthquake hit the restaurant. “He told Ryan he’s up here looking into a shooting in L.A., that he followed the suspect up here, that he’s working as a private investigator.”

Davis said, “Did he tell her what shooting?”

“Something that happened during a bank robbery. Said the case is still open.”

“If he’s legitimate,” Davis said, “he’d have come to us, share information.”

“She told him that. Slayter told her LAPD was accused of killing the guy. Unnecessary force during a bank holdup. Said there’d been an investigation and two officers had been suspended-that it was those officers who hired him to find out who did kill him.”

“Who was the victim?” Max said. “Did Slayter mention a name?”

“A Frank something.”

“Frank Cozzino,” Dallas said.

Clyde nodded.

Davis spread marmalade on her toast. “Slayter wanted Ryan to pass him departmental information. Wanted her to pump us. Interesting.”

“Sleazebag,” Dallas said casually.

Clyde was silent, looking from one to another. Above him, Joe Grey belched. Everyone laughed. Clyde looked up at the tomcat, scowling. He couldn’t mouth off to Joe-with sufficient prodding, who knew what the tomcat might do. Joe looked back at him, smug as cream.

Max said, “Frank Cozzino was a snitch for LAPD. He worked for several gangs, gathering intelligence for them on some high-powered burglaries. Then he started passing the information on to L.A. Looks like that got him dead.

“He and the DA managed the cases so smoothly that it was a long time before anyone caught on that he’d furnished the information. When one of the gangs made him on it, someone took him out and tried to make it look like the uniforms did it. Of course L.A. got the blame.” Harper finished his coffee and set down his cup. “L.A. has the bullet but they’ve never come up with the gun.”

Dallas finished his breakfast and laid half a slice of bacon up on the wall, making Clyde smile. “Maybe those two guys did hire Slayter. But if he’s up here for that, why hasn’t he come to us? Why try to go through Ryan to find out what we have?”

Davis finished her coffee, wiped her hands on her napkin, and straightened her uniform jacket. Tucking a five and some ones under the ketchup bottle, she rose. “You want to go over that matter you mentioned, Max?”

Harper nodded, reaching for her money to add to his own.

“I’ll make a pot of coffee,” Juana said. “I made empanadas last night, we can warm them up later.”

Dallas rose, too, handed Harper a ten, and he and Juana headed back to the station. From atop the wall, Joe Grey watched them as he dispatched Garza’s bacon. He liked and respected Juana Davis; she was a thorough, no-nonsense detective, yet with a frightened victim or with a wrongfully accused arrestee she was warm and understanding. Juana’s proper, dark uniform and regulation dark stockings and black Oxfords contrasted sharply with Garza’s faded jeans and old tweed sport coat, and Harper’s jeans and boots and Western shirt. In this casual village, it was Juana Davis who stood out. Wondering what “matter” Harper and the two detectives meant to discuss, Joe slipped off the wall into the alley and headed for the station.

By the time Clyde and Harper rose, and Clyde turned to speak to the tomcat, Joe was long gone. Not a leaf stirred atop the wall where the gray cat had crouched. He’d vanished like the Cheshire cat. Only the empty plate remained, tucked among the leaves and licked to a fine polish.

Juana Davis�s office was down the central hall, past Harper’s and Garza’s offices and past the staff room. If Joe had continued on, he could have entered the large report-writing room with its individual cubicles and latest electronic equipment, or the interrogation room. At the end of the hall was the locked, metal-plated door leading to the officers’ parking area, and the jail. Having slipped in through the glass doors at the front of the station on the heels of a hurrying rookie, he double-timed back to Davis’s office, hoping she wouldn’t wonder why he’d shown up there so soon. But he might as wellput a bold face on it. Strolling on in, he made himself comfortable atop her coffee table and stretched out, licking bacon grease from a front paw. Coming in behind him, Davis gave him a stunned look.

“You little freeloader. You spend all morning stuffing yourself, and now you think I have something to feed you?” She looked up as Garza entered. “Talk about pigs!”

Garza picked Joe up off the table and laid a stack of papers down in his place. Setting Joe on the couch, the detective made himself comfortable beside the tomcat. This kind of behavior never ceased to amaze Joe. All his life Garza had raised and trained gun dogs, their pictures were all over his office. Garza was not a cat person.

“There was a time,” Juana said, “when you wouldn’t be caught dead petting a cat.”

“He’s getting soft,” Harper said, coming in. “You behave like this around those two old pointers of yours, they’ll pack up and move out.”

On the center cushion of the leather couch, Joe Grey washed his shoulder with deep concentration. He had to admit, he’d done a number on Garza. The guy was becoming almost civilized, turning into a regular cat fancier. For this, the tomcat had to congratulate himself. He had, very smoothly, charmed the department’s upper echelon, while all the time maintaining a persona of simple-minded feline innocence. And as he lay purring and dozing beside Detective Garza, Joe realized he was smack in the middle of a major departmental planning session.

The confidential discussion he was witnessing was a brainstorming, nuts-and-bolts logistical plan of action, as the three officers laid out departmental strategy for handling a really big jewel heist-maybe the biggest jewel burglary this village had ever witnessed.

If their information was good. This wasn’t intelligence that Joe or Dulcie had provided; Joe listened with curiosity and with rising anger. Why was it that the small, lovely village attracted these hoods? Why couldn’t they leave Molena Point alone, go somewhere else to make trouble!

Well, but there was money here. Plenty of money. Movie stars; executive types coming down for conferences and for their brainstorming getaways; upscale tourists. And when the Colombian gangs in L.A. had discovered Molena Point and put the village on their thieving roster, every crook in California tried to copycat them. Didn’t matter that Molena Point had one of the finest small departments in the country-with a little help undercover, Joe thought modestly-every sleazy no-good thought he could beat the odds.

Davis said, “Doesn’t seem possible that L.A. bunch would undertake this kind of operation, after they messed up so badly down there.”

Dallas shrugged.

“Maybe not possible they candoit,” Harper said. “But given their past attempts, I’d say it’s way possible they’ll try, that they think they can pull it off.”

“Big dreams, short on brains,” Davis said.

“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Max said. “They’ve pulled a few good ones. And with Dufio out of the way�”

They were quiet a moment. “You think they killed him?” Davis said.

Max refilled his coffee cup from the pot Davis had set on the coffee table. “We should have the ballistics, end of the week. I’d give a month’s salary to get my hands on the gun.”

“One thing sure,” Dallas said. “The oak tree bark, outside his cell window, doesn’t pick up prints worth a damn. But we have a nice collection of fibers.”

In spite of himself, Joe felt his ears go rigid with interest. It took all his effort to keep his head down and appear to doze. With Garza on his right and Harper on his left and Juana looking straight at him from behind her desk, it was almost impossible not to stare from one speaker to the other like a spectator at a tennis match.

He could see Harper’s notes, though. He was only a foot from the clipboard that Max balanced against his crossed leg, from the chief’s bold handwriting. And he had a front-row view of the map that Dallas had laid out on the coffee table. Rising to rub against Harper’s knee, he took a closer look at the map, getting a strong, pleasant whiff of Harper’s horses.

Harper had marked twelve jewelry stores on the map, and five other upscale shops. He had noted, beside each, the store name, the opening and closing times and the names of the owners. Every officer, even the rookies, would have all the information at hand-every officer and one tomcat. Joe concentrated as hard as he could to set the layout clearly in mind. He wished Kit were there; with her photographic memory, she’d have the diagram down cold.

Through narrowly shuttered eyes, he studied Harper’s notes, which included hidden video cameras both inside and outside the targeted stores, several still photographers and a team of officers hidden near each location-in one huge departmental sting. A sting that would employ not only every officer in the department-no one off duty or on leave-but a dozen or more men Harper would borrow from surrounding districts up and down the coast.

“Have them down here in time to get familiar with the layout. Billet them among us.”

Dallas said, “I can take four comfortably, more if needed.”

“Two, maximum,” Davis said. She had, a little over a year ago, sold her house and moved into a small condo. Harper said he and Charlie could take the rest. “Ryan should have the upstairs finished by then-finished enough.”

“Maybe not a shot fired,” Garza said hopefully. “Not a piece of jewelry unaccounted for.”

“If we’re lucky,” Harper said tightly. “Don’t count your chickens.”

“Jewelry stores still happy with their plan?” Juana asked.

Max nodded. “They’ve already collected every piece of faux jewelry they could lay hands on. This whole thing makes me edgy, it’s too pat. The fact that we have a specific date, specific hits� If our intelligence is valid.”

Joe closed his eyes so he wouldn’t stare at the chief. What intelligence? These guys were talking about things that neither he nor Dulcie were aware of. Nor the Kit, surely. Who was passing information to the department? Andwasit good information?

Or was someone playing snitch, meaning to double-cross the cops? His anger at that made his claws want to knead into the leather cushion. Hastily he shifted position, scratching a nonexistent flea. These officers thought their information was coming from their regular snitches, and they could be walking into a trap, being set up big-time. Joe’s heart was pounding so hard he thought Harper and Dallas must hear it or notice its hammering blows right through his fur. He closed his eyes, trying to get a grip.

Juana said, “This snitch has never let us down. Without her, we wouldn’t have a clue. If she’s setting us up�”

She? She, who? Dulcie hadn’t made those calls. Kit had made a couple of calls when she spotted Chichi spying. But did she have all this other information, that Luis planned to hit all the stores at once? As far as Joe knew, Kit hadn’t been privy to any one specified time and date. Unless she hadn’t told them-hadn’t had time to tell them?

Had Kit learned this and called Harper while they were locked up? And in her panic to save them and to help the ferals escape, she hadn’t thought to tell them?

It was earlier that morning, long before dawn, when Kit woke in the dark in the branches of the pine tree and thought about Luis chasing them and about his dead brother Hernando. She looked over at her three sleeping companions and shivered and was hungry again and lonely and didn’t know whether to go home or to keep running with them, didn’t know what she wanted. Didn’t know if they would search for their clowder and their cold-hearted leader and return to that miserable life, or if they would go off on their own, asshewanted, just the four of them, and start their own clowder and be free of Stone Eye? Or defy him, battle him, run from him forever?

Was that what she wanted? This morning she wasn’t sure, she didn’t know. But a voice inside whispered, “Lucinda and Pedric love you. You will hurt them terribly if you don’t go back.”

Crouching in the pine boughs shivering from exhaustion and cold and the effects of fear, Kit wanted to run on across the open hills forever and she wanted to return to Lucinda and Pedric, to her human friends, to human civilization with all its faults and goodness. To her own dear Dulcie and Joe, to Wilma and Clyde and Charlie and all her human family, to a life so layered in richness and the mysteries of humankind that she would never truly learn it all.

She wanted both. Wanted everything. Crouched miserably among the branches, she might never have known what she wanted if she hadn’t grown thirsty and backed down the tall trunk to find a drink of water-and come face to face with Stone Eye.

She dropped the last six feet into the soft cover of pine needles smelling the scent of water on the wind and there he stood on a fallen log. Watching her. Stone Eye. Broad of head and shoulder, heavy of muscle, ragged of ear. His eyes blazed with rage, his fangs were bared. He looked up into the pines where Willow and Coyote and Cotton slept, and he snarled with fury. As if they had purposely escaped him, had defied him and intentionally run away. And as he closed on Kit lifting his knifelike claws to strike, Kit ran.

35 [��������: pic_36.jpg]

When Charlie looked up from her computer, she was surprised to see that the predawn dark had brightened into morning. She glanced at her watch. Max had been gone for nearly an hour. He’d been quiet this morning, solemn and distracted as he often was when police business presented a knotty problem. Breakfast in the village with his officers was good for him, he hadn’t done that in a long while; and it lent her some extra time, which she appreciated right now.

She had wondered, slipping out of bed at four a.m., if she was raving mad to be getting up at that hour. She’d eaten yogurt and fruit at the computer, and now she was ravenous. But she was so into the world of the book that it was hard to leave-hard to leave the kit, cold and shunned by the older cats, wandering the winter hills alone. The story was so real to her that sometimes shewasthe homeless tortoiseshell, feeling sharply the terror of the thin, frightened creature creeping through the night, hiding from the clowder leader among jungles of dense, tall grass. Charlie’s rough sketches for the book marched across the cork wall behind her, sketches for which Kit had been the model. At first Charlie had meant the story for young children, but it had grown of its own accord, enriching and complicating itself until it had become a far more involving novel.

Rising from her desk she headed for the kitchen, her thoughts partly on her empty stomach but mostly still on the book. While the cat in the story looked and acted like Kit, the real challenge was that this fictional catwasan ordinary feral, and she must show the cat’s life from that aspect. No speaking, no uncatly notions. The fictional cat’s vocabulary was limited to mewls and caterwauling, to growls and hisses and body language. She had no name, there was no human to give her a name. Charlie called her, simply, the cat. But the details of a feral cat’s life were as real as she could make them-facts right from the cat’s mouth, Charlie thought, smiling. Immersed in Kit’s story, the words flowed out in a rush, all the joys and terrors of that feral cat’s perilous existence.

She was standing at the kitchen table making a peanut-butter-on-whole-wheat sandwich when she heard rustling and scrabbling outside, beneath the bay window. Crossing to the window seat to kneel on the scattered cushions, she looked down into the bushes.

Within the tangle of geraniums and camellias and ferns, she could see nothing. Looking up across the yard, she saw nothing unusual around Ryan’s truck where it stood beside Scotty’s car in front of the barn. Rock was out in the pasture playing with their own two dogs. Turning away, she spun around again when a thud hit the window behind her.

A dark shape clung to the sill. The kit stared in at her, pressing so hard against the glass that her whiskers were flat; her round yellow eyes were huge with fear.

Hurrying to open the door, Charlie was nearly bowled over as Kit flew into her arms. The little cat clung against her, shivering, her heart pounding so hard that Charlie feared for her. Holding Kit close, she returned to the window seat and sat down to cuddle her. Kit’s coat was matted and wet from the early morning dew, and full of trash and leaves. Her paws were ice-cold. She stared, terrified, into Charlie’s face, but she said no word.

“It’s all right,” Charlie said softly. “We can talk, Ryan and Scotty are both on the roof, I can see them. No one else is here.” Tucking Kit warm among the pillows, she rose long enough to snatch up the milk bottle, pour some in a bowl, and nuke it for half a minute. Setting it down, watching Kit inhale it, she opened a can of chicken, which Kit gobbled.

Sitting down beside her again, Charlie rubbed her ears. “What happened? What happened? What chased you? Where have you been? We thought�”

Kit looked up at her tiredly, still shivering.

“Worn out,” Charlie said, hoping that was all. “You’re exhausted. Oh, Kit, you mustn’t be sick!” Picking Kit up and hugging her close, Charlie carried her to the table. She was reaching for the phone, to call Lucinda or the vet, when the phone rang. Charlie snatched it up with a shaking hand.

Lucinda’s voice, agitated, cutting in and out. “Have you seen her? Have you seen Kit? Is she there with you? She hasn’t come home at all.”

“She�”

Lucinda pressed on, giving her no chance to speak. “I thought she might come there to you because you’re closer to Hellhag Hill. We’ve walked all over the hills and down into Hellhag Cave�”

“You’re in Hellhag Cave? Oh, Lucinda, come out of there. She’s�”

“We’re out now, you can’t use a phone in there. But if the ferals didn’t go down into the caves,” Lucinda blurted breathlessly, “then they’ve headed back where they came from to their clowder, and the kit�”

“Lucinda! She’s here!”

“There? Oh, my dear�”

“Kit’s here! Right here beside me. Safe in my arms. What in the world happened?”

“You didn’t know? Is she all right?”

“She’s fine! Hungry, but that’s nothing new. Didn’t know what?”

“Clyde found three ferals from Kit’s clowder, locked cruelly in a cage. Kit led him there, and he freed them-but she ran off with them. We thought� Pedric and I thought�”

Kit had her face in the phone. “I’m here, Lucinda! I’m fine. I’m right here with Charlie and I’m fine!”

Lucinda sighed, then was silent. Charlie pushed Kit away. “I didn’t know,” she said in a small voice, looking sternly at the kit.

“We thought she was just leading them away through the village and that she’d be back. When she didn’t come home, we thought� No one told you? Wilma didn’t call?”

Kit looked up at Charlie. Charlie looked at Kit. A little smile touched the kit’s darkly mottled face, the first smile Charlie had seen. Pulling the wet, dirty cat warm against her, Charlie imagined Lucinda and Pedric tramping up Hellhag Hill in the dark, imagined those two old people going down into Hellhag Cave, calling and calling the kit, and she shuddered.

“When she didn’t come home,” Lucinda said, “we were terrified she’d gone forever.”

Kit scrambled back to Charlie’s shoulder, nearly shouting into the phone. “I didn’t� I didn’t mean to worry you, Lucinda. I love you!”

“We’ll be there,” Lucinda said. “Ten minutes, as soon as we can get down the hill, we’ll be there to get you.”

When they’d hung up, Charlie gave Kit some more chicken, and finished making her own sandwich. “Those caves go on forever, Kit! They could have been lost down there!” Though it was hard to be mad at the kit. Charlie had never been able to find anything written, and had found no person who could tell her, where those black fissures ended; but the tales about Hellhag Cave were not pleasant. Carrying her sandwich and Kit back to her studio, she tucked the little cat into an easy chair, in a warm blanket, and sat down at her computer. Already Kit was nodding off.

But she couldn’t work, she sat watching Kit sleep, watching the nervous twitch of Kit’s paws, as if she was still running; and Charlie’s heart twisted at Kit’s occasional sharp mewls of fear.

As Charlie waited for Lucinda and Pedric to come for their lost kit, Joe Grey and Dulcie were preparing to search for Roman Slayter’s gun, relying on Kit’s information. They were flying blind, not at all sure what finding a gun would prove-unless it was the gun that killed Dufio. Or, if Chichi was looking for a gun, and if Chichi had been so pushy trying to learn where Slayter was staying� Though that didn’t add up to much, it was enough to put them on Slayter’s case. Cop sense or cat sense, Joe had the gut feeling this was worth a shot.

If they did find a gun in Slayter’s room, and could hide it where the cops could find it, they might fit together a couple more pieces of the puzzle-a puzzle that seemed as nebulous as smoke on the wind.

They knew that Lucinda and Pedric were searching for Kit, that the old couple had been out since before daylight, and Dulcie was frantic for the kit; she alternated between feeling bad that she and Joe weren’t searching, and sensibly admitting that Joe was right, that this was Kit’s call, Kit’s responsibility. Though Joe had, Dulcie noticed, glanced up to the southerly hills several times with a listening and worried frown.

Now the two cats lay comfortably on a warm, tarred rooftop across the street from the Gardenview Inn, scanning the windows and balconies hoping to spot Slayter. Kit had not heard which room. They knew better than to call and ask for a guest’s room number; no respectable hotel would divulge that information. The building was a creamy stucco of Mediterranean style, three stories high, topped by a low, red clay roof and a dozen chimneys, implying that each large room boasted a fireplace. In the center of the long building three steps led up to an entry that opened directly into a small, bright lobby-they could see through it to glass doors at the back, opening out again to a garden and terrace between beds of roses. “You want to do the diversion?” Joe said. “Or shall I?”

Dulcie sighed. “You do it. I’ll slip up on the desk, see if I can find the room number.”

“Dulcie, if you don’t quit worrying about the kit, I swear�”

“Shecouldbe in trouble.”

“And if she is? How do you propose we find her out on a thousand acres of open land?”

“Lucinda and Pedric have gone looking.”

“Lucinda and Pedric have a car.”

“We could�”

Joe sat back down on the warming black rooftop, looking hard at her. “She’s a big cat now. She is not a kitten anymore.”

“But that Stone Eye� If she� I’m sorry, Joe. I just can’t get it out of my mind that she needs us.”

“That’s the mothering instinct. If you want to go look for her, fine. Maybe you can find Lucinda and Pedric, join up with them. I’m going to find that gun or whatever Chichi’s looking for.”

Dulcie sighed again, and followed Joe as he dropped down onto a copper awning, then to a raised planter, and to the street and across on the heels of a half dozen tourists.

Earlier this morning, coming from home, she had detoured by the Greenlaws’ second-floor terrace, had stood pressed against the glass door, looking in. The old couple’s apartment had been dark and empty. Wilma hadsaidthey were out searching. And Wilma would be, too, Dulcie thought, except that she was the only reference librarian on duty this morning. Trotting with Joe across the street, she paused beneath a little bench. She watched him strut into the lobby and on through, bold as brass, and out the back to the patio. In a moment, his tomcat yells and blood-curdling screams filled the hotel, the street, the block.

Joe himself couldn’t be seen among the roses; but with creative mimicking and plenty of pizzazz, he produced a fight between two tomcats that was so real, it was all she could do not to run before the two beasts found her. Gathering her wits, she watched the clerk and two more women hurry out into the patio with rolled-up newspapers, and one with a plastic wastebasket, which she filled with water at an outdoor tap.

The minute the lobby was empty she raced in and leaped to the desk, landing practically on top the guest register. She was pawing through, wondering how long ago Slayter had registered, how far back she’d have to turn the pages-and was keeping an eye on Joe in case those three women grabbed him-when Slayter himself appeared in the doorway, coming in from the street. Swallowing a hiss, Dulcie dropped behind the desk, then wondered why she’d done that. She was a cat, a dumb and simple cat!

In a moment she hopped casually up onto a file cabinet among untidy stacks of papers and books. Crouching where she could see through the window to the back garden, she pretended to pay no attention to Slayter. How could someone so handsome make her so uneasy?

He was dressed in pale slacks, sleek dark loafers, a dark shirt and a tan suede blazer. Pausing in the small lobby, looking out the window, he watched with amusement the scene in the garden. The three women had chased Joe up out of their reach onto a high wall. There the tomcat crouched among a tangle of ivy, licking angrily at his drenched coat. Slayter’s grin had turned sly and, she thought, cruel-his amusement made Dulcie’s fur crawl.

She hadn’t yet found his room number; as Slayter moved on toward the hall, she came out from behind the desk and sat down where she could see the elevator. She watched him enter, then watched the dial; when its swinging arm stopped on three, she fled for the stairs that peeked out from behind the elevator’s confining walls.

Racing up the two carpeted flights, she heard the elevator stop above her, heard the door open and close. As she hit the last step panting, she heard a door slam down the hall to her left. Peering around the corner, she scanned the hall in both directions.

Empty to her left, a maid’s cart far down to her right. No maid in sight, but near it the door to one room stood open. Turning away toward the sound of Slayter’s slamming door, she scented along the thick carpet, her nose and taste filled with the freshly laid smell of good leather and expensive, musky aftershave, the same aroma that had accompanied Slayter through the lobby. The trail ended at 307. On down the hall a narrow, carved table supported a potted plant beneath a large mirror with an old, hand-carved frame such as she had seen in the expensive antiques shops. Padding into the shadow beneath the table, she sat down, considering Slayter’s closed door.

The room was on the west, so would overlook the garden. She wondered if Slayter had been sufficiently entertained by the tomcat’s plight to be standing at the window now, looking down with that unpleasant smile. She hoped, if that was the case, that Joe got the hell out of there. How long would Slayter be in his room? If she waited until he left, and she was quick, could she slip in behind his heels?

If she failed at that, surely she could get in when the maid came to do up the room-but who knew how soon that would be?

Kit’s notion that there was something in his room that Chichi wanted might be all wild imagination. Except that Chichihadsearched Abuela’s house.Wasthe object of her search the gun she hadn’t found? Whatever, there was surely something definitely “off” about Chichi’s behavior-fawning all over Clyde, her dislike and aggression toward Joe, her surveillance and partner status in Luis’s crime plans. Her appearance running from the jewelry store with the black bag that later showed up in Luis’s pocket, then her search of Abuela’s house.

But then she had helped Clyde to free them all from the cage, and that puzzled Dulcie; except maybe Clyde had really forced her to do that. Edging deeper into the shadows beneath the little table, she curled down, waiting for Slayter, intent on getting into his room-and hoping Joe had made his sodden escape.

36 [��������: pic_37.jpg]

Half an hour after Dulcie settled among the shadows to watch Roman Slayter’s door, Joe found her there asleep on the hall carpet beneath the little table. Having waited for her in the garden as he cleaned himself up, after that fool woman threw water on him, he had at last gone looking for her. If she’d gotten into Slayter’s room, she’d better be well hidden. From the garden wall, he’d seen Slayter up at a third-floor window, sitting as if at a table. Then when he’d tracked Dulcie through the lobby and up the stairs, there she was asleep in the hall. He nudged her.

She woke at once. “Where have you been? He’s in there.” “I know, I saw him from the garden, sitting by the window with the TV on. What’s to watch, in the daytime? The soaps? He made two phone calls, and answered three; I could just hear the phone ringing, and saw him pick up. Could you hear anything? But you were asleep.”

“I wish you’d stayed awake. I’d give a case of caviar to know what those calls were. So many pieces that don’t add up.”

“They never add up until the last shoe drops, the last mouse runs out of the hole.”

Joe settled down beside her. They were softly whispering, patiently watching Slayter’s door, when a door just beyond them flew open and a second maid came out, wheeling her squeaky cart. She passed by three closed doors with DO NOT DISTURB signs on them, and knocked at 307.

“Housekeeping.”

“Come in,” Slayter called. She used her passkey, then flipped down the little doorstop to hold the door open. The cats, scrunching down beside the cleaning cart, were ready to make a dash inside when they heard the elevator humming, heard it stop at the third floor. Heard its door slide open and soft footsteps coming their way along the carpet, and they smelled the sweet, flowery scent of Chichi Barbi’s perfume. Hunching smaller, they stared at each other. Joe ducked his head down to hide his white nose and chest and paws.

Chichi hesitated beside the maid’s cart; then everything happened at once: They heard Slayter inside talking with the maid, heard the closet door slide open, heard him coming. Swift as a cat herself, Chichi drew back into the recess of the door to the ice machine. She watched, unseen, as Slayter left his room and went on down the hall, carrying a newspaper. The minute he stepped into the elevator and the door closed, Chichi came out and stood listening.

The maid was in Slayter’s bathroom, running the water as she cleaned. Chichi slipped quickly in. Joe and Dulcie followed, strolling in behind her between the cart and the door. They stood watching as Chichi tossed the room. She checked beneath the mattress, which was on a solid platform, shook out the tangled bedding to glance underneath, then dropped it in a heap.

Stepping to the open closet she did a thorough job on his suitcase that stood inside on a stand, and on the hanging clothes. Fast and efficient, she was heading across to the windows when the maid came out of the bathroom.

“Hi!” Chichi said brightly, not missing a beat. “Roman sent me back up to find his jacket, he’s waiting in the lobby. The blue one, but it isn’t here. Could it be in the bathroom?”

“There’s no jacket in there,” the Latino maid said suspiciously, moving toward the phone. Quickly she picked it up, but before she could call security, Chichi was gone-and so were Joe and Dulcie. Chichi out the door, the cats behind the open draperies.

It was there they found the gun, in a hiding place so efficient that no maid would be apt to look. Maybe no one would discover it unless they were doing electrical repairs-or had their nose to the carpet.

Except a cop. Any cop would spot the loose carpet in the corner behind the draperies-but the cats were aware of more than that. They crouched in the corner excitedly sniffing the faint, distinctive scent, trying to close their ears against the violent roar of the maid’s vacuum cleaner. They stared down at the loose carpet beneath their paws; Dulcie patted at it, her green eyes wide. Joe nosed at the crack where the carpet met the wall, where the rug did not lie snugly-where it had been lifted, then secured back in place. He clawed it back to get his teeth in, and pulled with a ripping sound.

“Double-sided tape,” Dulcie whispered, and they pulled back the carpet to look at the floor beneath.

The plywood floor had been cut into a six-inch square, as if removed and then replaced. The wall at the corner was lumpy, too, as if it had also been cut, then repaired and replastered. “Old building,” Dulcie said. “Older than the wing that goes along the end of the garden. Maybe when it was built, they had to make some changes here in the wiring?”

Together they clawed the plywood up. It fitted so snugly it was hard to remove without ripping out a claw. Beneath it, a black hole gaped, filled with wiring and with a plastic pipe running through. Concealed back beneath the old part of the floor, half hidden by wiring, lay a dark handgun, a plain blue semi-automatic with a dark grip. They could see that the clip was in. As their eyes adjusted, they could see the round silver S-and-W logo of Smith and Wesson on the grip. The cats looked at each other and smiled. Slayter had discovered an excellent hiding place-except for the nosiness of cats.

They had no way of knowing if the gun was loaded without removing the clip, and neither was about to try that. “I told you there was a gun,” Dulcie said. “That Chichi was searching for a gun. What do we do now?”

Before Joe could answer, the loud, brassy blast of a jazz trumpet drowned even the roar of the vacuum, bursting up from the courtyard.

“It’s starting,” Dulcie said. “The first bands must be set up.”

“The streets will be wall-to-wall traffic, the sidewalks a forest of feet.”

“But it’s only just past noon. Luis wouldn’t hit those shops this time of day?” She stared down into the hole, at the gun. “What’ll we do with it? Leave it here or�?”

“We’re not handling that thing. You want to haul that over the roofs? Besides, we can’t move evidence. You know that.”

“Was evidence what Chichi was looking for?”

“Whatever, the cops need to find it right here.” Slipping the plywood back into place, he pressed the carpet flat over it. Sudden silence beyond the drapery, then little rustles of fabric told them the maid was making the bed. They listened as she plumped the pillows and moved around as if straightening the folders on desk and table. At last they heard the welcome squeak of wheels as she moved the cart, the click as she snapped the doorstop up, then the door slammed closed. They heard her turn the handle, testing the lock, then blessed silence. They’d have the room to themselves until Slayter returned.

Slipping out from behind the drapery, Joe leaped to the nightstand, pressed the phone for an outside line, and punched in Harper’s private number. Quickly he gave Harper the location and told him where the gun was hidden. He wished he understood Chichi’s role in this. If she was working with Luis, and apparently with Slayter, then why was she snooping? The only answer that came to mind was far too simple, and didn’t seem to fit Chichi. Sure didn’t fit her past behavior, ripping Clyde off. Across the room, Dulcie reared up against the door, working at the knob.

She had turned it and was swinging on it, ready to kick it open, when the door flew violently open. Joe thought she was crushed as Slayter hurried in; but she twisted and leaped out behind him, and was gone. Joe had time only to drop into the thin space between the bed platform and the wall, a crack that had been left to allow the bedside lamps to be plugged in, a space so narrow he had to wriggle to get in at all, and then could hardly breathe. He felt trapped there, and he sure was trapped in the room with Slayter. He hoped Dulcie wouldn’t linger out in the hall or try to get him out. At least he wasn’t crouched in the corner on top of the gun, in case Slayter went for it.

And Slayter did just that. Joe heard him pull the drapery back, heard the ripping sound as he pulled the carpet up, a screech as he lifted the plywood. To the accompaniment of the welcome noise, Joe slid on through to the far side of the bed nearest the door, and reared up to peer up over the bed.

He watched Slayter remove the clip and check it, replace it, and jack one into the chamber. Watched him slide the gun into a body holster beneath his jacket. As he turned, Joe dropped down again, backing deeper into the space between bed and wall.

This time when Slayter left the room the man moved so swiftly, barely cracking the door open, that Joe almost didn’t make it. Scorching out behind Slayter’s ankles without brushing against his leg, Joe followed on his heels. He meant to streak across the hall and in through the open door of the room that was marked ICE MACHINE-but Slayter headed that way, moving directly into the soft-drink room and through it, and through a door marked MAINTENANCE. He heard Slayter’s hard shoes climbing the concrete stairs that would be used by maintenance to access all floors, stairs that probably led to the roof, to the vents and heating equipment. Had Dulcie gone that way? He heard the heavy door at the top slam, a door that sounded too heavy for Dulcie to have opened.

Joe didn’t like going up on the roof with Slayter, even if he could get the door open. But if Dulcie was there�

And, he had told Harper where the gun was hidden, but now it wasn’t there. Slayter was wearing it, and if an officer approached him�

Had he seen a house phone on top the little table in the hall? But you couldn’t call out on a house phone. Slipping back into the hall, he could see the cleaning cart down at the far end. Racing down, he paused by the open door, listening to water running and the TV tuned into a Spanish station. Before he could think better of it, he was inside the room and on the desk, punching in Harper’s number. It crackled when Harper answered.

“He retrieved the gun. Wearing it in a shoulder holster, left side. He’s gone up on the roof.” He waited to be sure Harper wouldn’t ask him to repeat, then hung up and was gone, out into the hall again, his nose filled with the stink of disinfectant-and he headed fast for the roof.

37 [��������: pic_38.jpg]

Cars lined the curbs and filled the streets, creeping slower than a cat would walk. Dulcie sat on the roof of the Gardenview Inn waiting for Joe and beginning to worry. She grew more certain each minute that she should go back, that Slayter had caught him. Below her in the street, drivers held up the single lines of traffic to let people out onto crowded sidewalks. The cacophony of a dozen jazz bands made her ears ache. Any sensible cat would be home, hiding under the bed among the dust mice.

Dulcie loved the beat of the old classic jazz-she’d just like it not all mixed together. She was so awash in Dixieland that she felt giddy. Where was Joe? At last, losing patience, she spun around and raced back across the hotel’s tile roof to the little raised portion of the building that housed the stairwell-but before she could try to fight the door open, she heard footsteps coming up the stairs.

Fleeing away among the shadows of the chimneys, she watched the door swing in, and Roman Slayter emerge. He left the door cracked, did not let the latch click. Moving to the edge of the roof, he stood considering the street below.

Had Slayter locked Joe in his room? But Joe could get out, he could turn the knob just as she had-if he hadn’t hurt Joe. In a sudden panic, she crouched to leap for the door; she drew back when it began to swing open again, this time without sound.

Joe Grey emerged silently behind Slayter, glancing across the roof to Dulcie.

Slayter had a cell phone in his hand, and was looking away to the center of the village, across several blocks of rooftops. The cats could see, beyond an open lot where an ancient cottage had been torn down, that he had a clear view of the courthouse and PD. He could see the front of the station, and the back area beside the jail where the patrol units parked. They watched him punch in a preprogrammed call. He spoke softly.

“Looks like the expected number of patrols are cruising. Hardly moving, in the crush. Half a dozen uniforms on foot, mixing with the crowd. Four CHP units up along the highway. I think we’re� Wait�”

Slayter was quiet as two men emerged from the back door of the station and quickly crossed the police parking lot. When they hit the side street they moved off in different directions. Slayter described them; dressed as civilians, they wore faded shirts, worn jeans, the kind of clothes favored by many locals, comfortable and innocuous.

“Not sure,” Slayter said, in answer to a question. As the men moved into the center of the village where the music was loudest, Slayter relayed their positions. “You have someone on them?” Dulcie glanced across at Joe. Had Roman Slayter figured out Harper’s carefully planned sting? If therewasanother snitch working, she’d hate to think it was someone in the department.

Or was Slayter simply covering all bases? Whatever the case, from this vantage he could see every officer who left the station, uniformed or wearing street clothes. He could track every cop Harper assigned, see where they went, which mark they observed, and pass it on to Luis. She looked frantically across at Joe; the tomcat looked furious, his eyes blazing with a challenge so predatory that Dulcie felt her fur stand up. They had to stop Slayter before he ruined the carefully laid sting, before cops were attacked, civilians caught in possible gunfire.

Crouching, every muscle at ready, she took her cue from Joe, praying they didn’t kill themselves. A blaze of fire in Joe’s yellow eyes, and a twitch of his ear, and she raced across the roof beside him�

“� brown leather jacket,” Slayter was saying, “tan Chinos, long blond hair and�”

Together they leaped, hitting Slayter’s back with all the power they had and all claws digging.

The force of their assault sent him to his knees, scrambling at the edge of the roof, gurgling a scream. The phone went flying. Like a streak Joe snatched it and was gone again, the phone sticking out both sides of his mouth like a dog bone; he vanished behind a chimney.

Before Slayter could get to his knees, shaking his head and twisting unsteadily around to see what had hit him, Dulcie landed on his back and struck him in the face. He screamed, twisting away, pulling loose the frail metal gutter as he tried to steady himself. He lost his grip and went over, snatching at air. Dulcie raked him again and leaped free; with a twisting grab she snagged the edge of the roof with her claws. She was swinging helplessly, trying to pull herself up, when Joe grabbed the side of her neck in his teeth and jerked her back to the roof. They heard Slayter hit the balcony below with a dull thud. They ran, stopping only for Joe to snatch up the phone again.

Scorching away across the rooftop and among some heating equipment, they paused at last, panting; and Joe punched in Harper’s number.

Dulcie watched the roof behind them, but there was no sign of Slayter trying to climb up. She was a bundle of nerves at how close she’d come to falling maybe the whole three stories; she’d counted on Slayter cushioning her fall, and she guessed Joe had thought that, too. Beside her, he had Harper on the line.

He told the chief what they’d seen. “Slayter made three of your men.” Joe described the three. “Gave directions to where the first two were headed. And then, I don’t know exactly what happened, but he fell. It was pretty confused, I guess he might be hurt, though he only fell to the second-floor balcony.”

“Where the hell are you?” Harper’s voice was ragged. “If you saw him fall, youknowwhat happened.”

Harper didn’t ask who this was; he knew the snitch’s voice. “How did he fall?”

“His cell phone’s lying on the roof where he fell.” Joe hit end call and flipped the phone closed. Quickly carrying it back where he’d snatched it, he laid it in the gutter. Cautiously peering over, he smiled.

He returned to Dulcie, still smiling. “He’s down there curled up and groaning, holding himself like he hurts bad.” He glanced back with longing at the abandoned phone. He’d always wanted his own cell phone; but sensibly he turned away. “Let’s get out of here.” They headed away fast, before the cops arrived. Maybe the department could trace the numbers Slayter had called; most likely it was Luis’s cell number.

“What will happen,” Dulcie said, “when the cops see those scratches on his back and face? What will they think? What will Harper and the detectives think?”

“What can they think? Come on, Dulcie, it’s getting late.” The sun, in its low southerly journey, reflected a last path of flame over the western sea. It would be gone in a minute, and the winter sky would darken fast. And as evening fell, so would Luis’s marks fall.

And so will Luis’s men, Joe thought, smiling. If our luck holds. But behind him, Dulcie hadn’t moved. He turned to look at her. “Come on!”

She stood staring down at the street, her tail lashing. “Chichi! It’s Chichi. She’s headed for the Gardenview, fast. She�” The tabby’s eyes widened. “She knows something happened to Slayter!” She looked up at Joe, wide-eyed. “Was it Chichi he was talking to? Or was she with Luis when Slayter cut out, did Luis sendherto find out what happened?”

Paws in the gutter, Joe watched Chichi, torn between following her and hurrying on toward the blasting music and crowded streets where the action would be coming down.

“Go on,” Dulcie said. “You know those officers better than I do, you can spot them easier. I’ll follow Chichi.”

“Too dangerous. You�”

“I’m not a kitten, I’ll stay out of the way. Go on.” And before he could argue she spun away, heading back for the Gardenview-but when she passed the place where Slayter fell, and looked over, he was gone.

She watched Chichi hurrying in through the front door, and heard the distant whirring of the elevator. Before Chichi could reach the third floor, Dulcie slipped into the rooftop stairwell and flew down-she hadn’t reached the bottom when she heard from below a soft banging as someone knocked on a door. Again, harder, a fist pounding. Dulcie paused in the small utility room. Insistent banging, just outside. And Dallas Garza’s voice.

“Police. Open up. We need to talk with you, Slayter.”

With a shaking paw she pulled the door open a crack. Three uniformed cops stood in the hall with Garza, to either side of Slayter’s door. With them was a pale, lean man in a suit, maybe the hotel manager. There was no sign of Chichi. She must have fled the minute she saw the law enter the building. Maybe she doubled back to tell Luis?

Would Luis call off the operation? Oh, that would be too bad, after all Harper’s planning, after bringing men in from other districts. If Luis and his men left town and no arrests were made�

Dallas pounded again and shouted. When there was only silence, the hotel man handed him a passkey. Standing against the wall, Dallas unlocked the door and kicked it open.

Crouched between the ice dispenser and a soft drink machine, Dulcie watched the detective and one uniform enter, leaving the other two standing guard. From down the hall, she heard the elevator descend. Someone else would be coming�

The elevator did not return. But suddenly Chichi came hurrying around the corner from the stairs-maybe she rang for it, then ran up, too impatient to wait. She paused at the open door, watching Dallas and the uniforms.

Frightened that she might be armed, Dulcie was about to shout a warning and then run, when she heard Captain Harper’s voice coming up the stairs behind Chichi. Dulcie caught her breath, shocked, as the two came along the hall together, talking softly like a couple of old friends.

They entered Slayter’s room, pushing the door nearly closed. Now, with the beat of jazz filling the street outside, she could barely hear them. Dallas was saying “� found him lying on the bed, curled up on his side like that, moaning like a stuck pig. He may have broken ribs. The shoulder looks dislocated.”

Dulcie crept nearer, peering through the crack into Slayter’s room. “Those scratches on his face and back,” Dallas said. “Exactly like Hernando.” The detective looked at Chichi. But when he said, “You have any idea what could have made them?” Dulcie lost her nerve and fled again, back up the stairs to the roof.

38 [��������: pic_39.jpg]

On the rooftops, Joe was awash in Tiger Rag and then Tailgate Ramble; if Dulcie were there, her paws would be twitching. He was edgy with worry about her. As he approached the leather shop, he spotted one of Harper’s stakeouts, and drew back. But when he saw no action he moved on to the first jewelry store on Harper’s list. Molena Point had as many jewelry stores as art galleries, both important elements in the village economy. Tourists loved going home with a painting or a bracelet or necklace to remind them of their bright vacation.

Lingering near the jewelry store was a pair of cops dressed as carefree tourists, mingling with the crowd. No one would notice their sidearms beneath those loose shirts. Most of the officers on loan from other towns had been paired with Harper’s men, who knew the streets. He saw Officer Cameron, just up the street, dressed in ragged jeans and a long, loose sweater, her straight blond hair kinked into a curly mop. She limped only slightly from her gunshot wound. Beside her, Officer Crowley tried to ease Cameron’s way through the crowd, his big bony hands and the thrust of his muscled shoulders slow and deliberate. His loose denim jacket might hide any sort of weapon, and very likely his camera. The two officers wandered among the crowd, brandishing big paper cups, half dancing to the jazz beat; they paused near two of the selected shops. Above them Joe Grey paced the roof.

He was edgy for the action to begin-and for Dulcie to catch up with him. He missed Kit, too, even though she would be sure to complicate matters. Lucinda was trying to keep her in, said she wanted Kit tucked up safe tonight. Who knew how long that would last? Though in truth, the little cat had seemed worn out, hardly objecting to Lucinda’s bullying-grieving over the departure of her clowder. He was thinking hard of the kit, hoping she was all right, when something nudged his shoulder and a dark shape emerged from the shadows, her eyes wide.

“What are you doing, Joe? No one told me! Where’s Dulcie? It’s happening! Why didn’t you tell me! It’s coming down,” she whispered boldly. “The st�”

Hushing her, Joe shouldered her away from the roof’s edge. “Don’t even say the word. Come on.” He led her into a crevice between two peaks where they could talk. It took him some time to fill her in, twice that to appease her.

“But why didn’t you tell me? I could help, I can�”

“That’s just it. There’s nothing more to do.You’vealready done more than your share. Without your information, Kit, this would never have happened. If it wasn’t for you, the cops wouldn’t have a clue! You’re already a hero.”

“But�”

“We thought you’d like to rest.”

She looked at him as if he was crazy; she wasn’t buying this. He licked her ear, explaining how worried they’d been about her, how glad that she was safe, that she’d escaped Stone Eye. It took a long time of coddling before she smiled again and made up, and followed him silently across the roofs. They were approaching another of the targeted jewelry stores when they spotted Officer Brennan wandering through the crowd, eating an ice-cream cone.

How different a man could look with a simple change of clothes. Instead of his dark uniform, Brennan wore a flowered shirt and a slouch hat. He looked thinner in the bright, loose shirt, but more florid. Half a block behind Brennan, rookie Jimmie McFarland wandered and gawked; he was dressed in a bright plaid sport coat and carrying a clarinet case, a big grin on his face. The two officers paused half a block apart, Brennan looking in the window of a golf shop, McFarland idly striking up a conversation with a pretty young tourist.

All over the village Harper’s men were in place among the crush of civilians and with strict instructions not to fire their weapons, to use only a taser if such force was absolutely needed. That had to be stressful. And surely they’d got the word that three of their group had been spotted.

As the two cats crouched on the veranda of a penthouse above a leather shop, they saw tall, beanpole Officer Blake come around the corner, carrying a trombone case and a clarinet case. He’d have camera stuff in the trombone case; but Blake did play a mean clarinet. Joe watched three women in short skirts with amazement. Officer Davis was hardly recognizable out of her dark, severe uniform. In a miniskirt over those pale, stocky legs, Davis was not an appealing sight. All three women wore boots that could hide a weapon. He glanced at Kit. “What are you grinning about. You’re not laughing at Davis.”

She shook her head. “I wouldn’t. It just seems so strange. Disguised cops, disguised crooks, and civilians mingling all together in the bars and restaurants. Like a story�”

“Luis won’t think it’s a story,” Joe said darkly. They heard, in the distance, a Count Basie number echoing out from the Molena Point little theater where there was a Basie concert, his music copied by a new generation of jazzmen. It was perhaps six-thirty when, quietly among the crowds, the crooks began to move.

Slayter lay uncomfortably on a stretcher, staring up at Garza as the detective read him his rights. Captain Harper and Chichi Barbi stood near the door. From across the hall, Dulcie watched, drawing back behind the ice machine only as Garza finished and the two paramedics carried the stretcher out, accompanied by two armed officers. Harper and Chichi stepped out behind them and stood in the hall, talking. Behind them in the room, Garza was collecting evidence. Dulcie still hadn’t figured it all out, except that Chichi didn’t seem to be under suspicion for anything. That, while she was passing her snoop lists to Luis, Chichi had given copies to Harper.

Dulcie had watched Garza drop Slayter’s cell phone into an evidence bag, and then Slayter’s gun. She had watched the two officers search the hole in the corner, removing the plywood, shining their flashlights down into it and feeling back underneath the wiring, then dusting the plywood and wiring for prints. As happened so many times, she could only pray there were no paw prints or cat hairs.

Dallas had already printed the room before Chichi entered, and had bagged Slayter’s clothing and personal items. He had photographed the scratch wounds on Slayter’s face and back, and that was stressful for Dulcie. What did he think? What did he wonder? Now, in the hall, he asked Chichi, “You said you know nothing about how he fell? And about how he got those scratches?”

Chichi shook her head. “I didn’t see it, I was in the village with Luis. He was talking with Slayter, on his cell. Slayter was describing one of your men. He� then he screamed, then a bang as if he’d dropped the phone, and Luis couldn’t rouse him. The line was dead, Luis dialed him back and got the message recording. That’s when he sent me to see what happened. Howdidhe fall?”

“You heard him.” Harper shook his head. “Says he was pushed from behind, that he didn’t see anything. That someone hit him hard between the shoulders and when he fell, they hit him again-some kind of weapon with sharp prongs.” The captain frowned. “Crazy. Said it felt like he was raked with metal spikes, like an old-style golf shoe-he glimpsed something dark, the size of a golf shoe.”

“Attacked with a golf shoe?” Chichi giggled.

Harper gave her a lopsided grin. “Weird kind of weapon. Why would someone� Well, maybe it was handy� You hit a guy with one of those old, metal-spiked golf shoes you could do that kind of damage.”

“I’m glad it’s over,” she said, smiling up at him. “Or nearly so. If that turns out to be the gun that killed Frank, I’ll be forever indebted to you, Captain.”

“Thank you for your help, Chichi. We should know about the gun tomorrow, if the DA has Frank Cozzino’s records in order.”

“I hope he does. It’s been a hard time.” She started to turn away. “I’ll call you in the morning then?”

Harper took her hand. “Call me, or Garza or Davis. We’ll see what we get.”

As Chichi headed down the hall and Harper returned to Slayter’s room, behind the ice machine Dulcie sat putting the pieces together.

If Frank Cozzino ran with Luis’s gang, but somewhere along the line he began feeding information to LAPD, then Luis might well want him dead. Slayter was part of the gang-Luis could have assigned Slayter to do the deed. Slayter had told Ryan he’d come up here to find out who killed Cozzino; but maybe Slayter had done it.

So who, Dulcie thought, killed Dufio? And why? She watched Dallas seal the door to 307 with evidence tape, watched the detective and captain head for the elevator. Then she fled up the stairs and through the heavy door, leaving it ajar, and away across the rooftops to find Joe. She longed to see Luis and his men arrested, see every last one of them jailed.

She spotted Joe and Kit on the roof of Molena Point Inn-you might know Kit would have slipped out and found him. The two cats, crouched at the edge of the shingles, peered over into the inn’s secluded patio; when Dulcie pushed in between them, she saw that the crowds hadn’t yet discovered the small hidden garden. Only one tourist couple was there, strolling hand in hand, smiling as if glad to have found some privacy: a plainly dressed, thirtyish man and woman with simple, neat haircuts, out-of-style starched shirts that branded them as being from a small midwestern town, and loving expressions.

The patio was enclosed on one side by the hotel, on the other three by rows of exclusive shops. There were no alleys between the shops. The couple seemed to have no interest in the fine china and silver and designer gowns, seemed aware only of each other. They sat down close together on a bench facing Emerson’s Jewelry, their backs to the small pepper tree and lush flowers. The woman, fishing around in her large handbag, handed her partner a small, high-powered gas torch.

Moving quickly into a narrow walkway between the hotel and the jewelry store, he lit the torch and turned to face the wall where a locked, foot-square metal door closed off the electric meter. Burning quickly through the padlock, he opened the little door and turned off the power for that building.

With nothing to activate the security alarm, he stepped around into the patio again and used the torch to destroy the deadbolt lock on the jewelry store’s glass door. Silently swinging the door open, he and his lady friend entered. Within two minutes they had breached seven jewelry cases, dropping the contents-diamonds, emeralds, heavy gold and pearl chokers-into her handbag and into his pockets. Leaving the shop, they closed the door quietly behind them.

Strolling away, they joined a crowd gathered around the Blue Gull Cafe, where they stood listening to a jazz trio that owed its style and funky beat to the legacy of Louis Armstrong. The trumpet player didn’t sound as good as Satchmo. No one could. But he had a nice rift and a sure beat, and the crowd was rocking. The couple moved with the beat, then strolled on up the sidewalk, keeping time to Back ‘O Town Blues.

Half a block behind them a pair of young men followed: muscular, skinny guys with sun-bleached hair, dressed in faded jeans and worn sweatshirts.

“Nice,” Dulcie said. “They look like surfers.”

“Let’s make sure,” Joe said, moving on quickly until he could look back and get a glimpse of the officers’ faces; turning back, he grinned at Dulcie and narrowed his eyes with satisfaction. He’d seen the two men earlier, entering the station with Dallas Garza. Confident that in a few minutes, and when their quarry had moved away from the crowds, the officers would quietly make their arrests, the cats trotted on across the roofs where they could see the Oak Tree Cafe. Crouched between the two older cats, Kit was unusually quiet. Dulcie glanced at her several times. Was she mad because they hadn’t told her the sting would be tonight? Or was she missing her feral friends? Was she wondering if she should have stayed with them, wild and free with no one to keep secrets from her and to boss her?

The Oak Tree, crowded with jazz buffs, vibrated with a throaty sax and bass and piano where a small stage had been set up inside. Next to the cafe was a small independent bookstore, then a shop featuring handmade children’s clothes, then Karen Jenkins’ Jewelry. All three were closed. From the rooftop the cats watched an elderly, gray-haired couple pause to look in the jewelry store window. They watched the portly man quickly diffuse the store’s burglar alarm with a small electronic device the size of a pack of cigarettes.

“Whatisthat?” Dulcie said.

“I don’t know, but I mean to find out,” Joe said irritably. He didn’t like not knowing about such a useful invention.

“But they’re elderly,” Dulcie said. “They look like someone’s grandparents.”

“Maybe they are someone’s grandparents.” Joe gave her a wide-eyed look. “Does that make them law-abiding and honest?”

Dulcie preferred to think of criminals as young and rough, crude humans without any hint of gentleness. “And where are the cops? I thought they were all to have tails, I thought� Have they missed this one?”

Joe studied the crowd until he spotted a frail-looking young woman, slim as a model in her flowered skirt, boots, and suede jacket. “There. Eleanor Sand.” Sand was Harper’s newest rookie. Her companion was a clean-cut young man in jeans, with short hair and brown turtleneck sweater, on loan from up the coast. Standing in front of the cafe, glued to the music, they seemed unaware of the elderly burglars just three doors down. Fascinated, the cats watched Gramps and Granny within the dark store move directly to the inside meter box, where they threw the breaker, perhaps so that other alarms, within the store, wouldn’t be triggered.

“These old stores!” Joe said. “These old simple alarm systems.”

“You think the owners deliberately made it simple tonight? Deactivated some more sophisticated warning device? The whole idea is to let the perps get in and out again.”

The tomcat smiled. “Maybe.” He watched the old couple, working together, jimmy and empty nine glass showcases. “Those two might be grandparents, but they’re skilled at their trade.”

Leaving the store, the gray-haired couple wandered away into the crowd apparently confident they hadn’t been noticed. A half block behind them, Eleanor Sand and her companion wandered aimlessly in the same direction. All around the village, similar breakins were occurring in small, unnoticed corners, and similar teams of officers followed their progress, then made their arrests in other isolated retreats. The cats missed the action at Marineau’s Jewelry.

So did the Greenlaws, though Lucinda and Pedric were sitting on their terrace enjoying the tangled melange of music and watching the crowds below. Neither noticed a darkly dressed Latino man slip down the alley next to Marineau’s, open the shop’s metal-sheathed side door with a key, and slip inside. No smallest light shone. Nothing could be seen through the boarded-up windows. The Greenlaws did not see him leave, five minutes later, the pockets of his trench coat bulging with items taken from the safe for which he also had keys. Neither Lucinda nor Pedric was aware that, while the jazz group down the street at Bailey’s Fish House played the gutteral, funky music of the old Preservation Hall group, Marineau’s was being cleaned out a second time, with keys whose patterns had been taken the first time around. And meanwhile, four blocks away, the cats were intent on redheaded Tommie McCord and his Latino partner, as they strolled away from the last jewelry store on the list, walking along laughing and swilling cans of beer.

Neither man realized that Officers Brennan, who had already made one arrest, and Julie Wade, dressed as a frowzy pair of tourists, followed half a block behind, pawing each other and peering into shop windows, Brennan’s big belly and firearm covered by his loose shirt printed with palm trees. Wade was on loan from Santa Cruz PD. She wore a long, smock-like blouse and long, full skirt; very likely the officers’ garments concealed not only regulation automatics but radios, cell phones, handcuffs, and belly chains.

As Tommie McCord and his friend turned away into a dark residential street, leaving the scene, and headed up toward the crowded hillside cottages, the cats followed them over the rooftops. The cats watched as they were arrested. No shot was fired. Tommie tried to run, and got pepper spray in his face, which made him double up, choking. His friend got a dose of the taser that put him on the sidewalk, for trying to take down Officer Wade. Cuffed and helped into a squad car, they would be, as Kit said, “Locked in a cage themselves. Let’s see how they like that.” This kit was not big on forgiveness.

39 [��������: pic_40.jpg]

The cells of Molena Point jail were indeed satisfyingly overcrowded. Men were stacked in the bunks and sleeping on pads on the concrete floor. The department’s evidence room was equally full, its safe filled with sufficient small, sealed bags of jewelry and valuables to convict an army of thieves. The detectives’ reports had gone to the DA. All arrestees had been denied bail. It would be some weeks after the Greenlaws moved into their new house before the town would be treated to the full details of the sting-or to that part of the story that could be told, and that those in the department knew. Some facts would remain unrevealed even to the chief-forever, the three cats hoped.

The Greenlaws’ housewarming was impromptu but satisfying in its camaraderie and good cheer. The hodgepodge of treasures with which the old couple had furnished their new home formed an amazing collection, gleaned from used-furniture stores, garage sales, and the most exclusive shops. On a three-day shopping trip to the city with Hanni Coon, to the exclusive designer showrooms, they had purchased the last pieces; except for the bright primitive rugs, which had come from Hanni’s own showroom. Among their purchases was a large box marked “Kit,” destined for the tree house.

The night after the last deliveries were made and in place, George Jolly’s team arrived bearing trays of delicious selections; the Greenlaws’ front door was propped open, the department brought the wine and beer, and cops and civilians crowded the bright rooms. While out in the tree house, Dulcie and Joe and Kit reclined among a tangle of exotic new pillows.

Lori Reed and Dillon Thurwell had been eager to carry the pillows and the cats’ loaded plates up a ladder. The girls had wanted to have their own supper there, but Lucinda made it clear this was Kit’s exclusive property. Both girls had, however, begun dreaming of tree houses of their own, plotting how to accomplish that endeavor.

The cats, full of delicacies, sleepily watched the party from their cushions, through Kit’s open window, and listened to conversations and laughter too tangled together to make sense. Cop talk; woman talk; talk of children and clothes and cooking; cop jokes and excessive high spirits. The Rivas trial was scheduled for two days hence. The eighteen prisoners had decided on one group trial, perhaps because their sleazy L.A. attorney might charge them less-if they were paying him at all. Who knew what kind of favors Luis was calling in? Certainly the single trial would cost the county far less. Though Roman Slayter would stand trial alone for the murders of Frank Cozzino and Delfino Rivas. The evidence in both cases was solid. Ballistics showed that one of Slayter’s several guns had killed both men. Three other firearms were found in the trunk of his car, including a.22revolver. Chichi thought Slayter had killed Dufio because Dufio alone had seen Slayter kill Frank. Certainly Dufio had been near when Frank went down.

“And the gun that I found under Abuela’s dryer,” Dulcie said, “that didn’t kill anyone.”

Joe shrugged. “Not that they know of. But it was stolen. Who knows what might turn up later, in some other case.”

“There she is,” Dulcie said, peering out the tree house window. “Chichi. Just coming in.” The tabby cat stared, her green eyes wide. “How different she looks!”

Chichi stepped across the tile entry beside Detective Davis and Dallas Garza, just behind Ryan and Clyde. Since the department knew the whole story, since Chichi had furnished a preponderance of evidence, she was more than comfortable with the officers. She did not look hard now, not like the brittle Chichi Barbi the cats knew. She was dressed in a soft, pale, loose-fitting blouse belted over a gathered skirt, and sandals. Her pale hair was pulled back and caught at the neck with a simple clip. She wore little makeup, just a touch of lipstick.

“She’s really pretty,” Joe said, gawking. “Who would have thought?”

Dulcie and Kit smiled. All females like to see a successful makeover; unless of course they are jealous.

“She told Clyde she might stay here,” Joe said, “after the trial. Look for a real job and a small apartment. Says she likes the village.” He watched her with interest. “Since the sting, since they arrested Slayter, she hasn’t come on to Clyde at all.” He yawned, full of Jolly’s delicacies, and sinfully comfortable among the cushions; and for a little while, the gray tomcat dozed.

He woke when Dulcie nudged him. “Come on, people are leaving, we can clean up the plates.”

He stared at her. “You can’t be serious. After what we just had to eat?” But Dulcie spun away through the window, Kit followed her, and the three cats headed across the oak branch and in through the dining-room window. They paused on the wide sill. People were shrugging on coats, carrying away little paper plates filled with leftovers. Charlie beckoned to them and as she cleared the long table, she filled clean paper plates for them.

“I don’t know how you can eat so much.” She set their suppers down on the windowsill, and stroked and hugged them. “Such good work,” she whispered. Though they didn’t dare answer, they let their looks warm her. From the kitchen door, Wilma watched them, smiling.

At the dining table, Pedric was saying, “� the faux jewelry, every gleaming diamond and emerald as fake as Grandma’s teeth.” The thin old man laughed with pleasure.

“Yes, it was,” Harper said, sitting down across from Pedric, patting Charlie on the behind as she passed. “Even the key-locked safe at Marineau’s was a set-up. We got some nice fingerprints off of it, and off the fake jewelry-some of those guys weren’t a bit careful.” Harper’s long, weathered face looked happier tonight than the cats had seen in a long time. “Store owners polished the jewelry all up before it went in the cases, not a trace of their own prints.”

Wilma and Lucinda came in from the kitchen and sat down. Lori and Dillon heaped their plates for the third time, and retired to the far corner of the living room, beside the tall bookcases. At the table, Detective Davis, who had resisted earlier and had eaten little, now filled her plate. If Davis was dieting, she’d lost the battle, this night.

“And all your reports are in, to the DA,” Pedric said.

Harper nodded. “Two weeks ago. We’re pleased that Judge Anderson denied all bail. And with this sleazy attorney Luis brought up from L.A� They don’t have much of a case.”

Lucinda said, “And not a civilian hurt, by the grace of God and the skilled way the department handled it.”

“Mostly by the grace of God,” Harper said. “And the information Chichi and a couple of snitches provided.”

Davis said, “We didn’t have enough on Luis or Tommie to lock them up before the sting. They’d have been right out on bail� only circumstantial evidence to the first jewelry store burglary.”

“What you did,” Lucinda said, “was amazing.” She looked at Chichi, who had come out of the kitchen with Charlie. “What Chichi did was very brave.”

“Not brave at all,” Chichi said, sitting down. “I was so angry, and hurting. I never believed the cops killed Frank, they knew he was on their side. But no one� Who was going to believe me? Luis swore at the hearing that hesawa cop shoot Frank. He did that for Slayter, lied for Slayter.” She looked up at Lucinda, a hurt, naked look. “I did the only thing I could think of, hang in with Luis until I had the evidence. I hated that, hated being nice to them. I was hoping to find the gun.” She looked at Harper. “But that turned out fine, that you found it.

“In L.A., when Luis ran out of the bank right behind Frank that night, I didn’t see Slayter at all.” She had balled up her fist, gripping her wadded napkin. “Slayterwasthere, in the shadows. Dufio told me, a couple of days before he� Before Slayter shot him.” She shivered. “Shot him in that cell like an animal in a trap! Poor Dufio. He told me he’d seen Slayter in the shadows near the bank, but that’s all he said. If he’d told me all of it, and sooner, you’d been able to arrest Slayter, and Dufio would be alive.”

Wilma glanced across to Dulcie. No one had mentioned Slayter’s scratch wounds; but the subjecthad been discussed earlier, more than Wilma and the cats cared to think about� As had the remarkably similar wounds on Hernando Rivas’s body. Wilma had been in favor of the golf-shoe theory. No shoe had been found.

It seemed more than strange, to those who knew the truth, that in neither case had the coroner found any cat hairs. Surely there must have been a few. Wilma wouldn’t think of broaching that subject to John Bern, though they had been friends for many years. If Bern did not care to mention cat hairs, that was fine with her. If he knew more than he should and was keeping it to himself, that was fine, too. She wasn’t going to rock the boat.

Pedric looked at Chichi. “And there’s no doubt that Frank Cozzinowasfurnishing information to LAPD?” Leaning forward, his elbows on the table, the thin old man looked very frail between the harder, young officers and Clyde.

Chichi nodded. “He informed LAPD for a long time.” She said no more. She did not offer an explanation as to why Frank had turned to helping the police, what had made him change his thinking, any more than she explained why she had changed.

The cats, cleaning their plates, were again so sated they could hardly keep their eyes open. Any normal cat would have been sick. Joe sat nodding on the windowsill until Clyde gathered him up, and Wilma picked up Dulcie. Kit had only to trot into the master bedroom and tuck down among the quilts-or leap out across the oak branch to slumber the night away high in her tree house.

But Kit thought it best to stay inside at night, for a while, best that the old couple would not awaken in the small hours to search among the blankets for her, then wonder if she had gone off with the wild ones again, perhaps this time forever.

I’m done with that, Kit thought.Thisis my home, with Lucinda and Pedric. Willow and Cotton and Coyote have chosen their way, they didn’t want what I want. She hoped they were safe, that they’d found a place of their own far away from Stone Eye.

She thought about her three wild friends the next morning when she woke before dawn to hear the first birds chirping, and when she went to sleep the next night and heard an owl hoot outside the window. She worried about them, as Lucinda and Pedric worried about her. And then, on the night of the next full moon, she dreamed so vividly about the ferals that the following morning, when she wentwithLucinda to see the finished pictures for Charlie’s book, she asked Charlie. The minute she and Lucinda were in the door, Kit asked her.

“Will you take me there? On horseback, up in the hills? I don’t want to go alone. Stone Eye� I want�”

But Charlie interrupted her. “I’ve seen them, Kit. Not up on Hellhag Hill at all, and not off beyond it. Right up there,” she said, pointing up toward the hills that rose away behind the house and barn. “Up beyond our own pastures, where that little brook comes down. I saw them there. Ten cats, and I’m sure your three friends were among them. A dark-striped fellow with long ears, creamy circles around his eyes and a face like a coyote? A pure-white cat with long hair and blue eyes? And a lovely bleached calico, sleek and creamy?”

Kit nodded to all three descriptions; and Charlie rose, reaching for her jacket. “Come on, Kit. I’ll take you, while Lucinda makes herself a nice cup of tea.”

Lucinda nodded. “I can look at the drawings again? And read a bit of the manuscript over again?”

“Of course you can.” Charlie hugged Lucinda and went to saddle her mare.

Folding a saddle blanket across the pommel of the saddle and strapping it securely, she made a comfortable perch where Kit could ride. And they were off into the hills, the mare twitching her ear as she looked around at the kit. Charlie said, “Your friends could have a home with Estrella Nava-with Maria’s abuela. She might welcome a little cat, maybe all three.”

“They would never go back to that house, even if Abuela did try to help them.”

“Luis should be gone a long time,” Charlie said. “Maria is going to stay there with Abuela. She’s determined he won’t come back there. She means to clean up the house and paint it, and get a job in the village. Maybe rent out the downstairs, for some income.” They rode for a long time, but saw no cats. Softly, Kit called to them. They rode up in the direction of the old ruined mansion, searching for the small clowder that the three must have gathered around them. Kit called and called, but no one showed themselves. It was growing late when they turned back, the kit bitterly disappointed. And suddenly there they were, crouched on the trail before them. Charlie pulled up the mare, and sat still.

Maybe they had been following them all along, maybe afraid of Charlie. Maybe taking some time to decide about her. Perhaps they decided that if she was treating Kit so well, then she, like the man who had cut the lock off, must be a friend. As the ten cats stood watching them Kit leaped from the saddle.

Three cats came to her; and slowly, one by one, the rest of their little clowder gathered around Kit. She said, “Stone Eye hasn’t bothered you?”

“You know that old mansion to the north of here?” Coyote said. “That huge stone place, all fallen down?”

“The Pamillon mansion,” Kit said.

Coyote smiled. “Stone Eye is afraid to go there.”

“You made a homethere?Where the cougar� Where I saw a cougar once?”

“We smelled the cougar,” Cotton said. “An old smell. We made a home, for now. Those cellars are full of rats. Look how fat we’ve grown.”

Kit laughed. They were fat. She licked the cats’ ears, and they talked for a long while. Their conversation, about all manner of cattish concerns, so fascinated Charlie that she began thinking of a second book. Kit told them that Abuela would give them a home, but of course that did not appeal. “No,” Coyote said, looking away toward the wild hills, and toward the fallen mansion. “We would not do that. This is our life.”

Charlie said, “You will come to me, if you are in need?” They looked up at Charlie a long time. They did not seem afraid of the mare, but they were wary of the human. At last Willow said, “We will come.” And as the afternoon drifted toward the hour when larger predators would come out to hunt, Kit’s wild friends left her. With a last whisker rub for Kit, and a flick of ears and tail for Charlie, gestures that Charlie would not forget, the wild clowder was gone into the falling evening. And Charlie and Kit turned for home, both content, both smiling.

12. CAT PAY THE DEVIL

1

A t the edge of the sea, the small village, even among the shadows of its lush oaks and pines, seemed smothered by the unseasonal summer heat that had baked into every stairway and crevice and shop wall. The rising coastal temperatures, mixed with high humidity from the sullen Pacific, produced a sweltering steam bath that had lasted through all of July, and was not typical for the central California coast. The scent of hot pinesap was mixed sharply with the salty stink of iodine at low tide. And from the narrow streets, the scent of suntan oil rose unpleasantly to the three cats where they sprawled on a cottage rooftop, in the ineffectual shade of a stone chimney, indolently washing their paws-avoiding the crush of tourists� feet and the scorching sidewalks, which felt like a giant griddle; if a cat stood for a moment on the concrete, he�d come away with blistered paws-Joe Grey�s white pawsfelt blistered. The gray tomcat sprawled, limp, across the shingles, his white belly turned up to the nonexistent breeze as he tried to imagine cool sea winds.

Near Joe, the long-haired tortoiseshell lifted her head occasionally to lick one mottled black-and-brown paw. Kit had the longest coat of the three, so she was sure she suffered the most. Only dark tabby Dulcie was up and moving, irritably pacing. Joe watched her, convinced she was fretting for no reason.

But you couldn�t tell Dulcie anything; she�d worked herself into a state over her housemate and nothing he could say seemed to help.

Below them on the narrow streets, the din of strangers� voices reached them, and the shrill laughter of a group of children. Tourists wandered by the dozens, dressed in shorts and sandals, lapping up ice cream and slipping into small shops looking for a breath of cooler air; the restaurant patios were crowded with visitors enjoying iced drinks, their leashed dogs panting beneath the tables. Strangers stared in through the windows of shaded cottages that were tucked among bright gardens, into shadowed sitting rooms and bedrooms that looked cool and inviting. Lazily Joe rose to peer over at a pair of loud-voiced, sweating joggers heading for thebeach to run on the damp sand, as if they might catch up to an ocean breeze.

With a soft hush of paws, Dulcie came to stand beside him at the edge of the roof, silent and frowning, looking not at the busy streets below but up at the round hills that rose above the village-hills burnt dry now, humping against the sky as brown as grazing beasts.

They could see nothing moving there, no human hiking the dusty trails, no rider on horseback; the deer and small wild creatures would be asleep in the shade, if they could find any shade. Even among the ruins hidden among the highest slopes, the feral cats would be holed up in cool caverns beneath the fallen walls. For a long time Dulcie stood looking in that direction, her peach-tinted ears sharply forward, her head tilted in a puzzled frown.

�What?� Joe said, watching her.

�I don�t know.� She turned to look at him, her green eyes wide and perplexed. �I feel like�As if they�re thinking of us.� She blinked and lashed her tail. �As if Willow is thinking of us, as ifshe knows how I feel.� She narrowed her green eyes at him, but then she rubbed against his shoulder, brushing her whiskers against his. �I guess that makes no sense; maybe it�s the heat.�

Joe didn�t answer. He knew she was upset-and females were prone to fancies. Who knew what two females together, even at such a distance, could conjure between them? Maybe both Dulcie and the pale calico had that fey quality humans found so mysterious in the feline. Maybe their wild, feral friend, with her unusual talents of perception and speech that matched their own, maybe she did indeed sense that Dulcie was worried and fretting. Who knew what Willow was capable of?

But Dulcie was worrying over nothing, as far as Joe could see. Dulcie�s human housemate had gone off before, for the weekend, driving up the coast to the city, and Dulcie had never fretted as she did now.

Now, Dulcie thought she had reason, and Joe looked at her intently.�Prisoners have escaped from jail before, Dulcie. That, and the fact that Wilma is later than she promised, does not add up to disaster. You�re building a mountain out of pebbles.�

Dulcie turned, hissing at him.�Cage Jones better keep away from her. Wilma�s done with supervising him and too many bad-ass convicts like him, done with the kind of stress they dumped on her for twenty years. She doesn�t need any more ugly tangles and ugly people messing up her life.�

But despite what either Dulcie or Joe thought, tangles were building, complications that would indeed snare Dulcie�s housemate. The scenario had started two months earlier on the East Coast, when an old man entered the continental U.S. When Greeley Urzey stepped off that plane, he set in motion events that would weave themselves into Wilma Getz�s destiny as surely as a cat�s paw will snarl a skein of yarn.

The old man�s flight from Central America entered the States officially at Miami, where passengers would connect with other flights after lining up to go through customs inspection. Deplaning, Greeley smiled, sure of himself and cocky. He�d slip through customs clean as a whistle, as he always did, not anounce of contraband on him, this time, for the feds to find. Even if he�d had anything tucked away, he�d have waltzed right on through slick as a greased porker, always had, always would, he�d never yet got caught. And, he thought, smiling, there were better ways to bring what he wanted into the States.

He�d gotten most of it through over a period of years, tucked in among household furnishings in them big metal overseas containers. Them feds couldn�t search everything.

Well, that part was behind him now. Half of it already cashed out and stashed away, and in a few days he�d have the rest, allhe�d ever need. He didn�t live high like some of them fancy international types: high on the hog, and dangerous.

He fidgeted and shuffled through the long, tedious customs line with its pushy feds and too many nosy damn questions, but after that hassle he still had a good share of the four-hour layover to do as he pleased; enough time for the one important phone call, make sure his contact was in place. Then a couple of drinks and a decent meal instead of them cold airline snacks you had to pay for. Sure as hell not like the old days on Pan Am, free champagne if he flew first class, a nice filet and fancy potatoes all included in the price of your flight, good Colombian coffee and a rich dessert. Now it was pay, pay, pay, and lucky to get a dry sandwich. Even customs, in the old days, didn�t make all this fuss. Boarding was the same way-all this new high-powered routine they said would stop terrorists. So high tech that for a while there they were stopping babies in arms from boarding, refusing to let toddlers in diapers on the plane if they didn�t have all the right ID. Sure ashell the world had seen better days.

He�d boarded in Panama City at seven A.M. and now, approaching the Bay Area and nearly suppertime, his whiskers itched and his rough gray hair tickled under his collar. The flight from Central America seemed longer every time he took it, though he didn�t return to the States often. He�d gone towork for the Panama Canal Company when he was twenty, and then later for the Panamanian government, a forty-year hitch all together. Now, at last, with a little fast footwork, he was getting together the kind of retirement money that would let him laugh at the rest of the world.

Well, he sure as hell wasn�t retiring stateside. A visit to California every few years was plenty. Better living in the tropics, better weather, better people. Hell of a lot more opportunities. Too bad a man had to come up to the States to sell his take-if he wanted to sell it safe, not get a knife in his ribs.

They�d taken off from Miami in early afternoon, the sun over the left wing blazing in his eyes as they banked to head west. Full of a good meal in an airport caf?, he�d leaned back in his seat, in a better mood, going over his moves. Planned to pick up a rental at San Francisco Airport, better known as SFO. Get the montly rate, and he could use a car that long. Check into some airport motel, hit the road early tomorrow morning-first, the short drive down the coast to Molena Point. Couple of hours, get in and out of the village nice and easy, not run into his sister. He sure didn�t want to see Mavity now, she asked too many questions. She always had been too damned judgmental. Then head south for L.A., on 101. Long trip down and back, but that couldn�t be helped if he wanted cash in his jeans-wanted cash in the bank, in big numbers. He didn�t look forward to those megalane city freeways in southern California, he was too used to the slow, crowded streets of Panama and the narrow jungle roads.

When he�d gotten back to San Francisco and took care of business, he�d make one more quick trip to Molena Point without Mavity�s knowing. Later on, though, he planned to spend some time in the village, and camp out at his sister�s.

He�d waited a long time to make this sale and he wished the price was higher now. But the time was right, and his contact to the fence was available now-or would be when he got to L.A. Strange, Cage Jones in and out of prison all those years and leaving his half of the stash hidden like he did.

Well, Greeley thought, he had salted his own share away, too, while he was out of the country. But in a safer place. Sometimes, you had to trust a bank.

But Cage never did. Well, everyone to his own. Question was, where had Cage hidden it?

Greeley smiled. He�d find out; might take some time, but he had time.

Right now, the hard part was done. They�d both got their share into the country. Now, once he picked up Cage from prison, selling his own share would be a piece of cake.

Somewhere along the way he�d buy a car, maybe one of them old-fashioned-looking PT Cruisers; that old thirties era look suited his sense of humor. He wasn�t never no high roller to be buying some fancy convertible, he wasn�t out to impress no one, and he liked doing things his own way.

Looking ahead, he could see the lights of the Bay Area now blazing out of the dark. Hell of a lot more lights spread out than you saw over Panama City. Propping his feet on his wrinkled leather duffle, Greeley settled into the feel of the big 757 cutting speed and dropping altitude. Soon felt the little bump as she let down her landing gear. Pilot�s tinny voice over the loudspeaker said the city was sixty-five degrees and foggy, and that made him shiver. He wished this coast had warmer summers; here it was May and he doubted it would get much warmer except maybe a few scattered days in July. Pulling his coat around him, he settled deeper into his seat as the plane hauled back and touched down; deafened by the roar of the plane on the runway, then waiting to deplane, he went over his schedule again to make sure he hadn�t missed anything.

The minute the door opened, everyone stood up and crowded into the aisle. Greeley stood, too, but didn�t move out, picked up his leather duffle and set it on the seat beside him, watched them crowd out like a flock of brainless chickens.

The next days went smooth as glass; he�d missed nothing in his planning. When it was over and he had the cash, he headed down the coast in the rental car, for Molena Point; but again he didn�t call his sister. He closed out his now empty safe-deposit box, and in three other village banks he opened modest checking accounts and new SD boxes, each in a new and different name for which he had obtained new IDs in the city. He filled the boxes with sealed envelopes containing bound packages of hundreds. Then he took himself back to the city for a little vacation. Nice but modest hotel room where he watched stateside TV, read the papers, enjoyed room service. Didn�t do no shopping, fancy clothes meant nothing. He�d buy a car later, in Molena Point, after he�d made his presence known to Mavity.

She wouldn�t be happy to see him. She lived with three other women now. Strange thing to do, putting her bit of money from the condemnation sale of her marsh-side house into a fourth share of a house big enough for the four old women. The chicken feed she called her savings. Said she wanted to keep her independence, not go into a home. Well, he could understand that-but likely she�d gotten scammed somehow in that house deal and just didn�t know it yet.

It was nearly a month later, in mid-July, that Greeley was ready to return to Molena Point and move in with his sister. He booked the short flight from SFO on a one-way ticket. He didn�t call Mavity; she�d figure out some reason he couldn�t stay there with her. He�d take a cab from the airport, give her a nice surprise.

At least the weather had turned hot; even on the coast it was up in the high nineties, hot as hell itself, just the way he liked it. On the short flight, and again as he swung into the cab outside the little peninsula airport, he thought about them two village cats. Them talking cats-he�d had his share of those snitches. Hoped they kept their distance, this time.

He sure didn�t want them hanging around him, nosing into his business. Them cats saw too much. They got into too many places, always snooping, damn near as nosy as his sister. And talk about judgmental. Them Molena Point cats�Not judgmental like the black tom who used to run with him, who�d used to breakinto stores with him. Azrael�d been opinionated, all right, and he sure as hell said his piece. But that black tom, he wasn�t never hot for law and order.

That Joe Grey and his tabby friend, those two thought they were God�s gift to law enforcement.

Somewhere he�d heard, maybe from his ex-wife, there was a third cat hanging around with them. Another snoop, you could bet. Well, he didn�t want no truck with cats, no more than he did with cops. Just wanted to be left to his own affairs, thank you.

2

N ow, as Joe Grey and Dulcie stood on the scorching rooftops looking up toward the old ruins, Dulcie frowning and wondering, up there among the fallen stone walls, they could see no creature. If they�d been nearer, an occasional small shadow might have been glimpsed flitting through the tall dry grass and brown weeds. But among the ancient oaks, no deer grazed; the deer had left in search of water. Only the wild little cats slipping stealthily among the rubble, only they knew where to find water, deep in hidden cellars and chambers beneath the fallen walls of the crumbling old estate: ten sentient cats prowling through the ruined mansion, wandering through its moldering interiors that now stood open, like ancient stage sets, the faded wallpaper curling down in long, dirty strips.

Atop a ragged wall, Willow paused in her nervous pacing, her bleached-calico coat blending into the colors of the fallen stone; thinking of Dulcie, she stared down across the dry hills, to the far village.�Something�s wrong,� she told her two companions. �Dulcie�s troubled, she is afraid and troubled.�

�Even if she was,� said the long-eared tom skeptically, �what could we do? We could do nothing.�

But the white tom said not a word; he hated the village, he had still not recovered from their entrapment there and their panicked escape.

The other seven of their small wild band had already vanished at Willow�s mention of trouble, fleeing among the basement caverns; and soon Cotton and Coyote slipped away, too, leaving Willow alone, shivering and wondering.

And down in the village, Dulcie turned away from pacing the hot shingles, restlessly counting the hours until Wilma would be home. Her housemate had been gone only three days, but to Dulcie it could as well have been three months. She�d never felt like this before at Wilma�s absences. She thought of going home again, thought maybe Wilma would be there now. Or she could stay home and wait for her in the relative coolness of their stone cottage-but she�d been home just an hour before; the bright rooms were too empty, their cozy cottage echoed with loneliness; she had left again quickly, her skin rippling at the desolation of the empty house and the fear that gnawed at her.

Her increasing panic was wearing her into a near frenzy; she was so wired that Joe, who had lain down again, collapsing in the one small patch of shade on the hot roof, raised his sleek, silver-gray head to stare irritably at Dulcie, the white strip down his nose narrowed in a frown, his slitted yellow eyes flashing his annoyance.

�Will you calm down? What do you expect? The woman�s shopping. Give her a little slack.�

�But she might not know that Cage Jones escaped from jail this morning!� Dulcie stared at Joe, her tail lashing. �She might be wandering innocently around the shops, without a clue. Don�t you care?�

�She�s a trained federal officer, Dulcie. Even if she is retired. You don�t give her much credit. She�s armed, and she isn�t going to let some sleazy escaped con slip up on her.�

�But Joneshates her. He has to hate her now, after she testified to send him back to prison. Don�t you think he�s in a rage!That�s why he broke out, Joe! To get at Wilma!�

�You can�t know that!�

But Dulcie looked away, toward the clock in the courthouse tower; it seemed ages ago that it had struck five thirty.�She promised to be home by early afternoon, and now it�s nearly suppertime!�

�The clock struck five thirty ten minutes ago. In my book, that�s late afternoon. A woman shopping should punch a time clock? Whenwe�re hunting rabbits, do you come home right at suppertime? How many nights has Wilma paced the cottage worrying aboutyou?�

The kit had awakened and was listening, licking her long, mottled fur. She gave Dulcie a round-eyed gaze.�You know what shopping�s like.We dream of shopping, of being human shoppers�The silks, the cashmeres�And she�s not only buying clothes for herself, she�ll buy presents for us, and for Charlie. Wilma always buys presents.� Charlie was Wilma�s only niece, the only family Wilma had, besides Dulcie-but Wilma wasDulcie�s only family! And now, when Joe and Kit refused to understand, Dulcie turned her back on them, lay down, and closed her eyes.

Ever since Dulcie had discovered she could speak and could understand human language, she and Wilma had shared all confidences. Almost all, Dulcie thought. Some things, like teasing coyotes or leaping long distances from tree to tree, would unnecessarily worry a human. They shared most of their meals and certainly they shared the special treats from Jolly�s Deli that Wilma liked to bring home. They shared the blue afghan on the velvet couch, and they shared the big double bed in Wilma�s bright bedroom, where they curled up to read, both from the same page, while a cozy fire blazed in the small red woodstove in the corner of the bedroom. Or Wilma would read to her; that was how Dulcie had learned to read, by following the pages as Wilma said the words. She�d had no idea, when she was a kitten, that those strange papers Wilma stared at for hours could offer up such wonderful worlds for a cat to explore. Dulcie�s discovery of her latent talents, of her ability to master the human language, had opened gigantic worlds for her-just as that discovery had revealed amazing new worlds to Joe Grey; together the two cats had stepped into realms of history and myth and human endeavor far beyond their own feline world.

The kit, on the other hand, had always known she could speak, from as far back as she could remember, from the time when she was an orphaned kitten tagging, unwanted, behind a band of feral cats; though those wildly roaming cats had seldom spoken to her, keeping their conversations among themselves. Except when they said cruelly,�We don�t need that straggly weanling. No one wants a tortoiseshell around. Chase it away, there�s hardly enough garbage for the rest of us.�

Dulcie tried to think about the tortoiseshell�s precarious kittenhood, to think about anything besides Wilma, but she couldn�t.Wilma will be home in an hour, she told herself.Wilma can take care of herself,she istrained and she isarmed and she isclever.

But maybe she should just go home once more. Each time she�d raced home, she�d tried to reach Wilma, leaping to Wilma�s desk, punching the speaker button and then the one-digit number for Wilma�s cell phone. Five times, the voice mail came on. Five times, she�d left the same message. �Cage Jones has escaped from jail! Have you turned on the news or seen the paper? He escaped this morning, about the time you left the city. Please, please watch out for him! Please, come home! Now! Please, please be careful!� Wasn�t Wilma checking her phone?

And why wasn�t she?

If she�d gotten Dulcie�s frantic messages, she would have replied.

If she could reply. And terror gripped Dulcie. No one had any idea what Jones would do. The ex-con would be wild with fury not only at Wilma but at her partner, too. Both Mandell Bennett and Wilma had testified before a federal judge to send Jones back, and Dulcie knew enough about that kind of offender, from Wilma herself, to know that Jones would be hot for revenge. She had left three messages on Bennett�s tape, too; though his office was in the city and he surely would have heard that Jones had walked out of jail using a false ID. Probably laughing to himself, the bastard.

This would be the second time Wilma and Bennett had helped send Jones up; the first time was ten years ago, just before Wilma had retired as a U.S. Probation Officer. This time, he had come out of federal prison in early June on conditional release. He�d stayed clean for all of a month, then been arrested the first week of July for transporting a stolen car across the state line. The judge, after looking over Jones�s files, had, in an unusual move, requested the testimony not only of Mandell, who was his present probation officer, but of Wilma, who had supervised Jones before her retirement.

Dulcie had seen Jones�s picture, and she knew from Wilma that the beefy, big-boned convict found the idea of rehabilitation a huge joke. Jones pretended to reform, lied and made a big show, then went his own way, following his own lawless agenda, forcing Mandell Bennett to send him back before the judge.

Bennett had been a green young officer when Wilma first met him; his first assignment was as her partner. Now he covered Molena Point out of the San Francisco office, and when he made a trip to the village, they often had lunch together. Wilma had driven up to the city four days ago, meeting Mandell there, in court, to testify at Jones�s revocation hearing. The hearing had lasted two days; Friday afternoon, after the sentencing, Jones had threatened both Wilma and Bennett, and had been forcibly hauled out of the courtroom and locked in the San Francisco city jail to await transport back to the federal prison at Terminal Island.

Wilma had stayed in the city Saturday, seeing friends. Her plan was to leave for home early this Sunday morning, in time for several hours of shopping at the discount mall in Gilroy-and this morning Jones had walked, mistakenly released when he presented the officer on duty with borrowed identification. Had walked out free, and dangerous.

Pacing the hot shingles, lashing her tail, Dulcie created such turmoil that Joe hissed and growled at her.�Will you stop! She�s all right! She�ll be home before dark. Between the heat and your fussing, you�ll work yourself into a frothing cat fit.�

�But she keeps her gun locked in the glove compartment, she won�t take it in the stores while she�s shopping, and a lot of good that will do her!� Dulcie lashed her tail harder. �Jones is as volatile as a pit bull jabbed with hot pokers. Armed robbery. Seven assaults on guards while he was in prison. Solitary confinement half the time, for fights with other inmates. And in this heat�� The tabby sighed. �You know how a heat wave affects the unstable ones. Three weeks of scorching weather, every nut in the world is on the prod! The papers are full of it-petty thefts turning violent, family arguments escalating into rage and battery. Add all this heat to Jones�s anger, you don�t know what will happen!�

Joe looked at her, and stretched in the sun�s baking heat, and he licked a white paw. But then he rose and nuzzled her ear and said he was sorry-and he had to admit that in hot weather there was always a jump in the crime rate. Ask any cop, Joe saw the reports and arrest sheets on Chief Harper�s desk. Or ask the highway patrol-CHP couldtell you about the increase in road rage. And all up and down the coast, the unseasonable heat had escalated silly pranks into acts of hate, prodded simmering resentments into mayhem, exploded friendly arguments and familial conflicts into violence. And now, just two nights ago, a brutal murder in the village.

Both of Chief Max Harper�s detectives and the chief himself were working long hours overtime, as were their street patrols, who yearned for additional men and women on the force. The three cats, intent on their own input into police matters, with their own unique ways of discovering evidence, wished they could lead double lives. Or, given that cats have nine lives anyway, they could use several of those lives now, all at once. This late-afternoon�s nap on the roof was the first time Joe had been still in days, the first time he had not been lying on the dispatcher�s desk listening to radio communications or snooping into apartments or homes where the police did not yet have sufficient evidence to enter. He was idle now, waiting for additional information on the breakin murder to come into the station, just as the detectives were waiting. The village woman, whom everyone knew and liked, had been shot andkilled in her bed at three in the morning. She had been alone, her husband on a business trip.

Perhaps she had awakened, surprised the burglar in her bedroom and maybe screamed or in some way alarmed him, and he�d fired at her in panic; the coroner�s report said she had not been molested. The event created unusual fear in the village; suddenly everyone was security conscious. Doors and windows were being kept locked at night despite the killing heat, and all five village locksmiths were working overtime to replace credit card locks and weak window closures that should have been tended to long ago.

After the police left the crime scene, the three cats had slipped into the house through a roof vent and down through the attic trapdoor; they had gone over the scene carefully, searching particularly for scents that the officers couldn�t detect. But they had found nothing suspicious, no smell that did not belong to a cop or to the householders, no tiny overlooked item that the police hadn�t listed and cataloged. Ordinarily Dulcie was as eager as Joe and the tortoiseshell kit to track a killer, but now she couldn�t even keep her mind on the appalling murder. Every fiber of her little cat body resounded with missing Wilma, sheknew that Wilma was in danger or was soon to be; now, nervously, she rose.�I�m going home again.�

Joe looked at her with strained patience. But then he gave her a whisker kiss and licked her ear.�Shall I come with you?�

�No. I just want to go home and see.� She was panting with the heat but shivering, too, all at odds with herself. �I�ll be right back. If-if she isn�t there.� And she turned away. But at once, Joe was beside her again.

�Don�t, Dulcie. Don�t be angry. I know you�re worried. I just�� The tomcat�s fierce yellow eyes looked naked for a moment. �I just don�t know what to do about it.� He looked deeply at her. �I could call Clyde, we could go to Gilroy to look for her. But we could miss her on thehighway. We could call the station, tell the chief she�s not home yet, but it�s-�

�Iknow it�s too soon,� Dulcie said. �And I know that every cop is looking for Jones-CHP, the county sheriffs.� California Highway Patrol always provided excellent backup. �Iknow there�s a warrant out for him. Maybe-maybe she�s pulling into the drive right this minute. Or�� She stared hopefully at Joe. �Or standing in the garden, calling me!� For a moment, she leaned into him. Then she took off across the rooftops, running flat out-and praying hard.

3

S he�s shopped all day! Dulcie thought, racing home across the roofs.All she ever buys are jeans and sweatshirts; Wilma doesn�t linger over satins and velvets the way I would-so it couldn�t take her this long! Dulcie loved soft, beautiful garments; when she was younger, she�d often stolen silken scarves or nighties, a cashmere sweater or a satin teddy from their good-natured neighbors, had dragged each item home to snuggle on-only to see Wilma return them with an embarrassed apology.

But such luxuries wouldn�t delay Wilma. Dulcie�s tall, silver-haired housemate would have left the city early; she liked to hit the road before work traffic grew heavy, would probably have left before breakfast, planning to stop for a bite on the way or to eat at a favorite restaurant in Gilroy. Now, though the long summer evening was still bright, it was nearly six-twelve hours, Dulcie thought.Oh,she�ll be home by now! Home when I get there! Oh,Wilma,please be sitting on the couch with your shoes off,your packages strewn all over. And she leaped from a tree to the next roof, dropped from the shingles onto a storefront sign, then down to a bench, and finally to the sidewalk, landing lightly between a bed of petunias and a metal news rack. Crouched to sprint across the street and up the block for home, she stopped, staring.

Even in the heat radiating from the sidewalk, suddenly she felt cold all over. She stood facing the news rack and the afternoon edition of theMolena Point Gazette in its metal holder, feeling as sick and weak as if she�d eaten poison.

ESCAPED CONVICT SHOOTS FEDERAL OFFICER

Dulcie couldn�t breathe, couldn�t move. Didn�t know what to do but stand shivering and staring.

But then common sense took over-if the victim was Wilma, she�d already know, the police would have been to the house, Joe�s housemate would know and would have found her and Joe even on the rooftops. It wasn�t Wilma, couldn�t be Wilma. But then when she scanned down the first column, again her heart pounded with hurt and rage.

The lead article might ordinarily have been of interest only to San Francisco readers, for the shooting had occurred in the city where the victim worked-but it was in theGazette because he was well known in Molena Point as well. Mandell Bennett was in intensive care in San Francisco General Hospital. He had been found early this afternoon by a coworker, in the underground parking garage of his San Francisco office, lying beside his car. The paper did not identify the shooter, and no suspect had been apprehended. Dulcie stood staring up at the newspaper, unable to move-until a giggle behind her made her spin around.

Two people were watching her, two fat, fleshy tourists in shorts staring down at her, cackling with amusement.�What�s that catdoing? Reading thepaper? What kind of animals do they keep here? Dogs in the restaurants, cats reading newspapers��

Leaping at the paper rack, Dulcie snatched at an imaginary moth, batted it around the back of the stand, and took off running and dodging as if chasing it-reading the paper in public was a blunder the little cat would never, ordinarily, have committed. Behind her, the tourists laughed louder; but then when she glanced back, they had lost interest, had turned to admire a dreadful painting in a gallery window-and Dulcie raced for home.

Wilma Getz had indeed left the city early, heading out around six A.M.; after two days in court, she was looking forward to a rare binge of shopping. Having gassed up her car the night before, she drove south on Highway 101, enjoying a cinnamon roll from the hotel�s continental breakfast bar, sipping coffee, and listening to a favorite Ella Fitzgerald tape that included �Lorelei� and �Too Darn Hot.� She seldom had the time or patience for a shopping spree, and didn�t pay much attention to clothes; she was happy in jeans and well-chosen sweatshirts. But her jeans were growing threadbare, her sweatshirts baggy and faded, and every few years the mood hit her for something new, even for a bit of elegance. As she drove, she left her phone off, and had not glanced at a paper or turned on the news. Once she�d fulfilled her courtroom responsibilities, the extended weekend was a welcome vacation. Her governmental duties behind her, she didn�t want to spoil her drive home with some local reporter�s warped version of the revocation hearing, or with the sour sensationalism of national or world news that could leave one filled only with questions. With her mind on a breakfast of a Mexican omelet in the small town of Gilroy, and then a grand and restorative few hours trying on and buying new clothes, she kept the music at a sensible level, the air conditioner turned to high, and enjoyed the smooth curves of the passing hills burnt dry by the hot sun, their winter emerald changed to summer brown. She planned to pick up a few early Christmas presents for her redheaded niece, too, to put away until the holidays, and of course she would find gifts for the three cats; Dulcie and Kit so dearly loved a new blanket, something soft and fresh. Joe Grey, just like a human male, was the hard one to shop for.

She�d had dinner last night with Mandell, a few hours to visit. He still covered Molena Point and the central coast, and she often saw him then, but dinner in the city had been special. Mandell was fun, and he made her laugh, though he was a no-nonsense officer. Bennett was from Georgia; he was halfCherokee and had retained in those sturdy genes not only a quick wit and a powerful instinct and skill for survival, but an easygoing humor that, no matter the circumstances, never seemed to fail him. Because of this and his inner strength, and the fact that he�d always been there for her, he wasmore like family than merely a friend. And though she�d tried, when he�d lost his wife six years ago to cancer, she had never felt that she�d been able to do anything significant to help ease his distress. No one could help much, that was a pain one must bear alone, a pain Mandell would carryto the end of his life.

During the hearing, Mandell had weathered Cage Jones�s sullen anger with the cool equanimity he always mustered, while she had inwardly fumed. Their quiet dinner afterward had lifted her spirits, had helped her to get centered again. Maybe she�d grown soft, in retirement. The likes of Cage Jones disgusted her far more now than when she�d dealtwith him and his caliber of criminal. Dulcie had asked her once why she had chosen probation and parole as a profession, and she hadn�t really had a good answer.

�Wanting to change the bad guys-until I learned that most of them wouldn�t change, had no desire to change. And then wanting to keep them off the street, keep them from hurting others.�

She�d looked at Dulcie�s wide green eyes. �Maybe a bit of a predatory streak in me? A bit confrontational? A streak of the cat in my nature?�

�Maybe,� Dulcie had said, laughing. �Maybe that�s why we get along so well. And,� Dulcie continued, �that should help you understand why Joe and Kit and I love what we do.�

�I guess it does,� Wilma had said, diffidently stroking Dulcie�s sleek tabby back, tracing a finger down her dark, silky stripes. �I guess I understand very well.�

The drive to Gilroy took her an hour and twenty minutes, from hotel parking lot to the sprawling discount mall. Her first stop was to gas up her car, and then to her favorite restaurant where she enjoyed a large and decadent breakfast. Locking her car, she�d made sure her glove compartment was safely locked, too. The.38 Smith& Wesson had been important when she worked corrections, but now, with those years long past, the revolver was simply insurance in case her car broke down or something else unexpected occurred, such as a carjacking or attempted robbery. Life bloomed with the unexpected, and she felt more comfortable prepared. Though the gun wasn�t likely to be needed for a simple day of shopping; and her only known enemy of the moment was safely cooling his heels, watched over by San Francisco �s finest.

She thought of checking the messages on her cell phone before she hit the stores; but she had called her close friend Clyde last night, and then called Lucinda and Pedric Greenlaw. Dulcie had been there with the elderly couple, tucked up on the couch with Kit as Pedric recited an old Celtic fairy tale for the two cats. Pedric was an authority on Celtic myth and, as the cats� heritage lay within that distant and mysterious realm, they loved hearing his stories.

She supposed she could check for a message from Dulcie, but she�d talked with her just last night, and she�d be home in a few hours, even if she hit every store in the complex; she was trying to break herself of worrying about Dulcie. Ever since Dulcie and Joe discovered they could speak and understand the human language-were, as Dulcie put it, thinking like real human persons-Wilma had worried over the little tabby to the point of driving Dulcie crazy. Just as Clyde worried over Joe. When the two cats launched themselves into a life of spying and snooping, she and Clyde had worried big-time. The inherent dangers of such an occupation for two little cats had nearly undone them both.

From the first, Dulcie hadn�t liked Wilma fussing, and had set her straight with such insistence that she�d backed off. That hadn�t been easy. But the thought made Wilma smile, because soon the tables were turned. When the tortoiseshell kit arrived on the scene, a starving orphan kitten then, and had taken up with the Greenlaws and with Joe and Dulcie, she had proved to be far more of a handful than either of the older cats had ever been-and soon it was their turn to worry. Kit was fascinated with criminal investigation, and she was fearless.

Molena Point might be small, but there was a lot of money in the village-multimillion-dollar homes; wealthy estates on the outskirts; a handful of movie stars, retired and otherwise. And there were moneyed tourists drawn not only by the charm of the village but by fine golf courses, antique-car competitions, and a world-class horse show. When Kit joined Joe and Dulcie�s clandestine investigations of burglaries, thefts, and the crimes of passion that occurred beneath the sleepy facade of a small town, her approach was wild indeed; she launched into the investigations with all four paws, ears back, and tail lashing-too often putting herself in harm�s way, so that Dulcie and Joe did indeed fret over her.

�Payback time,� Wilma had told them, though she, too, worried about the kit. But at least now the older cats understood what such worrying was about.

Finishing her coffee and paying her bill, she left the restaurant. The mall parking lot was only half full, the shop doors just opening, but already the heavy July heat was enervating. She hoped it was nicer at home, that the sea�s fog had moved in to cool the village, to cool her cottage that, even with thick stone walls, could in this weather grow too hot for her taste or Dulcie�s. Moving her car over in front of her favorite discount stores, sitting for a moment looking at her short shopping list, she had a fierce, empty feeling of missing home; felt an unaccustomed nostalgia for her cozy living room with its soft blue velvet chair and love seat, the huge, bright landscape above the stone fireplace between the walls of books, her cherry desk before the window where Dulcie liked to sit. She felt empty suddenly,as if she�d been gone for months.

But she�d be home in a few hours. She was just tired, and feeling bruised after the court hearing, after having to dredge up all Jones�s ugly history and listen to his squirming protestations. She was just wanting to be snug at home, where she could restore her sense of the goodness of the world. Annoyed with herself, she swung out and locked the car, and, mustering a bit of shopper�s eagerness and excitement, she headed for the first row of stores.

4

R acing home, Dulcie couldn�t get Mandell Bennett out of her mind, a vision of the strong, dark-haired, soft-spoken man falling beneath a blaze of gunfire-and she imagined Wilma falling�falling�But that had not happened! She had to stop this, she mustn�t think this�Courting bad luck, Lucinda would say.

Wilma�s car was not in the drive, and there was no scent of exhaust as if she had pulled into the garage. Dulcie pushed resolutely through her cat door into the service porch then into the kitchen.

Crossing the blue linoleum, there was no scent of Wilma. She padded into the dining room, stood beneath a dark, carved chair, her paws on the Persian rug, looking through to the living room. There was no one there. The vivid oil painting over the fireplace, with its red rooftops and dark oaks, seemed faded; the blue velvet love seat, Wilma�s cherrywood desk, the potted plants, the bright books in the bookcases-all seemed abandoned without Wilma, diminished and forlorn.

She knew she was being melodramatic, overreacting. Turning away, she hurried down the hall to Wilma�s bright bedroom, stood looking in at the cheerful flowered chintz and white wicker, the red iron woodstove-then she fled back to the living room, leaped to the desk, and again pressed the message button.

Nothing, no message. Punching the speaker button, then the one for Wilma�s cell phone, she recorded a few listless words. The effort seemed useless, she�d already jammed Wilma�s cell phone with messages. Shouldering quickly out through her cat door again, then through Wilma�s wildly blooming garden, she leaped once more to the rooftops and raced through waves of rising heat across the hot shingles and tiles, straight to Joe Grey and Kit. Above her, the sky was deepening into evening, the gleam of the low, slanting sun glancing golden across the roofs ahead of her. She found Joe and Kit atop a little penthouse where the faintest breeze fingered their fur. The kit was curled on the high roof, dozing, but Joe Grey paced, now as restless as Dulcie herself. As if, having had a restorative nap, he could no longer stay still.

She knew it wasn�t Wilma that Joe was fretting abouthe was yearning to get back to Molena Point PD, to the dispatcher�s desk and its rich sources of information. Joe�s whole being was focused on last night�s breakin murder; something about this shooting had deeply puzzled the tomcat, had taken hold of him from the very beginning. He�d been grumpy and preoccupied all day, waiting for the lab reports, waiting to cadge a look at whatever information might come in over the wire.

Joe was indeed growing grumpy. The murder had occurred at around three A.M. There had been no sirens, and he hadn�t learned about it until that morning over the radio while Clyde made breakfast-an omelet for the two of them, the usual canned feast and kibble for the three family cats. Halfway through the news, Joe had pawed the morning paper open across the breakfast table, and there it was.

While Linda Tucker�s husband, a real estate agent, was in Santa Cruz at a training conference, Linda had been shot once in the forehead, with a small-caliber bullet, while she slept.

Clawing the page over to read the rest of the article, Joe had quickly devoured his breakfast omelet and taken off, up to the roof and across the rooftops to Molena Point PD, where he slipped in on the heels of two officers coming on duty. Leaping to the dispatcher�s desk, he had rolled over and purred, making nice, picking up what news he could-and when that source dried up, when no more information seemed forthcoming, he had headed for the murder scene.

He had found Dulcie and Kit already there, having heard the news when Kit�s humans, Lucinda and Pedric Greenlaw, turned on the TV before breakfast to see if the weather might cool off.

No such encouraging weather report was at hand, but when reports of the murder came on the screen, and before Lucinda could stop them, Dulcie and Kit had fled out the dining room window and across the oak branch to Kit�s private tree house, where they scrambled backward to the ground, claws raking the oak bark, and headed for the murder scene. There, Joe and his tabby lady, and Kit, had waited, hidden and watching, until Detective Garza and three other officers had secured the scene and left, at around ten A.M.-and quickly they had slipped into the house, past a uniformed guard and under the yellow tape, to search for scents that the police had no way to detect, and for any tiny, hidden items that the officers might somehow have missed.

The Tucker house had been torn apart, drawers pulled out and dumped, furniture turned over. And yet, for the first time in all the crime scenes the cats had prowled, they�d found nothing of value that the law hadn�t already photographed and bagged as evidence; they had detected not even the scent of the intruder, a clue that human officers would, of course, miss. The house reeked so of the husband�s cigar smoke that they could smell nothing beyond it. Even the scents of the three other cops and Detective Garza, laid back and forth across the house, were muddied by the stink of cigars. The only other notable smells were a spoiled onion in the kitchen cupboard and the unpleasant odors associated with the death of the deceased.

Later in the day, Joe had returned to the PD twice to prowl the dispatcher�s desk and then the chief�s office. He knew it would take a few days to get the ballistics report. As far as the cats knew, the police had not found the gun; the bullet was from a.22 fired at point-blank range. It had made an ugly, torn wound at the back of the head. Not that the deceased cared; if Linda Tucker was looking down from heaven, she probably cared only that she was dead and wanted to see her killer apprehended and punished.

Joe Grey wondered sometimes about the dead.Did they look down, watching the investigations? And if they did, why couldn�t they, one way or another, give a sign? Why couldn�t a murdered woman point a ghostly finger? How convenient that would be-if a cop knew how to read those unearthly signals.

The ransacked Tucker house was a mess in the crime photographs, which Dallas Garza studied later at his desk, going over and over them. Yet, for all the mess, according to the bereaved husband only jewelry had been taken, and some cash from Linda�s purse. Tucker had arrived home about five A.M., an hour after the Santa Cruz police located him asleep in his hotel room in that small coastal town. There had been some mix-up at the desk about his reservation, and he had been moved from one hotel to another because of overbooking, so it had taken officers a while to find him. When he did arrive home, and when at last he pulled himself together sufficiently to go through the mess in the house, he was certain that nothing else was missing. Linda�s body had been taken to the county morgue, where it would remain until disposition of the case.

It seemed a cut-and-dried case of break-and-enter; perhaps when Linda woke up she had made some move that caused the thief to think she was reaching for a gun, perhaps she had slipped her hand under the pillow or toward a drawer, and in panic he had shot her.

And yet, the murder bothered Joe Grey. As, he thought, it seemed to bother Detective Garza and Captain Harper. Now, sixteen hours after the killing, the tomcat paced the shingled roof, his mind totally on the dead woman.

�Something isn�t right,� he muttered, turning a narrow yellow gaze on Dulcie. �Garza missed something at the scene, and we missed it, too.�

Dulcie knew Joe hated to muff a case, but it was all she could do to pay attention, her own mind on Mandell�s brutal shooting and worry over Wilma. Joe looked at her intently.

�Why would a real estate agent go to a training conference?�

�I don�t know, Joe! To learn something new. Or maybe to train others. How would I know? I just saw the afternoon paper, and-�

�Garza�s report said Tucker was certain nothing else had been taken. Very certain. Garza watched Tucker go through the house, through all the junk dumped out of the dressers and her jewelry box and the desk. He-�

�Joe, I-�

Joe�s short gray fur gleamed like silver in the falling light of evening. �Garza said Tucker was very certain nothing else was taken, and that�s what bothers me-just like it bothers Garza. No hesitation, just a steady reassurance that nothing else was missing.�

He looked intently at Dulcie, his yellow eyes blazing.�Is that normal human behavior? How many people can tell right away that nothing is missing, no little bauble, a forgotten necklace-his wife shot to death and the house a mess, he should have been all at loose ends, confused and uncertain, unsure of anything.� He was so wound up that Dulcie gave up trying to tell him that Mandell had been shot.

�After the death of a loved one,� Joe said, �most folks are totally befuddled, all rage and grief, and their senses go bonkers. Their perceptions are all unhinged, they can�t remember anything clearly. But not Clarence Tucker,� the tomcat said, hissing. �He seems to have a total grip onreality.�

�He�s a real estate agent,� Dulcie said softly. �And a very deliberate kind of man. Precise. I�ve watched him, in restaurants. Hardly ever looks at a menu. Knows what they have and exactly what he wants.�

Molena Point�s patio restaurants welcomed well-behaved village cats just as they welcomed leashed dogs; and it was amazing how much information a cat could pick up along with the bits of lobster and steak that might be proffered by cat-friendly diners. �Such a manmight act logical and have his wits about him, Joe, but still be hurting bad inside.�

Joe just looked at her. He wasn�t buying that. �Garza�s report�Garza thought there was something off about Tucker.� The tomcat reared up, staring away over the rooftops in the direction of Molena Point PD. �Maybe something more has come in, a fax or an e-mail. Maybe Dallas has something more. Come on, Kit, get a moveon.� He looked hard at Dulcie. �You coming?�

Dulcie turned her back on him.�You go,� she said shortly.

�Wilma�s fine!� he said, frowning so hard the white strip down his forehead was a narrow line. �She�ll be home soon, tired, will probably stop at Jolly�s Deli to pick up supper for the two of you. Come on, we�ll only be a few minutes.�

Dulcie sighed. She wanted badly to tell him about Mandell; she longed for Joe�s help, but he was too preoccupied. And the fact was, how could a cat stop Cage Jones? If Jones was set on��Oh!� she said suddenly. �Oh! The sheriff�s office!� And she fled for home, chagrined that she hadn�t thought, sooner, of the Santa Clara County sheriff.

Watching her race away, Joe shook his head. Cage Jones, if he had a lick of sense, would be miles from the Bay Area by now, probably on a plane, under an assumed name. Why would he hang around where every cop in the state was looking for him? And dismissing the escaped prisoner, his mind fixed on the Tucker murder, Joe headed for Molena Point PD and its electronic world of fast information. He assumed Kit was behind him-but Kit followed neither Joe Grey nor Dulcie.

No one seemed to care where she went. Looking from one fleeing cat to the other, both deep in their own concerns, she felt hurt and abandoned-and disappointed in Joe. She knew Joe�s mind was on the murder-burglary, but Dulcie was so upset, and Joe Grey didn�t see the dark tabby�s distress-or did he just not care? Frightened and unsettled, her heart filled with Dulcie�s fear for Wilma and with Joe Grey�s disregard, Kit leaped after Dulcie, racing to catch up, her mottled paws flying over the shingles, her yellow eyes huge and anxious.

5

T he old man had been home in the village two weeks, staying with his sister-home in the sense that it was where he grew up, not where he chose to live. Mavity didn�t welcome him real warm, but that didn�t bother him none. It was where he needed to be at the moment, and a sight cheaper than these rip-off California motels. And he had to say, the food was tasty. Those four women sure could cook. They refused to do his laundry, though, and that ticked him off big-time.

In Panama he�d had a black woman to do his laundry and make his meals. Everyone down there had a maid. Several if you were rich. All these years he�d had a woman come in to shop and clean, wash and iron and cook supper. There was plenty of cheap labor, black people descended from the Barbadian families that�d been brought in to build the canal during the early years of the last century.

The last century. Christ that made him feel old. Ever since he�d hit Central America as a young man-and that was some years back, he had to say-ever since he was twenty and stepped off that ship in Cristobal the first time, there�d been blacks in the streets, blacks cutting the lush green lawns, cleaning the houses, driving the cabs while talking to you over the back of the seat in Barbadian accents that he�d had trouble understanding back then. Barbadian descendants picking bananas in the interior, too, working alongside lighter-skinned Panamanians.

That Creole woman who lived here with Mavity, though, she was something else. Nothing servantlike about her. Good-looking woman, even if she didn�t seem to have much use for him. None of the four women did. Well, hell, it was free rent, and he wouldn�t be there long.

Just long enough to figure out where Cage�d hid his half of the stash. And figure out why Cage�d been so closemouthed with him all the way back from L.A. to San Francisco. Then silent and sour when Cage took him to the fence in the city, not easy like they used to be. Too long ago, maybe, when they ran together. Or maybe prison�d changed him.

Well, Cage�d got him to a fence, like he�d promised, and he�d got a fair price. Could have waited, but who knew how long till the market went higher, right along with inflation?

The day was nice and hot, and he�d walked down into the village to look at cars, that high-class Beckwith dealership. He thought he better be careful about paying cash in there, though. That friend of Wilma Getz, the one who owned that gray tomcat with the smart mouth, he had the mechanic�s shop there. Didn�t need to be flinging cash around in front of no friend of Wilma Getz, it�d get back to her. Get straight to Mavity, too, the two of them thick as thieves. And all of them thick with the cops. Well, the hell with it. He�d set up a loan, then next month, pay it off. The dealer wouldn�t check on that, and he hated paying interest.

He was just crossing Fourth, looking for a place to have a cup of coffee, when he stopped, staring up at the roofs across the street, and then he stepped back quick, into the shadows of a doorway.

A cat had gone racing over the roofs. A dark-striped tabby, he could swear it was that gray tom�s female. That Getz woman�s cat, another of them special ones, and her damn near as smart-ass as the tom. He didn�t need them cats knowing he was in the village. The longer he kept them out of his hair, the better off he�d be. Take care of business and get out of here. Them cats could muddle up everything.

Well, the tabby was gone now, flying over the roofs in a hell of a hurry-scorching away like a streak, in the direction of the Getz house.

He hadn�t seen anything chasing her, but she was sure as hell stressed about something. And that made Greeley smile. Whatever her problem, the worse the better. Maybe it�d keep her and that Getz woman both busy.

Kit, racing across the rooftops, her paws hitting only the high spots, careened against Dulcie-but the racing tabby spun on her, in sudden temper.�Go back, Kit! Go home! Why didn�t you go with Joe? I don�t want company!� Dulcie felt too shaky and upset for company, felt like she�d fly apart any minute.

Kit wilted, creeping away, and stood forlornly watching Dulcie drop down through the branches of an acacia tree to her own street, then disappear. Joe had been short with her, and now Dulcie, too.What did I do? Why does no one want me?

Kit, of all cats, knew she should understand about sometimes needing to be alone when you were frightened or upset, when you needed to collect your wits. But right now she had wanted, had badly needed, to be close to her friends; she stood on the roof looking away after Dulcie, puzzled and alone. And as evening tucked itself down around the village, Kit sat hurt and lonely for a long time, staring away toward Dulcie�s house, and then toward Molena Point PD where Joe would be nosing into everything on the dispatcher�s desk.

But then she looked, even longer, up at the silent hills where the shadows were fast gathering. Something unseen was pressing at her from up there, pressing and insistent, pressing and pushing, the same something that had held Dulcie, earlier in the afternoon, the same sense of someone listening and watching. It was Willow. The feral calico surely sensed trouble, sensed Dulcie�s distress; Kit felt almost as if Willow reached out her paw, offering whatever help she could give.

The shops of the discount mall finessed Wilma along from one inviting window to the next as skillfully as strippers beckon to their audience-and, once she�d entered, finessed away her cash just as readily. Well, she didn�t shop often.

The day was too hot for Wilma�s taste, but the mall gardens were rich with flowers, the streets clean, and the shops offered discontinued items in all her favorite brands. She told herself she might not shop again for another ten years and that she really did need clothes. She purchased, as Dulcie had suspected, mostly faded, well-fitting jeans in the soft stretch denim she liked, and sweatshirts and Tshirts in her favorite colors-powder blue, yellow, lots of soft tomato red, a shade that was not available every season. She bought sandals, boots, one long flowered skirt and a couple of boucl? sweaters for more dressyoccasions. She purchased one indulgence, a silver-and-topaz necklace, with a matching clip for her long gray hair.

And the gifts she found�A soft cashmere throw for Dulcie in pale blue, though Dulcie had throws all over the house. For the tortoiseshell kit, a bright plaid cotton blanket for Kit�s new tree house.

She bought for Joe Grey a new glazed bowl with a gray cat painted on its side and a stainless-steel liner to hold food or water. She didn�t trust ceramic glazes, didn�t know what chemicals they might release to be innocently ingested. The painted cat looked very much like Joe, with its white nose and chest and paws, except that this cat�s tail was long, not docked like Joe�s.

Joe had lost his tail as a half-grown stray, in San Francisco, where Clyde had then been living. A drunk had stepped on his tail and broken it. Clyde had discovered him in a gutter, sick from the infection, and had taken him to a vet, who removed all but the last jaunty stub. Clyde nursed Joe back to health, and the two remained together, soon moving back to Molena Point, where Clyde had grown up. Where, when he was eight years old, Wilma thought, smiling, she was his neighbor and, he said, his first love. She had been in graduate school then.

Using her credit card with abandon, Wilma took packages to her car three times and locked them in the trunk. The ordeal in court had left her feeling unaccustomedly flat, and this spree was definitely making her feel better. Cage was such a manipulator, his big face all soft and smiling, hardly revealing his brutal nature.

Jones had irons in a dozen fires, many of them strange and off-key. He enjoyed scams and angles that few other offenders would bother with, from rigging up fake ATM machines, which he labeled DEPOSITS ONLY, hauling them to a new location in the small hours of the night and switching them for real ones, then collecting the take every day, to several interesting confidence games over the years. In Judge Bailey�s view, society would benefit greatly if Cage Jones spent the rest of his natural life behind bars.Preferably, she thought,without the amenities of telephone and e-mail with which to pursue his scams.

The court�s unusual request that Wilma, retired for ten years, should return to testify along with her partner clearly showed its view of Jones. Cage�s was the last case Wilma and Bennett had worked together before she retired. At that time, they had searched his Molena Point house with a team of DEA agents, turning up enough heroin and stolen cash to net Jones a twelve-year sentence, ten of which he had served before he came up for parole. The parole board, which was now disbanded, had, in Wilma�s view, made a serious error in judgment when they�d turned Jones loose in society.

But that wouldn�t be the first time a parole board had wrung its hands with pity over an undeserving prisoner, ignored the safety of ordinary citizens, and set a felon free to seek out the most vulnerable victims. Such was bureaucracy, Wilma thought, shrugging to herself in the mirror as she tried on a gold silk sheath. The lovely dress was very slimming, not that she needed it; she kept herself in fair shape. And she had no occasion to wear such an elegant dress. But it would look smashing on Charlie. Wilma and her redheaded niece wore the same size, and she knew the cut was right. This, she thought withexcitement, was the perfect Christmas present-even if Charlie, like Wilma herself, lived most of the time in jeans, sweatshirts, and boots. A police chief�s wife didn�t have much occasion to dress in fancy clothes, nor did Charlie have the desire to do so. But when Charlie�s new book came out, she might need just such an elegant gown for a gallery opening and book signing. This was Charlie�s first book, which she had both written and illustrated-written with clandestine feline help.

That secret was well kept by the tortoiseshell heroine of the story. Kit and Charlie shared the confidence only with Joe and Dulcie, and their few human friends who knew they were not ordinary cats: Clyde and the Greenlaws and Wilma herself were all privy to the cats� secret.

After buying the dress for Charlie, Wilma found a lightweight summer blazer for herself to wear over jeans, then decided she was done with shopping. She�d hit the stores she liked best, and the afternoon was waning; the sun was low in the west as she headed for her car.

She clicked the trunk open and fit in the blazer package between the other purchases and her overnight bag; she could not have bought much more, she already felt like she�d made a grand haul. Shutting the trunk, she clicked open the car door, was leaning forward to put the long dress box in the backseat and wondering if she should just check out the two shoe shops she�d missed, when she was grabbed from behind. Big hands jerked her around, bending her arm back painfully and forcing her keys from her fist. Enraged that she�d been caught off guard, she kicked backward, hard, ramming the heel of her shoe down his shin and jamming her elbow into his stomach. He hit her so hard across the neck that she reeled, and saw blackness. In a frantic move she slippedher credit card from her pocket, bent it double, swung around in his grip, and slashed his face with the sharply folded corner. He swore and shoved her in the backseat on top of the dress box. She knew it was Cage before she saw him, but only then did she get a look at him. Cage Jones was grinning coldly at her as he leaned in. He had a rope in his fist.

�Bend over. Put your hands behind you! Now!�

She fought him, tried to kick him in the crotch. His weight was too much on top of her, he was too strong. He jerked the rope so tight around her wrists he probably took the skin off. How the hell did he get out? How did he get out of jail?

6

D ulcie didn�t see Greeley Urzey as she raced across the roofs above him; she was too preoccupied.It�s nearly dusk. She willbe home! No need to call the sheriff in Gilroy, she�ll be in the bedroom unpacking her overnight case and that thin little hanger bag. She probably stopped in the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee or make a drink, and she�s wondering where I am. Right this minute she�s home and everything is as it should be!

There! Her own shake roof, where she sunned, where she caught birds. And lights on in the kitchen! Yes! She couldn�t see the bedroom windows, but she could see the reflection of their lights across the hill that rose close behind the house. And even as she looked, lights came on in the living room, reflecting across the oak trees beneath her; leaping down the oak to her own driveway, she smelled car exhaust.Oh, the wonderful perfume of that ugly exhaust stink-tonight it smelled as sweet as catnip. Madly she bolted in through her cat door, all purrs and mewls and wanting to shout Wilma�s name.

But something stopped her. She stood in the middle of the kitchen, very still. Something wasn�t right-the wrong smells, and when she reared up to stare at the tops of the counters and the tabletop, fear filled her. She leaped to a chair, looking. Wilma never left the kitchen like this. A mess of smeared jam and butter mixed with toast crumbs. The bread out of the bread box, its wrapper ripped raggedly and three slices of bread left to dry among the crumbs; the half-full juice bottle on the sink, its lid missing; the tub of butter atop the toaster, lid off, the butter smeared with crumbs and jam.

But when she peered through to the dining room, the dining room table was piled with bags from Liz Claiborne, Chico�s, all Wilma�s favorite shops. Had Wilma dropped her packages and, very hungry, stopped for a hasty piece of toast before she unpacked, and left that mess behind her? Dulcie cocked her ears toward the bedroom, listening.

The house was deathly still. She started to shiver. Had someone been in here when Wilma got home? Someone who�d hidden and waited�?

Dropping silently to the floor, she slipped toward the living room-and stopped: the scent of strangers, two men. And the living room had been trashed, the couch cushions thrown to the floor, Wilma�s beautiful Jeannot landscape rudely jerked from its hook and jammed against a bookcase. The Persian rug was flipped back at three corners-as if the burglars thought there might be a hidden safe sunk in the floor? And the rug scuffed up into folds where Wilma�s lovely cherry desk had been shoved away from the window, all the drawers pulled out and tossed in a heap, their contents a jumble-bankbook, erasers, pencils on top of a tangle of files marked CDS, STOCKS, and BONDS. One man�s smell was all over the files, his testosterone-heavy scent overlaid with the stink of greasy potato chips.

Now she knew how their friend Kate Osborne had felt when her San Francisco apartment was broken into and ransacked; the same shock of invasion, of being defiled, a hot tide of helplessness and rage.

But the burglar in Kate�s apartment had been after jewels, searching for a rich inheritance that Kate had not, then, known the true value of. Wilma had nothing like that. A silver hair clip, one or two small precious stones, and the one valuable hair clip Kate had given her-but not enough to warrant this kind of search. And, what about the packages? If Wilma�s purchases were here, so was Wilma. Or, she had been.

Dulcie�s paws were sweating, her mouth dry. Trying to steady herself, she sniffed all across the floor searching for Wilma�s fresh scent, but she found only the sour smell of the two men. When she paused again to listen, she heard from the bedroom a drawer being pulled out softly, then a man�s hushed voice, low and angry��It�s not here��

Silently she padded into the hall that connected Wilma�s bedroom and the guest room, pausing in the shadows at more thumps, and a second man�s voice-and she glimpsed a broad figure that made her draw back. That was Cage Jones. It had to be-he was just as Wilma had described him. And was Wilma in there, held captive? Swallowing back terror, Dulcie tensed to leap at him�

She knew she should spin around and go for help. She was no match for Jones, he was huge. If he killed her, there would be no one to help Wilma. But she had to see. She was slipping through the shadows toward the beefy man when she heard her plastic cat door swing and flap. Terrified they�d hear, she spun around�

The tortoiseshell kit stood behind her, her yellow eyes widening at Dulcie�s soft hiss for silence. When the voices came again, Kit dropped to the carpet, backing away in alarm.

Dulcie, creeping to the door, could not smell Wilma. She peered in, saw the two men. Wilma wasn�t there. She slipped away with Kit, to the living room, where Kit licked Dulcie�s ear just as, so many times in the past, Dulcie had comforted the tortoiseshell.

�Who are they?� Kit asked. �The burglars who killed that woman in the middle of the night? Oh��

�It�s Cage Jones,� Dulcie whispered. �He shot Wilma�s partner this morning.�

�Mandell? Oh, he didn�t shoot Mandell Bennett! How�?�

�He�s alive. Intensive care.� Bennett had been to Wilma�s house only a few times, but he was gentle in the way he spoke and stroked a cat, was the kind of human a cat liked and remembered.

�We need help,� Dulcie said, glancing at the phone that had, surprisingly, not been knocked off the hook; its receiver was still in place-but if they called 911, Jones would see the extension�s red light blinking in the bedroom. For several years, Wilma had had a second line for her computer,with two-line extensions where a red light blinked when one line was in use. That light would be a dead giveaway.

But what if Wilmawas in there, and hurt, maybe tied up in the closet? Abandoning the phone, the cats headed back for the bedroom, Dulcie thinking,So what if they see us? We�re cats! What�re they�re going to do? Shoot a couple of house cats mindlessly looking for our supper?

7

T he beefy man sat on the bed going through the overnight case Wilma had taken to the city; her thin hanger bag was thrown on the floor, the clothes spilling out. Dulcie stared in at his long, heavily angled face, long upper lip and heavy features. Jones must be well over six feet, big boned, big hands, thick shoulders. The other man was smaller, tall but of light frame. Thin face, maybe thirty. Thin shoulders, thin long hands, long brown hair under a brown baseball cap. Both men seemed, to Dulcie, parodies of what humans should look like. She could not bear to think how they might have hurt Wilma, what they might have done with her.

Wilma�s flowered chintz coverlet was wadded up on the floor, the white wicker night tables overturned, the door to the red iron stove flung open and ashes scattered over the flowered rug: Did they think Wilma hid her valuables in the woodstove? But, what valuables? What did Jones think she had? Finished with the overnight case, he dropped it on the floor, stood, and began going through Wilma�s closet, throwing clothes out into the room, running his hands over the wall behind. The white wicker dresser had been jerked away from the wall, cosmetic jars scattered on the floor, as were the contentsof her traveling makeup case. What would she hide in there? The case she kept in her overnight bag, neatly supplied, ready for an impromptu junket, a habit learned when she was a probation officer and so often had to travel. Dulcie, seeing that Wilma wasn�t in the bedroom, backed away toward the guest room, Kit pressing close.

The guest room had been trashed, too, closet doors flung open, drawers pulled out and dumped, guest sheets and towels spilled on the rug, the bed shoved aside, the covers pulled off. If they thought Wilma kept valuables in the house, a large stash of money, or jewelry, why would they look in her luggage? And if they had Wilma, why had they brought in her luggage and packages? This made no sense. If Jones wanted it to appear that Wilma had come home, why bother to trash the house?

Did they want it to look like she�d been here, then was forcibly taken away? Did they want the cops to think that the housebreaker who�d killed that woman last night had done this? Take advantage of the moment, make it seem that Wilma had come home, had a snack, started to unpack, and then the breakin or forced entry had happened?

�Her car�,� Kit said. �Is her car here?�

�I smelled exhaust. It�She�I didn�t look inside!� Racing for the laundry and the door to the garage, Dulcie leaped up the door, scrabbling her paws to open the dead bolt�But it was open. Those men had been in the garage, had left the door unlocked. She could smell them. Swinging on the knob, she kicked at the wall until the latch gave and the door careened in, carrying her with it.

She saw Wilma�s car as she dropped to the concrete, could feel heat still radiating from it, smell the stink of oil and exhaust. She did not want to look inside,could not look inside that car. Kit stared at her, waiting, then reared up, trying the doors, but they were locked.

Ever since Dulcie and Joe Grey discovered they could speak and were thinking like humans, ever since they�d helped trap their first killer, not much in the human repertoire of assorted evil shocked the cats; their clandestine roles as police informants had hardened Dulcie to most human viciousness. But now fear held Dulcie as cruelly as she, herself, had ever gripped a mouse between sharp teeth. Andit was Kit who leaped to the hood first, and pressed her nose to the windshield. Ice cold, Dulcie followed.

The hood was warm beneath their paws. Pressing her nose to the bug-splattered glass, Dulcie shivered with relief at the empty front seat and floor. She stared into the back as far as she could see, then leaped to the workbench and stretched out across space, her back paws on the bench, her front paws on the side window, to see the dark floor of the backseat.

Empty. She began to breathe again-but then she caught the faintest scent of blood and stiffened, studying the pale leather upholstery.

There was no dark stain, and the scent was so faint she wondered if she was mistaken, if it might be a blood smell that the tires had picked up. Dropping down to the concrete, she examined the warm tread, but she could detect no blood scent there. She watched Kit sniff at the trunk, her mind awash with every grisly kidnapping she�d ever heard about-and Kitdid smell something, she was sniffing intently.

But then she dropped down again, lashing her bushy tail, and turned her round yellow eyes on Dulcie.�Only gas fumes,� she said quietly.

Dulcie went limp.�Is her cell phone in the car?� Both cats flew to the hood again, peering in at the seat and dark floor; then over the curved metal roof and onto the trunk to look in through the back window, pressing their faces against the glass, leaving smears that would puzzle the police but couldn�t be helped. They could not see Wilma�s little phone, not dropped on the floor, not fallen in the crack of a seat-and Cage Jones wouldn�t stay in the house forever.

�Going to chance the phone,� Dulcie said boldly, and she streaked for the living room again and onto the desk, and hit the speaker button. Her paw was lifted to press the button for the police dispatcher when she thought, Howcould she call the station? Why would the phantom snitch, whom Harper thought was a human person, be in or near this house? How would the snitch know that the house had been trashed, that there were two men in the bedroom, and that Wilma had disappeared? Only someone who had a key would know that.

Captain Harper himself had a key. As did Joe�s housemate, Clyde. And Wilma�s niece, Charlie Harper.

Swiftly Dulcie punched in the key for Charlie�s cell phone. Charlie would have to lie for her, would have to pretend she�d come in here, herself.

Three rings, and then she got the voice mail. She tried the house, but again no answer, only that canned voice telling you to leave your name and number. Fidgeting from nerves, she punched the digit for Clyde�s cell phone.Answer, Dulcie prayed.Oh,please,Clyde. They won�t be in the bedroom forever. If they see the light, they�ll be after us. And if they don�t�Once they�re gone, the cops might never find them,and they�re all that can lead us to Wilma.

But Clyde didn�t answer, not on his cell, or on his home phone. She left frantic messages on both. If he was at the automotive shop, which was closed on Sunday, he�d be in the very back, in his own exclusive garage, working on one or another of the classic and antique cars he collected, happily puttering away, no phone to disturb him, not knowing anything was amiss. And Dulcie did the only thing left to do. She�d have to conjure up a whopping lie. She tried to think of a good one as, heart pounding, she pressed the key for 911.

One ring, and the dispatcher picked up. Dulcie was glad it was Mabel Farthy. She was describing the trashed house, explaining that Wilma was missing and that two men were in the bedroom when Chief Harper came on the phone�Mabel had summoned him, or had turned on the speaker. At the same moment, as Dulcie started to describe the two men, Kit stared toward the bedroom, hissing, and slipped behind the couch. Dulcie leaped after her as harsh footsteps pounded out, running. The two men raced past, through the dining room and kitchen and out the back door. As the door banged, Dulcie leaped to the window, looking, leaving Mabel shouting into the phone. She heard a car start on the side street, heard it peel away, but couldn�t see it. At the same moment, two trucks rumbled past, loud and intrusive, hiding all other sounds.

�They�re gone,� she shouted at Mabel. �A car raced away a block over, I never saw it, I can�t hear it now, can�t tell which way it went.� That sounded so lame, like she was making the whole thing up. �I couldn�t see!� she told Mabel in frustration.

But even as she pressed the disconnect button, she saw the first squad car pull quietly to the curb. Bless Harper�s men for being so fast! They must have been nearby, even closer than the station, men already in their squad cars, their engines running. Two more units sped past the house, racing to spot the fleeing car.

�You didn�t describe the men,� Kit hissed. �Tell her-�

Moments later, a second squad car halted at the curb, and Max Harper swung out as four uniforms took off running, to surround the house. A key clicked in the front door; the door banged open so fast, the cats only had time to back against the shutters. Chief Harper and two uniforms moved fast, toward the bedroom. The instant they were past, the cats streaked through to the laundry and bolted out Dulcie�s cat door; they just missed being trampled as the two other cops moved quickly up the steps, their hands on their weapons. Dulcie and Kit dropped from the porch into a flower bed, Kit�s eyes wide. This was not the usual procedure for a break-and-enter-but the law didn�t fool around when it came to an escaped convict. And Max Harper didn�t play gentle when a close friend, and his wife�s own aunt, might be in danger.

8

W hen Dulcie frantically phoned the station, Joe Grey was asleep in the chief�s empty office, sprawled across Max Harper�s desk; he snored softly, less than thirty feet from the dispatcher�s cubicle, so deep under that he didn�t hear a thing until Mabel shouted. He heard Harper double-time up the hall from the coffee room, then, as if she had turned on her speaker, heard the voice on Mabel�s phone. Joe woke up, alarmed, leaped from the desk, and peered around the door, up the hall.

Mabel Farthy never lost her cool, the amply built older blonde was totally in control in any emergency as she juggled radio, phones, fax, computers, and officers milling around her counter. But not so now. Her voice shook and she was swearing. She stood gripping the chief�s arm, upset indeed, as, from the shadows of the hall, Joe listened to Dulcie�s frightened voice on the phone and tried to play catch-up, his every muscle tense with alarm.

An hour earlier he had been lounging on the desk in Detective Dallas Garza�s office as Dallas and the chief discussed a second breakin killing, another woman murdered in her bed. Joe had come into the station, on the heels of Detective Garza, to see what new information might be forthcoming on the first death, and now they�d been discussing a second one. What was coming down here? Some de-ranged burglar who wasn�t satisfied simply to steal and get out, but who got his thrills in other ways? The coroner had already told them that the first victim hadn�t been sexually molested-just sadistically blown away. And as the officers began to put this second killingtogether, they waited for autopsy and fingerprint reports on the first one, for which they had two sets of prints besides those of the dead woman and her husband. But there had been workmen in the house, a carpenter and a plumber repairing a bathroom, and the officers expected the prints would turnout to be theirs. Now, with a second, similar case, questions had multiplied like jackrabbits. Joe had lain curled up in Dallas�s in-box, sharply alert beneath shuttered eyes, watching Dallas lean back in his desk chair, put his feet up on the blotter, and flip open a file.

The square-faced Latino detective�s usual sunny smile had vanished. �Marital trouble in both cases. Five domestics at the Tucker address since the first of the year, four at the Keatings�. Linda Tucker was a shy little thing, real quiet and reclusive. But Elaine Keating��

�Right,� Harper had said. �She was bad news.�

�Three of those call-outs, Linda pressed charges for battery, and was told how to get help and find shelter. Didn�t do much good. She took him right back.�

The detective had sipped his coffee, reaching to stroke Joe Grey, giving Joe a look of amazement-whether amazement that the cat hung around the department, or surprise at his own friendly feelings toward a feline, Joe wasn�t sure. For a dog man, Dallas Garza was coming right along, and that made the tomcat smile. Dallas had, when Joe first met him, considered cats about as appealing as gutter rats.

�We could have a kinky burglar,� Harper had said, �or a copycat murderer. Common knowledge Tucker was sleeping around. Maybe his wife threatened to walk.�

In that case, Joe thought, she didn�t handle the problem very well. Even a cat could have told her that a battered woman should keep her plans to herself, get her own affairs in order, put her money where the man couldn�t reach it, and then quietly get out. Follow her escape plan and lay low, not telegraph her intentions. No different from a sensible cat quietly stealing away from a pack of coyotes, no disturbance, no movement through the grass to give himself away, just gone. And this sure would be true if a woman had children to get out safely-or pets. It hurt Joe deep down when a fleeing wife, in her haste and terror, left a dog or a cat behind. The poor creature was nearly always abused; most abusers would do that to get back at a woman.

�Elaine Keating had some money of her own,� Max said. �A small inheritance she kept in a separate account. Trouble was, she put his name on the account.�

Dallas shook his head.�If this is a copycat murder, I hope to hell it doesn�t start a rash of wife killings.� The detective studied the gray tomcat sprawled across his papers. �What does he find so fascinating? We don�t have mice in here.�

Harper shrugged.�This is one of the coolest buildings in the village, with these thick adobe walls.�

�And in the winter?�

�One of the warmest.� Max stared at Joe. �His visits couldn�t be because Mabel feeds him, hides away little snacks for the cats?�

�Then why isn�t he on Mabel�s desk instead of mine?�

�Likes your company,� Harper said. �If we get an article or two in the paper, to head these guys off�Help them remember we keep a list of wife abusers from past reports�� Harper rose to refill his coffee cup from the pot on the credenza.

�And maybe enlighten the abused wives,� Dallas said. He scratched Joe Grey�s ear. �Put those women on alert-without inviting a lawsuit. I�ll call Jim Barker, he�s a good reporter.�

�Who would sue us? We won�t be printing their names.� But Harper grinned. These days, some people would try to sue the cops over a traffic ticket.

The chief rose and moved away down the hall on some errand, and in a minute Joe heard him going downstairs, where the emergency center and shooting ranges were located. Dallas had picked up the phone and was making a date with Barker for a private lunch; but when the detective turned on his computer and started filling in tedious travel sheets, Joe leaped down and trotted along to Harper�s empty office, which was darker and quieter; he never had liked the click of computer keys.

Now, an hour later, having been awakened by Mabel�s shout from the dispatcher�s cubicle, he listened, alarmed, to the canned female voice from Mabel�s speakerphone-Dulcie�s voice, talking to both Mabel and then to Harper when she knew the speaker was on.

��isn�t in the house, I�m sure. But the house has been ransacked��

�How do you know this?�

�I�The door was unlocked. I thought I�d glimpsed her car go in the garage, so I knocked. When she didn�t answer, I tried the garage door. It was locked, but I smelled a whiff of exhaust, like she had just gotten home. I thought it strange that she didn�t answer, and knocked again. When she still didn�t come, I got worried. That�s when I tried the back door.

�It was unlocked, and I stepped into the kitchen. I was about to call out when I saw the house was all messed up, furniture overturned; then I heard men�s voices from the back. But I didn�t hear Wilma. I ran out, called you on my cell. I saw two men run out�One was-�

The line went suddenly dead. Dulcie had hung up or bolted away. Harper snatched the phone, shouting,�Give me your name. You�re Wilma�s neighbor? Where�? Your address�?�

He turned away at last, came pounding down the hall past Joe, shouting at Garza; the detective swung out of his office, and as the two headed for the back door and a patrol unit, Joe slipped up the hall to the front, where Mabel was dispatching squad cars-she paused long enough to punch in a phone number. Her voice, sharp with dismay, was obliterated as three police units sped away from the station. When they�d gone, she was saying, ��in Wilma�s house. Two men. They ran, but�All right, but be careful. You tell anyone I called you, Clyde, you�re dead meat!� She listened, then, �You�d better cover for me, or the chief�ll have my hide.� Silence. Then, �Said she was a neighbor. Hungup before she identified herself. I�Max would fire me, I swear he would.�

Joe was strung tight as four more officers hurried up the hall and out the front door; he streaked out behind them, leaped scrambling up the overhanging oak to the roof and headed for Wilma�s house. Racing across hot shingles and tiles, he forgot the two murders and the disquieting prospect that they might not be the last. Dulcie needed him, and Wilma needed them both-and he guessed Clyde, too, could use a little support. Wilma was like Clyde�s older sister, the only family Clydehad.

Sailing across space and into an oak that bridged the narrow street, Joe scrambled up it to a higher roof. Max Harper was nearly as close to Wilma as was Clyde; they�d both known Wilma since they were boys, the two kids spending hours in Wilma�s kitchen eating peanut butter and bacon sandwiches, awed by the beautiful blond graduate student, talking with Wilma about life in a way neither boy could talk with his parents.

Roof after roof; the blocks had never seemed so long. At last, backing down a jasmine vine to the sidewalk, Joe fled across Wilma�s street, between parked squad cars and through Wilma�s tangled garden. He was headed beneath the bushes for Dulcie�s cat door when Dulcie and Kit materialized out of a forest of lavender, Dulcie looking as miserable as he�d ever seen her. Her sleek tabby fur was bedraggled, her peach-tinted ears twitching with distress.

�She�s gone,� she panted, pressing against Joe and mewling as pitifully as a lost kitten. �Somewhere�,� she said. �Those men�Cage Jones�� And she collapsed against him, trembling.

9

T he old man was sitting at a sidewalk table in front of a hole-in-the-wall caf? enjoying a beer when half a dozen police cars moved swiftly up the street. No sirens. Two cops in each car. He watched with interest as they turned onto the street where that Wilma Getz lived. Several blocks up, they slowed. Looked like them cops was headed for that Getz woman�s place, sure enough. Fancy stone house. Cottage, they called it.

Pretty fancy place for a retired parole officer. Hard-assed old bitch. She�d throwed him out of that house when he was trying to visit his own sister, Mavity, sick in there, near to dying. Threw him right out, or tried to. Two years ago, that was. Just because he�d had a couple of drinks. Dried-up old prune�

Well, Mavity was just as judgmental. Raised a hell of a fuss this afternoon when she saw him drinking an innocent beer.

A person had to walk into the village, pay through the nose-tourist prices-if he wanted to have a drink in peace. Open a beer in that house or let�em see a bottle of whiskey, all hell broke loose, Mavity fussing and the other three scowling like he�d made a bad smell. One little drink�What the hell didthey do for recreation?

Gulping his beer, watching for more cop cars, Greeley rose. If them cars was parked in front of the Getz woman�s place, he sure as hell didn�t want to miss the action. Tucking the price of the beer but no tip under the wet bottle, he double-timed up the sidewalk. What a joke,him following squad cars. How many times in his sixty plus years had cop cars followed-and lost-him. He moved fast, dodging tourists. This village with its too cute cottages and shops always made him feel smothered. Too cozy for his taste, but a good place to rip off innocent shopkeepers and not get shot at.

Ahead, them cop cars was pulled up smack in front of the Getz place. Cops in the yard and moving around behind the house. He was slipping into the shadows of a porch half a block down and across the street when a car careened out of a side street racing away. Greeley stared.

Cage?

Sure as hell was. Cage Jones, driving fast, dodging other cars. Big hulking guy like Cage Jones was hard to miss, that long face and long lip. He hadn�t seen Cage since they�d got back from L.A. more�n a month ago, done their business in San Francisco, and parted. But he�d read the San Francisco papers, paid attention to the hearing, all right. Cage due to be sent back, and he walks out of that San Francisco jail easy as you please, big smile and a fake ID. What a laugh. Had to hand it to Cage, though it would have suited Greeley�s own plans better if he�d stayed locked up.

But what, exactly, was he doing at the Getz house? What the hell did Cage have in mind, coming there? He ought to be staying as far as he could from Wilma Getz; the woman meant nothing but trouble, specially for Cage.

Well, that car had sure as hell been coming from her place, cop fear written all over Cage�s bony face, him bent over the wheel, ducking down, driving as fast as he dared and not get stopped-but the next racing figure left Greeley openmouthed. And then he grinned a cold, knowing smile.

As the cops burned their searchlights into the fading evening, flashing along the crowded cottages, sure as hell looking for Cage, he saw a streak of gray with white markings run through a beam high up along the roofs, then vanish. That damn tomcat. He�d seen Joe Grey for only an instant, but he knew that cat, all right. Well, the cat had sure as hell followed them cops.

In a moment he saw the cat again, sailing from an oak tree onto the Getz woman�s garage roof, could see the cat�s white markings as he crept along the edge of the roof. The next minute he vanished in the thick shadows of another oak. Greeley, hunkering down in the bushes, stayed out of sight, trying to put it all together, figure out what Cage had in mind, coming here.

Cage was a damn fool to come down here to Molena Point-well, he sure wouldn�t go home, cops knowing where he lived. Greeley hoped to hell he wouldn�t. Because that was wherehe was headed, for a little visit to Cage�s place-though he sure didn�t look forward to playing nice to Cage�s sister Lilly. Sour old spinster, meaner than a snake.

But even if Cage was fool enough to go to ground there in his own house, with Lilly, he�d wait, make sure the cops had searched the place first.

Meanwhilehe�d have that big house all to himself, if he hurried. And if he could sweet-talk Lilly just right. That Jones house, that was what he�d come for.

He hadn�t seen Lilly Jones in some years, not since long before them little burglaries he and the black tomcat had pulled off together in the village. He�d never got caught-though them two village cats knew who did it, all right. They�dsaw black Azrael go down through a skylight, saw his black tail disappear inside. Nosy little bastards spying on them.

Well, them cats�d kept their mouths shut and with good reason. If he�d got caught, and his black tomcat, too, that damned Azrael would have mouthed off at the cops. And that would have let the cat out of the bag, Greeley thought, laughing. Cops find out there were talking cats in the world, copsheard Azrael cursing them, they�d be forced to believe it. And that would sure as hell blow Joe Grey�s secret.

That was when he�d met Sue, met her at her South American Shop, and first thing you knew, they were all over each other and headed on back to the tropics to get married-though the honeymoon hadn�t lasted long before Sue split. Thanks in part to Azrael. That black tom sure had hated her, sure as hell drove her out. Well, but Greeley, he�d been glad to see the last of her, himself, she was such a teetotal. Hell, he wasn�t made for marriage anyway.

Black tomcat was gone now, too. Greeley didn�t know where. Evil little bastard, always into voodoo. Sometimes he�d even scared Greeley. He didn�t miss Azrael, but he sure missed his skill at break-and-enter. Cat could get into Fort Knox if he had the time to work at it, as good with the windows as Greeley himself was with a safe. They�d made a good team, and Greeley did miss having a partner the cops would never make.

His marriage to Sue might be finished, too, but at least they�d parted friends. When she�d moved back to Molena Point, she was still willing to do a little business on the side, if it profited her. And his own line of work, at the moment, had fit right in, her exports to the States, that shop and its replicas of devils and idols; those little geegaws she�d helped him bring back had set him up real nice. Well, Sue�d get her share when this was all over-what he told her was her share.

Sure as hell, he was past the age when he relished the diving like he once had, and his lungs was going real bad on him. And Panama starting to hire locals and younger men, the bastards. Damn doctors said lung trouble was to be expected, the amount of whiskey he drank. He�d never heard that! What the hell did they know? Screw �em all, the medical profession didn�t know no more than some jungle witch doctor, maybe a hell of a lot less.

Watching cops move in and out of the Getz house, and cop cars take off, he thought again about Lilly Jones. Strange, pale woman. He guessed she stayed on in the family house because she had nothing better. She didn�t work, not that he�d heard. Maybe the parents�d left some money when they died, or maybe Cage saw that she got by, so he�d have a place to come the times he was out-and a place to hide his stash. Had to be pretty well hidden for the feds not to find it. He wondered, uncomfortably, if Lilly knew.

But hell, Cage wouldn�t have toldher. Andshe�d never figure it out. Woman was too dull. Hidebound. Spent half her time in church-until that sister of hers was born. Then, Cage�d said once, Lilly�d stopped going to church. That one, the sister, even as a child, was just as pale and silent as Lilly. Even as a child, near as dried up. No more spirit than a sick chicken.

Wilma�s shoulder hurt badly, felt like it was swelling, getting tight against her shirt. Cage had twisted her arm so painfully behind her, she wondered if he�d dislocated it. She�d fought him with little effect, and cursed herself for not staying in better shape. But Cage was built like an ape. Well, if she couldn�t fight him, she�d have to outwit him somehow.

How many dead women, in the last hour of their lives, had clung to that same futile hope? Imagining they would outsmart their abductor?

She�d blown it when she�d let him slip up on her. How the hell did he get out of jail? What kind of scam had he pulled this time? It had been around four in the afternoon when she was grabbed from behind and shoved in the backseat of her car, where he�d jerked her down and tied her hands behind her, taped her ankles together. She�d wanted badly to ask him how he�d escaped; every time she tried to turn and face him, he�d shoved her down again. The prodding in her back had felt like a gun but could have been anything: flashlight, cigarette lighter, the blunt end of a screwdriver. She prayed he hadn�t found her own gun, hadn�t jimmied the glove compartment. She didn�t dare try to look up over the backseat in that direction.

But now he had her keys, surely he would look. She could only hope he wouldn�t want to be caught with her gun. She had managed to flip her credit card in the gutter, distracting Cage again so he wouldn�t see it. Slashing at him she�d cut her hand a little on the card�s ragged corner. At least, with it folded, someone finding it might be less likely to use it. Maybesomeone honest would find it, if it was found at all. Cage had then slapped three lengths of duct tape over her mouth. She�d waited sickly for the blindfold, but he hadn�t put one on her. Did he mean to kill her before it would matter what she saw?

How had she ever supervised this man?

But he�d needed her then, needed her goodwill, needed her influence with the court. He didn�t need her now, and he could let all the hate out.

She presumed that no pedestrian, no shopper had been near enough to see him throw her in the car. He�d kept his back to the sidewalk while he tied her, his body hiding her. The tape was going to hurt like hell when it was ripped off-if she was alive when it was removed. If itis ever removed, she thought, fear escalating into panic.

There were two of them. The other man had slipped into the driver�s seat, shoving the seat back as far as it would go; it pressed hard against her legs. He was tall, thin shouldered, looked younger: smooth neck under longish brown hair. Tan T-shirt tight across his bony shoulders, dirty brown cotton cap pulled low.

Cage had had a partner on some jobs. She must have seen mug shots or read a description, but that was ten years ago; still, there was something about this guy that rang a bell. He started the car, gunned the engine, and pulled out with a squeal of the tires. Drove three blocks to a less public side street, parked, and got out. When Cage got out, too, she managed to twist around and sit up. They stood by the front of the car, talking. There was no one on the narrow little residential street behind the mall, no one visible but Cage and his partner. Yes, this man was younger, maybe twenty-five. Six foot two or three. Lean, long face, high cheekbones. Tanned arms, tanned neck and face. She could see no prison tattoos. He swung into a blue Plymouth that sat parked just ahead of them, a car maybe ten years old and grimy with dirt. She was craning to see the license plate when Cage slipped into the backseat again and pulled a long, dark rag over her eyes, tying it tightly behind her head, and shoved her down on the seat again.

�Stay down. Or you�re going to hurt, bad.� He slammed the door. She heard him open the driver�s door, felt the car rock, heard the door slam and the locks click. He started the engine and pulled out; she could hear the other car take off behind them, the driver gunning the engine. Didn�t he know any other way to drive? Cage made a sharp left, and when she struggled up again, hoping to hear better and to retain a sense of where they were headed, he reached over the back, hit her hard, and shoved her down.

�Stay down, bitch, or I�ll fix you so you can�t get up.�

She could only swallow her rage. She thought about her.38 locked in the glove compartment, and she could almost hear Clyde say,�You had to know he�d escaped. Why the hell weren�t you carrying! You have a permit for a concealed weapon, and a perfectly good shoulder holster.� She could just hear him, and Max, too. In her mind, she pointed out to them that she hadn�t known Cage was free, that it was Sunday, broad daylight, in an ordinary shopping mall. She could just hear her niece, too-�You are a retired federal officer, you had every right�� Worst of all, she imagined Dulcie worrying when she didn�t come home.

As he increased speed, and his attention was on the traffic, she squirmed around until she could reach the door handle behind her, but it wouldn�t unlock; he�d engaged the childproof locks. And she didn�t relish rolling out of a moving car. There was no hope of running out of gas; she�d gassed up when she hit Gilroy, before breakfast. At least she wouldn�t go to her grave hungry, she thought wryly.

Listening, and memorizing the turns, she was sure they were headed for the freeway. And in just a minute the car picked up speed, climbing, as if going up an entry ramp, and then they were whipping through heavy traffic, passing roaring trucks. Heading south, she was certain. Toward Molena Point? If this was Cage�s vindication for her testimony in court yesterday, why hadn�t he killed her in Gilroy where he could dump her back in the hills somewhere? But what else could this be about?

Could Cage want something from her, or plan to use her as a hostage for some reason? She couldn�t imagine what. In the past, when Cage was on parole, she�d usually been able to reason with him, on his own level, to his own degree of tolerance; on several occasions, she had even been able, with careful efforts, to sidetrack or delay his crimes.

Now, with the tape over her mouth, she couldn�t even talk to him. And then she thought, what about Mandell? Did Cage plan to find Mandell Bennett, too?

But Bennett was a far warier adversary; he was younger and he kept himself sharp for his work. Mandell was bigger and stronger than she, and he would be armed. Again she was ashamed of letting down her natural wariness and becoming complacent.

But there was one thing in her favor. To her knowledge, Cage Jones had never been a killer. Thief, burglar, robber, manipulator. If he�d ever killed, there was no hint of it in his record.

Well, but she hadn�t dealt with Cage in ten years. Ten years in Terminal Island among the vicious prison gangs-a ten-year hitch for which she and Bennett were largely responsible-could make a big difference in the attitudes of a felon. She felt a shaft of late-afternoon sun strike her face and knew for sure they were moving west; she welcomed for that brief moment the warmth and light through the blindfold.

When she�d left the last store, heading for her car, the low sun had shone sharply in her eyes. Now, as they traveled west, it would be shining in Cage�s eyes. Too low for the visor to block the glare? Was he wearing dark glasses? If not, and the sun was half blinding him, could she do something to make him swerve and crash? But the odds of doing that weren�t good. Tied up in her own car, she�d be unable to escape such a wreck.

Certainly no one was looking for her, not yet. No one in Molena Point would expect her at any given time-except Dulcie, she thought, feeling sad, and yet knowing hope, too. When she didn�t come home, when she hadn�t pulled into the garage by dark, her friends, if they called, would simply think she was delayed, as any woman shopping might be, or that she was in heavy traffic. But Dulcie would be pacing, the little cat would be growing frantic. Knowing Dulcie, it wouldn�t be long until she started raising some hell. She�d call Clyde, then Charlie. One way or another, she�d alert Max Harper. Max would go by the house and, when she didn�t appear long after dark and they couldn�t rouse her on her cell phone, he�d have every cop in northern California looking for her.

She wasn�t carrying her purse, only a fanny pack; her purse was locked in the trunk, and her phone locked in the glove compartment with her gun. Maybe Cage hadn�t used her key, yet, to gain access, to find her weapon and her phone, and play back her messages. And what was the difference? So someone wasworried about her? That would be of little interest to Cage. Let them worry.

Did anyone else know Cage had escaped? Had it been in the papers, or on the news? In fact, had the jailers themselves done a head count and realized he was gone? Or had he pulled off something so slick that he hadn�t yet come up missing? Slipups could escalate; jails were overcrowded and shorthanded; men traded identities, bought their way out with help from friends. Knowing Cage, that�s what he would have tried. But whatever had come down, or would, right now, Wilma put most of her hope in one lonely and worried little tabby; thoughts of Dulcie stirring up some action helped considerably to soothe her.

Cage�s window was down, and the hot air grew cooler, the light through the blindfold dimming as evening drew down. When the car took a right off the freeway, she eased up to listen; she could hear less traffic now. Soon they made another turn, and their speed decreased as they climbed up a bumpy road. Sniffing the air, she caught the scent of dry grass, then later of pine and eucalyptus trees, so they had to be heading up into the coastal hills. There was a lot of empty land up there along the higher ridges, above the small horse farms and ranches. Was Cage making for some sparsely populated region where a body could be dumped and maybe never found?

Oh,Dulcie. If they don�t find me, you mustn�t grieve. I love you. Please,go live with Joe and Clyde,or with Kit and the Greenlaws. Take care of yourself. Please,do what�s best for you. The pine scent was sharper now, carried on a welcome cool breeze that hushed, high above her, through tall trees. There was no longer any light through the blindfold; she rode in darkness, bumping along to�where?

10

A t dusk, up on the open hills where the hot grass blew brown and rattling, ten feral cats paced nervously along a broken stone wall, watching the hills below for the hunting beasts that roamed the hills and for invading and curious humans; the clowder of cats was always alert and wary as they roamed among the estate�s fallen rooms and ragged walls and overgrown weedy rosebushes. Below them down the falling hills, all the world lay open, wild and empty, and close around them among fallen stone and hidden cellars where the shadows lay thick, all was silent and still. There was nothing to disturb them, this hot summer evening, but the ten cats paced, lashing their tails, wary and nervous: The human woman had come again into the ruins: the wraithlike young woman who came too often, hurrying stealthily down from the scattered small houses in the hills high above, a pale creature, half child, half woman, asskinny as a starving bird. Always, she crept into the rotting, overgrown old travel trailer that had ages ago been hidden among the fallen walls. She would lurk in there like a mouse in a rusting can, as if seeking privacy and quiet, as if wanting to hide there.

The trailer seemed a part of the vines that covered it, as if they had grown right into its metal skin. It must have been hauled up the little dirt road countless years ago, and pushed by men in among the half-fallen walls and left to rot. Even when their feral band had first come to live in this place, they had not, beneath its heavy mantle of ivy, discovered the trailer for nearly a week. It was not visible, even to a cat, from more than a few feet away. Willow had found it, her inquisitive nose following the stink of mildew.

Once they had discovered and investigated it, and had determined that no beast had taken up residence there, they had slipped away nervously, and had afterward avoided the rusting box, giving it a wide berth. But the thin, pale girl-woman, walking so sad, always wary and sad, liked to hide there.

The trailer could not be seen from the narrow dirt road below; that road hadn�t been used since the cats had come to live there. Nor could the top of it be glimpsed from the wooded hills above; Cotton had gone up there to look. No human ever came down through these woods from the far houses except the human girl slipping down into their own realm of shadows like a lost spirit from some ancient Celtic ballad. This band of cats knew the old myths, for they were part of their own history. These little, wild cats knew that they were out of place in this world. They were survivors in a world where such beasts were said not to exist, where humans no longer believed in such creatures. They were trapped in a world they didn�t understand and that would never understand them. With their human intelligence and human perceptions, they had learned to survive, to take what they needed from mankind and remain apart. But now, looking down to the sea, stained with the reds of sunset, and to the glinting rooftops of the far village, their thoughts were filled with the unwanted concerns that had reached out to touch them. Willow paced the wall, the faded calico hissing with agitation, and warily the others watched her, knowing well her strange perceptions, and sharply attentive to her fear. For Willow and Coyote and Cotton had friends in the village. This last winter when the weather was cold and wet, three village cats and their humans had saved them from a cage and set them free-three cats like themselves, who could speak with humans. Three who had chosen to liveamong humans.

Now, something was not right among those three; sharply Willow sensed Dulcie�s unease. �What?� she whispered. �What is this distress for tabby Dulcie, what has happened that makes her pace and shiver?� She looked at Cotton and Coyote, but they couldn�t sense what she felt-though on the wall beside her, the two toms paid attention. As had the other ferals, all seven, who had vanished uneasily among the stones and caverns.

Clyde Damen was more than uneasy. Switching lanes fast in his old open roadster, dodging village traffic, he swerved in front of a bread truck, so the driver slammed on his brakes, blasted his horn, and yelled obscenities; but then the man stared down at Clyde�s classic yellow Chevy and grinned with admiration and motioned Clyde ahead. Clyde gave him a thumbs-up, went in front of him and wheeled across Ocean, heading for Wilma�s cottage. He didn�t know how he�d explain his swift arrival to the law. He�d think of something to tell Harper. He�d say he�d called Wilma to see if she was home and wanted to catch dinner, that when she hadn�t answered he�d decided to run by, and there were Harper�s squad cars all over. Looking frantically for a place to park among the patrol units, he ended up two blocks away, squeezing the roadster inbetween a couple of old pickups, swinging out of the car, and hurrying back to Wilma�s.

Impossible to stay out of sight, there were uniforms everywhere-except not trampling her flowers, even the rookies knew better than to trash Wilma�s garden. Hitting the front walk of the low stone house, he headed for Officer Brennan, whose large girth guarded the front door. Behind Clyde, two patrol cars took off burning rubber, and a third sped away up the narrow street in the opposite direction.

He started to speak to Brennan, but then he saw Dulcie and Kit at the far end of the house, huddled in shadow beside the back steps, looking small and miserable. Glancing at Brennan, who had turned to speak to someone inside, he hurried across the yard and picked up Dulcie. He reached for Kit, but she gave him a wild look and bolted away, up the nearest oak. Holding Dulcie close, he slipped around the far side of the house looking for privacy where they could talk.

�I called you,� she whispered, climbing to his shoulder. �You didn�t answer�I left messages�� Her face was close to his, her green eyes wide with distress.

�Dispatcher called me,� he said, cuddling her.

�She�s gone,� Dulcie whispered. �She hasn�t come home, but someone�� Her tail lashed against him, her ears laid back in worried anger. �Her packages are here, her overnight bag. Her car�s here. There were two men inside-Cage Jones and someone else,� she said, hissing. �They tore the house apart, they were in the bedroom, we saw them. Searching for something. What could they want? Kit and I watched them going through her things; when they ran out, I heard a car on the next street but couldn�t see it, don�t know what kind or which way it went. I called the station�Ten minutes later I heard it again, fast but quieter�as if they�d doubled back�

�Those men�They�re the only ones who know where she is, who know what happened to her. Your cell phone�I have to call Mabel back, tell her what they look like! I didn�t tell her.� Frantically she pawed at his jacket pockets. �Where-�

�Tell me what they look like, Dulcie. I�ll call. If a cop comes around the corner-�

�How can you? You had no chance to see them, they were gone when you got here. Shove the phone under a bush. Make it snappy.�

Glancing around for uniforms, Clyde punched in 911 for her, knelt, and laid his cell phone deep under a camellia bush among a carpet of dead brown blooms. As she talked, he paced, watching the front yard and the back, but only when he had pocketed the phone again and picked up Dulcie once more did he relax.�You sure she hasn�t been home?� he whispered. �Maybe went out again? If this is a false alarm, Dulcie, if-�

�Came home and what? Tore up her own house? Tipped over the furniture? Trashed her desk?� She stared bleakly into his face. �No one in the world but those two men know where she is. And now they�re gone.�

�She was going to stop in Gilroy,� Clyde said. �She called me early last evening, wanted to know if she could pick up anything for me.�

Dulcie sighed.�She called Lucinda after supper. She sounded fine, then.� The little cat leaned against his cheek, swallowing.

�Dulcie, did she check out of her hotel?�

Dulcie�s eyes widened.

�Come on�� Holding the dark tabby close, he made for the front of the house, up the steps past Brennan, and burst into the living room where Harper was helping Detective Garza lift prints. Both men turned to stare at him, scowling.

�This is a crime scene,� Harper said. �You know better than to come in here. And how did you know? Ten minutes since the call came in.� The tall, thin chief was dressed in his usual frontier shirt and jeans, Dallas Garza in faded jeans, a dark turtleneck, and an ancient tweed sport coat.

�Did she check out?� Clyde asked. �Check out of the Hyatt this morning? The one at the wharf.�

Max just looked at him.

�Did she check out?�

�Seven, sharp.� Max studied Clyde, frowning, stared at the cat in Clyde�s arms, shook his head, and turned away, his leathery face unnaturally drawn. �She�s been home,� Max said. �Or, it looks that way. Overnight bag�s here. Packages. Car in the garage. Either before or after she got home, the place was tossed.� He turned to look hard at Clyde again. Harper and Clyde were as close as brothers, but right now, Max�s head was filled with questions. �Caller wouldn�t identify herself, said the door was unlocked. Said she came in, saw two men in the bedroom, they saw her andran out.�

�Who called? Couldn�t you-�

Harper shook his head.�No caller ID. Said she was a neighbor.� Max frowned, compounding the wrinkles on his long, thin face. �I�ve never known Wilma to leave a door unlocked. Or the kitchen in a mess like that. Even the way she unpacked�Go back and take a look, see what you think.�

�I don�t know how she unpacks, Max. Call Charlie, Charlie would know.� Wilma�s niece had lived with her aunt for several months; she�d know things about Wilma�s personal habits that even he or Max might not.

�I can�t reach Charlie. She was going to ride with Ryan this evening. Can�t get Ryan, either. They�ll have their phones off.� Since Charlie had finished the manuscript and drawings for her first book, she�d been riding every evening, making up for lost time, sometimes waiting for Max toget home so they could have a gallop over the hills together, but more often going alone or with Ryan, enjoying the horses before she got back to work on new commissions for animal portraits and on her own drawings and prints.

�I heard,� Clyde said uneasily, �that Cage Jones escaped. Doesn�t his sister live in the village?�

Max nodded.�That house Cage and Lilly�s parents left them. Couple of hours ago, the minute we knew Jones had walked, Dallas and Davis picked up a warrant, searched the house. His sister Lilly says she hasn�t seen Cage, didn�t know he�d escaped.� Max shrugged. �Said she doesn�t listen to the news much-now, we�ll double back, have another look. Though it�s not likely Cage would hide her in his own house-if hewas fool enough to kidnap a retired federal officer.�

Max turned to Wilma�s desk, stood looking out the front window. �Sure like to talk with the woman who tipped us.� He looked at Clyde, scowling. �Could be our phantom snitch, but I can�t figure how that adds up,� he said irritably. �How the hell can she or her partner always be in the right place at the right time!�

Clyde felt Dulcie�s claws kneading nervously on his arm. Harper�s frustration at the unidentified but accurate tips he�d been receiving for several years was both stressful and comical. Clyde shook his head. �Doesn�t make sense, does it?� he said innocently. �I don�t know, Max. If they weren�t always right, if they hadn�t been a help in so many cases��

�I�m not sorry to have those two,� Max said. �Even if their seeming clairvoyance does drive me up the wall!�

�Is that what you think? Some kind of�?�

�I don�t know what the hell I think,� Max snapped. He continued to watch Clyde, then shook his head. �Made up my mind not to think about it. Take the information and run with it, not ask questions.� The chief reached to his pocket for a cigarette, something he hadn�t done for a long time. �Sometimes, it�s damned hard not to run those two snitches to ground, or try to. I wish to hell�

�But what�s the good, wishing,� Max said. �I just hope Wilma knows that Jones conned his way out of jail. What kind of shop are they running, releasing a guy on false ID!�

�Not the first time that�s happened,� Clyde said. �And Jones won�t know that Wilma was going to shop in Gilroy. Anyway, the minute he got out, wouldn�t he run? Head for another state?�

�Guess you haven�t heard the rest.�

In Clyde�s arms, Dulcie had gone as rigid as a stone, pressing her head into the crook of his arm.

�Bennett was shot two hours ago,� Max said. �As he left the office.�

Clyde squeezed Dulcie so hard she had to swallow back a mewl.�How bad?� He loosened his grip on Dulcie and contritely stroked her.

�He�s in intensive care. They got him in the shoulder and chest. San Francisco General. There�s a statewide bulletin out, I just talked with the sheriff up there, he�s got deputies all over Gilroy, all over the outlet mall. Mabel e-mailed them a picture of Wilma, that one in Wilma�s bedroom of her and Charlie at our wedding.�

�And her car�s here?�

�In the garage.� Max shook his head. �So far, nothing. Couple of tiny spots of blood on the side of the backseat, down next to the door. No more than a scratch would produce. Sample�s gone to the lab. Haven�t dusted the car for prints yet�� Max�s phone buzzed. He clicked on, listened and scowled.

Clicking off, he looked at Clyde.�Dispatcher has a description of the two men, the call just came in. From the same woman. Description matches Cage Jones, and I think I know the other guy.� He sat down at Wilma�s desk, looking tired. �The same snitch,� he said again. �Mabel had her hands full dispatching on a drunk call.� He looked up at Clyde. �Why didn�t that woman give Mabel those descriptions the first time she called?�

�Maybe she was in plain sight when they ran out, maybe she was too busy hiding from them.� He felt Dulcie�s ragged little attempt at a purr as she eased closer against him. �What�s the game plan? If Jones has Wilma, what can you do and not put her in danger?�

But Max was on the phone again, moving men into position, then motioning to Dallas; Clyde looked around at the trashed living room. He felt sick inside. And scared. Max was saying,��use the gas and electric company uniforms, get one of their emergency trucks. And a water company truck, three men. I want to watch the house for as long as it takes. We�re not rushing in.�

Clyde listened, thinking how unstable Jones was. If Wilma was in there�He stroked Dulcie, trying to calm her. Trying to calm himself. He didn�t like the way she felt under his hand, her tabby body hard and rigid, the way a sick cat feels to the touch. He stroked her gently, worrying over Wilma and worrying over the little tabby. Why the hell had this happened! Why the hell hadn�t Cage just skipped, gotten out of California!

Max looked around the room.�Davis is on her way up to Gilroy. Everything about this breakin looks like a distraction. Could be, she was never in the house at all. Possible they brought her car and her bag back to confuse and delay us.�

�I�m heading for Gilroy,� Clyde said, and he felt Dulcie�s paws tighten on his arm.

�The hell you are,� Max said. �You�d be in the way, make the sheriff mad. Let them do their work.�

�I�ll stay out of the way. I won�t hassle Davis, either. I just want to be there.� He expected Max to give him a stronger argument. When he didn�t, Clyde headed for the door, wondering how to keep Dulcie from demanding that she go, because clearly, as she brightened up and cocked her ears, that was what she was thinking.

�You taking that cat?� Max called after him, raising an eyebrow.

�Thought I�d drop the cat off with Lucinda,� he said over his shoulder. �With all the commotion, the house torn up, she seems really stressed. She�ll be safer there.�

In fact, Clyde meant to do just that. Clutching Dulcie, he beat it to his car as Max turned away to answer an officer�s question. Crossing the garden, beneath the oaks, he glanced up into the branches where Kit stared down, her yellow eyes huge. With the living room windows wide open, she�d heard every word. But she wasn�t coming down to him. She backed away when he reached up. Changing his mind about taking Dulcie to the Greenlaws�, he shoved her up into the branches beside Kit. �You�re staying here,� he said softly. �Try to stay out of trouble,� he said, knowing it was a useless suggestion.

�Wait,� Dulcie whispered. �Wait, Clyde.�

�Hush. We can�t talk here.�

�They can�t hear us, with your back to the house. They can�t seeus, in here among the leaves.� Dulcie looked into Clyde�s face, her green eyes questioning. �Please, Clyde�I don�tknow what to do.� He had never seen the little tabby unsure of herself; Dulcie was just as decisive and hardheaded as Joe Grey.

She looked at him deeply, her green eyes huge and afraid.�I want to go with you. And I�I want to look in Jones�s house. If he took Wilma thereafter Harper searched, a second search will be dangerous for her. If Kit and I can get in first, before Harper�s men�If she�s there, we can find a phone in there, we can call, tell them what room and if she�s tied up, tell them if she�s hurt, and who�s in the house�� She looked at him intently. Clyde shook his head.

�It�s that,� she said, �or I go with you to Gilroy to help look for her.�

11

C lyde looked up into the shadowed leaves of the oak tree at Dulcie�s stubborn green gaze. These three cats sure complicated life.

�Wilma�s in danger!� the tabby snapped. �You think I�m going to sit here polishing my claws? Jones has already tried to kill Bennett!� She hissed angrily at him, then spun away through the branches. �Come on, Kit.� And before Clyde could argue, the two cats were gone, leaping from that oak into the next and up a pine tree, and away across the rooftops. Clyde stood staring after them, then headed for his car. Damned cats never listened. He tried to remind himself that Cage Jones would have no reason to hurt a neighborhood cat if he saw them sneaking around his house. They were cats, cats were no threat to an escaped con. Praying for their safety, and thinking that before he headed for the freeway he�d better gas up, he was nearly bowled over when something hit him from behind. Swinging around to punch his assailant, he felt claws digging into his shoulder, as if Joe had leaped down on him from the roof. �Keep your claws in! I suppose you heard everything.�

�Of course I heard everything. I came straight over from the station. We don�t have much time before the shops close. Where�s your car?�

�You�re not going to Gilroy.�

�Says who? Get a move on. It�s already past seven.�

�I can�t take you in the stores, they�ll call security.�

�They have a discount pet store, you can pick up one of those fancy pet carriers that look like luggage. I can sniff out her trail through the mesh door-if there�s any scent to follow.� Clinging to Clyde�s shoulder, Joe peered around into his face. �I�m the only one who can track her scent. Unless they bring in dogs. If we don�t get moving, we might never know if shegot to Gilroy!�

�I take a cat carrier in those stores, security�ll be all over me. A big bag like that, perfect for shoplifting! Bad as that backpack in San Francisco. That store cop nearly-�

�We spent three hundred dollars in that store.�

�Three hundred ofmy dollars.�

�And we royally entertained the store guard-supplied him with a nice little story to tell his wife and neighbors.�

Clyde sighed, and pulled the tomcat off his shoulder, tearing his shirt in the process. Setting Joe up in an oak branch, he sprinted for his car-only to feel Joe brush past his leg, see a gray streak sail over the door of the yellow roadster and hunch down on the leather seat.

Swinging in on the driver�s side, Clyde started the Chevy and turned to look at Joe. �I can�t take you to Gilroy in an open car, on the freeway, it�s too dangerous.�

�Just as dangerous for you. So put the top up.�

�A soft top is going to protect you at freeway speeds? And it�s getting dark. That discount mall is nothing but parking lots. Reckless drivers in a hurry to get home. Too many cars, Joe. And you wouldn�tstay in a carrier. I can never trust you. You could get-�

�Crushed under someone�s wheels,� Joe snapped. �Picked up by strangers. So stop by the shop, pick up a hard top. You have a hundred cars you can choose from.�

�There isn�t time.�

Joe flexed his paws just above Clyde�s expensive new upholstery, the soft yellow leather as creamy as butter. �Not a scratch on it. Yet,� he said softly. �Really beautiful. Wasn�t this the most expensive leather they had?�

Clyde wanted to wring Joe�s furry gray neck. He waited for Joe to retract his claws, then eased the vintage roadster into gear and headed for Ocean Avenue, for his automotive shop.

The tomcat watched him narrowly.�One trick,� Joe said, �one act of subterfuge, and you�ll have dead mice in your bed every night for the rest of your natural life. Ripe, smelly mice specially aged for your benefit.�

Clyde turned into the broad drive of Beckwhite�s Automotive and stepped out of the car. �You will behave in Gilroy. You will do as I say, every minute. Or I swear, Joe, I will leave you in a cage at the county animal shelter.�

Joe looked back at him with chilling feline disdain.

Turning away, Clyde activated the overhead door of his big repair and maintenance shop that occupied the north half of Beckwhite Automotive. The handsome Mediterranean building provided, besides Clyde�s several spacious repair and storage garages and work bays, a vast, elegant showroom along the south side: tile-floored exhibit space for the latest models of BMW, Mercedes, Lexus, and a dozen far richer imports, as well as high-priced antique models. Clyde leased his space in exchange for handling all repairs and regular maintenance on Beckwhite�s customers� vehicles. Joe watched, peering through the roadster�s windshield and the big doors as Clyde disappeared into a back garage.

In a few minutes, a new white Lexus SUV eased out from the back. Clyde pulled it onto the front drive, put the roadster in the shop, scooped Joe up from the front seat, and dropped him in the SUV. Threatening the tomcat with mayhem if he clawed, or even shed upon, its soft black leather, he shut the big shop door behind them, and headed for Gilroy.

After two blocks, as he turned onto Highway 1, headed for 101, Clyde fished his cell phone from his pocket and dropped it on the leather seat.�Try Charlie. Max couldn�t reach her.�

�She always carries her cell. Where would she be, that she wouldn�t answer?�

�Riding, Max thought.�

Frowning, Joe punched in Charlie�s number. When she didn�t answer, he tried the number for the Harper�s small, hillside ranch. In both instances there were four rings, then the voice mail clicked in. Pressing disconnect, he stared at Clyde.

�Try Ryan.�

Joe went through the same routine: same pattern of four rings, then a message recording.

�Riding,� Clyde said again; but a worried frown darkened his brown eyes.

The old man slipped away after watching the police action around the Getz house, having seen and heard enough to know that Wilma Getz had disappeared. This made him smile. Sure as hell, Cage had her. Served the old bitch right.

He guessed he�d better get on over to Lilly�s while he still had the chance, before Harper sent someone to search the house again, because that cop would be sure to do it. He�d have to make it damn fast, knowing Harper. He hoped to hell Cage wasn�t there.

Not likely, though, with cops crawling all over. Specially as that car Cage�d been driving when he left here, that old blue Plymouth thick with dirt, that�d be easy enough to spot if there�d been a witness. Someone must�ve seen it, to call the law. Well, Cage wouldn�t go home, Cage was smarter�n that. Maybe he�d stashed Wilma there, and now would take off down the coast. Or head north. Either way, Cage knew how to lose a cop on them back roads. Thinking about that, Greeley headed up the hills on foot, toward Cage�s place, moving fast, thinking how best to approach Lilly Jones, how best to handle her.

The Jones house stood above the village on the ridge of a canyon that cut down from the Molena Point hills, an old brown house, tall and narrow, an ugly frame structure with straight sides, surrounded by brittle-leafed eucalyptus trees that, in the faint wind, shook and rattled against the siding. Ten small windows in the front, five above, five below.

Greeley walked for several blocks, circling the house, looking for Cage�s car. Didn�t find it. Back at the house, he studied the drive that sloped down to the garage beneath the two floors; the drive was covered with dust and leaves. Didn�t look like Cage or anyone else had pulled in there for a long time. He was about to approach the five brick steps that led to the front door when a water company truck turned onto the street, parking a block down. A pair of uniformed utility workers got out and knelt by the curb.

Removing a heavy metal lid, they peered in, making notes, fiddling with the meter or the pipes or whatever; they took their time, then moved on to the next meter box. Pretty late in the day for water company personnel, unless there was an emergency. Was this a stakeout, waiting for Cage? He couldn�t hear what they were saying, but a chill of unease filled Greeley.

But what difference, if theywere cops? They weren�t watching him, they had nothing on him. It was a free country. He had started toward the steps again when a gas company truck pulled up from the other direction, parking in front of a low white house. Three men dressed in gray jumpsuits got out. Moved in between the houses, one after another, as if checking the meters or connections. Men who, in Greeley�s opinion, got to work too fast for city employees.

Well, he�d just arrived in town recently, he�d gone to school with Cage. He could come to the house if he liked, maybe come to see Lilly, see how Cage was doing. What business was that of Harper�s?

Mounting the steps, he rang the bell, stood listening for sounds from within, for the shuffle of feet approaching, for Lilly�s slow, deliberate movement. Cage�s sister�d never liked him much, even when they was kids in grammar school, him and Mavity and Cage-and that Wilma Getz. Lilly was some older, in high school then. Tall, bone thin, dry as dust even when she was young.

The door creaked open, and Lilly Jones stood there tall and plain and wearing the kind of shapeless cotton dress his own mother had called a housedress; Lilly was more dried up and skinnier than ever.

�Evening, Lilly. It�s me, Greeley Urzey. Heard Cage was out of prison and I come over to visit.�

Lilly looked at him like she might look at a frog skewered on a stick.�Cage isn�t here. I don�t know where he is. What did you want?�

�Like I said, to visit. Been a while since I seen Cage.� Greeley gave her what he considered a winning smile. �You going to ask me in? It�s been a long time, Lilly. It�s hot out, I�d sure enjoy a drink of water. It sure is mighty hot, even this time of evening. Water, or that good lemonade you make. You always made the best lemonade, back when we was kids.�

Lilly looked resigned or too tired to argue. She backed away from the door, motioned him in, pointed to the couch. The woman wasn�t big on graciousness. But then Greeley guessed maybe he wasn�t so smooth, either, in the manners department. Mavity said that often enough. But what the hell difference, anyway?

�I can make you some frozen lemonade,� Lilly said shortly. �That�s the best I can do. There are some magazines there on the table. But he isn�t here, Greeley. And he won�t be.�

This, Greeley thought, was going to take a while. She�d kill time in the kitchen fiddling with the lemonade, and then the long process of drinking the sour stuff and trying to draw her out. He glanced around the tired-looking, faded room figuring out just what questions to ask her, how best to pull this off. Old woman was prickly as a cactus. Looked like she hadn�t changed a stick of furniture in the room since he and Cage was kids slipping up the stairs to Cage�s room and locking the door behind them.

When Lilly finally returned with the lemonade and handed him a glass and sat down, he took his time sipping and smacking, telling her how good it was. She looked at him coldly.

�What did you come for, Greeley?�

�Cage didn�t call you? Well, he figured he might not be able to, said he�d try. He needs some clothes and things, plans to�be gone awhile. He�s out, you know.�

�I thought you hadn�t seen him.�

�Well, he told me to be careful what I said. Until I saw you was alone, saw that the cops wasn�t here.�

�Hiding from the law again,� Lilly said dryly, not seeming at all curious about why or how Cage was out on the streets.

�Well, yes, ma�am. He didn�t have no clothes, and-�

�He can buy clothes.�

�He told me to come on down to the house, told me to check his closet, pretty much told me which ones to get. And his razor and toothbrush, like that��

�Surely he has money to buy what he wants.�

�I guess he doesn�t want to be seen just now,� Greeley said diffidently.

�I should think not. He almost killed a man today.�

That shook Greeley, that she knew.

�That federal officer could die,� Lilly said. �Cage belongs in prison.�

Greeley wondered, ifhe was in this much trouble, wouldhis sister, Mavity, be as hateful as Lilly Jones? He gave Lilly a gentle smile.�Cage said there was some kind of suitcase or duffle bag. Said to pack up his stuff, whatever I thought he�d need. If it�s all right with you, of course�� He was growing uneasy. This old woman was going to run him off-or try to.

It would be a sight easier if he had the house to himself. If he could search in his own way, take his time. But he hadn�t figured out, yet, how to accomplish that.

Lilly looked at him silently for a long time. He waited for her to tell him to get out, but then she settled back, watching him.�Tell me where he is. Tell me exactly what happened. Tell me why he shot that federal officer. If you tell me all of it, we�ll see about the clothes.�

12

D ulcie and Kit, too, were headed for the Jones house, racing up into the hills, skirting the canyon, where a fitful wind blew at their backs, pushing them along and ruffling their fur. Shouldering through tinder-dry weeds, they bounded into bright flower beds, then tangled grass, then across the back garden of the four senior ladies, on and on, up the ridge through all manner of backyards; at the crest of the hill, they circled around to the street, to the front entrance of the Jones house, just as Greeley had done.

The tall, brown, boxlike dwelling stood on the highest blunt ridge, nearly smothered by eucalyptus trees, a two-story structure with no architectural grace, though the trees hid most of its faults, the silvery-leafed giants crowding so close that their wind-tossed branches rattled against the siding, slapping the cracked wood.

The lumpy front yard was dry and bald, with a thin scattering of scruffy grass. There was no sign that anyone watered, or cared about growing things. Dulcie paused to pull a thorn from her paw, gripping it in her teeth and jerking hard, then spitting it out. A few parked cars stood along the street or in the narrow, cracked driveways. One imagined garages too full of trashy personal treasures to accommodate even a bicycle. No person could be seen in the yards or at the windows. In a few houses, though, lights were on. Above the darkening rooftops, the evening sky was still silvered with the fading day. Venetian blinds covered the windows of the Jones house. All were closed, so the cats could not see in; a faint light burned in what seemed to be the living room.

A block away, a water company truck was parked, as if out late on an emergency call, two uniformed men bent over the curbside meters. One was Officer Blake, a tall, balding, string bean of a man. The cats didn�t know the other officer. Down at the other end of the block, three PG&E employees were working, as if perhaps attending to the same emergency: two were older officers the cats had never seen. The cats knew that Max Harper had men on call for surveillance, when he might be shorthanded. Despite the late-afternoon heat, the windows of the Jones house were all closed.

�Must be like an oven in there,� Dulcie said. �Could Lilly have air-conditioning? Oh, not in this old house.� Most folks on the coast didn�t bother with artificial cooling; usually a sharp evening breeze took care of any unusual heat. Kit counted the windows and studied the size of the house, staring high above them. �Why would she live alone, in such a big old place?�

�It belongs half to her and half to Cage,� Dulcie said. �When he was on parole, Wilma suggested he get something smaller, put the money in savings, but he didn�t want to do that. I guess the house is paid for, so Lilly lives rent free. Their parents bought it years and years ago, when they were first married�I�ll bet they never dreamed it might be a place for their son to hide from the law.�

Circling the house, sniffing the front porch and along the narrow, leaf-covered driveway that slanted down to the basement garage, they caught not the faintest scent of Wilma.

�If she isn�t here,� Dulcie whispered, �where has he taken her?�

Kit studied the house, her yellow eyes burning with thoughts of getting inside. They checked the basement vents, but all were solidly screwed in place. They slipped up the eucalyptus trees, one after the other, to inspect the attic vents, but these, too, were securely fastened.

The back blinds and the upstairs blinds were all open, as if Lilly was concerned only with privacy from the street. Peering in from the trees through upstairs windows, they made out four sad-looking bedrooms and one old-fashioned bathroom. When they looked into the main floor from the back of the house, they found an equally outdated kitchen and bathroom, all grim, neglected rooms; it appeared that no one had painted those box tan walls or replaced any rug or piece of marred furniture since the place was built.

Was that because Lilly didn�t have the money, or because she didn�t care? Not likely Cage would care. There was a younger sister, but she had married and moved out shortly after the parents� deaths. The cats pressed their noses to a living room window, trying to see through the cracks of the closed Venetian blinds; they could see nothing, but voices reached them�A TV? No, these were live voices, one scratchy and familiar. Dulcie looked at Kit.�Greeley? Greeley Urzey? It can�t be. Why would he be here? What would Mavity�s brother be doing here?� Tense with questions, she pressed her ear to the dusty pane.

�It�s Greeley, all right,� she said, listening. �Mavity told Wilma he was in town. Moved right in with her, freeloading as usual. But why would he be here? He doesn�t know�Oh,� she said. �He�d know Lilly!� The idea of a connection between Greeley and Lilly Jones, or Cage Jones, didn�t seem to wash until she remembered that Wilma had gone to school with Cage as well as with Mavity and Greeley. She thought Cage and Greeley had been friends, then. All children together, so very long ago.

�Here,� Kit whispered, edging along the sill. �You can see in here, where the slat�s bent.�

Crowding against Kit, Dulcie peered between two slats.

Faded brown couch, faded chairs long overdue for recovering. One frilly lamp lit with a low-watt, dull bulb. Mothy-looking afghans folded over the upholstered chair and couch backs, as if to hide excessive wear. And on the walls, dusty-looking needlework pictures of flowers and square-faced dogs crammed between a collection of huge, ugly masks. What an unsettling combination, the prim, prissy needlework and the rude, primitive faces, crudely made and garishly colored: the faces of devils with their mouths open and tongues sticking out, the heads of snarling jungle beasts with fangs bared and dark holes for eyes, each aboriginal face adorned with jutting feathers.

Even in the history and art books Dulcie liked to browse through in the midnight library, she had never seen uglier masks. The effect of so many huge, violent faces leering down into that stumpy, fussy, old-fashioned room was totally off-putting-as if evil spirits had thrust through the walls, an out-of-control primitive world breaking into that dull, proper house.

Greeley Urzey sat on the couch, a fusty, rumpled old man as out of place in the prim room as were the wild masks. He and Lilly spoke so softly that, even with their excellent hearing, the cats could make little of the conversation.

�Why is he here?� Dulcie said. �He and Cage went to school together, but�Could this have to do with Wilma? Greeley hates Wilma�Is Greeley part of this? Is Wilma locked in there, and Greeley guarding her?� She looked helplessly at Kit. �We have to get in�Maybe the basement?�

Kit shivered, not wanting to be shut in that house with Greeley Urzey. That old man knew about speaking cats, and he knew they were close to the law. For that alone he hated them.

�Come on,� Dulcie said, dropping from the windowsill, down to the bushes, to circle the house again. But as they rounded the corner, Kit paused in a flower bed. Resigned to Dulcie�s determination, she looked up past a scrawny jasmine vine to a high, small window.

�Bathroom window?� Kit said. �Would she bother to lock that? No human could get through that.�

�And I doubt a cat can get up that vine,� Dulcie said, �without tearing it from the wall-spindly thing doesn�t look strong enough to hold a mouse.� But, testing it, she started up anyway, heading gingerly for the little window.

Tied in a hard, straight-backed chair, Wilma couldn�t move without the tight ropes cutting into her arms and ankles. The worst was the tight bandana binding her eyes. She fought panic at being unable to see where she was, to see what-or who-was near her.

At least he�d removed the tape from across her mouth, had ripped it off, surely taking half her skin with it, saying, �You can yell now, bitch. Yell all you want, there�s not a soul to hear you or to care.�

There�d been a time when Cage wouldn�t have dared call her bitch. The room was so hot, the blindfold and her jacket so constricting she felt locked in a straightjacket. She was not a woman given to hysterics, but she felt very near the edge. Only her deep anger at Cage kept her fear at bay. She could not deal with him if she fell apart.If he ever returned, to be dealt with. If he did not simply leave her to starve or die of thirst. She was painfully thirsty. She tried not to think about water. She felt close to pure terror, and she must not let that happen. She had dealt with criminals most of her adult life. She was not going to give way now.

Cage had driven her car up into the hills somewhere, up a long, winding gravel road. Blinded, able only to listen, she had tried to sense where they were, tried, as well, to catch some familiar scent on the breeze, the way an animal would do.

He had parked on a gravel drive or yard. When he cut the engine, she�d heard the other car pull up behind them. Forcing her out of the car, Cage had untied her ankles long enough for her to walk across gravel and then rough, rocky earth, his hand bruising her arm as he roughly guided her. She�d smelled eucalyptus and pine trees, and had heard above her the faint swish of wings, then a few birds chirping. He�d pushed her up three wooden steps and through a door that slammed behind them. She heard him lock it, didn�t hear the other man enter. He forced her across a rough wooden floor, pushing her to avoid her falling over furniture. The place smelled ofdust and sour, rotting wood. When he shoved her into the straight-backed chair, she�d tried to talk to him, had felt so hindered because she couldn�t see him.

�What is it, Cage? What do you want from me? How did you get out? Whatever you did, it had to be pretty clever.�

He�d refused to be suckered by that. And had refused to remove the blindfold.

�For heaven�s sake, tell me what this is about. Maybe I can-�

�Where is it!� he�d barked.

�Where is what?�

�You know what! That day you searched my place, you and Bennett and the frigging DEA!�

�That was ten years ago!�

�Don�t matter. You have it, or had it, and I want it back-or want what you got for it.�

�I have no idea what you�re talking about. I don�tknow what you want.�

�You know damn well. You two took it, and I want it now. All of it.�

�I honestly don�t know. You�ll have to tell me, or we�ll be here forever.�

�That day after the friggin� feds left, you and Bennett were there by yourselves. There a long time, Lilly told me. You went through the house again and I want what you took. That�s stealing, stealing by federal officers. How do you think that would look. The newspapers would love to get holdof that.�

�So tell them.�

�First, I�m giving you a chance. Trying to treat you nice in spite of what you did. Lilly was there, she�s my witness. It�s mine, bitch. I want it back, now.�

�What did Lilly say we took? I can�t imagine your sister lying.�

Lilly Jones was the opposite of Cage in every way. She had always seemed an honest, straightlaced woman who believed in obeying the law. Opposite even in looks-Cage big boned, oversized, and bullish. Lilly frail, and as thin as a sick bird. Lilly Jones spoke little; when she did speak, her attitude was wooden and impassive, stolid to the point of insensibility. The younger sister, Violet, was even more withdrawn. But at least Violet had had the good sense to marry and get out. Or, it had seemed to be good sense at the time. Wilma heard later that she�d married an abuser. Violet had not been in evidence during the time Wilma supervised Cage, so she had never met the girl.

She realized suddenly that Cage had her purse, she could hear him going through it, and he began to comment on the pictures in her billfold. Until that moment she had convinced herself that she could talk Cage out of whatever this was about; she had assumed that onlyshe was in danger. Now, suddenly, she was far more afraid.

�Pretty redhead.� Cage�s voice told her he was smirking. �Maybe if you don�t want to give me what�s mine, don�t want to save yourself, you�ll like to save them that�s close to you.�

She hadn�t answered, had gone cold inside, and felt herself tremble. She heard him toss her purse aside, and then a small rustling as if he was flipping slowly through the packet of photographs she�d tucked in the bag.

�From these pictures,� Cage said, �looks like this redhead lives up in the hills. Lives pretty fancy, too, them horses and all. Nice big house like that, that tall peaked roof and glass and all, should be easy to spot from the road, even if you don�t have her address in here. Isn�t that Hellhag Hill rising up behind?

�Why, here�s another picture, and she�s getting married. That�s you, there, the flower girl or whatever. Must be a real close friend. Or a relative? Why, I believe that there�s your niece, the one they call Charlie.�

�Whatever you want from me, Cage, you touch her, you�ll never get away, the law will track you wherever you hide-and then they�ll burn you.�

Cage hit her hard, across the mouth. That was the first time he�d ever hit her. During the years that she�d had him on parole, then later on probation on a different charge, he would never have dared do that. He gave a cold laugh. �Bennett got his. You don�t want the same, bitch, you�ll tell me where you hid �em.� He�d gone silent for a moment,then, �If you sold �em, you�ll hand over the money pronto if you want to go home again. And if you want that redheaded niece safe. Is that how you bought that house of yours, that fancy stone house? With my money? You did, you�ll pay for that, too.�

�What did you do to Bennett?�

�How you think it�ll look to the feds, turns out you bought that house with stolen goods? Illegal to take that stuff out of the country. Illegal as hell just to have it. You and Bennett think of that?�

She�d longed to jerk off the blindfold and get a look at him. If he�d hurt Bennett�And if he hurt Charlie�Unable to see his face, she cringed from helplessness. But how could anything have happened to Mandell? Mandell was quick, and he always went armed�No, Cage had to be bluffing. How couldhe have hadtime to get at Mandell?

She and Mandell had had dinner together in the city just last night, a wonderful Chinese meal at Tommie Toy�s. They�d talked for a long while over tea and dessert. Surely, at that time, Cage was safely in jail-in jail until sometime this morning, apparently. But not a federal prison, just a city jail, overcrowded, understaffed, far easier to figure a way out�If he had found Mandell after he escaped�

�That big house of your niece�s, looks to be about half a mile this side of Hellhag Hill, right along the crest there. Easy to spot, easy access in and out, too.� He�d grabbed and shaken her. �You want to tell me what you did with �em?�

When she remained silent, he hit her again, harder. He said nothing more. He turned, and left the house. She heard both cars drive away, crunching little rocks under their tires. She thought the other man was Eddie Sears, Cage�s old partner. She�d seen Eddie only once in person, ten years ago. And she had seen a mug shot or two. Thin, long face. Younger than Cage, thirty-something. Brown hair. When the cars left, she�d fought to get free. But now, what seemed like hours later, she was still fighting.

13

T he frail vine sagged under Dulcie�s weight, but as it tore she scrambled up fast; the trellis was fragile, too, swaying and cracking. The smell of the jasmine blossoms was too sweet. She was clawing up at the little, double-hung window when beneath her hind paws a slat broke. She fell, clawing at the sill, ripping down the rusted screen. As she was snatching through to the window�s mullions, she managed to dig her claws into a little crosspiece and hang there, desperately swinging.

�Hurry!� Kit hissed unsympathetically.

Reaching and stretching, she clawed at the top of the frame until she got a grip. The window slid under her weight, dropping like an elevator. She swung up fast, bellying through the torn screen, pulling and tearing her fur, then regained her balance crouching atop the double-hung window, staring down into the dark little bathroom. She heard Kit storm up the trellis behind her, moving so fast that when two more rungs gave way, Kit�s momentum carried her to the sill-with a desperate leap she was through the window, right in Dulcie�s face. They dropped to the sink together, then to the floor as softly as they could. They�d worry later about how to get out. Boldly, Kit took the lead, slipping through into the hall-seeming not to remember how she had, not long ago, been trapped while snooping in a felon�s house and unable to escape.

The Jones house smelled of old wood, old dust, old clothes worn too long, an unpleasant m?lange of stale scents trapped in closed spaces. Following the voices, they looked from the hall into the living room, then slipped in, bellying beneath an unoccupied armchair into dust that threatened uncontrolled sneezes. Peering out, Dulcie looked up at the masks and shivered. How could anyone live among the hideous faces that leered down from the dark walls? The primitive masks had, she felt sure, come from South or Central America; she had seen many like them in the library, in books on primitive art. Interesting that Greeley had lived most of his life in Central America.

Dulcie knew only one other human who had spent much time in those countries and who cared enough about such artifacts to collect them, and that was Greeley�s ex-wife. Sue loved Latin American art, though the items with which she filled her shop were smaller than these masks and more appealing, bright, fanciful carvings and weavings of a cheerful nature, whimsical pieces far removed from these bone-shivering presences that reeked of all the devil myths Dulcie had ever heard-though the concept of the devil had come late to Latin America. These images, she thought, would be based on other spirits, on some equally evil underworld putrefaction. Whatever the case, the collection unnerved her, seemed to speak to something deep and ancient within herfeline memory, to stir some timeless presence far too menacing. Why would Lilly Jones want to live among such monstrosities?

Above them in the too hot living room, Lilly and Greeley made dull and hesitant small talk, the topic of conversation at the moment being the weather. The dry old woman behaved as if she and Greeley were quite alone in the house, not as if a hostage were locked in one of the rooms; she did not seem nervous, did not pause to listen for sounds from some other room.

But if Wilma was here, did Greeley know that?

Could he be here to take delivery of Wilma, to take her away somewhere? But, then, why wouldn�t he simply tell Lilly to take him to Wilma? And,would Lilly Jones hide Wilma at the risk of her own arrest? From what Dulcie knew of Lilly, she did not seem the kind to take risks, even for her own brother.

Except, Lilly would be more afraid of Cage than of the law. Cage could be mean and coersive, and Lilly was reclusive and weak, not nearly bold enough to defy her brother. Dulcie sighed. Nothing would make sense until they knew why Cage wanted Wilma. Dulcie�s housemate wasn�t some heiress with unlimited funds for a ransom. What could she have, or know, that would make her so valuable to Cage Jones?

But maybe Greeley was here looking for something, and not for Wilma at all.

But what? And why now, just when Wilma had vanished?

Greeley had abandoned the weather as a topic, and was digging for information, feeling Lilly out with questions about as subtle as a Great Dane in a crystal store; but at last he got down to specifics, wanted to pack Cage�s clothes and take them to Cage, and bring some papers, too, that Cage had put away. Could Lilly get those for him? He�d be glad to get them himself, save her the trouble. He said Cage had mentioned a small box he wanted, and that Cage had told him where to find it. The old man seemed as nervous as a cornered rabbit in his eagerness to break away from Lilly, to get at the rest of the house on his own. He kept at it until Lilly said, �What are you looking for, Greeley? What do you think Cage has hidden here that you want so badly?�

Greeley widened his eyes in surprise.�Just what he told me to get, Lilly. Oh, you can�t think Cage has hidden something illegal? Oh, my. If them cops search the house, looking for him, and they find something incriminating��

�I told you, they have already searched.�

�But they�ll be back,� Greeley said darkly. �Now that Wilma Getz has disappeared, they�ll be back here looking for her. You can bet on that. And if they find something illegal in your house�� Greeley shook his head. �That would make you an accessory, Lilly. There�s a terrible longprison term for that.

�Of course, if it�s something he�s brought across the border, carried up from Panama, that makes it a federal offense, with an even longer prison term-for Cage,and for you, if you knew about it.�

�That doesn�t make sense,� Lilly snapped. �An innocent woman, alone. No one would put an old woman in prison. What a foolish thing to say.�

�Norma Green went to federal prison when she was eighty-seven, for passing forged checks. Eileen Clifton was sixty-eight. Sentenced to twenty years by the feds for taking her kidnapped granddaughter across a state line. Hergranddaughter! Anything that goes across a state line��

Kit�s ears were back, her yellow eyes narrowed with disbelief; Dulcie swallowed back a hiss of disgust.

�Them federal judges are sticklers for the law, Lilly. Don�t make no difference, your age. If you know that he�s hidden something here, you�re aiding and abetting. Them judges will see you do federal time, sure as hell is filled with brimstone. Well, I�d just hate to see them even book you, even take you off to the local jail�� And Greeley kept laying it on, about how bad the prisons were, about the sexual bullies and prison gang wars. It was hard to know what Lilly was thinking, with that sour poker face. When Dulcie could stand it no longer, she cut her eyes at Kit and they slipped out from behind the chair into the shadows of the hall.

Trotting swiftly through the shadows from one room to the next, they didn�t look for whatever Greeley was after, they wanted only to find Wilma; poking into closets, they prowled a room used for sewing, two unused bedrooms, a dark room dedicated to storing boxes and other junk, and a large linen closet, skillfully and silently sliding open closet doors, poking their noses behind the brittle shower curtain of a second bath-all to the background of Greeley�s wheedling and Lilly�s sour, oneline refusals. And even as they inspected each depressing room for Wilma, it was hard not to keep an eye out for whatever Greeley had come here to find.

Slipping up the stairs from the hall to inspect the second floor, they made quick work of the four other bedrooms, the last of which was redolent with Lilly�s lilac scent, Lilly�s clothes and shoes in the closet. Nowhere was there the faintest scent of Wilma, no hint that she had been in this house.

They found Cage�s room, though, and he had been there recently-same sour male smell as in Wilma�s house. Cage had, within the last few weeks, slept in the front bedroom; a few of his clothes hung in the nearly empty closet.

Interesting that Lilly had said no word, when Greeley claimed that Cage had sent him for his clothes. But still, nothing really made sense; Dulcie hated when things didn�t add up.

They tossed Cage�s room more thoroughly than the others, though Wilma certainly hadn�t been in there; they found nothing valuable that Greeley might want. Heading back down the stairs to the first floor, the drone of Greeley�s voice met them, accompanied by a faint clicking. And when they peered around from the hall, they saw that Lilly was knitting-having grown totally bored with Greeley�s wheedling-her needles flying through some project fashioned in pink yarn, she was so engrossed she seemed hardly to notice Greeley.

Some women knit when they�re nervous, when they need a calming diversion. Some knit when they�re angry. As the cats watched the needles flying and the rows of pink stitches building, Lilly seemed to grow calmer. Greeley, apparently running out of hot air, sat watching her, stone faced, then at last he rose.

�I�m sorry to have troubled you,� he said stiffly. �I hope, Lilly, you are doing what�s best for your own welfare.�

The cats smiled as Lilly hustled him out the door; behind her back, they fled for the kitchen; and there they waited crouched on the worn linoleum until they heard her return to her knitting, sighing with relief to be rid of him, her needles once more clicking away madly. They prowled the kitchen, pausing to sniff thoroughly at a door that smelled strongly of musty basement and of gas and oil from the garage.

Could Wilma be down there, so securely confined that Lilly felt no need to go downstairs and check on her? Could she be drugged, or so hurt that she could not escape? In her terror, Dulcie leaped and snatched at the doorknob, clawing and swinging, making too much noise. She couldn�t see if the separate dead bolt was locked. But, fighting the door, she heard the knitting stop, heard the hush of Lilly�s footsteps on the carpet. Frantically, both cats fought and kicked-until Lilly entered the kitchen, then they slid behind the refrigerator, a tight squeeze, the motor hot against their fur.

They listened as Lilly opened a cupboard, apparently getting herself a little snack; they could smell vanilla cookies, could hear her munching. When, rattling the package, she headed for the living room again, they followed on her heels. Dulcie�s mind was on the basement, on the windows at the back of the house where the cliff dropped away and the daylight-basement looked out at the ravine. And, slipping past the living room as Lilly again bent over her knitting, they made for the bathroom. Onto the counter, and then they were up and out the window, leaving tabby and tortoiseshell fur caught in the torn screen. Ignoring the trellis, they broke their fall among the bushes and fled for the back of the house. Only there did they pause to lick their paws, bruised from the doorknob, and their bare tender skin where the screen had pulled out hanks of fur.

�Will it ever grow back?� mewled Kit who, six months ago, couldn�t have cared less how she looked. Now she sounded as foolish as the vainest house cat.

�It will,� Dulcie said dryly, studying the basement windows and, for a quick escape, the grassy canyon that dropped away below them.

The canyon was far narrower here than where it fell away behind the seniors� house. Pine and eucalyptus trees grew up its sides, climbing to within a few feet of the basement, casting their shadows across the dirty basement windows. There were no screens.

Each cat leaped to a low sill and began to work at a slider, trying to jimmy its old brass lock. It took maybe ten minutes and made way too much noise, too many choruses of dry scraping, before Kit�s lock gave way; under her insistent claws and then her pressing shoulder, the bottom half rose up with a loud, wrenching screech that turned the cats rigid. They expected any minute to hear the door in the kitchen fly open and Lilly come rushing down the stairs.

When they decided she hadn�t heard them, they leaped into the basement, into a mildew-smelling, clutter-filled storage room behind the garage. They could see, up front, past a row of deep, built-in cupboards, an old Packard that was just the kind of car Clyde would covet, a vintage model badly wanting Clyde Damen�s loving restoration. Dulcie stood very still, scenting for Wilma, but not daring to call to her. Kit pressed close, her round yellow eyes big with unease in the shadowy, musty space; then at last they began to search, going first to the oversized cupboards.

14

W ith her hands tied, Wilma couldn�t reach to rip away the blindfold. She couldn�t move, tied to the chair; tilting it back and forth, she was able to rock along crablike, jerking across the rough wooden floor, the chair legs banging. Feeling out with her toes, for barriers, she soon found a wall. Getting the chair turned, she rocked along beside it until she came to what felt like a heavy wooden dresser. Yes, she could feel the corner with her arm, and then the drawer handles.

Bending her head against the top drawer, she wriggled and worked until she caught the blindfold on the handle. She pulled and fought until she had jerked it and it slipped down around her throat-her release from darkness left her heart pounding. The thin light of evening filtered in through dusty windows. She looked warily around her.

The house was a crude cabin. Rough wooden walls, small, dirty windows. One wall of dark stone, behind a rusty woodstove, two faded armchairs before it. To her right opened the three small windows. Hobbling her chair toward them, she pressed her face to the grimy glass.

The cabin stood in a grove of pine and eucalyptus trees. She could see only woods, and a bare dirt yard. One small outbuilding away at the edge of the graveled clearing, a rusty old car parked beside it. To her left, where the woods thinned, she could glimpse open hills washed golden by the last rays of the sun as it settled into a low line of fog-surely that fog lay over the sea, over the Pacific. She was very likely high in the Molena hills. She caught glimpses, closer to the cabin, of a narrow dirt road leading away and down to vanish among the falling golden slopes, a road surely making its way to the sea. She searched along the far fog line for the roofs of Molena Point, but could find no hint of them.

In the far corner of the room was a kitchen alcove and a wooden table. A window above the sink faced the woods away from the sea. On the long wall between her and the kitchen was a heavy door that looked like it would lead outside; she thought she had come in that way. Awkwardly tipping and turning the chair, she headed for the kitchen. If these were her last hours on earth, she damned well wasn�t going to die of thirst.

When she had gained the sink counter, she stood up as best she could, bent nearly double in the chair, and, leaning over the stained yellow Formica into the rusting steel sink, she pressed the tap handle with her chin.

Water gushed out. She drank awkwardly for a very long time, soaking herself, drenching her shirt, cool against her hot, sweaty skin. She rested, letting the water run, then drank again, rested and drank until at last she felt satisfied; then clumsily she pressed the faucet off and balanced back, steady on the floor again. She looked around her at the dark kitchen corner, the cracked brown linoleum and ancient dark cabinets, the worn Formica; no surface looked clean. A newspaper lay on the counter. The headline and photograph caught her attention; she remembered the article from earlier in the week:

Woman Killed in Her Home, Police Seek Burglar

The picture was of a smiling Linda Tucker in a low-cut dark dress, a professional photographer�s portrait taken perhaps for a birthday or other special occasion. The paper was well worn, the stain of a cup or glass at the lower corner. This was the only paper she could see; there were no other newspapers or magazines in the room, not even on the table beside the two worn chairs. Had this one paper been saved for a reason? Or had it only been kept to wrap the garbage?

The kitchen alcove was so small, and the heavy table so close to the cabinets, that, tied in her chair, she had no room to maneuver; every time she rose to move, the chair legs sticking out behind her rammed into the cabinets or the table. The drawers were in the tightest corner. She was able, just, to reach behind her and open the top one. Feeling gingerly through its contents, she found only forks and spoons, no knives. Shutting the drawer, she had hunched down to the next, was wriggling forward, pulling the drawer out, when a sound beyond the kitchen window startled her so that she nearly toppled the chair. The sound came again, a hushed scraping. She twisted around trying to see.

Was someone out there? Someone who would help her, or someone she must hide from? Nothing moved beyond the glass; in the darkening evening she saw nothing but the dense pines. It couldn�t have been a branch blowing; the soft wind had died.

The sound did not return; she sat staring into the woods, both disappointed and relieved. But then, knowing there might not be much time, she turned her attention again frantically to the kitchen drawers-paper napkins and long narrow boxes of foil or waxed paper with little metal saws along the edge that might cut rope. She considered those briefly-little saws that could leave her arms painfully scraped and bloody, inviting infection if she remained there long.

Putting that option aside as a last resort, she was fumbling lower into the next drawer when she heard the hushing sounds again. As she twisted toward the window, something dark flicked away, so fast in the gloom that she couldn�t tell what it was. The shadow of a person? A small animal? A squirrel? No fox or weasel would be that high off the ground, and it had moved so fast.

A cat, peering in at her? And now, even as she watched for that presence to return, another noise alarmed her, a sound from the ceiling, a loud thudding. Was there a second floor, then? She�d seen no stairs. But someone was there, someone was in the house, above her.

The rows of identical shops bordering Gilroy�s parking lot seemed to Joe Grey, in the mall�s vapor lights, yawningly dull and commercial; yet at this moment the discount mall drew the tomcat more powerfully than rats scrabbling in a barrel. As Clyde parked in front of Wilma�s favorite restaurant, to see if in there he could get a line on her and also could find Davis, Joe crouched, ready to leap out and head across the parking lot to the shops that, too soon, would be closing.

Clyde slapped his hand on the lock.�You stay in this car, Joe. You will not get out of this vehicle. Not for any reason. Not unless and until I say you can get out.� He stared hard at Joe. �You got that?�

Joe looked at him defiantly.�You can�t be serious. This is what we came for! So I can-�

�Not without me. Not until I tell you.Comprende?�

If Dulcie had been there, she might have felt just as rebellious as Joe, but she would have looked meekly reprimanded, knowing that you can catch more birds with subterfuge. Joe stared pointedly at the clock, which even now rolled its lighted digits to the next minute.�Twenty minutes! That�s all we have!�

�You get out of this car, in this traffic and confusion, and get hurt or in trouble, and you�re going to blow the search. Did you think of that? I told you I plan to stay over, get a motel room. The stores we don�t cover tonight, we�ll hit in the morning.�

This might sound reasonable to a human. It made no sense to the one doing the tracking.�The scent is freshnow. By tomorrow morning the cleaning people with their vacuums and chemicals will have trashed every trace. Vacuuming compound, cleaning substances, to say nothing of the personal scents of dozens of assorted humans.�

�Five minutes, I�ll be back. Then we�ll hit the stores.� Clyde leaned over, his face close to Joe�s. �I have to open some windows or you�ll die in this heat. I expect you, on your tomcat honor, to stay inside this car.� He looked up again, scanning the parking area. �That could beDavis�s unit, over behind that truck. I�ll just see what she�s found, then we�ll get to work.� Another hard glare and he was gone, leaving the windows halfway down, locking the doors simply as a small deterrent to passersby.

Not that anyone with common sense, seeing the glaring eyes of the enraged tomcat, would stick his hand through. Joe watched Clyde enter the restaurant and wave, and glimpsed Davis, sitting in the back. The squarely built Latina was in uniform as usual, though the day was hot as hell and such formality was seldom expected of Harper�s detectives. She didn�t look happy to see Clyde.

Juana Davis was a good detective, she�d do a thorough search for Wilma-as good as a human could accomplish with no talent for scent detection. Sitting with Davis in the booth were two sheriff�s deputies. As Clyde sat down beside Juana, Joe considered the car�s open windows. He looked across the parking lot to Liz Claiborne�s, which was Wilma�s favorite store and had, most likely, been her first stop this morning-if she ever got this far, he thought, rearing up with his paws on the glass, wondering if the security alarm would go off.

It didn�t. He propelled himself over and out, and there was not a sound. In a nanosecond he was across the lot, between parked cars, slipping into Liz Claiborne�s, padding in on the heels of a hurrying shopper. Ducking behind a rack of dresses, immediately his nose filled with the smells of new cashmere sweaters and women�s perfume, unwelcome indeed as he sought the one scent of importance.

15

D ulcie and Kit left the Jones house running shoulder to shoulder, smug with information but deeply disappointed that none of it was about Wilma; they had found no scent of her, no hint that she�d ever been in Cage�s house. The only place they hadn�t been able to search was the attic; though after they left the basement, they�d tried. There was no way to get up into that under-roof space without going back in the house and trying to drag a chair under the trapdoor, which would have brought Lilly quicker than fleas to a stray hound. Leaving the attic without searching it worried Dulcie. A prisoner could die under that roof, it would be hot as blazes in there.

They had, before they approached the roof, thoroughly searched the jumbled basement, swinging open musty cupboards, peering behind tangles of old furniture and stacks of cardboard cartons. How many years of discards were dumped in that crowded space? Old clothes, a dressmaker�s dummy, a treadle sewing machine, a gigantic waterfall dresser, an abandoned refrigerator (with failing hearts, they looked inside; nothing but mold). Boxes of rusty tools: crowbar and wrenches, screwdrivers and hammers tossed in with cans of rusting nails.

In the garage, they had searched the old car, too. Looked like it had seldom been driven. Tires half flat, dust on every surface. They�d leaped in through its open windows, which, they supposed, Lilly left down to prevent the mildew that had taken hold anyway, along with a hidden nest of mice that smelled as rich as steak, and the thick gossamer homes of several generations of spiders. There was no human scent. Jumping out again, they had returned to the other end of the basement; they were crouched to escape through the basement window when Kit turned aside to paw at the loose linoleum in a closet they had earlier investigated, the one where the door wouldn�t close. Pawing and scrabbling, suddenly she lowered her ears and lashed her tail with excitement. Dulcie pushed close, to see.

Raking the linoleum up against the wall with surprising strength, Kit skinnied underneath.�Look here! And someone�s been here!� They could both smell it: The linoleum and concrete smelled of Cage Jones.

Sunk into the concrete floor beneath its grimy linoleum covering was a metal safe. A very old safe, rusting but sturdy and heavy. Cage had come down here recently, had surely pulled the linoleum back and handled the safe, and had probably opened it. The finger smears through its coat of dust smelled of Cage, and the dust around the dial was streaked, as if he had spun it; there were also smears along the edge of the lid, as if he had lifted it. What had he kept there? Was this what Greeley was looking for?

They had tried for a long time to open the safe, without luck; as superior as was a cat�s hearing, Dulcie and Kit were not artful at sorting out the tumbler sounds and then spinning the dial accordingly. That was Greeley Urzey�s forte, it was Greeley who was skilled at safecracking. For that old man, this would be the work of but a minute. They could catch no scent of what the safe might contain, or have contained, could smell nothing but the metal itself, and dust, and Cage�s stink. No odor of old musty money, nothing like the way bills smelled that had been hidden for a very long time-they knew that nose-twitching smell; some of Lucinda Greenlaw�s little fortune had once smelled like that from being hidden for many years.

Nor was there any hint of other musty paper in the safe, such as secreted bonds or stock certificates; aside from Cage�s scent, only the sharp metal smell. Turning away, they had let the linoleum spring back and were pressing it into place, wondering if they should try to paw dust over it, when a noise sent them out of the closet and streaking for the window. Even as they leaped to the sill, behind them the doorto the stairs flew open.

They heard Lilly gasp as they exploded out onto a pine tree. Scrambling up its far side, claws digging into the bark, they climbed as fast as a pair of terrified squirrels. Behind them they heard Lilly�s footsteps cross the gritty floor.

They had peered around to see her approaching the open window, and had drawn back. For a long moment, she stood looking out. There was no sound. And then, as if perhaps fearful that a burglar had been there and might return, Lilly slammed the window shut. They heard her attempt to lock it.

�That,� Kit whispered, �doesn�t make any sense. If she thinks there was a person inside, how does she know he isn�t still there? How does she know he won�t step out of a cupboard and mug her?�

Lilly tried for some time to lock the window, then fetched the rusty hammer and jammed it in above the lower pane of the double-hung window so it wouldn�t open.

�What if she saw us?� Kit breathed.

�So? We�re cats! What if she did? Come on!�

Scrambling to the roof they had peered over, checking the vents again, but none was loose. Padding across the scorching shingles listening for sounds from the attic space below their paws, they called Wilma, called her name over and over, at first quietly and then louder than was safe. Only silence greeted them. If Wilma were gagged as well as bound, she could give no answer-unless she could knock, kick out with a bound foot, make some noise. They tried for a very long time but could detect no sound at all beneath the hot shingles. They gave up at last, licked their scorched paws, and abandoned the roof, praying Wilma wasn�t down there. Leaping into the pine they backed down its rough trunk and dropped to the ground, into thick dry pine needles. Dulcie, shaking needles from her fur, glanced toward the far end of the house-and there was Greeley, standing in the next yard watching them, looking straight at them, an evil smile on his wizened face, a leer as cruel as the devil masks upstairs. The cats fled straight down the steep wall of the canyon. Leaping down through tangled grass and weeds, tumbling and sliding to the canyon floor, they ran, their hearts pounding. Not until they were two blocks away and wellconcealed within the canyon�s bushes did they stop and look back to the cliff-side houses.

He was still there, in the Jones�s backyard, looking straight down at them, staring directly toward the bush where they crouched, his piercing, knowing look filled with rage.

�What�s wrong with him?� Dulcie asked. �What does he think?�

�He thinks,� Kit said, gulping air, �he thinks we found whatever he�s looking for? Found it in that basement?� The two cats looked at each other, and shivered and crouched lower. They remained there, as still as rabbits gone to ground, waiting for Greeley Urzey to turn away.

They were still waiting when along the street high above them a police unit flashed quietly between the houses and stopped in front of the Jones house. Greeley saw it, and slipped back into the shadows.

As Dallas Garza and Officer Crowley stepped out of the squad car, the two cats slipped up the cliff again, keeping out of sight, up a eucalyptus tree to the roof, where they crouched, peering over as Dallas rang the bell. They heard its harsh ring, heard faint sounds from the basement, then an inner door close, heard footsteps on the wooden basement stairs as Lilly came up to answer.

Lilly Jones hadn�t seemed pleased to find the detective at the door. �You just searched my house, you were here not two hours ago. You went all through it. Why would you search again? Let me see your warrant.�

Patiently Dallas handed her the warrant; though the cats could see only the top of his head, Dallas�s dark, close-cut hair, they knew that his square face would be bland, his dark eyes unreadable. As Lilly studied the warrant, Garza�s gaze wandered past her and through the open door. �We�re looking for Wilma Getz,� he said bluntly.

�Wilma Getz?� Lilly paused as if sorting that out. �The librarian? Why would she be here? I hardly know her.�

She glanced past him at two PG&E employees who were heading around the side of the house.�What do they want? It�s too late for city employees to be�Are they with you?� Her dry, lined face was a study in distrust. �What is this about, Detective?�

But then, quite suddenly, her anger faded into a look close to relief. Perhaps she�d thought of Greeley�s unwanted visit and felt comforted to have the officers present. Dallas looked at her patiently. �May we search again, Lilly? You will accompany us?�

Peering down, the cats watched Lilly step slowly aside, allowing Garza and tall, thin Officer Crowley to enter. As she stepped in behind them and closed the door, three more utility workers joined the first two, moving to surround the house.

Watching Lilly, wondering how difficult she was going to be, Dallas followed her, and Crowley, into the dim, depressing house. Lilly, saying nothing, led them into the living room.

�I don�t understand, Detective Garza. What is this about Wilma Getz? Why would she be here? Why would it be necessary for you to search, again? Would you explain, please?�

Frowning, Dallas wished he could read her better. He kept his expression steady, infinitely patient.�Lilly, Wilma has disappeared. Cage broke into her house. He was seen, there was a witness. It�s possible he may have kidnapped her.�

�Why in the world�?� She looked at him for some moments. At last she turned, scowling. �Come on, then, if you must.� And she led them down the hall and on into the rest of the house.

And as Dallas searched the dim rooms, above, on the roof, Dulcie and Kit waited and listened.Please, go in the attic, Dulcie thought. She could not get that hot, airless space out of her mind.Oh, please, Dallas, the attic. Go in there, the one place we can�t reach.

They heard the two officers moving around in the rooms below, heard doors open and close, an occasional question from Dallas and Lilly�s terse reply. After what seemed ages there came a sliding sound, as if the ceiling hole to the attic had been opened; seconds later they heard an officer moving around close beneath their paws, heard hollow footsteps across the bare attic floor. Dulcie imagined Dallas ducking beneath the low attic roof, hunched uncomfortably. Listening to the detective�s progress across the wooden floor, her little cat heart pounded hard. But then at last they heard Dallas descend again and speak to Crowley, then replace the attic door, sliding it back into position. They had found no one. They listenedas the officers moved about the rest of the house and then headed down the wooden stairs to the basement; and the cats padded silently across the roof to the pine tree and scrambled down, to watch through the basement windows.

16

�E ven if Dallas finds the safe,� Dulcie said, peering from the pine tree, into the basement, �he won�t open it if the warrant is just to look for Wilma and Cage.�

The kit�s yellow eyes narrowed. �He needs to know Greeley�s looking for something in there, just like Cage searched Wilma�s house. If we had a phone�There�s a phone in the kitchen, we can slip back in the house and call his cell��

�No way,� Dulcie hissed. �Phone Dallas while he�s in the house with us? We push our luck, and�I don�t like to think about that.�

Kit sighed and settled reluctantly among the branches, watching Dallas search through the boxes and abandoned furniture, his hand never far from his weapon. When he opened the empty closet where the safe was hidden, the cats hissed with surprise: The closet had been empty, just the loose linoleum with the safe beneath it sunk into the floor. Now it was filled with boxes, a bucket of tools, the old rusted fan that had lain atop a trunk, and a tangle of old boots. Dallas stepped back, looking. He knew that clutter hadn�t been there when he�d searched the house earlier. The detective turned, his back to the wall, taking another long look into the shadows and dark spaces. He stepped to the door that led to the stairs, closed it, and shoved a heavy carton against it. Then he searched the garage.

When he found no one, he moved to the windows. Finding the unlocked window, he examined the sill, then slid it open, looking out into the dark woods. Above him, the cats crouched, unmoving. Leaning out the open window, he used his flashlight, in the darkening evening, to study the earth beneath the sill. Dulcie and Kit were glad they had trod only on pine needles. At last Dallas eased himself out the window and shone his light back and forth across the yard, looking for footprints.

�Did Greeley cover up the safe like that?� Dulcie whispered. �Or did Lilly? Is there something in itshe doesn�t want found? Did she put that stuff on top after she heard noises and came down, thinking someone was in there?�

�Someone was there. We were.�

�Someone human,� Dulcie said. �Maybe she thought it was Greeley. But what would she hide in there? Her jewelry?� Dulcie smiled. �She doesn�t look like the type to ever wear fancy jewelry�And would Greeley go to all this trouble for a few pieces of an old woman�s jewelry? I don�t think so.�

�And,� Kit said, �what does all this have to do with Cage?�

Dallas was moving the boxes and trash from the closet; when he�d emptied it, he knelt, lifted the loose linoleum, and pulled it back out of the way. Yes, he�d known the safe was there, the cats could see that. And now that someone had taken the trouble to cover it, his attention was keen.

He tried lifting the lid, then turned the dial until it clicked, and tried again. Maybe his warrant covered this, maybe not. The detective was as curious as a cat, himself. When spinning the dial once didn�t work, he remained crouched, lightly fingering it.

�Does he know how to crack a safe?� Dulcie whispered, and the tabby smiled. �Looks like he�s tempted.�

�Would that be legal?�

�To finger the tumblers, and crack a safe?� Dulcie twitched her whiskers. �Not likely,� she said, enjoying Dallas�s temptation.

They watched him resist, and at last he rose and began to replace the clutter that had been piled on top, putting everything back just the way it had been, his tanned, square Latino face drawn into a frown. Then he headed for the stairs, moved the barrier, and disappeared. As his footsteps ascended, the cats scrambled up again to the roof and softly across it, then crouched above the front door listening to Dallas and his officer taking their leave, Dallas thanking Lilly for her courtesy and help with a dry sarcasm that was rare for the laid-back officer; the cats watched them head for their squad car as Lilly closed the front door hard with a chill finality, a clear message that she was tired of people tramping through her house. As the officers� car made a U-turn and headed back down the hills toward the village, Dulcie and Kit streaked away across the rooftops, heading home, their minds a tumble of new facts and more than a few questions.

Racing from shingles into pine or oak trees and down across more roofs, up and down over a jumble of peaks, Dulcie hoped Max Harper was still at the cottage, and that by now there was news of Wilma-good news. Dulcie let herself think of no other kind. The evening was warm, as soft as velvet, the late sky holding more light, now, than the dark village streets below. But when the courthouse clock struck nine, her heart sank. On a normal evening Wilma would be home, they�d have finished supper and would be tucked up together on the velvet couch, or, on cold nights, in bed by the woodstove, contentedly reading.

Dulcie�s creamy stone cottage shone out of the darkness, and there were lights at the windows. The tabby ran so fast she hardly hit the shingles, and twice she tripped over her own paws. But, then, warily they stopped on the roof of the next-door house, looking.

There were only two police units, now, at the curb. And two officers stringing yellow tape around the edge of the garden.As if this is a murder scene, Dulcie thought sickly. As she approached the house, she began to shiver.

But of course Harper would want to mark the premises off limits, to preserve any possible evidence they might have missed. Taking heart, she leaped from the neighbors� roof into the oak tree by Wilma�s living room window.

Just beyond the open window, Max Harper sat at Wilma�s desk, busy with paperwork. Dulcie drew nearer along the branch, and could see that he was filling out a report. Both cats tried to read it upside down. Behind them a car pulled to the curb and Dallas stepped out, alone; perhaps he had swung by the station to drop off his officer. He hurried inthrough the open front door. The whole house seemed to be open, though the heat that had collected within would take half the night to dissipate; the walls would stay hot long after the late breeze had cooled the rooms. Dallas drew up a chair beside the desk, glancing inquiringly at Max.

Max shook his head.�Nothing. You?�

�No sign of Wilma, and Lilly doesn�t seem to know anything. One or two details were strange; I�ll fill you in later. Anything on the Tucker and Keating murders?�

�Reports just came in,� Max said. �Linda Tucker case, the only sets of prints besides the Tuckers� belonged to the cleaning lady and to a plumber who was in the house three days before.

�The Keating case, Elaine�s husband had a poker game last week. All we got were the Keatings� prints, and those of five poker players. We�ll need a day or two to get that bunch in for questioning.�

Harper didn�t seem terribly interested in those possible suspects, and the chief�s indifference shocked Dulcie. �What�s he thinking? Is he off on some other track?�

But Kit�s yellow eyes had widened with dismay. �Does he think�� She looked at Dulcie and shivered. �Does he think the husbands did it? Oh, that would be too bad.�

Dulcie watched Kit with interest. The young tortoiseshell cat, after helping gather information on so many cases, and hearing about other murders from Joe and Dulcie, should be inured to such matters-but she was not hardened to the thought of a husband killing his wife, and Dulcie understood. The fact that these men might have murdered the partners they had vowed to love and cherish, seemed to hurt something deep and tender in the young tortoiseshell. Kit had never, as a kitten, known a loving and nurturing family; did not remember her mother or her littermates. A close and loving family seemed to Kit rare and wonderful; she looked on family as having a sacred bond of love and decency, and the thought of murder within that family bond hurt her deeply. Dulcie looked at Kit, hunched miserably on the branch, and she licked Kit�s ear, trying to soothe her; but suddenly both cats startled to attention as Max, pushing back his chair, stood up from the desk.

He shoved his papers in a folder and looked at Dallas.�I�ll stop by the Greenlaws, see if they�ve heard from Wilma, if they have anything that could help.� The lean lines of his face fell into a deeper dismay. �They have to be told she�s missing; I don�t want them hearing it on the news if some reporter picks it up. Will you call Ryan again? I�ll keep trying Charlie. Those two�They get off with the horses, they never turn on their phones, the rest of the world doesn�t exist.�

�I�ll keep trying,� Dallas said. �Or I�ll take a run up there.�

Max nodded.�Maybe by the time we get hold of them, we�ll have better news.�

Dulcie and Kit watched Harper head up the walk to his squad car; as he pulled away they were already racing across the roofs, heading for Kit�s house. Kit wanted to be there with Lucinda and Pedric, to be close to comfort them when Max told them that Wilma was missing. She wanted to be there for them just as, when she was little and lost and frightened, Lucinda and Pedric had comforted her, had held her close, petting her; had snuggled her in their soft bed and given her nice things to eat. Now her humans would need comforting, would need what Pedric called �a wee bit of moral support.�

Though Kit couldn�t bring them good things to eat-unless Lucinda and Pedric had developed a taste for fresh mouse.

17

T hat soft tapping wasn�t caused by the wind; Wilma listened to the sounds above her hoping it was a squirrel in the attic, or a raccoon, or maybe a crow on the roof, pecking at the shingles. But she knew better. Those were human footsteps, walking softly across the second floor of what she had thought was a one-story shack. Her fear of whoever was there and might come down while she was tied up and helpless sent panic through her that was hard to control, filled her with a shock of terror that dwarfed the fear she�d felt when she�d glimpsed, out the window, that dark, small shape careen away. Though surely that had been only a squirrel or a cat, nothing big enough to threaten her. She wished it had been Dulcie, or Joe, or Kit.

But no one knew where she was. In the moving car, she had left no scent trail, nothing for a cat to follow. Even those three clever feline friends had no way to find her.

Cage had told her he�d searched her house, and that filled her with terror for Dulcie; thinking he might have hurt Dulcie.

But Dulcie wouldn�t have gone near him, wouldn�t have let him approach her, if she had come home and found him there. And he�d have driven away, leaving no trail for a cat to follow.

Driven away in her car, or in the other one? For a moment, she banked all hope on the quick reactions of one small cat, praying Dulcie had seen the car, that she had reported her car stolen or seen the license number of the other car and called the station.

But that was too bizarre, a far too timely solution to a messy situation. Too much wishful thinking. Still, if Dulcie had made the car, there were police patrols all over the village, and the station was just blocks away. One of Harper�s units might have been able to find and follow Cage.

Awash in panic because, very likely, no one knew where she was, and no one was going to know, she ceased her awkward search for a knife and uselessly fought her bonds again, jerking and struggling as she listened to the footsteps overhead, soft shoes or slippers padding around on a hard floor. She looked for a place to hide, certain that every time she moved the chair, whoever was there would hear the awkward thumping.

The windows were growing dark; when night fell, the woods and yard and inside the cabin would be black as sin; there would be no moonlight to seep in among the masses of tall, dense pines. If whoever was there came downstairs in the pitch-black dark, when she couldn�t see them�

Bending awkwardly to fight open the lowest drawer behind her, conscious of every small scrape and thump as she tilted and rummaged trying not to lose her balance, she searched with increased panic for a weapon to free herself.

Indeed, in the low attic room above Wilma someone heard her struggles and visualized what she might be doing down there, someone who moved softly about the dim room, someone filled with questions, with fear, and perhaps with a cold, hidden rage.

And from outside the house, others, too, watched Wilma, observing her through the window as she fought for her freedom: Three small, wild beings looked down from the stickery branches of a pine tree and in through the dusty window, watching the captive woman struggle.

The pale calico looked at her companions.�Iknow her. That�s Wilma, that�s Dulcie�s Wilma.� Amazed and puzzled, Willow slipped around the pine�s dry trunk to its far side where the tall, gray-haired woman wouldn�t glimpse her, wouldn�t see in the gathering night, her pale calico coat gleaming. Both she and white Cotton would stand out now, easy to observe. Only Coyote with his dark brown-striped coat would blend into the night�s shadows.

But Coyote was saying,�You never saw Dulcie�s Wilma,� and the big, dark cat lashed his tail with disgust, his long, tufted ears flicking with annoyance.

�I know her from how Kit described her,� Willow said. �You heard her, Cotton heard her.� She looked at white Cotton, but that tom remained silent.

�No one can know a human from a description,� Coyote said. �There could be hundreds like that.�

�There are not hundreds like her! I do know her,� Willow hissed. �You think humans are all alike? She�s tall and slim, she has long silver hair. Look at her, her hair tied back with a silver clip. Jeans and a red sweatshirt. All exactly the way Dulcie said.� She glared at the dark long-haired tom whose black face stripes and tall ears made him resemble a small coyote. �I�m not stupid!� Willow snapped. �I know Dulcie�s Wilma.�

Coyote looked back at her uncertainly. Maybe she did know, who was he to say? He knew little enough about human creatures.

But it was Cotton who crept closer along the branch and looked in at Wilma for the longest time, saying nothing. And then, with a flick of his tail and a twitch of his ears he leaped away into the undergrowth; when Willow called softly after him, he said over his shouder,�Hunting. I�m going to hunt.�

�But-�

�What do I care for humans and their senseless problems?� And with that, Cotton was gone. Willow looked after him, hurt and disappointed.

But again, Willow peered around through the branches at Wilma, her bleached calico coat ghostly against the dark trunk.�Those men not only tied her to a chair, they blindfolded her. Well, but she�s gotten that off! Good for her! But what do they want with her?� She looked hard at Coyote. �How rude Cotton was! We have to help her, we have to free her.�

�I don�t-�

�Just like Kit freed us!� Willow hissed. �It�s payback time, Coyote. Couldn�t Cotton see that? We have to free her before they hurt her!�

Coyote stared at her, his ears back stubbornly. And Willow, swallowing, knew she had spoken too directly. It hadn�t taken much to send Cotton off. If she got Coyote�s back up, he�d leave, too, and she�d have no help at all.

Coyote was a good cat. So was Cotton. They just didn�t find any value in humans. Neither tom trusted humans, and with good reason.

Most of their band felt no connection to humans. They had all grown up feral, wild and wary, keeping to themselves. Well, maybe she was glad Cotton had gone. The white cat was so bossy, always wanted to do everything his way. At least Coyote was gentler; and Coyote had a deep social feeling for their own kind, a love of their own wild rituals. Maybe she could play on that. Maybe she could manipulate Coyote into helping-if only she knewwhat to do, knewhow to help.

But there wasn�t much time. Those men might soon be back.If they�re coming back, she thought. She was all nerves, watching Wilma struggle. With that chair tied to her, the tall lady could hardly turn. Willow could see the knives that Wilma hadn�t found, she wanted to tell her where, to leap in and touch her hand with a soft paw and guide her.

But she could not; she could not bring herself to try the things Dulcie and Kit took for granted; she dare not try to open that window, or go voluntarily into a human�s house. Instead, she turned a limpid gaze on Coyote. �We were in that cage two weeks, captive, just like she�s captive now. I thought we�d never get out.Her friends helped get us free.

�I was so scared, locked in there,� she said, trembling. �We all three were. Now she�s trapped like we were, andshe doesn�t even have anything to eat, like we did. Or any water until she managed to turn on the faucet.� She looked hard at the dark, striped tom. �She�s brave, Coyote. She�s a fighter-as strong and brave as a cat herself.�

Coyote watched her narrowly.�So? What canwe do?�

�It was her friends who savedus,� Willow repeated. �It was her friend, Joe�s Grey�s human, who cut off the lock for us. We can�t leave Dulcie�s Wilma. How could we? But, how can we help her?�

Finding the blade of a long butcher knife, Wilma cut her finger. Swearing under her breath, she felt for the handle, then, bending and twisting, nearly dislocating her spine, she pulled it to her and hauled it out.

With the big knife securely in hand, she was twisting it around with the blade toward her bound wrists when she heard the overhead floor creaking, louder, then footsteps approached, echoing hollowly, as if coming down hidden wooden steps.

It sounded like the stairs might be behind the stone wall where the woodstove crouched. Frantically she cut at her bonds-and of course cut herself again, she could feel the slick blood. Angry at her clumsiness, and shaky with her effort to sever the rope, she was looking directly at the stone wall when a figure emerged from behind it.

A small figure, stepping hesitantly. A woman, young and pale and as insubstantial appearing as a ghost. A frail and displaced-looking creature, stick thin, dressed in an oversized man�s shirt and a long, faded skirt from which her white ankles protruded like two bones. White feet shod in worn leather sandals. She stood looking at Wilma, then slowly approached; and even in the gathering shadows, Wilma could see her fear, her eyes wide in the fading light. She said no word; shewatched Wilma warily, then focused on the knife Wilma clutched behind her; she reached gently out to Wilma, as if meaning to cut her bonds-and jerked the knife away. Snatched it roughly from her hands and backed away fiercely clutching it, her eyes hard now.

�Please,� Wilma said. �What are you doing? Please, cut me free.�

�I can�t. They�d kill me.�

�They won�t kill you if I�m free, and we get out of here, if we run before they get back.�

The girl shook her head; something about her looked familiar, something about her frail thin body. Wilma studied her, trying to make out her age. Could this thin, pale woman be Cage�s younger sister? She looked as Wilma remembered her, but Violet would be around twenty-five. This girl looked maybe sixteen. �Violet?Are you Violet Jones?�

A faint nod, as she backed away.

Wilma looked at the cheap gold band on her finger.�Violet Sears, now? Eddie Sears�s wife?�

Another nod, tinged with a downward, closed glance of shame.

�If you leave me tied, Violet, and they kill me, you�ll be an accomplice to murder. You�ll go to prison right along with Eddie and Cage. Federal prison. For a very long time.�

�If I untie you, Eddie will kill me.�

�What does Cage want with me? If I knew that-�

�You stole from him. What he had in the safe. He told you that, I heard him tell you that.�

�What did he have? He won�t tell me anything. I have no idea what he thinks I took, no idea what he wants.�

Violet said nothing, only looked at her.

�If you free me, maybe I can help him. Find out who did steal from him. I can�t do anything tied up.�

No answer.

�I know how to help Cage. If I�m free Ican help him.�

But the girl didn�t buy it. She shook her head and turned away, heading for the hidden stairs. Wilma didn�t want to believe she would leave her there, helpless. But she guessed she�d better believe it.

She hadn�t seen Violet since she was a child. She might have glimpsed her on the street and not realized who she was. She�d heard that Violet was born just months before their mother died, that Mrs. Jones had died from complications developed at Violet�s birth. Other village gossips liked to say thatViolet wasn�t Mrs. Jones�s daughter at all, but was Lilly�s. That the shock of Lilly giving birth out of wedlock had killed Mrs. Jones.

Wilma hadn�t lived in the village when Violet was born, but Molena Point, like all small towns, enjoyed a complicated network of-as some put it-domestic intelligence. A web of personal histories and sensitive facts embroidered liberally with imaginative conjecture.

Lilly Jones had always been reclusive, and more so after the baby came. She was never seen in a restaurant or at the library or at village celebrations; nor was the child seen except walking alone to school and home again, alone, always alone. Lilly was about thirty when the baby came. She was around fifty-five now, though she looked far older. Watching Violet head for the stairs, Wilma felt too stubborn to plead, and she knew that was stupid, stupid not to try.

�If you leave me, Violet, Cage will kill me just the way he shot Mandell Bennett.�

Violet turned, her eyes widening with shock.�Cage didn�t shoot anyone.�

�Turn on the news, you�ll hear it. And if he kills me, too, that will be your fault. You�ll be an accomplice. It�s a federal offense, to be involved in the murder of a federal officer. You�d do hard time, Violet. Time in a federal prison. Those women would make mincemeat of you.�

Violet looked back at her, her narrow face sour and ungiving. Saying nothing, she rolled up the sleeves of her oversized shirt.

Her thin arms were red and purple with bruises. She pulled up the long tails of the shirt to reveal a mass of red and purple marks across her stomach and back, and one broad and ugly red bruise.�If Cage don�t kill me, this is what Eddie will do.�

Wilma had never gotten used to the signs of abuse. No matter how often during her working career she had witnessed this and worse, such violence sickened her.�What Eddie does to you�That�s all the more reason for us to get out of here. I promise I�ll find you a place to hide, a good place. And I�ll see that you�re protected.�

�Not the cops!� But Violet approached again, slowly, and stood watching her.

�Not the cops,� Wilma said. �If wecan get away, if time hasn�t run out, there are others you can trust. Private organizations. Abused women who have escaped, themselves, and who understand, who will hide you and protect you.�

To promise this battered person protection, promise her a secure shelter away from Eddie Sears, was very likely useless. If Violet ran true to form, if she was like most battered women, she would just go back to him. Wilma knew too many who did; she knew too well the terrors, and the hungers, of an abused woman. To try to help a battered woman, to try to bolster her courage and self-respect, often had no effect at all; many wouldn�t listen, they were just as addicted to abuse as were their abusers.

But she had to try. If she meant to live, she had to try. Because it looked like Violet Sears was the only chance she might have.

She looked at the week-old newspaper on the counter, wondering if it was Violet who had kept it-maybe out of some twisted fascination? Or because she felt a kinship with the murdered woman?

Or was it Eddie who had dog-eared the page, reading it over and over? She looked at the picture of Linda Tucker, then looked at Violet.

�I knew her,� Violet whispered. �I knew who she was, I�d see her in the grocery when we lived in the village, when Eddie let me go out to the store. I saw the look in her eyes, and I knew�She always wore long sleeves, and her shirt collar buttoned up. I knew�,� Violet repeated in a whisper. She looked at Wilma, desolate. �Now there�s been another one. Tonight. Another murder, a woman at home alone, in her bed. The paper calls it a breakin murder.� Her eyes narrowed. �Those weren�t breakins.

�This woman who died tonight, she was the same as Linda Tucker. I�d see her, too, in the grocery or drugstore�The same look, same cover-up clothes. We knew each other. We�d look at each other, and we knew.�

She pressed her clenched fist to her mouth.�There was no burglar to murder those women. Eddie�He just keeps reading about Linda Tucker, reading it over and over.�

She looked for a long time at Wilma.�He�s been reading that paper all week, like�like he would read a dirty book. Real intent, drinking beer and looking at her picture and reading about what her husband did to her.�

�You have to get away from him, Violet. We can get out of here now, together, and I�ll help you. Now, quickly, before they come back-before they kill us both.�

The village streets and unlit doorways were inky between soft spills of light from shop windows. Only above the rooftops where Dulcie and Kit raced did the last gleam of evening reflect a silver glow across the shingles; the two cats flew over peaks and dodged between chimneys and crossed above the narrow streets on the twisted branches of old and venerable oaks-but they were not as fast as the squad car.

When they landed on Kit�s own roof, Max Harper�s big white police car was already parked at the curb, heat rising up to them with the faint stink of exhaust; the chief still sat at the wheel, talking on his cell phone. Quickly the cats scrambled down an oak tree that overhung the street, then crouched on a low branch, listening.

Harper�s voice was coldly angry. ��and call me back, Charlie! Now, at once.�

Shocked, Dulcie and Kit stared at each other. Max never talked to Charlie like that. The Harpers had been married not quite a year, they were still newlyweds, he loved his redheaded bride more than life itself. Loved every freckle, loved her unruly carroty hair, loved her sense of humor and her quick temper. The tall, lean police chief loved Charlie Harper in a way that made both cats feel warm and safe. Now, did Max feel guilty that Charlie�s aunt Wilma had disappeared, on his watch? Was that what made him cross? That didn�t make any sense; it wasn�t his fault.

But a lot about life didn�t make sense, a lot about humans didn�t make sense. They watched him step out of his unit and head up the brick steps to the wide porch; as they trotted across an oak branch to Kit�s little cat door in the dining room window, and pushed through into the house, they heard the door chimes and watched Lucinda hurry to answer.

Opening the door, the tall old lady laughed with pleasure.�Max! This is a nice surprise. Come in.� Then she saw his expression and drew in her breath. �What? What�s happened?�

18

B eyond the Greenlaws� open windows, an owl hooted; and a pleasant breeze wandered through the big living room of the hillside house, cooling the hot night as the tall, lean, eightysomething newlyweds welcomed Max Harper; they stood waiting quietly for whatever bad news Max had brought them. Across the room, on the upholstered bench before the big front windows, Dulcie and Kit listened, trying to look as if they�d been there a long time, quietly napping. This was going to be terrible, Kit thought. It was scary enough that Wilma had disappeared; she didn�t want Lucinda to become sick with worry over her goodfriend.

Kit worried about Pedric, too; but Pedric Greenlaw was tougher. Equally thin and frail looking, but wiry and hardy, Pedric Greenlaw�s dry humor had seen him through all kinds of crises in his younger days, and through some questionable scrapes with the law, too. His checkered past had left him with a quick turn of mind, fast to act and shocked by very little.

Now, though Lucinda turned pale as Harper laid out the details of Wilma�s disappearance, Pedric asked clear, precise questions:Had Wilma left San Francisco? Had she checked out of her hotel? At what time? Which stores did she favor? Did she usually pay with her credit card, which could be traced? Had the sheriff been notified? Max hid the little twitch at the side of his mouth and patiently answered Pedric�s questions; Pedric should know he had done these things, but that was how Pedric Greenlaw approached a problem.

The cats smiled, themselves, as the captain explained that everything in Wilma�s house had been fingerprinted and photographed, all possible evidence duly bagged, and that the house would be sealed. Ordinarily, much more time must pass in a missing person report before the police undertook this thorough an investigation, but there had been a witness-and in Wilma�s case, ordinary procedures went out the window.

�Detective Davis is on her way to Gilroy,� Max said. �And so is Clyde. I couldn�t stop him; I just hope he stays out of Davis�s way.�

Lucinda glanced across at Dulcie and Kit, clearly wanting to know if Joe Grey was with Clyde. Kit twitched her ears in a little private yes that seemed to brighten Lucinda�s mood. The Greenlaws had great faith in Joe Grey. No cop could track scent, as Joe would do.

�What?� Max said, watching her. �Why the smile?�

�I�That will give Clyde something to do,� Lucinda said, �to keep him from worrying so much.�

Max nodded.�Charlie would want to head up there, too. If I could reach her. I guess she and Ryan are riding.�

�We saw on the news,� Pedric said, �that Cage Jones escaped this morning. Pretty shoddy way to run a jail. And then the paper said Wilma�s partner was shot. We�ve been worried about Wilma. Lucinda called the house and her cell-�

�Wilma�s quick,� Max said, �and careful.� But his face had gone closed with the extent of his concern.

Lucinda said,�Do the seniors know any of this?� The four senior ladies, who had bought a home together, were close friends of both the Greenlaws and Wilma.

Max nodded.�Mavity came into the station to ask advice about evicting her brother. Greeley�s become a real headache, and she wants him out of there. She told Mabel that she�d been trying to call Wilma, she said if they heard from her, they�d call the station. Apparently Mavity and her housemates hadn�t seen the paper or had the news on, they didn�t know about Jones�s escape, and Mabel didn�t tell her.�

Lucinda nodded, then shook her head.�Poor Mavity. Greeley camping in their nice house, letting those women feed him-poor all of them.� She spoke with sympathy, but with a laugh, too. �I think I�d spice up Greeley�s supper with a touch of rat poison.�

�Every time Greeley shows up,� Pedric said, �he brings trouble. I hope Mavity booted him out for once and all.�

�Mavity got down to the station,� Max said, �nearly lost her nerve, but finally filed a complaint.�

Lucinda shook her head.�This news about Wilma will be hard for those ladies, they�re all close to her.�

�Maybe Wilma�s disappearance,� Pedric said, �as terrifying as it is, will load Mavity up with enough worry that she�ll stop tolerating that old crook. Mavity will stand for just so much frustration before she pitches a fit.�

Max rose, and so did Lucinda. He put his arm around her.�All agencies are alerted and looking for Wilma. An APB out for Jones. Sheriff�s men all over Gilroy. Wilma isn�t�� He paused when his cell phone rang. He answered, then put the caller on hold, looking up at them. �Wilma was a federal officer, Lucinda. She knows how to handle herself.�

Lucinda and Pedric walked Harper out, watched him move quickly down the steps, pausing on the stone walk to speak with the waiting caller-and the cats slipped out behind them. They were crouched to race for Harper�s patrol car, intent on hiding in the back and hitching a ride wherever he was headed, when Lucinda snatched them up by the napes of their necks-an indignity usually reserved only for kittens.

�It�s hot!� she whispered crossly, turning her back to Harper, and ignoring the cats� anger. �Think about it! You get locked in that car, you�ll suffocate.�

�We never-� Kit began.

�Yes you did!� Lucinda looked hard at the tortoiseshell. �You�ve done it before, both of you! Slipped into cars, and at great danger!� She held them close against her. Neither Dulcie nor Kit would insult Lucinda by trying to get away-at least, not if they could argue their way out of a scolding.

�We just meant to listen to his call�,� Kit lied, whispering into Lucinda�s ear. She looked beseechingly at her thin, wrinkled friend. �We just wanted to listen��

Dulcie had the good sense to keep her mouth shut.

Frowning, Lucinda put them down again, giving them another stern look; she stood and watched as they slipped into the bushes behind Max.

��hardly dark,� he was saying, �and the other two happened around midnight. What�s the coroner say? Does Bern see similarities? Dallas is at Wilma�s place. Get him over there.�

The cats looked at each other. What was this? Another murder, a third one?

�No witnesses, no one heard anything? Who did you send?� Then, �Tell her to print everything! Every damn surface! Light switches, dirty dishes, soap dish, whatever! Everything in the kitchen where you found her-salt shaker, table legs, trash can, every damn surface she can find! Stuff in the trash, jars and cartons in the refrigerator, stay there and print if it takes her a week. I don�t like this-this isn�t going to continue, not on our watch! Keep someone with the husband; I�m on my way.�

Crouched in the bushes, the cats burned with questions. Who was the victim? Where? As Harper punched in a number, Kit took a sneaking step toward his squad car, but Dulcie nudged her, looking up guiltily at Lucinda.�You promised her, Kit,� Dulcie whispered, her green eyes fixed hard on Kit. �You came flying home to comfort Lucinda and Pedric, not to worry them-you go off on some wild hair now, you�ll have them pacing all night!�

�What about the times you left Wilma worrying!� Kit said, turning away; she was slinking back toward the front door when Harper�s phone rang again. She paused; both cats watched him as he listened and then swung into his car. They heard, through the open windows, his voice falter, suddenly broken and rough.

�What time was this, Ryan? You checked the whole house? The barn? She hadn�t gone riding without you? Did you�?�

A truck roared by, blocking all sound, prompting Max to roll up his windows. The cats watched a long, indecipherable discussion. When no more trucks passed, he put the windows down again.�Are you carrying?� he said.

Another longer silence. Then,�Lock yourself in your truck, Ryan. Do it now. And stay there; I�m on my way.� But before he spun a U-turn, they heard him call the dispatcher. He told Mabel to put out a �be on the lookout,� for Charlie. �Call Garza, tell him the Peggy Milner murder�s all his, I�m headed for the ranch.�

The cats listened, deeply afraid. Behind them in the open doorway Lucinda and Pedric stood with their arms around each other, Lucinda clutching the doorjamb, both of them shocked into silence, thinking of Charlie, of Max�s redheaded bride, watching helplessly as the chief took off fast, burning rubber.

19

M ax left the Greenlaws� moving fast through the village, emergency lights flashing, seeing only Charlie�s face, her green eyes searching his, feeling the cloud of her red hair against his cheek, her presence filling his whole world; for a long and painful moment the earth had dropped away, leaving only Charlie and, around her, an empty and chilling void.

He had Ryan on the speaker.�The kitchen door was unlocked,� she was saying; her cell phone cut in and out a couple of times, then came in clearer. �I know she locks that door when she goes out to the barn.� Ryan�s voice shook, her Irish/Latina temper blazing. �Who the hell�Her car�s here, Max. She�s fed thehorses and brought them in from pasture, put the dogs in a stall to feed them, and shut the door.

�Sandwich fixings laid out for our dinner, sliced roast beef and potato salad in the refrigerator. Coffeepot�s been plugged in for hours. Boiled dry. And, Max, she left her work out. She would never do that. Scattered everywhere, computer on, drawings and manuscript all over.�

No, he thought, Charlie wouldn�t leave her work strewn about. The first thing she did when she finished for the evening, before she went to take care of the animals, was to put everything away: backup computer disks, manuscript in the file, drawings safe in the long drawers of the map cabinet. All in its place, ready for the next day�s work.

�Maybe,� Ryan said, �when she got my first message that I�d be late, maybe she decided to get back to work. But she�She isn�t here,� she said uncertainly. �Dallas called me earlier, told me that Cage Jones has escaped�And then I heard it on the news�Could this be part of it? Dallas described what�What they did to Wilma�s house.�

�You were in the kitchen, Ryan? Did you go into any other part of the house?�

�I�ve been through every room, closets, the works.�

�What time was this?�

�Just now.�

�You checked the whole house. Did you�?�

�Nothing seems disturbed. Kitchen isn�t messed up, just looks like Charlie was interrupted, that maybe she stepped outdoors for a minute, which could explain the door being unlocked. If she played her messages, she knew I was delayed. Cement truck was two hours late, there was a wreck on Highway 1 and we��

�You never did talk with her, then? Just the messages?�

�That�s right. Cement truck arrived, we had to pour and finish out a three-car garage, then pour foundations�,� Ryan said helplessly. �It was dark when I got here, no lights on in the house. Only the automatic security lights outside. Both dogs were barking, in the barn.

�The instant I parked and opened the cab door, Rock leaped out over me-he never does that any more. Roared out of the truck snarling and barking and headed straight for the barn. Circled and circled, and then flew around back. He was on to a scent, Max. Wanted to take off through the woods. I grabbed his collar, pulled him back until I could see what was going on.

�There were tire marks behind the barn, fresh ones. Rock was going wild. They were close together, not a truck. Some kind of small car�a track that came down the bridle trail! Came down to the barn, turned around, and went back up again. And there were fresh footprints, three sets. I thought�One set was smaller, like Charlie�s paddock boots.�

Max thanked his stars it was Ryan who�d gotten there first, not someone who knew nothing about investigation; she had learned well from her uncle Dallas, and would disturb as little as possible. He imagined Charlie going into the barn, someone stepping from the shadows, grabbing and dragging her, Charlie fighting�

Turning onto Ocean he flicked on his siren, moving fast. Despite Ryan�s worry over Charlie, Max could hear the pride in her voice at the behavior of her untrained dog; he marveled, too, that Rock would be so responsive. But Rock was bred to thatthe Weimaraner was a sight-and-scent tracker and retriever used on all kinds of game. A well-bred specimen like Rock wasa powerhouse of intelligence and determination.

He spun a turn onto Highway 1, cut across two lanes, and took off for the hills. Ryan said,�The ground in the alleyway between the stalls was all scuffed up; I kept Rock close to the stalls. It was all I could do to hold him, pulling and snarling. And the horses were nervous, snorting, shying when I approached their stalls. The two dogs were wild, leaping at their stall door. I didn�t dare let them out, I was afraid they�d take off, and what good would that do?�

The Harpers� two half-breed Great Danes were long on enthusiasm but, except for basic obedience training, were still too unruly to be of any specific use. If someone had tried to take Charlie by force, Max thought they would have attacked if they�d been out of their stall. And Ryan was right, they would sure give chase if someone had Charlie. Feeling ice-cold, he fought the sinking fear that threatened to overwhelm him.

�Those tracks, Max�Where could they go, up the bridle trail like that? There are just woods up there, and patches of open hills. Just that narrow trail�Shall I saddle up and�?�

�No! I�m almost there, just turning off the highway.�

In Gilroy, Joe ducked under a dress rack when he saw Clyde coming into Liz Claiborne�s, and he fled for the dressing rooms, where Clyde might not come pushing in. Winding in and out of each little cubicle, sniffing at the carpet, he sorted through a hundred scents of powder, perfume, hair spray, and less appealing odors; he nosed at garments discarded on the benches and floor. Talk about messy shoppers. He had just caught Wilma�s scent and found her booth, when a young clerk came back to the dressing rooms. She, too, wound in and out picking up rumpled clothes.

When, in Wilma�s abandoned booth, she picked up a navy blue windbreaker that some earlier customer had left, Joe stared up at her from beneath it. He looked as innocent as he knew how to look, while gripping in his teeth a lipstick-stained tissue that bore Wilma�s scent. Above him, against the wall, hung three pairs of jeans, two sweaters, and a blazer that Wilma had tried on; he had reared up on the little bench to make sure.

When the clerk picked up the jacket and saw the tomcat, she let out a yip-but then she laughed and knelt to stroke him.�Aren�t you a handsome fellow. Where did you come from? What did you do, just wander in? Did someone bring you in, some shopper?� She glanced behind her down the row of dressing rooms, then toward the door, as if expecting someone to come looking for their lost cat. Then she petted Joe and baby-talked him until she had finessed a rumbling purr from the tomcat.

She was an exceptionally pretty brunette. Long, silky hair and big brown eyes, and she smelled like fresh green grass. When she tried gently to remove the tissue from his clenched teeth, he snarled at her until she withdrew her hand. But he had not intimidated this lady.

�What do you want that for, you silly cat? Maybe you like the smell of lipstick? Cats,� she said, laughing. She was obviously a cat person, and for that Joe was grateful. �You are a pretty fellow. Wheredid you come from? What are you doing in here besides stealing tissues?� Laughing again, and despite his earlier growls, she boldly picked him up.

Making nice again, he purred against her shoulder and gave her the look that Dulcie called�lovey eye.� He made up to her so shamefully that he soon had her practically purring herself. When she came out of the dressing rooms carrying and stroking him, Clyde was standing at the cash register talking with a clerk. Seeing Joe, he did a double take, then quickly collected himself.

�There he is,� he said, as if deeply relieved. �I�ve looked everywhere.� He grinned at the girl, and reached out to take Joe from her arms. �Cat got out of his carrier.

�What a bad cat you are,� Clyde cooed, staring deep into Joe�s angry yellow eyes. He did not try to remove the tissue from Joe�s teeth. �I looked and looked for you. Come on, kitty, baby-such a bad cat. Come on, Joe, baby. Come to Papa now.�

This performance earned, the moment they were alone in the car, an incensed scolding.�Kitty,baby? Come to Papa?� The tomcat was so furious that, when Clyde tossed him into the front seat, he deliberately scratched Clyde�s hand. �If I weren�t so good-natured, I�d have bloodied your face! If you ever again call me kitty baby, I swear I�ll kill you, Clyde. Slowly and painfully, as I would disembowel a gutter rat!�

But then, because he was totally wired after what he had found, proof that Wilma had been there, Joe broke into a grin.�Actually, that was some rare performance you gave in there. Juvenile. Insulting. But crudely amusing.�

Clyde stared at the tissue that Joe had laid carefully on the seat.�What did you find? You think Wilma handled that?�

�I know she did. Wiped her lipstick and powder on it, maybe before she slipped a sweater over her head. She tried on jeans, two sweaters, and a green linen jacket, all of which she left hanging neatly in the dressing room, her scent all over them. Good-looking jacket, but not her color.�

Clyde dangled the tissue carefully by one corner, took a clean tissue from the box beneath the dash, wrapped the evidence in it, and placed it in the glove compartment.�This is evidence to us, Joe. But how do I present it to the law? What would I tell Davis?�

�I don�t know. All I know is, Wilma was there, and recently. Could you say the smear of lipstick looked like Wilma�s, so you picked it up just in case?�

Clyde raised an eyebrow.

�Let me think about it,� Joe said. �Maybe I can come up with something.� He twitched a whisker. �Tell Davis you�ve been training me to follow scent, like a tracking dog? That I found it and you�re really proud of me, that it�s the same color lipstick as Wilma�s, and you bet if they ran the DNA��

Silently Clyde looked at him.

�Guess that wouldn�t fly, either,� Joe said.

�I guess not.�

�I personally think the concept has possibilities. A cat�s sense of smell isn�t as good as a bloodhound�s, but it�s far superior to a human�s. I could-�

�Leave it, Joe.�

Joe shrugged, and looked at the clock on the dash.�Ten of nine. I have time for one more shop.� And he leaped out before Clyde could grab him, was out the window heading for a store that, he�d noticed, featured print denim jackets, just the kind of thing Wilma liked.

Clyde shouted at him, then followed him, running-but before Joe hit the shop door, he stopped. He did a sudden, cartoon cat skid, spinning back to the curb, to the gutter where the tiny, bright corner of a credit card had caught his attention with a hint of Wilma�s scent and the faint, metallic smell of blood.

Pawing aside a crumpled paper bag, he uncovered the bent plastic card. Yes, it smelled of Wilma, all right. It had been folded the way Clyde folded his outdated credit cards when new ones arrived in the mail. He would fold the old card once, break it in half, then fold and break it again before he threw it away.

This card wasn�t broken, just bent. The name Wilma Getz was embossed clearly below the red band that bore the name of a chain bookstore for which Wilma received bonus credits. It was the red stripe across the top that had caught Joe�s attention.

The asphalt beneath where it had lain featured what was clearly a blood spot, dry but fresh. In this heat it wouldn�t take long to dry. He tried to calculate. Maybe an hour? He had no way to ascertain exactly how long since that blood had been spilled, but surely no more than three hours. He was no forensic pathologist, he was just a simple hunter who�d had a fair amount of experience with spilled blood. Taking the card in his teeth, he backed out of the gutter looking up at Clyde.

Gently Clyde reached for it, lifting it gingerly by one edge. He looked at its brightly colored logo and at Wilma�s embossed name. �What�s that on the corner? Is that blood?�

�Blood.�

�You sure?�

Joe just looked at him.

�Human blood?� Clyde asked. He had total faith in Joe�s ability to distinguish human blood from, say, mouse blood or the blood of some canine unfortunate enough to have run afoul of the tomcat.

�Human blood,� Joe said.

�That could be the blood in Wilma�s car, then. Can you tell if it�s Wilma�s blood?�

�That I can�t tell.�

Clyde looked around them, but no one was near to witness their exchange.�This,� Clyde said, �is what we came to find! This, we can show Davis. How the hell did you see this, how did you find this under that trash?�

�Saw the red stripe, then caught her scent. My superior sense of smell, and my superior wide-angle vision, combined with a far more sensitive retina that enables me to-�

�Okay! I�ve read the books. You smelled it, then you saw it.� Reaching down, Clyde gripped Joe firmly, both out of friendship and to keep him from leaping away again as they headed for the car. Joe refrained from pointing out that if he hadn�t left the car, against orders, he would never have found this piece of evidence.

Before Clyde started the engine, he laid the credit card in a clean tissue, folded the corners over, and placed it, too, in the glove compartment. Then he called Davis�s cell, switching on the speaker out of deference to Joe.

She picked up on the first ring, grunted when she heard Clyde�s voice. �I�m sitting in Chili�s with a couple of CHP guys. Sheriff�s deputy just left. I�ll meet you by the register.�

Driving the short distance across the parking lot, Clyde pulled into a slot in front of the restaurant, then looked down at Joe.�That was a long shot on Wilma�s part.�

�Maybe that was all she had time to do. She�d know there�d be a report out for her when she didn�t show up, that her name would be on every police computer��

�The street sweeper could have picked it up, anyone could have.� Clyde removed the wrapped credit card from the glove compartment, leaving the lipstick-stained tissue. �Here comes Davis up to the front. Get in the carrier; you�re not staying here.� He gave Joe a stern look. �If I can smuggle you into Chili�s, you damn well better behave yourself. No yowling. No thrashing around making a scene.�

�When have I ever yowled and thrashed around making a scene, as you put it? I want to hear what Davis found. Order me a burger. Rare, with no-�

�I know how you like your burgers. Shut up and get in the carrier.�

20

J oe slunk into the cat carrier growling at Clyde, watched Clyde fasten the latches, and felt the carrier rudely snatched up and swung out of the car; the next moment they were entering Chili�s, into a heady miasma of broiled hamburger, French fries, and various rich pastas that hit the tomcat with a jolt. He hadn�t realized he was so hungry. Clyde greeted Davis and they settled into a booth, Clyde dropping Joe�s carrier on the leather seat, which smelled of uncounted occupants and of spilled mustard.

�Have you eaten?� Clyde asked her.

�No,� Davis said. �Nothing but coffee, I�m awash in it.�

Joe, if he sat tall in the carrier, could see the sturdily built detective across the table, her short black hair smooth and clean, her dark uniform regulation severe. Where most detectives wore civilian clothes, easy and comfortable, Juana Davis preferred a uniform. Joe�s theory was, she felt that it made her look slimmer. �I�m starved,� she said, picking up her menu.

When the hostess came, glancing apprehensively into the carrier, Clyde said,�Just got off the plane. Trained cat, very valuable. He does movie work.� The yellow luggage ticket hanging from the handle was an excellent touch, and seemed to impress the thin, swarthy waitress.

�What movies has he made?� she asked with a considerable accent.

�Oh, he�s done over a dozen films as a bit player, but only two so far where he starred, where he had top billing.� Clyde mentioned two nonexistent movie titles, hoping she hadn�t lived in the U.S. long enough to know the difference.

Davis, sitting across from Clyde, remained straight-faced. When the waitress had taken their order and disappeared, Davis said,�I�m not going to ask why you brought your cat. Or why you took him into Liz Claiborne�s.� She looked at Clyde for a long time. He said nothing. �Are you going to explain to me what happened in there? I heard a pretty strange story from the deputy who just came from talking with the manager.�

Clyde looked at her blankly.

�About the tissue,� Davis said patiently. �And about that tomcat running loose in the store.�

Clyde gave her a disingenuous look that to anyone but a cop would reek of honesty.�He got out of his carrier. Guess I didn�t fasten it securely. Cat picked up a used tissue somewhere while I was describing Wilma, asking if she�d been there. I thought I had the carrier door fastened.�

Davis did not respond. Joe wished she�d show some expression. As warm and thoughtful as Juana Davis was on occasion, that cop�s look could be unnerving.

�Juana,� Clyde said, �Wilma�s like my family, you know that. I�m really worried about her, I had to just go in and ask, had to do something. I�with Wilma gone, I didn�t have anyone to leave the cat with.

�But then,� he said with excitement, �when I left the store, luck was with me. Incredible�� He reached in his pocket, drew out the wrapped credit card, laid it on the table, and opened the tissue. �Looks like, for once, my stupid civilian nosiness paid off.�

Davis looked at the credit card, at Wilma�s name, at the dark stain that appeared to be dried blood. She looked up at Clyde. Still a cop�s look, silent and expressionless, a look designed to unnerve the toughest convict.

�It was in the gutter. Among some trash, right where I parked my car.�

Juana�s rigid demeanor and her unreadable black Latina eyes made her look more severe than she was.

�I figure,� Clyde said, �either someone robbed her and dropped this-except why was it bent? Or that Wilma was mugged and kidnapped, and had time to drop it herself. To bend it and drop it. A carjacking, maybe? You think that�s blood on there? Could she have slashed someone with it, then dropped it hoping it would be found?�

Joe was glad he was concealed inside the carrier so Davis couldn�t study his face as severely as she was studying Clyde�s.

�My guess is,� Clyde said, �she was shoved in a car outside Liz Claiborne�s, had the card in her hand, slashed at her abductor, and dropped it as he slammed the car door and took off.�

�Why would she fold it?�

�To make a better weapon? That sharp corner?� Clyde took a sip of his coffee. �I don�t know, Juana. I only know it�s Wilma�s, it has her name on it, and it�s an act of fate that I found it, that I ever saw it.�

Davis studied the credit card. She picked it up by the edges and, taking an evidence bag from her pocket, dropped the card in, marked it with date, time, and location, and sealed it. She looked at Clyde again, then looked across the table at Joe�s carrier. Joe yawned stupidly, scratched a nonexistent flea, and curled up as if for a nap. Davis and Clyde were silent until their order came. A burger for Clyde, the same for Joe, sans the fixings. A chicken sandwich for Juana, which probably fit into her perpetual diet.

Clyde opened the carrier, shoved the burger inside, and fastened the mesh door again; he tore into his own burger as if he hadn�t eaten in days.

Joe inspected his order to be sure there were no pickles or offensive spreads, pulled off the bun, and scarfed down the hot, rare meat.

Clyde said,�What have you found out? Can you tell me? Sheriff have any leads?�

Joe stopped eating to watch Juana. Suddenly her dark eyes revealed a depth of anger that neither Joe nor Clyde often saw in the steady officer, a controlled rage that frightened them both; she didn�t like what she�d found. Wilma was not just a missing case, she was Juana�s friend, too.

�Sheriff�s deputies had already done the rounds when I got here,� Juana said. �Three clerks, in two stores, recognized Wilma from the picture we faxed. One clerk saw her leave, saw her go up the sidewalk with her packages but didn�t see where she went. Didn�t know if she got in a car. Sheriff has copies of her Visa charge slips. He checked the motels in the area, in case she decided to stay over. Showed them her picture. Nothing.

�No one�s found her car, no sign of Jones or Sears. We don�t know that Sears is with him, but he�s usually in Jones�s shadow. Sheriff is checking convenience stores, gas stations. CHP is all over the freeway watching for her car, and for Jones or Sears. APB out for the state. If she�s not found soon, that�ll be all the western states.�

�What does Sears look like?�

�Slighter built than Jones, thin face. Younger, thirty-two. Longish brown hair, muddy brown eyes. Jones is a hulk, six four and built like a truck. Gorilla face, long lip.� The detective was tense and edgy. Joe waited uneasily, as did Clyde. There was something more, something she wasn�t telling Clyde. Rearing up against the carrier�s soft top to observe her, Joe shivered. Davis was mad as hell, and about something more. Joe was surprised when Clyde unfastened the carrier, reached in, and began to stroke his back, as if to comfort them both.

�I just got off the phone with the dispatcher,� Juana said.

Clyde�s hand stiffened. Joe went very still.

�It�s Charlie,� Juana said. �Charlie�s disappeared. Charlie Harper�s missing, too.�

Clyde gripped Joe�s shoulder so hard the tomcat hissed. But then he rubbed his face against Clyde�s fingers, which felt suddenly icy.

�Charlie and Ryan had planned to ride,� Davis said. �Ryan was delayed on the job. By the time she got there, Charlie had fed the horses and put them up, and started to make sandwiches. Looked like she went outside again on some errand, or at some disturbance. The door left unlocked, and she hadn�t finished in the kitchen. From that point, no one knows. Ryan got there, she was gone. No note, no phone message. Her car there, engine cold.

�Max is there. Karen is making casts, taking the prints. Ryan found the tracks of a small car or maybe an old-style Jeep behind the stable, leading away up the bridle trail, back into the woods.� Juana looked at Clyde gently, her cop�s reserve falling away. She was close to Charlie and the chief, the small department was like family.

�Whatever the hell this is,� Juana said, �I hope the bastards burn-that we can make them burn.�

Even as evening fell, the cabin and the little cubbyhole kitchen remained intolerably hot, the walls pressing closer, so that Wilma felt there wasn�t enough air. Sweating, confined by the tight ropes, panic gripped her, making her feel almost out of control. She wanted to scream and to beat at the walls, to tear at the rope, tear it off, and she couldn�t even get a grip on it.

She seldom lost it like this. She was trainednot to panic, but her training had gone to hell; she wanted to scream, and keep screaming until someone somewhere heard her.

Violet had taken the butcher knife, jerking it from Wilma�s clenched hand with surprising strength, and was carrying it away with her, toward the stairs. Wilma watched her retreating back; how thin her shoulders were, every bone visible beneath the flimsy shirt.

�You don�t think I can hide you,� Wilma said, trying not to beg. �You�re wrong. You don�t believe the federal authorities can keep you safe. I know they can. Witness protection has hidden thousands of folks with far more dangerous men after them than Sears, and those women are doing fine.�

Violet paused, but didn�t turn to look at her.

�You�re destroying what may be your only chance for freedom, Violet. I can get you into a safe house far away, out of the state. New identity, new name, all the papers. New driver�s license, new social security number. You can start over, free of Eddie�s abuse, do as you please with your life.�

As she tried to gain Violet�s attention, she prayed that in Gilroy her credit card would be found. But that was a real long shot, you couldn�t lay your life on a card lying in the gutter, a card that would probably be swept up by the street sweeper and dumped in some landfill.

�We can hide you in a little house or apartment in the most unlikely small town, somewhere no one would think to look. We�d alert the sheriff there to watch out for you, he�d be the person you could go to anytime if you were afraid. You could be living where no one would beat you, threaten you, hurt you, Violet.�

�He�d find me,� Violet said in a flat voice. �There�s nowhere he wouldn�t find me.�

�He won�t find you if he�s in prison. If you help me get him there, he can�t follow you. I have enough on Cage and Eddie to put them both behind bars for a long time.�

Violet turned, a question in her eyes.

�Believe me. A long stretch in the federal pen.�

�What happens when Eddie gets out? He wouldn�t be locked up forever. He�d know I helped you, he�d come after me.�

�Not if he can�t find you.� She was losing patience with Violet, but she couldn�t afford to snap at the girl. Violet, with no sense of self-worth, could easily become useless to her. �What�s the alternative?� Wilma said gently. �You�re going to sit here like a lump waiting for himto come back and beat on you for the rest of your life? Or kill you? If he�s in jail where he can�t get at you-�

�I don�t believe you can lock him up. He never-�

�He has aided and abetted Cage�s escape, the escape of a federal prisoner. He has kidnapped a retired federal officer. Both are offenses with long mandatory sentences. Mandatory, Violet. The judgehas to send him away.�

Violet looked hard at her.

�If the law can make Eddie for theft, too, if Cage and Eddie have made some big haul-if that�s what Cage is looking for, that added to the other offenses could put Eddie in prison for the rest of his life.�

�And Cage, too?� Violet asked warily.

�Of course, Cage, too. That�s the law. Both locked up where they can�t hurt you.�

Violet was very still; Wilma watched her, trying not to let her hopes rise. No matter how much psychology Wilma had studied, it was still hard for her to relate to the masochistic dependence that made an abused woman love and cling to her tormentor. Wilma was too independent to understand the self-torturing, or guilt-ridden pleasure, an abuse victim took in harsh mental lashings and harder physical blows, even in wounds that could be fatal. Such an attitude disgusted her, went against her deepest beliefs. Disgusted her because these women had abandoned their self-respect, were committing self-abuse by their complicity.

She wanted to shout and swear at Violet, almost wanted to strike the woman. No wonder such women were ill treated. Violet�s cowering submission made a personwant to hit her.

Violet looked at her for a long time.

�I can help you,� Wilma repeated; she was tired of this, tired of everything. �I will do all I can to help you, will use every kind of assistance that the federal system has to offer.� She prayed she wasn�t promising more than she could deliver. �But you have to want to be rid of him-and first, you have to help me.�

Violet�s blank expression didn�t change. She didn�t speak; she turned back toward the wall and disappeared behind it. Wilma listened in defeat to her soft footsteps mounting to the upper floor.

But then, swallowing back discouragement, she reached awkwardly behind her again to fight open the next drawer, to scrabble blindly for another tool sharp enough to cut her bonds.

21

W hen Cage Jones grabbed Charlie Harper, the only witness was the white cat-the only witness who could speak of what he had seen in the alleyway and behind the Harper stables. The other animals could not.

It had taken more courage than Cotton thought he possessed to go to that ranch seeking out the tall redheaded woman and ask her for help for the captive human. He had never in his life approached humans except to steal their food in the back alleys where his clowder had sometimes traveled.

But he had once seen Kit speak with the redheaded woman, and that lady had seemed gentle and respectful of his kind, so he�d thought maybe it would be all right. He had heard her promise that if ever his small, wild band should need help, she would come. Cotton remembered.

But now the redheaded lady needed help, perhaps to save her life.

Approaching the ranch, three times he had nearly turned back. But at last, shivering and ducking away from nothing, he had come down through the woods, avoiding the bridle trail, not wanting even to leave paw prints.

When he slipped into the stable, the horses had stared over their stalls at him with only mild interest, but the two big dogs in their closed stall had huffed and sniffed under the door, then had barked and kept barking, and in a moment he heard the door of the house open. When he looked out of the stable, redheaded Charlie Harper was coming across the yard to see what they were barking at. He�d tried to steel himself to speak to her, but he was so frightened he had ducked into the stall that held saddles, shivering, not daring even to peer out-and the next moment he was filled with guilt because his presence had brought her there.

He�d heard a vehicle approach from behind the barn where there was no road, only a horse trail. Little rocks crunching under its wheels. The dogs were barking too loudly for Charlie Harper to hear it stop quietly beyond the closed back door. But Cotton had slipped out of the saddle room�s open window and around to the back, along the side of the barn, concealing himself among the bushes as best he could considering that he was blindingly white and seldom able to hide very well.

Peering around the corner of the barn, he�d watched two men step out of an old rusty vehicle. It was the same strange, rusty car that had been near the house up in the woods beyond the ruins, where the silver-haired woman was tied up.

And these were the same two men he�d seen there, the one bulky as a bull, the other, thin with long brown hair. The two men stank the same, too. Sour sweat, and the whiskey humans drank; Cotton drew back in the bushes as they slipped around the building to the front, where the big doors stood open. Cotton followed.

The minute they saw Charlie in the stable they raced in and grabbed her, scuffling and swearing and fighting, and Charlie Harper was shouting and the dogs were barking and leaping against the stall door and the horses plunging in their stalls; the big man laughed at Charlie�s rage-then Cotton found his nerve and leaped into the thinner man�s face, clawing and biting. But the big man was gone with her, dragging her out the back door to the old car. And the thin man grabbed Cotton off his face and threw him; he landed twisting and screaming in a pile of straw.

Leaping up, he raced out the back again, to see them shove her into the back of the old car they called the Jeep, and tie her hands and feet together. They muttered and argued between themselves, then the thin man snapped,�That rotting trailer won�t hold her, you could jam your fist through those walls. Damn woman�ll kick them apart, kicks like a mule.�

�Not if we tie her up good, she won�t. Get a move on, I don�t wanna be stumbling around in the dark up there in that mess.�

�Ain�t near dark yet. And we can�t get the Jeep in there, not anywhere near enough. Have to drag her-�

�So we drag her,� the big man said. �What�s your problem?�

�She�s that cop�s wife, is what! The damn chief. You think of that, Cage! It�s a federal-�

�It ain�t no federal offense to mess with thewife of a cop, for Chrissake. That ain�t the same as-�

�How the hell do you know? You don�t know what you�re talking about!�

But Cotton heard no more. He couldn�t stop them; they could easily kill him, and then maybe no one would know what had happened to redheaded Charlie Harper, or to the gray-haired human. And Cotton knew only one thing to do. Despite his terror of the human world, he spun away out of the stable, across the yard and away through the pasture, running full out, hitting only the high spots across the open fields, heading for the village. Not only fear drove him now, but rage. Running and panting and his heart pounding too hard, the feral tom was a dazzling white streak exploding down across the brown hills, as incandescent as a small meteor. Something in Cotton, recalling his own captive misery last winter, couldn�t bear that those two women who were not like other humans were now captive and helpless. He could only pray that he could find Kit, who would know how to bring help, could only pray that he could find his way toher through the village among the confusion of houses and shops and so many moving cars and hurrying people-among all the millions of smells that would hide the scent he remembered, of the kit�s home.

He tried to remember which way, from the night Kit had led their escape away from the vicious cage, to her tree house and then out of the village to safety on the open hills. Kit�s tree house could be anywhere among the hundreds of village houses. No clear direction came to him; he had been too terrified to pay proper attention. The evening was still light, the sun low and orange ahead of him as it dropped toward the orange-tinted sea. On and on down the hills the white tom raced, rigid with fear that he would never find the tattercoat kit, that his terrified search among humans would come to nothing, and that those two special ladies would be lost.

It was dark when Max sped home, driving too fast, his siren and emergency light blasting a furor of alarm in the still evening. Half a mile before his turnoff he extinguished both, quelling the loud, bright announcement of his approach. Skidding a turn onto his own dirt lane that led in from the highway to the house, he slowed. The time was nine thirty.

Ryan had called him ten minutes earlier, ten minutes that had seemed like a lifetime. He had no clear idea how long Charlie had been missing. Swerving his car onto the grass shoulder between the lane and pasture so as not to obliterate other tire marks, he parked near Ryan�s truck and Charlie�s SUV, and for a moment he imagined that Charlie was there, that she would step out of the kitchen or the barn waving to him.

He saw only Ryan, standing alone in the lighted door to the stable. He heard three more units swing into the lane behind him, the crunch of tires on gravel.

Getting out, he walked on the rough grass, motioning for his men to park on the shoulder; he stood looking around the yard, scanning it for fresh tire marks and footprints, still imagining that Charlie would appear, stepping sassily out of the barn. He was empty inside, all his cop�s professional detachment vanished; empty, and shaky, and lost.

An hour before the Greenlaws knew that Wilma was missing, Mavity Flowers learned the news when, her mind set on evicting her brother, she headed for Molena Point PD.

Greeley had been dead drunk at dinner, slopping food on himself and laughing raucously, and he�d stunk to high heaven of booze and unwashed clothes, was so disgusting that Cora Lee had sent twelve-year-old Lori upstairs with her supper. The child had eagerly picked up her plate and vanished; she�d seen enough drinking in her own family; Greeley�s behavior brought back too much pain.

Days ago Mavity�s housemates, Susan and Gabrielle and Cora Lee, had ceased being polite to Greeley. Gray-haired no-nonsense Susan Britain was ready to sic her two big dogs on Greeley. It wouldn�t take much; neither the Lab nor the dalmatian liked the old man. Blond Gabrielle had stayed as far away from Greeley as she could manage, and had talked about moving out. Cora Lee had simply looked at Mavity, her lovely, caf?-au-lait beauty and dark eyes very sad, and Mavity could do nothing less than get Greeley out of there. Disregarding the sinking feeling in her middle at the thought of abandoning her own brother, she had called the department to ask how to get rid of him.

Mabel Farthy had answered; Mabel was the only dispatcher Mavity knew very well, and with whom she was comfortable. Angry as she was, it still took a lot of courage to boot her own brother out on the street, but she didn�t know what else to do.

Greeley had told her that, as her brother, he had every right to move in. The downstairs apartment was vacant, wasn�t it? So what was the problem? When he�d first arrived, showing up one evening without calling, without letting her know he was even in the States after she�d heard nothing from him for six months, she�d told him to go to a motel. That had shocked her housemates-but that was two weeks ago.

Arriving unannounced, just at supper, he had marched boldly into the house sniffing at the good smells of roast beef and gravy and all the other fixings; then they were all at the table, Greeley tucking his napkin into his collar and belching. Susan and Cora Lee and Gabrielle made a fuss over him at first, as they would any guest; Susan said he must be tired, and gray-haired Susan Britain had served him generously of the good roast. Cora Lee had poured wine for him, over Mavity�s disapproving scowl. That was the first night; later, for a while, the ladies were too well mannered to be rude, but at last they lost their patience.

Mavity had put a folding cot in one of the two small basement apartments they were renovating as rentals, apartments that they meant, later on down the years, to accommodate live-in help. She�d made him promise to stay just the one night and then go on about his business. She didn�t know what business that was and she didn�t want to know. Now he�d been there two weeks, dug in like a mule refusing to leave its stall. She�d left the other apartment locked up tight, the one they�d already cleaned up and painted and furnished real nice, and had told him it was rented.

Now, after Mabel Farthy suggested she come on down to the station and sign a complaint, Mavity and Mabel stood on either side of the dispatcher�s counter sipping the coffee Mabel had just brewed. Mabel was in her late fifties, pudgy, but with a bright blond wash on her short hair, and an honest way of dealing with folks.

�Captain Harper and both the detectives are out on cases,� she said. She sounded unnaturally distressed, and it took a lot to upset Mabel. �The chief is�� She paused, watching Mavity. �You don�t know?�

�Know what?� Mavity said nervously.

�You�re not to repeat this-I�m sure it�ll turn out all right,� Mabel said gently.

Alarm filled Mavity.

�You haven�t heard about Wilma.�

�That wasn�t Wilma, the breakin and-�

�No! Oh, no. She�s�Nothing like that.� Mabel had taken her hand. �She�s only�Mavity, Wilma is missing.�

�Missing! She can�t be missing, she went up to the city. Didn�t�?�

�She checked out of her hotel this morning. Her things are at her house, suitcase, packages. Her car. But�Captain Harper isn�t sure Wilma ever got home.�

�I don�t understand. If her things are there�Where would she go?� Mavity felt cold all over. �I don�t understand what you�re saying.� Wilma had just gone up to the city for a court hearing, that was old stuff to Wilma. �She was going to stop in Gilroy. You�d better tell-�

�He knows that. Davis has gone up there. This afternoon, someone was in Wilma�s house, searched it, left it a mess. Captain has an APB out for her, all the law-enforcement agencies across the state. I think the captain and Detective Garza are still at the house. You didn�t talk with her today, haven�t heard from her? Any messages, anything that could help?�

�I haven�t seen or talked with her since�since last Thursday,� Mavity said, thinking back. She was so distraught that, when at last she�d left Mabel, she�d found it hard to drive home, had to concentrate hard on what she was doing. And at home, after she�d told Susan and Cora Lee and Gabrielle, and despite the fact that she�d filed the complaint against Greeley, she�d gone down to ask if he might have seen Wilma. Not that he�d care if Wilma was in trouble, not after she�d booted him out of her own house last year, Greeley dead drunk and dragging that horrible black tomcat in there to torment Mavity, herself. Greeley barging in and embarrassing her when she�d just come out of the hospital and Wilma was taking care of her. And then Wilma telling him to leave, Mavity thought, smiling. No, Greeley had no love for Wilma Getz. But still, he might have taken a phone message and not bothered to pass it on, or might have glimpsed her on the street. She knew she�d have to ask him.

She�d heard him on the back deck of the downstairs apartment, had found him sitting in the chaise swilling beer, the radio on, singing along with it, out of tune and loud enough so everyone in the neighborhood could hear him. Coming onto the deck, she saw him toss his empty beer can down into the canyon-with how many others?

Strange thing was, when she�d told him Wilma was missing, the news upset him more than she�d imagined. The old man stopped guzzling and came alert, and right away started asking questions about what she�d been doing in San Francisco. But Mavity got the feeling he already knew the answers. And when she told him about Cage Jones escaping from jail, Greeley had got real nervous. But again, as if he already knew and wanted to see what she knew.

Well, the escape had been in the afternoon paper. Mabel had shown her the clipping before she left the station. She wondered why Greeleyhad asked her those questions. And what was he so fidgety about? Nothing made sense, Greeley didn�t make sense-but then, with the amount of booze he drank, what did she expect?

Greeley and Cage Jones had grown up together, went to school together in the village. She didn�t know if they�d stayed in touch; she didn�t know much about Greeley�s business, all those years down in Central America. Shehad wondered where he got the money to buy himself that fancy PT Cruiser, just three days ago. She�d asked him, �How you going to make the payments, Greeley? You plan to get a job?�

�Paid cash for the car,� Greeley said, laughing an openmouthed laugh at her. �Got a deal on it. I always did like a green car.�

�Where, Greeley? Where did you get the money?�

�Savings. Not that it�s any of your business.� Greeley had never in his life had any savings; he spent it so fast the money might be programmed to dissolve.

After he bought the car and she�d asked about the money, he started drinking even more and got louder and worse tempered, and that was when she�d gone down and talked with Mabel and had been so relieved when Mabel said she�d send out a patrol officer, get Greeley out before the neighbors started calling in complaints abouthim. Mabel had said it wouldn�t hurt Greeley to spend the night in a cell, that the captain kept a nice clean jail, and she�d sent Mavity back down the hall to that nice young Officer McFarland who�d helped her with the restraining order. Mavity had left the department feeling guilty that she�d really done it, but feeling a whole lot relieved, too.

22

T he village streets were filled with heavy evening traffic, the blaze of moving headlights blinding and confusing the white tomcat. He had been on these streets only once before, and then it was midnight, the town silent and empty as he and Willow and Coyote had followed Kit from that cage to freedom. Kit had told them how she crossed when there was heavy traffic, by trotting close behind humans. But now Cotton couldn�t bring himself to do that. The sidewalks were alive with people, their hurrying feet threatened to trample him even as he hid in the shadows of steps and alleyways.

Scrambling up a vine to the rooftops, he felt safer, alone at last. How did Joe Grey and Kit and Dulcie stand the human mobs? Breathing with relief the fresher air of the warm, open roofs, Cotton felt his pounding heart slow; he stopped panting and looked around him across the angled peaks, trying to get his bearings.

Far ahead rose a familiar collection of metal chimneys and the railing of a penthouse veranda that seemed familiar, as if Kit had led them that way. He recognized the tall tower, too, with the clock in it, he had seen that from the window of Kit�s tree house. Looking away to the northeast, slowly the night of their escape came back to him.

Crowded into that smelly cage, he and Willow and Coyote had nearly lost hope. Then Joe Grey and Dulcie had been captured, too, and jammed in there with them, five cats crammed in, and their rage building dangerously. But at last Kit and Joe Grey�s human had found and freed them: Clyde Damen cut off the lock, and they had exploded out of there and out the window, running with terror-and then with wild, incredible joy, running and running, following the tortoiseshell kit. She�d led them to a flower-decked alley, to a plate of delicious food that had been set out just for cats. He and Willow and Coyote had thought it was some kind of trap, but Kit swore it was not, and she had eaten and eaten, and when at last they tried, too, she drew back so they would have the rest. Cotton licked his whiskers, remembering the taste of the fine salmon and cheeses. They had filled themselves right up, and then Kit led them to her tree house, where they had curled up safe and warm. That had been their first deep, deep sleep since they were trapped, not jerking awake with fear at every sound.

Now, taking his bearings from the clock tower, Cotton reared up to search the rooftops and the islands of trees; and it was then he glimpsed a little peaked roof, too small for a regular house. It rose high among the oaks beside a big house. He raced ahead eagerly between chimneys and balconies and across girding branches: raced to find the kit, to find help for the two women who knew about cats like them, who were not afraid to talk to cats. What cat would ever have thought that he, Cotton, would launch himself on such a terrifying journey in order to save two humans?

Max Harper was thankful he�d hired Karen Packard. She�d taken over the stables and yard as efficiently as a far more seasoned investigator. Her careful, intelligent presence helped very much to ease his wrenching pain over Charlie�s abduction, as the slim, dark-haired young rookie took prints in the stable and house, and now in the alleyway of the stable poured casts of the intruders� footprints. Karen was thirty-six, a tall, fine-boned woman with long dark hair and caring green eyes. She�d done some clothes modeling to work her way through the law-enforcement program at San Jose State. She�d told him, when he hired her, she�d rather dig ditches than do one more modeling job; she didn�t like the atmosphere, didn�t like the people, didn�t like their values and the meaningless glitz. You couldn�t put it more clearly than that, Max thought with a crooked little smile. Now, Karen pursued every aspect of her job-investigation, paperwork, surveillance-with an eager, single-minded commitment that would not be understood in that world of what she considered to be high rollers.

Running a brush over Bucky�s back, Max smoothed on the blanket and set his saddle in place, reached under for the cinch, automatically fending off Bucky�s companionable nip at his backside. It might seem a cowboy thing to do, to set out after Charlie on horseback, but there was a lot of wild, tangled country up there, and no way you could get a truck or a car up that trail; it had been iffy even for whatever smaller vehicle those men had used. He had observed, even in the near dark as he walked up along the shoulder of the trail, tire marks careening up over the shoulder, and broken branches that would have scraped hard along the vehicle. Hitting Charlie�s bound body? His mind was filled with Charlie, sitting across the table from him, laughing over some silly joke; grinning down at him from the back of her mare; standing out in the pasture calling the dogs, the wind blowing her long red hair; her hair tumbled on the pillow as she lay warm against him.

As he tightened the cinch, Ryan put Rock in the pasture so the eager dog couldn�t follow them. Max fetched the shotgun from his unit, nestled it into the saddle scabbard, and checked the clip in his automatic; then he and Ryan mounted, Ryan on Charlie�s mare, and headed up the dark trail. They would avoid using much light, which might be seen for some distance through thewoods, and their cell phones were on vibrate.

He didn�t like employing a civilian in this way, but none of the uniforms at hand was any good with a horse and he wanted someone with him in case they had to split up. Ryan, having grown up in a police family, knew more about the work than most rookies, and she was competent with a firearm; her uncle Dallas had overseen the training of Ryan and her two sisters as soon as he considered them old enough to be responsible. Dallas was their dead mother�s brother. It was their father�s brother, their uncle Scotty, who had taught Ryan carpentry. Ryan had never played with dolls, the little girl muchpreferring to tag along after Scotty on his construction jobs.

Moving quickly up the trail through the dark woods, they had to use their torches occasionally, shielding them heavily, flicking them on only to pick up a tire track, making sure the vehicle hadn�t turned off somewhere. Though that wasn�t likely; with no side roads, the rough terrain would slow it considerably. They were less than five minutes out when they heard a huff behind them-and Rock came racing, the big dog a pale, panting streak looming like a ghost out of the night, charging into their shielded beams.

�Oh, God,� Ryan breathed. �He climbed the fence.� The heavily woven wire of the pasture fence was constructed to confine the Harpers� two big mutts, as well as the horses; it was six feet high, and the Harper dogs had never thought to climb it. A Weimaraner was another matter, Max thought, half angry, half amused.

The big silver dog was royally pleased with himself, and raring to go; he had his nose to the trail and paused only to look up at Ryan, as if for direction, then sniffed at the breeze, drinking in a scent that drew him. He was all tension, ready to forge ahead, not wanting to obey when Ryan told him to hold. Max watched the two of them, frowning.

Ryan didn�t know whether to scold Rock and waste time taking him back or wait and see what he�d do. She wondered if Rock�s original escape from his sadistic owner had been accomplished by climbing over the woman�s chain-link security barrier. The expression on the silver dog�s face reflected such joy at his accomplishment that she couldn�t scold him. She looked through the darkness to Max. �Do I take him back?� But she didn�t want to do that.

Max knew this was foolish, the dog wasn�t trained. But, �Let him try,� he said softly. �Keep him quiet.�

She had only to nudge the mare ahead and Rock�s nose was to the trail, then scenting up high, drinking in the still air-and like a shot he took off.

They booted the horses ahead, fast. What the hell were they doing? Max thought. This wasn�t a tracking dog, Rock had had no such demanding training. But Max shook his head.Give him a chance,let�s see what he has. He�s bred for it,and he�s sure as hell on to something. Max�s gut was churning, his mind filled with Charlie�s face; he daren�t blow it, bringing the damned dog. But they moved on quickly, following the ghostly dog; and the cop who never prayed was praying now, and was willing, tonight, to take any help they could get, no matter how off the wall.

They kept the horses to a fast trot, it was too dark to safely gallop, the trail too rough; he wasn�t going to cripple a horse, which would only slow them. He hoped to hell the trees were thick enough to hide their shielded lights. They followed Rock as fast as they dared, losing him sometimes, then catching a faint movement far ahead, the crack of a twig as he ate up the ground. Was he tracking the vehicle only because Ryan was following it, obviously distressed? Or could he be on a deer? But a deer wouldn�t stay to the trail this long. Max couldn�t believe Rock was following Charlie, but that was what it looked like: the big dog taking her scent from the air, moving fast and intently, never swerving from the narrow path.

They knew that Rock was exceptionally well-bred, from a long line of dogs developed to follow by scent as well as sight, to track and retrieve on land and on water. This was an all-around breed, intelligent and powerful, that Max had grown to admire. But, tracking without training? Watching him, Max could only speculate on what was happening in that intent canine mind. Rock was fond of Charlie, and he was keenly sensitive to Ryan�s feelings; clearly he knew that something was wrong. Before they set out, he had been attuned to their tension, watching them, nervous and alert, as they�d saddled up. Now, staying to the bridle path, repeatedly scenting the air above the tire tracks, Rock moved so fast he was leaving them behind. Ryan daren�t shout at him; she whispered to call him back but he paid no attention. Max was afraid he�d run straight into their quarry and give them away-but suddenly, at the top of a ridge, he slowed. Stood frozen.

They strained to see among the dense, dark trees, to hear the smallest sound. Approaching Rock, they could see him sniffing the ground in a circle, as if he�d lost the trail. They pulled the horses up at a distance so as not to disturb whatever he had-but the horses hardly had time to rest before Rock started again, stepping slowly now, his head raised to taste the wind. At the same instant, Max�s cell phone vibrated, sending unease through him and then a surge of hope that Charlie had been found, that he�d hear her voice. Snatching the phone from his pocket, he answered softly-and went rigid.

A female voice-but not Charlie.

�Charlie�s kidnappers are headed for the ruins,� she said, and the voice was so familiar that he shivered. �For the Pamillon estate. They plan to hide her there, leave her tied up in an old overgrown trailer, all covered with vines.�

�If you know where she is,then help her!� he whispered. �Where are you? Can�t you untie her, help her get away! Where-�

�I�m not there. I�heard them say that�s where they�d take her. I�m not anywhere near there.�

�Then how did you hear them? Who are they?�

�Cage Jones. And a younger man, slimmer than Cage. Long hair and faded brown eyes.�

�Will you tell me who you are? Tell me how you�?�

The caller hung up.

He knew who the woman was, as much as he could ever know. This snitch, who had given him so many tips, had never identified herself and very likely never would. Feeling numb, he punched in the code for Garza, got him on the first ring.

�Ryan and I are on the trail above my place,� he said softly, �headed up into the hills, following the tire tracks. The snitch just called-the woman. She said it�s Cage Jones and, from her description, I�d guess Eddie Sears. Said they mean to hide Charlie at the old ruins, that she overheard them. Some overgrown trailer up there. That ring a bell?�

A negative from Dallas.

�She said it�s covered with vines. Send four units up the old road, no lights, radios off. Have them wait at the edge of the ruins, stay in their cars. No radios, no noise.�

�They�re on their way.�

When Max hung up, he called Karen. She had nothing new, she was still taking prints while waiting for her casts to dry-tire casts and three good sets of footprints, one set that she thought would be Charlie�s. �Did Rock follow you? He got out of the pasture. I�m sorry, Max. He wouldn�t come to me. I didn�t know dogs could climb-I swear I saw him do it.�

�This one can,� Max said wryly. �He�s here. Damn dog�s tracking her.� He told her about the snitch�s call and that four units were headed for the ruins. �When you finish, Karen, get on back to the station, get those prints into the works.�

Hanging up, he pushed Bucky to a slow, sure-footed lope, catching up with Ryan. She�d dismounted and was holding Rock back, to wait for Max. When she turned the dog loose he took off again, tasting the air now with even sharper excitement, his four-inch tail wagging madly, wagging the way it did when he dug out a ground squirrel. Then suddenly he stopped again, dead still, noseto the ground and snuffling hard.

Ryan slid off the mare, threw her reins to Max, and pulled Rock away so he wouldn�t destroy the new configuration of tracks. �Shoe prints,� she said softly. She praised Rock and hugged him, and she and Max studied the torn-up ground, their coats wrapped over their lights.

The Jeep had stopped there, and the prints of two men were all around its tracks, in a confused tangle. Had Charlie made a successful try, and gotten away? Max searched for her footprints, his hands sweating, his belly in a knot.

The young officer who came to evict Greeley Urzey from the seniors� basement apartment took considerable verbal abuse in both English and Spanish. Jimmie McFarland was one of the youngest men on the force, baby faced, with soft brown hair and innocent brown eyes. Jimmie knew enough Spanish to greatly admire the grizzled old man�s vocabulary.

Greeley Urzey was not well educated, but McFarland knew he�d lived and worked most of his adult life in Panama. He�d apparently learned quickly what he needed to get along, including a nice repertoire of retorts. As Officer McFarland invited Greeley to quietly leave the premises of the seniors� house or spend the night in jail, Greeley told him halfin English and half in Spanish that he wasn�t sleeping in their jail and just what they could do with that facility.

McFarland had looked at Greeley steadily, trying not to smile.�You want a lift down the hill? It�s a motel or the jail, take your pick.� McFarland wasn�t about to leave Greeley hanging around the seniors� place and have to come back for him. No cop likes a domestic dispute, even an apparently nonviolent one-though he didn�t much want the old man in his squad car, either; he smelled like a drunk billy goat.

�I have a car!� Greeley had snapped, snatching up his wrinkled leather duffle and heading around the house to the street, to a new, green PT Cruiser that surprised McFarland. McFarland waited for him to start the car and head down the hill, then followed him, wondering if he should run the plates, see if the car was stolen. He pulled over, making a note of the plates, and watching as Greeley swung into the parking area of the first vacant motel he came to, parked the PT Cruiser, and carried his battered old satchel through the motel�s patio and into the lobby.

After ten minutes, when Greeley did not come out, McFarland called the motel desk to make sure he�d checked in.

He had. Breathing easier, McFarland left, thinking about the beginning Spanish lessons he was taking, wondering if the advanced course would provide a more colorful approach, if it might include some of the old man�s impressive vocabulary.

McFarland had had a good day. He had, with the two detectives and Karen working the urgent missing cases, been given free reign with the village murders. He had acquired, by means he might not want to relate to the chief, enough evidence to bring in both Tucker and Keating for questioning-for visits that, he hoped, would result in arrests. As for the third murder, he was convinced that it, too, would turn out to be a domestic, though as yet they had nothing solid.

As Greeley signed the register and palmed the key to his room, up in the hills his sister, Mavity, was airing out the apartment that he had occupied. Setting down her arsenal of vacuum cleaner and dust mop, scrub mops and chemicals and buckets, she flung open windows as violently as if the wind coming up the canyon could blow away Greeley himself. Her attack of cleaning included new contact paper in all the drawers, which gave her an excuse to go through them to see if he�d forgotten anything of interest. She had already searched Greeley�s duffle, two days earlier.

That was part of what had upset her so, and made her pursue the restraining order. She had been searching his bag for his stash of whiskey, meaning to throw it out. She felt no guilt in poking around. It wasn�t her fault her brother was a drunk, but she did feel responsible for the fact that he was disturbing her friends. She hadn�t found his bottle, but she�d found something far more interesting.

In the bottom of the bag was a small white paper box, maybe two by three inches, embossed with the logo of a Panamanian jewelry store; the box was old and stained, as if perhaps it had been used for many purposes. Inside, packed carefully between layers of yellowed tissue paper, was a little gold devil. An ugly little figure with an evil leer-devil, or some other idol, one of them pagan idols from Central America. It looked like real solid gold, and it felt warm and rich like gold; it was so heavy it startled her.

But it couldn�t be real gold, the real thing would be worth thousands, maybe more. It had to be a museum copy. She remembered Greeley telling about little gold figures, ancient artifacts, he�d said. She couldn�t remember the name he called them. Did he say they were pre-Columbian? From the time before Columbus discovered South America? Didn�t seem possible anything could last that long, anything so small. Sacred trinkets, Greeley�d said, fashioned by vanished tribes. He�d been only a little drunk at the time, just enough to be in one of them showy moods when he liked to tell what he knew, and embroider on it. He said them little gold figures were in great demand, now, that even one would be worth a fortune.

With Greeley, she never knew what to believe.

She didn�t know much about history or archeology, and she didn�t remember those long-ago dates. Huacas, she thought suddenly. That was what he�d called them. The real gold huacas, Greeley said, were illegal to own, in Panama, except by the national museum. He said the museum made copies, though, and sold them to the tourists. Surely this was one of the copies. But why was it so heavy?

Greeley wasn�t above stealing, if he could get away with it, or thought he could-but Greeley couldn�t steal this kind of state-guarded treasure. If what he said was true, such a theft was far more sophisticated than anything that old man was capable of. Greeley�s thefts ran to cracking the safe of a small mom-and-pop store and making off with a few hundred dollars. Not some high-powered international operation; that wasn�t Greeley�s style, he wouldn�t know how to go about such a thing. All his talk that night, that had been whiskey talk, colorful storytelling, more than half from Greeley�s sodden imagination.

All their lives, her brother had stolen, ever since they were kids. She was forever surprised he didn�t spend more time in jail; it was just short sentences and then out again. Well, she had to admit, in spite of his thieving ways, he�d held down a good job for forty years-but only because he loved the diving. She never ceased to wonder that he could be so responsible at his work and so worthless in the rest of his life.

That day she�d found the huaca she�d stood there in the basement apartment looking down at that evil gold devil, wondering. Itwas an evil little thing; its stare had given her the creeps, made her think of voodoo curses, the pagan magic that Greeley liked to tell about.

Wilma said those countries weren�t all pagan, that they were Christian, too. Catholic. But Mavity had seen pictures of those South American churches, their voodoo idols all mixed in with the saints and the virgin. That, in her book, wasn�t any kind of Christian.

Quickly she had wrapped the gold devil up again, closed it away in its box, and put the box back in the duffle. Hurrying, she�d latched the worn leather bag and left the room, her hands icy, the image of that devil face too clear in her mind.

Now, she cleaned the room vehemently until she�d eradicated the sour smells. She carried the sheets and towels into the little laundry at the end of the hall, put them in the washer with plenty of Clorox. When she gathered up her cleaning equipment and locked the door to the apartment, she left the windows open, to air the place. She felt noguilt at possibly sending Greeley to jail. If he didn�t obey the restraining order, a cell was what he deserved.

23

C harlie�s whole body was sore from the battering Cage gave her, and from bumping along in the Jeep; her face felt bruised and raw where he�d struck her, hit her three times for trying to roll out of the vehicle. And then when it blew a tire and skidded on the narrow trail, jamming hard between two trees, she�d prayed it was stuck. She�d thought at first the sharp report was a gunshot, it had sent her ducking down, filled with hope-but it was only the tire exploding when the wheel hit a deadfall. The men�s rage would, under other circumstances, have been amusing. They were near hysteria by the time they got the wheel off, then found that the spare had no air, that it, too, had a hole in it. The situation was entertaining, but turned heart-stopping when they grew so enraged that she didn�t know what they might do to her.

But they hadn�t taken it out on her. They had sworn and argued, then at last had set about patching the spare, irritably bickering. Now, bumping along again, she was terribly hot and thirsty, her sweaty T-shirt plastered to her, the too-tight ropes burning into her. The worst discomfort was the gnats; millions of gnats had found her, and were feasting. Their bites made her wild with itching, and she couldn�t scratch. Her last thread of composure was almost gone. And she was ashamed, so ashamed that her disappearance would have Max frantic, would cause all kinds of trouble. Ashamed that she hadn�t been watchful, that she�d let her guard down, had come out of the house completely unprepared for a prowler. She knew better. After several previous threats to Max, she knew better than to become complacent. She had stepped out thinking the dogs were barking at nothing or at some small wild animal; and now Max would have to deal with the trouble her foolishness had caused. Worst of all, she knew he�d come after her, that she�d put him in unnecessary danger.

No matter how she twisted and worked at the knots, she�d not been able to loosen one. With her feet tied, and her hands tied behind her, even if she�d been able to roll off the Jeep, she couldn�t have run, couldn�t get away, could only hop stupidly, like a trussed-up chicken.

When the men had finally gotten the spare tire patched and on the wheel, and had taken turns pumping up the tire with an ancient hand pump, they�d shouldered and fought the Jeep out of the trees and moved on again up into the pine forest. The woods were black as midnight, the headlights dim. She lay helplessly bumping along again on the dirty metal floor trying to understand what this was about.

She knew Cage�s name, the other man had called him that, receiving a vicious blow across the mouth, a strike that had made him spit blood. Cage Jones-the man Wilma had gone up to the city to testify against. In some way, this whole thing was about Wilma; that knowledge riveted her with fear. Was this retribution against Wilma, for her damning testimony? What else could it be?

Early in the evening, when she brought the dogs and horses in from pasture and fed them, she�d been imagining Wilma on her way home down 101 in the heavy afternoon traffic, her car loaded with boxes and bags of new clothes and early Christmas presents. She�d thought that when she and Ryan got back from their ride, if there was no �getting home� message from Wilma, she�d give heraunt time to unpack and have a cool shower, a drink, and some supper, then she�d call her and they could talk about Wilma�s weekend.

Tending to the horses, then going in the house to fix sandwiches for herself and Ryan, she�d amused herself imagining what Wilma had bought. New jeans, of course. New sweatshirts. But she hoped something frivolous, too. When the dogs began to bark, she�d stepped out on the porch, stood in the falling evening listening. Deciding maybe there were raccoons in the barn again, or the foxwho often came to sneak dog food and that enraged the mutts, she had just slipped into the barn to see-It happened so fast. She was grabbed from behind, the dogs going crazy, the horses plunging in their stalls. She was swung around hard, losing her balance, to face a huge man.

He had clamped his meaty hand over her mouth so she couldn�t yell, had dragged her out behind the barn and tied her up and gagged her, and then thrown her in the Jeep. There was a second man, thinner. Neither spoke until they�d driven for some time and were well away from the stables, up the narrow trail. She�d leaned up to look over the back, trying to see behind them, hoping uselessly that someone had seen them and followed. But every time she tried to look back, Cage reached around from the driver�s seat and knocked her down.

And who would have seen? She�d been alone at the ranch. There was no one to know she was missing, or to know what had happened. She�d bounced along miserably on the hard metal floor, through the darkening woods, with Cage watching her so closely, against any attempt at escape, that she just about lost hope. Until the tireblew and her hope rose again.

But that hadn�t lasted long and they were off again, she still steaming at her helplessness, at her inability to help herself.

But now�Did she hear something behind them? The faintest noise? Stealthily she slid up again along the side of the Jeep to sneak a look. The sky straight above them was still silver, but the dense woods through which they rumbled were so dark that surely Cage, looking back from the driver�s seat, could no longer see her clearly. Far back down the trail, she thought she glimpsed a flash of light. She saw it for just an instant, saw it again, flicking, then it vanished. Had she heard, above the Jeep�s rattling and grinding, another sound? A distant door close, an engine start?

She tried to judge how far they had come. They�d been climbing constantly, the Jeep�s engine straining, climbing very steeply in some places. When she could see through a gap in the trees, beneath the lighter evening sky, the black hills fell away, but then they were gone again, hidden by the pine forest.

There wasn�t much up this trail but forest, and patches of open hills. Some scattered old houses far up, a fallen fence line. And, nearly straight ahead, this trail would pass close to the Pamillon ruins.

Was Cage headed there? Did he mean to dump her there?Kill me and leave me under the fallen walls or in some caved-in cellar,where no one will find me? Leave me there to get back at Wilma? Certainly Cage hadn�t kidnapped her for a ransom. He wouldn�t get much, she thought ruefully, she wasn�t some heiress worth millions.

Oh, but Max would pay. He�d pay with the ranch, the horses, the cars, and every smallest thing he owned, go into debt for the rest of his life, if that was the only way to save her-except that Max was too clever for that, Max would never be so foolish, he was far sharper than these two cheap crooks, he would never let them twist him around.

Wouldn�t he? To save my life?

And she knew he would.

Was this revenge against Wilma? Did Cage think he could make Wilma suffer far more if he killed her niece? Or, she thought, could Cage want something from Wilma, something besides revenge?Am I a hostage? Is this some kind of trade? But trade for what? Certainly he can�t buy his freedom from the law with a hostage. The U.S. courts don�t make that kind of bargain.

This was all too unlikely, too bizarre. It had been such a peaceful afternoon, she�d so been looking forward to a quiet ride, to spending some time with Ryan. And then�everything had gone to hell.

The sky was going dark now. Cage, still grousing over the flat tire, which was all Eddie�s fault because it was Eddie�s Jeep, hadn�t glimpsed her peering over the back. She caught her breath when she saw another light, a flash as brief as a firefly, one pinprick, then gone. But then another, farther down the hills, where she thought their ranch lay. Then the trail behind them was hidden by a thick stand of pine. The Jeep came up over a rise and dropped down again, and Cage swung around in the seat, turning his light on her; he caught her looking, and before she could duck, he smacked her in the face so hard he sent her sprawling. She lay unmoving, hurting, detesting Cage Jones. And thinking about the lights.

Someone was at the ranch or was approaching it. Or did those lights belong to someone following the Jeep? Ryan must have arrived by this time and found her gone. Found the door unlocked, the tire tracks, the animals upset. If she had, there�d be cops all over, and Max would be following their tracks.

They topped the rise and turned, bumping over rocks. She glimpsed broken stone walls, theywere in the ruins, the old Pamillon estate.Did Cage mean to kill her here? Shehad to get away, get back down the trail to Max-If Max couldn�t get a vehicle up that trail, he�d follow her on horseback.Not alone on horseback,Max,please. They�re both armed. Please�There was a shotgun between the front seats, she�d seen it when they threw her in the Jeep, and Cage had a handgun.

Stop it, she thought.Max is no fool. If he comes on horseback, they�ll never see him,never know he�s there. Twisting her hands in ways she hadn�t thought they�d bend, she again tried desperately to free herself; she felt blood flowing, making her hands slick as she tried uselessly to undo the knots. Cage pulled the Jeep deeper in among the fallen walls, stopped, and killed the engine.

The Jones house had been dark when Greeley arrived back there, though it was only an hour since he�d left, since he�d seen them cats tossing the place. What the hell were they doing? What were the little sneaks looking for? They couldn�t know what this was all about. Approaching the Jones�s front windows, he could see no light now. Had Lilly gone to bed? Not until he stepped around the side of the house did he see that one lamp was burning low, just about where Lilly had been sitting earlier. Was shestill in that same chair, mindlessly knitting away? Moving around to the front porch again, he rang the bell, hoping she might be in a better mood this time around. Hoping to hell them cats was gone, dirty, nosy varmints.

Well, he was damn glad to be shut of that cop, rousting him out of Mavity�s place like that. As if a cop had that kind of rights. Like some Gestapo bully. Stateside cops were as bad as them Panamanian La Guardia, didn�t give a damn for people�s rights. Unless you lined their pockets. In Panama, if you didn�t buy your freedom, the Guardia�d just as soon shoot you. Cheaper than feeding you, in jail. Well, hell, it made no difference. You get thrown in a Panama jail, only way out is in a pine box-if they bother to put you in a box, if they don�t just throw you to the sharks.

He�d stayed in that motel patio, after that cop followed him from Mavity�s, until he was sure the rookie was gone. Watched him drive away, talking on the radio like he was heading on another call. Watched him as far as he could see the cop car, then he�d retrieved his own car and headed up the few blocks to Lilly�s place. Oh, he�d checked in to the motel, all right. Waited till that cop called them, then said he�d changed his mind.

He didn�t know how he was going to convince Lilly to let him stay, but he�d figure it out. Once he got settled in one of them upstairs bedrooms, he could search the house at his leisure, do it while she slept. Do it before Cage got back. Sure as hell this would be his last chance before Cage barged inhere to get the stash.

If Cage got it first, he�d turn right around and head back to the city, to the same fence. And once that fence started moving Greeley�s own share to collectors, the feds would hear about it and them bastards�d have the dogs out.

He rang the bell again, fidgeting. What the hell was Lilly doing? At last he heard her padding to the door and he had to think how best to con her. She wasn�t an easy woman. So far, she sure hadn�t been what you�d call cordial.

He�d thought of phoning her first, asking real nice if he could stay there a day or two, that his sister had a problem with the apartment he was in. Maybe tell her the water pipes broke? But Lilly�d of hung up on him, sure as pigs had curly tails. He�d thought of pretending to be Cage, telling her to give Greeley a room, but their voices were too different, no way he could pull that off. He heard the knob turn, and she opened the door with the burglar chain on, peered out through the little crack at him. One good lunge with his shoulder and he could break that puny chain, send the door flying. Instead he gave her a big smile. �It�s me, Lilly. I come back. I�I have a kind of a problem. You think I could come in? Come in and maybe tell you about it and maybe get warm for a minute?�

�It�s still ninety degrees, Greeley.�

�Well, it�s a lot hotter in Panama,� Greeley said pitifully. �My blood�s thin. And I sure do need some help. For old times� sake?�

�What old times?�

�It�s Mavity,� Greeley said. �Something happened to her apartment where I was staying. She�d rented it and those folks showed up early to move in, and I had to leave. She didn�t have no more room; I just need me a place to stay for the night. Until I can get a motel, until the tourists go home. Motels are all full, I got me no place to sleep.� He hoped to hell she didn�t check. �I�d be gone again first thing in the morning��

She stood scowling down at him for a long time. They were the same height, but with him standing a step down on the porch, she was some taller. She looked real sour at being disturbed, sour and stubborn. He could have been starving or sick, she would have looked just as mean. When she shut the door, he thought that was the end of it, that he�d lost the first round.

But she�d only closed it to slip the chain. She opened it again, still scowling. She stared at him for another long minute, then stepped back, opening it wider. He gave her a pitiful, grateful look and moved inside, doing his best not to grin. He thought of going back to the car to get his duffle but was afraid she�d change her mind and lock the door. There wasn�t nothing in it he really needed.

She didn�t ask him into the living room, didn�t ask him to sit down. She led him along the hall to a little bedroom on the first floor. �You�ll have to use the guest bath,� she said, pointing back toward the bath near the front door. �I�ll set out a towel. You�ll find sheets in the top drawer of that dresser. When you leave in the morning�� She gave him a hard look. �What makes you think you can get a motel tomorrow if they�re all full tonight?�

�I made me a reservation,� he lied. �It�s Sunday night, some of them tourists don�t leave till Monday morning. I got me a room for then, all fit and proper, soon as they�re made up, so I won�t burden you.�

Looking unconvinced, Lilly turned and left him.

He found sheets in a drawer, and spread them on the bed, listening hopefully for the sound of Lilly going upstairs to her room. He waited for a long time, but when he went to use the bathroom, the reading light was still on in the living room and he could hear the clicking of her knitting needles, could see her seated shadow reflected against the wall between two devil masks, her shadow hands twitching and jumping as she cast on stitches or whatever the hell knitters did.

He had to brush his teeth with his finger and lavender hand soap. Didn�t know why he bothered. The towel she�d left him was thin and had a hole in one corner. Why the hell didn�t she go on to bed? Returning irritably to the fusty little bedroom, he fidgeted and stewed, sat on the bed with the pillows behind him and thought about Cage�s stash.

He and Cage had brought most of it up from Central America packed in boxes of old books that were heavy. And the boxes stacked in with furniture, in one of them big, metal overseas containers. They�d had a regular mover in; that was when Sue left Greeley and he�d given up the apartment.

When they got back to the States and the stuff was delivered to where Cage was staying in the city, they�d made sure it was all there, then tossed the books in half a dozen Dumpsters. Sold the furniture. Cage said maybe some of them books was valuable, but how valuable could a bunch of old musty books be?

They�d waited a long time, years, for gold to hit eight hundred again, because that should nudge their prices up, too, but it never got that high. Inflation was up, though, and that was good. Then finally they�d lost patience and started making plans. Cage was inside at the time, he wrote that whenhe got out, they�d do it. If Greeley�d fly up, get his half wherever he had it, Cage�d take him to the best fence. Greeley never was much good at that part of it. He�d been good at making the heist, real good, and Cage owed him that, big-time.

Gold was what all them Latin American countries had been about, back in history, gold that brought them Spanish ships, had nothing to do with saving souls. Inca idols of solid gold near as big as a house, a whole garden made of life-size gold figures and animals, hard for a fellow to believe. Made what he and Cage brought back look like peanuts-but it was still worth plenty if they�d got full price. Fence, and his dealers, everyone took their damn cut.

Still, though, he�d have enough to set him up real nice, all he�d ever want. No more diving; he was tired of working for Panama. Buy him a nice little finca up in northern Panama, couple young Indian girls to do the cooking and warm his bed, a pretty nice retirement.

Sitting on the bed, he waited for over an hour, fidgeting, until he heard Lilly go up the stairs. When he looked out, the living room was dark. Standing in the hall he saw a faint light upstairs, from a room to his left. Returning to his room, he listened for some time more as she moved around above him getting ready for bed, listened to the water running in the upstairs bath. Didn�t like to think of that old turkey naked in the bath. Listened until the water gurgled out of the tub, and finally there was silence, sweet, unbroken silence. When he peered again up the stairway, all was dark above. He hoped she was a sound sleeper. Hoped to hell she didn�t come sneaking downand catch him. Because if Cage knew he�d searched the house, Cage�d kill him.

But by the time Cage found his stash gone, he, Greeley, would be where Cage wouldn�t ever find him. He sure wouldn�t find him through the Frisco fence. Greeley wouldn�t use him again, he had another contact, had lucked on to that one and had managed it all right; kept that guy under wraps, staked out and waiting. A short layover in Miami, sell the stuff and get his cash, and he was out of the States, where Cage�d never come looking.

24

W ilma watched Violet vanish behind the wall and listened to the soft hush of her footsteps on the bare, hidden stairs, footsteps with, it seemed to her, a stubborn finality. What a hard, cold young woman Violet was, despite her frail looks and uncertain ways. Wilma felt she had made no real connection with Violet, though certainly she�d tried.

Couldn�t Violet, with her deep fear of Eddie, relate to Wilma�s own fear and to the danger she faced? Wilma had seen no sympathy in her, no recognition of their mutual peril and vulnerability. Certain that she�d lost what might be her one chance for freedom, Wilma felt herself falling into a hopelessness that was not typical of her, that was not the way she looked at life. Cage could return at any moment, and the fear that he would kill her churned in Wilma�s stomach so hard that it brought bile to her throat. This was a kind of terror she had never known, nothing like the quick surge of fear that prodded one to action. That defensive fear sharpened a person, honed one�s perceptions and one�s responses. Instant, reactive fear was what she should have felt when Cage slipped up behind her undetected and shoved her in the car; her normal fear instinct should have triggered fast action, triggered a counterattack of violence, of the moves and blows in which she had been trained. Instead, she�d caved, had been too slow. And the helpless fear that washed over her now did no good at all.

Leaning backward into the drawer again, she resumed her frantic search for a knife. At one point, she had considered the stove that stood just beside her. It was gas, and she�d thought of lighting a burner, of trying to burn the ropes off. But that was a last resort, a move of terrible desperation. Third-degree burns hurt like hell, and could further incapacitate her.

There had to be another knife, no one could cook with only one. In order to search a drawer, she had to grasp its handle in her tied hands, and twist and hump the chair forward enough to pull the drawer to her; and the space was so small she couldn�t turn fully. Digging behind her, she sorted through unseen kitchen implements, a grater, a peeler, pushing them aside. Ladle and measuring spoons jumbled together. As she searched, she listened for sounds from above, and for the sound of the car returning. But suddenly-was that a blade beneath her fingers?

Yes! A paring knife. Small wooden handle, and not very sharp. Excitedly, she drew it out.

Holding it by the handle, the tip of the blade pointed toward her, she rested her bound wrists on the edge of the open drawer and, with that support, attempted awkwardly to slip the blade between her wrist and her bonds. It took her many tries. The knife kept slipping, she couldn�t get a grip that would allow her to twist it in the right direction. Twice she dropped it, but both times was lucky that it fell into the drawer-she daren�t drop it on the floor or she�d never be able to retrieve it. Working stubbornly, and cutting herself several times, she was able at last to slip the blade between wrist and rope in a way that gave her traction. The relief of that small accomplishment was amazing. She was sawing away at the rope, intent on gaining more pressure, when Violet spoke, making her jump.

She hadn�t heard the young woman come down, no smallest sound on the stairs this time. She twisted around to glance across the room at her.

Violet stood beside the woodstove watching her with a cold resolve that had not been evident earlier. Its meaning was indecipherable; clearly the girl had made up her mind. But to do what?

Had Violet decided to release her, had she found the courage to run? Or did she mean to escape alone, leaving Wilma, thinking that the returning men would be too preoccupied with their captive to come after her?

Wilma didn�t dare speak, the girl looked as unstable as quicksand. Looked as if, at one word, she could come apart. Then, who knew what she might do? Watching Violet, she sawed hard at the frayed strands and jerked, trying to break free-but swiftly Violet moved across the room, reached over Wilma, and snatched the knife away. Jerked it from her grip, bending Wilma�s wrist and thumb back with more strength than she�d thought the girl possessed. The pain was sickening. Had Violet learned that excruciating trick from Cage, or from Eddie? As Violet stood gripping the knife, Wilma remained still, her head bent, fingering the frayed rope. Waiting.

When Violet leaned over her again to examine the rope, Wilma grasped it and jerked-she felt it break. Her hands were free. She lunged, tackling Violet, the chair still tied to her. They went down in a heap, Wilma on top tangled in the chair. Lying across Violet, holding her down, she wrestled the knife from the girl. And with her knees hard in Violet�s belly, she managed to cut free her ankles, then to free herself from the chair.

Twisting around, forcing the chair down on top of Violet, she untangled herself as Violet flailed and fought. With the cut rope she jerked Violet�s hands behind her and tied her wrists, then pushed the chair away. Sitting on top of Violet, she pinned Violet�s kicking legs and used the other piece of rope to tie them.

Leaving Violet secured for the moment, she rummaged through the kitchen drawers until she found a jumble of tools. Pliers, screwdrivers, a wrench, a roll of black electrical tape, even a flashlight that worked. Pulling open the last drawer, she withdrew a hank of old, worn clothesline cord.

Taping Violet�s wrists, she tied the cord around them and around the girl�s waist, then freed her ankles.

�Get up.�

Violet didn�t move.

Wilma shoved her.�You�re getting out of here whether you want to or not. What you do later is your business. Is there a car? Where are the keys?�

�They took the Jeep. Both cars are there. I don�t have keys, Eddie never leaves keys. He won�t let me have a car when he�s gone.�

�You�re lying. Where are the keys?� Wilma crossed the room and looked out; there was just enough light left to make out two cars parked close to the house. Neither was new, but new enough that they might be hard to hot-wire. She could make out a third vehicle farther away, by a shed. �That old station wagon-does that run?� It was one of the big old fifties models, with tall tail fins that made her think of a shark.

�It runs.�

�Are you sure? Does it have gas?�

�He keeps it full, he uses it to�He keeps it full. But if we take a car, they�ll find it and they�ll kill us both.�

�You think I have a choice? I stay here, I�m dead anyway.� Wilma stuffed the tools in her pockets. Holding the flashlight like a weapon, she jerked Violet up. �Get moving.�

Violet was dead white as Wilma forced her across the room and out, down the wooden steps; hurrying across the dirt yard, she shone the light on the old station wagon. It was thick with dirt over the rust. She wondered what Eddie used it for. Forcing Violet backward against the rear of the car, her hands taped behind her, she tied her to the bumper with the long clothesline, and then wound that through the bumper, and tied her feet together.

Jerking the rusting driver�s door open, Wilma lay down on her back under the steering wheel and got to work. Thank God Clyde and Max, when they were wild young men, during their rodeoing days, had taught her to hot-wire a car.

It took her maybe five minutes, making sure it was in neutral and the brake on. She felt a crazy thrill when, crossing the two bare wires, she made the engine turn over. Carefully she goosed the gas pedal until she had it running smoothly, then she slid out.

Untying Violet, but leaving her hands and feet bound, prodding her with the flashlight, she made her hop around the car and into the passenger seat.

�Stay there on your own side, Violet, and don�t mess with me. This flashlight, if I hit you in the right place, can be just as lethal as a gun. Where did they go in the Jeep?� She had thought, when the men left, that their vehicle hadn�t headed down the hill in the direction of the coast, that they�d turned away behind the house, moving south.

�Another road,� Violet said shortly.

�Where? What road? Where did they go?� She prodded her so hard that Violet sucked in her breath. �You might as well tell me. Whether you want it or not, I�m giving you your freedom.�

�A narrow path through the woods,� Violet said sulkily. �Only the Jeep can get through there.� She looked away at a ninety-degree angle to the wider road that Wilma could make out in the darkness, to a narrow line snaking away into the woods. That would be the bridle trail where Charlie rode sometimes. The big station wagon wouldn�t get ten feet along that track before it was stuck. Backing around, she took off down the wider road, moving without lights beneath the paler sky, down through the black land that fell away before her. This had to be the old dirt road she knew, that should lead to the Pamillon estate.

�Where does this go, Violet?�

�To the village. To the ruins, first. You know where that is?�

�What ruins? How far?� Wilma felt her heartbeat quicken.

�Parmean or something.�

�Pamillon?�

�I guess. All fallen down.�

Wilma�s spirits soared. She wasn�t lost, she was close to home, she was free and had wheels. She just wished she had a more formidable weapon. Cage and Eddie would be after them soon enough, the minute they got back and found them gone. �Where did they go in the Jeep? When will they be back, Violet?�

�I don�t know where. It�s just woods and then ranches. I don�t know what they�re doing and I don�t know when they�ll come back. Maybe they won�t, maybe they�ll hit the highway somewhere and keep going.� Violet glanced at her. �Maybe they�ve run.�

Wilma hoped so.�Can we get through the ruins to a main road, is this road clear?�

�They come and go this way. There are side roads, but I don�t think they use them.�

�Do you know the ruins? Know how to get around in there?�

Violet didn�t answer.

Wilma didn�t know what had made her ask that, what had made her think that Violet would wander there. But, from her sullen silence, maybe she did know her way among the fallen walls. Wilma glanced at her but returned her attention quickly to the dark and narrow twisting road. Dare she try lights, at least the parking lights? She knew there were drop-offs here, with nothing to mark them.

But the tiniest moving light would be a beacon, a dead giveaway. As she came around a sharp curve she hit a rock, jolting them so hard she was knocked sideways in the seat. Before she could see anything, they hit another. She thought they had gone off the road, but then the way smoothed again.

�Washed-out places,� Violet said shakily; she kept watching behind them, peering into the dark, looking for Cage and Eddie. The next bump was so violent they went skidding, the car sliding and tilting. As Wilma steered into the skid, Violet slid into her, using the momentum to ram Wilma into the wheel, making her lose control. Fighting the wheel, she felt the ground drop; the car fell with a terrible jolt, they were over the side, plummeting. The car came to a halt, hitting on its side, ramming her head against the window.

Violet lay on top of her, both of them jammed against the dash and the driver�s door, which was now underneath them. She couldn�t turn off the key-there was no key-and the engine was roaring. Afraid of fire, she shoved Violet aside hard, and jerked the wires loose every which way, breathing a shaking sigh when the engine quit.

She thought they must be on a ledge. She was afraid to move, the car was still rocking. The only sound was a faint ticking as the vehicle settled. Violet had fallen back on top of her, and lay there, limp. Wilma thought she was knocked out cold. She came to life suddenly, scrambling up and lunging for the passenger window above them, stepping on Wilma�s shoulder to boost herself through. Wilma didn�t grab her, she let her go, she didn�t want a battle that would send them over. The car rocked alarmingly as Violet leaped away. She heard Violet run, her footsteps soon lost in the night.

Gingerly Wilma lifted herself out from under the steering wheel and groped for the flashlight, sure she wouldn�t find it. She almost jumped when she felt its rubber-covered handle. Gripping it, envisioning the car balanced precariously on the edge of a cliff, she stood up slowly on the driver�s door, then stepped up into the crack between the two seat backs. As her head and shoulders cleared the passenger-side open window, the car teetered.

She didn�t see Violet in the darkness, didn�t hear her; now there was no sound. She could see, above her and above the edge of the drop, the jagged ghosts of broken walls.

Before climbing out she felt in the glove compartment carefully, not expecting to find anything useful, praying for a gun but knowing that Eddie and Cage weren�t that careless.

She found nothing but papers, probably old repair bills. Switching on the flashlight for an instant, shielding it in her cupped hand, she took a quick look at the cliff.

The earth looked solid enough beneath a black mass of boulders, she could see no dark empty spaces yawning directly below her. Switching off the light, she eased herself out the window onto the door. As she crept onto the fender, the car shifted. She slid to the ground landing among the boulders, thought it would fall again, but then it settled. Closing her eyes until they adjusted again to the dark, she climbed up the rocks that loomed black above her, her every muscle already aching and sore.

She stood at last on the road feeling incredibly free-free of ropes, free of the precarious car, free, for the moment, of Violet; hindered now only by the jabbing pain in her leg and hip, and by the aching sting of her cuts and bruises. Beneath the paler sky the land lay inky black; if she was indeed above the village, and if that faraway silver line was the sea, then those tiny clustered lights might be Molena Point. The thought ofhome had never seemed so safe and dear.

But she wasn�t there yet. Alone and hurting, she set off limping down the dark road thinking longingly of a hot shower, a stiff drink, and a rare steak-and entertaining herself with what she�d like to do to Cage Jones. But then her thoughts turned to Dulcie. She prayed that the little cat, in her panic when Wilma didn�t come home, hadn�t gone off alone looking for her.

But, no, first Dulcie would have called Max or Clyde. That would have the whole department looking for her, would have the law in Gilroy searching, going through the shops, talking with the clerks. Maybe they would find her credit card and know she�d been there, know something was wrong. She looked hopefully down the hills, longing to see the dark silhouettes of police units climbing without lights up the dark road-and yet, why would they come here? No one knew she was here, there was nothing to bring them looking for her in this desolate place.

Around her there was no sound, just the empty night and the looming hulks of broken walls-and, hiding somewhere among the tangles of stone, Violet Sears. Was Violet waiting, still meaning to harm her? Perhaps wielding some sturdy piece of metal she�d picked up among the rubble? But why would she bother, now that she had escaped? Wouldn�t she run head down the dark hills to freedom?

Or, if Cage and Eddie appeared suddenly, she would hide among the invisible tangles of stone and rubble and sudden drops. Maybe Violetknew the lay of these ruins, maybe sheknew where to hide. Living so close, might she have come here during the day, when Eddie was gone? But then, eased of her stress, each time she would return, lacking the courage for escape?

Limping, hurting so badly she wondered if something was broken, and not sure how far she could walk, Wilma made her way slowly among the fallen walls, debating whether to start for the village or wait until the pain dissipated.

25

S lipping through the dark village streets, then through heavily shadowed, overgrown gardens, Cotton had at last found the oak that held Kit�s tree house. Thankful to have left traffic and people behind him, reassured by the night�s silence in the quiet neighborhood, he�d scrambled up the oak-and found himself face-to-face with Kit herself, and Dulcie, standing in the door to the tree house. Observing the street below, they had watched him for some time.

Already the two cats knew the redheaded lady was missing. And when Cotton described her capture, panting out his urgent news, within minutes Kit was across a branch to a window of the big house and inside, shouting and nearly mewing into the telephone to Police Captain Harper.

He�d told them how he and Willow and Coyote had seen the older, gray-haired woman through that kitchen window, how he�d gone for help and seen the two men grab the redheaded one and tie her up, and drive away with her up the dirt trail through the woods, and how the big man talked about the ruins-

�But Wilma�!� Dulcie had exploded, lashing her tail, her green eyes wild. �Where exactlyis that house? Why did�?�

He had told them all he knew. And now when Kit finished the call, and went right in to talk with her humans, Cotton was ready to race away. But he was too curious-and the next thing he knew, the thin old woman, Lucinda, was bringing him food, and hewas very hungry. He ate with one eye on the woman and the man, and listened to Kit argue boldly with them.

�You can�t be sure where they�re taking Charlie,� Lucinda said. �It�s late and dark, and you-�

�Cotton is sure,� Kit said. �He heard them, they said �to the ruins.� We-�

�The police can get there faster, Kit. Those empty hills at night are wild with coyotes and bobcats. Youdo remember the cougar?�

�The cougar is not there now, we haven�t smelled him on the hills for a long time. We canbe there in the time it takes to argue!�

�There could be shooting. You could end up in the middle of gunfire, and what good would that do Charlie or Wilma? Max will have half the force up there, armed officers who-�

�We have sense enough to stay out of the way!� Kit hissed at Lucinda. �You know you can�t keep us in, we-�

�If youmust go, if you absolutelymust, then Pedric and I will take you.�

�But you can�t. There will be too many police cars, they�ll be all over that little dirt road. They�ll have it blocked and�How will you explain being there? How would you explain that you already know about Charlie and Wilma? It won�t be on the news yet. Maybe it isn�t even on the police radios, maybe they�re using their cell phones so no one else will pick it up. You can�t-�

�We�ll take you as far as we can. I�ll just get my keys.� Lucinda stared hard into the kit�s blazing yellow eyes. �Wait for us! Promise me! Think of the time you can save.�

�Cotton won�t ride in a car!� Kit shouted. �Cotton won�t get in a car! He�s feral! He won�t-�

But he had gotten in. And that had amazed Cotton himself. And now here he was riding in the backseat beside Dulcie trying to put down his panic at being shut inside the noisy, moving vehicle while Dulcie and Kit thought nothing of such a journey. The old woman drove. Her husband, Pedric, sat beside her with the kit on his lap.

Cotton was glad that Dulcie sat close to him to give him courage, purring to ease his nerves, and licking his ear. But then as they moved up among the dark hills, she reared up with her paws on the window, staring out into the night. And now he was beginning to get the feel of the moving car; it wasn�t as loud or as bumpy, or as windy and cold as when he and Willow and Coyote were hauled down from the hills in that metal cage tied on the back of a motorcycle. That had been more than a cat could bear, trapped and caged and carried down the mountain in that violent, bumpy ride and the icy windbattering them trying to tear out their fur. They�d all thought that was the end of them.

It was Dulcie and Joe Grey who had come looking for them and gotten trapped, too; and it was Kit who had rescued them all. So he guessed he could try to be as brave as she was. Well, this carwas nice and warm. And the motor wasn�t so loud; its voice was almost a purr.

But then soon the ride grew bumpier once they turned off the smooth road onto the dirt one that led, winding, up the hills. Dulcie was still rearing up; in the front seat Kit stood up in Pedric�s lap, to look out, too. And she said all in one breath, �Cop cars, Lucinda, without lights. Slow down and put out your lights or we�ll give ourselves away and give the cops away. Turn them off now!�

�They�re off, Kit!� Lucinda snapped, pulling to the side of the road, onto the rocky edge. At once, Kit put her paw on the door handle.

�Kit�,� Lucinda began, holding down the master lock.

�Please, Lucinda. You�ve brought us this far; we�re as safe now as we ever can be. You can�t-�

�I know,� Lucinda said sadly. �We�ve had this argument before. I can�t run your life; I�m overprotective, and you can�t live that way.�

�Let them go,� Pedric said.

Lucinda flipped the lock. Kit leaped out the door, and Cotton beside her. Only Dulcie paused, looking at the bright tears on Lucinda�s cheeks. Then she, too, was gone.

But away among the rocks Kit reared up to look back.�We�ll be fine,� she whispered. �Go home, Lucinda. Go before the uniforms see you and come asking questions.� And, spinning around, she followed Dulcie and Cotton away fast, streaking up the hill toward the jagged, fallen walls that loomed above them against the dark night sky.

On the second floor of the ruined mansion where the front wall had crumbled away, the big, old-fashioned nursery stood open to the night like the stage in an abandoned theater. Beside a broken rocking horse, Willow and Coyote crouched, looking down the black hills, watching yet another car move up the road without lights. Already, half a dozen cars were parked along the shoulder, dark and still. Police cars. The two cats watched this car stop, saw the door open and a white cat streak out beside two darker companions.

�Cotton!� Willow hissed. �That can�t be Cotton. Riding in a car? But�that�s Kit and Dulcie.� They watched the three cats race up toward them and vanish among the tumbled stones. �Cotton went to find Kit and Dulcie?� Willow whispered, ashamed that she had doubted him. �When we saw Wilma through that window, I thought he ran away to hunt, that he didn�t want to be bothered. But he-

�He went to find them,� she said. �Even though he hates humans and fears human places. He hates that village where we were captive-but he went there, all alone.� Admiration for the white tom filled Willow. Beside her, Coyote was silent; and when Willow looked at him, he was scowling. Willow�s eyes widened. Was he jealous? She had never known Coyote to be jealous.

But there was so much else to think about, so much happening, first that car going over the side and the thin young woman scrambling out and climbing up to the road and running, and then the silver-haired woman following her more slowly, and limping. The young one called Violet seemed very afraid. Her every movement sent messages of fear, like the movements of a cornered mouse. And then the cop cars had come, and parked, never turning on lights.

�There,� she said, glimpsing Violet. Spinning around, she raced through the cluttered nursery to the back where the wall still stood intact. Leaping to the sill of a broken window, she looked deeper into the interior of the ruined estate. �Violet�s headed for that old trailer, the place shegoes when that man has beaten her.�

�She thinks she�s safe there,� Coyote said, �She doesn�t know he watches her go in there.�

�Here comes Wilma,� Willow said softly, �following her. We have to tell them those men know about that place, that they will find them there.�

�We can�t talk to humans!� Coyote stared at her, shocked.

�We�ll tell Dulcie and Kit, they�ll tell them�� But even as she spoke they heard a car coming from the woods along the horse trail, heard the rattle of that rusted, open car, and there was no time to find Dulcie; Willow leaped away down the broken stairs and out the back, heading for the old trailer. Behind her, Coyote didn�t move, he stood staring after her. Glancing back, Willow gave him a scornful look, and slid away into the ivy.

Wilma moved warily and painfully downhill, approaching the derelict mansion, looking for Violet�s pale, swift shape, imagining her flashing away like a ghost among the ruins to some secret hiding place. The Pamillon estate had remained without repair for more than a generation, awaiting disposition of a title so tangled among two dozen heirs that even a vast array of attorneys seemed unable to sort out the many wills and trusts in a way that would establish legal succession. Pausing to get her bearings, shielding the flashlight and switching it on just long enough to be sure she wasn�t headed for a sinkhole, she flicked it off again, startled when she glimpsed Violet�s thin whiteshirt vanish among the jagged walls. Quickly she followed.

In the shadows of a collapsed garden shed and tangled ivy trellis, the girl stood unmoving, as ethereal as a ghost; Wilma approached her, expecting her to run.

She didn�t run, she stood shaking, white as paper in Wilma�s shielded light. Wilma studied her thin face and then took her icy hand. �Come on, Violet. We have to hide. Show me where.�

Violet stared into the shielded light.�There�s a place, but there are spiders and-�

�If we can hide there,� Wilma said, listening to the faint rumble of a distant, ragged engine approaching from the south, �then get on with it! They�re coming.�

Violet listened to the Jeep crunching over gravel and rocks and brushing through the trees, breaking branches. She stiffened when it did not turn up the hill toward the house but continued on through the rubble, heading directly toward them.

�Move it,� Wilma snapped. �Now!�

Violet spun, and ran.

26

W illow and Coyote watched the two women slip quickly in among the vines that hid the old trailer. The shelter stood in such a tangle that only a cat might find it, prowling the rubble as they had, a hunting cat slipping through the heavy growth. They didn�t know how Violet had discovered it-but that man knew about it, too. More than once he had followed her there; months earlier he had watched her slip in there to hide, had waited for her to leave, and then he had pushed into the mildew-stinking trailer to see where she�d been.

The next time she went there the cats had expected him to go in and drag her out, but he didn�t. He watched her, then turned away smirking in a silent, ugly laugh. As if, once he knew her secret, he meant to wait until just the right time to sneak up on her and-what? Thinking about that made them shiver; they feared that sour, sneaky man.

Now they watched the two women disappear quickly beneath the ivy and the metal roof, escaping from the Jeep. Did they think they were safe? A voice behind Willow made her spin around.

�Did she get away?� Cotton said softly. �Did the silver-haired lady get away?�

Willow leaped at him, happily licking his ears.�Didyou bring help? Didyou bring the cops? There are cops all over, sitting in their dark cars. But how�?� Then behind him she saw Dulcie and Kit, and she leaped at them, too. �Quick, you have to tell them. Tell Wilma to run, that the Jeep is coming and those men know where they are. Oh please-� But Dulcie and Kit and Cotton were three streaks racing into the old, hidden trailer.

The trailer was dark inside and smelled of rot and mildew; the door Wilma had come through flopped on one hinge, hanging out into the mat of vines. Safely inside, she shielded the flashlight with her cupped hands and switched it on.

�Where�d you get that?� Violet said.

�In the glove compartment.� She shone the light around the tiny trailer, across surfaces heavy with dirt and rust and rat droppings, over damp wood spongy with rot and smelling sour; everything was thick with mold. Who knew how many varieties of lethal spores Violet breathed in here. If she came here often, no wonder she looked pale and sick-though more likely it was the stress of living in fear of her husband that left the girl so frail.

Going in ahead of Wilma, Violet had curled up at one end of a single bed that was built between a minuscule kitchen counter and a closet that held a smelly toilet. The bed was covered with a filthy spread and smelled sour. Wilma sat down on a narrow bench, one of a pair flanking a small table that had been folded out from the wall and was supported by a flimsy leg. The trailer, cooler than the outdoors, rang with the sounds of crickets, dozens of crickets hidden in the dark around them celebrating the hot, humid night. Wilma sat with her elbows on the table, her chin on her hands, trying to quiet her fear, ignoring the pain in her leg and hip, encouraging her pounding heart to settle to an easier rhythm. A demanding mewl brought her up startled, swinging around to the open door.

Dulcie stood looking in at her. The dark little striped being was hardly visible in the night, but for her lighter nose and ears and the gleam of her green eyes. Crouching, she sprang at Wilma, landing on her shoulder, clinging to her, licking and nuzzling her face. Laughing, Wilma cuddled and hugged Dulcie, kissing her ears.�You�re all right! You don�t know how I missed you, how I worried, how bad I felt for you��

Dulcie couldn�t talk in front of Violet. She couldn�t have talked anyway, she was too choked up, all she could do was mewl. But then, getting hold of herself, she whispered faintly against Wilma�s ear, her words so soft that Wilma could hardly make out what she was saying.

�They�re back. They know about this place! Get away. Cage knows where she hides. Run! Run now!�

Wilma rose fast, holding Dulcie tight.�I hear them, Violet! The Jeep, they�re coming, headed straight here, I hear them talking�Run!� And she was out the door, clutching Dulcie, and away, letting Violet decide her own fate. In the dark behind her, the crickets had stopped. The noise of the Jeep was like thunder. Wilma ran, dodging fallen rubble, her every painful step jolting her. She could hear someone running behind her.

Violet caught up with her, they fled together as headlights veered at them, then vanished. Had they been seen? The engine roared as if goosed, roared again and died.

Silence. Wilma watched Violet warily as they crouched behind a fallen wall maybe thirty feet from the trailer, half that from the Jeep. Dulcie clung tightly to Wilma, her heart pounding against Wilma�s chest. They heard the men step out, their shoes crunching on broken stone. Wilma prayed Violet wouldn�t move-wouldn�t intentionally give them away. The girl started to rise. Wilma shoved her down and twisted her arm behind her. �Be still. Not a sound.�

Violet moaned at the pain of her twisted arm.�Let off a little! I won�t do anything! There�s someone in the back of the Jeep, they�re forcing someone out��

Dulcie breathed one word in Wilma�s ear, turning her cold. �Charlie. They have Charlie.�

There was commotion around the Jeep, the prisoner was fighting them. Cage yelled,�Bitch! Damned bitch. Hold her, for Chrissake!� Then a dull thud and a woman�s muffled moan. But then Charlie snapped, �Go to hell!� That brought Wilma up, rigid.

Both men were facing them, they could see the pale smear of Cage�s face and shirt, his heavy shoulders against a stone wall as they dragged Charlie away from the Jeep. �Untie her feet,� Eddie grumbled. �I�m not carrying her, she�s too damn heavy.�

�Shut up and take her shoulders, I�m not untying her. Hurry the hell up!�

Wilma hugged Dulcie close and then jerked Violet up.�Come on. Now.� Pulling Violet, she slipped away fast among the broken walls. They moved as silently as they could through the scattered rubble. Wilma didn�t dare run and risk stumbling noisily over the rocks. But suddenly she was aware of small shadows running with them. Kit? Yes. And she could see Cotton, white in the blackness. No time to think what other cats there were. Intent on getting away, she forced Violet ahead, brutally prodding her, hoping the sounds of their running were drowned by Cage and Eddie�s arguing as they dragged Charlie into the trailer.

Hauled roughly out of the Jeep and across ragged stone into what appeared to be a cave, Charlie saw, high among the fallen walls, a hint of swift movement, something small and quick. And despite the men�s arguing, she caught the faint whisper of voices, distorted by Cage�s swearing and Eddie�s whining replies-but now, all was still. Could that band of feral cats still be here, in the ruins? For a moment, hope filled her.

But those shy little cats; even if they were here, how could they help? They were so wild, and so fearful of humans. They wanted nothing to do with humans except to steal food, to scavenge from the alleys and escape. They would be escaping now, running from invading humans, would have been alerted by the first sounds of the Jeep, terrified by the men�s angry voices.

She had spoken to them once, spoken as a friend to three of them. But still, she thought they were too shy and far too fearful ever to help her.

Dragging her across a hard floor, Cage dumped her on what seemed to be a dirty, rumpled cot. He flicked on a small, weak flashlight. They were in some kind of little shack, or maybe a trailer.

Yes, it was a trailer, a small old camping trailer, every surface rimed with mold and dust. She tried to picture where she was in the ruins, could only be sure it was somewhere behind the main house she had seen looming against the sky when Cage dragged her out of the Jeep. She had walked these ruins, she and Max, and they had ridden up here to picnic, as had she and Ryan, leaving their horses tied while they explored the broken rooms and cellars-but they had never discovered this trailer.

The first time she�d ever seen the ruins, she and Max and Dillon Thurwell had hidden here from another killer, hidden in one of the cellars just under or just behind the main house, a cellar with broken concrete stairs leading down to it. If she could free herself, could she find it again and hide there? She didn�t like the fact that it would be a dead end, only one way out, but it would be better than nothing. Strange that she was a prisoner here a second time. That first had been enough.

When Cage tried to tie her bound legs to the bed, she twisted and kicked him hard, her feet striking him in the chest. He grunted, sucked air, and hit her, knocking her against the wall so violently that her vision swam-hit her again and she went dizzy; fighting to stay awake, she could feel herself reeling and falling as if into a black pit.

From her hiding place, Wilma watched the two men drag Charlie into the trailer, swearing and arguing; she burned to get her hands on Cage. Kneeling, she felt among the rubble of fallen stones until she found a long, well-balanced rock. And she headed for the trailer.

�Wait,� Violet hissed, grabbing her arm. �They�re leaving. Look, they�re coming out. They�they�ve left her there.� She looked at Wilma. �Who is that woman?�

Wilma didn�t answer. She watched the men moving away, glimpses of their dark figures shifting against the broken stone walls; she expected that any minute they would turn back, to further hurt Charlie. But they hurried on, to the Jeep. She heard the engine start, listened to it pull away without lights, heard it head uphill, its engine whining-she felt Dulcie jump down, the little tabby gone before Wilma could grab her. �Dulcie�� She could see nothing in the blackness. Dulcie had vanished.

�The house�,� Violet said. �They�re going back to the house, and they�ll see we�re gone. They�ll be back and they�ll find us.� She rose to sprint away, but Wilma grabbed her. Violet hit her hand with a painful chop and jerked free, and ran; Wilma could hear her stumbling throughthe dark, toward the mansion. She stared after the girl, half hating her for not wanting to help Charlie, half glad to be rid of her. She rose and, carrying the rock, headed for the trailer and Charlie.

She daren�t switch on the flashlight. As she hurried, stumbling through the rubble, listening to the Jeep�s roar grow fainter, she felt Dulcie brush her ankle, warm and furry.

�Good riddance,� Dulcie said softly.

Wilma picked her up, glad to hold her close again.�Where did you go?� But Dulcie said nothing. Pushing in through the curtain of ivy and stepping up into the dark trailer, Wilma, meaning to rush to Charlie, switched on the flashlight.

She stopped in midstride.

Four cats were crouched on the cot, over Charlie where she lay tied up. All four were busily chewing at the ropes-like some strange, impossible fairy tale. Chewing at Charlie�s bonds just as, not long ago, Kit had chewed at similar bindings to release a younger hostage, freeing twelve-year-old Lori Reed when she had been kidnapped. Wilma watched, not knowing whether to laugh with delight or weep at the cats� bold kindness. It had not been easy for these wild littlecats to come in here, to put themselves so close to humans-but now, the minute the light flicked on, the three feral cats froze, staring up at her with eerie reflective eyes. And they were gone, dropping soundlessly from the bed and melting into the shadows.

She supposed they vanished out the door, though she saw and heard nothing. Only Kit remained on the cot, diligently chewing at Charlie�s ropes and glancing sideways up at Wilma, her golden eyes caught in the light, her tortoiseshell fur dark against Charlie�s red hair. Then Dulcie leaped from Wilma�s shoulder to help.

Quickly, Wilma removed the dirty bandanna from around Charlie�s mouth, and began to work on the half-chewed ropes, jerking them apart where the ferals had chewed almost through them. It was the look on Charlie�s face that made Wilma laugh, a look of terrible wonder and disbelief.

Charlie struggled up as Kit chewed through the rope that bound her hands. Wilma jerked the last rope off, and Charlie swung off the bed-and they ran, Charlie and Wilma, Dulcie and Kit, up across the ruins.�Where can we hide?� Wilma said. �Where are�?�

The roar of the returning Jeep barreling down the road silenced her. They stopped and turned, heard it pull up close to the trailer, Cage swearing.

�We still have the niece,� Eddie said, �and the aunt�ll come back for her. She�ll do whatever we say when she knows we have her precious niece.�

�This way,� Kit hissed, and the little cat ran, slipping past the Jeep in blackness, Charlie and Wilma stumbling behind her.

�We can�t see you,� Charlie whispered. But Kit mewled softly, then mewled again. Cage was still swearing as Kit led them away between dark and fallen walls, up four steps and into the kitchen of the ruined house, then through the kitchen and the living room, tripping over rotting furniture. �The captain,� Dulcie said, �has men down there, six units parked along the road. We can just��

But the Jeep had pulled around the house, they heard it skid to a stop before the broken front door; they had time only to duck behind the tumbled furniture, into the deepest shadows.

�Damn women,� Cage growled, slamming the door of the Jeep. �How the hell�You take the first floor, I�ll look upstairs. How the hell did Violet get the keys to the wagon! You gave �em to her, Eddie! I told you-�

�I never!�

�Don�t lie to me! Violet cut her loose and took the damn car keys. Why the hell did you�?�

�She wouldn�t dare, and she didn�t know where them keys were. Even if she did, she ain�t got the balls to take them.�

�You shoulda beat her before we left there the first time, made sure she couldn�t run. Come on��

�They wouldn�t hide in here, right in the house. There�s basements and things.�

�Them black, caving-in cellars? Not Violet. Scared of spiders, scared of the dark. And where the hell�s the station wagon? You think they went on down the hills?�

�Told you, car was damn near out of gas. Running on fumes. Told you I was out of canned gas. No, they hid the wagon somewhere; could be anywhere in this mess.� The other car door slammed, and their footsteps crunched across stones, the twin beams of their torches flashing up the steps and across the porch, then blazing straight in through the front door and across the tangles of fallen furniture.

Cage stood in the doorway looking in, seeming, in the flashlight�s reflection, as big as a giant. �You go find the station wagon. I�ll take care of this bunch. Still don�t know why you left the keys in it. If you can�t find it, look for tracks, try to make yourself useful.�

�Told you I didn�t leave the keys in it!� Eddie stood on the porch behind Cage, shining his light back into the ruins as if hoping the station wagon would miraculously appear and he wouldn�t have to go searching for it in the dark.

�You didn�t leave them in it, then you gave � em to Violet! Or you told her where they were. I swear, sometimes-�

�There,� Eddie shouted, jumping off the porch, swinging his light and running.

Cage turned and looked.�What the hell!� then took off after Eddie. When they were gone, Wilma rose and went to the window, stood watching them.

�They found it,� she said as Charlie joined her. They could see the men�s two lights shining down the embankment, could hear their voices clearly in the still night. Eddie began to laugh. �Guess that did �em.�

�What the hell?� Cage�s torchlight shining down silhouetted his tall bulk. �What you mean, that did �em? Ain�t nobody in the damn wagon. Damn women got out.� As he turned, staring back toward the house, Wilma grabbed Charlie�s hand, ready to go out the back.

But Charlie pulled away and moved to the front door, staring into the night.

�Come on!� Wilma said, grabbing her. �Before they come back.� Outside, at the wreck, the men were quiet for a moment, as if looking over the damage to the old car. When Wilma tried to pull Charlie with her, Charlie jerked away roughly.

�What?� Wilma snapped.

�Look,� Charlie said softly, slipping out onto the porch. �Watch, maybe half a mile back along the tree line-where the trees part. Watch the little dip, with the sky a shade lighter behind it. Watch right there, something�s coming, I saw movement farther back�� She gripped Wilma�s hand. �Horses. Horses on the trail�Max��

Wilma could not hear horses. This was Charlie�s wishful thinking. She had dropped Charlie�s hand and was starting to turn away when�

�There,� Charlie hissed. �There, see!�

Wilma glimpsed something moving past the little dip, then it was gone. Two riders, making for the ruins.

Terror filled Charlie�s voice. �Cage has a handgun, and there�s a shotgun in the Jeep. If he hears them�� She pulled Wilma through the front door and down the steps. �Go! Go down to Max�s men, tell them to come fast, on foot, and quietly��

�But you can�t��

�Go!� Charlie snapped. �Take the cats!� She snatched up Kit and shoved her at Wilma. �Go with her, both of you!� And she moved away through the blackness, toward the Jeep. Wilma wanted to drag her back, but knew she could make things worse by charging after her and alerting Cage. She could only go for help, as fast as she could go, down through the rubble and the dark road.

27

�D amn bitch!� Cage hissed, staring down the cliff. �How the hell did she get loose! That bitch Violet. Why the hell did you give her the keys! She cut that bitch loose and now she�s wrecked the wagon! Look at it! And both of �em gone!�

�I didn�t give her no keys, I told you! Maybe they hot-wired the car.�

�That�s sure as hell lame! Violet couldn�t hot-wire nothing, she hardly knows which end of a hammer to use! What�d you do, have extra keys made? I thought I could trust you!� He looked so hard at Eddie Sears that Eddie took a step back.

�I swear, I never had no keys made. I neverdrove the car, it�s your car�I thought you planned a few more heists and then would dump it�I swear, Cage��

�If you never drive it, how�d it run out of gas? Where�d you drive it to? What else have you been lying about?�

Eddie�s voice shook. �I swear, Cage, I never. You drove it two weeks ago. If I�d used it, you know I�d of put gas in!�

�And why the hell didn�t you work Violet over beforehand? Look at the mess you�ve made.�

�I should of,� Eddie said, backing away. �Should of beat her up good.� But then he rallied. �That old woman�ll show herself. She�ll come out when she knows you have her niece, when we drag the redhead out where the old bitch can see �er.�

As the men left the edge of the cliff, heading for the trailer, in the blackness beside a fallen wall Charlie slipped toward the Jeep. She could hear, above her, the soft hush of hooves on the trail and the occasional click of a shod hoof against stone as the riders approached and, once, the faint jingle of a bit. In another minute, Cage would enter the trailer and see that she was gone and come roaring back. Enraged, would he return to the Jeep to grab his shotgun? Max would be nearer, then. They�d hear the horses and shine their lights on Max like jacking a deer. She daren�t shout to warn him, daren�t telegraph his presence.

Racing toward the dark silhouette of the Jeep, she couldn�t tell where Max would enter the ruins. Would the horses spook among the unfamiliar night shadows, shy and make a fuss, rearing and backing, and give Max away? As well broke as their mounts were, this was no easy place for a horse in the pitch dark and looming shadows, when he couldn�t see where he was stepping, and with dark figures moving mysteriously in the night.

Peering into the Jeep, then slipping inside onto the seat, she snatched up Cage�s wadded jacket. Yes, beneath it, between the two narrow front seats was the sawed-off shotgun. It took her precious moments to find the bracket that held it in place, then to discover how it worked. She was sweating and shaky when at last the gun came free.

Carefully fingering it, she could find no lever. She decided the shells must be ejected by the movable portion of the stock, like Max�s shotgun. Everything was harder in the dark, more so with as little as she knew about shotguns, and her increasing urgency as the horses drew closer; she heard one of the horses snort.

Laying the gun across her lap and wrapping the coat around it, she snapped the stock to eject a shell. She felt the shell fly out inside the coat, against her thigh. With shaking fingers she found it and snatched it up. She explored the parts of the stock and barrel as best she could, then pressed the shell into what she prayed was the feed. She had no idea how many shells the gun contained, but her guess was, if it was loaded, it would be fully loaded. Maybe six to ten rounds? She didn�t like to depend on a guess. Feeling for the safety, she found the little button pushed in; pressing it to a protruding position seemed logical for it to fire, if the in position sent a bolt through the firing mechanism. She was praying hard that she was right when she heard the two men burst out of the trailer. They came pounding straight toward the Jeep. They weren�t swearing now, they were silent and fast, only the sound of their running and stumbling on the rocks. At the same instant, she heard a low exclamation from the trail. She heard the horses milling, as if they�d been pulledup short. She was scrabbling her hands over the dash trying to find the light switch-and the men were there, racing at the Jeep. She found the switch and pulled it.

Twin beams like lasers cut the blackness, catching Cage with a shock of light; he loomed out of the dark, diving for the Jeep, blinded by light, then dropped down behind the fender, taking cover as he reached beneath his jacket. Eddie had ducked down on the other side; Charlie saw the top of his head, his cap moving as he began to circle, to get behind her.

Standing up in the Jeep, she braced herself against the dash, the stock of the gun jammed hard into her shoulder, her stomach flipping as she tried to hold steady, to keep her hands from shaking.

When Wilma ran down the dark road, looking for the nearest patrol car, the two cats didn�t follow her, but had leaped away, in the opposite direction. She prayed for their safety; she could never have made them come with her, she�d only have wasted precious time. Running, searching for the first dark vehicle, she thought she�d spent half her life saying prayers for those three cats. Ahead, she saw a dark shape that had to be a patrol car; she stopped when a dark-clad figure stepped out, and she caught the glint of a handgun, stood with her hands out away from her sides, waiting. �It�s Wilma Getz,� she said softly. �Don�t shine a light, they�ll see you. Max is coming on horseback. And Charlie�� She caught a flash of the officer�s badge, the line of his dark uniform, the tilt of a familiar jaw. �Is that Jimmie? Jimmie McFarland?�

�Yes, ma�m.� Young Jimmie�s soft, bright voice sounded truly glad to hear her. She paused when a second officer emerged, stepping around from the far side of the unit, and she saw the broad curve of Brennan�s belly.

�Fill us in,� Brennan said quietly, staring up into the unbroken dark of the old estate. �How many men? And where? Where�s Max? He called us from the trail. Where does it come out?�

�To the left, above the Jeep,� Wilma said, taking Brennan�s hand and pointing with it to where the Jeep stood.

�Get in the unit and stay there,� Brennan said, and he and McFarland moved away. She wanted to go back into the ruins, but knew she would only hinder them. She slipped into the hot squad car and had hardly pulled the door to, making no sound, when far up among the rubble a pair of lights flashed. Headlights. Someone was in the Jeep.

The diffused gleam of the Jeep�s lights washing out across the ruins cast into stark silhouette the broken walls and gnarled oaks-and the small shapes of the feral cats, one poised atop a ragged tower, a pale cat padding across the sharp slant of a collapsed roof, and a stark white cat treading the top of a wall high under the stars. All watched the scene below. Curiosity, anger, and fear filled them. Then along the wall, two more cats appeared, dark creatures, rearing up, a pair of yellow eyes and a pair of green catching the light. Kit and Dulcie, fearful and intent, watched as Charlie stood up in the Jeep, her shotgun leveled behind the light-and as Cage Jones lunged to grab her.

Standing in the Jeep, her back to the dark where Max was approaching, the stock of the shotgun jammed against her shoulder, Charlie swallowed.�Stop, Cage. Stop now!�

Cage laughed.�Gun ain�t loaded, missy. And it�d be double-aught bird-if the gun was loaded. It ain�t.�

�Want to find out?�

Cage laughed again and lunged for her. She fired. He staggered and fell back, and grabbed the fender, bent double, rocking the Jeep. She felt Eddie�s weight rock it in the other direction and she spun around. He ducked, and disappeared beyond the light, then she heard him running in the blackness. She didn�t dare fire where she couldn�t see. Eddie was gone, pounding away as Cage clung to the Jeep, his face a mass of blood that turned her stomach. Slowly he slid down the fender, clutching it with bloody hands.

She waited for him to fall, but suddenly he twisted up again, righted himself and came up over the fender straight at her. She fired again, point-blank. He went down. This time, he stayed down.

How strange, the way that shot had echoed. Too loud and with an unnatural thunder, not like the first round.

But now the night was so still, only the echo of the shots ringing, the blackness unbroken except for the acid path of the headlights, beneath which Cage Jones lay crumpled.

Holding the gun at ready, knowing he couldn�t be a threat now but alert in case he was, she swung out of the Jeep.

He lay writhing in a way that sickened her. Where was Eddie? Her shots had stopped Cage from slipping up on Max in the dark, but where was Eddie Sears?

She heard no sound of running. And, now, she did not hear the horses.�Eddie�s out there,� she shouted. �Cage is down. Eddie ran.�

But the shots had warned Max. Somewhere in the dark, he was ready.

She didn�t think Eddie Sears would go after Max, not alone. Eddie was a coward, and this wasn�t Eddie�s battle. He�d be crazy to shoot at a cop. But still she stood scanning the night, watching for a dark figure slipping back toward the riders. She was thinking maybe she was stupid to think Max would be caught off guard, when Max said, behind her, �Thanks, Charlie.�

His hand brushed hers as he shone a light on Cage; he knelt with his gun on Cage, checking his breathing and searching him for a weapon. Then, standing again, he switched on his radio.�Need a medic for Jones. Eddie Sears ran.� He looked at Charlie. �Is he armed?�

�He didn�t fire at me, but�I don�t know.�

He relayed that information, and then he held her close, warm, so warm. He smelled of male sweat and horse and gunpowder. She lay her head against him and only now knew how weak she felt, how scared.

�It�s all right,� he said, stroking her hair and shining his torch into the night, searching-and watching Cage.

And then McFarland and Brennan were there; they took charge of Cage. Other lights moved through the night, throwing looming shadows as officers searched for Eddie Sears. She heard the horses behind her and then Bucky loomed over her, and beside him her own Redwing-and then out of the darkness Rock leaped at her, the silver hound all over her, wagging and whining, jerking the long lead rope that Ryan held.

Ryan sat Redwing, looking down at Charlie, holding Rock�s rope, and holding Bucky�s reins. In the glancing reflection of the headlights, Ryan had that long-suffering look on her face as Rock made a fool of himself.

�He tracked you,� Ryan said.

Charlie looked at her.�You�ve never trained him.�

Ryan shrugged.�He tracked you.�

Max said,�Where�s Wilma?�

�She�s all right, she went�� She nodded toward where the patrol cars were parked. Lights were flashing now, men running, dark shadows dodging among the ruins as if someone had spotted Eddie Sears.

Max was on the radio.�Wilma down there?�

�I�m here,� Wilma said.

Max handed Charlie the radio. She nearly dropped it.�You all right? Where are you?�

�In a nice comfortable squad car drinking someone�s leftover coffee and starving to death. Areyou all right? What was the firing?�

�I�I shot Cage Jones. He�Could we talk about it later? I�m beginning to feel�� Charlie swallowed. �I think I need to��

�Later,� Wilma said, and the radio went silent. Charlie listened to the sounds of running feet and rocks being dislodged and the faint, harsh mumble of the radios as officers searched for Sears; she prayed that no one else would be hurt. Max looked down at her and, with the back of his hand, wiped the tears from her face. She wondered why she was crying. Max put his arms around her, and it was all right, everything was all right.

28

F rom atop a crumbling wall, the five cats watched dark-clad cops scour the ruins, shining their lights into caves and crevices, talking to one another in those low, machine voices. They saw, farther up the hill, Max Harper kiss Charlie, and then Charlie mounted the big buckskin-the horses were nervous from the shooting, sidestepping, and fussing. Charlie rode away into the woods with the other woman to calm the frightened mounts, the cats thought. Willow and Cotton and Coyote understood that; they needed comforting, too. The three sat close together, gently grooming one another.

They had done things tonight that were not natural to them, had participated in frightening events foreign to their world, and now they needed one another. But they were warm with satisfaction, too. Cage Jones had gotten what he deserved, and that made them purr. But beside the three ferals, Dulcie and Kit were tense with excitement, watching the action as if eager to leap into the fray, convinced that, with cops all over, Eddie Sears would soon be caught, too.

�Like a mouse in a tin can,� Kit said. And Willow and Cotton smiled. In the ferals� wild and threatened lives, retribution was highly valued-and suddenly Eddie Sears appeared from out of nowhere running straight at them, racing for their wall, dodging, searching for a place to hide, and the cops were nearly on him. The three ferals slunk down, ready to vanish. But Dulcie and Kit crouched, with blazing eyes, their ears back, their tails lashing as Eddie veered along the wall looking for a way through-and the two cats flew at him: twin trajectories hitting him hard, raking him harder. Emboldened, the other three followed. Eddie Sears, covered with enraged and clawing cats, ran screaming, batting futilely at the slashing beasts.

�Don�t shoot,� Wilma shouted, swinging out of the squad car and running up the road. Maybe no one heard her; there were officers all over, converging on Sears. �Don�t shoot,� she cried, �he�s not alone!�

�What is that?� McFarland hissed, throwing his light on something wild and screaming that rode Sears�s shoulder, raking his face. McFarland dove at Sears�s legs, hit him low and hard and dropped him. As Sears went down, the beast that covered him seemed to break into separate parts and vanish, exploding away in the dark.

McFarland knelt, cuffing Sears�s hands behind him.What the hell wasthat? He shone his light into Sears�s face. It was clawed and bloodied. McFarland shivered and felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, stiff.

He was securing Sears�s legs when he glanced up and saw Wilma standing over them. She looked at him, looked at Sears. She said nothing, just turned and headed away, back toward the squad car. McFarland knelt atop Sears, watching her, amused by the shadow of a grin that she couldn�t hide. Then Brennan joined him, and they got Sears to his feet. �What was that?� Brennan said. Around them in the night, officers were gathering, their lights coming down out of the ruins. �What the hell was that?�

No one knew, or maybe didn�t want to say what they thought they had seen. Until rookie Eleanor Sand arrived. �I think,� she said, �it was cats.�

�Cats?� the men looked at her, and laughed. �Cats, Sandy? What kind of cats? Sandy, girl, you�ve lost it.�

�I think there are feral cats up here,� she said. �I�ve been up here, seen them. Domestic cats gone wild.�

�Sandy, no cat would do what we just saw.�

�What kind of cats would�?�

�They�d have to be rabid to do that.�

Eleanor laughed.�No. Those cats act all right, usually. But they stay away from people. Maybe tonight, with all the confusion, they felt threatened.�

It was then that Charlie rode up on the buckskin.�I think Eleanor�s right,� she said softly. �Maybe tonight, with all the excitement, everyone running, the lights�� She looked around at the circle of unbelieving cops. �If those feral females were protecting kittens, as wild as they are, they�d attack anything.�

The men stared at her and shook their heads.

�Wild cats with kittens�I�ve read that cats in wild colonies birth their kittens all at one time. And that they will band together to protect them.� Charlie shrugged. �Maybe Sears, running like that, got too near their lair.� Turning Bucky, she headed back up toward the woods, her joy in retribution equally as fierce as that of the five little cats.

Her only disappointment was that, entering the woods where Ryan sat astride Redwing, she could tell her nothing of what had really happened, she could share none of the wonder with Ryan. Nor could she, she thought sadly, share this with Max.

Dulcie and Kit listened to the ambulance come screaming, they watched as the rescue vehicle slowed and made its way through the estate, watched the medics get to work on Cage Jones.

Ought to let him die, Dulcie thought as she fled for the squad car and Wilma. She glanced behind her once, to the broken wall where Kit sat with the three ferals, all of them smiling. Then heading down the road, Dulcie leaped in through the passenger-side window, into Wilma�s arms, snuggling with her and purring so loudly that Wilma smiled.

But after a while, Dulcie said,�You�re hurting, aren�t you? I can tell, the way you sit. I bet you�re all bruises.� Dulcie quit purring and laid her ears back. �Hurting, and all alone, while Cage Jones is being patched up and pampered and covered with a warm blanket and given a sedative for pain.�

Wilma laughed.�I�m not alone, I have you. I could use something for my headache. A whiskey and a rare steak would fix that.�

�Makes my fur bristle to think of all the tax money the state of California is going to spend, making that man comfortable.�

�That, Dulcie, is the way it works.�

�Money that could be used to clean up our house, which he trashed. Why spend money on that scum?�

�Only in a dictatorship,� Wilma said, �would Jones be left to die unattended.�

�Maybe so, but that�s all he deserves. Well, I�m only a cat. I don�t have to think like a human. Maybe cats cut a sharper line between good and evil.�

�Maybe,� Wilma said, stroking Dulcie�s ear. �Maybe cats should rule the world.�

The traffic was light considering what this freeway usually handled. By nine forty-five the late work traffic had dispersed. Beyond Clyde�s open window the worst heat had abated, and the night was warm and soft; the heavy Lexus SUV provided a ride so smooth and silent that a guy could go to sleep, Clyde thought. Not like the vintage cars he restored, that let you know their engines were running. The way he babied them, his enginesalways purred-but louder and with more character. Tonight, he could have used a bit of engine growl to keep him alert. He didn�t even have Joe�s acerbic conversation. In the open-top carrier on the seat beside him, the tomcat slept deeply, his soft snoring rivaling the smooth rhythm of the Lexus. It had been a long day for the tomcat.

From Dulcie�s frantic phone call to the station saying that Wilma was gone, from the moment Joe raced to her house, and then their hasty trip to Gilroy; from Joe�s sleuthing in the discount shops, to playing dumb for Detective Davis, all that on top of the village murders that the gray cat had fussed overfor days, Joe was done in. In the car after supper, looking out from the carrier, his last words had been that he�d catch a few winks, a small restorative nap to recharge the batteries, then be rarin� to go again.

The calm evening drive would be peacefully restorative for Clyde, too, if he hadn�t been strung tight with concern for Wilma and for Charlie. Not in the mood for local radio or a CD, his mind was filled with a succession of scenes that ran by him like clips from old movies. Wilma the first time he ever saw her, when he was eight and Wilma in her twenties, the day her family moved in next door to him, Wilma in jeans and an old T-shirt, her long blond hair tied back, working alongside the two men her folks had hired to unload the rented truck. The tall blonde carrying in big cardboard boxes marked �kitchen,� �bathroom,� �Wilma�s room,� all the rooms of the house. Clyde�s mother had said they were probably paying the moving men by the hour, so everyone helped. Times were hard then for many families, certainly for his own folks.

A memory of Wilma playing baseball with the little kids, in the street, Wilma hitting a home run over the neighbor�s garage; they never did find the ball. Wilma making Christmas cookies in the shape of cowboy hats and horses for him; she was always so beautiful, her blond hair so clean and bright. Long years later, when it turned gray, she didn�t dye it like other women, she enjoyed that silver mane. Wilmataking him to San Francisco for the weekend when he was twelve, to the zoo, to Fisherman�s Wharf for cracked crab and sourdough. And the trip through the San Francisco PD because she knew the chief.

And then when Charlie had first come to stay with Wilma after she�d quit her job in the city, packed up her belongings in cardboard boxes, driven down to start a new life in the village. First time he ever saw Charlie she was lying on her back underneath the van, changing the oil in her old blue van, swearing when oil dripped in her eye.

For a long time he�d thought he was in love with Charlie. Maybe he had been. It had hurt bad when suddenly Charlie and Max were a pair, no hints, no working up to it that he�d noticed. They�d been training Clyde�s unmanageable Great Dane puppies for him, up at Max�s ranch, working the two on obedience where there was room for them to run.

It was a situation that neither Charlie nor Max had planned, Clyde was sure of that. It just happened. After Charlie told him, he�d never let either of them know how much it hurt.

But he�d gotten over the hurt, had seen how good they were together, had realized that in some strange way they belonged together, and he�d been glad for that, glad they�d found each other-and now Charlie was missing. Clyde felt his stomach twitch and churn, hurting for Max, felt tears of rage burn.

This wasn�t coincidence. Did Cage Jones have both women? He understood how Jones�s twisted mind might decide there were issues that warranted kidnapping Wilma, that was sick enough. But why Charlie? A hostage, additional pressure on Wilma? But for what? Both Max and Davis thought the hostage theory was valid, and that Wilma�s kidnapping wasn�t for retribution alone. Clyde slowed at the Prunedale cutoff, but then gave it the gas, deciding to keep straight on through Salinas, which was a safer route. In this light traffic, the trip should be less than an hour. Not until he�d slowed going through Salinas did he hit the phone�s button for Molena Point PD.

When the tomcat heard the ringing on the speaker, he jerked awake and pushed up out of the carrier, stretching tall and yawning. Stretching again as he listened to Mabel Farthy�s brief answer.

�It�s Clyde; I�m just coming through Salinas, headed home.�

Mabel�s voice was bright with excitement. When she said, �Wilma�s safe! Charlie�s safe!� Clyde almost wrecked the car.

�They�Hold a minute,� Mabel said, as she switched to another line. She was gone maybe twenty seconds, then cut back in. �The captain�s there with them, Dallas on his way. Jones is in custody, headed for emergency, gunshot in the face. Hold��

Another short delay, then she came back on.�Sears is in custody, too.�

�Where?� Clyde snapped.�Where are they?�

�Don�t go up there, Clyde. Half the force is up there on a narrow road, can hardly turn a car around, you�d only be in the way.�

�Upwhere?�

�Hold again�� Over a minute this time. As Clyde sped up, west of Salinas, a truck passed him, cutting close. He let off the gas until there was again ample space between them. Mabel came back on. �Gotta go, three lines flashing��

�If you don�t tell me where, I�ll keep calling, jam your lines.�

Mabel sighed.�Pamillon ruins. Come on into the station, Clyde. They should be down here by the time you get back. They�Gotta go,� she said, and cut off.

He turned the speaker off, grumbling. Beside him Joe sat erect in the carrier, staring at Clyde, then staring out the window, then back at Clyde, his look saying clearly,Step on it. Get this heap moving.

�I�m not wrecking us to get there faster. The excitement�s over. They�re safe. Thank your cat god or whatever, and keep your fur on.�

�But they�Dulcie and Kit�She couldn�t tell us what�s happened to them. Where they are, Clyde? What if�?�

�I�m not driving any faster. We�ll be there in twenty minutes.�

The tomcat began to wash his paws.�There was a time, you�d have floor-boarded this buggy.�

�There was a time I�d kill a quart of whiskey, get up the next morning and hunker down on the back of the meanest bull in the string. I�m older now and smarter.�

Silence.

�Does it occur to you that my more sensible driving keeps your worthless neck safe? Or does that not mean anything?�

Joe Grey sighed, curled up in his carrier, lifted a disdainful paw, and pulled the top over. He remained thus secluded until Clyde bypassed Molena Point and, at around ten forty, turned up the hills, toward the Pamillon estate. Then Joe came alive, staring high above them at the scattered car lights, pricking up his ears at the wail of an ambulance that came zigzagging down, forcing them onto the shoulder. The minute they stopped, he crouched, to leap out.

29

T he house was silent around Greeley, no sound from the dark upstairs rooms. Probably Lilly was asleep, but he waited a while longer to make sure-he�d waited long enough for her to stop knitting and go to bed, he guessed a few minutes more wouldn�t matter. He�d conned her into letting him stay overnight, but she hadn�t shown no hospitality; hadn�t offered one of the upstairs rooms, which were likely bigger.

Well, this downstairs cubbyhole suited him better, farther away from her room. Having spotted the safe earlier as those two cats prowled the basement, he meant to start there. Finesse open the safe, and that was likely where he�d hit pay dirt. If that turned up empty, he�d have to plow through that whole damn basement full of junk, and maybe the rest of the house, too. He wondered if she was one of them early risers, up before daylight. He hoped to hell not. The time now was just after one.

He wondered if Lilly knew where the stash was. Not likely. He�d never known Cage to tell her nothing.

Well, he�d find them trinkets before she was out of bed, he had to. Find them, and be out of there before first light. And the old man�s face brightened in an evil smile. Maybe he�d leave her a note, thank her all proper for her hospitality.

He had one more little drink, from the bottle he�d brought in his coat pocket, waited a few minutes more, listening to the silence of the house, then, swinging off the bed, he opened the door without a sound, and slipped out.

It was eleven thirty when Clyde pulled off the narrow dirt road onto the soft shoulder below the Pamillon estate, to make room for a police car coming down. Above them in the blackness, flashlight beams glanced across broken walls and twisted trees in a surreal tangle; they could see cops moving about, and half a dozen people gathered where the lights were concentrated and still. They passed the Greenlaws� car parked off to the side, just after the ambulance went by, and they stopped, Clyde grabbing Joe before he could drop out the window.

Lucinda looked out the driver�s window at Clyde. �Wilma�s up there somewhere. She�s safe. And the cats-we brought Kit and Dulcie, they would have taken off up the hills by themselves�I never could have locked them inside, any more than I could lock a person in. You know how hardheaded they are��

�But so much has gone on,� Pedric said. �We don�t dare go up there and be in the way. All we can do is sit and worry. It�s been mighty hard to hear gunshots, when the cats are up there�� Joe Grey stood up again with his paws on the window. �They�ll be among the rocks somewhere, hiding,� he said softly. He hoped to hell they were.

Lucinda reached across and touched Joe�s cheek, then Clyde pulled away, heading on up, studying the turmoil of flashing torches, trying to make sense of what was happening. Joe rode with his paws on the door, ready to leap out.

Clyde gave him a look, and restrained the tomcat by the nape of the neck as he parked behind a row of squad cars.�Let�s take a little time here.� Killing the engine, his hand tightening on Joe, he sat scanning the blackness as Joe hissed, and pawed to get free. �Just stay still a minute and look,� Clyde said. �There, on that nearest wall.� Above them, surrounded by twisted oaks and picked out bythe flashing lights, five cats prowled along the wall, were lost, and then silhouetted again against the night sky.

�Dulcie and Kit?� Clyde said.

Joe nodded, twitching his ears with relief.

�And the other three? The ferals?� Clyde said with amazement. �What other cats could it be? But they�those wild creatures wouldn�t stay there, with all that�s going on!�

�Let me loose, Clyde, before I hurt you. The excitement�s over, someone�s coming down with a prisoner. Let me go!� They watched a squad car approach. �Look, there in the back��

The squad car passed them, two officers in front, a thin man in the back, behind the security screen, sitting rigidly, as if shackled.

�Eddie Sears?� Clyde said, smiling. �But where-�

�Let me out now.� Joe twisted around, lifting an armored paw.

Clyde freed him and Joe was gone, leaping down, racing through the night to Dulcie.

Clyde looked after him, sighing. He remained in the car until three more police units passed, heading for the village. He watched two riders come out of the woods, breathing with relief when he saw Charlie. But where was Wilma?Was she safe? A cold hand touched his heart. Snatching the keys out of the ignition, leaving the windows down for Joe to get in, he hurried up the dark little road trying to look everywhere at once, watching for any eruption of violence. He was passing the last squad car when Wilma�s voice spun him around. �Clyde?�

She opened the door and stepped out, and the next minutes were a tangle of hugs and both of them talking at once; but then suddenly Wilma was shivering and had to sit down again. Sliding into the backseat she moved over to make room for him.�I guess it�s catching up with me.� Her hands in his were cold.

�I�d guess itwould catch up with you. What did Cage�?�

Wilma looked at him.�It�ll take a while to tell. Charlie shot him. She shot Cage. She�s shaky, too. Pretty upset.�

Clyde held her hands.�I guess this will take a lot of telling. Have you had anything to eat?�

�Coffee, and a sweet roll Brennan gave me. Before that�Breakfast in Gilroy around eight this morning.�

�You need a rare steak and a drink.�

�I�d kill for exactly that. But where�s Joe! You went to Gilroy�Where�s Joe Grey?�

Clyde pointed up to the wall, where six silhouettes lingered, two of them sitting close together, Joe�s white markings bright in the flashing lights.

Wilma laughed, and relaxed.�Those other cats are the ferals. That, too, will take a bit of telling. You won�t believe what they did. I hardly believe it.�

�You need to eat. Tell me over dinner. You don�t need to hang around? Let me go up and see Charlie, then we�ll get you a steak.�

From atop the broken wall the six cats watched Clyde step out of the squad car and head up to where Charlie stood, safe in Max�s arms. Cotton was worn out; the white tom had never pursued the kind of madness he had tonight. Approaching the village, he�d been scared out of his skin, and he still wasn�t sure why he�d done it. But now that it was over, he was proud he�d found the courage. Now, he wanted only to sleep.

Willow looked at Cotton stretched out limply along the stone wall, and wanted to snuggle down with him. Until tonight she hadn�t known which of the two tomcats she favored; she thought she loved them both. But now she knew. Cotton was brave and staunch, Cotton made her heart race.

Coyote might be more dashing and handsome; certainly he would have no trouble finding his own lady. Maybe among their own ten, or maybe he�d slip back to their old clowder and lure away one of the discontented young queens. Coyote was her friend, they would always be close, but Cotton was her chosen.

Coyote watched her, and knew. He felt sad and a little lonely. Felt shy beside them now-but he was often shy. He looked away to the high boulders where the others of their small group were hidden, then lifted his nose to look south. Some miles away, their old clowder might still be ranging. He thought about the young queens there, and he wondered, and his green eyes lit up with speculation.

Joe Grey and Dulcie and Kit glanced sideways, watching the little scene, and they smiled. Dulcie and Kit felt sad for Coyote, but Joe knew the challenge that gripped the striped, long-eared tom. The hunt was everything, the hunt for game, the hunt for a mate. And, in Joe�s life, the keen and wily search for human prey, the hunt that drove him ever more powerfully. He glanced at Dulcie and twitched a whisker. The hunt that absorbed them both, a hunt no other cat in the world but the three of them would understand or care about.

Looking up the hill, they watched Clyde hug Ryan and hold her for a moment as they talked, then Clyde sat down on a fragment of broken wall beside Charlie, who was wolfing down coffee and a sandwich. There was some laughter, a few tears, and a lot of hugging. But then at last Clyde rose and headed back for his car.

Wilma stepped out of the squad car and stood with Clyde beside the Lexus, looking up at the cats. At once, Dulcie tensed to leap down. With a lick at the ferals� ears and a nudge of noses, a special nuzzle for Cotton by way of a thank-you, Dulcie dropped from the wall and streaked for the road where Clyde and Wilma stood waiting. Joe followed close on her heels. Behind them Kit made her own farewells, then raced for Lucinda and Pedric.

Parting from the wild band was hard for Kit-but she�d already made her choice many months ago about how she wanted to live her life. In her deepest heart, she�d already left their wild ways-she did not want to change her own life, she wished only to see them sometimes, here among the ruins. If they remained here. With a wild band, who knew where they would go? She could only wish them well, wish them happiness. Nuzzling each cat, she spun around and raced away following Dulcie and Joe, her little cat heart hurting, but not regretting.

From the top floor of the Pamillon mansion, from the old nursery, Violet Sears had stood for some time watching the scene below. She felt sick when Charlie shot Cage. She knew he deserved it, but he was still her brother. She watched Eddie run, and saw those cats leap on him. That had shocked and deeply frightened her.

She had watched the police clean up Eddie�s wounds and force him into a squad car, and she didn�t know how she felt about his arrest. Maybe she felt nothing.

Eddie would be in jail now. For a little while, she was free of him. She shivered at the thought that she was on her own; she didn�t know what to do about that. How would she live? Where would she live? There had always been someone else to decide about her life. Their parents. Lilly and Cage. And then Eddie. She thought that woman, Wilma, wouldn�t really help her. She stood watching the dark scene before her, shivering and afraid.

Watching Clyde step out of the squad car and head up in her direction, Charlie had suddenly and inexplicably found herself crying. Pressing her face into Max�s shoulder, when he turned back to her after briefing Brennan and a handful of other officers, she felt weak and shaky-but she was safe now, safe in Max�s arms. He held her away from him and wiped her tears. She looked up at him, ashamed of her weakness, embarrassed at crying in front of his men. He handed her a paper bag.

�Hunger�ll take all the starch out. Here�s Brennan�s lunch. Roast beef and coffee and you�ll be yourself again.�

�I can�t take his lunch, he�� Knowing how Brennan loved his meals made her tear up all over again.

Max laughed.�He kept one sandwich of the three, and a slice of cherry pie. He gave his coffee roll to Wilma.�

Charlie glanced across at Brennan and blew him a kiss. The portly officer looked embarrassed, grinned at her, and turned away. She had sat down on the remnants of a tumbled stone wall and was wolfing down the second of the sandwiches and slurping hot coffee, nearly scalding her mouth, when Clyde sat down beside her.

�Glad you got out of that.�

She nodded, her mouth full.

Clyde laughed.�Wilma�s pretty hungry, too. I�m taking her for a steak. Want to come?�

She swallowed.�Going to ride back with Max, take the horses back. I think Ryan�s going with Dallas, her truck is at our place.�

He nodded.�How did the snitch know where you were?� he said softly. �She called Max, but how did she know?�

�The white cat, Clyde. That feral cat. He�Against all odds, that wild little animal went down into the village. Went to Kit for help. Dulcie was there at the Greenlaws� with Kit, and it was Dulcie who called.�

Clyde shook his head.�Seems impossible.�

�But then,� she said, �the other two ferals�all three of them and Dulcie and Kit chewed my ropes. They had me almost loose when Wilma found me.� She swallowed the last of the sandwich, washed it down with more coffee. �And there�s a lot that we don�t know yet, that Dulcie and Kit will tell us. But you�You and Joe��

�Same thing,� Clyde said, grinning. �A lot to tell. Too much for now, Wilma�s starving.� He hugged her and rose, stood a moment with his hand on her shoulder. �She�s pretty upset that Jones dragged you into whatever he wanted from her.�

�She doesn�t know what he wanted?�

�Not a clue.� He leaned down to hug her again. �Have a good ride home.�

She watched him stop to talk with Ryan and make a date with her for the next night, then head down to fetch Wilma.

�Where�d the sandwiches go?� Max said, coming to join her, looking at the wadded-up paper bag. �I was gone no more than three minutes.�

Charlie laughed.

�That hold you until we get home? Take about an hour. You�ve had a long day, you feel up to the ride?�

�Ohyes. Can you do that, can you leave, with�?�

�Dallas is here. Prisoners are secured. Wilma�s safe, with Clyde. We�ll take her statement in the morning. Right now, I think it�s time for me to take your statement.�

Flushing, she moved away to the horses. Leaving Max to wrap up a few details, she stood with Ryan, leaning against her mare.�You found me gone, and you called Max.�

Ryan nodded and put her arm around her.

Charlie said,�Guess I owe you supper.�

�Guess you do,� Ryan said. �If you two take the horses back, I�ll never see that potato salad and roast beef you had laid out.�

�Guess I can make more potato salad,� Charlie said, hugging her back, and as Max turned to join them, she tightened Redwing�s cinch and mounted up.

30

I t was midnight when the old man descended to the basement and, working silently, moved the piled boxes out of the closet, shoving them in among the rest of the detritus that crowded the concrete room. He guessed Lilly had gotten nervous about that safe, so visible and all. The fact that it was covered up told him there was something to be nervousabout.

Kneeling over the locked metal box he tried to remove it from the closet, but it was sunk deep in the floor. Probably bolted, the bolts removable only from inside, once it was open. When he couldn�t budge it, he took from his pocket a small, rechargeable electric drill and a miniature periscope, a tiny light on a long, thin, flexible neck, an eyepiece at the end.

The sound of the drill wasn�t loud. But twice he stopped to listen to the house above him, just in case Lilly woke and started down. The big old house remained silent, and within minutes the drill had gone through the thick metal lid, leaving a quarter-inch hole into which he slid the periscope.

Slowly he turned the safe�s dial, watching through the periscope as the plates moved, slowly working out the combination until, after maybe twenty minutes, he was able to apply that information and lift the heavy lid.

Staring down into the metal box, Greeley was very still. His expression didn�t change. An observer could have read nothing on the face of the grizzled old man. He knelt there in his wrinkled clothes and old worn shoes, shaggy gray hair, three days� growth of stubble, looking down blankly into the empty safe. Only slowly did his rage burn to the surface, like a flame that started deep inside a building, belatedly flickering and blooming until it blazed red and violent through the walls.

Rage. Disbelief. A deep and painful disappointment. He knelt there a long time, looking. At last he closed the safe again, spun the dial, and rose. He put back the boxes on top as they had been, shut the closet door, and turned resolutely to search the rest of the basement, but without much hope.

Knowing Cage, he limited his survey to places that would be relatively fireproof, because Cage had once lost a nice haul in a fire, in an old, tinder-dry apartment. He investigated a patched area of concrete where another safe might be sunk, but could find no way into it. Carefully he examined the concrete walls, the concrete floor beneath the stairs. He looked over the stacked boxes and old bits of furniture, but they were all tinder, not what Cage would choose. At last he turned away, discouraged, and left the basement, moving up the wooden stairs in his stockinged feet just as he had come down.

Back in his room, shutting the door silently behind him, he sat down on the bed, put his feet up on the spread, poured a good jolt of whiskey into the plastic glass he�d taken from the bathroom, and drank it down. You could bet that bitch parole officer had been here, just like Cage must�ve thought. Her and her partner, her and that hard-nosed Bennett-served him right coming in here and stealing, served him right he got shot.

He thought about them cats. That one cat that lived with the Getz woman. Had them cats spied on Cage, watched as he opened the safe and then told her? And she�d waltzed right in here, her and Bennett, and cleaned it out? Withthem cats, anything was possible.

It did not occur to Greeley that Wilma and Mandell Bennett had made that official search of the Jones house with the DEA agents some years before tabby Dulcie had come to live with her. In fact, before Dulcie was born. Sitting on the bed finishing the whiskey, the old man began to feel trapped, driven into a corner by an unfair and twisted fate. He�d been counting on that gold. Not so much because he needed it; he had already cashed out half his own share, before this trip, more than enough for all the cars and whiskey, and even women, he could handle in what remained of his lifetime; and he didn�t care about fancy houses and clothes, hecared only about his own pleasure. No, it wasn�t that he needed Cage�s half of the haul. He wanted it purely because he�d set his mind on it-because this theft had been the big one. The one spectacular prize before he retired, before he kicked back and enjoyed life. This job was big enough tohave the entire Panamanian government panicked into closing its borders, if they�d knowed about it.

That was the beauty of this heist. The Guardia didn�t know, not a clue. A theft from thieves didn�t get a lot of police action. If those guys he and Cage�d stole from had run to the Guardia,they were the ones who�d be in thecarcel.

And now, that bitch parole officer had cheated him out of every penny.

Sure as hell no one else had known about the stash. Cage wouldn�t of told anyone, he was too closemouthed. Greeley wondered if he�d told Eddie Sears, but Cage never had trusted him. Cage�s sister Violet, she didn�t count for nothing, skinny little thing afraid of her own shadow. Ditto Lilly Jones. Lilly didn�t have the imagination or the balls to think of stealing anything. The very idea of cracking a safe would give the old girl a sick headache.

No, it was that Getz woman. Fancy stone house and new car. Not hardly, on her federal retirement. Likely socked the rest of the loot away in some kind of securities or some little-old-lady annuity, safe and untouchable.

But right now he had to search the rest of the house. Cagecould have hidden the stash somewhere else, and he�d be a friggin� fool to miss it. Slipping out of the room to toss the main floor, he used a little penlight that wasn�t much. A nuisance searching in the dark. He went through the refrigerator-freezer, which might be impervious to fire but was the first place a burglar would look. He was turning out the living room, checking the electrical plugs for tampering, when he heard a noise at the front door. The lock clicked, the knob turned, and as the door opened Greeley drew back behind the couch, crouching down as sneaky and undignified as them damned spying cats.

�I still have no idea what Cage was after,� Wilma said, settling back into the leather booth, sipping her whiskey and water, gazing into the fire that Moreno�s Bar and Grille kept blazing even in warm weather. The cozy restaurant was nearly empty at this hour. A rare steak was on the way, with fries and onion rings. �Was he dumb enough to hide stolen stocks or securities there in the house? There�s no theft like that in his record, but that doesn�t mean much. Who knows what Cage might have pulled off that was never connected to him.�

Clyde frowned.�Stocks or securities that could be traced? Whatever it was, it had to be pretty valuable to leave it there all those years while he was in prison.�

�Or,� Wilma said, speculating, �maybe something he thought would increase in value? I wonder if he has that much foresight.�

�Or,� Clyde said, shaking his head, �he meant to hide it until the law forgot about it?�

Wilma laughed.�Cage won�t be around that long. If it�s of interest to Treasury agents, they don�t forget.� She yawned, beginning to relax, feeling the aches and tension subside. The cozy retreat, and Clyde�s company and the promised steak, had made her feel almost normal again. That, and the fact that Dulcie and Joe Grey were tucked up on the leather bench beside her, Joe with his head on her lap, treating her to a rare show of affection. She was greatly touched that the tomcat had put aside his macho disdain of cuddling.

Clyde made a pattern of rings on the table with his glass.�What will happen to Violet? I guess she�s glad Eddie�s in jail. Or she should be.�

�I don�t know that she�s glad. I half-expect she�ll go back to him when he gets out, even years down the road.� The subject of Violet tired her. �I don�t have much patience for a woman who won�t help herself, and I don�t think she plans to do that.�

Clyde shook his head.�Maybe she�ll change.�

�If she has any sense, she�ll get out of Molena Point and go where Eddie won�t find her, go while she has the chance. I told her I�d help her.� She stroked Dulcie, then looked up at Clyde. �At least Mandell is mending.�

On their way down from the ruins, she had called the San Francisco hospital on Clyde�s cell phone and had been able to speak with Mandell. He was out of intensive care and wanted to get into physical rehab as soon as possible. He said that when he got his hands on Cage Jones, he planned to be in top form.

�I�ll be right beside you,� Wilma had told him. �Have you been able to figure out what Jones thinks we took?�

�Nothing my secretary could find in his early files. She went through everything. But those years he was in Central America, who knows what he did down there? Didn�t you and Cage go to school with some guy who later moved down to Panama? A diver for the Panama Canal?�

�Greeley Urzey. Greeley was older, but it was a small school. When Cage grew up, he and Greeley ran around together for a while. They were in Panama at the same time.�

Mandell had been silent for a few moments, then,�Something I read, some years back. I keep thinking about it, but can�t bring it clear. Be glad when I�m off this pain killer and I can get my mind straight.�

�About crimes down there, some unsolved crime?�

�Seems like something spectacular. How would I forget that?�

�Let me do some checking. I�ll run it by Max.�

Talking with Bennett, she�d had the speaker on. Both cats, when they talked about Greeley and Cage, had been glued to the phone. But when she�d said good night to Mandell and hung up, she had studied their two sleek little faces, Dulcie�s green eyes and Joe�s yellow eyes as innocent as the gazes of kittens, the twocats looking back at her blandly and saying nothing.

Mandell had described how Cage had shot him, how he�d gone into the office as he often did on weekend mornings to catch up on paperwork, worked from seven until midmorning, then had gone out for a good breakfast. When he stepped out of the courthouse elevator in the parking garage, checking around him as he always did, he felt the impact a secondbefore he heard the shot. He took a second shot in the shoulder and heard a car speed away, glimpsed Cage�s face as the car swung up the ramp. He had tried to run after it, then to use his cell phone, then he must have blacked out, which embarrassed him; he could remember nothing more.

�Woke up in the ambulance,� Mandell had said, �thinking strange thoughts�about my Cherokee ancestors who I never knew. I could see them marching as prisoners across the continent into that dry hot land they hated. Woke up hot and parched, thinking I was marching�Strange,� he said, �what the human mind will do.�

Wilma thought of Mandell again after dinner, when Clyde dropped her and Dulcie off at home, thought that it would take Mandell time to recover, that he would be pretty laid up for a while, and no one to do things for him in his little bachelor apartment.

Clyde insisted on going through the house with her. The trashed rooms were heartbreaking, daunting. She tried to put that out of her thoughts; she�d clean up tomorrow. The first thing she did was go to her car, unlock the glove compartment, and retrieve her.38, which was locked there, just as she�d left it.

�It would be nice,� Clyde said, �if you�d sleep with that where you can reach it. And,� he said, �if you would consider putting a lock on the bedroom door, to narrow the odds of someone walking in on you. Dulcie can�t play watch cat all night.� He stroked Dulcie gently. �She stands guard all night, she�ll never get her beauty sleep.�

Wilma laughed and gave him a hug.�I�ll keep it close, and I�ll call a locksmith in the morning.� And within half an hour of Clyde�s leaving, she and Dulcie were tucked up in bed, a chair propped under the doorknob, which at least would make some noise if someone came in. She didn�t see how it would be needed, now that Cage was in the hospital, and Eddie in custody, but she�d promised Clyde. She did straighten up the bedroom. Then, stretched out in bed between smooth sheets, she relished the clean feeling from her shower, the feel of Dulcie snuggled warm beside her, extravagantly purring, and the thick stone walls of her own house secure around her.

31

T here was no need now for stealth on the dark bridle trail; the two riders headed home using their torches to throw wide beams of cheering light among the trees that crowded their passage, bright paths that delineated tire marks ahead, broken by the hoofprints of their horses and the paw prints of the big Weimaraner. On her sorrel mare, Charlie welcomed the quiet, empty night around them as she tried to get centered again, after seeing Cage Jones�s bloodied face when she shot him, the explosion of bone and blood, seeing Cage twist and fall. Her mind and spirit were sick with that moment, with the shock of shooting a man.

But the alternative could have been her own death, and Max, too.

�Takes a while,� Max said, watching her, riding close and putting his arm around her.

�Does anyone really get over it?�

�You live with it. Better than not stopping him.�

�I know. But it�s hard to get used to. Do you remember, when I read C. S. Lewis aloud, where a damned soul wouldn�t change itself, so it went out like a snuffed candle? Just vanished? And you said, �What would the alternative have been?��

�Yes, I remember.�

�I keep seeing Jones�s face, all bloody. And a moment before, when he raised his gun at me, so vicious and filled with hate.� She looked at Max. �The devil�s face, it seemed to me,� she said, looking at him shyly.

�That�s not crazy,� he said softly. �Evil is evil, Charlie.�

She leaned into Max, their legs bumping against each other, the horses fussing because they were forced too close together. There had been moments this evening when she�d wondered if they would ever be together again, if she would ever see Max again. Tonight, when she�d thought that Cage had killed Wilma, when she�d thought that they would both be dead by morning, hope had nearly deserted her.

She sat up straight, looking away through the trees where the lights of the ranch shone, welcoming them home, and she squeezed Max�s hand. And as they headed down the last hill through the woods, loud barking greeted them and the three dogs came running-their own two unruly half Great Danes, and Rock, dancing around the horses. Beside the house, Ryan�s red truck stood parked beside a squad car. The air was filled with thearoma of something spicy cooking.

The door opened, spilling light from the kitchen, and Ryan stepped out, the smell of simmering chili filling the night. Dallas came out behind her and crossed the yard to help with the horses. That, too, was a rare treat, that Dallas would rub the horses down, give them a flake of hay and extra grain, see that they, too, were comfortable. Handing her reins to Dallas, she slid gratefully from the saddle, made her way tiredly across the yard beside Max, and went into their bright house. They were home, safe and together.

In the upstairs master suite of Clyde Damen�s house, all the windows were open, the predawn breeze blowing through smelling of the sea, cooling the bedroom and study. Beneath the high rafters, in the king-size bed, Clyde slept sprawled across the sheets, clad only in Jockey shorts, snoring. The gray tomcat slept close against Clyde�s shoulder, on his back, his four paws in the air, much as he had slept when he was a kitten. He snored, twitching in his sleep. He woke at dawn still half worn out from dreaming, irritable and hungry. He nudged Clyde, his cold, insistent nose jerking Clyde from sleep. Clyde rolled over, glaring. Then, turning, he stared incredulously at the bedside clock.

�It�s five o�clock. Five A.M.! Do you realize-�

�It�s Monday. You going to work?�

�Six,� Clyde said, rolling over. �You know what time the alarm rings. Go back to sleep. If you can�t sleep, go up on the roof. Wake up the neighbors. Leave me alone.�

�I�m hungry. Weak with hunger.�

�You are not weak with hunger. You ate half my steak last night and nearly an entire order of fries. I�m surprised you didn�t throw it all up in the middle of the bed. If you-�

�Weak,� Joe repeated. �The excitement�� He looked hard at Clyde. �Stress. That kind of thing is really stressful for a cat, all that shooting. Stress can kill a cat. I feel-�

�You are not going to die of stress. Or of starvation. You might die of strangulation if you don�t shut up. Your problem is, you�re turning into a first-class pig. If you think you�re hungry, go get some kibble. Paw open the cupboard, you�ve done it enough times. And use a little consideration, don�t spill kibble all over the floor.�

Joe didn�t want kibble. He wanted something hot and freshly cooked. He wanted comfort food, something to warm his little cat heart and soothe his frayed nerves. He wanted restorative fat and cholesterol, a real tomcat breakfast, the kind only Clyde could make. Letting himself go limp on the pillow, paws drooping, he looked up at Clyde pitifully.

For an instant Clyde�s dark eyes widened in a flash of concern, but then he caught himself. Glaring, he turned over and pulled the pillow over his head. Joe sighed. Some woman could give Clyde an equally pitiful look and he�d fall all over himself, but when a poor little cat tried it, nothing. Joe lay, sighing hislast, until he almost believed that he was fainting away-and finally his perseverance did the trick; Clyde sat up scowling at the clock, glared at Joe, muttered something unnecessarily rude, and swung out of bed. �Who can sleep after that performance? What do you want for breakfast!�

Joe considered several menu options while Clyde retreated to the master bath and turned on the shower.�Damn cat! Damn rotten spoiled tomcat!�

Grinning, Joe padded down the stairs, slipped out through his cat door, and stood looking up and down the street. When he saw no neighbors about, and no one looking out a window, he took the morning paper in his teeth and hauled it through his cat door. Dragged it through to the kitchen and with some difficulty wrestled it up onto the kitchen table. The paper was getting heavier every day. If they didn�t solicit all that unnecessary advertising to bulk it up�Unfolding it as he waited for Clyde, he scanned the front page.

There was nothing about Wilma�s or Charlie�s kidnapping, or about the arrest of Cage Jones. Max and Dallas had been adept, indeed, at keeping things quiet. There were still a lot of loose ends in this case, and it didn�t need to go public yet.

The front page covered the third breakin murder, though, recapping how Peggy Milner had been killed in her kitchen. How a neighbor had seen her in there, but when she went to Peggy�s door, and knocked and called out to her and Peggy didn�t answer, the neighbor had called 911. Peggy had been fixing a late supper for one, as her husband was working late. She had been stabbed. The neighbor said the sight sickened her. There were, so far, no other witnesses. The article followed up with recaps of the Linda Tucker and Elaine Keating killings, pointing out similarities between the three incidents. The byline on the article said �Jim Barker.�

Barker was a tall, neatly groomed, sensible guy with three little girls and a keen sympathy for the problems the police faced when information was aired too soon. He covered the police blotter with common sense and real interest, not with a chip on his shoulder like some egocentric newsmen. Joe remembered some very snide articles by other reporters questioning the conduct of Max�s officers, and, more than once, claiming it would be foolish to spend city money on drug dogs and working police dogs, for whom Joe had the highest respect.

He wondered sometimes if Molena Point would ever get a police dog. That would be a fine addition to the force-except that a canine officer could sure destroy Joe�s rapport with the law, could mess up his investigations and totally destroy his clandestine surveillance. A trained evidence dog would pick up the faintest cat scent at a crime scene, and might single him or Dulcie or Kit out as having been there, might come down really hard on them. And a dog would know the minute a cat entered the PD, would know where they were, under which desk, behind which chair. No, dogs would be a problem in Harper�s department. Anywhere else, they�d be an asset.

Clyde came down the stairs and turned on the coffeepot.�And what is your royal highness�s pleasure this morning?� Rudely, he picked Joe up from atop the front page. �Do you have to hog the entire paper?� Setting Joe on his own side of the table, Clyde laid out a place mat and silverware for himself. �Omelet? What do you want in it? Ham? Bacon? Mushrooms? Cheese?�

�That would be fine.�

�Thatwhat would be fine?�

�What you just said. You can hold the mushrooms if you want, if you�re really-�

Clyde sighed and jerked open the refrigerator.

�That door gasket isn�t going to last another six months if you-�

�Can it, Joe. I haven�t had a lot of sleep.�

Joe yawned in Clyde�s face to demonstrate that he had missed just as much sleep.

�You slept all the way home,� Clyde said, cracking eggs into a bowl.

�I merely had my eyes closed. I was thinking.� The tomcat returned to the front page, perusing the article that pointed out the similarities among the three murders. It left out only those sensitive facts that Harper would not have wanted published, such as the identification of fingerprints and the list of suspects-of which, Joe knew, there were few. Jim Barker said that at this point the police were looking at no single burglary suspect who might be involved in all three cases. The paper went on to say, in a sidebar, that the Molena Point police kept a current list of the names and addresses of all calls for domestic disturbance or abuse.

An accompanying human-interest article at the bottom of the page dealt with the plight of abused women. It quoted a psychologist�s assessment of the fears of such women, and their reluctance to make a fresh start. It suggested steps they might take to separate themselves from their abusers if they chose to do so, including agency, shelter, and private foundation names and phone numbers. Jim Barker had done an admirable job for Max in helping to alert other women before it was too late. He had, at the same time, as was surely Harper�s intent, alerted other possible wife killers that the department was aware of their brutal tendencies.

As Clyde dished up their omelets, Joe pushed the paper around, facing Clyde�s plate. Far be it from him to hog the morning news. Twitching an ear at Clyde by way of thanks for an elegant omelet, he glanced down at Rube�s empty place on the floor, as he had done every morning since they�d had to put the old Lab down. And, as he did every morning, before he started toeat he said a little cat prayer for Rube that he supposed was just as valid for dogs.

Then he set to on the omelet, as ravenous as if he couldn�t remember his last meal. He ate slurping and enjoying, then at last gave his whiskers and paws a hasty wash, another flick of the ears for Clyde, and he was off-up the stairs, onto Clyde�s desk, up onto the rafter and out through his rooftop cat door. He paused in his tower for a hasty drink where the water was cool from sitting out all night; then he was out his tower window and across the roofs heading for Molena Point PD.

32

F ollowing the smell of sugar doughnuts, Joe padded silently into Molena Point PD on the heels of Mabel Farthy, who was carrying a bakery box. Behind the dispatch counter, a thin, redheaded young officer Joe didn�t know looked over at the tomcat and raised an eyebrow.

�It�s all right,� Mabel told him. �The cat has clearance.� The officer laughed and rose to leave, going off shift, turning the electronic domain back to Mabel. He reached out tentatively to pet Joe, stood stroking him as he filled Mabel in on late night�s events.

Last night�s excitement had all happened on Mabel�s eight-to-twelve shift. The after-midnight calls had been tamer: a few drunks, a loud teenage party, and two domestic disturbances that made Joe prick up his ears, though both had been settled peaceably. When the officer left, Mabel sorted through the faxes, yawning. Her dyed blond hair wasn�t quite as neat as usual, and her uniform was a little mussed. She hadn�t had much sleep, having been on duty last night and then doubling back this morning. She yawned again, came out from behind the counter, and went down the hall with the doughnut box. Joe could hear her filling the big coffee urn. From the counter, he watched her move on to Max�s office, heard her fill his smaller coffeepot from the bottle of water on the credenza, and the special brand of coffee he liked. Outside the glass front door, cars were pulling into the parking area that the PD shared with the courthouse offices. Soon, among other arriving officers, Harper and Dallas came in, heading down the hall, and turned into Max�s office.

Dropping soundlessly off the counter, Joe slipped along behind them and inside, under the credenza. Maybe they knew he was there, maybe they didn�t. Harper poured two mugs of freshly brewed coffee, handed one to Garza, and sat down at his desk. He turned on the computer, then opened the three hard-copy files that lay on his blotter. Garza sat down on the leather couch and removed a clipboard and file from his briefcase. Beneath the credenza, on the Oriental rug, Joe curled up, so full of omelet he didn�t even hunger for a doughnut.

The third murder, having occurred last evening, just before Max learned that Charlie was missing, hadn�t received much of the chief�s attention. Among the papers Dallas took from his briefcase was a copy of the coroner�s report on Peggy Milner.

�It was the next-door neighbors,� Dallas said, �the Barbers, who made the call.� He rose to refill their coffee mugs. �Bern says the knife we found didn�t kill her, though very likely it was used on her. Apparently, no prints, it was wiped clean. I sent it to the lab to see what they can do. There are flecks of dried blood between the blade and the handle. Bern says a wider, heavier weapon killed her, struck her in the throat.�

Max made a sound of disgust. Beneath the credenza, Joe shivered. The older he got and the more he learned about humans, the better he liked his own feline cousins.

�Milner is an insurance representative,� Dallas said. �Got home late, said he�d had three evening appointments. I took the information off his client files and time sheet, and we�ve talked with two of the three. Third guy, a builder, is up the coast this morning picking up some plumbing, should be on his way home by now. The first two check out okay. The builder was Milner�s first appointment last night, just about the time his wife was killed.

�Bern thinks the killer wore leather gloves; he found flecks of something like leather in the wound, maybe from an edge of rough-cut leather. Waiting for the lab on that.� Dallas sipped his coffee. �Again, like the other two cases, no sign of a breakin. The front door was unlocked. Milner said she often forgot to lock it.� Dallas shook his head. �No sensible woman, in a house alone, leaves the door unlocked.�

�Unless she�s expecting company.�

Dallas nodded.�There�s no indication, so far, that she had an outside interest.�

�Nothing from the Milners� other neighbors?�

�Only the Barbers. They can see the Milner kitchen window from their kitchen. Mrs. Barber saw Peggy in there preparing her dinner. Ten minutes later Mrs. Barber was watching TV, and when she saw there was a movie on that Peggy liked, she phoned her.

�There was no answer. She tried again in a few minutes, tried three times. The light was still on in the kitchen, but now the blind had been pulled. She said it was unlike Peggy, not to answer. Told her husband she was going over to see what was wrong. He said not to do that, told her to call 911. She told him that was silly, and she went on over. Walked in the unlocked front door, found Peggy on the kitchen floor, bleeding. Ran home, and her husband made the call.�

Dallas looked down beneath the credenza where Joe Grey lay curled up pretending to sleep.�You might as well come out of there, tomcat, make yourself at home.� He looked up at Max. �Cat�s staying out of the way this morning. Funny, he almost seems to know when things are real busy.�

Joe smiled to himself, rolled over beneath the credenza, and appeared to go back to sleep.

�Thanks for last night,� Max said, �for putting the horses up and fixing supper with Ryan. You two could have stayed and eaten with us.�

Dallas laughed.�We ate half the chili while we were putting it together. You two needed time alone.�

�Charlie wasn�t too worn out to spoil her appetite. She ate almost that whole pot, and half a dozen tortillas.�

Dallas smiled.�I have to admit, my half-Irish niece makes pretty good Mexican soul food.�

�Charlie drank one beer with supper, fell into bed. I�d hardly put out the light and she was gone, snoring in my arms.� He looked a minute at Dallas. �That dog, last night. I never saw an untrained dog track like that. He went wild when he saw Charlie down there; Ryan had put my lariat on him, and he was jerking and fighting to get to Charlie.�

�Ryan and I talked about that. I think Rock�s worth training.�

�Could be. He had a bad start in life, but he has plenty of potential. What about the neighbors on the other side of the Milners�? Anything there?�

�No one home. That�s a second residence. Karen and James Blean. Gone most of the time. Peggy Milner takes-took-care of their yard and watered it for them, and she had a key to their garage.�

Max looked at Dallas with interest.

�I got the key from Milner last night, took a look. Not much in there, a few garden tools, a small workbench, a new roll of hose. No cupboards, nowhere to hide a weapon.�

Max nodded.

�No attic access. Some paint cans stacked under the workbench, and one of the cans had been opened recently. I asked Milner about it. He said his wife had borrowed a bit of white paint to touch up a scratch on their kitchen wall; he showed me where.

�There was no paintbrush. Milner said she�d probably taken a little on a tissue, then flushed it, that she didn�t like to clean paintbrushes. Looks like it could have been dabbed on with a tissue.�

A bit of paint surely amounted to nothing, had nothing to do with the murder, but the officers� interest brought Joe alert. Maybe he�d have a look, himself, at that garage.

�I left the door unlocked, put one of our locks on it, in case we want in again.�

The tomcat, rising, yawning as if he�d had enough of their boring voices, sauntered away into the hall; he slipped out of the PD on the heels of a sleazy attorney with a beard and a battered briefcase, some crook�s mouthpiece; he headed for the Milner house, making no attempt to gather his two accomplices. Dulcie would be snug athome with Wilma; and Kit needed Lucinda and Pedric just now. As bold and brash as the tortoiseshell was, she was tender inside and easily upset by the rough treatment of those she loved.

It was three in the morning when Greeley, crouched down behind Lilly�s sofa, listened to the front door open, and close, and a woman�s soft step head for the kitchen. Too light a step for Lilly, and anyway, she ought to be asleep upstairs. He stayed where he was when the light went on in the kitchen.

He had tossed most of the main floor, had been deciding whether to slip on upstairs when he�d heard the key in the door. He hated to give up the search now. The thought of walking away from that kind of money galled him, even if he did have that much already salted away. It had been tiresome, the effort it took to open three puny checking accounts, getting fake social security numbers and drivers� licenses, just so he qualified for three safe-deposit boxes. But he didn�t trust nowhere else short of a bank box, nowhere the IRS wouldn�t come nosing, before he got the cash out of the country.

Two million in Mexico�d buy all he ever wanted, a little place down the coast where it was warm and the living was easy-and buy a knife in your back in a damn minute, too, if anyone knew what you had. And, the way customs was now, it would be hard to get that kind of money down across the border. Feds in your way, nomatter what you did.

He could smell coffee from the kitchen, and toast. Who the hell could this be? She had a key, he�d heard it in the lock. Rising from behind the couch, he slipped down the hall, stopping in the shadows. She hadn�t heard him. She was sitting at the table, a cup in her hand. Young and skinny and pale as a ghost.

�Violet?�

She stared up at him, frightened.

�You�re Violet?� He went on in, sat down across from her. He�d known her when she was a teenager, just as fleshless and bony then. Hadn�t seen her since she�d married Eddie Sears, still in her teens-likely to escape living with Lilly and Cage. Probably it wasn�t no better with Eddie.

Had she been here last night, when he�d searched the basement? Might she have watched him? Woman looked like she could slip around silent as a ghost and you�d never know she was there. He looked at her for a long time. She pointed to the coffeepot.

�There�s plenty,� she said softly. �I thought Lilly might be up.�

�I didn�t know you were living here.�

�I�m not. Well, maybe I am now. From this morning. Is Lilly still asleep?� She didn�t seem interested in who he was. Maybe she knew, though, maybe she remembered him from years back. But she sure didn�t seem interested in what he was doing there, now.

�I expect she�s still asleep,� he said. �She let me have a room last night; the motels was all full.� He rose and poured a cup of coffee. Perching on the edge of his chair, he blew on it and drank it quickly. He wanted to ask what she was doing there; she made him real uneasy. But then, later, when he found out Eddie was in jail, and Cage in the hospital, he guessed she�d had nowhere else to go.

Nervously finishing his coffee, he rose again.�Have to be getting on. Tell Lilly thank you.� He went to get his jacket, and within minutes was relieved to be out the front door and away.

Checking into the Seaview Bed and Breakfast, he couldn�t get the rate down even on a Monday morning. Whole damn village was the same, take all a man�s money and ask for more. Now, with Cage in the hospital, he didn�t want to leave Molena Point. He didn�t give a damn if Cage cashed it in, but no one except Cage could tell him where the stash had been, and who else might have taken it, if Wilma hadn�t. Only thing he could do was wait till Cage got out of the hospital and away from that police guard-if he didn�t die-and then follow him when he went looking.

One thing sure, Cage�d come out of that hospital mean as snakes with his face all shot up, the kind of mean that he�d kill you if you sneezed wrong. And, Greeley thought, smiling, that Charlie Harper who�d shot him, she�d be smart to get out of town before Cage found her.

33

T he house next door to where Peggy Milner was murdered was a charmingly remodeled cottage that had only recently been a shack with an uncertain future. In this village where folks would pay a million for a teardown, the expense of such a renovation was not unusual. The disturbance of the remodeling had sent droves of mice out into the neighborhood, and Joe and Dulcie and Kit had had their share.

The resulting small, cream-toned retreat was now far more appealing than the two-story gray box that loomed beside it, where Peggy Milner had drawn her last breath. The garden had been redesigned to feature low-maintenance lavender and Mexican sage. A narrow side yard was enclosed by a woven-wire fence four feet high topped with a two-by-four crosspiece, meant to confine the Bleans� small terrier when they were in residence. The yard within stunk sharply of dog. Joe, coming up the block, had already endured the sour stink of the neighbors� garbage cans clustered on the street along with plastic recycling boxes of newspapers and cans and bottles, a miasma of rotten food, wet baby diapers, cleaning liquids, and wet paint.

He had circled the Milner house, making sure there wasn�t a uniform or two standing guard, had strolled casually beneath the yellow crime tape, looking up at the windows. When he saw no movement within, he moved on to the Blean house. He circled it, too, though he wasn�t interested in getting inside. It was the garage Joe wanted, where Peggy Milnerand her husband had had key access.

Leaping to the top of the low fence pondering possible methods of entry, Joe gave a whiskery grin. Right there in the dog yard was just what the tomcat wanted: a small doggy door installed next to the narrow, pedestrian door. Smiling, he had dropped down into the dog yard when he realized that the little door would likely be blocked from inside by one of those sliding panels that people installed when they planned to be away, to prevent the entry of raccoons or skunks-or inquisitive tomcats.

He nosed at the plastic flap, expecting it to stop against a hard surface. Wondering if he could claw that sliding panel to the top of its metal tracks and push in under it, he nearly fell through when the flap gave freely. Quick as a flash, he slipped inside.

The Bleans� garage was nearly empty. It was light and pristine, the white walls finished as nicely as the inside of a house. He caught the scent of fresh paint, from the can that Peggy Milner had recently opened. The space was lit by a long row of high windows looking out on the dog yard. Beneath these stood a small white workbench. No tools hung on the wall behind it. No gardening tools adorned the other walls, and there were none of those tall storage cabinets that people installed to hide clutter. He found, when he leaped atop the workbench, a neat row of small garden implements laid out beside a rolled-up hose that was still in its package. He dropped down again to consider the shelf underneath.

The paint smell came from there, from one of a row of gallon cans, each featuring its own handwritten label indicating living room, kitchen, master bath, and so on. Talk about neatniks. Clyde could take a lesson here. He could see where one can had been opened, a tiny line of paint still glistening at its edge, from where Peggy had touched up her own wall. Dropping off the low shelf, he circled the garage, not sure what he expected to find. The fact that Peggy Milner�s husband had had access to this private and uninhabited space, out of sight of the neighbors, interested Joe just as it had interested Harper and Garza.

Dallas had found nothing, but Dallas didn�t have a cat�s keen sense of smell. And as Joe circled, the scent of paint followed him, as if it was not all coming from the can beneath the workbench.

The smell grew stronger near the door that would open into the house. And stronger, still, when he padded toward the corner, following a foot-high, four-inch-wide, oversize baseboard that ran the length of that one wall. He remembered, from slipping in here after mice while the builders were working, that this space had been open, then, with telephone, electrical, and cable lines running through it-an electronic life-support system from the meter and cable boxes into the dwelling.

In the corner, the smell of water-based paint came strongest, and he found a freshly painted area, dry, but still fresh. The smell was faint enough that, he supposed, a human could easily miss it.

Studying the surface at an angle, he could see where the protruding baseboard had been cut and then resealed; and beneath the smell of paint, he caught a faint scent of caulking or patching.

Dragging a paw softly over the barely dry surface, he felt a subtle, raised line beneath the fresh paint. When he looked closely, he saw not only the patch line but brush marks.

He found no paintbrush in the garage, used or otherwise.

Maybe the cable man had been here. Or the phone guy, making some change that necessitated cutting into the baseboard. Maybe they had used their own brush, and had taken it with them?

Or maybe not.

The Milners had had the garage key. If a serviceman were to be admitted, Peggy would likely have come over to let him in, and she would have told her husband. Under the circumstances, wouldn�t he have made sure to tell the cops?

Well, Peggy Milner wasn�t talking. He stood a moment, considering, his heart pounding hard.If it was just painted,where�s the paintbrush? Why would someone�? Where�?

Muttering to himself, he headed out through the doggy door, leaped to the top of the fence and over, and fled up the street to the nearest neighbor�s garbage cans, where, among multiple offensive stinks, he�d caught a whiff of paint.

He found no paint can in the recycling box. Leaping atop the closed garbage can, pawing at the handles that fastened the lid in place, he flipped them up as easily as any raccoon could have. But it was impossible to get a purchase on the lid itself and push it off while standing on it. He gave up at last, dropped down, and with a flying tackle threw his weight against the side of the can, praying no one was watching. Over it went, the lid flying, the contents spilling into the street.

Did he hear someone running and shouting? Nosing in panic among the stinking mess, he pawed aside items he didn�t care to identify-he�d taste these smells for hours-spoiled food, bleach, and�

Paint! There! Pawing aside wadded paper, he snatched up a little, damp paintbrush stuck to the lid of a tomato can.

Taking the brush carefully in his mouth, he looked for a tube of patching compound or caulking. Behind him, the running had ceased. He was still looking when softer footsteps approached behind him, making him spin around.

A small boy stood staring at him, a kid of about seven. Short black hair, a red-and-blue baseball jacket. He looked up at the house behind them.�If Mrs. Hallman sees what you did, cat, you�ll be cat skin.� He stared at the paintbrush. �What�ve you got?� Lunging, the kid tried to snatch it�But Joe Grey was gone, scorching into the bushes and behind the houses, into a thorny thicket of blackberries. That should stop the little brat.

He waited maybe twenty minutes while the kid tramped around outside the thicket pawing at the vines. Joe smiled when the kid got hung up and scratched himself good, and then at last wandered away.

Slipping out again and along through the backyards, Joe headed once more for the Blean cottage. But this time, before he went over the fence, he slipped beneath a holly bush, lay the paintbrush against the holly�s trunk where it wouldn�t get any dirtier, then stood there debating.

He�d been seen doing something very uncatlike. Even a seven-year-old had to wonder why a cat would steal a dirty paintbrush. Who would that boy decide to tell about the weird gray cat? If this kid turned up while Garza was talking with some neighbor, and if the kid opened his busy little mouth�Joe shivered.

But it couldn�t be helped. Anyway, who would take the word of a seven-year-old boy? Why would anyone believe that a cat would want a dirty paintbrush? He looked out to the street and, when he didn�t see the kid, Joe irritably dismissed him.

He had to find a phone, he didn�t want to leave the brush there very long. Maybe he could get into the Blean cottage through the inner garage door and use that phone.

But why would therebe a phone in there? Why would anyone bother to pay a monthly phone bill when they weren�t there very much, when they could just use their cell phones? Even for rich folks coming down once a year on vacation or the occasional weekend, to pay for a landline seemed foolish. He looked next door to the Milner house, wondering if he could get in there, instead.

Rearing up, slipping the paintbrush higher among the prickly branches of the holly bush, he had crouched to make a dash for the Milner house, thinking first to check the windows and then the roof vents, when a patrol car pulled into the Milner drive.

Talk about serendipity. Talk about happy accident and smiling fate! Dallas Garza stepped from the car and headed directly for the Blean cottage, moving carefully through the deceased�s flower garden, clutching a key in his hand.

At about the time Joe watched Dallas cross the garden, apparently to have another look at the Blean garage, up in the hills in the Cage Jones house Lilly Jones sat at her little writing desk methodically paying the monthly bills and making her phone calls; she was relieved that that Greeley person had left, but not at all happy that her sister, Violet, had moved in on her. And without even a phone call. Well, but the poor thing had nowhere else, the helpless creature never had had any gumption. Lilly supposed she could put up with Violet for the short term. In the long run, what difference?

Nor was she unduly upset that Cage was in the hospital in intensive care; she was not wringing her hands for her brother. If Cage�s wounds to the throat and face and chest were critical enough to seriously restrict his respiratory functions, that was his fault and his problem. Fate would do with Cage what fate would do.

She had spent the hour since her breakfast dusting and vacuuming. If that woke Violet, that was too bad. She hadn�t asked Violet to move back home, into her old room. She might feel sorry for Violet, but the girl�s presence compounded Lilly�s own problems.

Still, in some respects, Violet�s proximity might make life easier for her. Thinking about Violet, back again and living there, and then about Cage in the hospital, perhaps dying, Lilly Jones smiled with a dawning contentment, and returned to paying her bills.

Watching Dallas approach the garage, Joe snatched the paintbrush from where he�d shoved it up into the bush and, trying not to drool on it, fled beneath the lavender and Mexican sage to the gate of the dog yard that Dallas would have to open to reach the garage side door.

Dropping the brush where Garza couldn�t miss it, he fled again, unseen through the bushes and, behind Garza�s back, up a pepper tree.

He watched Garza pause before the gate, looking down at the paintbrush. Frowning, Dallas took a tissue from his pocket and carefully picked it up. Then he scanned the yard all around, looking up and down the street. At last he crossed the dog yard, unlocked the garage door, and disappeared inside. Joe�s nerves were doing flip-flops.

He knew he should get out of there, but he was unwilling to miss the crucial moment. Skinning over the fence, he crouched beside the doggy door and, lifting a paw, cautiously pushed the flap in a quarter inch and peered through.

Dallas had placed the paintbrush in an evidence bag, which he still held. He stood looking carefully around, then knelt to examine the lower shelf of the workbench and the gallon cans of paint, much as Joe had done. He ran a finger around the lip of the can that had been opened, then held the paintbrush to the can.

Apparently, from the look on the detective�s face, the paint matched. Dropping it back in the evidence bag, he circled the garage studying the walls and rafters-and sniffing the air as intently as had Joe himself, and that made the tomcat smile.

It didn�t take the detective long to find the source of the scent, to locate the patched and repainted portion of the oversize baseboard. Running a finger lightly over the floor, he examined a tiny spill of white dust on the concrete that Joe himself had missed. When Dallas rose quickly to leave, Joe backed out into the dog yard, squeezing beneath a dog-scented bush as Dallas raced past him-after this caper, he was going to stink of dog pee.

He heard the car door open and slam and thought Dallas would take off, but almost at once the detective was back, carrying a camera. The minute he was inside the garage again, Joe peered in, watching as he photographed the repaired wall and the white dust on the floor. He watched as Dallas, wearing thin gloves and using a penknife, carefully lifted the minute particles of dust and dropped them in a small plastic sandwich bag, which he sealed in an evidence bag. Then with his knife, Dallas pried away a six-by-six-inch section of drywall board. It came out easily, the new caulking sticking to the edges. Shining the light into the end of the small utility tunnel, presumably picking out cable and electrical and phone wires, Dallas smiled.

Again he photographed, this time directly into the hole. Half a dozen shots, then he reached in, nearly to the elbow. He drew out two leather gloves, handling them by the corners of the cuffs, and dropped each into an evidence bag. He retrieved a small, folding hatchet of the kind that a hiker might take camping.

With the hatchet secured in an evidence bag, he examined the hole again and, finding nothing more, he rose. He bagged the paint can and, with a last look around, he headed for the door. This time Joe was quicker. As Dallas locked the door behind him, Joe Grey was on the roof above him. But when Joe glanced up the street, he saw the nosy kid poking around in the spilled garbage.

Below him, Dallas was heading for his car when he paused in the Milner drive, looking back up the street, watching as the boy happily rummaged.

Frowning, the detective headed there. Joe remained frozen as Dallas found a stick and began to rummage, too. The kid stared at him.�What you think you�re doing?� When Dallas opened his coat and thrust his badge at him, the kid took off for home. Methodically, Dallas sorted through garbage. After maybe ten minutes, he reached deeper in with the stick and eased out a small, crumpled tube.

Studying the tube and then bagging it, Dallas looked again at the garbage, then looked up and down the street as if wondering how this particular can had gotten tipped over, when all the rest stood undisturbed. Watching him, Joe could only pray that that little kid was royally scared of cops, too intimidated to venture forth with some story about stray tomcats.

You say a word about cats,kid,I�ll skin you. You think those blackberry stickers hurt! You haven�t a clue, what a tomcat�s claws can do.

Well, Dallas had hard evidence now. The gloves and hatchet, the paint can and tube and portion of drywall would go to the lab. Considering that Peggy�s husband had had access to the garage, Dallas would surely bring him in on suspicion, maybe would have enough to hold him. In the meantime, there was other unfinished business-the arraignment hearings in the other two murders; Greeley�s unexplained search, and learning whatwas missing from Cage Jones�s house-what Cage had stolen, and lost. If Joe was right, that theft had been, indeed, an audacious piece of work on Cage�s part. And, with a wry smile and a flick of his ears, Joe Grey left the scene of the Milner murder, his hunting instincts keening for action.

34

W ilma and Charlie worked all morning in the gath ering heat, straightening up Wilma�s trashed cottage; at noon, Charlie�s cleaning-and-repair van pulled up, and Mavity and two other members of Charlie�s team emerged carrying their cleaning equipment, ready to give the house a good polishing.

�I�m sure glad you went into this business,� Wilma said, hugging her niece. �I would never have sprung for having someone come in to clean, I�d be doing it all. But it�s so hot-should we take Mavity to lunch with us? She�s already done half a day�s work on their first appointment.�

Charlie considered, and shook her head.�Let her work, she wants to make the house nice again for you. We�ll bring back dessert for all of us, that will be a treat.� She stepped into the kitchen as little, gray-haired Mavity Flowers, in her ubiquitous and oft-washed white uniform, came in through the back door, loaded down with brooms, mops, and buckets; her two tall, younger crew members entered close behind her carrying bins of cleaners and polishes; both were strong young women dressed in jeans and Tshirts. Mavity hugged Wilma, then looked at her, frowning. �You okay?�

�I�m fine,� Wilma said. �We�re both just fine, now. They can�t put down the Getz women. We�re just going to run out for a bit of lunch, Mavity. If you�ll put on a pot of coffee, we�ll bring back some desserts. Cr?me brul?e?� she said. �Key lime pie?�

Mavity grinned.�You know I love them both.� She put down her equipment, hugged Wilma again, then turned to get to work.

Stepping into Charlie�s SUV, Wilma carrying her dry cleaning to drop off, they headed toward the shore. �It�s Monday,� Wilma said, �the Bakery will have flan.�

Charlie glanced at her, laughing.

�I can�t get filled up. I know it�s all in my mind. I only missed lunch-and dinner by a few hours. You�d think��

�Stress,� Charlie said. �I feel the same. I ate three bowls of chili last night, pancakes and bacon and eggs this morning. Panic hunger, or some fancier name. I only know I want one of the Bakery�s famous crab sandwiches.�

�I could eat two,and dessert.�

Moving up the steps of the old gray dwelling that now housed the Bakery, Charlie asked for a table on the wide, covered porch where they could cool off in the sea breeze and watch the surf a block away. Ordering iced tea, they settled back, looking at each other like two wanderers who had been lost, and had only just found each other again. It took a little while to ease back into the normal world. There was a strong family resemblance, two tall, slim women, one gray haired, one redheaded; the same lean features and steady eyes.

This morning while they�d cleaned, they had avoided talking about their ordeal. Now Wilma said, �You�re doing all right? About the shooting?�

�As good as can be expected. Max says everyone goes through this.�

�Everyone does. It gets better, with time. Just remember that he could have killed you, killed both of us and Max and maybe Ryan, if you hadn�t shot him.�

Charlie shivered.�We still don�t know what he wanted. What he thinks you took, what he had hidden.�

The waitress came with their tea. They ordered crab sandwiches, salads, and three kinds of dessert to go. When they were alone again, Wilma said,�Dulcie says Greeley searched the Jones house.�

�Is she sayingGreeley�s involved in this? Those cats! Did he find anything? What did they-�

�Dulcie and Kit found a safe,� Wilma said. �Which, of course, they couldn�t open.�

�When was this?� Charlie said softly. �Greeley can crack a safe.�

�I�m not sure when. After we were kidnapped. I don�t have it all sorted out yet.�

�Weren�t Cage and Greeley in Central America together?�

�They were both down there, Greeley working in Panama. I can�t be sure when Cage was there-only times he was not was when he was under supervision or in prison. He was always secretive, said he couldn�t remember the dates. Said he was all over Central and South America, couldn�t remember exactly when and where. Even if he�d given me dates and places, it would have been hard to corroborate. Certainly, most of the time, Lilly didn�t know where he was.�

�The interesting thing is, why did Greeley show up here, just now?�

Wilma nodded. Their order arrived, and they were silent for a while. Charlie said, when her first pangs of hunger were appeased,�When Mavity called this morning to ask what time they should be at your place, she sounded really distressed. She said she�d kicked Greeley out, called the station and gotten a restraining order. She said he�d been so drunk, so loud that she didn�t have a choice. I let her talk it out, or try to.

�She really rambled,� Charlie said, �not at all like Mavity, said she was so embarrassed, the way he behaved in front of her friends. She confessed she�d gone through Greeley�s suitcase, she was embarrassed about that. She said he had some kind of little gold idol, an ugly little man. Shecalled it a devil, said it gave her the shivers. Sounded like those museum copies that Greeley�s ex-wife brings back from her trips. But Mavity said this was far heavier. She said she�s looked at those, and they don�t weigh half what this did��

Wilma had stopped eating.�Those little pendants that Sue brings back for the South American shop.� She was silent for a long time, looking at Charlie, and thinking. �Charlie, on the way home, let�s swing by the library. It won�t take a minute, I�ll just run in.�

Charlie nodded. Wrapping half her sandwich in her paper napkin, and asking for the bill, she quickly paid it, gulped her tea, and rose, picking up the cardboard box filled with the Bakery�s famous desserts.

They were back home at Wilma�s twenty minutes later, Wilma loaded down with half a dozen heavy coffee-table books on pre-Columbian art, Charlie carrying the bakery box. Pushing in through the front door, they smelled fresh coffee. It was not until the five of them had finished coffee and the desserts that Wilma sat down with Mavity in the living room surrounded by library books. Getting Mavity settled with the heavy books, Wilma thought, amused, that she�d set aside the next few days to be alone and quiet, to enjoy a little recuperative R and R, and instead, here she was, digging into clues, unable to leave the puzzle alone-every bit as curious as the three cats.

In the library, as she�d hurried toward the stacks, one of her coworkers had stopped her and started laying on the sympathy about her �ordeal,� asking nosy questions about the kidnapping. You could keep nothing secret in a small town. Little dumpy Nora Wahl had told her with great authority that what she needed todo �right now,� was to �get right out with your friends again, Wilma.Do things,go places, don�t stay shut up in the house brooding. Go out among people right away, get your mind off all that trouble, keep busy and you�ll soon forget it.�

Wilma had told Nora curtly that that wasn�t the way to heal anything, to try to forget it and hide from it. Thatthat wasn�t the way her mind worked, thank you. That what she needed was a little privacy. And she had headed into the stacks, leaving the library assistant startled into unaccustomed silence.

Now, sitting on the couch next to Mavity, with Charlie on the other side, she watched the little grizzle-haired woman leaf through color photographs of gold pendants and gold ceremonial artifacts that had been dug from ancient graves.

�Ugly,� Mavity said. �But�I don�t know�� She looked up at Wilma. �They hold you, don�t they? Doyou think they�re ugly?�

Charlie said,�I think they�re fascinating, strong. But maybe that�s an acquired taste. The faces are ugly, but the work itself��

�Yes,� Mavity said. �I think I see.� She studied Charlie. �You�re the artist, you know about these things. These were made by ancient Indians?�

�Yes, with really simple tools. The whole of that continent was so rich with gold, great veins of gold that they could just dig out. When the Spanish conquered those people and killed them, they took their beautiful gold sculptures and melted them down, destroyed thousands upon thousands of thesepieces, casting them into Spanish coins.�

�But how did Greeley�?�

�His is most likely a copy,� Wilma said. �The museums make copies, to sell.�

�It was so heavy,� Mavity repeated. �So very heavy, for such a little thing.�

�If it is gold,� Wilma said, �it was illegal to bring it out of the country. In Panama, it�s illegal even to own real gold huacas, unless you register them. You can�t sell them. Only the Panamanian government, and the museum of Panama, can legally own them.�

�Then if it is gold, where could he�? Oh, he didn�t steal it, from a museum! Greeley isn�t that clever.�

Charlie said,�Would there be more? Would he have more of them?�

Mavity�s eyes widened. �Greeley�Greeley isn�t some international thief like you read about, able to get into a museum.� She looked hard at Charlie, and at Wilma. �That�s just not possible.�

�We�re guessing a lot here,� Wilma said. �But�maybe not a museum. �The most recent grave discovered,�� she read, �was found less than a hundred years ago.�� She looked up at Mavity. �People stole gold artifacts from it, before the Panamanian government found out and stopped the thefts.� She scanned the columns again, then, �No one knows where those pieces ended up. Possibly, it says, in private collections.�

�But,� Mavity said, �if Greeley stole something so valuable, even from a private collection�� She shook her head. �My brother�s just a petty thief. I don�t think he�d know how to go about that kind of sophisticated theft.�

�Maybe Greeley and Cage together?� Wilma said. �Cage might be capable of that, if he planned carefully.�

Mavity sat back, marking her place in the book that lay open on her lap. But then, leaning forward again, caught almost beyond her will by those riches, she read aloud the description of a golden garden in ancient Peru, a garden paved in gold, with life-size gold corn growing on gold stalks, life-size gold sheep and their lambs, huge gold jars filled with emeralds, full-size gold women; she read of gold fountains with running water where gold birds bathed, and there were even gold spiders, other gold insects, and gold lizards.

�Like a fairy tale,� she said. �Such wealth seems impossible. To even imagine�Oh my, how valuable even that little devil must be, if it�s real. And how many centuries old?�

�Maybe five centuries,� Wilma said, �or less. Some were made later.�

�I don�t think,� Charlie said, �the Indian cultures had devils. They had underworld men, but I think the idea of the devil came with the Spaniards, with the Christian religion.�

Wilma nodded.�And the native religions incorporated the Christian devil into their own beliefs-but those underworld figures looked like devils. Dulcie said Cage has masks with devil faces hanging on the living room wall. I think those are more common. After Christianity was introduced, the Mexicans and many other cultures made devil masks of�Oh, painted papier-m?ch? or wood. Masks for festivals and holidays.�

Charlie said,�Would that be why Cage kidnapped you, because he did have such a treasure, and someone stole it while he was in prison?�

Mavity said,�And Greeley has at least one.�

Wilma put her arm around Mavity.�If Greeley stole from Cage, why would he search the Jones house? We don�t know that Greeley stole even that one little figure.�

�So heavy,� Mavity repeated, her little wrinkled face pulled into lines of concern. �So very heavy when I picked it up. And the way the metal felt�Warm and heavy, not like some bit of cheap jewelry��

It was not until Mavity had left, she and the two younger women driving off in the blue van with Charlie�s logo on the side, that Charlie said, �How much of this do Dulcie and Joe know? And where is Dulcie? I haven�t seen her all morning. Clyde said that when you didn�t come home last night, Dulcie was a basket case. So where is she now? I�d think she�d be staying close.�

�She was snuggled up with me all night, as close as she could get. We woke up early, I had coffee in bed, and then we had a nice breakfast.� Wilma frowned. �Maybe the cats are at the station.�

�Maybe,� Charlie said. �Max and Dallas were going to bring in Lilly and Violet Jones for questioning. If the cats knew, they wouldn�t miss that.� She hugged her aunt, then rose. �I�m going back home for a quiet nap with the dogs. Maybe, if Max can get away, a nice evening ride. Will you rest, too?�

�Of course I will,� Wilma said, and she got up to see Charlie out the door-but the minute Charlie�s car pulled away from the curb, Wilma was at the computer and online, searching for references to reported thefts of pre-Columbian gold. She spent nearly two hours reading and printing out pages; then, wondering if this information was indeed relevant to the case, or if she had wasted her time, she reached for the phone to call Max.

35

L illy and Violet Jones, sitting stiffly side by side in Max Harper�s office, looked so rigid they might have just been formally charged and their rights read instead of simply invited down to the station for a few questions. Perched on the edge of Max�s leather couch, the two dry, pale women looked Harper over as if his invitation to stop by and have a chat had been a summons from hell itself.

The courteous young rookie who had knocked at their door and then chauffeured them to the station had been meticulously polite; Harper had offered the sisters coffee and a plate of George Jolly�s homemade cookies, both of which Lilly and Violet refused. Max had made it clear that neither sister was suspected of wrongdoing, but that didn�t stop their scowls at Harper and at Detective Garza, who sat in the leather armchair. The only observers the two women didn�t frown at were the two they didn�t see.

They sure don�t like being hauled into the station, Joe thought, watching from beneath the credenza.Well,Lilly doesn�t like much of anything. Mad at the world. And it isn�t only anger-there�s fear in that woman�s eyes, the tomcat thought with interest.Harper sees it. So does Dallas. Does Lilly fear for Cage,lying so close to death? Or is it something more?

�Cageis better,� Lilly was saying stiffly in response to Harper�s question about her brother�s condition. �It�s a wonder, the way that woman shot him-to shoot him in the face like a-�

�If my wife hadn�t shot him,� Max said coldly, �he would very likely have killed her, and might have killed me, too.That woman saved her own life and possibly her aunt�s life, and mine.�

�And since when,� Dallas asked Lilly, �have you grown so concerned about the welfare of your brother? When we talked a few days ago, you said that if he went to jail that was what he deserved.�

�Jail and that terrible shooting are two different fates,� Lilly said pitifully. �The one what the law dictates. The other so unnecessarily gruesome.�

�Is there,� Max said, �a more humane way to stop a killer who has a gun pointed at you and his finger tight on the trigger?�

Dallas looked at Violet.�Do you feel the same, Mrs. Sears?�

Violet looked down at her lap and said nothing, and the cats glanced at each other. Was she silenced by the proximity of her older sister, or by her inability to give an honest answer? If Joe read Violet Jones correctly, she would find happiness only if both Cage and Eddie were to disappear from the face of the earth.

�As soon as Cage is well enough to be released,� Max said, �he�ll be in jail, here, with follow-up medical visits. We asked you to come in today hoping you could help us understand why Cage and Eddie kidnapped Mrs. Harper and Ms. Getz, and why Cage shot Mandell Bennett.� Max�s voice wassofter again, quietly friendly.

�Cage is fortunate,� Max said, �that Mandell Bennett is recovering. He could be facing first-degree murder charges.� He studied Lilly. �He seems to think Ms. Getz stole something from your home. Do you have any idea what that might be?�

Lilly pressed her lips together.�I don�t know what Cage ever left in that house worth stealing. I have seen nothing worth the trouble. Those masks he brought from South America, I can�t imagine who would want those. Anyway, they�re right in plain sight for any thief to take. I wish someone would take them.� She fixed cold eyes on Max. �If there was something in the house I don�t know about, it�s surely gone now, or Cage wouldn�t be so upset. Someone took it,� she said accusingly.

Max remained patient, sternly reining himself in. Dulcie put out her paw, wanting to touch him, then hastily drew it back before it might be seen under the credenza. She had longed to comfort Max when he thought Charlie might have been murdered, he�d been so alone and hurting.

The women remained quiet as Max described the indictment and bail processes Cage would face. A flicker of sudden eagerness in Lilly�s eyes, when Max said bail might be denied, made Joe and Dulcie look knowingly at each other. Joe thought, watching the two women, that they were both afraid of Cage�s release.

Joe could understand Violet�s fear. If Cage and Eddie were both out, no matter how unlikely that was, she might think she couldn�t escape from Eddie, that Cage would force her to stay with him. But why would Lilly fear Cage�s freedom?

When the dispatcher buzzed Max, and he picked up, he suddenly became very quiet, listening. Immediately, Dallas made small talk to distract the women, speaking softly, complaining about the excessive heat. He received only terse answers.

At his desk, Max was intently taking notes. Joe, peering up, could see the excitement deep in the chief�s eyes. The tomcat was ready to leap into the bookcase behind Harper to cadge a look at his notes, when Dulcie nipped him on the shoulder, her green-eyed glare saying clearly,Don�t,Joe. Don�t thinkabout it!

She�d told him that he did that too often, leaped into the chief�s bookcase to read over his shoulder, she�d told him more than once that Harper would begin to wonder, and that he should be more restrained. Now, both cats stiffened as Max said, �Thanks, Wilma. I sure will.�

Max hung up, trying to suppress a smile, and sat looking steadily at Lilly and Violet, studying them until Lilly began to fidget.�I think, for the moment, ladies, our conversation is concluded.� He waited, then, �Unless you have something to add.�

Neither woman spoke.

�I can only tell you there is a formidable prison sentence for withholding information or evidence. In this case, one would be facing both state and federal sentences.� Max watched them for a moment more, then he rose, pushing back his chair.

The sisters looked blankly at him, and stood up. Lilly Jones had gone parchment white. Violet looked even more frightened and uncertain than usual.�There is no need for a driver,� Lilly said stiffly. �We prefer to walk home.�

As the Jones sisters departed, Max shoved his notes across the desk to Dallas.�You want to get on the computer, see what you can find? This is a real long shot, but�Wilma thinks Greeley and Cage might have brought in contraband from Central America-it�s all in my notes.� And Max moved quickly away to the dispatcher�s desk, where he talked with Mabel for a moment, then headed out the front door.

From beneath the credenza, Joe looked up at Dallas, wanting to get a look at the notes. Dulcie whispered, so softly no human could hear,�I�m going home. Come on. We can find out quicker from Wilma!� And Dulcie slipped away, down the hall, the tip of her tabby tail flicking, and out the wide glass door, behind Violet.

Joe didn�t follow. Sauntering out from under the credenza, he rubbed against Dallas�s ankles.

Dallas stroked the tomcat absently as he read Harper�s notes. Joe was crouched to leap to the back of his chair when the detective folded the notes, and slid them in his pocket. �Well, tomcat! Maybe we have some teeth in this case, after all.� Giving Joe an absentminded pet, he hurried down the hall to his own office and flicked on the computer. Joe paused, uncertain whether to follow Dallas and get a look at the notes and see what he brought up on the computer. Or whether to beat it over to Wilma�s, where Dulcie would be getting the full story.

But then he thought about Violet and Lilly. Whatever Wilma had told Harper, he�d soon hear it from Dulcie-but whatever those two women talked about while walking home could be lost forever. And quickly he headed for the front door, racing out when a rookie came swinging in. Belting out onto the hot sidewalk, he raced to catch up with the Jones sisters, then padded along behind them, keeping out of sight among the long morning shadows, dodging behind planters and steps, feeling like Columbo without the trench coat.

The women were slow, they had no interest in striding out swiftly, as Wilma or Charlie would do; there was no joy in their steps. It would be hard to live with such a dour pair. Their voices were without inflection, too, featureless, and so low he had to push close on their heels to hear some of their mutters; Lilly was still coldly angry.

�What nerve,Unless you have something to add! What did he mean,withholding evidence?�

Violet turned to look at her older sister.�Do you know what Cage had, Lilly? What was stolen?Do you know what they were talking about? There had to be something, Cage was so angry��

Lilly stared at her and didn�t answer; they were silent now as they moved on through the village and started up the long hill.

�And what was that Greeley person doing in our house?� Violet asked at last. �When I came in and saw him�Lilly, why did you let him stay there?�

�He was trying to trade on his friendship with Cage to get a free room. Cheap. And pushy. He kept banging at the door. I got tired of it, and let him in. Then I got tired of his whining, gave in to shut him up, just for the one night.� Climbing the hill, the women had slowed even more, but at last Joe could see the dark old house rising up ahead, smothered by its pine and eucalyptus trees.

�He could have murdered you,� Violet said.

�That little runt? I locked my bedroom door.�

�You could have called the police.�

Lilly looked at her and laughed, a dry, mirthless sound.�Cage would like that. He�d be wild if there were any more cops in the house. Twice was bad enough. Anyway, he�s gone. Guess he�s at the Seaview Bed and Breakfast. He made a call there, this morning. I wish he�d pack up and leave town, him with his ugly gold devil-�

�A gold devil? Cage has�What was it like?�

�Some kind of trinket from South America, had it in his pocket. Ugly as those masks. Whatabout Cage?�

�I�He has a devil thing like that, a dangle on a key chain. Could there be two? Eddie says the one Cage has is real gold and worth a lot.�

Scowling, Lilly looked at Violet for a long moment, then turned and moved quickly up the steps, fishing her house key from her pocket. They disappeared inside, slamming the door nearly in Joe Grey�s face.

Not that he wanted to enter that house and be shut in with those two. Turning away, he galloped down through the neighborhood�s overgrown yards, and scrambled up a cypress tree to the hot rooftops, heading for Dulcie and Wilma�s house-thinking about Greeley in South America, and about Greeley�s little gold devil and that Cage had one like it. Wondering if those trinkets were solid gold, and what they might be worth, and if there were more, and who had them? He had reached Wilma�s block and was about to come down the pine tree beside the stone cottage when Dulcie came flying out her cat door. She stared up at him, her green eyes bright, and clawed her way up the pine between its tangled branches.

�I was coming to find you. Wilma-�

�Come on,� he hissed, �tell me on the way��

�But-�

�Greeley�s in a motel,� he said. �A bed and breakfast. He has-� Seeing her impatient stare, he stopped. �Whatdid Wilma tell Harper? Come on, tell me on the way!� And before she could answer, he took off across the roofs in the direction of the Seaview Bed and Breakfast, Dulcie close on his tail, bursting with her own news.

36

�B e still one minute, can�t you!� Racing across the roofs, Dulcie careened against Joe and took his ear in her teeth, pulling him to a halt. �Just listen! Mavity told Wilma about some kind of gold devil Greeley carries, and Wilma got some library books and showed Mavity pictures. They found one the same as Greeley�s, just a tiny figure, among all kinds of idols, some huge. All solid gold, and worth a fortune. Wilma went online and found that a lot of them were stolen, never recovered�some about the time Greeley and Cage were there-and every piece worth enough to keep us in caviarfor a lifetime.�

The shingles were too hot to stand still. They moved on again, trotting.�Could they have pulled off a theft like that?� Dulcie said. �Is that what Cage claims went missing, and Greeley was looking for? They stole something worth a fortune, and then someone stole it from them?� She paused in the shadow of a chimney. �Or did Greeley�? Where is Greeley? Which bed and breakfast?�

�Seaview, on Casanova.� And Joe took off again running flat out, Dulcie close behind him. �There,� he hissed, flying along the edge of a steeply shingled slope, �that green roof with white dormers.� And with a wild leap, he dropped down into a shingled valley between the two rising dormers of a rambling old frame building.

Crouching on the scorching shingles between the steep roofs, they looked down into the inn�s tiny patio. A cooler breeze rose up from freshly sprinkled bricks, where a gardener was watering. They were discussing how best to find Greeley�s room when the old man himself appeared out on the sidewalk, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, as if he�d just come from breakfast. He had a large, greasy stain on his pants leg. As he headed for a room directly below them, they drew back against a chimney.

They heard his key turn in the lock, heard his door open. When they didn�t hear it close, they peered over.

The door stood wide open, as if to catch the cooler air that lingered in the small patio. From within the room, they heard Greeley open a window, then apparently drop a handful of change on the dresser, maybe emptying his pockets, meaning to change pants-though a grease stain had never before seemed to bother that old man. They heard an inner door close, then water running in the bathroom basin.

�Now!� Dulcie said, flying backward down a trellis, knocking off clematis blooms; ducking into a mock orange bush beside Greeley�s door, they looked into the dim room-and moved inside, searching for the best hiding place. They might have only a minute. And Greeley knew them. To that old man, they were not simple neighborhood cats, he knew very well what they were capable of, and that their sympathies lay not with cheap crooks like Greeley, but with the law.

The room was small, dim, dusty smelling, and overfurnished. Huge, dark mahogany dressers, big unmade bed. Wildly flowered, faded draperies left from another era, striped upholstered chair crowding one corner. On an upholstered bench stood Greeley�s wrinkled leather duffel. They hopped up beside it, and Dulcie disappeared halfway inside, searching, as Joe leaped to the dresser behind her, among the tangle of small items from Greeley�s pockets.

Greeley�s billfold smelled of old leather and old man and was well stuffed with cash. Beside it, a fall of loose change, a little penknife, a wadded-up handkerchief that Joe didn�t want to touch. A ring of five keys, including three safe-deposit keys, flat and smooth, without ridges. And a little flashlight and the tiny periscope that Greeley favored for cracking a safe. But no gold devil.

They heard the toilet flush. Dulcie leaped out of the duffle, the small gold devil dangling from her teeth, and took off fast, out the door, Joe beside her. They had barely made it to the shadows beneath a potted tree when Greeley came out of the bathroom. When he opened the closet door, they were gone, up the clematis trellis to the safety of the roof.

They heard items rattling on the dresser below, loose change clinking, as if Greeley was dropping those small possessions back in his pocket. They wondered if he had changed to clean pants? On the roof above the old man, Dulcie dropped the little gold figure on the dark shingles. It caught the morning sun in a flashing gleam: square, scowling face and large nose beneath an elaborate headdress, its body naked, its maleness boldly explicit. Its entire aspect, as Mavity had said, gave one the shivers.

Joe lifted it by the dark leather string from which it was suspended, widening his eyes when he felt its weight.�Heavy as a wharf rat,� he said, laying the huaca down again.

Dulcie�s green eyes glowed; the same triumphant look as when she came tramping across a field dragging a large and succulent rabbit. �It�s so heavy, Joe. If it�s real, and solid gold�then as sure as I have paws, this is what Cage was after, a stash of artifacts like this.�

�But�I don�t know.� Joe shook his head. �That�s big-time, Dulcie. To steal from a museum, in a country that will shoot you if you sneeze wrong. Greeley isn�t that sophisticated. Is Cage? Just how were those burglaries handled?�

�On the Web, one article Wilma pulled up said the unrecovered huacas from the museum had probably been sold to illegal collectors.� Her green eyes narrowed. �Think about it. If a person had an illegal collection of stolen goods, and then someone stole from him, would he report the theft?�

Joe smiled.

�And now,� she said, �with this information, what will Harper do?�

The tomcat shrugged.�Report it to customs or whatever federal agency deals with this stuff.� He laid his ears back uncertainly, but then he smiled. �Will the feds contact Interpol? Talk about heavy.�

But Dulcie looked uncertain.

�What?� he said, frowning.

�The feds can have Cage,� she said. �Let him burn. But his sister�If he did have a stash of gold, and it was in the house while Lilly was living there, won�t they arrest her, too?�

�So?�

�So, if she didn�t know, and they send her to prison, that would be too bad. She�s just a lonely old woman.�

Joe just looked at her. Here was his beautiful tabby lady, with her delicate peach-tinted ears and her huge emerald eyes, the most perfect cat in the world, feeling sorry for some second-rate, bad-tempered, and probably lying human.

�Dulcie, if Lilly Jones knew there were millions in stolen gold hidden in her own house-if that�s what this turns out to be-and she didn�t call the police, if she knew why Cage kidnapped Wilma and she didn�t tell Harper, if Lilly Jones just sat on her hands, then why would you feel sorry for her?�

�But what,� Dulcie said in a small voice, �if she didn�t know?�

Watching his lovely lady agonizing over that stupid woman, Joe Grey picked up the leather cord in his teeth and trotted across the roofs, the gold devil dangling and thumping against his gray-and-white chest.

Where a cluster of chimneys and air vents rose close together, in a little cleft between two steep peaks, several layers of shingles met at odd angles. There, Joe pawed back the shingles, dropped the little gold devil on its leather cord safely beneath them, and watched the asphalt squares flop back over it.

Patting at the shingles, making sure nothing could be seen, he turned back to Dulcie.�How about Jolly�s alley? I�m starved.� And the cats raced away toward Jolly�s, heading for a midmorning snack-leaving that one small fragment of a vast and ancient culture where not even a seagull or roof rat was likely to find it.

For nearly a week, the cats thought about the little gold man hidden among the shingles. Several times a day Joe or Dulcie trotted across the roofs to that aerial hiding place, making sure the treasure was safe; and all week their minds were full of questions yet to be answered. But not until the following Friday, when their human friends gathered at Clyde�s for dinner, did they learn more.

The occasion was Mandell Bennett�s release from San Francisco General and his arrival in the village to stay with Wilma for a short recuperation. Wilma wouldn�t hear of his staying alone in his apartment with only a handful of coworkers coming in to tend to his needs, though they would have been more than adequate. �What ifJones breaks out again and comes after you? Better to have someone else in the house until you�re better. This time, I promise, Mandell, I�m ready-and the department is only blocks away, they can be here in seconds.�

She had made up the guest room for Mandell, had all his favorite foods on hand, had arranged for a visiting nurse to come in to help him with bathing and changing bandages; and in anticipation of Mandell�s arrival, she and Clyde had planned a party.

37

O nly now, in the early evening, had the accumulated July heat managed to penetrate to Clyde Damen�s patio; in this sheltered oasis, the high, plastered walls hoarded well the cooler night air. It seemed to Joe that the heat spell would never end; he felt as if the whole world was being smothered by a giant, sweaty hand. Pacing the top of the six-foot wall above the unlit barbecue, he watchedClyde hosing down the brick paving and the plaster benches. Only the outdoor cushions, piled on the porch, had escaped the soaking onslaught of the spray. As Clyde adjusted the hose to a gentler pressure and began watering the flowers in their raised planters, the tomcat sniffed with appreciation the cool, damp breath rising up to him.

�Game for a little shower?� Clyde said, flicking the spray in Joe�s direction.

�You want a set of claws in your backside? Only some idiot dog would want to play in the hose.� But immediately he was sorry he�d said that. Old Rube had loved the water, had loved to bite and leap at the hose. Together, Joe and Clyde glanced across the garden to Rube�s grave, and exchangeda hurting look. The big retriever had been put down just two months ago, and both man and cat still felt incomplete; they missed painfully the black Lab who had for so many years been a member of the family; every memory of Rube was distressing. But it was hard not to think of him, hard not to stirtheir memories.

Rube�s greatest passion had been to swim in the ocean, shouldering through the surf as strong and agile as a seal. Now, Joe�s remark had left Clyde so distressed that he turned off the hose, came over to the wall, and stood silently stroking Joe.

�I�m sorry,� Joe said.

�I know.� Clyde rubbed behind his ears. Joe could smell Clyde�s aftershave over the nose-tickling aroma of cold charcoal from the big barbecue; it was too hot this evening to build a fire for burgers or steaks or ribs, though a crowd would soon descend.

A cold supper waited in the kitchen, cold cracked crab, cold boiled shrimp, and an assortment of George Jolly�s succulent salads. Charlie and Wilma, as two of the guests of honor, had not been allowed to contribute a delicious casserole or salad as they usually did. Ryan, who would rather build houses than cook, was bringing the beer.

Clyde dried off the chairs and benches with a towel, and tossed the cushions back onto them. He had stepped into the house to bring out the big iced tubs of shrimp and crab when the doorbell rang and the unlocked front door opened; Joe could see in through the kitchen window and straight through to the living room where folks were crowding in, Dallas and Ryan and her sister Hanni, Max and Charlie, and behind them other cars were pulling up.

Everyone but Hanni was dressed in old worn jeans and cool cotton shirts; Ryan�s beautiful and flamboyant sister wore a low-cut black T-shirt and a long, flowered skirt, expensive sandals, and dangling silver earrings. No one ever said the two sisters were alike. Except in their lively attitude, Joe thought, admiring both women. The tomcat was amused that he had begun to notice people�s clothes in addition to people�s attitudes; that was Dulcie�s influence. It was true, though, that what people wore told a lot about them. Cats didn�t have that problem. Only the condition of one�s fur mattered, and that was more for the feel of it; scruffy fur was irritatingand distracting.

Ryan wore ancient jeans, sandals, and a nice red T-shirt that set off her short, dark hair, her green Irish eyes and warm complexion. Wilma came in behind her, wearing red, too, Dulcie perched on her shoulder, the other guest of honor following.

Mandell Bennett was using a walker. He looked happy indeed to be out of the hospital, out of intensive care. His short dark hair was freshly trimmed, his print sport shirt still lined with creases from the store. He was laughing, his dark Cherokee eyes filled with pleasure. As people crowded through to the big kitchen, a tall thin man with carrot red hair came in behind Bennett. Mike Flannery was Ryan and Hanni�s father, and Chief U.S. Probation Officer in San Francisco. He was Bennett�s boss, and Wilma had worked for him before she retired. He had picked Bennett up at the hospital to drive him down from the city, a good excuse to get away for a few days and to see his family.

Lucinda and Pedric came in behind Flannery, the kit snuggled in Pedric�s arms. The thin old man was dressed in jeans, an open shirt, and a lightweight cotton sport coat. Lucinda wore a long cotton jumper over a light blouse. As people moved on through the kitchen in a tangle and out the back door, a dozen officers crowded in the front door, laughing. There was not a uniform among them, not even Detective Davis who, like blond Eleanor Sand, was wearing a long denim skirt and a T-shirt.

Ryan stopped to put a six-pack of beer in the crowded refrigerator in the space Clyde had left beside the bowls of deli salads. She handed her heavy cooler to Clyde, to carry down the back steps. Pedric came out behind her. As he passed the patio table where the crab and shrimp were bedded in ice, the tattercoat peered down, licking her whiskers.

Joe smiled at the look of satisfaction on Ryan�s face as she looked around Clyde�s patio, now as crowded and noisy and full of life as Ryan had intended when she designed it. She always seemed so pleased to see something she had designed and built put to its full use. Clyde, standing with his arm around her, pulled her close. The cats thought they made a warm, handsome couple.

But Joe had thought that about other women. He�d thought that about Charlie, had thought for sure Charlie and Clyde would marry-and she�d ended up falling in love with Max.

And as Dulcie had pointed out, when Clyde did get married, Joe himself would be evicted from the master suite; he was, after all, not an ordinary cat, and newlyweds did need some privacy.

No more king-size bed, no more waking Clyde in the middle of the night just for the pleasure of hearing him complain. No more direct route from bed to the rafters and out the cat door to his rooftop tower.

But, Joe thought, watching his friends celebrating, he�d think about that when the problem arose. He watched Eleanor Sand and Charlie, sitting off in a corner of the patio, on the bench beneath the maple tree. Eleanor�s arm was around Charlie, and Charlie looked weepy, very still and quiet-that shooting had upset her more than she�d let on to her friends.

Of course Max knew how deeply Charlie felt, as did Dallas and Davis. But Officer Sand had recently been through the same thing and, being young and not on the job too long, she, too, had had a bad reaction. Joe wanted to slip closer and listen, but when he caught Dulcie�s eye, he hastily turned away and leaped to the top of the wall beside her and the tortoiseshell kit. Across the patio, the three non-speaking household cats were up on the porch, close to the doggy door that would admit them quickly to their lair in the laundry if the party got too noisy. Two of the cats were growing elderly, and the young white cat had always been skittery and shy.

Everyone toasted Mandell, and then toasted Wilma and Charlie and made jokes at their expense. Mandell looked at Wilma.�Have to admit, this is a weird set of circumstances. Devil masks, ancient treasure�and I�m sure I haven�t heard the half of it.� He looked across at Max. �What was the outcome of Eddie Sears�s arraignment, wasn�t that yesterday? I was really out of the loop, in that hospital. What about Jones? Will he live to be arraigned?�

�Sears is up for two counts of kidnapping,� Max said. �Jones, hard to tell. He�s still in intensive care, and the prognosis is shaky.�

The three cats glanced at one another. They were not all of one mind on their preferences as to Jones�s fate. Joe was for a slow and painful death, before Jones cost the courts a bundle of money, trying and convicting, and then incarcerating him. Dulcie wanted Jones to face charges and endure a long, tedious, painful battle in court. Kit looked from Joe to Dulcie and wasn�t sure what she wanted. Just, she thought, whatever would cause Jones the most misery. A cat is not big on forgiveness. These two men had no compassion for human lives, and in their humble feline opinions the world would be safer without them.

�We have several interesting communications from Interpol,� Max said, �on thefts of pre-Columbian artifacts. When Wilma found some of that information on the Internet, we started making contacts.

�There were three burglaries from the Panamanian National Institute of Culture. At least one, early in 2003, was an inside job. A big haul of gold huacas and clay pots that could date back farther than two thousand years. The pieces were taken from the institute�s Reina Torres de Arauz Museum of Anthropology, from locked display cases. Nothing broken, not a lock damaged.�

Joe tried to think how long ago two thousand years really was, how many generations of ordinary cats that would be, but the magnitude of that many lifetimes made his head feel woozy. He knew that Dulcie could think in those terms more easily, at least when it had to do with their own mythical history. And the kit�She had grown up on ancient tales. Kit looked at ancient history as just yesterday. Joe watched the tortoiseshell as she peered down from a low branch of the maple behind Max, studying the pictures that had been faxed to him by Interpol. And Joe dropped to the bench beside Clyde where he, too, could see.

One picture seemed identical to the gold pendant he had hidden on the roof. There was a handwritten note in the margin, placing its value at over four thousand dollars. That little bit of gold�If Cage had stolen as much as would fill the floor safe in his basement, the value would be considerable. No wonder he�d been in a swivet when the pieces vanished.

He watched Kit, staring down from the branch at the pictures. Was she thinking that those gold huacas were very like ancient Celtic relics? Like the primitive gold jewelry and shields from Ireland and Wales that were so entwined with the myths about their own strange race of cats? But that stuff made Joe shiver; their own strange, mythical past made him unbearably nervous.

�The 2003 theft,� Max said, �had to be an inside job. No employee was supposed to have both the key and the combination, to any single display case. Obviously someone, or several people, did have them. One guard who had recently been employed, had a long record. He was out on bail when they hired him, waiting on appeal for an earlier job.�

�And theyhired him?� Charlie said.

�This is Central America,� Max said. �Interesting that the theft occurred a month before they were to install a new security system.

�The museum had been hit a year earlier, and there was a theft in 1982. And that�s where we think this haul may have come from.� Max reached for another O�Doul�s. �Cage was in Panama in the eighties, as well as more recently.� He looked across at Wilma. �And Greeley Urzey was there in the eighties.�

Wilma said,�I don�t think Greeley, alone, has the skill to pull off that kind of job. But he and Cage might.�

Max nodded.�There were several illegal collections of pre-Columbian artifacts in Panama, held by wealthy individuals. Ownership is legal only for the museums. Interpol thinks those collectors bought huacas stolen from the museums, and that then, over the years, some of those collections were burglarized. That kind of theft, Cage and Greeley might have pulled off. And those thefts, of course, would never be reported.�

�How would they get them out of the country?� Lucinda asked.

�A lot of ways,� Max said. �Customs can�t check everything. They might have been sealed in moving containers, in those big overseas crates. Packed up by a mover in Panama or the Canal Zone and put on shipboard for transport to the U.S. Before 9/11, it would have been far easier to slip contraband through. But,� Max continued, �there�s a kicker to this. Late last night, we had a call from Seattle PD.

�Five stolen huacas have turned up there, sold by a San Francisco fence about a month ago.� He settled back, sipping his beer. �They were sold three days after Greeley�s flight got in from Panama-the day after Cage Jones was released from Terminal Island. We�re guessing Greeley flew into SFO, maybe under an assumed name. Cage meets him there, or maybe Greeley rents a car and picks Cage up at T.I. And Cage takes him to the San Francisco fence.�

The eyes of all three cats glowed. They glanced sideways at one another and found it hard to keep from grinning.

�But,� Mandell said, �if Cage sold his take in the city, what was he looking for at the Molena Point house? What disappeared from there, that he thought Wilma and I took?� He frowned, his dark eyes narrowing. �If Cage and Greeley made a large haul together and got it out of Panama, and then split it, that could have been Greeley�s half that they sold in the city.�

Max nodded.�That�s what we think.�

�And then,� Mandell said, �Greeley came after Cage�s half, which he hadn�t yet sold.�

�But why sell Greeley�s share so near the time that Cage got out of prison?� Wilma said. But then she smiled. �Greeley waited for Cage to get out, to make the contact for him. Greeley isn�t very sophisticated when it comes to that kind of thing, it�s Cage who knows the high-powered fences.�

Pedric said,�If they sold Greeley�s share, and Cage�s half was still in the house,did Greeley find and take it?�

Max shook his head.�We don�t think so. Greeley was in there after the kidnappings, snooping around. If he�d already found and taken it, why would he go back?�

�And what about the three murders?� Lucinda said. �They weren�t connected to this, at all? You arrested one man, the husband?� she said with distaste.

�Two,� Max said. �Tucker and Keating. We had enough evidence on both to make good cases. And in the Milner death, we have the murder weapon. We were able to lift one print that he missed when he wiped it.�

�Then-� Lucinda began.

�Milner�s skipped,� Max said. �Parked his car at San Jose airport, made a plane reservation, but we don�t think he boarded. He�ll be picked up-we hope he will. He�s not too sophisticated.�

Max said no more, nor did Dallas. Neither officer mentioned the plastered-over and painted baseboard in the Milner case, the paintbrush, the caulking tube found in the neighbor�s garbage. Until the trial, it was best to keep such information to themselves, even among those close to the department. The fewer who knew, the fewer slips could be made. The cats glanced at one another, Dulcie twitched a whisker, and again Joe Grey smiled.

�And there never was a burglar,� Lucinda said.

�None.� Max grinned. �You�re safe in your bed, Lucinda.� He looked around at Clyde. �I�m starved. One more toast to the three guests of honor, then let�s eat.�

But before Max raised his glass, Charlie said,�I think there�s another guest of honor who helped stop Cage Jones.�

The cats went rigid, staring at Charlie.

�Seems to me,� Charlie said, �that a toast to Rock is in order. The poor guy ran his tail off tracking me.� Joe and Dulcie and Kit went limp. Charlie�s eyes met theirs, laughing, then moved on, her look noticed only by those who knew the whole story. And as Charlie knelt to hug Rock and give him a treat of shrimp, the cats knew he deserved every morsel. Joe smugly washed his whiskers, and Dulcie rolled over on her back, purring. And soon everyone gathered around the table, filling their plates with the good shrimp and crab, Jolly�s seafood so fresh it might be still swimming, the salads crisp and well seasoned, the French bread freshly baked, the desserts rich, just as the cats liked them. Rock and the cats, the household cats, too, all had their own plates; Kit ate so much, ending with a lovely bowl of cr?me brul?e, that Lucinda and Pedric were sure she�d be sick beforethey got her home.

But Kit wasn�t sick, she reveled in the evening, loved having all her friends around her, cat and human; after her lonely, bullied kittenhood, she loved being part of this warm human world. When late that evening the friends parted, heading for their cars, and Ryan lingered for a last drink with Clyde, Kit sat on the seat, between the old couple, talking nonstop; she wanted all the answers that had not yet come to light, she wanted it all at once.

She wanted not only to know all the final resolutions to the several cases in question, which no one on earth could yet tell her, but also she worried over her wild friends who had so courageously helped Charlie and Wilma. She worried about Willow and Cotton and Coyote living wild, and she envied them, too. She knew they would choose no other way. Wound tight, Kit talked nonstop until the old couple had tucked her into bed between them and turned out the light, and then she fell asleep all at once, purring.

Kit�s frustration notwithstanding, the answers did come, the first, early the following morning. Kit woke to the ringing of the phone. She rolled over on the big bed as Lucinda picked up. Lucinda listened, then turned on the speaker so Pedric and Kit could listen.

�Cage Jones died at four this morning,� Wilma said. �The hospital called Max, and Charlie called me. She was crying.�

�Oh dear,� Lucinda said, swinging out of bed and feeling for her slippers. Beside her, Kit shivered. Charlie had killed a man and, no matter how casual a cat might feel about taking another creature�s life, Charlie was a tender human.

�What can we do?� Lucinda said.

�She�ll be all right,� Wilma said. �She�s strong, it just takes time. She knows very well that she saved lives that night. Max said that as soon as he can get away they�re going to saddle up and take that week�s ride down the coast that they�ve been planning, take some time alone together.�

That same day, Violet Jones moved back into her childhood home with Lilly, and found a part-time job waiting tables. And it was later that week that Greeley Urzey left the village, just disappeared, didn�t tell Mavity he was going. �Just like him,� Mavity said. �He shows up, makes trouble, and vanishes.� Greeley checked out of his motel at five A.M., the day after Cage�s fence, in San Francisco, ID�d Cage and Greeley as having sold him illegal gold huacas. The fence had studied pictures from Interpol that identified the pieces he�d bought as having been stolen in several Panamanian burglaries. When federal officers went to arrest Greeley, he was gone. He had sold his car two days before to a private party. If he got on a plane, he�d used a fake ID. The feds were still looking for his trail on the day of Cage Jones�s funeral, which was delayed while forensics determined whether Max�s.38 or shotgun pellets had killed Cage, though the question was academic. It was a week before the funeral when Lilly Jones disappeared.

Violet called Wilma to say that Lilly was gone. She wasn�t crying. She didn�t know why Lilly had left; she said they�d been getting along just fine. Her voice was stiff, but Wilma thought that, secretly, she was pleased. She told Wilma that Lilly�s bank account had been closed and that she had left a large check, telling Violet to open her own account in order to pay future household bills. Lilly�s note said there was no mortgage, and that, with Cage�s death, Violet owned half the house. That she would have to pay the taxes, and insurance, and upkeep. Lilly did not leave a forwarding address. She took only a few clothes and the one good suitcase. She explained that Violet couldn�t sell the house, of course, without Lilly, but that if Lilly decided to release her half, she would send a legal paper to that effect. She did not take the old Packard, but transferred the registration to Violet. She did not make airline reservations under her own name.

There were no charges against Lilly Jones. But Max gave the information to Interpol. Violet, when she checked with the bank to be sure Lilly�s account was indeed closed, learned that Lilly had also relinquished her large safe-deposit box. At this time, two abused village women left their homes, seeking shelter and protection, and Violet, while waiting tables at the Patio Caf?, toyed with the idea of taking in such women as roomers, for mutual support. She thought about this during Cage�s graveside service, which she witnessed apparently without emotion, turning away when it was finished, dry-eyed and composed.

Hidden among the tombstones behind Violet and the few others present, the three cats waited. The morning was hot, overcast, and muggy. The service was short. Lilly�s minister did not seem inclined to go on at much length about the life or virtues of Cage Jones. The selections he read from the Bible were blandly generic. Violet spoke no words of cleansing or of memory on Cage�s behalf. Cage Jones�s funeral was a glum affair. In the arrangements Lilly had made for it before she vanished, she seemed concerned only about doing the minimum civil duty and being done with her brother. The cats, curled up in the shadow of a nearby granite monument, looked sadly at one another. To possess human life, and to have so squandered it that one departed accompanied only by hatred or indifference-that was, in their eager feline minds, indeed a terrible waste. They felt no grief for Cage Jones; they felt only disgust. What each of them wondered about, and grieved over, was the emptiness and waste.

They watched Wilma and Charlie turn away and leave the cemetery with Max and Dallas, watched Violet leave alone. When the handful of people was gone, they waited patiently until the backhoe had arrived and the grave was unceremoniously covered with earth, and then sod laid over it.

Then, alone, Joe Grey approached the grave.

And now, smiling with a sad but perverse sense of humor, the tomcat dug a hole in the center of Cage Jones�s grave, dug it in the soft dirt, as any cat would dig, but carefully between the squares of sod. He dug it deep. He dropped the leather thong, which he had carried all the way to the cemetery secure between his teeth, dangling the heavy gold devil-dropped it deep into the hole and buried it, covered it well, as any cat would do.

And he turned away, smiling, leaving Cage Jones alone with his only remaining treasure.

Content

Мерфи Ширли Руссо Cat Cross Their Graves. Cat Breaking Free. Cat Pay The Devil