Мерфи Ширли Руссо

Cat Deck The Halls. Cat Playing Cupid. Cat Striking Back

13. CAT DECK THE HALLS

1

H E REACHED THE village half an hour before midnight, cutting over from San Jose to Highway One, on the coast, the child tucked up warm in the seat behind him. She slept soundly, her faded doll clutched close to her, one of its angel wings tucked beneath the seat belt. He had made a wide nest for her, had filled the floor well with the cheap pillows he’d bought in the first drugstore he came to, and with their two duffel bags. With the blanket laid over, the backseat of the rental car was just like a regular bed. She had a new drawing pad and crayons and a picture book back there, but she hadn’t touched them much. Any other six-year-old would be raging for action, bored out of her mind, wanting to run and work off steam-as she once had, he thought sadly, seeing a sharp picture of her when she was smaller, laughing on the park swings and chasing a ball in their walled garden.

Above the highway, the night sky was black, he could see no stars, no moon. The only illumination came from flashing car lights racing north on the freeway as he and the sleeping child headed south from the airport. The car was rocked periodically in bouts of wind and rain, the storm raging and then easing off only to return every few miles. He was worn-out from the trip, from the long waits going through security, the delayed schedules and plane changes. He’d made the call from San Jose but had to leave a message, said the flight was delayed, that he’d just swing by and if he saw no light he’d get a motel and they’d be there in the morning. It was too late, tonight, to get anyone out of bed.

He was hungry, though. Their simple supper seemed ages past. He hoped the child would be hungry-if she woke at all. At last, heading downhill into the small seaside village, he left the heavy traffic, passing only three cars, all coming uphill as if maybe going home to the hillside houses behind him. The streets were slick from rain. He rolled his window down and could smell the sea. With the wind easing off, he could hear the surf, too, crashing half a mile ahead; that would be at the end of Ocean Avenue, he remembered from the map.

Driving halfway through the village, he turned up into gentler hills among close-set cottages. Molena Point had no street lamps, its narrow streets were dark beneath the trees. Shining his headlights on street signs, he found the house he wanted, but not by an address, there weren’t any house numbers in the village. He wasn’t able to see much on the dark streets, but he found his destination by its description and he slowed, looking. Yes, everyone was in bed. He started to get out, to see if there was a note on the door, but something made him pause.

Parking for just a minute, studying the house, he thought he saw movement in the shrubbery, something dark and stealthy. Puzzled, he watched uneasily, then decided it was nothing, just shadows. What was wrong with him? Tired. Tired from the trip, and from tending to the child. Her malaise dragged him down real bad. Though the shifting of shadows was not repeated, still he felt edgy, and did not leave the car; he didn’t feel right again until he’d moved on, made a U-turn in the black, empty street and headed back down to the village.

Even in the small business section, the streets were lit only by the soft illumination from shop windows shining down onto the wet sidewalks, and by the softly colored lights of motel signs reflected on the slick, mirroring surfaces. He saw two motels with their vacancy signs lit, but first he moved on, looking for a caf?. Each shop window gleamed like a small stage set with its own rich wares, diamonds and silver, expensive leather and cashmere, imported china, Italian shoes, oil and watercolor paintings and bronze and marble sculpture, a feast of riches for such a small village. Windows stacked with children’s books, too, and with toys, and brightly wrapped Christmas boxes to entice a child with imagined surprises. The quaint restaurants were all closed for the night, their windows dark, nor were there any moving cars on the streets, though it wasn’t yet midnight. Just parked cars, maybe left overnight by tourists already asleep in their motel rooms. On this stormy night, even so near Christmas, the whole town had buttoned up early, and he thought of bed with longing. He really was done in after the long flight and then the drive down from San Jose, bone tired and achingly hungry. But most of all, he wanted to get some food into the child before he checked in to a motel and put her to bed. He had not expected all of the village to be closed, not a restaurant lighted, not even a bar, and he passed only a couple of those. Cruising the narrow, tree-sheltered streets not finding what he sought, he parked beside a small shopping plaza and got out. Stood listening, hoping to hear the echo of voices from some unseen caf? within. He was eager suddenly to hear another human voice, but he could hear nothing but the surf, and the dying wind-as if he’d stepped into some kind of time warp, as if everyone on earth had vanished except himself and the child, as if all the world was suddenly empty.

No voices. No canned Christmas music. No sound of another car on the streets until one lone vehicle turned on to Ocean and approached, moving slowly toward him and then speeding up and going on, the dark-clad driver invisible within the dark interior. A bicycle swished past, too, and turned left, and that made him feel less isolated.

But then, only the surf again. And the constant drip of water from the roof gutters and the branches of the oaks and pines that caressed the roofs of the cottagelike shops. Lifting the sleeping child out of the backseat, he tucked her doll in the crook of her arm, knowing she’d wake without it. Snuggling her against him, he turned in to the small but exclusive-looking shopping plaza hoping to find a coffee shop open, catering to late-night tourists. He had hardly entered when he saw the Christmas tree.

He stopped, longing to wake her, longing to see a gleam of delight kindle in her somber eyes. A two-story Christmas tree, brilliant with colored lights and oversize decorations and a tangle of large toys jumbled beneath the laden branches. It stood in the center of the plaza surrounded by flower gardens and brick walkways, the gardens enclosed on four sides by two stories of shops, in a rectangle that must fill the whole block. The colored lights of the lavishly decorated tree cast a phantasm of brilliant reflections across the windows of Saks and Tiffany and the small boutiques and three small, closed caf?s. Nothing moved, not a soul was there. Standing among the deserted gardens, he wondered, if he woke the child, if the sight of the wonderful tree would bring her alive, would be enough to stir her blood and excite her, maybe stir her hunger, too? Thin as a little bird, she was, frail and infinitely precious. And there was no medicine that could help this condition.

Around six this evening, he’d gotten her to eat half a peanut-butter-and-jam sandwich and drink half a small carton of milk, and that was a victory; then soon she’d slept again. He longed to see her dark eyes wide with wonder, as they used to be-wonder at the magical decorations and the fairy lights and the brightly painted toys and the rocking horse beneath the laden branches, longed to hear her laugh with pleasure and reach up to the magical tree.

He looked above him to the upper-floor veranda and additional shops, where an open stairway led up, but there was no little coffee shop tucked in there, either. Turning, he looked back toward the street and his car thinking he’d better go on, get checked in to a motel. With the help of a motel coffeepot, he could heat a cup of the instant soup he carried in his suitcase, something hot if not very filling. Get the child tucked up safe for the night, and then drop into sleep, himself. As he turned to leave the plaza andreturn to his car, he saw that they were not alone. A man stood behind him, had approached without sound, and light from the tree caught his face.

“Well, hey!” He laughed, clutching the child tighter, glad to see his friend, but then puzzled. “How did you…? Where did you come from? Why didn’t you…? Is this a surprise? How did you get here? And when?” When the other didn’t speak, he stepped forward, reaching out to clasp his shoulder.

When the man moved he glimpsed the weapon.“What…?” He twisted away, shocked, ducking and shielding the child, but he wasn’t quick enough. A jolt caught him and light exploded and he felt himself reel off balance. He fell, shielding and cushioning the child. Why? Why would he…? She had awakened, struggling and clutching him, she caught her breath staring up into the face of their attacker then drew back against him, trying to hide herself. She made one gasp, no other sound. He couldn’t see right, couldn’t see at all, felt himself falling into blackness, the child clutching him. He could only imagine her little white face, couldn’t see her, felt her shivering against him as deep darkness swarm over him.

T HE KILLER BENT over them, pressing the gun against the victim’s throat. The weapon felt awkward with the silencer on it. Well, he didn’t need it now, the man was limp, gone. He was going through the fallen man’s pockets when a cop car passed and slowed, he caught a glimpse of their uniform caps, heard their radio, and he ducked and froze in place as a spotlight shone in.

But it was just a routine patrol. The white Buick sedan moved on again slowly, the cop in the passenger’s seat sipping coffee from a white Styrofoam cup as he scanned the shop fronts that faced the street, scanned what he could see of the plaza and gardens.

The minute the law had gone he finished searching, made sure he had the billfold, the airline tickets and rental car keys. The child huddled away from him, staring at him white with shock. He didn’t speak to her. Rising, he rearranged some of the oversize toys so the body wouldn’t be visible from the street, then headed away through the \plaza to the back, keeping to the darkest doorways and to the gloom beneath the small, ornamental trees. The cops would be back. Would most likely circle the block, checking again before they went on. He hoped to hell they wouldn’t walk the plaza, walk right past the tree to look in the individual stores. They would if they had any feeling of unease. He’d planned for more time. He’d have to hustle to move the body, he hadn’t planned it this way, and he hated to hurry.

He’d waited for his quarry beside that house, cold and wet from the storm. When the car appeared at last, and stopped, and he could see the driver’s profile, then it turned around and took off, he’d expected them to head straight to a motel. He’d followed silently on the bike, keeping to the shadows, drew back when his victim went into the plaza maybe looking for a caf?. And wasn’t this ironic. This was too good. Shot beneath a Christmas tree, his death fitting right in with the season.

Not that he’d wished his victim any special bad luck. He just couldn’t have him around.

Watching for the cops, he knew they couldn’t have heard or seen any disturbance, couldn’t have heard the faint pop of the silenced weapon. He waited until they returned, shining their light in again across the lighted tree and the toys and rocking horse but missing the dead man where he lay in the dark behind the big toys. Missing the silent child cringing against him, hidden among the tangle. She was so scared she likely wouldn’t run. And she sure wouldn’t cry out for help. The minute they’d gone he slipped across the wide street, retrieved the old bicycle that was his transportation tonight, and wheeled it toward the empty store, one of a dozen dark retreats that he’d scoped out weeks earlier, scattered around the village.

He waited inside the dark store until the cops moved on down Ocean. He was returning for the body, entering the plaza, when he heard a soft noise like someone running; he melted into the shadows and was gone again fast, heading for the backstreet.

T HE BODY WAS discovered only a few minutes after the killer fled. It was glimpsed by a lone and silent prowler looking down from the roof of a plaza shop. By a four-footed wanderer trotting across the steep shingles enjoying the lull in the storm, a lone adventurer out to discover what might be new in the night. By a tortoiseshell cat out on the prowl, to see what she could see.

Below the darkly mottled cat, the streets were deserted. The only movement was the police unit making its way slowly up Ocean-out on the prowl, too, she thought companionably.

As she crossed the plaza roof, she smelled blood, and then cordite. Startled, she approached the plaza below her, and was suddenly shaken by the smell of death. Nose twitching, she padded to the edge of the roof’s rounded tiles and looked down into the enclosed gardens.

Here atop the single one-story shop at the front of the complex she was below the rest of the building, and below the top of the plaza’s Christmas tree, below its crowning star. For a moment the colored lights blinded her. As her pupils contracted, she saw the body under the branches and she hissed and backed away. But then she crept to the edge again, looking.

The man lay unnaturally twisted, his body angled awkwardly between the tangle of oversize toys, his face whiter than paper except for the dark blood spilling from a wide and gaping wound down the side of his forehead and cheek. He was dead, no question, the sour smell of death filled the night. He was beyond help now, beyond any help in this world-but the little child who clung to him was alive and shivering, a little girl lying curled against the dead man, clutching him tight, her face pressed against him and her little tense body shivering with silent sobs.

Crouching and still, the tortoiseshell cat looked out to the street. The deepest shadows were pitch-black, impenetrable even to feline eyes. The smell of death was so sharp it made her draw back her lips, her teeth bared, her whiskers flat against her darkly mottled cheeks. She lifted a paw but didn’t back away, she stood watching the dead man and the little silent child with her arms tight around his arm and neck, her face burrowed into his shoulder, her little white sweater soaked with his blood.

She thought the child might be five, maybe six years old; it was hard to tell with humans. Beneath her bloody white sweater she wore little blue tights, and little white boots with fake white fur around the tops. Her hair was jet-black, her skin milky. A ragged cloth doll lay forgotten beneath her, a doll that seemed to have little padded wings, a homemade angel doll.

Kit studied the black shadows of the plaza but did not see a lurking figure. She was crouched to leap down to the child when the little girl choked out a tiny, thin sob, a small, lost sound perhaps too faint for a human ear, and that sob frightened and hurt Kit all the more deeply. This child had been abandoned in a way no child should ever be abandoned, this child should be laughing and reaching up among the laden branches and golden bells and ribbons, not hovering terrified against a dead man, filled with incomprehensible loss; and a terrible pity filled Kit, and an icy fear.

The dying wind carried the scents of Christmas that lingered from the village shops, of baking, of nutmeg and ginger and hot cinnamon, all mixed, now, with the stink of death. Away across the roofs behind Kit, the courthouse clock struck midnight. Twelve solemn tolls that, tonight, were death tolls.

This afternoon the village and plaza had been crowded with hurrying shoppers, the park across the street filled with white-robed carolers and with the velvet soprano of Cora Lee French,“…rest ye, merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay…” And now there was no one but a little abandoned child and, somewhere unseen, a killer with a gun, for surely that was a gun shot wound. What else could it be? Kit was alone in the night with a dead man and a lost little girl, and an unseen killer. Nervously she washed one mottled black-and-brown paw, trying to get centered, trying with calming licks to soothe her frightened inner cat.

And then she spun around and bolted away across the rooftops racing to bring help.

2

C ORA LEE FRENCH heard the sirens shortly after midnight as she undressed in her upstairs bedroom. She had arrived home late from choir practice, driving slowly on the wet streets although the storm had almost passed. As she pulled into the drive, the house was dark above her, one of her housemates gone for the holidays, and Mavity most likely having read herself to sleep with a romance novel. Gabrielle was probably out on a date with Cora Lee’s cousin, and that made her smile, that Donnie had found someone to console him and ease his hurt. Gabrielle was good for him, and no one said you couldn’t have a hot romance at sixty-some. Whatever the outcome, Cora Lee was pleased that Gabrielle’s charm and attentions took Donnie’s mind off his loneliness, even if only for a little while.

Letting herself into the main house, she had turned on a lamp and gone upstairs to make sure young Lori was safe, in her third-floor room next to Cora Lee’s. Lori didn’t wake, but the two big dogs looked up at her-knowing the sound of her car, and her step, they hadn’t barked. She spoke softly to them, and they wagged and smiled and laid their heads down again. If she’d been an intruder, they would have raised all kinds of hell; the deep voices of the standard poodle and the Dalmatian, alone, would drive away a prowler, thundering barks that would be backed up with businesslike teeth and powerful lunges.

There weren’t many twelve-year-olds Cora Lee would leave alone for the evening, with only Mavity downstairs. But Lori had the dogs, and she was a resourceful kid, a child who would be quick to call 911 at anything unusual, and she knew how to use Cora Lee’s canister of pepper spray, too, if she needed more than canine protection.

Going back downstairs to the kitchen, Cora Lee saw that Gabrielle’s bedroom door was closed, so maybe her housemate was home after all. She fixed a mug of cocoa, and brought it upstairs with her, setting it on her nightstand beside her bed. The big white room was filled with the bright colors of her paintings and of the handwoven rugs she liked to collect, andthe bright covers of a wall full of favorite books, among them many dog-eared picture books from her childhood. Cora Lee had never had children, but she treasured her own tender past. And now, of course, she had Lori, the kind of child who, though she was reading adult classics, was never too old for good picture books-she had Lori, she thought uneasily, until the child’s father got out of prison. Cora Lee dreaded that parting, and tried not to think about it.

Cora Lee was a tall woman, still slim for her sixty years, her black short hair turning to salt and pepper but her caf? au lait complexion still clear and smooth as a girl’s. As she undressed, slipping on a creamy fleece gown, she heard a rescue unit heading out from the fire station, and then the higher scream of police cars. She paused, listening, dismayed by the possibility of some disaster so near to Christmas.

This was a quiet village, where any ugliness seemed more shocking than in a large city, seemed far more startling than on the crowded streets of New Orleans’s French Quarter, where she grew up. And now, during the gentle, homey aura of Christmas in the village, the prospect of violence was all the more upsetting.

The sirens whooped for some time, then the night was shockingly quiet. Before slipping into bed, Cora Lee removed Donnie’s three letters from the drawer of her nightstand and set them beside the cocoa. Because the sirens had unnerved her, she checked on Lori again, then moved down the hall to the high-raftered room filled with her paintings. Builder Ryan Flannery had added the tall studio, designing it in such a way that it lent a finishing charm to the flat roofs of the original house.

Looking out the bay window, down the hills toward Ocean Avenue, she could see the red lights flashing, and again she shivered-but maybe it would turn out to be a wreck with no injuries, or an overexcited call about a bear up a tree. That had happened one evening right in the middle of the village, a disoriented young bear with no territory of its own, wandering down from the open hills, lost and afraid.

Or maybe the sirens were responding to a false alarm, she thought hopefully. She wanted Christmas to be peaceful, wanted to see around her only renewal and joy. Saying a little silent Hail Mary in case someone out in the stormy night might be hurt, she returned to her room and slid into bed beneath her down comforter. But the violence of the sirens, though silenced now, echoed in her head for some time, mixed with the Christmas carols she had practiced earlier, sending a cold chill through her own soprano solos.

Propping three pillows behind her, she opened Donnie’s creased, linenlike pages that bore the logo of a Days Inn in Texas. And as she reread his letters, the sirens and the carols all vanished, and she felt again only his terror and the pain of his shocking loss in the hurricane.

Donnie’s letters said far more to her than Donnie himself had even told her, since his arrival a month ago, more than he wanted to talk about, and she understood that. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, his loneliness shone far more clearly in the letters he had written to her than he let anyone glimpse in his daily banter and quiet good cheer-perhaps this was why, though her cousin had been in the village for over a month, she still found herself returning to his written words to make real for her that shocking time-an entire population homeless; injured, sick, or dead; or escaping the city like rats from a doomed ship.

Donnie’s letters stirred too realistically the thunder of hurricane winds and the crashing of gigantic waves, the rending of collapsed levees and of twisted, falling buildings. It was all there in his careful handwriting, so vivid that it frightened her anew each time she read his words; but she was glad she had the letters when she saw how difficult it was for him to talk about that time-as if the gentle cousin who had come to spend Christmas with her could be known, truly, only by the anguish of his written words, never by the quiet and cheerful facade he so carefully nurtured for others to see.

Until three weeks ago, she hadn’t seen Donnie since they were young children. Since Donnie’s family left New Orleans for the coast of Arkansas, when she and Donnie were nine. To little kids who were best buddies, Arkansas had seemed continents away; and they hadn’t been in touch since. The ugly row had parted their families irrevocably.

Never borrow from relatives, the old adage went. But she and Donnie had been only children, they hadn’t been responsible or really understood about bankruptcy and inability to pay, and the resulting bitter feelings.

But now, in their sixties, suddenly Donnie had needed her again, had needed her badly enough to write his first letter to her in over fifty years. Had needed to reconnect with the only family he had left, after his children died in the flood, and with his wife already dead from cancer. Had needed to be with the only close blood relative he had left.

She could hardly bear to think about those three little children drowning before he could reach them, before he could race from the restaurant where he worked, through New Orleans’s chaotic, flooding streets, battling the surging waters to the school that had been, he’d been promised by city authorities, completely floodproof and safe. He arrived as the building collapsed beneath pounding waves and surging debris, the top floor of the classroom imploding, drowning more than two dozen children-little children huddled in a refuge they’d been assured by grown-ups was secure against any storm.

Setting the letters aside, she snuggled down beneath the comforter, trying to dispel the coldness of spirit that filled her far deeper than the chill of the stormy night. Softly, she could hear the waves breaking on the shore, a strongly aggressive high tide, but not waves of hurricane force; not here on the Pacific.

Yet even as that thought comforted her, a sharper gust of wind and rain moved suddenly across the rooftops, rattling the widows.

But this was only a minor winter storm, nothing like the violence of an East Coast hurricane.

When Hurricane Katrina hit, she’d tried to reach Donnie, but she’d had no phone number or address. She’d tried through the rescue units, through the Red Cross and Salvation Army and the police, but had been unable to obtain any information. For over a year she’d tried, and then this fall, when Donnie called her, the shock of that phone call had sent her heart pounding.

He had followed up with a letter, and then two more. And now here he was, under her own roof, and safe.

But, Cora Lee thought uneasily, life was never safe.

Nor was it meant to be. Anything could happen, any life could take a disastrous turn, just as any sea could turn violent. Even the tamer Pacific could flood the land, she supposed, under the right conditions. Listening to the heavy waves of the full tide, she wondered how far up the sand they were breaking tonight, and she imagined them lapping up onto the street, at the end of Ocean Avenue where the asphalt ended at the sand beach. Butnot here, she thought stubbornly, willing herself into a sense of security, yet at the same time wondering perversely if, in the distant future, the seas would indeed take back the West Coast.

That was the way the world worked, she thought sleepily, in gigantic cycles of change.

But that would be centuries from now, she thought as she dropped away into sleep; everything about the earth was ephemeral, each in its own time and cycle, nothing on this earth was meant to be forever.

Except, Cora Lee thought, our own spirits. Our spirits never die, they simply move on beyond the earth’s cycles, to a realm we can’t yet see. And in the deep, windy night Cora Lee slept.

3

T HE GRAY TOMCAT lay on his back, his four white paws in the air, his sleek silver body stretched out full length across the king-size bed, forcing his sleeping human housemate to the edge. Clyde Damen’s left arm hung over the side, his knuckles resting on the cold hardwood floor; all night Joe Grey had been nudging him away from the center; all night Clyde had unknowingly given, inch by inch, to the tomcat’s stubborn possession. Now, as Joe lay contentedly snoring, pressing his paw against Clyde ’s shoulder bidding for ever more space, suddenly he jerked wide-awake and flipped right side up, intently listening.

The sound was soft.

It came from the roof above. The rhythmic thumping of an animal racing across the shingles.

The next instant, the running paused. He heard a small window slide open just above him. Then the familiar flapping of his plastic cat door that led from his rooftop cat tower down through the ceiling onto a wide rafter in the next room of the master suite.

Whoever had entered was now inside the house. Cat or raccoon, poised on the rafter above Clyde’s desk in the adjoining study.

No strange cat came into Joe’s personal territory without serious damage. A raccoon or possum entered only at risk of its life.

The flapping of the cat door slowed and stilled. Then a hard thump as the intruder dropped down from the rafter onto Clyde’s desk. Joe crouched to leap, his gray fur bristling, crouched to do battle when he saw her…

Her yellow eyes were huge as she leaped from the desk, her dark, fluffy tail lashing and switching as she came racing into the bedroom and hit the bed leaping over Clyde wild with panic and fear, talking so fast that he could understand nothing. Before he could make sense of what she was trying to tell him, she was off the bed again in a froth of impatience and back onto the desk, where she hit the speaker button, shouting into the phone.

“A dead man, dead with a shot in his head in the plaza under the Christmas tree and a little child in his arms scared and crying. Hurry! Oh, hurry, Mabel, before the killer comes back! Tell them to hurry!” And even as Joe leaped to the desk beside her, hearing the dispatcher’s familiar voice,they heard the first siren leave Molena Point PD, and then the beeping of a rescue unit careening out of the fire station. Kit’s eyes were black with fear, she trembled against him crying, “The child, Joe. The little child…”

“Tell me on the way,” Joe said as he sailed to the rafter. Together they crowded out Joe’s cat door and through his tower to the roof-where Kit bolted away, Joe racing after her across the shingles, down to Clyde’s back patio wall and up again to the two-story wall that separated their patio from the shopping plaza.

When the plaza was originally planned, both Clyde and the tomcat had fumed because the wall proposed along their back property line would block their view of the green hills that rose to the east of the village and hide the sunrises they both enjoyed. Clyde had said the wall would destroy property values along the entire street, but that hadn’t happened.

With Ryan Flannery’s innovative design and construction, their scruffy backyard had been transformed into a handsome outdoor living area, a private retreat clearly defined and sheltered by the white plaster wall along which Joe and Kit now raced, at last dropping down onto a roof of the plaza shops. Kit never stopped talking, blurting out the details of the dead body in such a garble that Joe had a hard time making sense of what she was trying to tell him. For a moment he saw the plaza as it had been late that afternoon, hours earlier, when he and Kit and his tabby lady, Dulcie, had sat atop the wall watching the procession of white-robed carolers come up Ocean Avenue from the Community Church, gliding regally in their long robes to the little park across from the plaza. In the last rays of winter sun, they had stretched out on the roof tiles enjoying the Christmas carols, and the Christmas tree that rose beside them, its decorations a bright feast of color, the rocking horse and oversize toys richly painted. But now, just after midnight, the little park was dark and deserted, and the lights of the tree shone even brighter-though not as bright as the red strobe lights that pulsed atop the rescue vehicle that had backed in among the gardens, and the half-dozen squad cars parked at the entry to the plaza-and all across the shadowed gardens, uniformed cops moved fast, the beams from their flashlights swinging into shop entries and in through shop windows, picking out rich wares and searching the shadows within.

The ambulance stood with its back door open facing the Christmas tree. A stretcher stood on the sidewalk. Both were empty.

“So where’s the victim?” Joe said, studying Kit. “You said there was a body under the tree, and a clinging child.”

“Itwas there! And the child was there. Maybe in the ambulance?” Kit said hopefully, crouching to peer deeper in through the van’s open door.

“You can see there’s no body,” Joe said flatly, just the usual medical equipment, cots, oxygen tanks, who knew wat else? He looked at her patiently. Two medics stood beside the van with Dallas Garza as the detective spoke on his radio. As the cats drew closer, Garza clicked off and stood studying the green plastic cloth beneath the wooden toys where it was rumpled and awry, the toys knocked roughly aside. There was no body there and no child, and the tomcat looked at Kit with narrowed yellow eyes, his silver ears back, the white streak down his nose drawn into a harsh feline scowl.

“What the hell are you up to, Kit? You called them out here on a ruse? Some kind of…”

But the space beneath the treewas disturbed, and was splattered with blood; Joe could smell the blood, and he could smell death. And he said no more. They watched Dallas Garza study the short trail of blood, seeing where it led, and then look away at the plaza gardens, his dark eyes taking in the shadows beneath the small trees. Joe glared at Kit.

“There was a body, Joe! I swear! There was a child! A scared little girl with the dead man’s blood on her sweater! I suppose it was his blood,” she said. “Or was it the child’s blood? Oh, was the child hurt, too?” Crouching at the edge of the roof, Kit peered down into the windows of the squad cars, still looking for the victims. She could see no one, no glimpse of long black hair and dark eyes, no little white sweater. She looked at Joe forlornly. And even if his nose hadn’t told him, Joe would know she hadn’t made this up-Kit did not make up disasters.

“What will Garza do now?” Kit whispered. “Will they all go away, will theythink it’s a hoax? But the blood…”

The paramedics had sat down on the back bumper of their vehicle, waiting for someone to come up with a victim. Detective Garza, stepping carefully around the tree, began to take photographs. Beyond the Christmas tree in the darker reaches of the plaza, officers continued to search, and on the dark streets beyond the plaza, squad cars slipped along like silent, hunting hounds, their sudden spotlights sweeping into sheltered doorways and down narrow walkways-and before Joe could stop her, Kit leaped off the roof into a pine tree and down to the plaza gardens to disappear among the flowers and shadows in her own search for the frightened child.

T HE MOMENT THE running footsteps had ceased and the dark street had grown silent again, when he’d been able to see no one watching among the shadows, the killer had hurried around to the main street to the rental car parked in front of the plaza-if someonehad seen the shooting, and had called the cops, he had only seconds to get the body out.

Backing quickly in over the curb between the plaza gardens, and stepping out, he’d seen that the kid was gone. That scared him. Where the hell? Well, he had no time to look for her, and anyway, she wouldn’t talk. He’d dragged the body up the walk and into the front seat, pushing it down partially under the dash, and at the last instant he’d grabbed the ragged cloth doll-it was obviously handmade, and might be traced, and he didn’t need that kind of evidence. Swinging into the driver’s seat, he’d sped away from Ocean heading for the nearest hiding place of the seven he’d pinpointed earlier, this one just two blocks away. All these residential streets were dark, no streetlights to deal with in this quaint little town. Pulling into the drive, he’d heard the first siren, and he’d backed the car around behind the row of tall bushes. The house was empty and dark, the part-time residents were in China for the holidays-he read the Molena PointGazette religiously, at least the society column, to get a fix on the planned vacation schedules of the village’s well-to-do residents.

He’d thought of pulling the body out of the car and shoving and rolling it under the bushes, covering it as best he could with dry leaves and dead branches. The bushes were thick there, heavy with shadow. But then he’d changed his mind, in case he might have to move in a hurry-it would take a while to get the ID out of the car, remove the VIN number, and get the plates off.

He’d waited a long time until he thought they’d quit searching. When all seemed quiet, he silently opened the empty garage, folding the old hinged doors aside, and pulled the car inside; he knew there were tools in there.

Shutting the doors without sound, he got to work. He worked nervously, worrying about that kid and if they’d found her, wishing he’d had time to look for her. Maybe she’d be so scared she’d stay hidden, scared of what she’d seen and then of the flashing red lights and dark figures milling around. He imagined her crouched somewhere frozen like a frightened rabbit. Did a rabbit ever die of fear? he thought hopefully.

If they found her, she couldn’t tell them anything-and yet…

He’d better go back. As soon as he took care of the car’s ID. See if the cops had her. Maybe hear where they were taking her-then it would be a cinch, he’d take care of her later, if needed.

4

R ACING AWAY FROM Joe into the dark plaza looking for the vanished child, the tortoiseshell cat didn’t care that the body had vanished, she thought only of the terrified little girl, afraid that the killer had taken her-or had the child run before he could grab her? Had the sirens scared him away before he could snatch up the frail witness? A little girl like that, could she get away from a grown man? Maybe hide where he wouldn’t find her? If she’d seen the shooter’s face, she was surely marked for death.

Trying to find the child’s scent among all the cops’ trails as they’d quartered the plaza sent Kit doubling back again and again, sniffing at every brick, at every patch of earth, scenting around every bush trying to catch the smell of the little girl over the sharp trails of shoe polish, testosterone-heavy sweat, gun oil, and the pungent odors of geraniums and Mexican sage that seemed to want to drown out all else. Though Kit could track as no cop could, as only a dog could do, this morass of fresh scents was indeed daunting.

And was the killer still nearby, watching the police? Maybe even watching her, wondering what that cat was doing?

The day had begun so happily amid all the Christmas bustle. As Kit had trotted out of the house that morning through the dining-room window onto her favorite oak branch, behind her the dining table was strewn with wrappings and boxes; in the living room, the tree lights glowed; and in the kitchen her two human housemates had been chopping nuts for fruitcake, the tall, eighty-some newlyweds as happy as a couple of kids, laughing and teasing each other, surrounded by the delicious smells of baking, of vanilla and almond flavoring and ginger and candied cherries. Racing away toward the village over the familiar tangle of rooftops, Kit had found Joe Grey and Dulcie on the tiled roof of the Patio Caf?, the big silver tomcat having a morning wash while tabby Dulcie waved her darkly striped tail, caught happily in the milieu of delicious Christmas smells and of taped Christmas music that rose up to them from the small shops, and listening to the villagers’ cheerful greetings as they hurried from one small store to the next. The cool morning had been jewel bright, almost balmy for December, a day to roll on warm concrete or, for a human, to abandon the house for the sunwashed village and seashore. After a week of icy winds and lashing rains, everyone had seemed to be out and about, as busy as field mice emerging from their holes on the first nice morning. But then, by late afternoon, the weather had turned stormy again, dark clouds rolling in and the wind whipping up foam off the ocean. Since early November, the weather had been wildly unpredictable, the central California coast awash with bright sun one day, battered by dark rain and heavy winds the next. Kit’s human friends hardly knew, when they got out of bed in the morning, whether to dress in shorts and a light shirt, or sweaters and rain gear. Even the newscaster on TV seemed unable to predict heat or cold, rain or sun, his broadcasts so uncertain that he should be embarrassed to show his face on the big screen. In six weeks’ time, the Pacific Coast had been hit by five gusting storms that ripped away tree limbs, tore off shingles, and made everyone as grouchy as if the weather’s tantrums were personal assaults. Then would come a few days of sunshine that made everyone smile and laugh and go out Christmas shopping before another storm hit, the pre-Christmas temperatures as crazy as if the weather gods were binging on catnip.

W HILE KIT SEARCHED the dark gardens, deftly avoiding the fast-moving hard shoes of the uniforms, across the street from the plaza, inside the empty store that he had scoped out earlier, James Kuda stood among sawhorses and stacked lumber, looking out, watching the dark-clad cops searching the street. Because the store was undergoing extensive renovation, he had wandered in there days ago, out of curiosity. Investigating the back room, he had found only a simple, punch-type lock on the backdoor, which, tonight, he had easily jimmied. Now, wearing a black sweatshirt and black pants, and a black stocking cap that amused him, he stood among a half-dozen upright rolls of black construction paper, his face turned away into the shadows-black on black to the cops’ lights that flashed like explosions through the glass, picking out bare stud walls, stacked plywood and two-by-fours, and sliding over Kuda, who stood like another roll of strong-smelling building paper.

From this vantage he couldn’t see much inside the plaza. An abbreviated view through its side entry, part of the Christmas tree, a half-dozen cops clustered around, and the back end and open doors of the EMT van. Body or no body, it looked like they were running the scene. A Latino detective taking photographs. Next thing,he’d be dusting for prints, taking particle and blood samples, then walking the grid. Kuda wasn’t worried about prints, not with cotton gloves-generic gloves whose fibers they probably couldn’t trace. He still had the gun and silencer, though, and was debating where to dump them.

Well, not likely they’d find the body. The car was well hidden, and not even a window in that garage; and he wouldn’t be pulling out again until the uniforms cooled off, had gone off duty or back to their regular rounds. Glancing above to the plaza roof, he glimpsed something dark and small slipping along the tiles, some animal or maybe an owl; maybe that was what he’d heard earlier, an animal running across the roof.

Except, there’d been a person, too. Someone had called the cops, no animal could do that.

F ROM THE ROOF, looking down on the dark gardens as the officers searched, Joe Grey caught only glimpses of the tortoiseshell kit prowling among the flowers and bushes, her darkly mottled coat hardly visible against the night-dark patterns of leaf and shadow. She’d been down there a long time. Had she found nothing? Restlessly, he dropped down a tree to join her, and together they sniffed and shouldered through the darkest, back portions of the garden, as deeply intent as a pair of tracking bloodhounds.

They found not the faintest scent of the child. Until…

Joe stopped and reared up. Sniffing. Listening. His white paws and chest and the white stripe down his nose gleamed in the night as he spun around toward the center of the plaza-and swiftly Kit leaped to join him.

“There,” he said softly.

They approached a tangle of flowering shrubs where a tiny pond and waterfall had been built, set aside as a special drinking fountain for visiting canines. No one had thought to dedicate anything to the village cats!“There! Do you smell her?” Joe hissed.

Kit’s nose twitched. Smell of water, of dog and dog pee, all so heavy around the little pool that she had missed the child’s scent. Now she caught it, and they circled the pond to where the smell was sharpest-scent of child. Scent of blood.

Behind the rocky waterfall, the fountain’s pump was enclosed in a small shed some two feet high. The child’s smell came from there. Approaching the little closed door, fearful of what they would find, they caught no scent of death. But now, on the door handle, another smell. The smell of peanut butter.

And then, listening, the rhythm of soft, ragged breathing.

Pawing and fighting the door handle, then hooking their claws underneath the door itself, they were able to pull it open.

A T THE BACK of the shed, the little girl was crouched in a dark niche between the small water pump and the rough wall, her face pinched and white, her dark eyes huge with fear, eyes as black as obsidian-but when she saw that it was only cats, she drew in her breath with startled relief.

Kit approached her softly. When the child didn’t cringe away, Kit nosed at her, then stepped into her lap. Standing with her paws on the child’s shoulders, Kit licked her on the nose. Shyly the child stroked Kit, drawing in a tremulous breath. Behind them, Joe Grey managed, with stubborn claws, to draw the door closed again. And in the dark, small space the two cats snuggled close to the little girl, nosing at her as they tried to see if she was hurt, tried to find a wound.

The blood on her sweater was drying. They found no fresh blood, and there seemed to be no physical hurt, and they decided this was, indeed, the dead man’s blood. They didn’t want to discuss the matter, didn’t want to speak in front of the child, their commitment to secrecy was far too important. Even a six-year-old could tell tales. They simply curled up on her lap and smiled up at her, purring-and wondering if they could nudge her into leaving her hiding place, if they could lead her back to Detective Garza; the child was so rigid with fear that they didn’t think she’d follow, didn’t think she’d leave her tight little refuge.

Joe thought the fastest way to bring help was to race home and phone the dispatcher, tell Mabel where the child was so Dallas Garza could come and get her. He was about to push outside when footsteps came pounding up the walk straight toward the shed, heavy steps that paused, then began to circle the fountain. The child cringed deeper in, shivering. The cats, leaving her huddled, crouched by the door, tensed to leap in the face of whoever entered, their claws flexing with predatory lust. Beyond the door, the man stood inches from them. The child swallowed, her thin body rigid with fear-but then a radio mumbled softly, and they caught the man’s scent.

5

T HE LOW DOOR to the pump house flew open, and a gun was thrust in at the cats and child, and a dark, crouching figure peered in, the black automatic held in his meaty hand. The cats didn’t breathe, the child didn’t breathe. He switched on a light, blazing in their faces. And suddenly he laughed. Brennan, Officer Brennan, his belly protruding over his belt as he bent lower and reached in. Brennan’s gruff voice was unusually soft.

“Come on, honey, it’s all right. It’s all right now. I’m a police officer, I won’t hurt you.”

But the child pressed away from him, pushing so hard against the metal pump that she was surely embossing its imprint into her thin arm. Brennan drew back so as not to frighten her further, and for an instant his brown eyes met the cats’ eyes in a surprised, searching look that sent a shock of wariness through Joe and Kit.

While Joe thought fast-and came up with no logical excuse for being there-Kit looked at Brennan with big round eyes, gave a soft little mewl that would charm the hardest cop, and rubbed against the child, purring and waving her tail. Taking Kit’s cue, Joe snuggled closer, shaken by the child’s trembling.

Brennan’s voice softened even more, and slowly and gently he reached to stroke Kit, then tried to entice the little girl out to him. She only stared at Brennan, her eyes as glazed as those of a trapped deer.

Brennan had been on the force for as long as Joe Grey could remember, and he had never hurt or been harsh with a child; he had never touched Joe or Dulcie or Kit except gently. But the child’s fear of the stranger did not ease. Watching them, Joe longed to speak, to tell the cowering child that this officer would never hurt her.

Once, when Brennan, answering a security alarm late at night, had discovered Joe and Dulcie inside Sicily Aronson’s art gallery, when they had stared out at him fearfully from beneath Sicily ’s desk, face-to-face with the startled cop, Brennan had not snatched them up and thrown them out as some patrolmen might do. But there had been more embarrassing moments, the most recent when Kit leaped from a rooftop onto a thief’s head, knocking him straight into Brennan’s arms. That kind of caper did make a cop wonder. Now, with Brennan finding the cats at another scene just after the snitch’s call, they trembled at what that good officer might be thinking.

Well, hell, Joe thought. Clyde and I live beside the plaza. Our house backs up to it. Of course Clyde’s cat would prowl the plaza gardens. And as for our being in here with the kid, everyone knows that cats and children have a natural affinity. Wandering neighborhood cats come on a child in the plaza gardens at night and make friends with her. So what’s the big deal?

It all seemed reasonable to Joe. He spent a long time trying to convince himself it was reasonable while Brennan tried to get the little girl to trust him and come out. The officer rose at last, defeated, and backed away, speaking into his radio.

“The little girl’s here. She seems all right, but scared, won’t come to me. She’s in that little pump house behind the dog fountain. I don’t want to drag her out. Maybe a woman…You got a woman out there?”

“ Davis,” came Garza’s reply. “She’s on her way.”

Joe and Kit didn’t know whether to make themselves scarce, or whether running would tweak further the big cop’s sense of suspicion. They heard Garza tell Davis to bring a blanket, and then in a moment heard Detective Juana Davis’s familiar footsteps approaching, her black regulation oxfords making a sharp, quick rhythm along the brick walk-and all they could do was snuggle closer to the child in dumb innocence.

Davis emerged from the shadows, her dark uniform separating itself from the night. Juana Davis was squarely built, and was always on a diet, which she found any number of excuses to circumvent. She had short graying black hair and dark expressive Latino eyes that could burn a hole through a felon, or could fill with gentle understanding, as they did now as she knelt quietly before the little open door of the low shed.

She looked in, then looked up at Brennan.“What the hell?” Davis whispered softly. “What are the cats doing in there? Clyde ’s cat and the Greenlaws’ Kit. Why would they…? How did they…? Come out of there, Joe Grey. I never saw such a cat to turn up at a crime scene! What do you do, scout for trouble?” But then she turned her attention to the child.

“Come on, honey, it’s all right. Were the cats keeping you warm? They are warm, aren’t they? This is Joe Grey, he’s a friend of mine,” she said gently. “And the dark fluffy one is Kit. I’m glad they found you, to keep you company and to keep you warm, it’s getting really cold.

“Joe Grey lives nearby. He’s a good cat. I guess he likes to roam among the gardens.” At Davis ’s gentle voice, the child began to relax and listen, and to unclench her tight little fists-but now Joe was all the more uneasy. It was bad enough to stir Brennan’s suspicions, but now they hadJuana Davis wondering. Beside Joe, Kit was frozen rigid with nerves, she looked as if she was about to bolt past Juana and vanish, leave Joe to face the law alone.

Juana continued talking softly to the child, then she reached in quietly and closed her hand over the little girl’s small, cold hand. “It’s all right,” Juana repeated. “I have children of my own. I’m a police officer, I won’t hurt you. I know how to make gingerbread, and hot cocoa, too.” With her other hand she reached to stroke Joe and Kit. “You like kitties? I do, too. Sometimes,” she said, rubbing Joe’s ears, “sometimes these two come down to the police station and sit on my desk, and beg for some of my lunch. And”-she laughed-“I always give them what they like to eat.

“Maybe,” Juana said, “if you wanted to ride in a real police car with a police radio, I could make us some hot cocoa, and I have some gingerbread. I’d love to have a nice hot cup of cocoa, with a marshmallow in it, it’s so cold out here tonight.”

The child looked at Juana questioningly, some of the glaze of fear and loss leaving her dark eyes. She drew Kit closer into her arms, as she would hug a teddy bear. She spoke no word, made not the slightest sound. For a long time, as Juana talked to her, she stayed still, hugging Kit, squeezing so hard that the tortoiseshell cat had to swallow back a yowl of distress; Kit was not a cat who liked hugging. She had not grown up being hugged by humans. As much as she wanted human companionship and loving, too much hugging always felt like a threat, like she was trapped. If this had been a grown-up, the claws would have come out-sometimes, with too much closeness, a cat who has grown up wild just can’t help but lash out, even at the most friendly hand; the need came over one like a jolt of lightning, Kit would react before she could think not to hurt a friend. But now, with this child, despite the sense of panic that descended on her, she tried desperately to remain gentle, tried with every ounce of feline discipline she could summon to keep her claws sheathed, and her paws still-and slowly, slowly the terrified child was relaxing, responding to Juana’s words.

“Will you come out,” Juana repeated, “will you come with me where it’s warm and safe? I promise I won’t leave you alone, I won’t leave you to be afraid or alone.”

Brennan had backed away; he turned and left, removing one seeming barrier to gaining the child’s trust, but even with all Juana Davis’s calm patience, it took her over half an hour before the little girl decided to trust her, and loosened her grip on Kit and crawled out and warily let Juana pick her up. Even then, as the child looked back over Juana’s shoulder, the cats could see her lingering fear.

They watched Juana carry the little girl out of the plaza’s side entrance avoiding the ambulance and the crowd of men and police cars-avoiding the scene of the murder. They watched Juana head for her squad car, parked along the quieter side street. Crouched in the bushes, they watched her lift the child into the backseat, tuck a blanket around her, andfasten the seat belt, then slip into the driver’s seat. Through the white Chevy’s open window they listened to Juana call Detective Garza, tell him that she was headed for the hospital, for the children’s wing, and that she would stay with her then take her home to her apartment.

“Why the hospital?” Kit said worriedly as Davis started the engine. “Why would she…”

“They’ll need to see if she’s hurt,” Joe said. “See if there are any marks on her.” He looked intently at Kit. “See if she’s been abused.”

“Oh,” Kit said, shocked. “Oh, not that little girl.”

“Maybe Juana can get her to talk,” Joe said. “Get her to describe the killer and tell what happened.”

“She didn’t speak at all,” Kit said doubtfully. “Not a word, not a sound. And she’s such a little girl. Not like an adult witness.”

But as the two cats whispered in the bushes, and Juana Davis headed for the hospital, not even the cats saw the dark figure in the building across the street, watching from the black window of the vacant store; they did not catch his scent among the sharp smells of tar paper and new lumber, were not aware of the lone man watching Juana Davis, listening as Davis told Detective Garza where she was headed, for the hospital and then her own condo.

J AMES KUDA WATCHED the woman cop come out carrying the kid, all hugs and soft words, and his hand tightened on the automatic-but hell, he couldn’t shoot her in a cop’s arms; he’d never get away. Well, now he knew where she’d be. When the cop drove away, Kuda turned back into the black interior of the bare store, moving so silently that even the cats across the street didn’t hear him, nor did they glimpse a shifting shadow or change of light within the dark interior-an omission that, if they’d known of it, would have embarrassed both felines.

After the white patrol car sped off toward the hospital, Kuda waited. He waited a long time, until the coast was clear, until most of the cops finished up and left, then he retrieved the bike he’d stashed behind the lumber, wheeled it out through the back door, and vanished into the night; rode fast and silently, thinking about his moves from the moment he’d slipped up on his victim-but then thinking uneasily about that faint sound on the roof, just after the shooting. Raccoon, probably. Except that didn’t explain who’d called the cops.

He’d just made it, before the sirens blasted, had dragged the body into the car, keeping to the walk so as not to step in the soft garden dirt. Pulling the heavy man along, sweating from nerves. But he’d made it, got the body out of there. And now, a little while longer and he’d have disposed of it. Then to take care of the girl. Not likely she’d ever ID him, kid that age and all, but even so it might be better not to push his luck.

6

T HE SCREAM OF sirens had awakened Joe Grey’s tabby lady; Dulcie slipped out from beneath the flowered comforter and sat up in bed beside her human housemate and lifted one dark striped paw, listening to the highwoo woo of an ambulance followed by the urgent wail of the police units. Lashing her tail, her sharp ears forward, she was as alert as any ambulance-chasing lawyer. Though her intentions were less greedy, she was just as hot for the excitement of the hunt. The screaming stopped somewhere on Ocean at the north end of the village. Somewhere, she thought, near Joe Grey’s house. Shaking free of the quilt, trying not to disturb Wilma, she was off the bed and up the hall, a dark tabby streak heading for the kitchen and her cat door, when she heard Wilma stir behind her, heard the mattress give as she sat up in bed.

“You don’t have to chase every ambulance and cop car that leaves the station, Dulcie.” Wilma’s voice was hoarse from sleep, but alert enough to give her hell. Her annoyance brought Dulcie padding dutifully back to the bedroom, her ears back, tail lashing.

Her housemate sat clutching the quilt around her. The woodstove’s cozy fire was long dead, and their bright bedroom was bone-chillingly cold.

“I just…” Dulcie began. “It sounds like it’s near Clyde and Joe’s house. I have to go and see,” she said reasonably.

“Feline hearing is amazing. There are dozens and dozens of houses and shops near Clyde ’s house. Can you tell me the exact address?”

“You don’t need to be sarcastic,” Dulcie hissed. “You’re getting as testy as Clyde.”

Wilma smiled.“I’m sorry. I guess that was rude.”

“I guess.”

Wilma’s long silver hair hung loose from its usual ponytail, flowing down over her flowered flannel nightgown. She looked a long time at Dulcie. “Guess I still have a case of nerves, after the kidnapping.”

“I know,” Dulcie said gently, jumping up on the bed to rub against her. When Wilma had been kidnapped a few months earlier, it had seemed the end of the world to Dulcie. The dark-striped tabby stared into Wilma’s face. “Why don’t you buy another police scanner? That was the only thing missing, when Cage Jones broke in here. If we had one now, we wouldn’t have these arguments. We’d know what’s happening on the street!”

“What difference would it make? You’d go anyway. You know Max seemed suspicious when I bought that one. As if, why did I really want it? You know that’s why…”

But before Wilma finished, Dulcie had escaped, racing away up the hall and through the kitchen, and plunging out her cat door.

Behind her, Wilma sighed and lay down, pulling the quilt close around her. No point in trying to stop the hardheaded tabby; Dulcie would have her way, and they both knew it.

Fleeing across the yard through Wilma’s lush winter flowers, Dulcie sped across the empty street and up a pine tree to the rooftops, then ran like a streak for the village, hitting little more than the high spots. She guessed she couldn’t fault Wilma for worrying. Wilma, as a retired probation officer, could not be fooled about the dangers the cats faced when snooping into police matters-she understood very well the compulsion that drew the three cats to the scene of a crime and also drew them, with stubborn commitment, to track the thief or killer, to join with law enforcement using their own special talents of scent detection and anonymity. Wilma understood but that didn’t keep her from worrying.

Leaping up a steep, shingled peak and down into a gust of cold wind, Dulcie had no doubt that Joe Grey and the kit were already at the scene, summoned by the siren’s wails-she had no notion that it was Kit who had started the action when she called 911, but she wouldn’t have been surprised. She just prayed the problem was not at Joe’s house.

She came down from the roofs at the divided expanse of Ocean Avenue, raced across behind three parked police units making sure there was no approaching vehicle, and up a bottlebrush tree to the roof of the plaza. There, crouched on the cold, rounded tiles, she looked down on the whirling red lights. Cop cars all over the place, and the rescue vehicle was backed up onto the little walk that led between the first shops, two of its wheels in a flower bed crushing the bright cyclamens, its siren silent now, its rear door open.

Trotting across the roof of the one-story wing at the front, to where she could look down into the gardens, she was below the top of the village Christmas tree; its colored lights mingled now with the whirling red emergency lights. Directly below her, the paramedics and officers stood well back from the Christmas tree as Detective Dallas Garza photographed the scene. She saw and smelled blood, smelled death, but there was no body. She peered down into the emergency vehicle, and found it empty, and she flicked her ears, puzzled. No one would move a body until the coroner and detectives were finished with it.

Hunched at the edge of the roof, she could see no damage to the surrounding shops, as from vandalism; no shop window broken, no benches or small tables overturned. The Christmas tree didn’t seem to have been damaged. The oversize wooden toys were disarranged, but nothing looked broken or missing. Yet the stink of human death rose up to her sharply, making her flehmen and shiver. No clearer message was needed of what had come down here. But, where was the body?

And where were Joe Grey and Kit? They couldn’t have missed hearing sirens.

She watched Detective Garza taking pictures, moving carefully around the tree and then the surrounding area. As he stepped aside from where he’d been blocking her view, Dulcie studied the blood on the blue drop cloth. Bloodstains on the toys, too, on the rocking horse and on an oversize baby doll. Flehming at the stink, she listened to the cops’ shorthand remarks until, piece by piece, she put together some idea of what had happened here.

A disappearing dead man? And a live, frightened child who had also vanished? And then on the roof tiles she found the scent of Joe and Kit, where they had leaped into a tree, heading down into the gardens. They’d be down there now, the tabby thought, searching for the child just as were half a dozen officers, the beams of their flashlights swinging in and out among the shrubbery and tall flowers as the officers themselves kept carefully to the brick walks so as not to leave footprints or destroy evidence.

Peering over the edge of the roof, she watched Detective Garza begin to bag fibers and bits of bloody leaves. The bloody rocking horse was bagged along with the two bloodied, oversize toys and locked in a squad car. Dallas had already photographed half a dozen partial shoe prints and a clear tire mark in the dirt of the garden, and now he nodded to Eleanor Sand, to begin pouring plaster casts of these. There were three sets of footprints in the earth, and all appeared to be men’s shoes. So far, no prints of a child.

“If there really was a child,” Sand was saying, looking up at Garza from where she knelt, preparing a cast.

“This better not be a hoax,” Garza said. “If that analysis comes back as animal blood…”

“Was it the same informant?” Sand said.

Dallas nodded.

Sand just looked at him.“She wouldn’t do that, she wouldn’t lie to us. You know she wouldn’t.”

Dallas nodded and turned away. But he was still scowling, his square, Latino face drawn with anger, surely thinking of the cost of such a hoax, cost to the city for trained personnel coming out on such a call, to say nothing of the diversion of Molena Point’s police and rescue units from some other crime or serious incident. On this stormy December night, a diversion of their forces could, at the very worst, prove life threatening.

But that wasn’t the case, Dulcie knew.Kit placed the call, she thought, her predatory fires stirring.Where is Kit? Where’s Joe? She peered down again into the dark gardens.

Apparently the body had been taken away in the vehicle that had left its tire tracks in the garden. If that was so, it hadn’t been very smart. Didn’t the killer know the kind of evidence he was leaving? Or maybe he thought he’d gotten away clean. Dulcie was crouched to slip down into the gardens and sniff at the edges of the crime scene, see what kind of scent she could pick out, when Garza’s radio came to life: Officer Brennan’s voice. She paused, listening.

“I have the little girl. She seems all right. Hiding in that little pump house behind the dog fountain…I don’t want to drag her out, she’s scared as hell…You got a woman out there?”

Garza glanced at Eleanor, who was busy with pouring casts, then looked up toward the street, where Detective Davis was just coming around the corner.“Juana’s on her way,” he said shortly.

“Get a blanket,” the detective told Juana, nodding toward the rescue unit, which was closer than her squad car, “and hike on back to the fountain-the pump house-we’ve got a scared little girl hiding back there, apparently a witness.”

An EMT handed Juana a folded blanket; she tucked it under her arm and headed swiftly back between the plaza gardens. The square, dark-haired detective was in uniform, unlike Dallas, who was dressed in jeans and a wrinkled sweatshirt. Dulcie was crouched to race after her when, out front, a Chevy pickup pulled up and Chief Harper swung out, and again Dulcie waited, listening.

Max Harper was long and lean and hard-muscled, his thin leathery face sun-lined, his brown eyes watchful now, a cop’s eyes-but eyes that could laugh and look loving, particularly when he looked at his redheaded bride. He and Charlie had married when Charlie was in her thirties, Max the other side of forty. Charlie was Wilma Getz’s niece, and was just about the only family Wilma had left.

“Call to dispatch came from our snitch, from the woman,” Dallas told Max. “How the hell do they do that? This stuff gives me the creeps. How is one or the other always on the scene?”

Max said nothing. Dulcie knew their calls upset and worried the chief, whether from Joe or from her or Kit. And despite the fact that she often felt guilty for deceiving him, Dulcie had to smile at their delicious deception. The mystique for which cats were most admired was, for them, a fine and satisfying source of entertainment.

As far as the cats knew, Dulcie and Kit’s telephone voices were enough alike so that Harper and his two detectives, and the dispatchers, thought there was only one female snitch, along with the one male-but Joe Grey’s gravelly telephone voice was well known to a good many in the department, and Dulcie wondered sometimes if Joe’s harsh meow didn’t match the tomcat’s human words too closely.

Still, no cop seemed ever to have caught on. To believe in a talking cat would be just too far out for a fact-oriented law enforcement officer-unless they spoke directly with the cat, unless they confronted in-your-face proof.

Harper and Dallas had moved up the walk beyond the Christmas tree, Dallas filling him in on what had gone down, when Davis’s voice came on the radio. She had the little girl, and was on her way to the hospital.

“She seems fine,” Juana said. “Cold and scared, but she doesn’t seem hurt. She hasn’t said a word. I’ll go straight to the children’s wing, and stay with her. She doesn’t need to be left with strangers. If she’s okay, how about I take her home with me for the night? She is so scared, Max.”

“Do it,” Max said. “Make sure the dispatcher knows. Tell Mabel to double the officers on the patrol around your condo.” Juana’s apartment was directly across the street from the station, which would contribute somewhat to the child’s security. Juana had bought the condo just last year, a small one-bedroom unit with a view of the village, and a deck large enough for a chaise, a comfortable wicker chair, and a few pots of flowers, and from which Juana could see the station.

Now, as the radio went silent, Dulcie leaped across the roof to where she could look down on the side street, where Juana’s police unit was pulling away from the plaza. Peering over, she saw Joe and Kit just below, half hidden in the bushes. They looked up at her, and scrambled up a bottlebrush tree to the roof. They smelled of little girl. All three cats, in an unaccustomed breach of vigilance, had missed the movement of the dark shadow in the shop across the street.

On the roof they settled down near the Christmas tree, their paws in the leafy gutter, watching Garza finish bagging evidence. And now with the bloodied toys removed, he retrieved his camera for some close-ups of the disturbance in the blue plastic dropcloth where it was rumpled and stained.

When he finished photographing, he began to lift additional particles from the plastic, tilting them into a clear bag, sealing that in an evidence bag and dropping it into the deep pocket of his sweatshirt with the bags of fiber and hair samples. The cats, looking beyond Garza, watched uniformed officers cordoning off the plaza with yellow crime-scene tape; and they looked at one another with a sudden sense of amazement.

It was daunting to see the officers of Molena Point PD doing a full crime-scene investigation without a victim, doing it on their word alone, on the word of a tortoiseshell cat.

But the evidencewas there, and the blood was on its way to the lab. And now they had found the child who, if she would speak, was surely further proof of the snitch’s veracity.

When Garza had finished with the immediate scene, he and tall blond Eleanor Sand moved on into the gardens looking for footprints among the flower beds and bushes. The cats watched him photograph the child’s small footprints that led to the pump house, then photograph that refuge inside and out. Then Eleanor, who was slimmer, pushed as far as she could through the little door, to collect samples from where the child had hidden.

“We could collect samples for them,” Dulcie said wistfully, “if we had opposing thumbs.” The tabby imagined, not for the first time, the endless possibilities available when one had clever human hands.

“At least,” Joe said, “if they lift cat hairs in there, they’re legit.” The cats worried, often, about cat hairs at a crime scene where none should be found; cat hairs duly bagged could royally confuse a police investigation. Dulcie sometimes had nightmares of Max Harper confronting her, shaking a handful of tabby hairs in her face, demanding that she explain. She would wake mewling and clawing at the quilt, waking Wilma, who would hug her tight and tell her not to worry-but Wilma, herself, could offer no solution to the problem. She could only repeat that no cop would ever believe such a wild phenomenon as talking cats. Telephone-literate cat snitches. Cats addicted to the same adrenaline-high challenge of law enforcement that the cops themselves experienced.

When Eleanor backed out of the pump house, placing several small bags of evidence in her pocket, the two officers walked the length of the dark plaza using their lights to examine windows and doors, moving slowly along beside the small shops though Dallas had already walked the scene. The cats watched Garza post guards around the plaza and send the few remaining men back to their patrols, watched him leave in his own unit, heading for the department. When chief Harper left, the cats, with the scene cleared of human disturbance, spent more than an hour prowling the gardens, walking the scene themselves, in their own way, sorting through hundreds of scents-trying to identify them all, and to isolate the one fresh scent they didn’t recognize, trying against heavy odds to sort out the smell of the killer.

They found nothing definitive. They isolated a scent that might be the killer, but there was no way to be sure. With the smell of death around the Christmas tree, they had no sure point of reference. At last, their heads full of questions, the three cats called it a night and headed home, tired and hungry.

Kit’s Lucinda and Pedric Greenlaw, being early risers, would soon be out of bed to make her a nice breakfast. Dulcie was thinking of a quick little snack in the kitchen, without rousing her housemate, and then crawling back under the warm comforter beside Wilma-of not waking Wilma, unleashing a barrage of questions and receiving another lecture. But Joe Grey, racing home along the plaza wall, was too hungry to wait for Clyde ’s alarm to go off. He meant to wake Clyde at once and demand a good hot breakfast. Eggs, bacon, cheese, and anchovies-the works.

7

C LYDE DAMEN LAY prone on the bed, trying to get his breath despite the twenty-pound weight solidly planted on his chest.“What the hell, Joe! What are you doing? I can’t breathe. Your feet are as hard as pile drivers.” He lifted his head enough to stare eye to eye with the gray tomcat. “It’s the middle of the night! What the hell do you want?”

Joe Grey narrowed his eyes, and tried to keep from smiling.

“This is the third time this week, Joe! Third time you’ve jumped on me in the middle of the night, nearly cracking a rib. What the hell’s with you?” Despite the hindrance of the heavy tomcat pressing down on his solar plexus, and despite Joe Grey’s yellow-eyed smirk, Clyde managed to struggle up on one elbow.

He looked, heavy-eyed, at the bedside clock.“Four thirty-five.” He lay down again, sighing. When the tomcat smiled and began to purr, Clyde raised a threatening hand.

“You wouldn’t,” Joe said complacently.

“Nothing in this world, Joe, could be so important as to warrant your behavior. Your rude and thoughtless behavior. You’re not a lightweight kitten anymore. You weigh in about the same as a Peterbilt eighteen-wheeler loaded with concrete.”

“Muscle,” Joe said in a rough tomcat voice. “How could I be heavy? I’m only a little cat, not a German shepherd. Whatever infinitesimal weight I might possess is pure muscle. If you were in better shape, ifyour stomach muscles weren’t so flabby, you wouldn’t even feel my delicate feather ounces.”

“Might I point out that it is still pitch-dark. That it is not yet dawn, that it is not even five o’clock, and that I-”

“It’s winter,” the tomcat said. “December. This time of year, it stays dark until-”

“Can it, Joe! Shut up and get the hell off my stomach and let me go back to sleep! You know damn well I have to go to work in the morning to support your prodigious appetite. If you had one ounce of consideration, you…”

But now Joe’s expression changed as if by magic, from amused and mildly sadistic to bewildered hurt. Clyde’s eyes widened as the tomcat turned his back, dropped cringing off the bed, and fled to the far corner of the bedroom, where he curled up on the cold hardwood floor, his back to Clyde, his white nosetucked under and his eyes closed, breathing out a soft sigh of wounded resignation.

Staring at the tomcat, Clyde swung out of bed. Shivering in bare skin and Jockey shorts, he padded across the room and knelt beside the gray tomcat.

“I’m sorry, Joe. What’s wrong? Tell me what’s wrong,” he said softly. With Joe curled into a miserable ball, Clyde couldn’t see the cat’s expression, couldn’t see Joe’s sly grin, his yellow eyes slitted in amusement. When, gently, Clyde turned Joe’s sleek silver face toward him and looked into his eyes, there was, again, only a pitiful look, an expression so wan and lost, so filled with desperate hurt, that Clyde could think only of the starving, fevered stray kitten Joe had once been, when Clyde found him abandoned in that San Francisco gutter.

Clyde had rescued Joe then, gently picking up the sick kitten and taking him home to his small apartment, where he fed him rare steak and milk, and then took him to a vet-who treated Joe for a broken and infected tail, and duly removed most of that appendage. Clyde had nursed Joe back to health, and they had never been parted since. Now, studying the suffering look on the tomcat’s gray-and-white face, Clyde was overwhelmed once more with pity. “Do you hurt somewhere? What happened?”

The tomcat rolled his eyes.

“Do you feel sick? Are you feverish? Is your stomach upset?”

Silence.

“Or could it be,” Clyde offered, “that you are weak and faint from hunger?”

Joe Grey smiled.

Clyde uttered another long-suffering sigh and, dispensing with shower and shave, pulled on his pants and headed downstairs to get breakfast.

The kitchen was cold and silent. No shuffling doggy sounds getting out of bed, no clicking of doggy toenails on the cold linoleum, no glad panting. The room was hollow with an emptiness that neither Clyde nor the tomcat could get used to. Even when Clyde threw on the light and turned on the radio and spoke to the three sleeping cats in the adjacent laundry, the silence pressed in. No glad huffing, no doggy yawn and whine, no doggy mumbles of greeting. Old Rube was gone. Buried out at the back of the patio, with a little flat headstone marking his grave, right next to Barney’s marker.

How long would it take, Joe wondered, until he and Clyde learned to live more equitably with the death of the old black Lab? It had taken a long time of grieving after golden Barney died, and he knew that the aftermath of Rube’s death would be no different. He peered into the laundry at the three household cats who, despite Clyde’s greeting, still slept, the two older cats twined together in the top bunk among their blankets, Fluffy’s head resting on Scrappy’s flank-Scrappy, through several name changes, had finally settled in with the name that had fit him best when he was young. Now that he was in his later years, that name didn’t seem to fit very well, either.

Only Snowball, the younger, white cat, slept on the bottom bunk. In Rube’s old bed. Grieving. Snowball had mourned deeply since Rube died.

She looked out at them, now, with only a sad expression, then curled tighter and squeezed her eyes shut.

Joe spent a long time licking and grooming her, but she didn’t respond much. Even when the smell of frying sausage and then scrambled eggs began to fill the room, Snowball remained in bed. As did Scrappy and Fluffy-the older cats letting Clyde know that it was too early, and too cold and dark, to get up. They would come yawning down later, stretching, andthen hopefully Snowball would follow.

The aromas of sausage and eggs sent Joe Grey up onto the kitchen table, where he stretched out on his own side, impatiently waiting. Clyde set a place for himself, then went to get the paper, which they’d just heard hit the step. The time was 5:10. Clyde got up at six anyway, Joe thought unsympathetically. This would give him more time to read the paper.

Returning, Clyde shook open the paper and stood at the stove with his back to the tomcat, making toast as he read the headlines and sipped his coffee. Joe hated when Clyde hogged the front page. Rearing up on his hind paws, on the table, he could just see over Clyde’s shoulder, the headline above the fold.

So therehad been a reporter on the scene last night, slipping around, keeping out of the way, quietly pumping an officer or two for information. The guy had had to hustle, to get his article in this morning’s paper. Joe wondered what “important” story they’d pulled off the front page at the last minute, to make room for the more sensational headline:

COPS CONVERGE ON PLAZA CHRISTMAS TREE POSSIBLE MURDER? NO BODY FOUND

Clyde put their plates on the table and sat down, continuing to read, leisurely finishing the article-payback for the early wake-up call. Watching Clyde fork in scrambled eggs, Joe wolfed a few bites of his own breakfast. It tasted bland.“Do we have any kippers? Or a can of those imported sardines that you so carefully hid behind the canned beans?”

“You’re getting fat. No one eats sardines with sausage and eggs.”

“I do. You know perfectly well that I like a little fish condiment with my breakfast, it makes the eggs go down.”

“I didn’t know you had trouble making anything edible go down.” But Clyde rose, reached deep into the back of the cupboard, and withdrew a can of sardines. “I’m just lucky I have a strong stomach.” He twisted the little key to open the lid. “No one wants to smell sardines with their eggs at five in the morning.”

Dishing sardines onto Joe’s plate, he looked intently at the tomcat. “Sothat was what last night was about! When Kit came barging in and woke me up and then made that phone call. She reported a dead body that wasn’t there! I swear, Joe…”

“Woke you? How could we wake you? You never stopped snoring.”

Clyde looked hard at Joe.“The department got a phone tip, caller reports a dead man. Cops arrive, nothing. No body. A little blood-they don’t know, yet, if it was human blood.” He studied Joe. “What are you cats trying to pull? Cops search the plaza and find nothing. Nothing, Joe!” He laid aside the paper. “Youwant to explain this?”

“What’s it say about the child?”

“What child? There wasn’t any child. The paper doesn’t mention a child.” Trying to curb his temper, Clyde scanned the last column more carefully, then shook his head, still looking hard at Joe. “What did you tell the cops, you and Kit? What are you cats up to? What have you done now?”

Joe just looked at him.

Clyde laid down his fork.“You didn’t…Oh, hell! You didn’t mess with a crime scene? You didn’t lure away some witness? Some kid who saw a murder? Why, Joe? Why would you do that?”

“Do you suppose,” Joe said patiently, “that the law didn’t give the reporter the whole story? That they found something last night that they decided to keep quiet and didn’t share with that reporter? Is it possible for you to imagine, in that hidebound brain, that that child could be a holdback? A witness they don’t want the public to know about? That maybe they’re trying to protect her?”

Clyde concentrated on finishing his last bite of sausage. Then,“Was there a body? And who’s the kid? Why is a kid so important? You want to tell me what happened?”

Joe licked sardine oil from his whiskers.“Maybe Harper figures the kid’s safer if he keeps her under wraps, if the killer doesn’t know where to find her.”

“Will you start from the beginning?What child? Who is she? And,” he said, fixing Joe with a keen stare, “if therewas a body, where is it?”

“Strange, though,” Joe mused. “Strange the guy didn’t kill her when he had the chance. She had to be a witness, she was right there in the dead man’s arms when Kit found her. Except, maybe the shooter didn’t have time, maybe he heard something, and hurried away dragging that heavy body-maybe he plans to go after her later.” The tomcat sat thinking about that, then returned to his eggs and the bright little sardines, which, along with the sausage, certainly did enhance the eggs’ bland flavor.

Only when he had finished his breakfast and licked his plate and cleaned his whiskers and methodically washed his front paws, a procedure that took some time and left Clyde fidgeting impatiently, did Joe fill Clyde in on the events of the previous night, on as much of the story as Joe himself knew. He described the body that only Kit had seen, and then the little girl they had found. Who the child was, and who the dead man was, and where the body was now, no one yet knew. The fingerprint reports might help. Or not, Joe thought. The killer could have no previous record, though that didn’t seem likely.

“So what happens,” Joe said, curling down on the want-ad section, which neither one of them read, “the way I see it, the killer knocks this guy off. Shoots him right there under the Christmas tree, maybe even while he’s holding the kid. He’s about to get rid of the body when something startles him, some noise or maybe some late passerby, maybe a car slowing out in front of the plaza. Noise scares him, and he runs.

“I’m guessing he hides somewhere close by. At about that time, Kit comes along over the roofs, smells blood and death, looks down, and there’s the body and the kid. Who knows, the guy might even have heard Kit herself scrambling up to the roof, maybe that’s what scared him off. Anyway, Kit sees the dead man and the kid, and takes off to get help.

“Now,” Joe said, “the plaza is quiet again, and the guy returns. Maybe he means to knock off the kid so she can’t ID him, but meantime, the kid has run. Vanished. Found a place to hide. Have to give her credit that she got the hell out of there, she’s only five or six. Kid took care of herself the minute she could, and she had to be scared witless, still scared when we found her. Some kids would just fall apart screaming.”

Joe took a last lick at his plate, then had to wash his whiskers again.“With the kid gone, the guy starts to get nervous. Maybe he looks for her, maybe not. He’s in a hurry to get the body out of there. Maybe figures she’s too little to give the law a coherent description. Figures if he gets the dead man away, maybe no one will ever know there was a body. Fat chance of that. Anyway, he…”

Clyde was fidgeting again.“This is really…”

“I’m not totally guessing here,” Joe said. “ Dallas found tire marks coming into the plaza, up over the flower bed, along the sidewalk, and out again where someone had backed down over the curb. Eleanor made a dozen casts where tires went over the flowers and dirt, and she made casts of a man’s footprints, someone besides the corpse.

“Guy brings his car around, drives into the plaza, loads up the body, and takes off-while Kit is racing to our house and waking me and calling the dispatcher, and then we’re scorching back there. Then the sirens, and that had to scare him and make him hustle.

“We get back, the cops are on the scene, but no body and no kid. Blood. Footprints. Tire marks. The samples and fibers and stuff that Dallas collected for the lab.” Joe scratched his ear with his hind claws, looking across at Clyde. “So, except for the little girl, Kit was the only one to seethe victim.”

“This is making my head ache.” Clyde glanced at his watch and rose. Stacked their dishes in the sink and started to rinse them. “Does it occur to you, Joe, that if that child-”

“Kit and I found her,” Joe interrupted, “in the pump house behind the dog fountain. Little shed the size of a doghouse. We were in there with the kid, trying to calm her, when Brennan found her-and found us.”

Clyde spun around, glaring at him.“Oh, that’s great. That’s just the kind of caper I like to hear about. That’s the very kind of stupid move I keep warning you cats about. What the hell did Brennan think?”

“How do I know what he thought? You think I’m clairvoyant?”

Clyde shrugged.“How the hell do I know? You’re everything else unnatural.”

Joe let that pass.“She wouldn’t come out for Brennan, so he called for a woman.” He smiled. “The kid came out for Davis, nice as you please. Scared as hell, but she snuggled right up to Davis. She wouldn’t say a word, though. Not a sound. Davis took her to the hospital for a look-over, told Harper she’d take the kid home with her, that she didn’t want to leave her among strangers. God knows what happened to her,” Joe said darkly, not wanting to think about the possibilities.

But Joe’s sudden sick look of concern so touched Clyde that Clyde came around the table and, in a rare show of gentle affection, picked Joe up and cradled him against his shoulder, much as Detective Davis had cradled the little, silent girl. Moving to the window, Clyde stood holding the tomcat, the two of them looking out to where the sky was still dark. It would be several hours yet until dawn, and even then they wouldn’t be able to see the rising sun, for the high wall that defined the back of their patio and ran on behind their neighbors-but they would be able to watch a brightening streak oflight finger up along the top of the wall, heralding the coming of dawn, and they had learned to live with that.

But while Clyde stood holding Joe, feeling ashamed of doubting the tomcat, Joe’s mind was on the vanished murder victim and on the little girl. Wondering where the man and child had come from. Strange to have such a young child out in the middle of the night-unless they had just arrived in the village.

“So the department was able to lift prints?” Clyde said.

“Prints from the decorations and toys,” Joe said. “It’ll take a while to get everyone who worked on decorating the tree into the station for sample prints-take time to check for missing children statewide and then national, check the airlines, go through the missing adult lists…”

“No description,” Clyde said. “And no one saw the car. They’re asking in the paper for witnesses.”

“There was no one on the street tosee a car. Not a soul, Kit said. With the storm, the whole town was deserted, except for patrol cars.”

“And the victim and his killer.”

“It all takes time,” Joe said. “That’s what makes you want to claw and yowl, the damn waiting. Dulcie and Kit and Iknow the blood was human, but the department has no proof until the coroner’s lab tests it. The cops only know what Kit told them. Though I have to say, they didn’t hesitate. Moved right in, on her word-on the word of a tortoiseshell cat,” he said, smiling. “But the blood…Depends on how backed up the lab is, how soon the coroner gets to it.”

“Maybe the child will tell them something when she recovers a little from the shock.”

“If she can talk at all,” Joe said. “She didn’t say a word last night, but maybe she’ll open up for Davis. Maybe…” He twisted around on Clyde’s shoulder, his whiskers tickling Clyde ’s cheek. “It would be pretty neat if the kid did ID that bastard. To shoot a man like that whilehe’s holding a little child. That experience will sour Christmas for that little girl for all the rest of her life. I hope that little girl nails him good,” Joe hissed. “I want to see that guy burn.” The tomcat’s yellow eyes blazed at Clyde -and this was one time when Clyde Damen and Joe Grey were in perfect agreement. If they had their way, that killer would burn slowly and forever, with unthinkable agony and pain.

8

H AVING BACKED THE car into the small garage, Kuda hid the two duffel bags in a storage cupboard, but left the pillows and blanket in the car. He tore up the car rental agreement and registration, stripped off the rental stickers, tore all of it into confetti and stuffed it, a few pieces at a time, into the drain of the laundry sink, running all the pieces on down with a lengthy cascade of water.

With tools he’d found days earlier in the garage, he removed the license plates, then, taking off his shoes, he stood atop the car in his stocking feet, shoved the plates up into the attic through the crawl hole, and pushed them under the soft blanket of fiberglass insulation, smoothing it back over them. He was still wearing white cotton gloves. Last thing, he put the bike in the trunk of the car and tied the lid closed over the protruding rear wheel.

He waited a long time, his ear to the crack in the garage door, listening for the soft sounds of cop cars moving outside on the narrow streets, and trying to be patient. Had to make sure the cops had given up looking-given up, depending on what that witness had told them. Where the hell had that unseen witness been? What had they seen?Someone had called the law. He knew he’d been careful. He was certain the cruising patrol hadn’t seen him. And he sure as hell hadn’t seen anyone on the streets or standing in the shadows. Hadn’t heard anyone-until that sound of running, almost like it was overhead, a sound so soft. Most likely some animal. Or could have been some kid on the street, the echo playing tricks? Some kid slipping out at night to see the Christmas tree?

Time to get moving, everything quiet out there. The cops would still have a guard at the plaza, but he’d use the back or side entrance. He looked around the garage to make sure he’d tidied up. No, nothing there but the two small duffel bags in the cupboard, under a bunch of old rags, and they wouldn’t be there long. Silently he stepped out the side door to see if the street was clear, before opening the garage door.

W HILE CLYDE DAMEN stood in the kitchen holding Joe, staring out at the predawn dark, and while James Kuda prepared to dispose of the body, across the village in her condo apartment Juana Davis was tucking the little girl into a hastily made bed on the wide velvet love seat. She had placed the child so she would not face the Christmas tree. She thought of covering it or moving it to another room, after the trauma the child had suffered.

But there were Christmas trees and decorations everywhere, all over the village, no matter where they went. She would be taking the child to the station in the morning, and dispatcher Mabel Farthy had a small, beautifully decorated tree on the counter beside the in-box.

Juana thought sometimes it was a lot of fuss and extra work for a person living alone to buy and decorate a Christmas tree-but she always did, always had a fresh, live tree, and she guessed she always would.

Though it would soon be dawn, Juana had slipped into a pair of warm, comfortable pajamas, over which she had rebuckled her shoulder holster with her automatic. She had lit a fire on the hearth, only gas logs but real enough to be cozy, and had brought out an extra blanket and pillow from the bedroom so she could sleep lightly in the upholstered chair near the sliding-glass door to the balcony with a view of the street below.

Davis’s one-bedroom condo rose just across the street from the courthouse complex-with her husband long dead and her two sons gone from the nest, she had sold her house up in the Molena Point hills and rented an apartment while she waited, it seemed forever, for the right condo to come on the market. When this one became available diagonally across the street from the station, it was hard to make a low offer and chance losing it. Hard not to snap it up. But as both the real estate agent and the seller well knew, the market for a condo where two women had been murdered was somewhat limited-this was a small town, and no one had missed the details of that brutal killing.

The fact that this had been the scene of a double murder last summer didn’t bother Juana. The one-bedroom unit had been listed for less than a week when her low offer was accepted. She had worked the case, so she knew the apartment well, and she had no complaints about it except for a leaky bathroom faucet and the noisy refrigerator; she was not a person to worry about lingering ghosts. All traces of blood had been cleaned away and the walls freshly painted in a pleasing off-white; she had installed new, off-white carpeting-and she took a quiet pleasure in being so near to work.

From the wide balcony she could see down onto the block-long courthouse building and its surround of old twisted oak trees and bright gardens, and the wide parking lot on its far side. She had a clear view of the end of the two-story complex and the single-story wing that housed Molena Point PD. She could see the department’s back door and smaller police parking area and the small jail, all enclosed within a woven wire fence. She could see, beneath the gnarled branches of an ancient oak that hung over the red tile roof of the building, the small bared window that was cut into a raised clerestory, allowing light andventilation for the department’s one small holding cell that opened off the front entry. Now, at just before six on this cold winter morning, beyond her drawn draperies, Juana’s balcony was black and chill, a light dew clinging to the teak chair and love seat and the three potted camellias thatwere in full bloom. But here within the bright, firelit living room, she and the child were cozy. This was nice, the cheerful blaze on the grate, the little girl curled down, her tummy full of cocoa and a cookie, hopefully falling into welcome sleep.

Since her own two boys had grown and left the nest, Juana had seldom held a small child in her arms. Maybe someday there’d be grandchildren, but not for a while. Both her boys were cops, neither one married yet. When that time came, she wondered what kind of grandmother she’d make. Well, she wasn’t holding her breath. At this point both her sons were married to their work, Randy as a detective with the Tacoma Sheriff’s Department, and Jed with California Highway Patrol.

Guess I’m married to my own work, she thought, amused. Still, as a widow and an empty nester, she found it surprisingly satisfying to shelter this little girl, to hold her and to put her to bed, tucking her safe under the quilt. The child was such a fragile little thing, thin as a baby bird. Shoulder-length hair as black as a raven’s wing, and skin as pale and clear as milk. Long black lashes, and when she was awake, those huge black eyes staring up at you, so sad, filled with such hopelessness.

In the hospital, and then in the car coming home, the child hadn’t spoken. She had made not a sound even when the woman doctor examined her, an examination that had to be frightening. Juana had called ahead and asked for a woman, and found that Terry Wayne was on duty. Juana’s white-haired, cheerful friend had been waiting for them at the emergency-room desk, and Juana, not knowing what the child had been through, was relieved not to have to deal with a male doctor.

Terry hadn’t kept the child long. The little girl was so frightened, and so tired and cold. Just long enough to wrap her in warm blankets, and then gently examine her to determine that she had not been molested and had no physical wound that Terry could find. Nor could Terry find any malformation of the throat or mouth that would account for the child’s silence.

Last night was not the time to run complicated hearing or speech tests, even if they had been available, at that hour. Terry thought the speech problem was simply trauma. Whether the child had been so traumatized by the murder that she’d stopped speaking, or whether this was an older condition, they couldn’t guess. They only knew that the child was still very afraid, and cold and clinging, and jumpy at any loud sound. The two other doctors on emergency duty had wanted to keep her in the hospital, but Terry wouldn’t hear ofthat. Even with a private room and a guard at the door, a hospital setting made Juana uneasy. She could make the child more comfortable in her apartment, make her feel that maybe someone cared what happened to her; and both she and Max felt that the child was safer with an armed officer, and with extra patrol around the building.

Max would be setting up a round-the-clock schedule for the few woman officers in the department to take shifts staying here with the child. That would be hard on the officers, taking double shifts, even if they could get some sleep while they babysat, and it would be hard on the department’s budget, which was always tight-but at the moment there was no viable alternative. No one in the department wanted to dump this child into the gaping jaws of the state bureaucracy. Watching the sleeping child, one hand curled now in a more relaxed gesture, not clenched rigidly, and her black lashes thick and soft on her pale cheeks, Juana told herself again that the child’s silence was indeed caused by trauma and that with rest and love and quiet, she would speak again-and, thinking like a cop,and then maybe we’ll have a witness.

A frail, frightened little witness. How much would a six-year-old remember as it had really happened? How much would she be able to make clear to an adult? To a judge or jury?

How much of the testimony of a six-year-old child would grown-ups believe?

All night the child had clung to her, at first hadn’t wanted anyone else to touch her, her dark eyes huge with dread, her ivory skin clammy and damp. Was it her father who had been shot? Shot as they stood looking up at the wonderful Christmas tree?

For the rest of this child’s life, what would her Christmases be like? Chestnuts and blood. Bright lights and rocking horses heralding death.

But Juana had known one thing from the first moment she saw the little girl. She wasn’t taking her to Children’s Services. Not now, not in the morning that was fast approaching. Neither she nor the chief nor Dallas liked the lax security at Children’s Services, even in the Protective Division. Although some of the caseworkers were conscientious and understanding, too many were hard-nosed paper pushers, political climbers, or just plain incompetent. As if the children in their care were so many packages to be sorted, held in will-call, and delivered when required.

Some ugly stories about Children’s Services had reached the department, and then when young Lori Reed was found last year hiding in the library basement, and had refused to have anything more to do with the caseworkers, and after Juana and the chief had talked with Lori and looked into the handling of the child, they felt even more strongly that the County Department of Children’s Services would benefit from a good housecleaning. Nine vanished children who had never been found and whose cases were still open. A boy in foster care for five years when all Children’s Services had to do was pick up the phone and check information, in order to to locate the child’s relatives in Seattle. And too many “accident” cases among the foster homes, logged in to hospital emergency. Children with old scars, and with new bruises that could not be accounted for.

Lori Reed, after spending nearly a year on the East Coast, in the custody of Children’s Services and a number of foster homes, before being returned to her father, had told Juana other ugly stories that enraged her.

Lori had run away from a seriously depressed father who, in his secret and unrevealed fear for Lori, had inadvertently terrified her. He had boarded up their windows, padlocked the doors, and had forbidden her to leave the house even to go to school. With Lori’s mother dead of cancer, with no one to explain to her the real cause of her father’s distress, and with her fear of being sent to another foster home, the twelve-year-old had taken matters into her own hands-had packed a blanket and some food, and found a very clever and safe place to hide.

But Lori Reed was twelve, not six years old, and had been far more skilled and resourceful in solving the problems that were dumped on her. This child was hardly more than a baby.

And the fact that she might be the only witness to a murder was more than sufficient reason not to turn her over to a lax bureaucracy where anyone could get at her.

Without opening the draperies, Juana stepped behind them and looked out through the slider to the balcony; standing in the shadows, in the predawn silence, looking down at the village, she considered other options than keeping the child too long in her apartment, where the coming and going of officers might be noted.

She thought of the Patty Rose Orphans’ Home, a very caring private facility. But, though the child could lose herself among the other children, the home didn’t have sufficient security. The Patty Rose Home was not a jail, the kids were not locked in, and, conversely, visitors were not locked out or rigidly screened. Even with an officer assigned to guard her, the Patty Rose Home was not a good choice.

She thought about Cora Lee French and her housemates, with whom Lori Reed lived until her father would be released from prison. Lori was an understanding little girl, and might be good for the younger child. It was a big house, up in the hills away from the village, with plenty of room for the child and an overnight officer, and Juana wondered if the senior ladies would be interested.

Maybe a rotation, from one private residence to another, always with a guard. This little girl was too precious to be hurt again. Juana had to remind herself that this was police business, that besides her personal fear for the child, the little girl was their only witness to a crime.

Hoping they got something positive on the blood samples or the prints, hoping they could find the body, nail the killer, and wrap this up quickly, she listened to the crash of the Pacific ten blocks away. The waves sounded violent, and would be black and churning-with the extremely high tide just after midnight, the Pacific all along the coast would be dangerous. That meant emergency calls, and another strain on the department. Every year some fool, most often an uninformed and overly trusting tourist, went too near the sea during a storm and had to be rescued-rescued if they were lucky. And either way, needlessly putting lifeguards and law enforcement in danger. The rule was, never turn your back on the sea. Even in calm weather. That bright, seductive monster was always hungry, waiting for the foolish and unwary.

Turning back inside, she locked the slider, feeling secure within her own space. Cheerful fire on the hearth, her old familiar Christmas ornaments on the tall, fragrant tree, her grandmother’s Creech on the mantel, the hand-carved Creech she’d had since she was a child in Ventura in their close Mexican family-a childhood of safety and warmth, in sharp contrast to what this sleeping child might have known.

Moving to the kitchenette, she started a pot of coffee, then went to take a shower. Stripping off her holster and pajamas and stepping into the pelting hot water, Juana had no notion that the storm that now battered the shore was about to claim another victim. No notion that the black water crashing up the cliffs was already licking at its prey, hungry to receive the sacrifice offered. No idea, as she soaped and rinsed off and wrapped her towel around her body and moved into the bedroom to put on clean clothes, that the eager sea was already doing its best to swallow what murder evidence might remain.

9

T HE GRAY TOMCAT strolled into Molena Point PD yawning, and full of breakfast, still licking sardine oil from his whiskers. He had, crossing the roof of the courthouse complex heading for the station, seen Juana Davis leave her condo building, hurrying in the same direction.

Scorching down an oak tree and racing across the parking lot, he’d moved inside behind her through the bulletproof glass door, receiving only an amused glance from the detective. Slipping into the shadows of the empty holding cell that faced the reception area, he tried to hold his breath against the faint odor of old urine and the stronger nose-twitching stink of disinfectant. Tried to breathe in only the fresh, forest smell of Mabel’s little Christmas tree on her dispatcher’s counter.

The child wasn’t with Juana. He hoped to hell she hadn’t taken the kid to Children’s Services. He didn’t think Juana would do that. From his shadowed retreat beneath the single bunk, he watched Juana move away down the hall to the back of the building, watched as she checked the overhead surveillance camera that showed the officers’ fenced parking area, then opened the steel back door a few inches to look out. He heard a car pull up, caught a glimpse of a white patrol car close outside the door. Watched Juana step aside as Officer McFarland entered, his black trench coat bulging so severely one would think Jimmie McFarland was pregnant with twins.

Behind McFarland, four officers crowded in, effectively shielding him from anyone standing outside the fence or looking down from one of the second-story windows across the street. When the door had safely closed, McFarland removed the black coat.

The little girl clung to him, her arms around his neck, and didn’t want to get down. As Joe heard the car take off again and move away out the gate, he came out of the cell, crossed the reception area, and padded toward them down the hall-just Damen’s tomcat come to freeload, to cadge his morning handout of doughnuts or coffee cake.

Juana took the child from McFarland, cradling her against her shoulder-but as the child looked over Juana’s shoulder, her big dark eyes looked straight down the hall and into Joe Grey’s eyes. She opened her mouth as if she would speak; but then she closed her eyes and turned away, her face pressed against Juana, quiet and unresisting. As if she didn’t care what happened to her. Juana came up thehall carrying her and talking softly to her, and turned in at Max Harper’s office, where a light burned, and where Joe could hear the chief and Detective Garza talking.

As Davis’s voice joined the men’s, Joe wandered in behind her and lay down beneath the credenza, with another wide yawn. Juana was tucking the child up on the couch with a lap blanket around her.

“They gave her a little sedative last night,” she said. “She drank some cocoa when we got home, and had a cookie. Didn’t want anything this morning but a few bites of oatmeal.”

“No disturbance during the night?” Dallas asked.

“Nothing. Did the coroner identify the blood?”

“Human,” Dallas said. “All of it. He called about an hour ago. Blood on the toys, all the samples-same blood type as from the child’s clothes.” Joe knew it would take several days, at best, to get results on the DNA that might, with great good luck, help identify the victim.

“Question now is…” Juana said, glancing at the child on the couch and then at the chief, where he sat behind his desk.

Max was silent for a moment, then,“If I talk with the director of Children’s Services, maybe-”

“No,” Juana said. “They don’t know what security means. You could take her up the coast and lock her in juvenile hall, she’d be safer.”

Max just looked at her.

“She’s better off in my apartment,” Juana said, “with guards on all watches. I know it’s a big-budget item, but there’s no way around a guard, wherever she is, sure not in Children’s Services. Not until we lock up the shooter.”

Max glanced at the sleeping child, and his thin lined face softened.“We don’t know what she saw. Don’t know what the killer thinks she saw. I don’t like keeping her in your apartment long enough for someone to notice activity there.”

Joe had been watching the child, wondering if she was really asleep. Now suddenly she stirred, looking up at Davis and Harper and Garza-and then straight across the room into the shadows beneath the credenza, staring again straight into Joe Grey’s eyes.

Why did she do that? Joe wondered.Don’t do that! Look away from me! She was way too interested in him. Above him, the discussion had ceased, the three officers were all watching her. Then Juana rose and knelt before the credenza, and gently hauled Joe out. He hung limp, didn’t complain as she carried him to the couch and knelt, holding him up to the child and gently stroking him. Joe cut Juana a look. But the child reached out to him, her dark eyes needy. And of course, ham that he was, he slipped into her arms and snuggled against her-and found himself purring likea steam train.

Dallas and Max chuckled, which made Joe scowl. But the child stroked him and buried her face against his shoulder, and when he looked up at the officers again, they looked only pleased. They looked, in fact, almost admiring-as if Joe’s role in calming the kid was not at all to be laughed at.

But they looked puzzled, too, and Joe could almost hear the questions churning-questions he didn’t want to think about. Juana said, “She was like that with the cats last night, when we found her. Cuddled up to Joe and that tortoiseshell cat. Maybe,” she said, “she only feels safe around animals.”

Both officers, being dog men and horsemen, could relate to that. Max said,“We have dogs at the ranch, she might do well up there-isolation could be to our advantage. Or not,” he said, concerned about the lack of security among the open hills and woods and pastures.

“What about the seniors?” Dallas said. “Those two big dogs are pretty protective, a good early-warning system. Their place would be easier to patrol.”

“Cora Lee’s good with kids,” Juana said. “Our little girl could hang out with Lori and Dillon while they work on their playhouse for the contest. With a couple of guards…” She looked down at the child snuggled with Joe. “It’s a beautiful big playhouse, big enough for you to really play house in, two stories, a slide, a ladder…And the dogs…A big brown poodle who’ll lick you all over, I bet. And a spotted, firehouse dog…”

The child looked up at her trustingly with, Joe thought, a spark of anticipation-but a spark that was quickly gone again, drowned by sadness.

This was a hard call, Joe knew, to adequately protect their small, frightened witness, and yet put her in a friendly and comforting environment where she’d loosen up enough to talk, to tell them what she’d seen. With a six-year-old child, time was of the essence-before the event morphed, in a child’s naturally imaginative mind, into any number of dark and twisted fantasies only loosely based on the facts.

Max said,“Maybe a couple of hours up there, to be with the other girls and play with the dogs. I’m not sure about overnight. See what the senior ladies say. We can’t jeopardize anyone, nor put the older girls in danger.

“Take McFarland with you,” he told Juana. “The young lady seems to like him.” Max smiled. “When Cora Lee sees this little girl, she won’t be able to resist.” He buzzed the dispatcher, asked her to get Jimmie McFarland on the radio.

“I’ll call Cora Lee,” Juana said. “She…” She paused when the dispatcher buzzed through, and Max switched on the phone speaker.

It wasn’t McFarland, but Officer Sand on the line.

“I’m bringing in a homeless man, he was asleep in the alley behind Green’s Antiques, an empty billfold shoved under the newspapers he was sleeping on. His shoes are way big for him, look like they could fit my casts, and there appears to be blood on one. Old jogging shoes,” she said with excitement, “waffle soles. Looks like a speck of garden dirt-and some shiny red flecks.

“Says he lifted them from a Dumpster out on the highway, early this morning, that his own shoes were worn-out and sopping wet. He seems more than usually nervous, looked all around when I cuffed him and put him in the car.”

“Get him in here,” Max said.

“Holding cell?”

“Let’s call him a person of interest. See if you can get any identification, then bring him on back to my office, tell him we just want to talk.” Max clicked off the phone. He was smiling.

Davis glanced at the child.“You want us out of here?”

Max shook his head.“First reaction’s worth a lot-her reaction, and his.”

The child was still stroking Joe. She smelled nice, the cat thought, a sweet littlegirl scent. Snuggled up with her, Joe Grey began to feel protective-so protective that he began to wonder if the prisoner would try to hurt her, and he felt his claws tense.

But what could some old tramp do with four cops guarding the little girl? Still he waited, nervous and alert, until, ten minutes later, Eleanor Sand escorted the ragged, smelly old man into Max’s office.

The old fellow entered hesitantly, Eleanor walking behind him. He smelled so ripe and looked so rough that Joe wanted to rise up defensively in front of the child. Instead he slipped off the couch, sensibly out of the way. These officers wanted the little girl’s reaction, not that of a cat; and they wanted the tramp’s first reaction to her, without distraction. And Joe sat down quietly beside the couch, unobtrusive but ready to leap and defend her.

From the floor beside Dallas’s chair, Joe studied the old guy. He sure as hell could use a bath. His wrinkled old clothes were worn-out and dirty, his long gray hair tied in a ponytail, his head bald on top and sunburned. Wrinkled cheeks with an inch of stubble. And the smell of unwashed body and clothes was overlaid with the acrid stink of wood smoke as if from innumerable campfires.

On any cold morning Joe could see, from the treetops and highest roofs of the village, smoke rising down along the Molena River where homeless men slept, building up their campfires to get warm and to make coffee.

Well, the old guy had his coffee this morning. He was carrying a full Styrofoam cup that Eleanor must have picked up in the squad room.

He wore no shoes. They would be in the sealed bag that Eleanor had probably dropped off in the evidence room. Padding onto the Persian rug in bare feet, he looked warily at Dallas and the chief and then his eyes widened in surprise at the child on the couch. Everyone was still, watching the two of them.

The child looked at him without interest. Not frightened, not at all alarmed. Her only reaction was a wrinkled nose, from the smell of the old man. He looked at her, caught sight of Joe, and scowled around at the four officers.

“Didn’t expect to see no kid in a police station. Sure didn’t expect cops to keep no cat-well, hell, didn’t expect to see no Christmas tree neither, out there in the entry.”

“You know the girl?” Eleanor said softly.

He shook his head.“Never seen her.” He looked at Eleanor with the beginnings of alarm, and backed away a step. “How would I know her? Why would I know her? I ain’t done nothing, I never laid eyes on the kid.”

“Just asking,” Eleanor said quietly. “Where did you get the shoes?”

“Told you. Dumpster, couple miles out, on the highway. By that tourist caf? out there.”

“That’s what you told me. What else did you take from the Dumpster?”

Joe expected, knowing Eleanor, that she had already sent an officer back to search the Dumpster for anything suspicious, anything with visible blood.

“That empty billfold is all else I found,” the old man said testily. “Don’t know what good a billfold does me, ain’t got nothing to put in it. I thought maybe to sell it.”

Dallas rose, pushed Joe Grey gently aside, and motioned the old guy to sit down. He filled up the old man’s coffee cup from the pot on the credenza, and then settled on the couch so the child was between him and Davis. Sand stood leaning in the doorway. Joe, anticipating an informative interrogation, slipped back under the credenza.

The old man, very likely imbuing the leather chair with a permanent stink, looked at Dallas and Eleanor, and raised a bushy eyebrow.“You worried about that kid?”

No one answered.

“I might know something about kids-not her, exactly. Other kids-guess she might be one of ’em.”

The officers waited, silently alert.

“Something that might be…of interest, as you like to say.”

“Go on,” Max said.

“Mighty cold morning,” the old fellow said. “Long time since I’ve had a good hot breakfast.” He watched without expression as Dallas slipped a twenty from his pocket, added a ten, and handed it over. The old guy sighed. “Might be pretty valuable information.”

Dallas fished out another ten and passed it across.“That’s it. Let’s hear it.”

“That orphans’ school up toward the hills? That one that movie star owned?”

“The Patty Rose School,” Dallas said.

“Big tan mansion with these brown timbers crisscrossing the walls?”

“We know the place,” Max said.

“Guy watching them kids up there, I seen him twice standing in the woods peeking out. I, ah…got me a little shelter place up there. Place I can go sometimes, out of the storm. Rain coming bad, I go up there.”

“Why weren’t you there last night?” Dallas said.

“Came up the highway last night, headed right into the village to get me something to eat. I don’t go there much, they watch that place. All locked up, but they watch it. Last night, found me a bit of overhang to sleep under.” He looked hard at Dallas. “I wouldn’t want to lose my good shelter, up there. Winter ain’t over yet. That wind and rain, fellow could die of pneumonia.”

“That stone building?” Max said.

The old man nodded.

“We’ll see no one runs you off, at least for a while-if the school finds nothing wrong. No fires inside there. Understand?” Again, the old man nodded. “Can you describe this man?” Max said. “Tell us when and where you saw him?”

“Up at the school, like I said. Across the street in them woods, watching the front. And then the other time at the side, near the old stone house. Watching the play yard. Kids outside both times. Watching them orphan kids.”

“What did he look like?” Eleanor prompted.

“Couldn’t see much, him turned away. Skinny. Skinny head. Big ears. Short hair and them big ears sticking out.”

“And he was watching the children?” Dallas said. “For how long? What did he do while he was watching them?”

“Long time, maybe half an hour or better. First time, just stood there looking and done nothing much. Stood kinda limp, hands down on his crotch. Next time, he had a camera, taking pictures. Long thing on the front of the camera like a telescope, taking pictures of them kids.”

“When was this?” Max said.

“Maybe…over a week. Maybe two weeks. Just after one of them bad storms-the storm before last, I think. Cold. Sure looked nice and warm in that big school, firelight through the windows and all them colored lights on that big Christmas tree, and the smells…Smell of baking, of gingerbread and spices,” the old man said longingly.

Joe watched the old fellow for a moment with a keen sense of camaraderie.Homeless men, the tomcat thought uneasily,like homeless cats, out in the storm without shelter. He might hassle Clyde unmercifully over the quality of his meals and his own shelter, but in truth Joe was mighty thankful for his home. His kittenhood, trying to survive alone in San Francisco’s alleys, had been no picnic-he still didn’t like the garbage stink of Dumpsters.

Joe remained at the PD until the old man ran out of things to tell the officers, until Eleanor put the old fellow back in her squad car, to drop him at the hole-in-the-wall caf? where he wanted to have breakfast.

She told Max she’d pay the restaurant bill for him before she left. Joe thought the old man wasn’t a drinker, at least he hadn’t smelled of booze, but Max wanted to be sure he ate, and didn’t slip out again to buy wine. Strange old man, Joe thought. Somehow a cut above most homeless, some of whom would kill a man just for the thrill.

Joe watched Juana gather up the child to take her to the seniors’ house, where McFarland would meet them; and the tomcat left the station wondering where Dulcie had gotten to and thinking about a little snack in the alley behind Jolly’s Deli-a gourmet experience that was, always, a far cry from anything remotely connected to Dumpsters.

10

C ORA LEE FRENCH had been up since well before daylight on this cold winter morning. She had always been an early riser; her housemates teased her that she wanted the newspaper on the doorstep when her bare feet first swung out of bed. But this morning, even after she’d showered and dressed and put her breakfast on the table, the paper still wasn’t at the front door.

Over a solitary breakfast of instant oatmeal, and then three Christmas cookies with her last cup of coffee, she had, out of desperation, read yesterday’s classified section. Breakfast didn’t taste right without something to read, and by the time she’d finished eating, she knew more than she wanted about how hard it was to get skilled help, how high real-estate prices and rents were climbing, and how many small animals were coldly given awayto strangers, via the want ads, as casually as one would donate one’s unwanted clothes. She left the house wondering what had happened to the sober responsibility that had infused the training of her own generation.

Getting old, she thought, amused at herself.Old and cranky.

The interior of her car was bone-chilling cold, the wet windshield soon fogged over. Waiting, with the wipers swinging, for the engine to warm the interior and clear the glass, she glanced at her shopping list, which included half a dozen last-minute Christmas errands she’d put off in deference to choir rehearsals; then she headed down the hill to the village, the oaks and pines dripping, the dropping street and the rooftops below her shining from the rain.

The grocery would be open, but she’d have to wait for the shops, even with their earlier holiday schedules.Banker’s hours, she thought, and laughed at herself again because she wanted all the stores to open up at dawn-she couldn’t help it if she was a morning person.

Though when she was doing a play or concert, like the upcoming Christmas pageant, she would be a night person, too, for a while, enjoying afternoon naps when necessary to provide sufficient sleep. You can sleep when you’re dead, Cora Lee believed. That was one of Donnie’s favorite sayings. Even when they were kids, he’d said that, quoting his own father. Now, with Donnie’s reemergence into her life, Cora Lee was interested to note that they both still used that expression.

Happy-go-lucky Donnie French. He’d been the closest thing to a brother she’d had. Inseparable playmates when they were small, blue-eyed, golden-haired Donnie, and her own dusky, black-haired coloring caused folks, even on New Orleans ’s streets, to turn and stare at them. Donnie, suddenly back in her life. What a wonderful Christmas present for them both.

As she left her car, heading into the market, the air was filled with the scent of pine from the cut trees stacked outside the door. Red and green decorations hung within, festooning the tops of the shelves beneath gold garlands. The store was filled with popular Christmas tunes and with the spicy smells from the bakery. This time of year she missed having family and children of her own. Her husband dead for so many years, and they’d never had children. But now she had family again, real family, besides her housemates and her close friends.

She and Donnie had been a pair when they were kids, Cora Lee the dusky tomboy, Donnie the sweetly smiling blond charmer-but Donnie was always the bolder and more adventurous, the wilder troublemaker. A pair of scoundrels. Well, they’d never gotten into serious trouble, just pranks and dares, and foolish acts of poor judgment. And Donnie, despite his sometimes wild and defiant ways, had been in some respects the more even-tempered.

He had been the methodical planner when he set his mind to it, when they had something to gain. While she had swung crazily with her overwhelming moods, between soaring joy often generated by the jazz music that surrounded them on New Orleans’s streets and a deep sadness generated by her mother’s own sadness-at their poverty and then at her father’s senseless death from stray gunfire.

Even as a child, Cora Lee had known instinctively that she would have to make her own happiness as she grew older, that she would have to learn how to lift herself out of the kind of sad days that her mother experienced. She hadn’t known, then, the word “bipolar” or the other fancy terms. But she had understood her mother as best a child can, and she had vowed never to fall into the kind of mourning to which her mother had succumbed.

She had vowed thatshe would be strong enough to lift herself out of sadness. And always, she had refused to call those dark moods depression. She still hated that overused, catchall word that was used to describe so many different situations.

As a child, she’d only known that she would be on her own far too soon, and that no one else would, or could, teach her the survival skills and resiliency she’d need. That only she could teach herself how to cope. How to solve life’s problems. Maybe she’d learned by watching her inept mother-learned that you always had a choice of solutions to a problem. You did, she had known even then, if your thinking was open enough and creative enough to ask all the right questions, and to choose the best answers. It made Cora Lee incredibly sad that her mother had never learned how to do that.

Now, as she finished her shopping and left the market, wheeling her loaded cart, she paused beside the newsstand, the headline of the Molena PointGazette catching her eye. So that was what the sirens were about, last night.

COPS CONVERGE ON PLAZA CHRISTMAS TREE POSSIBLE MURDER? NO BODY FOUND

She scanned as much of the article as she could see above the fold. She was damned if she’d buy a paper; they paid for newspaper delivery. It was terrible to think of a murder at Christmastime. The circumstances sickened her-to kill or wound a man beneath a Christmas tree. She frowned, reading the strange details. Blood, but no body. Maybe the victim had been injured, but had gotten away. Except, the paper said, there had been a witness; someone had seen a body.

But could that be a hoax? A false report? Maybe the blood wasn’t that of a person at all. Animal blood? That thought didn’t comfort her.

The police wouldn’t have had any lab information last night, when the paper went to press. Maybe…A hundred conjectures ran through Cora Lee’s mind, and with them, the coldness. Hoax or not, this was ugly. Death, violence, the defiling of Christmas. Ugly, when there should be only love.

She was loading her groceries in the trunk when a squad car pulled into the parking slot next to her, and Juana Davis gave her a yawning“good morning.”

“You’ve been up all night,” Cora Lee said.

Juana nodded.“Most of it.”

Cora Lee looked at the little girl huddled in a blanket, in the front seat next to the detective, crowded up next to the complicated console, as close to Juana as she could get. A little girl with eyes darker even than Juana’s eyes, black as obsidian in such a thin, white little face. Long, ebony hair framing her milk-white skin. And such a sad expression that Cora Lee longed to pick her up and hold and comfort her. The child’s eyes were filled with fear, as she pushed closer to the detective-eyes as wary as thoseof a wild creature.

“There was an incident last night in the plaza,” Juana said, scanning the half-empty parking lot.

“I saw the paper.”

“The paper doesn’t mention this little girl, but she was part of it. We found her hiding in the plaza, pretty scared. Blood on her clothes. The call came in from an unidentified informant who saw the child at the scene with the body. Max kept that out of the paper.”

Cora Lee nodded. The child had said no word, she only watched Juana. Juana’s eyes told Cora Lee that the officer hated talking about the little girl in front of her, as if she weren’t there, told her it couldn’t be helped.

Cora Lee wondered if the child did not speak English. Or if, perhaps, she couldn’t speak at all.

“We have no identification, no idea who the man was, or who this young lady is. She came home with me last night.” Juana waited a moment, watching Cora Lee. “We don’t want to take her to Children’s Services.”

“Of course you don’t.” Cora Lee had heard plenty about situations with various child welfare departments from Lori Reed. She looked at Juana’s dark eyes, the detective’s sternness gone now. “You need somewhere for her to stay.”

“We’re not sure, yet.” Juana held the child’s small white hand. “Maybe for a few hours. There’d be an officer with her.”

“We have plenty of room for both of them to stay. Susan’s in San Francisco for the holidays. Mavity and Gabrielle and Lori and I are just rattling around, and my cousin Donnie is downstairs. We’d love to have any officer you send, two if you like. We’d really love to have another child for the holidays.”

“Overnight might not be safe, for any of you. But for a few hours, so she could spend some time with Lori and Dillon, and play with the dogs. She loves animals-cats, at least. When we found her last night she was snuggled right up to Clyde ’s cat and the Greenlaw cat.”

“The dogs would be thrilled to have someone to play with. Lori and Dillon have been so busy on their contest entry they’ve had no time to roughhouse with them. And of course the girls would love to have her.” Leaning down, Cora Lee looked in at the child. “I think our guest might be the first one to test out the new playhouse.” She smiled. “Would you like that?” Then, to Juana, “Would you like to come on up now? I’m headed home.”

“On my way,” Juana said. “If you’re sure you’re comfortable with this.”

“I’m sure,” Cora Lee said. “Our dogs are good protection, they can be fierce, when someone threatens.” She looked at the child again. “And yesterday evening, Mavity baked pumpkin pies.”

Juana laughed.“You knowmy weakness. I won’t follow you, I’ll take another route.”

Cora Lee, swinging into her car and heading up the hills, glanced in her rearview mirror to see Juana’s white Chevy leave the parking lot, turning in the opposite direction. But when she pulled into her drive, the squad car was already there. Down the street two neighbors were out in their yards, looking, making Cora Lee smile. Every time a squad car showed up at their house, she’d see a neighbor or two peering out, and that highly amused Cora Lee and her housemates-though most of the neighbors knew of their friendships within the department, there had been one time that was serious police business, and some folks preferred to remember the unpleasantness. That case, Cora Lee thought uneasily, had also involved children.

But nothing would happen to this little girl, not with police protection, and two big dogs on guard. Parking in the drive, she made two trips into the house loaded down with grocery bags while Juana sat in the squad car talking in a one-sided conversation with the little girl, until at last the child seemed willing to get out. Across the yard, Donnie was at work on the garden wall he was building along the side of the property.

It seemed a very cold day to be mixing mortar, but maybe that didn’t matter. As Juana helped the child out of the car, Donnie turned away, heading for his truck. Cora Lee went on into the kitchen to put away her groceries, leaving the door unlocked behind her.

Soon Juana and the little girl came into the kitchen hand in hand, Juana letting the child take her time. Cora Lee thought the dogs were in their fenced yard, in the back, but when the big poodle and the Dalmatian heard a strange voice, they came racing through the house. The child shrank against Juana, and Juana lifted her up, to make her feel more secure. Cora Lee grabbed the dogs’ collars, telling them to sit and stay.

It had taken several months for Susan Brittain’s three housemates to learn to handle the dogs properly and insist they respond to commands, but the training sessions had paid off. As the dogs sat obediently, avidly watching the child, the little girl looked down at them, big-eyed-and the next minute she struggled out of Juana’s arms, straight to them; Lamb, the big chocolate poodle, surged forward, and then the child and dogs were all over one another, the dogs licking and whining, the frail, silent little girl hugging and hugging them.

Juana stood close over her for a moment, in case of trouble, but then she looked up at Cora Lee, grinning, and backed off-and the women watched with wonder the child’s transformation from a terrified and shrinking little being to a vibrant and lively creature. Still silent, but very much more alive.

“She needs animals, all right,” Cora Lee said.

“She only trusts the animals.”

The two women sat at the kitchen table with coffee and pumpkin pie. There was milk and pie for the child, but the little girl wouldn’t sit down, she wanted only to play with the dogs.

“That was your cousin who just pulled out?”

“Donnie, yes. He’s been working on the garden, building plastered garden walls, the way we’ve planned for so long. He laid the new stone walks, too.”

“It’s looking great, Cora Lee. You’ve all worked hard on this house-you’ve made a new, beautiful home from a place too long neglected. And the Christmas decorations, your huge tree, and the red bells and wreathes…”

“Donnie helped a lot-we’d never have dared such a big tree without him. It’s been a boon for us, to suddenly have him here, he’s done so much to the house. I didn’t know he had those skills. He’s been doing some jobs around the village, too, and people have already started to seek him out. He just finished a renovation for Sicily Aronson’s gallery.”

Davis nodded.“Opening it up to the caf? and bookstore. Makes all three more inviting.”

“I wanted to pay him for our work, but he refused. Said if we wouldn’t let him pay rent and board, he’d work for his keep.” Cora Lee smiled. “He said, ‘If you ladies keep feeding me so elegantly, I have to do something or you’ll be rolling me down the driveway.’”

“Sounds like a nice guy. I saw him in the village the other day; Dallas pointed him out. He was talking with a middle-aged couple-tall, dark-haired woman, strangers. He’ll have all the work he wants, as difficult as it is to get skilled craftsmen.”

“What did happen last night, Juana? You’re pretty concerned about the little girl, if Max didn’t tell the reporters about her.”

“I’d already gotten her away from the scene when the reporters showed up.” Juana described the events of the previous night. And the anonymous phone call, like tips they had received in so many other cases, this one telling them about the child.

“The caller said she was clinging to the dead man,” Juana said. “When Brennan found her, she was huddled in that little pump house behind the dog fountain, and those two cats were with her, Clyde’s big tomcat, and the Greenlaw’s cat cuddled right up to her.”

“I guess even that macho tomcat might have a soft spot,” Cora Lee said, smiling.

“She was afraid of Brennan, shrinking away from him. That’s when he called for a woman. She likes Jimmie McFarland, though, maybe because he’s quieter. She didn’t shy away from the chief and Dallas, either. I think it was just last night, so soon after the shooting, and Brennan’s voice isloud and gruff.”

“Can’t shestay here with us?” Cora Lee said. “We’re all women in the house, except for Donnie, and he’s a gentle soul. She and the guard could sleep in my room, with the dogs in there, and in the daytime she could hang out with Lori and Dillon while they work on the playhouse.”

Though there was two years’ difference in age between Lori Reed and Dillon Thurwell, the girls were fast friends, in part because both rode together, both keeping their horses up at Chief Harper’s ranch. Lori Reed, though she was the younger, had helped Dillon in school. Lori was intently committed to “real history,” as she called it, and to English, and her eagerness had rubbed off on Dillon, an interest that had changed Dillon a great deal.

Juana looked out to the living room, where the big poodle and Dalmatian and the little girl had curled up in a tangle among the floor cushions, the dogs panting.

“There’s no name tag on her clothes?” Cora Lee said. “No labels you can trace?”

“Kmart labels, could have come from anywhere. I bathed her last night, bagged her clothes for evidence, put her in one of my Tshirts. This morning Officer Kane brought me some clothes, his boy’s about the same size.

“There’ve been no California missing reports,” Juana said, “for an adult or for a child of her description. Nothing so far on the West Coast, and nothing yet in the national reports. Taking the word of our informant that there was a dead man, we’re guessing he was a tourist.”

“You think she was kidnapped?”

“It seems unlikely if, as the caller said, the child was snuggled up to him. It’s possible that an estranged father could have taken her, and run, against a court order. We have no report to that effect, yet, where the child fits that description.”

Cora Lee shivered. The two women looked at each other, both touched by the horror that the child must have experienced, if she was in that man’s arms when he was shot.

Though the child seemed busy with the dogs, they kept their voices low. She might not speak, but it was obvious that her hearing was just fine, turning when a dog huffed, glancing up at the women if they laughed. When they finished their pie and coffee, Cora Lee called the dogs, Juana wrapped up the child’s pie for later, and they headed out the front door, across the front deck, and down the four steps to the big garage, where Lori and Dillon were building their contest entry.

11

P ASSING THE WIDE garage doors, Cora Lee and Juana stopped to wait as Jimmie McFarland pulled in, then the three adults moved, with the child between them, around the side to the pedestrian door accompanied by the two gamboling dogs. They could hear, from within, the buzz of the electric screwdriver and the rhythmic pounding of a hammer, and the two girls bantering and laughing. Pushing the door open, Cora Lee turned, looking across the yard for Donnie, but his truck was still gone. His wheelbarrow and bags of cement and tools were scattered where he’d been working, which wasn’t usual for him. But he’d been at work since dawn, and was obviously coming right back-he must have run out of something unexpectedly.

When she and her housemates had bought the house, the yard was a mass of weeds. But once they’d moved into the neglected dwelling, most of their work had at first gone into the interior, painting and repairing, decorating the communal living area in a way to bring their divergent pieces of furniture and tastes together. Each of them had designed her own room as she pleased. Blond Gabrielle, who wasn’t much for yard work and who didn’t like to get her hands dirty, was a fine seamstress and had made all the curtains and draperies. That, in Cora Lee’s opinion, took far more patience and skill than wielding a garden trowel or a paintbrush. Holding the child’s hand, she led her inside. “You have an audience,” she called, “a special visitor.”

Along the walls of the three-car garage, Cora Lee and the girls had constructed a sturdy cutting table and a paint table out of sawhorses and plywood. The permanent workbench offered ample room for hardware, nails and hinges, and the small power tools. Ordinarily the garage was Cora Lee’s furniture studio, and she had orders nearly three years ahead. But until later this week, when the girls would deliver the playhouse to the contest grounds, this space belonged to them. The playhouse nearly filled it.

There were twenty-three entries, most of them produced by adult teams and professional builders. Once the winner was chosen, all the other entries would be auctioned off. Given the popularity of custom playhouses along the coast, Cora Lee had no doubt they’d all sell at a profit-in her mind, it was a win/win situation; but the girls were set on getting the first prize.

Above them, Dillon Thurwell was perched atop a six-foot-high platform of joists, the red-haired fourteen-year-old carefully balancing as she screwed lightweight cedar boards onto the raised deck-the playhouse, which was nearly finished, could be taken apart in three sections to be transported by truck. If the girls’ dream came true, their entry would win twenty thousand dollars to be split between them, to add to their college funds.

Dillon’s parents had started her college fund long ago, and added to it regularly; but Dillon’s mother was a real estate agent, and her father a college professor. Lori, on the other hand, with her father in prison and her mother dead, had little more than odd jobs and her own ingenuity with which toamass the huge sum she would need for her education. And Lori Reed was dead set on college, no matter what it took. Lori had lived with the four women since her father was sent to San Quentin to serve a sentence for second-degree murder, a crime that everyone who knew him felt they might have committed themselves, considering that the man he killed had brutally murdered innocent and very bright children, and had intended to kill Lori.

The little child beside Cora Lee stared up round-eyed at the bright, multicolored playhouse; it was a confection of brilliant colors, of closed and open spaces and ascending levels, and of wild cutouts for air and light, and all the surfaces were painted in amazing patterns. There were three ways to climb to the top-a knotted rope, a ladder, and a vertical bar with protruding rungs. Standing on the tumbling mats that were scattered underneath, to make the low work easier, the little girl stared up at the wonderful confection, her eyes wide, her mouth curving in the tiniest hint of a smile.

“Paint dry?” Cora Lee asked, keeping the dogs back, worrying that they would smear Lori’s careful work.

“It’s dry,” Lori said. Kneeling beside the front of the playhouse, she was nailing on freshly painted, bright persimmon trim. The younger girl had long, straight brown hair, light brown eyes that could look achingly hurt and needy-or could look as secretive and feisty as could Dillon’s impish glance. But Lori’s attention was on the little girl, clearly seeing the child’s shy fear. Lori put out her hand.

The little girl came to her slowly at first, but then with trust. This was not an adult bid for contact, this was child to child, as nonthreatening as the earlier, guileless greetings of Joe Grey and Kit, and then of the two dogs. Above them, Dillon remained still, her red hair catching a shaft of light through the garage windows, her cropped, flyaway locks gleaming like flame.

At the sound of a car pausing on the street, Davis stepped to the door, but then it moved on by, and she returned to watch the child explore the bottom part of the playhouse then scramble up the ladder. Forgetting the adults, the little girl disappeared into the three rooms and out again in a little dance across the various decks, so losing herself to wonder that Davis and Cora Lee beamed at each other-and Davis dared to think, now, that the child might find her voice, and be able to speak to her.

S O THIS WAS where they meant to hide the kid, at least part of the time. This, and that detective’s condo. What a laugh-those women had no clue that he knew all about this place. Kuda watched the woman cop lift the kid out of the car, and he smiled. The kid was a sitting duck.

He waited warily but with patience while they were in the house. Watched the second, lone uniform pull in. So the kid had two guards. Oh, this was too good. This was security?

And still he waited.

Kid hadn’t said a word, so far, he could bet on that. Hadn’t, or the cops wouldn’t be so relaxed. They were just normally watchful, but not sweating it. No, the kid hadn’t told anything she saw, and he didn’t think she would-and how much could they believe, from a kid? Kid was no kind of witness.

So why mess up a good thing? Kill her, and they’d be after him for sure. No, for now, let sleeping dogs lie. So far he was home free. Keep it that way. Body disposed of, and only some passing witness’s word there ever was a body. How far would the cops go to investigate hearsay? This was Christmas, the stores had to be full of enough shoplifters and petty thieves to keep the street patrol plenty busy.

No, he thought, leave the kid for now. Leave her, and he’d be able to slide right out of this berg, once he got what he came for. Disappear so the law would never find him.

He’d disposed of the clothes and duffels pretty well, scattering them in several places. He hadn’t wanted to leave stuff in the car that might be traced, even though he’d checked the labels. All were generic. Kmart. Penney’s. Wal-Mart.

He’d dumped the empty billfold, after wiping it down, in a bin out on the highway at the edge of the state park as he pedaled back toward the village in the predawn dark. Had left his own shoes there, too. Waffle soles, that had been foolish. Was afraid they’d left prints. Best place to dump themwas the highway, where some homeless man walking that stretch might pick through, might put them on. And then, who’d ever find them?

He’d worried about the two duffels, even empty. Hadn’t wanted to leave them in the garage, and for some reason didn’t want to leave them in the car. He’d decided to bring them with him, tied on the back of the bike, riding along like a homeless person, himself.

He’d emptied some of the pants and shirts down into the bottom of the highway Dumpster, too, and pulled debris over them. Rolled the bigger, emptied duffel in mud and stuffed it down in there. But the kid’s stuff had worried him. Pretty little girl’s clothes, too new to throw away. That’d attract attention.

Coming into the village, he’d cruised the streets, passing three charity shops, all closed, of course, then circled back when he saw a car stop before one of them. And luck had smiled on him, big-time.

Woman got out, hauled out four big black plastic garbage bags, tucked them up against the shop’s door with a note pinned on. Got back in her car, all dressed up for work, sleek black suit and high heels, and took off.

It had taken him only a minute to tuck the kid’s clothes down inside. He used three of the bags, a few garments in each, the small cloth duffel rolled up and stuffed in, too, and that ragged doll-had to get rid of the doll. Sealed them up again with the twisties, swung on his bike, and took off, wanting to hide the bike or get rid of it. Thinking again that the cops weren’t going to spend a lot of time digging through charity shops-not this time of year, not with organized crime working the shoplifting rackets so they were more than just random events. How thin could that small department spread its uniforms? They only had two detectives, only two that he’d seen.

Going over his routine of last night, he watched the tall house, watched the kid come out with the two women, heading around the garage. He watched the lone uniform pull up and join them, and then he turned away, and headed on down into the village.

12

T HE THREE CATS crouched shivering on the roof of the Molena Point Little Theater, able only to listen to the music ofThe Nutcracker; on this cold night they could not enjoy the dancing and costumes and sets. Ordinarily, they would have slipped inside at the last minute behind the crowding audience, but with the icy wind blowing in through the open doors, those doors had been closed too quickly.

But even though they were shut out in the cold, the music filled their heads, dancing up through the roof. Kit’s fluffy tail twitched in delighted rhythm to the lilting cadences, to visions of Marie and Clara and the Nutcracker and the King of the Mice, to all the convoluted and interwoven scenes of the tale so sharply brought to life in the bright music. And now, as the theater let out, they peered downat the happy, departing crowd, looking for their friends.

Charlie Harper and Dorothy Street were the first of their party to emerge, presumably leaving their companions in the lobby lost in scattered conversations. As the two women headed up the street, the cats followed, padding across the icy roofs and across slippery oak branches and more roofs, making straight for the Patio Caf?. There the cats paused on the clay tiles looking down to the restaurant’s outdoor terrace as Charlie and Dorothy were seated. In the center of the terrace, a fire burned in the round brick fire pit, sending up welcome heat to warm their fur and paws and their cold noses. The patio, decorated with red swags along the eaves and huge pots of poinsettias, was crowded with late, cheerful diners, most of them talking about the ballet.

“Charlie had a ticket for Max,” Joe said. “I don’t think he’s into ballet, he opted out. Said because of the murder.”

“If not for the murder, he’d have gone,” Dulcie said shortly. “He’d go almost anywhere, to enjoy an evening out with Charlie.” She looked hard at Joe. “You likeThe Nutcracker, you just don’t want to admit it.” But then she turned her attention to Charlie and Dorothy.

The two women had been seated at a big round table beside the fire pit; though they were almost directly beneath the cats, their low conversation was hard to hear among the rising tangle of voices. Only Charlie was aware of them on the roof above. She glanced up once as they basked in the warmth from the blaze; she watched them sniffing at the heady scents of broiled shrimp and lobster, and she raised an eyebrow, then looked away again, hiding her smile.

The brick patio was enclosed on two sides by the restaurant itself, the other two by a two-foot-high wall topped with the pots of poinsettias and bright red winter cyclamens separating the caf? from the sidewalk. The street beyond was busy with tourists and locals coming from the theater or enjoying last-minute, late-evening Christmas shopping. The whole village was festivetonight, the shop doors hung with wreaths, the overhanging oaks and pines strung with colored lights-and their friends looked festive, too. The cats seldom saw Charlie in anything but jeans. Tonight she wore a soft, metallic-gold tunic over slim black pants, her untamable, kinky red hair bound back with a heavy gold clip, and a thick, golden stole over her shoulders. Dorothy Street was sharply tailored, very handsome with her sleek, dark hair, and her winter tan from running the beach, her clean beauty set off by a black silk blazer over crisp white pants and white boots. She had let her dark hair grow long, and was wearing it in a braid wrapped smoothly around her head-a more serious, finished look than the short, windblown mop she’d sported when she worked for Patty Rose as the retired actress’s assistant, an efficient young secretary who often went to work in jeans and sweatshirt and smelling of the sea. Now, as Patty’s heir and new owner of the inn, and as trustee for the Patty Rose Home and School, she presented a far more businesslike demeanor. The cats weren’t sure they liked her new look; but they supposed that status-conscious humans were impressed, and that that was good for business.

Dorothy was talking about a breakin at the Home, speaking so softly that over the noise of the other diners, the cats had to crouch low across the roof gutter to hear at all.

“Nothing was taken,” Dorothy was saying. “There’s nothing in there to take. Why would someone break into that old, empty studio? Not a stick of furniture, you can see through the windows that it’s empty. But the front door was jimmied last night, fresh scars in the molding. Last week, after we found the back door open, we changed the locks. But the next morning, two of the boys came to tell me they’d found a window open, banging in the wind.

“I went over, found the lock broken, and called the department again. It’s embarrassing to have to call them out for such a small thing, but…Whatever this is about, we need to find the cause before Ryan starts work. She’ll have material and power tools stored in there.”

Above, on the roof, the cats glanced at one another, wondering if that had been the work of the old tramp. On these cold nights, that old stone studio would be dry, all right, just as he’d said, a welcome retreat from rain and wind.

Charlie pushed back an escaped strand of red hair and gave the waiter a long, annoyed look where he lingered just beyond their table, coffeepot in hand. Charlie liked good service, but she didn’t like overt attention.

“The old window locks were easy enough to break,” Dorothy said. “Ryan says they were the original ones. That studio is nearly a hundred years old. She sent a carpenter over to replace them.”

Dorothy sipped her coffee.“That, combined with whatever happened in the plaza last night, is giving me the fidgets. I keep thinking about our Christmas bazaar, in a just few days, about how vulnerable we are up there, how vulnerable the children could be.

“I’ve hired six more guards,” she said softly, “besides the regular three.”

“You really do expect trouble? But…”

“I don’t know what to expect.”

Charlie frowned.“You think there’s some connection between the plaza murder and the breakins?”

“I don’t know, Charlie. But the two things at once…If we’d had only a simple breakin…But three times, without anything to steal. That’s so strange.”

“No possessions of Anna Stanhope’s left forgotten? Maybe tucked away in a closet?”

“Nothing. The few paintings that were left locked up in there, all those years after she died, and a few books and papers, we’d already removed and stored safely. Her son had long ago sent most of her remaining work up to her gallery in the city.”

“I understand that Anna was rather secretive, inclined to stash things away.”

Dorothy smiled.“I really don’t think there was anything left hidden. There’s nowhereto hide anything in that studio. I think that’s one of those stories that gets started-maybe John Stanhope started it, to boost the price of the studio when he sold it. I wouldn’t put it past him.”

John Stanhope, Anna’s son, had built the big, newer mansion on the property some years after Anna died. The mansion badly dwarfed the small, stone studio where Anna had lived and worked. Later he’d sold the studio as a separate dwelling, but had retained most of the estate grounds with the new mansion. When actress Patty Rose bought the mansion, wanting to convert it to a children’s home, the smaller house was not available. Then last year, after Patty died, the studio came on the market again, and Dorothy, representing the Patty Rose Trust, quickly bought it, thus reuniting the property. She meant to turn the historic studio into additional classrooms for the children, and she badly wanted to get started with the work right after the holidays.

“These breakins made me feel so…not just vulnerable,” Dorothy said, “but as if I’ve let Anna Stanhope down. She loved that old studio, she would not have liked this invasion. Her journal is full of entries about how happy she was there, and now I feel responsible that this has happened.

“But most of all, I’m worried for the children. I don’t want…It’s almost like a personal attack on the children themselves, that someone would break into the Home, where we’ve tried to make everything safe for them. Those kids…”

“Those orphan kids are like your own babies,” Charlie said. “But-you don’t think the intruder was some jealous village child, playing pranks?”

“That’s possible, I suppose. Certainly none of our children would do that.” Dorothy smoothed her dark hair. “Why do I keep trying to tie the breakins to the murder in the plaza? Assuming there was a murder. Howcould there be a connection? Why do I keep thinking of that?”

Charlie couldn’t answer.

“I don’t mean to talk about things you aren’t free to discuss.”

“There isn’t much to discuss-not until Max knows more about what happened there. Dorothy, I just don’t have any answers.”

“It isn’t my nature to fly apart,” Dorothy said. “I guess, after Patty was murdered last year, and the things that happened to her daughter and grandchild, that I’m overly nervous about our kids.”

“You have a right to be anxious. But you have extra guards in place, and you use an excellent agency. Have you talked with Max about…”

They looked up as Lucinda and Pedric Greenlaw along with Cora Lee French came in, crossing the terrace to join them. Cora Lee’s cousin, Donnie, and her housemate, Gabrielle Row, came in behind them, holding hands like youngsters, the two so wrapped up in each other that the cats had to smile.A Christmas romance, Dulcie thought, purring. It pleased her when older people found that kind of happiness. She looked at Donnie’s blond and white hair, and at Gabrielle’s blond dyed hair that was very likely graying, too, under that elegant color. The two were so attentive to each other that they hardly seemed to know anyone else was present.

The Greenlaws sat down next to Charlie. Lucinda had pulled a warm cashmere stole close around her shoulders, over her silver-toned wool suit. The elderly Greenlaw couple was the tortoiseshell kit’s human family, a tall pair of octogenarian newlyweds as spry and adventurous as folks half their age. Pedric looked handsome tonight in a pale cashmere sport coat, white shirt, and camel-toned tie and black slacks. The new arrivals had, as they entered the patio, also been talking about the Stanhope house, the subject having been brought to their attention by a large display in the theater lobby showing old photographs of Anna Stanhope’s studio and giving some of Anna’s background, as promotion for the Home’s bazaar and auction on Sunday.

“Over eighty years ago,” Cora Lee said, sitting down across from Charlie. “The village was really bohemian, then. So many famous names-Jack London, John Steinbeck, and a lot of lesser folk, all a close-knit group with Anna Stanhope. She worked for years in that small stone studio, hidden backin the woods.” Cora Lee’s dusky Creole beauty was set off by a simple cream velvet suit. Blond, bejeweled Gabrielle was overdressed as usual in a long blue satin gown, too much bright jewelry, and a pale real fox wrap. Donnie looked handsome indeed in a cream-colored cashmere suit, pale blue shirt, and tie-perhaps a bit overdressed or citified for the village, but a man whom all the women on the terrace were glancing at with thinly concealed interest.

“Where’s Lori?” Charlie asked Cora Lee. “She didn’t want to come?”

“We left her and Dillon holed up with that…” Gabrielle began; she went quiet at Charlie’s annoyed look and the faint shake of her head. Gabrielle looked surprised. Donnie hugged her closer, looking back at Charlie with sour disapproval, as if his ladylove could do or say no wrong.

“…busy with their playhouse,” Gabrielle finished, almost simpering. “I never saw two children work so long at anything. It’s really quite unusual.”

Everyone at the table knew that Gabrielle thought the playhouse was silly, that young girls should not undertake that kind of challenge against adult contenders. That two young girls could never complete such demanding carpentry work, that there was no way they could produce an acceptable construction, let alone win the huge prize they were hoping for. Gabrielle’s criticism was a sharp bone of contention between her and Cora Lee, one that Cora Lee tried her best to hide in deference to Donnie’s infatuation with her housemate.

Obviously, Charlie thought, Gabrielle had not bothered to look at the nearly finished playhouse, had not wanted to see how wonderful it was, and how well constructed. Nor had she considered that Dillon had trained for some time as a carpenter’s apprentice to Ryan Flannery. As Donnie tried to cheer Gabrielle, cajoling and flattering her, Charlie noticed her ring.

Reaching across the table, Charlie gently took Gabrielle’s hand, holding it up so the large diamond on her third finger gleamed in the firelight. Everyone at their table stopped talking, then all talked at once congratulating them as Gabrielle and Donnie beamed. Gabrielle managed to blush, and Donnie’s blue eyes were as bright and excited as the eyes of a boy. Across the table, Cora Lee smiled upon the happy couple like a proud parent.

“When did this happen?” Lucinda said. “When did you become officially engaged?”

“This afternoon,” Gabrielle said softly. “Donnie…I…It was a surprise. I…I’m still shaken. And it looks like we might move up to the city, too.”

“A job offer,” Donnie said. “They called this afternoon. A large company. If it pans out, looks like I might work myself into a managerial position within a year.”

They were still exclaiming and congratulating when the waiter brought additional menus and took drink orders, then turned away to linger, again, inside the door to the kitchen, keeping an eye on the tables. He returned with two additional menus as Clyde Damen and Ryan Flannery crossed the patio to join them.

Ryan looked beautiful tonight, her short dark hair windblown, her green eyes set off by a green velvet pullover, topping a slim black skirt, a green velvet shawl around her shoulders. The cats liked seeing their human friends dressed up; they were used to seeing Ryan and Charlie in comfortable jeans and work boots, Ryan because she was a builder, Charlie because she and Max kept horses up at their small ranch among the Molena Point hills.

And Clyde, who favored old worn jeans and ragged Tshirts, had made an effort, too. Joe Grey’s housemate was turned out in a tan suede sport coat, a black turtleneck, and cream slacks, was newly shaved, and his dark hair freshly cut. As he held Ryan’s chair, Dorothy looked up at Ryan questioningly.

“Nothing yet,” Ryan said, sitting down. “We could be in our graves before we get this permit.” As the project’s contractor, Ryan was out of patience waiting for city and county permits and the final okay from the historical society. “The planning commission knows you want to have the classrooms ready by spring semester, they know you have four new teachers coming.”

Dorothy nodded.“Without the new space, we’ll be really crowded. Well, we’ll make do-crowded doesn’t really matter, if the kids are excited about what they’re learning. Give them an intellectual challenge, show them how to run with it, and they’re happy.

“They’re looking forward to the new quarters, and to having a real fireplace in the big classroom, but they understand about the Historical Society-they know the old stone house is the only real monument left to Anna Stanhope.”

Lucinda said,“Her studio in the woods must have been lovely then, before her son cut down so many trees and built that big ostentatious mansion-though in the long run, that turned into a blessing, as if it was always meant to be a children’s home.”

“Strange to think,” Charlie said, “about the wild parties and unleashed sex and drugs that went on, when those things were far less common. And now the Stanhope house is a children’s refuge from just that kind of ugliness.”

“Those artists did more partying than work,” Gabrielle said, fluffing her fur wrap. “They just played at being artists and writers.”

“Not all of them,” Cora Lee said. “Not Anna Stanhope, she was a serious painter. She must have managed, somehow, to protect her privacy and working time. She was very dedicated, and very fine. She left a huge legacy of work.” Anna Stanhope’s paintings appeared in many fine collections andwere included in many art histories, the landscapes jewel rich in color, the essence of scenes they saw around them every day in the shifting California light.

“Haven’t you ever wondered,” Gabrielle said, “why her son boarded up the house all those years? I’m surprised the city let him.”

“It was his property,” Dorothy said. “He paid the taxes. He wasn’t breaking any law if he wanted to close it up. And he did come down from San Francisco sometimes, to check on its condition.”

“To clear out her paintings,” Gabrielle said. “Sold them a few at a time, in that gallery in the city.”

“Maybe he didn’t want to flood the market,” Cora Lee suggested. “They’ve increased so much in value.” Cora Lee’s own background as an artist lent her a quiet authority that silenced her housemate. Donnie, caught between his cousin and his fianc?e, kept out of it, silently sipping hisdrink. Dulcie was watching him, frowning, when her own housemate appeared hurrying up the street to join them.

Earlier in the evening, Dulcie had lain on the bed as Wilma dressed, and the tabby had pawed through Wilma’s jewelry box helping to choose which barrette Wilma would wear. They had agreed on an onyx-and-silver creation to clip back Wilma’s long silver hair and to complement her soft red jacket and long paisley skirt. Wilma Getz might be in her early sixties, but her tall figure was as slim as a girl’s. She walked several miles a day, and since she’d been kidnapped last summer, she worked out more often at the village gym, intending to be in far better shape if another of her old ex-parolees surprised her.

Dulcie watched her swing in through the patio’s little iron gate, cross between the crowded tables, and pull out the last chair at the big round table, sneaking a look underneath to see if the cats were there waiting for a bit of supper. Not seeing them, she glanced up to the roof, and hid a little smile.

When the waiter came for their orders, Wilma chose a shrimp bisque and, for dessert, a rich cr?me br?l?. Both were among Dulcie’s favorites. When Wilma ordered two of each, one meal for herself and one to go, Dulcie, above on the roof, hungrily licked her whiskers.

As Wilma sipped her coffee, Ryan looked across the table to the Greenlaws.“When do you want to go over plans for your remodel? I can come by any day, but better if it rains. We’re just starting a new house, so it’s all outside work, and rain will give me some free time. We’ve finished both the current remodels-both couples wanted to be settled back in by Christmas.” She grinned. “They’ll have to hustle. We did the best we could, but Christmas is almost on us.”

“What about now, tonight?” Lucinda said eagerly, glancing at Pedric.

The old man nodded.“Sooner the better. But if you’re starting a new job…”

“Just for a look?” Lucinda said. “A general idea, maybe enough to give us a rough estimate?”

“Enough,” Ryan said, “so I can draw a rough plan of the space and some tentative sketches, and can suggest some materials you could look at. The only thing that will hold me up is when we get the permit for the children’s home. Then it will be all-out, until it’s finished.”

“I still say,” Gabrielle said darkly, “it’s the public-school children who were allowed to transfer up there that has the city so riled and reluctant to issue the permit. I don’t see why those children did that.”

“Because the school is better,” Wilma said shortly. “Because those kids were bored out of their minds in public school.”

Gabrielle huffed impatiently, as if Wilma knew nothing about children or about learning.

The small exodus of students from public school up to Patty Rose had created a deep anger among some of the village teachers. Both Lori and Dillon had transferred, both girls rebelling when Lori was told by her principal that she was not allowed to attend the school of her choice. Lori Reed did not take well to being told that she could not do what she longed to do-not without a logical reason, not by strangers, certainly not by a county bureaucracy.“What do they mean, Ican’t?” Lori had ranted. “When did this country turn into a slave state!” The girls said that a few teachers were so dull, they put everyone to sleep, that they weren’t learning anything, that all they did was follow workbooks like robots, so why shouldn’t they turn to a school that challenged them? Dillon’s parents and Cora Lee had fought the school officials for months to make that happen.

“Our remodel,” Lucinda was telling Ryan, “is pretty straightforward, if we can turn the half bath into a small kitchen. And it’s all inside work, so maybe you could work on rainy days when you can’t be on the new job.”

“The way the weather’s been,” Ryan said, “an inside job for rainy days will be a big help, if you can live with the delays. It could be a very long delay, for the Orphans’ Home, and that could be frustrating for you.” That was the biggest complaint Ryan heard about contractors, that they would juggle several jobs at once, pull men back and forth, and prolong all the work. Some clients were demanding penalty agreements from contractors, a hundred dollars a day off the bill, for not meeting the finish date.

“We don’t mind delays,” Pedric said. “One thing, though. First day you have free, could you take a look at the plumbing? There seems to be a leak somewhere. Sometimes for short periods we hear water running, but then it stops. We’ve checked inside and out, but we can find nothing.”

“Could you come tonight?” Lucinda said again, eagerly.

Ryan glanced at her watch.“It isn’t too late for you?”

“Ordinarily, it might be,” Lucinda said, laughing. “I think, tonight, we’re too energized, our heads too full of the ballet, to go right to bed, even to read. And too full of ideas for the apartment.”

Ryan nodded, glancing at Clyde.“We’ll meet you up at your place, then.”

Above them on the roof, the kit moved nervously. She wanted to be home before Ryan got there and they all went downstairs to those empty rooms.

Kit, too, had puzzled over the strange behavior of the water pipes. And prowling the backyard, she’d thought she caught the scent of a stranger. Though sometimes the neighbors crossed there, coming down from the street above rather than going around the block, so she couldn’t be sure-but now suddenly as she thought about her old folks and Ryan and Clyde entering those dark rooms, a shock ofunease gripped the tortoiseshell cat. And her fear sent her spinning away toward home, racing across the rooftops, wanting to have a look before her humans entered that empty downstairs apartment.

13

R ACING HOME OVER night-dark rooftops, Kit crossed high above the many-colored Christmas lights of the shop-lined streets, leaping from peak to peak and then spanning above the shadowed streets on spreading oak limbs. At last on her own block she scrambled down a pine trunk into a dense cover of dry needles, and raced through a tangle of gardens toward home, stopping only when her own house towered high over her, its plaster walls pale in the night, its two stories of decks looking down over the village. From the front, the Greenlaw house faced the end of a quiet cul-de-sac, and appeared to be one story. But here at the back, on the downhill side, the windows and decks of the main floor and the daylight basement looked out over the lower street to the far, tree-shaded cottages and shops of the village.

Lucinda and Pedric had bought the house for its view of the village and the open green hills beyond. The real-estate ads had said it provided, as well,“a glimpse of the sea,” but Pedric said you’d throw your neck out trying to see the ocean from that vantage. Their plan was to convert the downstairs rooms to a separate apartment so that at some future time they could have a live-in, personal caretaker. But one of the biggest selling points was not a part of the house at all.

On the west side of the house stood five old twisted oak trees, and tucked among their highest branches, half hidden, was a sturdy tree house. It had been built for the previous owner’s children-and it was now Kit’s own. A private retreat that Kit considered nearly as elegant as Joe Grey’s rooftop tower, a shingled aerie that she could reach from the dining-room window across a thick oak branch or, of course, up the trunk from the garden below. The day they moved in, Pedric had installed a cat door in the bottom of the dining-room window.

Tonight the old couple had left lights on in the dining and living rooms, and Kit, approaching the warmth and smells of home, began to purr a happy rumble-but suddenly she froze, listening.

That sound. The pipes again. Water running in the house. And this time, in the night’s silence, without competing neighborhood noises, she knew that it came from the downstairs bath.

Slipping in among the bushes beside the lower floor, she could hear someone there, all right, in the unoccupied downstairs bathroom. Someone moving softly about, an intruder where no human should be. She approached the lower deck stealthily, and across it to the sliding-glass door that served as the outside entry.

The downstairs was dark. She could see down the hall, but no light burned, not even a flashlight. Crouching on the little entry deck, she was peering through the glass doors into the black interior of the empty family room when, inside, someone coughed. Kit backed away into the shadows.

She waited for some time, but hearing nothing more, she slipped closer and reared up against the glass. A cold wind nipped at her backside, ruffling her fur and tugging at her tail, carrying with it the smell of a new storm, smell of rain approaching, smell of ozone. Pressing her nose to the cold surface, she tried to see in.

She could discern no one inside, no movement down the dark central hall. Examining the lock, she didn’t think it had been broken or tampered with, she could see no scars or scratches on it, nothing bent, no screws removed. And no one could have come down from upstairs. Months before, one of Ryan’s carpenters had sealed off the inner stairway with timbers and plywood, so there was no access. The only way in was here, through this six-foot glass door, which was reached from the upper level by the outside stairs to this deck.

Quickly she circled the lower floor, slipping along among the bushes and flowers close to the wall, moving back and looking up at each window to see if it might have been jimmied. In the dark, she could see no damage, they all looked securely locked. No fresh scratches, no tool marks. Coming around to the narrower, front deck, she hopped up there and reared tall to examine the front windows.

Here, along the front, there were no sliding-glass doors, as one would expect to open onto a deck, only windows. Below her, as she padded along, the lights of the village sparkled and shifted between the deck’s rails. Overhead the stars were fast disappearing as storm clouds gathered, carrying the serious smell of rain-then suddenly she caught a human smell, the smell of a woman.

The fact that the intruder was a woman made little difference, a woman could be just as violent as a man, just as cruel to a small cat. Pausing beneath the window where the scent came strongest, she could see tool marks there, all right. Scars on the molding and a tiny slit where the lower half of the double-hung window had been left open a crack. The woman’s scent was strong-cheap bath powder, cheaper hair spray, and female perspiration.

On silent paws Kit leaped to the sill. Pushed up the glass and slipped under, into the long dark family room.

Padding across the big, empty room to the dark hallway, she looked down its length, considering the open doors. On her left were two small bedrooms that she knew had a bath between. On the right, a half bath next to the family room, and behind it the blocked-off stair leading up to the main level. At the back, the original laundry room. Lucinda had installed a new washer and dryer upstairs. There was no sound now. The woman’s scent led up the hall.

Was she waiting there in the dark for Lucinda and Pedric to get home? But why wait down here, if she meant to rob them? Had she thought, breaking in, that she could get up to the main level from inside and burglarize the house while they were out? When she found the stair blocked off, she would have had to change her plans.

So, what did she mean to do now?

But Clyde and Ryan were with the old couple, and those two hot-tempered, younger folk would handle the housebreaker.

Except, what if she had a gun? Neither Clyde nor Ryan, out on a date, was likely to be armed, Kit thought, amused.

How dangerous was this person? Or was she only some homeless woman taking shelter from the winter cold? Kit imagined her luxuriating in a hot shower, to get warm. Would there be, in one of the two small bedrooms, a thin, dusty bedroll or a pad of old newspapers or maybe old discarded clothes and food wrappers? Moving silently, tensed to spring away, Kit had started up the dark hall when she heard the Greenlaw car, on the street above, turn in to the drive. And behind her, light bloomed through the glass door as the outdoor security lights came on. Ahead, down the hall, there was no sound. She heard the garage door rise up on its metal track, heard the car pull in-she heard movement near her again as the woman slipped softly across the front bedroom. Above Kit, the car doors opened and slammed, then the garage door rumbled closed.

At the end of the hall, a figure appeared, a dark silhouette. The woman stood looking, and then started toward Kit.

I am only a shadow, Kit told herself.A smudge of darkness, black on black to human eyes. She heard, above her, the door open from the garage into the kitchen. She heard Lucinda and Pedric cross the kitchen to the living room-and out on the street, two more car doors slammed. The woman had paused again, as if listening. More light bloomed through the glass sliders as additional yard lights went on. She heard the upstairs front door open, then Ryan’s voice, then Clyde. Someone closed the front door and locked it, she heard the dead bolt slide home, then multiple footsteps came along the stone walk above, and down the wooden stairs. The woman had vanished into the far bedroom, stirring about in a flurry.She’s going to run, Kit thought, ducking into a corner.This way, down the hall? Or out a front window? But the narrow deck along the front was a full story above the ground.

She’s trapped, Kit thought. And like any trapped creature, this could make her more dangerous. Kit had to warn her old couple. She spun around, racing back down the hall. Beyond the glass, Clyde and Pedric were talking as Lucinda fit her key into the lock. As the lock clicked open and Pedric slid the door back, Kit flew at them, streaking through the open door, leaping at Lucinda, mewling and crying in Lucinda’s arms, her tail lashing, her claws going in, in a way she never did, and desperately flinging herself at Lucinda’s ear, whispering-she’d hardly gotten a word out when footsteps pounded down the hall and the woman bolted straight at them.

From Lucinda’s shoulder, Kit leaped desperately into the intruder’s face. The woman screamed and grabbed Kit and flung her violently aside and bolted past Lucinda, nearly knocking her down.

Pedric and Ryan caught Lucinda between them as Clyde dove at the dark-clad woman. She tripped him and was past him and out the open glass door, racing down the lower stairs to the backyard, her dark coat flapping, Clyde hard on her heels, and Ryan close behind, as she crashed away though the woods; she was thin, very fast.

Lucinda picked up Kit and held her, burying her face in Kit’s fur. “Are you hurt? Did she hurt you?”

“No,” Kit whispered.

Pedric, when he saw that Lucinda and Kit were all right, followed Clyde and Ryan, running after the woman.

Alone with Lucinda, Kit nuzzled her face.“I heard the water running down here and then I smelled her and I came in to see and then you got home and I couldn’t shout out to you because Ryan would hear, and I let that woman…Oh, she could have killed you. Oh, Lucinda…”

“It’s all right, Kit. You did warn me. Hush now, hush.”

“I saw her face in the light for an instant,” Kit whispered. “Thin. Bony, like a starving stray. Big nose. Thin legs in tight black jeans, and that dark, floppy coat. Dark hair. And I smelled her.”

Kit would not forget the woman’s scent, she would retain that precise identification as unerringly as the AFIS retained the record of a perp’s fingerprints, or as the lab would record the DNA of a felon or of some unfortunate victim.

14

I N THE COLD night, Ryan and Clyde and Pedric returned from chasing the burglar, panting and ashamed to have lost the fast and elusive woman.“Disappeared in the heavy woods like a running deer,” Pedric grumbled. “All overgrown, tangles of blackberries back in there, catching and slowing us.”

“We were halfway through,” Clyde said, “could hear her crashing, then silence, and in a minute a car started, maybe a block away. Went roaring off without lights-we couldn’t see the plates.”

Pedric leaned against the wall, the thin old man getting his breath. Ryan put her arm around Lucinda.“Are you all right?” She looked at the kit. “This little cat tried to warn you. I’ve never seen such a thing, the way she leaped at you…And then she leaped at that woman, scratching and raking…” She reached to stroke Kit’s ears. “No dog could have done better. She’s a real watchcat, Lucinda. But how did she…Did she come in on our heels? She must have, and then she heard something we didn’t. What a fine cat you are, Kit! I wouldn’t have believed a cat would turn so fierce to protect her human family…Even Rock, who was a trained guard dog, couldn’t have done better!” Kit purred and smiled. Such praise, from Ryan Flannery, was, indeed, a grand compliment.

Holding Kit close, Lucinda smiled shyly at Ryan.“I guess cats are more complicated than people imagine. They’re strange little beings, and often, when they think there’s a need, they’re very creative little souls.”

“She was creative tonight,” Ryan said with admiration.

Kit purred for Ryan, watching her with interest. Ryan Flannery, Kit thought generously, had simply never been around cats. Ryan had never, she decided smugly, had the opportunity to deal with the amazing feline mystique.

Behind Ryan, Clyde and Pedric were looking exceedingly uneasy. Lucinda, not wanting Ryan to become too interested in the abilities of certain cats, said almost cloyingly,“She sure did hear something, poor little thing. But to be fair, maybe she wasn’t warning me at all. Maybe she ran to me for protection. I think,” she said, “that we often misread our animals.”

“Maybe,” Ryan said doubtfully-she might not know cats, but she knew animal body language, and Kit’s behavior had been a sharp warning, not a panicky bid for help.

In the dark and empty family room, Pedric switched on the lights and he and Clyde examined the windows, quickly finding the jimmied panel. Moving on down the hall, they turned on the lights in each empty room. Ryan and Lucinda followed them, Lucinda still cuddling Kit-they found nothing until they reached the back bedroom.

There, in the far corner, propped against the wall, stood a black canvas backpack. There were marks on the windowsill near it, where the thin coat of dust had been disturbed, as if something small had lain there. And Ryan found, half hidden behind one closed venetian blind, an empty film cartridge, carelessly abandoned or forgotten.

Using a tissue, she picked up the little plastic cylinder, wrapped it, and tucked it in her pocket.“Thirty-five-millimeter. Strange thing for a burglar to leave in a house. Unless…” She looked at Pedric. “Did you have a camera down here? Any camera equipment?”

“Nothing,” Pedric said. “There was nothing at all to take, these rooms were all just as you see them, bare as old bones.” Taking a clean linen handkerchief from his pocket, he covered his hand, knelt a bit stiffly, and opened the backpack. Touching the items within as little as possible, helifted them out one by one and lined them up on the floor. Binoculars. A thin plastic grocery bag that contained candy bars and a dry cheese sandwich, two unopened boxes of film, and an expensive-looking camera with a telephoto lens.

Clyde and Ryan moved to the window together, looking away down the hill between the Greenlaws’ oak trees to where the next house loomed, surrounded by woods. Three windows were faintly lighted behind drawn shades.

“Not much to take pictures of,” Ryan said.

“That’s a rental,” Lucinda said. “New neighbors, they just moved in.”

Pedric was examining the film. He handed it to Clyde.“Regular thirty-five-millimeter. Fast, four hundred speed.”

Behind Ryan, Lucinda looked down at Kit, questioning. The tortoiseshell, forced to remain silent, twitched her ears and flicked her tail in a clear gesture:I don’t know any more than you do,Lucinda! Kit had hardly noticed the new neighbors, and that embarrassed her.She was supposed to be the spy in the family, and now she knew no more about those tenants than she knew about the black-clad, sour-faced woman who had invaded their home. All this going on unheeded, right in plain sight, right under her supposedly sleuthing paws.

“I remember,” Clyde said, “seeing a moving truck over there, a week or two ago.”

“Two men and a woman,” Lucinda said. “A big woman, tall, not fat. Sturdy-looking. Shoulder-length dark hair. There wasn’t much in the moving truck that I could see, some cardboard boxes, only a few pieces of furniture, old and tacky. I think that house rented furnished.”

Ryan cut a look at her, and laughed, and Lucinda grinned at her.“Nosy neighbor-nosy old woman.”

“Not old. And not nosy,” Ryan said, putting her arm around Lucinda. “Just observant. But I couldn’t resist.” They stood a moment, Lucinda counting back the days.

“It was about a week before they moved in that I saw a Pine Tree Rental Agency car over there, saw an agent go in and out a couple of times.”

Outside, the wind was coming stronger, rattling the old windows and driving the scent of rain in around the glass. Again Pedric examined the marks on the sill.“Looks like she balanced the camera here. What’s so important that she would break in, with the purpose of taking pictures of that house or of its occupants?”

Clyde said,“You haven’t met the neighbors, don’t know anything about them?”

Pedric shook his head.

Ryan, kneeling over the camera, studied its cumbersome telephoto attachment, then carefully searched the nearly empty backpack, slipping her tissue-covered hand into its inner pockets.

The last pocket yielded a large manila envelope and a smaller yellow envelope that bore the Kodak emblem, the kind one would pick up at the drugstore photo counter. She glanced into the brown envelope, then slid both inside her jacket.“Let’s get out of here. We can look at these upstairs, and call the department.” Replacing the camera and binoculars and plastic bag in the backpack, Ryan did not see Lucinda’s look of hesitation at the mention of calling the dispatcher.

They took the backpack with them. They left the jimmied front window ajar, as they’d found it, and locked the sliding doors behind them. Lucinda carried Kit, talking softly to her, though Kit wasn’t free to answer.

“You scared that woman bad,” Lucinda said, stroking Kit. “I wish I could make you understand how wonderful you were.”

Kit purred and snuggled against her.

“When you leaped and screamed like that, you very likely saved me from a far more violent attack, Kit.” Lucinda scratched Kit’s ears. “You’re way smarter than any watchdog, my dear!” Lucinda gave her a wink that no one saw, and Kit didn’t dare even smile. She hid her face against Lucinda’s shoulder to keep from giggling. Clyde cut them a half-warning and half-amused look, and turned away. Pedric had moved on ahead; if he was smiling, no one saw. Everyone but Ryan knew the truth about Kit, it was only Ryan Flannery who didn’t have a clue.

Kit wouldn’t mind Ryan knowing her secret-hers and Joe’s and Dulcie’s secret. Ryan was a good person, and certainly the cats trusted her. But so many people knew already that it really wasn’t smart to tell anyone else. Despite the best intentions, important secrets had a way of escaping as quickly asmice slipping from a cracked barrel.

Charlie had figured it out, as had Lucinda and Pedric. As had more than one of the criminals who the cats had helped send to prison-and that was more than enough people knowing. Ryan, being Detective Garza’s niece, might find it very hard indeed not to let their secret slip-look how hard it was for Charlie.

Kit knew, too well, that Charlie was sometimes sorry she knew. Such knowledge had to be awkward for a police chief’s wife, when the cats in question were the chief’s prime informants-and when they spent so much time on Max Harper’s desk pretending to be simple little freeloaders. The worst of it was, the cats had no idea how long they could keep up their charade before even that hard-nosed cop guessed the truth.

Everyone moved upstairs into the big, raftered living room, and Lucinda lit a fire and turned on the Christmas-tree lights. The house smelled of ginger and vanilla and that sweetly scorched smell of cookies that had browned around the edges. While Clyde and Pedric walked through the rooms to be sure the woman hadn’t gotten in there, too, Ryan, sitting down at the dining table, put on a pair of Lucinda’s cotton gloves and shook out the contents of the two envelopes. Lucinda fetched her own takeout container of shrimp bisque and warmed it, and set Kit’s late-supper snack on the dining-room windowsill. Kit, wolfing down her good supper, watched Ryan examine the photos from the yellow Kodak folder.

“A roll of twelve,” Ryan said, “processed through the Village Drugstore.” She shook her head. “Under the name Jane Jones.” She looked up at Lucinda. “Are you going to call the station?”

“I’d like to wait a bit. Let’s have a look at these, first. The woman’s long gone, by now.”

Ryan looked at her, frowning, but said nothing. Lucinda sat down beside the younger woman, studying the individual photos as Ryan laid them out. All twelve shots were of the neighbor’s house, all with the same distorted perspective produced by the telephoto lens, the house and figures sharp enough, but the trees in the foreground looking flat and out of focus. Two pictures showed a man inside at a window. Three showed a woman at another window. Six showed two different men outside the house, two of those with the woman as well. The last shot was of a car coming down the drive, the woman at the wheel. When Clyde and Pedric joined them, Pedric picked up Kit from the windowsill and held her in his arms as he sat down so she could see better. It was the nine-by-twelve pages from the larger envelope that made them all uneasy.

Ryan lined them up. Each sheet of slick white paper was printed with four color photographs. The twenty pictures were all of a different location. Lucinda’s hand trembled as she reached out for the nearest page. Ryan stopped her, taking her hand, and offered the older woman the package of cotton gloves.

“Those are pictures of the Patty Rose Home,” Lucinda said, pulling on the gloves, so upset she’d forgotten about fingerprints. She brought the sheet closer. “What does she want with pictures of the Anna Stanhope estate-pictures of the children?” And already, within herself, Lucinda fearedthe answer.

Two of the twenty pictures were of the Stanhope mansion with its appealing Tudor design, its dark timbers incising their strong patterns across the pale plaster walls. Three pictures were of different angles of the artist’s small home and studio, a simple stone building constructed in the early part of the previous century. The other fifteen photos showed the buildings at more distance, with the children in the foreground running and playing in the tree-shaded garden and on the playground. Five of those were close-ups of individual little girls, all distorted by the telephoto lens, which flattened the perspective and made the pictures seem even more immediate and threatening. All five little girls had pale skin and black hair, and it was this detail that brought Kit sharply alert and made her shiver. All five little girls resembled, in coloring, the child she’d seen huddled against the dead man.

“Max needs to see these,” Ryan said. “Now, tonight. And you need to report the breakin to him, before that woman comes back.”

Lucinda looked at her uncertainly.

“When she finds the pictures and camera missing,” Ryan said, “she’ll do one of two things. Either she’ll run, or she’ll come up here to take these back. Possibly take them back, armed.”

“I…If she were armed,” Lucinda said, “she would have drawn on us downstairs.”

“You don’t know that. We don’t know what she’ll do. She might have a gun hidden somewhere else, in a car maybe. Bring it back with her.” Ryan looked hard at her. “Call the station, Lucinda. Or I will.” And she glanced through to the kitchen, to the phone that stood on the counter.

Pedric put his arm around Lucinda.“Ryan’s right.”

Lucinda nodded, rose, and headed reluctantly for the phone. Kit watched her, puzzled, and didn’t understand what held Lucinda back. This was not like her. As Lucinda talked with the dispatcher, Ryan looked at Clyde. He was scowling, and silent.

“What?” she said, laying her hand over his.

He shrugged.“I guess…Just that we don’t need this stuff at Christmas.”

But Clyde was thinking far more: Joe Grey and Dulcie and Kit were already in stalking mode, drawn into last night’s murder. And whatever the cats were into made huge waves in the lives of their three families and Charlie. Now here was another involvement, which, no matter how valuable the cats’ contribution might turn out to be, would keep their human friends totally uptight for the rest of the Christmas season, keep everyone on edge waiting for unseen complications-or for disaster. Would increase everyone’s stress level at a time that should be restful, restorative, and filled only with Christmas joy.

For some reason, Clyde thought, laughing at himself, he had innocently imagined a quiet Christmas this year. Lowkey suppers and relaxed parties with close friends. He and Ryan snuggled before the fire on Christmas Eve sipping eggnog and opening small, personal gifts while the tomcat dozed idly beside the hearth, content with the season and with his own Christmas eggnog.

Well, hell, Clyde thought. Living with Joe Grey, he should know that kind of holiday was not to be.

But then, when he glanced at the kit, expecting to see the wild flame of challenge that crime always generated blazing in her yellow eyes, he saw, instead, only a puzzled frown. Kit’s full and suspicious attention was keenly on Lucinda. And when Clyde looked into the kitchen where Lucinda was talking with the dispatcher at Molena Point PD, it was Lucinda’s eyes that burned with challenge-Lucinda Greenlaw looked as excited, and as sly and secretive, as the tortoiseshell kit ever had.

15

J OE GREY DIDN’T learn about the Greenlaws’ intruder until Clyde got home late that night. When Clyde ’s car pulled in, the tomcat was asleep in his tower, among the cushions, lying on his back with his four paws in the air. The reflection of moving car lights flashing across the tower’s conical ceiling woke him. He blinked and flipped over among the pillows, his nose to the glass, looking down to the drive to make sure that it was really Clyde pulling in.

Joe’s private, cat-size tower, rising four feet above the roof of the second floor, with its unique hexagonal shape and operable, full-length windows, was a masterpiece of luxury and, Dulcie said, ostentation. Joe disagreed about that-the tower was, in his mind, simply a utilitarian source of comfort, unimpeded view, weather control, and fast and easy access to the rooftops. To hell with ostentation.

As he listened to the purr of Clyde’s antique roadster, wild barking erupted from the back patio, where Ryan’s big Weimaraner had spent the evening. Joe rose and stretched, then lay down again, listening as Clyde and Ryan let Rock in the house, laughing and greeting him. He listened to kitchen noises as they made coffee and fixed a snack, and soon the smell of coffee rose up to him. Outside his tower, the night wind increased, fitfully shaking the glass and hustling the oaks and pines against the shingles, and smelling sharply of rain. He didn’t head downstairs-as lonely as he felt at that moment and as fond as he was ofRyan, he could not talk in front of her. If he went down, as out of sorts as he was, the enforced silence would leave him even more irritable.

He’d gone to sleep thinking about the little frightened child, so alone and terrified at Christmastime. He’d chided himself for growing sentimental, but he’d waked hurting for her, and badly needing company. Now, irritated by his own shaky and sentimental mood, he wondered if he was sickening for something.

He listened to the buzz of conversation from below, waiting and dozing until he heard Ryan’s truck pull away and he could go on down and talk freely. Could dump some of his misery on Clyde.

Slipping quickly through his cat door onto the rafter above Clyde’s desk, he dropped down onto a mess of paperwork, most likely orders for engine parts, and then to the floor. He was crouched to race downstairs when he heard Clyde slamming things into the refrigerator and rattling ice: quick, angry noises that clearly telegraphed a fight, or at best a lovers’ quarrel.Oh, hell. Not a fight with Ryan, not at Christmas! The two seldom argued, even mildly, though they unmercifully teased each other. Trotting reluctantly down the stairs, knowing that Clyde might need a sympathetic friend, too, he pushed in through the kitchen door, leaped to the table, and silently watched his housemate irritably mixing a bourbon and water.

Clyde turned, his scowl deep, his dark eyes worried.“What the hell do you want?”

“Milk and gingerbread?” Joe asked meekly.

“I suppose you want it warmed!”

“Yes, please.” Joe studied his housemate’s dark scowl as Clyde poured a bowl of milk, broke a thick slice of gingerbread into it, and put the bowl in the microwave. In a moment Clyde set the warm bowl, and his own drink, on the table. The tomcat looked sternly at him. “You and Ryan had a fight?”

“We didn’t fight. We were having a discussion. We had a very nice evening. I don’t need you to spoil it.”

“Then why all the slamming around? Why the scowl?” Joe’s yellow eyes burned at Clyde. “What happened up at the Greenlaws’?”

Clyde glared, and didn’t answer.

“What?” Joe said.

“Just for tonight, Joe, could you just eat and come to bed, like a normal, ordinary house cat?”

“What? What happened, up there?”

Wind buffeted the kitchen windows, then eased off. From the living room the fresh pine scent of the Christmas tree drifted through the house, mingling with the smell of the gingerbread that Clyde had made as part of an early dinner before he and Ryan headed for the ballet.

Ordinarily, Clyde would have taken Ryan out to dinner, but neither one had been in the mood for the incredibly crowded restaurants on a theater night. Instead, he’d fixed a simple supper that they’d eaten in the living room before the fire, enjoying the Christmas tree that they’d decorated together.I am, Clyde thought, amused,getting to be a regular homebody.

This Christmas, in fact, he found himself entertaining thoughts of marriage; the theme played so repeatedly that he was glad the gray tomcat couldn’t read his mind. Joe couldn’t keep one damned opinion to himself, he’d have way too much to say on the matter.

“So, what happened?” Joe said, patiently licking milk from his whiskers.

Clyde sighed. He really had no choice. The damned cat would just keep on pushing, as nosy as a case-hardened cop. No one who’d ever lived with Joe Grey, when the tomcat felt left out of the loop, would deliberately withhold information and incur his verbal abuse, as sharp as his threatening claws.

Refreshing his drink, then settling again at the kitchen table, reluctantly Clyde filled Joe in on the Greenlaws’ female intruder, the backpack and camera, and the two envelopes of pictures. He’d barely finished when Joe’s ears twitched toward the living room, and he crouched ready to spring away through his cat door. Clyde rose fast, shut the kitchen door, and stood in front of it. Like a flash Joe leaped for the big doggy door that led out to the back patio, not looking carefully in his haste.

He hit the locked plywood cover, bouncing back, as off balance as a flailing cartoon cat.

Clyde restrained a belly laugh. He had set the cover in place after Ryan and Rock left. He had, in fact, locked the dog door every night since old Rube died, since the black Lab was no longer sleeping right there, near the two-foot-high opening, to ward off potential burglars. Even Clyde himself, in an emergency, could squeeze through that dog door. Though it was unlikely an intruder would take the trouble to breach their patio walls, in these days of weird crimes, who knew what a thief might do.

With Joe trapped unceremoniously in the kitchen, Clyde picked him up. Joe growled and bared his teeth. Clyde set him down on the table again, and held him by the nape of his neck in a way that enraged the tomcat.

“Just listen, Joe. Just listen for one minute. Then, if you insist on heading for the Greenlaws’, okay.”

Joe glanced toward the closed kitchen door. Clyde squeezed the fold of skin more firmly.“Harper’s up there. Lucinda was calling him when we left. By this time, he’s going through the apartment, maybe with Dallas, maybe the two of them already fingerprinting and taking photographs. Don’t you think it would seem strange if you came waltzing in, quite by accident, in the middle of the night? How many times in the past have you appeared precipitously at a crime scene and made Max Harper wonder? How many times has Dallas Garza looked at you strangely? How many times have those guys watched you so closely you began to squirm?”

“Don’t squeeze so hard. That hurts!”

“How many times, before even those hard-nosed cops areforced to guess the truth?” Clyde leaned down, his face inches from Joe’s face. “Max Harper isn’t stupid. Dallas Garza isn’t stupid. Neither wouldwant to believe in talking cats. But you keep pushing it, Joe, and they may no longer be able to avoid the truth.”

Joe sighed.

“Do you really want to hasten the arrival of that cataclysmic day?”

Joe just looked at him.

“You don’t think Harper gets uneasy, with you three cats showing up every time they’re working a case? You don’t think he wonders about all the times evidence has appeared ‘mysteriously’ at the back door of the station? You don’t think he gets goose bumps every time an anonymous snitch calls in a new tip-and that tip brings in the goods? You don’t think that makes a cop edgy?”

Clyde let go of his neck and propped a chair against the kitchen door.“Have you thought about would happen if Max Harper ever takes the time to really think about this! To put aside all his more immediate concerns, put aside his natural skepticism, and really examine this phenomenon?”

“Of course I’ve thought about it. How could I not think about it? Don’t be such a nag!” Joe had thought about the matter more than he wanted to admit-and about the possible repercussions.

From a purely selfish aspect, if he and Dulcie and Kit blew their cover with the law, life would change dramatically for them. But their human families would suffer far more. Clyde, Wilma, and the Greenlaws-and Charlie Harper, the chief’s own wife-would be the ones in the hot seat. Their silence would render them far more guilty, in Max’s eyes, than the cats themselves.

There was no way, if Max ever did suspect the truth, that Charlie could convince him of her own ignorance. Not when, in her forthcoming book, both her drawings and her story revealed such a keen knowledge of feline nature that Max marveled at her perception, at her amazing intimacy with feline secrets. Max was already impressed to the point where he sometimes looked at Charlie in the same way that he studied the cats, puzzled and just a bit uncomfortable.

The bottom line was, instead of heading for the Greenlaws’ and making Harper wonder, Joe padded docilely up the stairs beside Clyde and crawled into bed-making sure to hog both pillows. Drifting off, he thought he’d catch just a few winks and then, in the small hours after Harper had left the Greenlaws’, he’d slip on up there and get the scoop from Kit.

Maybe they’d toss the downstairs rooms, too, to see what the law might have missed. Then they’d go get Dulcie, and hit the station-innocent, hungry, freeloading little cats. Get a look at Harper’s report and at the photos. And the tomcat fell asleep wondering about those pictures of the children.

But when he was deep under, his dreams of the orphan children and the breakins at the school and at the Greenlaws’, and of the body under the Christmas tree and that little girl huddled in the pump house all tangled together in confusion badly frightening him.

He woke worn-out, hissing and angry. He felt better only when, trotting downstairs to the kitchen, he found Clyde in a cheerful mood again, an omelet already waiting for him on his side of the breakfast table and the morning paper opened neatly beside it. He did not, tucking in to his breakfast, question the change in Clyde’s demeanor, from grouchy to sunny. Clyde seemed almost as if he’d settled some personal quandary, made some decision. But maybe it was only that he had finally decided, at the last minute, what to get Ryan for Christmas.

16

W HILE JOE GREY twitched through fitful dreams of threatened children and secret photographs and jimmied windows, the tortoiseshell kit took the investigation into her own paws. She woke several hours after Max Harper left her house. The sky outside the bedroom window was black. The lighted dial of the bedside clock said 5 A.M. The cold winter wind huffed at the windows, sending a chill over the top of the blankets. Lying tucked warmly between Pedric and Lucinda, she woke so filled with questions that she couldn’t help but wriggle and scratch at nonexistent fleas, was so fitful that after a few minutes Pedric turned over, irritably glaring at her, stared at the bedside clock, and glared again at Kit.

Ashamed of waking him, Kit dropped off the bed and raced away through the house to the dining room. Leaping to the window and out her cat door, and across the oak branch to her tree house, she looked down to the rental house-not a sign of Christmas cheer down there, no bright tree or colored lights, though the other neighbors’ Christmas lights, even at this hour, were cheerily burning. No smells of Christmas from that rental, just the smell of mud and rotting leaves surrounding the old neglected dwelling, sad and depressing and somehow coldly foreboding.

But someone was awake down there, already stirring. A light was on in the kitchen and she could see movement behind the shade.

Twice last week she’d seen the woman leave very early. Now, backing down the thick oak trunk, dislodging bits of bark with her claws, she hit the ground running. It crossed her mind that she might be foolish to prowl there alone and try to get inside, among strangers, that she really should wait for Joe and Dulcie,for a little backup, an additional arsenal of tooth and claw.

But Kit didn’t often heed the wiser choice, it wasn’t her nature to wait for the safer moment. Right now she felt far too impatient. Belting down the hill through the oak woods, she paused in their leafy shadows, her paws sinking deep in masses of wet leaves, looking up at the old, dusty windows.

They were all closed and covered with cheap brown window shades hanging slightly askew. As she circled, looking up at the flaking tan walls and studying each window, her paws were soon soaking. If there had ever been a lawn, generations of leaves had long since eaten it away. All she needed was one window left open, and she could be up and through in an instant.

She didn’t know, at this point, who was on the right side of the law, these three strangers or the woman who had spied on them. Or maybe they were all on the wrong side. Crooks against crooks?

She ignored the fact that there had as yet been no crime committed by these three, that the only criminal act was that of the woman breaking into Kit’s own home. She ignored the possibility that the woman’s spying might be the result of a domestic crisis, perhaps a cheating husband, a situation in which the Molena Point police wouldn’t have the slightest interest unless it turned violent. At that moment, the tortoiseshell kit wanted only to know why that woman had been spying, to know what she found so compelling.

There was no garden walk leading around the house, just the deep layer of wet oak leaves beneath the dripping trees. Soon not only her paws were soaked, but her legs and belly and tail, her long, fluffy fur sodden with icy water. Circling the house, she could see no windows open. The light had gone off in the kitchen; now that room, too, was dark. Three times she crouched to leap up to a first-floor windowsill, hoping to force an ancient lock, but each time, a frightened chill made her drop down again and sent her hurrying on around, not really knowing what had scared her.

She could hear no movement within, but at the back of the house, when she paused beneath the higher windows of an upstairs bedroom, she could hear the soft, slow breathing of someone asleep; and at the next bedroom window she heard the same. Trotting around the far side and up onto the driveway, she left dark, wet paw prints on the pale concrete. The car that stood in the drive was cold and dripping with dew, its tires and wheels cold, the air around the hood reflecting back to her only the night’s chill. She wondered why they didn’t use the garage.

How could it be full? It was a double garage, and she hadn’t noticed another car down here; and when they moved in she hadn’t seen very many boxes. That day, as the movers unloaded, as she and Lucinda watched through the dining-room window, Pedric had teased them about being nosy, and he had disdained to spy on the new neighbors-but later they saw himsecretly looking, and they’d grinned at each other.

The garage protruded out beyond the skinny front porch. Padding along beside it, Kit approached the three concrete steps leading up to the front door. Above her in the garage wall were three high little windows, so small they’d be a tight squeeze for a human. Might one of those have been left unlocked? But when she reared up to look closer, they appeared to be covered from the inside with plywood or cardboard.

She considered the thin trellis beside the porch, where a dead vine clung. From its top rung she could easily leap to the first sill and try to get in. If thatwas only cardboard, wouldn’t it be taped or tacked to the window frame? If she could fight the window open, maybe the covering would go with it.

Silently she padded across the porch between a dozen empty clay pots, some tilted over, spilling dried clods of earth and dried-up ferns, brown and brittle, maybe abandoned by some previous renter. Crouching, ready to leap and scale the trellis, she heard footsteps within the house and before she could run, the porch light blazed on and the front door flew open. Kit froze, hunched among the pots, hoping her dark mottled fur looked like just another dry fern.

She could smell sleep on the woman who stepped out. A tall woman, her dark hair hanging lank and dry. She was fully dressed, but hurriedly so, her blouse only half buttoned over dark jeans, and over that, a heavy black peacoat. She didn’t notice Kit; she shut the door behind her and the lock clicked. But then, fumbling with her car keys, she glanced down-and caught her breath, staring straight at Kit, and backed away from her with a look of fear that quickly flared to anger.

Phobic, Kit thought.I’m in luck, she’s scared of me, she…The woman dove at Kit, striking out at her. Kit yowled and clawed her hand, and ran; as she hit the drive she glanced back, ducked as a clay pot came flying. It crashed on the concrete inches from her, flinging shards in her face; she leaped away, terrified, through the deep leaves and up an oaktree, climbing and not stopping until she was so high among the tangled leaves that the woman couldn’t see her.

There she crouched, shivering and licking sweat from her paws and wanting suddenly to be home, wanting to be held and comforted, wanting to be home with Lucinda and Pedric. She had done some wild break-and-enters, but never where someone threw things at her, threw great, hard pots at a poor little cat.

If that pot had hit her, it could have done her in. She imagined her lifeless body sprawled on the drive as flat as highway kill, imagined her two old folks finding her there and kneeling over her, weeping. Imagined her little cat spirit wandering alone and lost in some mysterious otherworldly realm as she tried to find her way into cat heaven. And she wanted to be gently held and comforted.

But she couldn’t go barging into the bedroom soaking wet and covered with rotting leaves, reduced to nothing but a heap of trembling fear. Nor did she want to explain to Lucinda and Pedric where she’d been, after they’d warned her not to go snooping around that place.

No one had ever thrown things at her like a stray mutt, not since she was a starving kitten and a man in an alley had thrown a shoe at her. That had frightened her very much, had enraged and shamed her because she was so small and alone that she could not fight back.

That shame filled her now, and she was not ready to go home.

Leaping through the oak branches to the next tree and the next, she headed away across the roofs for Dulcie’s house. Dulcie would understand. Both Dulcie and Wilma might scold her for being reckless, but she would not be embarrassed to confess to them, as she would with Lucinda and Pedric. Through the dark predawn she ran, the sky above her streaking with paler gray, the sea wind fingering cold into her wet fur.

Wilma’s garden flowers were wet, too, when she plowed through; she was soaked when she plunged in through Dulcie’s cat door, the plastic flap slapping her backside like a powerful hand chastising her.

She stood in Wilma’s kitchen dripping onto the blue linoleum, sniffing the lingering scents of cr?me br?l? and chowder from last night, of Dulcie’s late-evening snack that Wilma had brought home, and of the Christmas tree from the living room. And the aroma of freshly brewed coffee, too, which she followed through the familiar house; crossing the dining room toward the hall and Wilma’s bedroom, she paused, dripping water on the Oriental rug, to look in at the Christmas tree; it shone bright and festive with its white and silver and red decorations gleaming among the deep green needles. She looked withinterest at the richly wrapped gifts, then moved on, following the smell of fresh coffee.

Dulcie’s housemate so loved coffee in bed that when she woke up she would pad barefoot out to the kitchen, switch on the coffeepot, wait patiently in the cold dark dawn, then carry a full mug back to bed, where she’d tuck up again beneath the warm, flowered quilt. Kit found her so now, sitting up in bed cradling a steaming mug, a warm fire lit in the woodstove, and Dulcie curled by her side looking up sleepily as Kit entered.

“What?” Wilma said, putting out her hand, seeing clearly Kit’s distress; and Dulcie leaped down to sniff her face and her wet fur.

“Where have you been?” Dulcie said. “Oh, what happened?”

“Come up, Kit,” Wilma said, patting the covers. “Come up and get warm, I don’t care if you’re wet.”

Leaping up onto the quilt, Kit snuggled down between them. She was silent for a long time, getting warm, licking at her wet fur, and wondering where to begin. She remained silent until Wilma lifted her chin and looked into her face.

“What, Kit? What upset you?”

Sensibly, Kit started from the beginning, from the moment last night when she’d left Dulcie and Joe on the roof of the Patio Caf?. Carefully she told everything that had happened since, every little detail. If she didn’t tell it all, Clyde or the Greenlaws would-and if Kit told it first, she could tell it her way.

17

A S WILMA GETZ sipped her coffee in bed, and Kit snuggled down between her and Dulcie telling all about the Greenlaws’ breakin, up in the hills at the Harper ranch, Charlie Harper hurried to do her morning chores, feeding the horses and dogs, turning them out into the pasture and cleaning the stalls. The sky was barely light, the time not quite seven. Max had left for the station some time ago, warmed by a breakfast of buckwheat pancakes and thick sliced bacon. Charlie, seeing him off, had stood in the stable yard watching his truck move away up their long, gravel road, worrying because he never got enough sleep. At the far end of the road, as he turned onto the highway, Max had blinked his lights once and then he was gone over the rise, heading down to the village.

He’d been up late the night before with the Greenlaw breakin, and the night before that he’d gotten to bed later still because of the missing body. Max wasn’t the kind of chief to stay in bed and leave his men to do all the legwork; but it was hard sometimes to rein herself in and not fuss at him that he needed rest.

Last night’s late rain had left the ranch yard muddy and squishing under her boots. As she entered the barn, dawn was beginning to brighten the sky. The air was as cold and fresh as springwater. Soon, as the sun rose, the pasture grass would gleam emerald bright-this time of year the four horses were wild to get out of their stalls, hungry to get at the new sweet grass. Besides Max’s big buckskin gelding and her own sorrel mare, they were boarding the kids’ horses now, a dun mustang that young Dillon Thurwell’s parents had bought for her, and a small, borrowed mare called Parsnip, named for hercolor, who had been a fine teaching pony for younger Lori Reed.

Lori was experienced enough now for a bigger and more challenging mount, but she so loved Parsnip that Max and Charlie had hesitated to return the little mare to her owners. As Charlie fed the horses and the two big dogs and then turned them all out to the pasture, her thoughts moved from the disappearing body to the Greenlaws’ mysterious intruder, her head filled with a tangle of questions. The department would come up with the answers, given time-but how much time was there for that scared little girl?

And was there a connection between the child and the breakin at the Patty Rose Home? It seemed to Charlie there had to be, if someone was secretly taking pictures of the orphan children.

As late as it had been last night when Max got home from the Greenlaws’, he’d described the breakin and the photographs; he had been royally irritated that Lucinda had refused to press charges. Without charges they couldn’t arrest the woman, nor could they officially do much to investigate the incident. Max said Pedric had tried to reason with Lucinda, but Lucinda wouldn’t give, and that wasn’t like her at all. She’d said she wanted a few days to see what the woman was up to, and had promised not to put herself in danger. But why did Lucinda care about a woman who’d broken into their home?

When Max pointed out that there could be a connection between this woman, the neighbors, and the breakin at the school, Lucinda had shrugged it off. That, too, was not like sensible Lucinda Greenlaw. Lucinda knew the woman could be violent, but she wouldn’t listen.

It wasn’t as if the older lady didn’t believe bad things could happen; Lucinda’s first husband had turned out to be a thief and philanderer. After he’d deceived her for years, Lucinda had grown far more wary.

She’d been so lucky to meet and marry Pedric; he had helped her through that time, and was a dear. But then, while the two were on their extended honeymoon trip in their RV, they had been kidnapped and nearly killed. Pedric’s cleverness, and the toughness of both old folks, had saved them.

That was when they changed their minds about building their new home up on the crest of isolated Hellhag Hill, and decided to settle instead in the village, closer to law enforcement and to medical facilities. The Greenlaws weren’t cowards, far from it, but at eighty-some, it can be nice to have certain support services near at hand. Their biggest consideration, however, had been the fact that Kit would be closer to Joe and Dulcie, that the little cat wouldn’t have that long and sometimes dangerous race up and down thehills to the village.So, Charlie thought,when Lucinda is usually so levelheaded and sensible, why is she suddenly so protective of this housebreaker? Well, maybe I can talk to her.

J AMES KUDA THOUGHT again about the moves he had made, about the car and the body. Not likely they’d be found for a while-not until he was long gone, had put the West Coast behind him.

Having left the garage of the empty house, driving at a normal rate through the dark village streets, he’d headed south down Highway One, the waves thundering high and violent below the dropping cliffs-big, hungry waves. To his left, though he hadn’t been able to see much in the dark, were the rolling hills dotted with small, scattered ranches; he’d glimpsed only a couple of lights up there, atthat predawn hour. With his window open he’d enjoyed the cold wind and the roar of the crashing sea, the smell of salt and iodine-had relished the sound of the extra-high tide. He always read the tide schedules, as well as the society page that offered up a nice working bible, a regular menu of lucrative possibilities, more than one man could ever make use of. Driving slowly, he’d watched the cliff carefully for the turnoff, which was nearly invisible in the dark.

He supposed he could have dumped the body somewhere up there beyond those ranches where the land turned wild, dumped and buried it. Days before, he’d driven all around up there, and looked. Had spotted that cop’s ranch, too-saw the chief’s truck and a couple of squad cars parked there, saw lights blazing in the house and heard music and laughter. Wouldn’t that be a joke, if he buried it on that police chief’s land?

Yeah, it would. Tantamount to teasing a maddened rattlesnake. And what was the point? No, that Max Harper would come after him with a vengeance.

He’d left no ID on the body or in the car, no prints but the victim’s own and the kid’s. Anyway, his own prints weren’t on record; he’d always been careful about that.

Making his turn in the pitch-dark, and dimming his lights to park, he’d eased along the edge of the cliff, pulled up where it dropped smoothly down. Setting the hand brake, he’d sat there a moment thinking, then swung out of the car, on the highway side. Found a long heavy rock just the right shape, careful to walk only on the bare stone outcroppings where the cliff had been cut to build the highway.

Pulling the body over into the driver’s seat, he’d retrieved the bike from the trunk and set it upright on the asphalt. Then, returning to the car, he’d set the rock ready, reached in and started the engine again, and in one practiced motion had shoved the rock in place against the gas pedal, slammed it in gear, released the brake and dove away fast, clearing the door as the car shot over the side.

He’d stood listening to tons of metal thudding and dropping against the rocks, the scrape of metal on rock, the sudden explosive crash into the sea-listening to the altered rhythm of the breakers suddenly as the vehicle sank, the sucking sound, and then the rising waves returning again to their owncadence, breaking only against the cliff.

Still stepping carefully only on the stone outcroppings, he’d returned to the highway, swung onto the bike, and headed back toward the village, the sky still dark, heavy with cloud. He’d almost cheered aloud when he felt a few drops of water on his face, and heard the rain start to pelt behind him-a good rain to wash away the tire marks. The way the weather had been, nothing was sure, but he’d lucked out, this time. Nothing in life was sure, he thought, smiling. You took it the best way you could.

18

H AVING FINISHED HER stable work, Charlie loaded the big portfolio of her newest etchings and drawings into her Blazer, changed her muddy boots for cleaner ones, hastily brushed her hair and clipped the red mass back out the way. Making sure the house was locked, she headed down the hills to deliver the last pieces of work to the framer, driving slowly, drinking in the morning, enjoying the emerald-bright pastures dropping ahead of her. The sky was a clear azure above the dark blue sea, the tide high and wild. Where the hills rose darker with scattered pines and brush, a long white streak of fog trailed across their brightening crests, a veil as thin and delicate as a chiffon scarf. It was on such a dawn as this that she imagined flying in that clear air, that she wished she could see all the earth at once reeling below her, the next emerald hill and the next, on forever. No wonder some wild souls couldn’t stay out of the sky, sacrificing all luxuries and many necessities for a way of life that counted for far more. But, horse-poor or airplane-poor, such folks were content and happy.

She arrived at the framer’s so filled with the morning’s beauty that she didn’t want to make small talk; she was glad Jim Barker wasn’t a big talker, that this slight, graying man understood silence. He spoke only to promise he’d have the eight pieces of work ready by Friday, when the gallery would be hanging hershow. “With Sicily Aronson,” the thin, balding man said gently, “one has no choice but to be on time.”

Driving the few blocks from Barker’s to the gallery, enjoying the festive shop windows with their holly and wreaths and beautiful wares, she parked two car lengths behind her own blue Chevy cleaning van. She guessed the girls were cleaning up the gallery after the last of the remodeling. Hurrying in, she stopped to talk with Mavity Flowers, who was mopping the Mexican tile floor. She could hear the water running in the powder room, where one of the girls would be cleaning the fixtures and tile. Little wrinkled Mavity Flowers was sixty-some but she liked to work, and she liked the work she did, liked making things bright andclean; and she was certainly healthy and strong. As one of Cora Lee’s housemates, she did much of the cleaning at home, too, while Cora Lee and Susan took care of the shopping and garden.

But this morning, Mavity seemed distracted. Setting aside her mop, she looked up at Charlie.“You’re not going to sell the van?”

“Of course not. What made you think that? Not after Clyde rebuilt the engine and we fitted it all out for the cleaning and repairs. Why…What did you hear?”

“Susansaid that was silly. I was going to tell you about it, but then decided it was nothing. I was leaving the Johnson house, Monday a week ago. There was a man looking at the van, walking round and round it. I stepped back inside, I don’t think he saw me. He looked and looked, wrote down something on a pad of paper, and then he left. He was walking, he had no car that I saw. I wish I’d asked him what he was doing.”

“It’s all right. What did he look like?”

“Thin face, short haircut that made his big ears look even bigger. A real narrow face, and black, bushy eyebrows.”

“Maybe a tourist,” Charlie said. “If you see him around the van again, let me know. Or call Mabel, have her send a patrol car around. Whatever he wants, that should put a stop to it. Where’s Sicily?”

Mavity nodded in the direction of the new archway that had been cut into the adjoining caf?. “This is real nice, the way she cut through.”

Charlie smiled.“I like it, too.” She gave Mavity a little hug, and went on through to the restaurant to join Sicily. The gallery owner sat at a back table where a wall of windows looked out on the patio, each window decorated now with a border of holly. Though the gallery had been left plain and stark, to show off Charlie’s work, the restaurant was all done up for Christmas, red swags from the rafters, a decorated tree in the far corner, and, of course, the scent of Christmas baking. Sicily, at her table, looked sleek and elegant, as usual, in black tights, a camel tunic, and half a dozen handmade necklaces-making Charlie wish, as she clumped on back in her jeans and boots, that she’d taken time to change her clothes.

“Coffee?” Sicily said, indicating a silver pot. “Have a cinnamon twist.” She pushed the plate toward Charlie. “It’s their new recipe, and it’s wonderful.”

The little caf? had opened only a month ago, when a dress shop moved out, to larger quarters. Sicily and the new owner had decided to join forces, and had been joined, as well, by the bookstore next door, which now opened to the caf? on the opposite side, through a second archway. The three owners had named their enterprise the Hub, and though the gallery had been there for years and was one of the busiest in the village, the new joint venture was an exciting addition. All three businesses opened to the back garden, where additional small tables welcomed patrons.

Some sour-minded people said a gallery and caf? and bookstore wouldn’t mix, that none of them would do well. But the complex was indeed becoming a hub, as the owners had anticipated. Sicily’s had already been popular; and the new bookstore was well stocked and cozy, with a warm, attentive staff who really knew books, who were eager to do special orders, and who paid a singular attention to all the local writers. Charlie, glancing from their table through to the bookstore, could see copies of her new book stacked high on a front table before a poster of the book jacket, awaiting Saturday’s signing. Charlie’s drawing on the jacketshowed a startled, big-eyed Kit, one tortoiseshell paw lifted, whether in alarm or surprise, Charlie had left to the imagination.

“They already have a long reserve list,” Sicily said. “Customers wanting signed copies.” She sat observing Charlie. “You haven’t said a word. Aren’t you excited?”

“Excited? I’m ecstatic! My second one-man show, and my first book signing-and one of your wonderful parties.” She took in Sicily ’s costume, delighted as always by her friend’s choice of clothes. Her jewelry today was silver, wooden beads and small, handmade clay medallions, her tunic nipped in by a wood-and-silver belt, her dark hair piled high and held by silver clips.

“You’ve finished the gallery work,” Charlie said, looking back through the archway at the new, movable walls all freshly painted-all waiting for Charlie’s drawings and prints, most of which were stored in the back.

“Cora Lee’s cousin Donnie did the remodel,” Sicily said. “The arches, everything. Didn’t he do a nice job? When I found I’d have to wait weeks for Ryan, that she’d be able to start only about now, Donnie stepped right in. He’s good, Charlie. Someone’s going to snatch him up for full-time work. Maybe Ryan herself, when she sees this. Look at the detail, and the molding.”

“He’s cute, too,” Charlie said, watching Sicily.

Sicily grinned.“Those big blue eyes and that nice crew cut. I love blond hair with a touch of gray-when it’s set off by a good build and a nice tan.”

Charlie laughed.“Donnie French has to be pushing sixty, he grew up with Cora Lee. Heis cute, but…I hate to tell you, but Gabrielle is wearing his engagement ring. As of yesterday, I think.”

Sicily shrugged.“Well, cute is cute. And maybe I still have a chance. From what I hear he’s a shameless flirt, comes on to every attractive woman he meets. Maybe Gabrielle won’t tolerate that for long.”

“And would you?” Charlie said, teasing. “How long would that last, with you?”

“Not long,” Sicily said, laughing. “I just said he was cute, not that I have my sights set on him. Although…” They both laughed. But Sicily Aronson wasn’t a fool over a good-looking man; she was a keen businesswoman, clever and skilled and no pushover for just any cute guy.

“He has done nice work,” Charlie said, considering the beautiful plastering job around the archway and the smoothly installed, curved molding. The gallery was done in off-white, the tall white exhibit panels reaching, on one side, to within a few feet of the balcony where smaller paintings and drawings were hung. “He seems skilled at so many things. You’re right, I don’t know why Ryan hasn’t hired him. She’s always complaining about having more work than she has reliable men.”

“Maybe Donnie doesn’t want to tie himself down,” Sicily said. “He was in, this morning, for a minute, to pick up some tools he’d left, said he was headed for the city on a job interview. He said something about a child, that Detective Davis had stopped by their place with a little girl intow. What was that about?”

Charlie looked blankly at Sicily.“I don’t think Davis has any grandchildren, but I could be wrong.” She shrugged. “Some of the other officers have little kids. Maybe Davis is babysitting. On company time,” she said, laughing.

She had no idea why Juana Davis or Cora Lee hadn’t warned Donnie not to talk about the child, when Max wanted the little girl protected. “Well,” she said, trying not to telegraph her unease, “Donnie Frenchis attractive, and he’s just as kind and friendly as he can be.” She didn’t know what it was about Donnie French that bothered her. Probably some pointless association that had no basis. Inwardly shrugging, she busied herself with her cinnamon twist.

“And what was that about, in the paper this morning?” Sicily said. “A body someone thought they saw, under the village tree? That’s pretty bizarre. Some prankster call, I bet. I heard the sirens-what a pity, to bring out practically the whole department for nothing, on a stormy night.”

“Max left so early, and I had the horses to feed-we didn’t talk much this morning. I was hoping that, during Christmas, Max and the men might have some time off.”

“It would be nice if you and Max could have a little vacation. If you don’t even have time to talk to each other…You’re not…Having problems?”

Charlie laughed.“We’re fine, Sicily.”

“Youwere cheated out of your honeymoon.” Sicily picked up the empty pot and signaled the waitress for more coffee. Then, more gently, “Maybe you’ll have time, now, to get away. With the book long finished and this exhibit put together-and already three great reviews on the book-you do need a breather. When you leave here, go on over to the station, Charlie, see if you can entice Max away for an early lunch. He can’t be that busy.”

“It’s a thought,” Charlie said. She was used to Sicily ’s managing ways, they didn’t usually annoy her. And she would like to stop by the station to see if anything more had turned up on the Greenlaws’ breakin. She couldn’t get her mind off the danger the two older folks might have been in last night, couldn’t shake her sense of unease for them.

She didn’t mention the incident to Sicily. That, too, was not yet public knowledge. She would talk to no one about it except those who already knew-including three nosy cats, she thought uneasily. Probably the cats were at the station right now, slyly absorbing newly arrived electronic intelligence-fingerprint information, DMV records…She was more than a little curious, herself.

“Why the grin?”

“Thinking about the show,” Charlie lied. “About Saturday night, about these rooms crowded with people, about the wonderful parties you always throw.” But then suddenly a wave of panic struck her. “What if… Sicily, what if no one…?”

Sicily laughed.“Have you ever been to one of my openings that wasn’t packed, and with the most elegant and influential people?”

“Never,” Charlie said, smiling in return. “I just…”

“Nerves,” Sicily said, patting Charlie’s hand like a solicitous mother. “Go have lunch with Max. Go shopping, spend some money, buy something frivolous, that’ll brighten your day.”

But Charlie wasn’t in a mood for shopping. Leaving the gallery, she headed straight for Molena Point PD. Maybe Max could tear himself away, if not for lunch, then for a late-morning coffee break-and maybe she’d see Juana, and the little girl. She wanted to tell Davis and Max that Donnie French was talking indiscreetly about the child.

The morning after the Christmas-tree incident, Max had looked distressed and angry when he told her about the three cats snuggled up with the little girl, and she could do nothing but brush it off.“ Clyde lives right behind the plaza, Max. I imagine his cat does roam in those gardens, that’s safer for a cat than the street.”

“And the other cats? Wilma’s cat? Greenlaws’ cat? Why would…?”

“They hang out together,” she’d said with a shrug. “You know how cats are.”

“No, Charlie, I don’t know how cats are. I know dogs hang out together. I know horses hang out together. I’ve always believed that cats were loners.”

“No.” She’d laughed. “Cats are just as social. They’re simply quieter about it. You’ve never been around cats very much. Look how Clyde ’s cat hangs around the station. That’s about as social as a cat can get.”

“That’s because Mabel feeds him.”

She shook her head.“Joeis a very sociable cat. I’ve watched him, and I think he likes you and Dallas. Cats are fascinating, Max. They’re all so different from one another.”

Max had to take her word for it. Charlie, having studied cats for her drawings and for her new book, had gained a reputation with him as an unchallengeable authority on the subject.And that, Charlie thought,is just the way I want it. As long as Max considered her an authority, she might be able to sidetrack his doubts.

But maybe I am an authority, she thought, hiding a laugh,considering what I know about the talents of certain felines.

19

T HE CHILL, SUNNY morning had warmed considerably as Charlie left her car, walking between the pale stucco courthouse, the broad parking area, and the courthouse gardens that were bright with red and pink camellias and cyclamen. Moving into the station through the heavy glass door, she stopped at the dispatcher’s desk to chat with blond, middle-aged Mabel Farthy. She admired Mabel’s countertop Christmas tree, and handed Mabel the bakery box that she’d bought from Jolly’s Deli, picking it up on her way from the gallery.

“Not homemade,” she told Mabel. “The spirit’s willing, but I can’t seem to find the time. They’re good, though,” she said, opening the box of Christmas cookies. “I sampled a couple, at the deli, just to make sure.”

They gossiped idly until Mabel’s radios demanded attention, then Charlie moved on down the hall to Max’s office. There she paused, swallowing back a laugh.

Max sat at his desk, deep into a stack of paperwork. When he looked up and saw her, his lean face broke into a grin. Across the room, Dallas sat on the leather couch behind a messy stack of files spread out before him on the coffee table. But it was the other three occupants who made her smile: from beneath the credenza, Dulcie’s green eyes and Kit’s yellow gaze met hers, as wide and innocent as kittens’. And from the book shelves behind Max, between volumes of the California Penal Code, Joe Grey looked boldly back at her.

Max’s closed, cop’s look had vanished at the sight of her, his brown eyes lighting with pleasure. “Come join us. Get yourself some coffee, we were just going over the Greenlaws’ breakin, you can help us brainstorm.”

Flattered, Charlie poured a mug of coffee and sat down in the leather chair from where she could catch glimpses of Dulcie and Kit. Max’s office was welcoming and comfortable, nothing like the old, noisy corner of the open squad room, before he’d bullied the city into remodeling the department-nice oak desk, leather chair and couch just nicely worn, the deep-colored Persian rug that Charlie had contributed, and three walls hung with her drawings of Max’s other love, his buckskin gelding.

Settling down into the leather chair, balancing her coffee, she thought how handsome Max looked, leathery and lean-and all hers, she thought, suppressing a grin.“What did you get on the prints?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Nothing on the woman who broke into Greenlaws’. Nothing on the prints from the Christmas-tree scene.”

“You mean they haven’t come back yet? They must be backed up.”

“No, I mean both sets came back negative. National, and regional.”

“I can’t believe that.”

“It happens. Guy doesn’t have a record, never been in the military, has never applied for a government or sensitive job.”

Behind Max, Joe Grey looked royally annoyed. But at Garza’s glance, he busied himself washing his paws. Max and Dallas were used to Joe prowling their offices, but this intense scrutiny wasn’t needed. Charlie knew both men enjoyed the tomcat’s company, though they wouldn’t admit it. Maybe a friendly, visiting animal is as therapeutic for a cop asit is for a hospital patient. A little purr to break the tension. Therapy cats for cops, the latest medical break-through-soothing feline intervention for overstressed law enforcement. If she didn’t stop, she was going to giggle.

But as Max laid out what they did have on the Greenlaws’ burglar, the cats were not in a nurturing mood. Watching the three little beasts, Charlie could see clearly their sharp annoyance at the lack of information.

There was nothing the three cats valued so highly as the nationwide electronic data available within the department-that intelligence, plus their access to the officers’ private discussions, all provided needed answers and filled in empty spaces. Without these visits, their clandestine assistance to Molena Point PD would be much less helpful; every investigation in which the cats took part was, unknown to the officers, a cooperative effort between feline and cop, reinforced by nationwide electronic resources.

“Possibly we have the make on the woman’s car,” Max said. “Car’s been parked for several days on different streets near the Greenlaws’. Four neighborhood complaints. Brennan was about to have it hauled off. It’s registered to Evina Woods. Eugene, Oregon, address that turned out to be a vacant lot. Cameron is lifting prints-but there’s not much else we can do, unless the Greenlaws file charges.”

“I thought,” Charlie said, “that by this morning Lucinda might have changed her mind.”

Max shook his head.“I’ve never known Lucinda to be so indecisive. Or hardheaded. She knows a break-and-enter can turn ugly. Says she wants a couple of days to watch the woman, see what she does.”

“That just isn’t like Lucinda,” Charlie said. “What if thisis connected to the breakins at the school? Or to the murder or whatever happened in the plaza?”

“We don’t know that,” Max said.

“You said yourself you don’t believe in coincidences.”

“I don’t believe in jumping to conclusions, either. But,” he said, his voice softening, “we do know that the little girl wasn’t molested, and that’s good news.”

“Has she told Davis anything?”

“She still hasn’t spoken. Maybe shecan’t speak, though the doctors could find no physical cause.”

Dallas said,“The bloodstains on her clothes and around the Christmas tree were human, all type O positive, that’s pretty common. Looks like the body was dragged into the car that was backed up into the plaza.”

“And still no witnesses?” Charlie said. “No one came forward after the newspaper article?”

“Not yet,” Max said. “If we had a make on the vehicle, something besides the tire casts…”

“They don’t match the car around the Greenlaws’ house?”

Max shook his head.“We’ve found no connection.”

“But what if there were? What if that woman turned out to be the killer, hiding at the Greenlaws’? Is Lucinda thinking of that?”

“That’s all conjecture, Charlie. We can’t force Lucinda to file.”

“But Pedric…”

“Pedric is standing back, this time. If we had anything to put that woman at the plaza-”

“Not her prints?”

“No. Nothing.” Max rose to fill his coffee cup. “Half my mind says Lucinda’s being foolish. The other half says listen to her, let her run with it.”

Charlie looked at him.“That’s why she talked you into leaving the camera and backpack there. Into printing the pictures, copying them, then putting them back in the empty apartment.”

Max nodded, his thin, lined face expressionless.

“Anything on the people this woman’s watching?” Charlie said.

Dallas said,“The names they gave the rental agent are Betty and Ralph Wicken, Eugene, Oregon. No record under those names on the West Coast. We’re waiting for the national report. There’s another man with them. He’s not on the rental agreement.

“The Kodak envelope was marked Jane Jones.” Dallas shook his head. “Really original. I talked with the photo clerk at the drugstore this morning, he remembers a woman, same description as Greenlaws’ burglar, bringing in an envelope of photos she claimed was given to her by mistake. She saidboth inner envelopes got into the one outer envelope, into the one with her own name on it. She may match the description of a customer who did some machine copies at Mail Boxes.”

“The woman,” Max said, “could be spying on a strayed husband, maybe he and his girlfriend moved into that rental. In that case, without a complaint from the Greenlaws that she broke in, we have nothing.”

“Unless,” Dallas said, “we feel she or the Wickens present a threat to the school. With those pictures…”

“I’m on my way up to talk with Dorothy Street,” Max said, “to show her the photographs.” He looked at Charlie. “We ran half a dozen sets last night, and some enlargements, before I took them back to the Greenlaws’. And we’re increasing patrols around the school. We can’t let this lie, with children involved. If we had the Wickens’ fingerprints and could come up with an old warrant, something to bring them in for questioning…I don’t…”

Charlie’s attention was snapped away by a flurry of movement beneath the credenza. Pretending to choke on her coffee, she leaned down-staring straight into Kit’s blazing yellow eyes.

The tortoiseshell was so tense and excited suddenly that Charlie was afraid she’d speak. Dulcie must have feared the same, the way she was pawing at Kit.Oh, Kit! Charlie thought as she mopped up her coffee.Be still, Kit! Please be quiet! What had Max said that so electrified the little cat? What did Kit know? Or suddenly remember?

20

T HE CATS VANISHED from Max’s office like smoke, one instant there, the next instant slipping out the door: three swift shadows, quickly gone. Charlie left close behind them, muttering something about shopping. Max said, “Come back around noon, I’ll try to get away for lunch.” He’d patted her on the backside and sent her out the door.

She’d wanted to follow the cats, but by the time she pushed through the glass door to the street, they were gone. She stood scanning the gardens and then moved to her car, stood looking back at the roof to catch a glimpse of them.

She saw only a flock of pigeons fluttering down as if returning to their strutting ground after being rudely rousted, and imagined the cats flushing them up in a panic as they sped away across the tiles. Sighing, she got in her car, and with no cats to follow, she went shopping.

K IT TOLD JOE and Dulcie on the way, running full out, as wild as bees in a windstorm.“When I went down there,” she said, leaping a narrow span between peaks, “that woman came out of the house and threw a clay flowerpot at me.” She went silent as they raced across an oak branch above the Christmas traffic.

“So?” Dulcie said. “So what’s the excitement? You’re lucky she didn’t…”

But Joe Grey was grinning from ear to ear; and he and Kit raced ahead like Thoroughbreds sprinting for the finish line.

Kit looked back at Dulcie once, with impatience.“Comeon. Hurry! Before she throws it away!”

Dulcie hurried, puzzled and irritated. Kit ran so fast she couldn’t talk anymore; not until they were in sight of Kit’s own house did she stop again, long enough to blurt, “Fingerprints! Dallas and Harper want fingerprints, and that woman…”

“Threw the pot,” Dulcie interrupted, getting the picture at last, and they were off again, streaking for Kit’s house.

Above them the sky was deep blue, the clouds white and towering where last night’s storm had given way to a bright and dramatic morning. Kit was crouched to scorch up the oak to her dining-room window when she saw Lucinda looking out-the moment Lucinda saw her, the old lady drew back out of sight.

She doesn’t want me to see her? Kit thought, surprised.Why ever not? That’s fine with me, she doesn’t need to see us around that rental, after she told me to stay away. Maybe she’s wrapping a present and doesn’t want me to see, maybe that’s why she ducked…

Climbing, the three cats waited hidden among the densest leaves of the oak until Lucinda left the room, then Kit leaped to the window and slipped in through her cat door, making not a sound. Racing for the kitchen and pawing open a cupboard, she was out again almost at once, carrying in her mouth an empty plastic bag. She bolted out her cat door as Lucinda came out of the bedroom and they were gone, racing downhill, lunging awkwardly through the sodden leaves toward the old rental.

A S THE CATS paused in the neighbors’ driveway, Kit dangling her white plastic bag, across the village in a small caf?, James Kuda sat at a table in the far corner among the shadows, though very likely he had no need to hide. He was annoyed at himself for feeling edgy. The place was self-service, there was only the cashier, back behind the counter. Kuda sat mulling over what he’d seen.

A weird twist of fate-or maybe providence-that he’d spotted that homeless guy in the village wearing what looked like his cast-away shoes. The shoes that he’d left in the highway Dumpster. Grizzled old tramp. Well, he’d left them there thinking a homeless man might fish them out. Better than some cop finding them. By the time the guy had walked the highway from that Dumpster into the village, there’d be nothing left clinging in the soles, no trace from the plaza. And what police department would have the time and personnel to check every pair of shoes walking around town, when there wasn’t even a body to investigate? When all theyhad was a scared kid who probably wouldn’t talk, a little blood, and apparently some phone call that could be the work of some prankster or drunk?

Not likely they had a bullet, he was pretty sure that hollow-point.22 had stayed in the skull where he’d put it. Rising to fill his cup again, he thought about that kid. Still not sure what to do about her.

It would take some kind of miracle for her to tell what she’d seen. He had to laugh, the cops hauling her around from one place to another trying to protect her. Some kind of security. He’d have no trouble at all if he decided to kill her, if he decided she was a threat. That cop taking her up to those four helpless women, that was a laugh. And that old cracker-box house-might as well hide her in a paper bag.

It might come to that, he thought, he might have to go after the kid, if there was some unexpected turn. Or, worst case, he might have to get out faster than he’d planned-and he wasn’t ready, he wasn’t finished, yet, with his business.

Well, he wasn’t going to panic now, and run, turn his back on half a million or maybe twice that. No, he’d be all right. He’d always slipped through slick and fast, and no one to follow him. It would be the same this time, he just had to keep his nerve. Play it cool, keep an eye on the kid, the unknown element, and he’d be just fine.

T HE CAR WAS still gone from the driveway, the shards still lying there on the cement, the shattered pieces of clay scattered among dry earth and dead fern fronds. As the cats hit the drive, the fading scent of the woman hung above them, mixed with the last remnant of exhaust fumes.

Glancing up at the rental and seeing no one at the windows, they began to pick up the sharp fragments of the red clay pot between their teeth and lay them in the plastic bag. They tried not to drool and smear the evidence, could only hope they weren’t obliterating the woman’s prints. Little bits of dry earth dropped off into their mouths, and Kit got the sneezes. Just as Joe placed the last shard in the bag, they heard a car coming. Snatching the heavy bag between them, they dragged it awkwardly away through the wet leaves into the bushes; and there they crouched over the white plastic to hide it, waiting for the car to pull in.

The car didn’t pause, it went on by, speeding away up the hill. The cats had risen to move on when Kit glanced toward home and saw Lucinda’s silhouette in the window of the downstairs apartment-exactly where she had promised Max and Pedric she wouldn’t go. She was standing at the laundry window, looking out; and she was not alone. Behind her, turned away, stood the shorter, dark-clad woman.

“What’s she doing?” Kit hissed.

“Come on,” Dulcie said, peering out from the heavy juniper foliage. “Come on, Kit, we’ll leave the bag here and come back for it.”

“That woman might have been looking out, too,” Kit said. “She might have seen, and what would she think, cats putting something in a plastic bag and dragging it away?”

“Lucinda might have seen,” Dulcie said. “But she would never let a stranger see such a thing. Lucinda’s quick, Kit. She wouldn’t…Don’t be nervous, it’s all right. We’ll just leave it here and-”

“We can’t leave it. What if someone-”

“No one,” Joe said irritably, “would have reason to look under here. If someone did, who would care about a broken flowerpot?” But even so, before they raced away, Joe pawed damp leaves over the bag with deft swipes, effectively burying it until not a trace of white plastic shone through. Then they raced away through woodsTo catch Lucinda in the act, Kit thought with a flash of unaccustomed anger at her housemate.

Approaching the downstairs window at the front of the house, they found it wide open. Crouching to leap to the sill, they heard voices inside, and footsteps coming down the hall.

“I will,” Lucinda was saying, “but you’ll have to trustme, Evina.” The soft scuff of their steps passed by the window, approaching the sliding-glass door. “I’ll do what I can, but in return you have to give me your word.”

There was a pause, another scuff, as if Lucinda had turned to face the woman.

“It will do your niece no good,” Lucinda said, “if you do something foolish and end up in prison. How would that help her?”

Evina’s voice was low and slightly raspy, with a soft Southern accent. “If you pull the law into this, old woman, I swear you’re the one to regret it.”

“I told you I would not. If it can be avoided. That’s the best promise I can make.”

“The law did nothing to help me. Nothing to help find Marlie. That sheriff’s thick with Leroy’s family, he’d do nothing against them. Cops. They’re all the same, don’t tell me about cops.”

“They’re not all the same. Our police aren’t like that.”

Silence.

“Our law enforcement folks couldn’t be more caring. And they are friends of mine. If I have to go to them, I promise they’ll help you.”

There was another shuffle, as if Evina had moved fast. Kit sprang to the sill, growling, meaning to leap in at her. But then the glass door slid open, and Kit dropped down again and raced around the side of the house as Lucinda came out, crossed the little deck, and started up the stairs. Dulcie and Joe held back as the slider closed again, and the woman’s soft steps turned away into the empty rooms. They were about to leap to the sill and inside, when they heard her approaching the window.

As they drew back into the shelter of the mock-orange bushes, the small, dark-clad woman swung a leg over the low sill, ducked under the upper glass, eased herself out and dropped to the ground. She was still dressed in jeans and a navy sweater, and was carrying black canvas backpack. Moving past the bushes where the cats crouched, stepping close enough so they could have slashed her ankles, she headed fast down across the yard to the street below and then along the narrow sidewalk.

Silent and quick, Joe and Dulcie were behind her. Trotting along through the neighborhood gardens, taking what cover they could, they tried to look like wandering neighborhood kitties as they followed Evina Woods. Twice she turned to look behind her. The first time, they leaped after a nonexistent bird that seemed intent on escaping them. Evina was so small and fine-boned that from the back she looked like a girl; only when they saw her face did they see the lines from sun and weather, and the large, prominent nose. Her black hair was short and scraggly, with a reddish gleam where the sun hit it. She made no friendly gesture toward the wandering kitties, as many folk would do; she was not, apparently, a cat lover. The cats, drawing more deeply into the shadows, followed her for two blocks, ducking into the bushes, watching as she got into a big, tan, rusted-out Chevy so old it had tail fins, a dinosaur of a car.

“A ’51 Chevy,” Joe said, well schooled in matters automotive from living with Clyde. “I don’t remember the name of that model.” They memorized the Oregon license number, though very likely this was the car on which Harper had already run the plates. They watched it head downhill toward the village, its dented top rust red where the tan paint was worn away to the primer. When they could no longer see it, they headed back for Kit’s house.

“You can bet Lucinda went down there without telling Pedric,” Joe said. He turned to look at Dulcie. “What’s she up to?” They had never known Lucinda to keep secrets from Pedric; the old couple were completely devoted to each other. They rounded the house through Lucinda’s camellias andferns, scrambled up the oak and across the horizontal branch to the dining-room window. There they paused, listening.

Kit and Lucinda were arguing, a heated family disagreement that made Joe and Dulcie back away. The two seldom argued, not with this kind of anger. And now Pedric joined in, snapping at Lucinda. Through the cat door came the lovely smells of Christmas, pine scent from the Christmas tree and the lingering aromas of baking-all spoiled by the angry voices. The two cats listened, shocked, Joe’s ears back and his yellow eyes narrowed. But then as the argument raged, he sat down on the sill and began with great concentration to wash his front paws. He cleaned all four feet and then his silver-gray coat-while Dulcie responded to her friends’ quarrel by nervously biting her claws, removing the outer sheaths to sharpen each curved rapier.

Both cats felt they shouldn’t be listening to this private family scuffle. Except that this was not strictly a family disagreement, this might soon be a matter for the police, Lucinda’s safety was at stake here. And, anyway, who ever said cats weren’t nosy?

21

“I TOLD EVINA,” LUCINDA was saying, “that the police had already been here and we didn’t file charges. I said before we did that, we wanted to know what this is about.”

“That’s not whatI want,” Pedric grumbled. “I want her out of here, pronto. I want her in jail, Lucinda, before she hurts you.” Pedric was no longer standing back. The thin old man was worried, and furious. Dulcie and Joe had never seen him so angry. They looked at each other, half amused, half frightened.

“She hasn’t harmed anything,” Lucinda said evenly.

“She scared the hell out of all of us, and she could have hurt you, bad. And damage? We don’tknow what damage she might have done taking those pictures and spying. Do you want to be a party to some kind of blackmail?”

Lucinda looked surprised, as if she hadn’t thought of that-but Kit leaped to the arm of her chair, hissing at both of them. “When you questioned her,” Kit asked impatiently, “what did she say, Lucinda?”

“She gave me a wild tale,” Lucinda admitted. “And yet…She was so upset. She sounded…Well,” Lucinda said with embarrassment, “I’m really inclined to believe her.”

Pedric snorted. Kit didn’t reply. Joe and Dulcie, unable to remain uninvolved, slipped in through the cat door and dropped from the windowsill to the dining-room rug, beneath the table.

Looking into the living room, which Lucinda had turned into a forest of evergreen boughs dominated by the Christmas tree in the far corner, they were very still. The room smelled of pine and nutmeg, and a fire burned on the hearth. The cats could see only the back of Pedric’s head where he sat, rigid and angry. Kit sat on the rug, between their two chairs, looking intently at the thin old woman. “Tell us, Lucinda. Tell us what she said.” The fire’s pleasant crackling was the only comforting sound in the tense room.

“She told me she followed those three down from Eugene,” Lucinda said. “She thinks-is convinced that one of them killed her niece, after the girl testified against him.”

“This was in Oregon?” Pedric said.

“No, that was in southern Arkansas, some little backwoods town. She told me that when the killer ran, she thought he would head to Oregon to his girlfriend, and-”

“Then why is she here?”

“Let me finish. She said that he’d been phoning the girlfriend, that she’d found portions of his phone bills in his trash.” Lucinda gave Pedric a wrinkled smile. “She broke into his cabin and tossed it. She said she couldn’t go to their sheriff with her suspicions, that he would have done nothing.”

“Lucinda,” Pedric said, “that’s-”

“She said the killer was thick with the law in their town, and that the sheriff was so corrupt she had no faith he’d ever arrest the man.”

“Lucinda, this sounds…” But at her look, Pedric went silent.

“You grew up in the South,” she said. “You know what some of those little country towns are like that. Good-old-boy buddies, looking out for their own.”

Pedric wouldn’t argue. “Start from the beginning,” he said. “Try to make sense of what you’re saying.”

Lucinda looked beyond Pedric to the dining room.“Come in by the fire, you two, and get warm.”

Quietly, Dulcie and Joe padded in, settling on the thick rug by Pedric’s feet, and Lucinda continued. “Her name is Evina Woods. She followed Leroy Huffman, the man she thinks killed her niece, from Arkansas to Eugene, then down here.”

“From the beginning,” Pedric repeated.

Lucinda sighed.“Huffman had been dating a friend of her sister, Neola Black. Evina said he milked Neola for everything, including ten acres of land that he got her to deed to him. Evina’s sister couldn’t talk sense to Neola, not even when there was nothing left but the woman’s house. Only when he tried toget her to mortgage that, after he hadn’t paid back any of the money she’d loaned him, did Neola come to her senses.

“Evina said that when Neola refused to mortgage her house, Huffman killed her. Maybe to avoid her filing a complaint with the county attorney, or simply in a fit of rage-Evina said he was known for his violent temper.

“Evina’s seventeen-year-old niece, Marlie, saw him kill Neola; she was the only witness. She saw them in the woods behind Neola’s house, saw him stab her…saw them fighting, saw Neola twist and fall and lie still. Marlie ran home to her mother, she didn’t think Huffman saw her. When Marlieand her mother went to the sheriff, he laughed at them.

“He sent someone out for Neola’s body, all right. But he made fun of Marlie and her mother, said he knew for a fact that Huffman had left town two days earlier, that the sister’s death had been a simple accident, that she’d fallen on her own butcher knife.

“Marlie asked why she’d have a butcher knife in the woods, and the sheriff said he’d heard she collected herbs sometimes, and that she liked to gather mushrooms.

“Now, mind,” Lucinda said, “this is what Evina told me. She and her sister went to the county attorney, and he took action. Finally this Leroy Huffman was arrested and charged with murder.

“Marlie testified at the trial, but according to Evina, even the county attorney wasn’t too clean. She said Huffman got only six months, for accidental manslaughter, that the jury apparently believed, or was bullied into saying, that’s all it was.”

“Sounds,” Pedric said, “like something she took off a TV movie.”

Lucinda shook her head.“She sounded…It was hard for her to tell this. The poor thing kept…Either she’s a mighty good actress, or her story’s true. She seems really shaken over this.”

“But how does that put her here?” Kit said. “What was she doing in our house, taking pictures?”

“She said that the same week Leroy Huffman got out of prison, Marlie, who had testified against him, disappeared. That she hadn’t told her mother she was going anywhere, and she wasn’t the kind of girl to just take off. And then, a few days later, Huffman was gone. Apparently there was nothing legal to stop him, he’d done all his time.

“Marlie was popular, and the sheriff said she probably ran away with some guy, or that if she hadn’t run away, then maybe she felt ashamed after she’d testified against Huffman. Evina says Marlie wouldn’t go away like that and worry her mother.

“She was so sure that Huffman had either killed Marlie or had her prisoner, that she broke into Huffman’s house, dreading what she’d find.” Lucinda stroked Kit, and sipped her cold coffee. “She didn’t find any trace that Marlie had been there. But she found letters from Huffman’s girlfriend in Oregon, and the torn-up phone bills in the trash showing several recent calls to Eugene. She traced the phone number, and it was the girlfriend’s number, all right.

“Now she had the woman’s address, and with no other clue to where Huffman might have gone, and still thinking he might have Marlie with him, she headed for Eugene, caught a red-eye flight. In Eugene she bought an old car so she’d be able to follow him.

“She watched the girlfriend’s house until she saw Huffman, he was staying there with the girlfriend and another man that Evina thought was her brother. For several days she spied on the house. She saw no sign of her niece, and was beginning to think he’d killed her. She waited until all threewere out, and then broke in there, too. But again, no niece.”

“Quite the skilled little housebreaker,” Pedric said, and Dulcie cut an amused look at Joe. Pedric Greenlaw was the gentlest of people, though he was far from weak or innocent. He had committed his own share of petty crimes in the distant past.

Maybe that was why he was angry now, was more distressed by Evina than was Lucinda, more willing to see through Evina’s story.

“But in the house in Eugene,” Lucinda said, “Evina found her niece’s locket and watch.

“There were several duffel bags packed and sitting by the door, and in the garage a stack of packed boxes. On a desk, she found some clippings and papers that made her think they meant to head down the coast, that they had some business in California.

“She left Marlie’s jewelry there, but took pictures of it in that setting. She watched the house, and when they left Eugene, she followed them.” Lucinda paused when Kit rose to stand on the arm of her chair, looking her squarely in the face.

“This is too much, Lucinda. That woman is putting you on.”

“Just listen, Kit. Just, for once, be still and listen.”

“Ihave been listening,” Kit said crossly, exchanging an exasperated look with Pedric before she turned her face away from her beloved Lucinda.

“Please, Kit.” Lucinda looked shaken at being pitted against both Pedric and Kit, the two she loved best in all the world. She stroked Kit, trying to make up, but Kit remained aloof, her tail lashing.

“Let me finish,” Lucinda said more sharply. “From the clippings she found, Evina thought that in coming to Molena Point, they were after some kind of artwork, something from the last century.

“I asked her if they seemed the kind of people to know about art. She said the woman’s letters to Huffman mentioned several Seattle galleries where she’d worked. Evina said the letters were vague, didn’t spell out exactly what they might be planning, but said that if he wanted to come out to the coast and help them, they might make a real haul. That’s how the letters put it.

“She said the letters also mentioned Betty Wicken’s brother, Ralph, that she had to keep him with her, after what had happened, that he was a real worry. That if she left him on his own he’d be in trouble again, and be back in prison.”

Lucinda shook her head.“Evina said she cares only about what happened to her niece. That when she found out more, she’d go to the police, and get an attorney. That she took those pictures of the Wickens so she would have some identification to give the police. The Xerox copies, she said, are from a roll of film that Betty Wicken’s brother took into the drugstore.

“She said she saw him by accident, she was back by the cosmetics aisle when he took the film in. Curious about him and what crimes he’d committed that Betty was so worried about, she returned early on the day the pictures were to be ready, picked them up, Xeroxed them, and then returned the envelope saying it was given her by mistake, said the clerk didn’t question that.”

Lucinda looked hard at Pedric, and at Kit.“Evina came all this way to find out what happened to her niece. She planned well enough to bring a piece of Marlie’s laundry, for DNA testing. She means to get into that house down there and look for Marlie or for some further evidence.”

Pedric remained silent. Joe and Dulcie couldn’t see his face. The whole story sounded so strange and unlikely-yet the cats had never known Lucinda to be such a soft touch for a hard-luck story.

“This Leroy Huffman,” Pedric said, “did she tell you anything else about him?”

“She said he’d lived all his life in their little town, and had always been in trouble, but his family had always been tight with those who ran the town, that the present sheriff and Leroy’s father were second cousins, and that Leroy and his two brothers could get away with anything.”

“But how do the pictures fit in?” Kit said. “The ones of the Home and the children?”

“In the house in Eugene, she had found one old, yellowed clipping about the brother, Ralph, and a child abduction. She tried to check on him, to see if he was a registered sex offender, thinking the information might help in some way, but molesters living in Oregon aren’t required to register.” She said no more, but they were all thinking of the dead man and the little child in the plaza. Could Ralph Wicken have tried to kidnap her, and the man fought him off, and Wicken killed him?

“Did she see if he was registered here?” Pedric asked.

“She tried on that Web list,” Lucinda said. “For California, and then the national one, but he wasn’t listed in either.”

The kit began to fidget, thinking about Betty Wicken’s fingerprints on the broken pot shards, and what those prints might show. Did Betty Wicken have a record? And was Wicken their real name, or an alias? Was that why Ralph didn’t show as a registered sex offender?

But now, with Betty’s fingerprints, could the department identify her? And if she had a record, would it show information about her brother?So much to learn, Kit thought nervously,all based on the fingerprints lying unguarded among the bushes, hidden only by a few rotting leaves. She looked intently at Lucinda.

“What?” Lucinda said uneasily.

“We have Betty Wicken’s fingerprints,” Kit said with a twinge of guilt.

Lucinda was very still.“You promised me, Kit, not to go down there.”

Kit looked at Lucinda, as wide-eyed and innocent as a kitten.

“Where are the fingerprints?” the thin older woman said patiently.

Silence.

Lucinda sighed.“Down in that house?”

“Not exactly.”

“You are not to go down there again, for any reason. Particularly now that we know more about those three. Is that clear, Kit?” It was. Kit dropped her gaze in consternation.

But Pedric looked at Kit slyly and rose from his chair, and hiding the first smile the cats had seen all morning, the old man put on his outdoor shoes and his jacket, questioned Kit further, and then went down the hill himself.

Despite his somewhat shady past, Pedric Greenlaw was a tall, erect, white-haired man as dignified-looking as a federal judge. No one who saw him wandering the oak woods would suspect him of prying into the lives of others-even when he knelt to dig among the wet leaves and lift out the white plastic bag, slipping it swiftly under his coat. Pedric had been raised from childhood to the skills of a pickpocket and shoplifter, talents of which he was no longer proud but that could sometimes be put to good use.

22

F ELINE PROMISES ARE not, from a cat’s viewpoint, really meant to be kept. Except, of course, when the cat is closely watched and can do little else. Five minutes after Pedric returned up the hill with the evidence hidden in his coat, while he was busy in the kitchen and Lucinda was on the phone to Max Harper, the cats slipped out and headed for the rental house, reassured that the pot shards were on their way to the police.

Even as they raced down through the wet woods, they heard the Greenlaws’ garage door open, heard the car start. They ducked when they glimpsed Lucinda backing out. Then, in a moment, her car came around and down the hill on the street below, heading for the village with the plastic bag, delivering, hopefully, a vital key to the identity of the strange neighbors-certainly Lucinda might notice her neighbor drop a flowerpot and, already curious and entangled in the mystery of who these people were, would of course hike on down at the first opportunity, and fetch the possible evidence.

Perfectly logical, Pedric said. No need for the snitch to be hanging around the kit’s house, to “accidentally” see that evidence, no need to invite unnecessary connections regarding the cats. They had already been in the cops’ faces this week, during the murder investigation at the plaza, and during the search for the little girl, why encourage unnecessary speculation andawkward questions?

But now, with neither Lucinda nor Pedric watching, the cats approached the rental house studying the blind-covered windows above them. Didn’t anyone in there ever want to look out at the daylight, or ever long for a breath of fresh air?

The driveway was still empty, the car still gone, and so, presumably, was Betty Wicken. There was no sound from within the house, the morning was quiet except for the scratching of a fat gray dove, in the bushes. Were the two men gone? If they, too, had left the house, the empty rooms were prime for a quick break-and-enter. If Evina’s niece might be held prisoner in there, this was the moment to find her.

Or were Leroy Huffman and Betty’s brother, Ralph, still sleeping? Crouching beside the front door, the cats listened. The house seemed taller than it was wide, just the garage at the front, the entry, and one small window. The kitchen and living room were at the back, with a view downhill to the village. Upstairs there seemed to be three bedrooms and a bath-a classic circa-1940s house that hadn’t received much attention since it was built, some seventy years ago. Circling, they paused below the kitchen, where the dinette window jutted out-the kind of shallow bay window that one would decorate with potted plants. The Wickens’ decor ran to newspapers and tattered paperback books stacked on the wide sill, ragged garish books such as one might pick up for a quarter in a used bookstore. They could hear the footsteps of two men, and could hear them talking, then the rattle of a cup against a saucer and the rustle of papers. The coffee smelled like it had been cooking for hours.

“If they stay in the kitchen,” Kit said, “we can be in and out, and they’ll never know.”

They thought the windows, with their dry, cracked frames, would be a snap for the three of them together to jimmy, but by the time they’d leaped up, trying half a dozen double-hung panes, working at the old locks with impatient claws, they decided these round, brass closures were stronger than they looked. All the windows were locked tight or perhaps stuck tight with the ancient paint. Sealed for eternity, as far as they were concerned.

The garage might have proven easier, except that its three small high windows were covered, inside, with plywood. They sniffed beneath the electric garage door and smelled a miasma of grease, mildew, new paint, and gas vapors.

At the far side of the garage, a small door opened to the backyard. Leaping up, Joe swung on the knob. It turned freely, but kick as he might against the molding, the door wouldn’t open. “Feels like it’s bolted from inside.”

Beside the little door stood an overflowing garbage can amid a half-dozen sodden cardboard boxes filled with empty bottles and wet, wadded newspapers. Very high above were three small, mesh-covered ceiling vents. Maybe big enough for a cat, maybe not. Leaping from the top of the garbage can, Joe managed to snag the mesh of one-and got his claws hung in it. He couldn’t get loose. Panicked, fighting the screen, he tore it enough to free himself. He dropped down, his ears back, swearing angry hisses.

“Mesh is nailed or stapled on, and sealed with old paint.”

“Come on,” Dulcie said. “We-”

“The car’s coming,” Kit said. Ducking into the bushes, they watched the old green Dodge turn in to the drive, parking before the front door. Betty Wicken stepped out, her long, dry-dull black hair tangled on the collar of her black peacoat. Moving quickly up the steps, she was just stepping in through the front door when the cats, with swift timing, shot in behind her. They made not a sound, did not once brush her ankles as they passed her and ducked under the hall table. The whole house shook when Betty slammed the front door.

The table had a low shelf just above them, which helped to hide them-a shelf thick with dust. Didn’t people know how to use a duster? It seemed to Dulcie that they had spent half their lives crouched in mite-ridden household dust beneath someone’s unkempt furniture-and household dust was not at all the same as good clean garden dirt or beach sand, was nothing like the fresh earth on the wild, far hills.

When Kit tried to stifle a sneeze and couldn’t, Dulcie and Joe threw their bodies against her, muffling the sound. Above them, Betty had pulled off her coat, tossed down her keys, and moved away down the hall toward the kitchen. They breathed easier when she’d gone.

The entry was dim and small. To their right, a flight of stairs led up to the bedrooms; the living room was beyond it, looking out to the back. Shoddy furniture, early Salvation Army, that made Dulcie wonder what kind of rent they were paying.

Down the hall near the kitchen was a door that breathed out the same garage smells of gas, motor oil, and paint. Joe thought the paint smelled like automotive enamel, with which he was familiar from Clyde’s classic-car restorations. In the kitchen Betty poured herself a cup of scorched-smelling coffee and sat down at the breakfast table.

“They fit?” Leroy asked, lifting his big-boned hand to scratch his shaggy brown hair.

Betty nodded.“They haven’t changed the locks, the garage, or the house.” She jingled two keys on a ring and dropped them back into her pocket. Using her fingers as a comb, she shook out her black hair, its tangled mass so dry one imagined dandruff drifting into her coffee. With the three tenants thus occupied, Joe Grey peered with predatory interest up the narrow stairs.

Before Dulcie could speak, he was on the first step.“Stay and watch them,” he hissed. “Distract them if they start up there. I won’t be a minute.” And he disappeared up the worn carpet treads to the top floor. Dulcie hoped no one else was there-except maybe the kidnapped girl. If shehad been kidnapped, if Huffman had brought her all this way. That seemed so strange. Why would he? As some kind of hostage protection?

“Supposed to rain again tonight,” Betty was saying. “Maybe hail.”

Leroy smiled, easing his muscled bulk in the small dinette chair.“That hail the other night…Could of fired off a canon, no one’d of heard.”

Ralph Wicken grinned. He was a small man, thin head with short crew-cut hair, ears sticking out as if he might take off in frightened flight.

“Gets dark about seven,” Betty said. “They tuck the kiddies up at eight. Lights go on upstairs, off again around eight-thirty.”

Huffman said,“They’ve hired more guards, they’re all over the place at night. Middle of the day would be better. The day they do that judging, place’ll be crawling with people, trucks, power tools, carpenters hammering away. That should be enough diversion.”

“What time do the day-school kids leave?” Ralph said. His eyes were muddy brown, like Betty’s, but his brows were thick and black.

“You’ll keep away from the kids,” Betty told him. “You mess around this time and blow it, I swear I’ll turn you in, Ralph. Leave you in prison for the rest of your stupid life.”

Ralph smiled. Betty seemed pale and nervous.“I mean it. I won’t have one of your mindless escapades mess this up.”

Ralph’s face flushed red and he lowered his glance. Betty watched him with distaste, then glared at Leroy. “Why the hell did you let him have the camera? I told you-”

“I didn’t let him have it, he took it. Middle of the night, sneaked in our room, took it off the dresser.You didn’t wake up! Well, hell, neither of us missed the damn thing.”

“I don’t see what difference,” Ralph whined. “How come you can do what you want, but you’re always on my case?”

Betty fixed her gaze again on her brother.“You stay away from that school. There’s a hell of a difference.”

“We better take him with us,” Leroy said. “Keep an eye on him.”

Ralph’s thin face twisted into a toddlerlike sulk. “No one knows me here. Why do you always have to…?”

“This isn’t Oregon,” Betty snapped. “ California, these new laws, they find you’re not registered, you’re as good as locked up anyway. Serve you right,” she said coldly.

The kit, sitting silently beside Dulcie, watched Betty Wicken, puzzled.“Maybe I’ve seen her in the village,” she whispered softly.

“Where, Kit?”

“A long time ago. I can’t remember where, I’ve been trying.”

Whispering, both cats glanced toward the kitchen, but no one had heard. No human had a cat’s range of hearing. Mankind was, in many ways, an inferior and handicapped specimen.God’s work left unfinished, Dulcie thought,at least in the areas of auditory skills and night vision.

But now Kit’s own skills seemed to have faltered. For the first time Dulcie could remember, the tortoiseshell didn’t have total recall. The more she studied Betty Wicken, the more shadowy was the memory Kit tried to bring forth of where she had seen the woman. Where and when? Under what circumstances?

Betty drained her coffee and picked up a stack of papers from the kitchen table, flipping through them. They seemed to be magazine articles. The cats could see colored pages torn from slick publications, some stapled together, some with pictures of houses. Was that the Stanhope mansion? Both cats swallowed back mewls of recognition as Betty sat looking at the page. But then Betty flung down the pictures and rose, giving Ralph another glare-a look of distaste and of long-standing resignation.

“Let’s get to work.” She headed for the door to the garage, and Leroy got to his feet. Ralph remained at the table, his expression one of stubborn secrecy. Dulcie glanced up the stairs, wishing Joe would hurry; she was crouched to leap up after him when he appeared at the top.

Silently he trotted down to them, a gray shadow with only his white marks to attract any sudden attention. And as Betty and Leroy moved into the garage, the three cats were behind them, diving through on their heels, another bold gamble that left their paws sweating; and they melted among a stack of cardboard boxes standing beside the door.

“What did you find?” Dulcie whispered, edging close to Joe.

Joe Grey pawed cobwebs from his whiskers.“No sign of anyone else, no scent but theirs. I don’t think that girl was ever here.” He reared up between the boxes until he could see Betty and Leroy standing at a workbench along the opposite wall-and could see the vehicle parked less than two feet from his nose. His stifled growl made Dulcie and Kit rear up, staring.

As the Wickens stood selecting tools from a cardboard box on the workbench, assembling sledgehammers and handsaws and an electric drill, the cats could only gape with shock. In the dim and crowded garage, parked between a row of storage cupboards and a large tan SUV, stood Charlie Harper’s blue van. Charlie’s “Fix-It, Clean-It” van, its logo lettered clearly on the side. Charlie’s blue Chevy van that she had bought when she started her home maintenance business and had used ever since, the van that should be parked either at a cleaning job, or up at the seniors’ house for Mavity’s convenience.

“What’s it doing here?” Dulcie hissed. “Charlie’s crew sure isn’t cleaning this house! And why inside the garage?”

“Did they steal it?” Kit said. “But when? Charlie didn’t say a word last night. How…?”

“Shhh,” Joe hissed. “Keep your voice down.”

“That Betty doesn’t work for her?” Kit whispered. “That woman hasn’t gone to work for Charlie?” But Charliewas hiring, the business was expanding, and they all knew that it was hard to find competent help.

“Of course she doesn’t work for her,” Dulcie said shakily. “I know everyone she’s hired. You saw the record checks that Davis ran on the applicants-every one of Charlie’s employees has signed a release so the department could check for a record.” The police chief’s wife could not afford, for the safety of Max and his men and for the reputation of the department, to hire anyone who had the least potential of turning dangerous or stealing from her clients.

“But how…” Dulcie began, then, “Where’s Charlie? Oh, they haven’t…This can’t be another kidnapping!”

“It’s Mavity who drives it the most,” Joe pointed out, staring up at the van’s windows, half expecting to see someone looking back at them trying to get their attention. All three cats were thinking of last summer, when both Dulcie’s housemate and Charlie Harper had been brutally kidnapped and their lives in danger. But then, “Look,” Joe hissed, rearing up taller. “Take a closer look.”

23

I T WAS JUST noon when Ryan Flannery left her construction job in the village and walked the three blocks to Clyde’s house. A cozy lunch, just the two of them in the sunny patio, should take the edge off her grouchy mood. Glancing in the front window, she paused a moment to admire the tree they had decorated, and the garland wreath Clyde had hung on the door, then she headed around to the back. She was greeted by wild happy barks and loud banging as Rock leaped at the gate; and, when she opened the gate, by a dervish of excited hound. Rock danced around her, but never touched her, testimony to the improvement in his behavior. She took his outstretched front paws in her hands, let them rest on her arm as she talked baby talk to him.

A year ago, when the big, stray Weimaraner had adopted her, he would have nearly knocked her over leaping on her and clawing her arms for attention, a lovable clown with no idea of manners. Kneeling, she hugged Rock and scratched his sleek, sun-warmed back. He grinned, and slurped her ear-though the big, silver purebred had mastered the basics of obedience training, he was still a clown, and a challenge.

No one, she thought, unless they were dedicated athletes with plenty of time to devote, should even think of owning a Weimaraner, a breed meant for action and hard work. Without both, the dogs were miserable, and so were their owners.

Rising, she moved into the patio with Rock at her side, and closed the gate behind them. The walled retreat was almost balmy on this bright winter day; and she was inordinately pleased with the small, private world she’d designed and built for Clyde. Clyde had swept away the last of the fallen maple leaves, and the chair cushions were clean and dried of their morning dew. The long, plastered planters were bright with cyclamens and begonias, and a pot of poinsettias stood on the picnic table. The cushion on thechaise still bore the impression of the big silver hound, where Rock had been napping. On the table beside the poinsettias were a cooler, picnic plates and napkins, and a tray laid out with packets of sandwich makings and plastic containers of salad-this, too, attested to Rock’s improved manners,that he could now be left alone with a table full of food, she thought smugly. But then she looked up through the kitchen window and saw that Clyde was on guard. He grinned, and waved at her.

Fetching a bottle of nonalcoholic Buckler’s from the cooler, she popped the lid and stretched out on the chaise, rubbing Rock’s ears as he came to lean against her, and watching Clyde through the window as he filled the coffeepot. It was nice that, since she’d started the nearby job, she could run over for lunch. Slowly, now, the tension of the morning began to ease.

She’d been so hoping for a quiet holiday season, for lovely, peaceful evenings with Clyde before the fire, admiring their joint-effort Christmas tree, Rock and Joe and Snowball and the two older cats sprawled around them. No serious worries, no violent police matters to prod her with fear for her uncle Dallas and Max and their friends.

Certainly Max and Dallas had enjoyed very little about the Christmas season, with the department looking for a killer and for a vanished body, and trying to identity a silent little girl who was too scared and traumatized to say a word-and now the Greenlaws’ strange breakin that seemed to hint at an uglier scenario. And to top it off, there was Charlie’s strange preoccupation and her unwillingness to share her problem.

Charlie should be turning handsprings right now, should be ecstatic with her upcoming exhibit and book signing, but instead she was grim one minute, and drawn away the next as if to another world.

In fact, when Ryan thought about it, Charlie was that way with every major crime. Whenever Max and the department faced more than the usual danger, Charlie turned moody and secretive-and that thought saddened Ryan. A cop’s wife couldn’t live like that. Charlie knew that. They’d talked about it at some length, and she’d thought Charlie was finally committed to living each day to the fullest and not fretting about tomorrow. Committed to living the only way a cop’s family could live, and still survive. Charliesaid she lived like that and thought like that. But if that was true, then what was this preoccupation?

Was worry over Maxnot the only cause of her stress? And a sudden realization startled Ryan: It wasn’t only Charlie who seemed to experience these worried, preoccupied spells. Clyde did, too. And Wilma Getz. And even the older, levelheaded Greenlaws. During every increase in crime that stressed the department and kept the men extra busy, Ryan’s friends seemed to turn moody and withdrawn, and,sometimes, inexplicably secretive.

She had never before realized this. Or maybe she hadn’t wanted to see it. Maybe, she thought, she didn’t want to think about it. Didn’t want to understand what this was about.

Clyde came out carrying a plate of freshly sliced bread still warm from the bakery, its scent filling the patio. He set it on the table, opened a beer, leaned down to give Ryan a long kiss, then sprawled in a lounge chair, taking a good look at her.“You’re wound tight.”

“I’ll be better when we can start on the Stanhope house. The damned city-these delays make me want to pound someone.

“But,” she said more cheerfully, “this present job, Clyde…a few more days, we’ll wrap it up. The house is charming, if I do say so. I can’t wait for you to see it all finished.”

“All your work is charming. It’s what you’re known for. Look at this house-from a shabby bachelor’s pad to a designer’s gem.” He grinned at Ryan. “Not only beautiful and intelligent, but incredibly talented.”

“That kind of flattery will get you a long way, with this lady. Meantime,” she said, rising, “I’m starved. I feel like Rock, ready to dive into lunch with all four paws.” Rock, though he had his own bowl of kibble, had been eyeing the picnic table with ears up and nose twitching. He knew better than to grab, but this degree of restraint wasn’t easy on the energetic young dog. Ryan was putting her sandwich together when her phone rang.

“Maybe Scotty,” she said, glancing at her watch. “He stopped in to see Jim Holden again at the building department.” She fished her phone from its holster, listened expectantly-and her hopeful look exploded into a dark scowl.

“Theydid all that. The research! The hearings! The historic lookwon’t be changed! We aren’tdoing anything to the outside. What the hell do they…” Ryan’s face was flushed, her green eyes burned with anger. Clyde opened another Buckler’s and handed it to her.

“We’re notchanging the outside,” Ryan shouted into the phone. “Can’t they understand simple English! Can’t they read a simple damned blueprint! What kind of…” She listened; then, “I know it’s nearly eighty years old! We’ve been through all that, Scotty!”

Scott Flannery was Ryan’s uncle, and her construction foreman. He was her father’s brother, a big, burly, redheaded Scotch-Irishman. He and Dallas Garza, her mother’s brother, had both moved in with Ryan’s dad when her mother died, and had helped to raise Ryan and her two sisters, staggering their work hours and sharing the household chores. Scotty was largely responsible for Ryan’s interest in the building trades, while Dallas had honed the girls’ interest in fine bird dogs and hunting, and in safe firearms training.

“The Historical Society is totally out of line,” Ryan snapped at Scotty. “They can’t have the gall to…”

But they could, Clyde thought, watching her. Everyone knew that the city historical committee could be incredibly high-handed and officious. When Ryan hung up at last, Rock pressed quietly against her, looking up at her with concern, his pale yellow eyes almost human. The big silver hound might be rowdy, and an aggressive protector of those he loved, but he was supersensitive and highly responsive to Ryan’s moods.

“Maybe,” Clyde said, “the two public school teachers who pitched such a fit when children began to transfer to the Patty Rose School, maybe they’re responsible for this.”

“If they are,” Ryan said, kneeling down to hug Rock, “that’s even more maddening-a personal vendetta. Small-minded personal rage, aimed at hurting the school and hurting those children.

“But,” she said, looking up at him, “it isn’t the teachers that make the public school so dull and ineffective-not all the teachers. It’s the policies, the administration, the red tape and constrictions and their morass of stupid rules.”

“And whose fault is that?” Clyde said.

“Ours.” Rising, Ryan moved to the table and finished slapping her sandwich together. “The city, the state. The voters,” she said, sighing with frustration.

Clyde, watching her, knew that that kind of bureaucratic control upset Ryan perhaps even more than most people. When Ryan moved down from San Francisco about a year ago, a big change in her life, it was to end the cold patronization of an emotionally brutal marriage. He put his arm around her.

“Slow down,” he said softly. She was almost crying, and Ryan never cried. He took her sandwich plate from her, set it down, and held her tight. She had worked so hard on this redesign for the old Stanhope studio, so intent on retaining its historic character while creating the needed classrooms. She had endured endless meetings, endless bureaucratic rejections, each of which sent her back yet again to the drawing board. She had put up with senseless arguments that had little to do with the quality and integrity of the designs and a lot to do with people’s desire to control.

She looked up at him, swiping at a tear.“I didn’t come down here to fight another bunch of small-minded, shortsighted, selfish…I thought I got away from all that.” She pressed her face against him. “I’m so tired of this damned squabbling, I don’t even want to do the renovation.”

Clyde held her away.“You’d let the city win? Let the city make you back down, and beat you?”

“Screw them,” she snapped. “I don’tcare.”

“Lori and Dillon didn’t back down. They fought the city and won. Two little girls…”

“Two little girls and three adults. And Isaid, Clyde, I don’t care!”

Clyde hugged Ryan harder, knowing that she would rally. But he had to wonder about the reason for the harassment. Was it only the small-minded teachers? Or was there something else, besides the petty backbiting and power struggles? And that thought stirred his own cold and protective anger.

24

L UCINDA GREENLAW, leaving the house earlier that morning with the pottery shards safe in her pocket, smiled again thinking of Pedric wandering down the hill like some distinguished-looking mushroom hunter, kneeling among the neighbors’ wet leaves and digging out the plastic bag of broken shards; as soon as he returned, she’d called Chief Harper. Her call had just caught him, he’d just come in and was about to leave again. She’d hurried down to the station, parking hastily among the courthouse gardens. As she headed in through the heavy glass door of the police wing, Mabel Farthy looked up from her realm of electronic communications.

“Lucinda!” Mabel swung out through the little gate to give her a hug, the pudgy blonde laughing, her dark uniform a bit tighter around the middle, Lucinda thought, not unkindly. “It’s been a long time.” Mabel sniffed at the white plastic bag that Lucinda had laid on the counter. “What did you bring? Some of your good Christmas cookies?”

Lucinda laughed.“Not this time. This is…” She did her best to look embarrassed. “I think it might be evidence. Well, fingerprints,” she said hesitantly. “This is so…so busybody of me, Mabel. I…”

Max came up the hall as they were talking, took the bag she offered, and led her back to his office. The tall lean chief poured her a cup of coffee and made her comfortable on the couch, sitting down beside her. She opened the plastic bag, still trying to appear embarrassed when, in fact, she wasn’t at all, she was having a fine time. But her story required a certain shy reluctance, she was not in the habit of bringing in evidence, and she had to make this look good.

Well, she thought, amused at herself, she’d always wanted to do a little acting. As she laid out her story, she knew she was letting the three cats off the hook-Joe Grey was right, the timing would have been way too pat if the snitch had called about this evidence: The cats are in the office, the chief says he’d give a lot for Betty Wicken’s fingerprints, and not an hour later the snitch calls, telling him where to find those prints. “With that scenario,” Joe had said, “everything would hit the fan.”

“I know it’s meddling,” Lucinda said now, looking at Max shyly. “But that woman in the rental, the woman our housebreaker was spying on? You said last night, if you could get information on her…Well, I was afraid if I didn’t slip right over there when I saw her break this flowerpot, if I didn’t snatch up the pieces before she threw them away…I don’t even know if a flowerpot can hold fingerprints, but…Am I making any sense…?”

Max looked into the bag, didn’t touch the broken shards.

“When she dropped it on the drive…She looked in such a hurry…It shattered and she just left it there, got in her car and drove off. Can you take fingerprints from this? Will that help find out about her?”

Max was silent for so long that Lucinda began to get nervous. She looked at him uncertainly, and sipped the coffee he’d poured for her. “Those photographs of the children, Max. I worried about that all night, I find that really frightening.”

“As do we,” Max said. He watched Lucinda so intently that she grew increasingly uneasy. She knew she was gushing, and that wasn’t like her. Max put his arm around her as if, she thought, he meant to humor her, to tell her kindly that what she had done was very clever of her, and then send heraway.

But instead, he had beeen interested in what she told him about Evina Woods.

“If we can lift some prints,” he said, “and if we can get anything from AFIS on them, if the woman turns out to have a record, we’ll have something to work with.”

Max rose to refill their coffee cups.“So far, on those three tenants, we have false names, false IDs, falsified car registration. That in itself might give us reason to bring them in for questioning, but it leaves a lot of holes.” He picked up the plastic bag. “We have a call in to Arkansas, to check on Evina Woods’s story. I’ll take this back to Dallas, see if he can lift clear prints. If not, we’ll send it along to the lab, where they have more sophisticated equipment.”

“I feel so sure,” Lucinda said, “that Evina was telling the truth.”

Max took her hand, helping her up.“You were bold to go down there and talk with her, Lucinda-I won’t say foolish.”

“She didn’t threaten me, Max, she seemed really scared. When she saw I wasn’t going to call the police, she calmed down. I know that could all have been an act, but…Call it a gut feeling. I think she’s telling the truth.”

She looked intently at him.“I’m not a soft touch, but once in a while, you have to take a chance on someone. This is one of the times…If I’m wrong, I expect I’ll pay for it. This gamble,” she said, “is one I choose to take.”

I N THE DIM garage, as Betty Wicken and Leroy Huffman sorted tools at the workbench, packing them into a canvas bag, Joe approached the blue Chevy van. Slipping up onto a stack of cardboard boxes piled between the van and the wall, he balanced with a forepaw against the van’s window, peering into the dim interior, his nostrils filled with the stink of automotive paint, from the amateurish blue paint job.

Pressing against the tinted glass, he saw not the pristine interior of Charlie Harper’s van, no neatly built-in cupboards, no polished worktable running down one side. Only bare metal bracing and raw composition walls. This ancient, neglected interior had never had any care; it was stripped and ragged, only an empty hulk.

Dropping down to the garage floor, he studied the lettering painted on the van’s sidethe hasty, unprofessional logo, an amateurish copy of the more finely spaced CHARLIE’S FIX-IT, CLEAN-IT.

Somewhere, the Wickens had found another old Chevy van and had treated it to a home paint job on a par with what any active five-year-old kid could accomplish.

“Not Charlie’s van,” Kit whispered, narrowing her eyes and lashing her tail.

But Dulcie smiled with relief.“Charlie’s safe, and Mavity’s safe. But why would anyone copy Charlie’s van? What do they mean to do?” Her green eyes flashed. “Setting Charlie up,” she hissed. “But for what? For some burglary?” she said softly. “Or…could this be the missing vehicle that hauled away the dead man?” Her eyes widened. “Did you smell death in there?”

Joe slipped under the van, Dulcie and Kit beside him, and they reared up, sniffing among the axles and brakes. Trying, over the stink of grease and hydraulic and brake fluids, to detect the faintest scent of death; but there was nothing else, no foreign smell.

Dropping down again, they fled among the boxes as Leroy opened the side door of the van and tossed in two bags of tools, some cans of paint, and then ladders, drop cloths, everything one would need to renovate a house, or repair it.

“Are they horning in on Charlie’s customers?” Dulcie whispered. “Pretending to work for her?”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Joe said softly. “And there’s no cleaning equipment, just the repair stuff.” The tomcat frowned. “Doesn’t make sense, unless…Unless they’ve staked out Charlie’s wealthy regulars, meaning to rob them-that would set Charlie up, big-time.”

They looked at one another, feeling sick. Law enforcement families were prime marks for any scam to embarrass or compromise them, to put them on the wrong side of the law. The cats remembered too painfully when Captain Harper had been framed for a double murder.

“That won’t happen again,” Joe said.

But Kit shivered, pushing closer to Dulcie.

“Nothing has happened yet,” Dulcie said. “We won’t let that happen!”

25

H URRYING BY THE station, loaded down with shopping bags, hoping Max was free for lunch, Charlie found him gone.“He had to meet with the judge,” Mabel said. “He went straight there from the Patty Rose School, from talking with Dorothy Street.”

“Another rain check,” Charlie said, laughing. It was well past noon, and she was starved.

“That’s what you get when you marry a cop,” Mabel said good-naturedly. “Lucinda Greenlaw brought in some kind of evidence. They talked for a while, then he headed over to meet Dorothy. Leave your packages here if you want to get a bite.”

Charlie nodded. She didn’t like to leave packages in her SUV, with no locked trunk. Not this time of year, when bright store packages containing free Christmas booty were all too tempting.

Tucking her packages out of the way in Max’s office, she stood a moment wondering what kind of evidence Lucinda discovered. She was headed out of the station, meaning to stop for a quick bowl of soup, when she saw Dorothy Street and Ryan coming out of the courthouse. Ryan was in jeans, work boots, and a red sweatshirt, Dorothy elegant ina soft gray suit, sheer hose, and Italian flats-succeeding very well in her new, businesslike mode. They waved, and Charlie went to join them. Ryan looked mad enough to explode. Meeting them on the steps, Charlie didn’t ask what they’d been doing. This had to be about the permit for the children’s home. “Have you had lunch? I’m starved.”

“I ate with Clyde,” Ryan said. “Scotty called me in the middle of lunch. They’ve denied the permit again. If I die young, of a coronary, you can blame that bunch of bigots!” She glanced at her watch. “I need to get back, meet the landscaper,” and with a wave she headed across the parking lot to her big red Chevy pickup.

Dorothy looked after her, shaking her head with sympathy. Then,“I guess Max stood you up. I rode over with him to pick up some papers. Come on, I’m hungry, too. Want to go back to the inn, have lunch in my office, where we can talk?”

When Charlie nodded, Dorothy flipped open her cell phone, hitting the code for the inn’s kitchen. “The shrimp melt okay?”

Charlie nodded enthusiastically.“And hot tea?”

Dorothy gave her chef the order, and as they strode out together past the courthouse gardens, Dorothy glanced at her.“Those people taking pictures of our children…That really scares me. Max called me last night after the Greenlaws’ breakin, and then, just now, he showed me the pictures-the copies he made-to see if I could add anything.

“I feel better knowing he’s doubled his patrol around the school. But to take pictures of the children…In my book, that means only one thing,” Dorothy said with disgust. “I’m glad they have the woman’s fingerprints-the tenant in that house where the pictures came from. Max said he washoping to get an immediate hit on them, something about having to get an expert to examine them, and he didn’t know how long it would take.”

Charlie hadn’t known about the prints. Was that what Lucinda had brought in? But how had Lucinda gotten the woman’s prints? Why had she…?Oh, Charlie thought,maybe it wasn’t Lucinda who retrieved that evidence. And the scene in Max’s office, earlier that morning, played back to her: The officers’ mention of the prints. Kit’s sudden excitement, the little cat hardly able to contain herself, she was so wild to race away.This time, Charlie thought,this time, those cats sent Lucinda Greenlaw as their courier.

But to Dorothy she said,“It’s great when AFIS can get back with an immediate reply, but if the prints aren’t clear, someone does have to do a visual exam. And if the prints are close to a lot of others on file, finding a match can take some time.” She studied Dorothy. “Have you talked with the children, about those people?”

“Oh yes. As soon as we knew about the pictures. We don’t like to keep things from the children. We all get together after breakfast in the central hall, before classes, talk over anything that needs discussing.”

She looked seriously at Charlie.“We told them about the pictures, and we described the two men and the woman as well as we could from the photos that the intruder shot. Described the car in their driveway, the old green Dodge. Told them not to play alone, anywhere in the school yard. Not to leave the grounds without one of us, for any reason. It’s hard to get the message across to the little ones, and not give them nightmares. Takes a lot of hugging and reassurance.

“But our kids are pretty wise,” Dorothy said. “They all know what to do if they’re approached. That’s part of the survival course Patty designed-self-protection, managing their money, good health practices, making positive choices in life-and, of course, values.”

Dorothy laughed.“We’ve had several teachers apply for jobs who said they wouldn’t be caught dead teaching values to the children.”

“And? What did you do?”

“We sent them packing,” Dorothy said. “Values are a part of survival, and that was important to Patty, after her little grandson was so brutally murdered. She told me the main reason she left Hollywood was the brutality and glitz and false values, the way the entertainment industry changed, over the years she was a star.”

Turning in through the inn’s wrought-iron gate, they crossed through the patio gardens. The sprawling, Spanish-style building, with its pale stucco walls, red tile roof, and generous inner patio, looked as if it might have stood during the days of the Spanish ranches and the first missions. It had, in fact, been built in the late years of the nineteenth century and had served as an inn since its beginnings, under half a dozen owners. Patty Rose had bought it when she retired from Hollywood and moved to a quieter environment. Having always loved Molena Point, she soon became a comfortable part of the village family.

They went in through the tearoom that wouldn’t open until midafternoon, when formal tea would be served. The cheerful, chintz-curtained room was chilly, with no fire burning on the hearth to warm the little round tables and the Mexican tile floor. Dorothy led her on through, to her office.

Nothing had changed in Patty’s office. Dorothy liked it just as Patty had designed it, the wicker-and-silk sofa, the big leather chair facing the desk, the hand-carved desk and bookshelves that had been made by a Mexican craftsman Patty had known during her Hollywood days. The carved screen behind the desk that, Charlie knew from talking with Joe Grey, concealed a wall safe where each day’s receipts were held.

“Ryan and I have an appointment with the mayor at three,” Dorothy said. “His secretary said he was at a meeting up the coast. I think that was an excuse, to give him time to talk with the building inspector and get their ducks lined up. Against us, of course. I did my best to-”

There was a knock at the door, and a tall young waiter wheeled in a cart bearing two covered plates of the inn’s famous shrimp melt, a pot of hot tea, and a selection of small, rich desserts. Reaching deftly past Charlie, he pulled out the sliding tray at the back of the desk and set her place with a linen mat and napkin and heavy silver flatware, then he set Dorothy’s place on her side of the desk. Charlie found it interesting to see Dorothy in this new light, all spiffed up and so businesslike, and yet so comfortable in her new role. Patty had trained her prot?g?e well.

When the waiter had gone, Dorothy said,“Even though Max has more men patrolling, I’m hiring more guards. I find it incredible that someone, planning to abduct a child, would have the nerve to come here in daylight and take pictures. Incredible that none of us saw him, that none of the children did.” She shivered. “But those telephoto shots of our little girls. You can tell just about where the photographer stood, behind the cypress trees across the street. Max said that Dallas photographed the area and made casts of some shoe prints.” She looked at Charlie. “Does everyone get this much attention? Is it because we’re friends? Or because this involves children?”

“It’s the children,” Charlie said. “The whole department is on the watch, they hate this kind of predator. I wish…This is just so sick. And now, at Christmastime, when little kids should be happy…When innocence should be a good thing, and not a safety problem.”

“We try our best to keep the kids informed, but not to scare them unduly. The little ones are tender, and kids dramatize everything. But they have to be alert, Charlie. We’ve stressed that they’re better equipped than most children, if they use common sense and stay together. We have to trustwhat we’ve taught them. We’re hoping, too, that the excitement of the Christmas pageant and the playhouse contest will give them a heightened sense of community, of being together.”

Dorothy was quiet for a moment; then,“It’s less than a year since Patty’s vindictive murder, and I keep wondering if someone wants to take out that same hatred on the school…”

They had all been at the theater that night, at a retrospective of Patty Rose’s old movies. It was the one night that Patty herself hadn’t attended. They returned from the theater to find her dead, lying in blood on the exterior stairs that led down to the parking garage. It was Kit who had found her. It was the kit who, all alone, had tracked and found her killer-and had subsequently been locked in the house with him, trapped and terrified.

Charlie finished her lemon tart and sipped her tea, puzzling over her feeling of almost knowing something, something she wasn’t seeing. She looked at Dorothy. “This is such a strange set of events. I keep wondering, Are we all missing something? Something right in front of us, that we all should recognize? Something I can’t bring clear.”

Dorothy thought about that.“Did your cleaning girls mention anything unusual, when they were up here?” Ever since Dorothy lost three of her cleaning staff, in September, Charlie’s crew had done most of the work while Dorothy interviewed for new hires.

“That’s been a week ago,” Charlie said. “They cleaned up here the end of last week. Mavity didn’t mention anything, but I’ll ask.”

“They came back yesterday. I thought you’d changed the schedule. I’d just pulled in through the gate when I saw the van pull away from the curb, down by the studio. I wondered why they didn’t park on the grounds as they usually do.”

Charlie frowned, puzzled. Maybe Mavity’s crew had cleaned one of their accounts near the school, though she didn’t remember anyone up there changing their standing appointments. And why would Mavity park down at the end of the school?

Charlie seldom went out on the work crews anymore, but she kept the schedules, paid the girls’ salaries and benefits, and handled the paperwork. Her cleaning teams were booked months in advance, and she could use more help, but it was hard to find competent new hires. Dorothy was proof of that, as hard a time as she was having finding acceptable people.

“I thought I saw one of the school’s old cleaning women in the village, a few days ago,” Dorothy said. “She drove off before I could hail her. I wish she’d come back-though I wasn’t sure it was the same woman. Her hair was black instead of mouse brown. Same tall, awkward look. She was agood worker. A rather sour sort, but she didn’t mind heavy, dirty work. She did most of the cleanup when we bought the old studio, got rid of some trash and an invasion of mice. Good thing the paintings had all been moved out, long before. Those mice would have done hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of damage.”

They parted after their delicious lunch, and Charlie, walking back through the village to her car, thought about the old stone studio. It was easy to imagine the lovely isolation Anna Stanhope had enjoyed, living and working in that charming retreat.

She had to wonder about Anna’s studio appearing, at different angles, in the background of several of the intruder’s telephoto copies. Well, but the studio wasthere, she told herself. Of course it appeared; a photographer could hardly mask it out.

26

F ROM AMONG THE boxes behind the blue van, the cats watched Betty and Leroy finish loading their tools in through its side door, then vanish back into the house. The door to the kitchen clicked shut and the dead bolt slid home, seating itself with a solid thunk-and there was no way to open the dead bolt on the garage side, except with a key.

They hadn’t wanted to barge back in the house behind those two, to be shut in again with Betty and Ralph Wicken and Leroy. Getting into the house originally, on Betty’s heels, and then slipping into the garage so close to her, had already stretched their luck. It would take only one faint rub against a pant leg, and those three would be on them like hawks on a rabbit.

And, while Betty Wicken was admittedly a brutal woman to throw a clay pot at a little cat, her brother, Ralph, stirred a deeper fear. Ralph gave all three cats the chills. His thin face and close-cropped hair and big meaty ears made him seem almost like a predatory animal they might meet on the wild hills-but it was Ralph’s smell, of unhealthy, nervous sweat, that made their fur really bristle.

Even if, to most humans, they were only cats and presented no imminent threat, they did not trust what Ralph or Betty Wicken might think to do to them.

But now, locked in the Wickens’ garage like mice in a cage, the cats grew uneasy. To someone small, with only claws and teeth, the solidly built garage seemed nearly impregnable.

The other pedestrian door, which led to the backyard, was secured high above the knob, near the top, with a fastening that they might, or might not, be able to manipulate. And the plywood over the three small, high windows looked to be securely nailed.

And of course the electric garage door, if they leaped up to push the button, would cause a racket that would bring all three residents storming out-to glimpse them racing away, to realize it must have been cats who had opened that door, and to grow unreasonably alarmed and hostile. Dulcie licked her sweaty paws. Kit bit at a nonexistent flea, and Joe Grey paced, staring up to the ceiling, at the screened air vents high above them between the rafters.

But first he approached the small side door leading out to the garbage cans, the door they hadn’t been able to open from outside. There was a thin line of light on the left, where the door fit unevenly into its frame. The dead bolt had an interior knob, but while it might be possible to turn that, the hasp and loop high above, installed nearly at the top of the door, made the tomcat lay back his ears in consternation.

There was no padlock through the loop; instead the householders had shoved a heavy stick of wood through. Interesting that they were so security conscious. He wondered if he could climb on the stacked boxes and make a wild leap at the stick-wondered how much noise that would create inside the house as he thudded against the door. Behind him, Kit and Dulcie fidgeted. Joe leaped at last, not at the door but to the top of the van and from the van to the rafters.

Crouched on a rafter, he considered the three tiny, mesh-covered vents. They were so small that he wondered, even if he could claw the screen off, whether a cat could squeeze through. There looked to be less than three inches of clearance, and Joe wasn’t sure he could get his head through.

But behind him, Dulcie wasn’t waiting. Leaping to the van’s roof and to the rafter beside him, she stood up on her hind legs and attacked the screen, wildly clawing.

Off balance, she tore a rip down the nearest mesh grid, and slipped and nearly fell. Joe snatched at her, and braced her with his shoulder. The grid was tightly in place, stapled to the wooden molding and sealed with old paint. Kit leaped up beside them and reared up, too.

Frantically clawing and joggling each other, the two females at last loosened one corner, blood spattering from their paws. Then Joe took a turn, and with teeth and claws the three cats together managed to pull a corner of the screen free-they pulled until the whole screen came flying, flinging Dulcie off the rafter. She hung clinging, Joe’s teeth gripping her neck like a mama cat holding a kitten.

He pulled her up until she got a purchase and, scrambling, righted herself. Her paws were bleeding, and her lip was cut-but Kit had squeezed though the vent and was gone, tufts of her dark, bushy tail left behind on the torn screen. They heard her hit the garbage can.

Dulcie went next, fighting through the rough opening, pulling out hanks of her own fur and raking her tender flesh. Joe heard a second thud as she dropped onto the metal lid.

Gingerly, the tomcat reared tall and poked his head into the little space. He was bigger than Dulcie and Kit, and he’d hate like hell to get hung up. If he could get his head through, though, then the rest of him could follow. He fought, clawing and wriggling. Rusty wire ripped along his shoulder, and something jabbed down his leg. A nail? But suddenly he was free, and falling.

He hit the garbage can and thumped to the ground-and they ran, scorching around the side of the house and across the drive, smelling their own blood and leaving bloody paw prints, and into the shadows of the woods, where they crouched together, Dulcie and Kit shivering and Joe Grey tense and angry. Well, at least he’d memorized the license plates of both vehicles, though that seemed, at the moment, small reward.

“Whatever the Wickens are up to,” Dulcie said, licking her paw, “Harper needs to know about the van.”

Joe looked back at her.“I’m not sure that’s smart.”

“Why ever not? We-”

“If the Wickens go up there during the playhouse competition, we’llsee the van. Whatever they mean to steal, we’ll see them in the act, and then we’ll call the department.”

“What if they kidnap a child?”

“They’re notafter a child. You heard Betty Wicken, she told Ralph to lay off the kids, to stay away from the school.”

But Dulcie laid back her ears.“What if we’re wrong? What if we missed something, and they do take a child? I’m going home, to call Harper.”

Kit said,“My house…”

Dulcie shook her head.“Lucinda and Pedric have had enough involvement. Let’s don’t make more waves.” And she crouched to leap away.

Joe stopped her, pushing belligerently in front of her.“Just listen. They’re not going to steal a child. This isn’t about kidnapping, you heard them. I think they’re after something in the old studio.” He looked at her intently. “If Max puts a tail on them, if they spot a cop before they make their move, maybe no one will ever know what they’re after.”

“You don’t give Harper much credit.”

“The department is working a murder case, Dulcie. They’re looking for a vanished body, and trying to keep on top of shoplifting and increased holiday thefts. And Harper has officers on double shift to protect the little girl. Plus three officers off for the holidays, and extra patrols around the school. If he sends a uniform up to tail the Wickens, it may have to be a rookie. And if the Wickens make the rookie, they’ll dump the van and take off-maybe never be found.”

Dulcie quieted. Joe looked intently at her.“The department only stretches so far. And think about this. If the snitch tells Harper that the van was hidden in the Wickens’ garage-and where else would they hide it?-that puts the Greenlaws right on the spot again.

“Don’t you think,” Joe said, “that Lucinda has been involved enough, for the moment? She brings Harper the pot shards with, presumably, fingerprints on them. She leaves. Then, in a little while, Harper gets an anonymous call that there just happens to be a blue van like Charlie’s, right there below Lucinda’s house? Where,” he asked, “does that leave Lucinda?”

“With egg on her face,” Dulcie said contritely. “Withsnitch written all over her.”

“Is that what you want?”

The kit looked from one to the other.“Joe’s right, I don’t want to drag Lucinda in again. We just need to be up there when the Wickens get there with the van, we just need to watch them. Meantime,” she said, “Lori and Dillon are going to load up the playhouse and I’m going to watch.” And Kit took off for the seniors’ house, meaning, this once, to keep her mouth shut and not tell the law what she knew.

Dulcie watched her go flying through the leaves, and then turned quietly for home. She knew that Joe was right. Or, she hoped he was.

Joe Grey watched them both, twitching an ear, then he laid back his own ears, spun around, and headed fast for the department-to see what he could learn, what new information might have come in. And to put to rest the niggling and edgy voice that said,Is this the right decision? You sure you want to withhold that information from the chief?

27

A SQUAD CAR STOOD in the seniors’ drive, its wheels and hood radiating a gentle warmth.As if it had arrived maybe half an hour earlier, Kit thought. The big white Chevy was parked just to the left of the garage, at an angle that left the closed garage doors clear-and that provided, unknown to the cop who had parked it, swift feline access to the hood, to the top of the car, and onto the garage roof. Three leaps, and Kit looked down from the flat, tarred roof at her own paw prints embossed delicately into the squad car’s thin coating of dust-then she padded across the warm tar paper to peer in through Cora Lee’s windows, into her friend’s sunny, bright bedroom.

The little girl was there, with Officer Eleanor Sand. Kit, twitching her tail with interest, studied the child curled up on the rug before the tall bookcases among a pile of cushions. Cora Lee sat on the floor beside her, an open book in her lap. Eleanor Sand sat on the window seat-looking directly out the window at Kit. The tall, lovely blonde showed surprise for only an instant, and then amusement, at the sight of a cat on the roof. Kit looked back at her uncertainly-then the two big dogs were leaping to the window seat beside Sand, wagging their tails and pressing their noses to the pane inches from Kit’s nose. Everyone was staring at Kit; she didn’t know whether to be embarrassed at being caught snooping or to play it up and let herself strut a little. Because she was certainly, at the moment, onstage.

But then Cora Lee, laughing, rose and opened the window. Kit stepped in, and the dogs were all over her, slurping and soaking her fur. Cora Lee settled them down, so they backed off, only wagging and grinning. She closed the window and sat down on the floor again, as lithe as a dancer. But the child reached from the cushions, wanting Kit. Her black hair was rumpled, her dark eyes huge. Dodging the dogs, Kit leaped down into the pillows and stepped into her arms, and together they snuggled down in the warm nest.

Gently Cora Lee pulled a lap blanket over the two of them, took up the book again, and, in a dialect that Kit had never heard from her Creole friend, continued the Christmas story. The bright jacket saidOle Saint Nick.

Cuz dere on de by-you [Cora Lee read],

W’en I stretch ma’ neck stiff

Dere’s eight alligator

A pullin’ de skiff.

The pictures, when Cora Lee held them for the little girl to see, showed not winter snow, but a sultry river among swampy trees; not reindeer and sled and Santa in a red coat, but the alligators hitched to a little square boat that was filled with bags of gifts. Santa was dressed in brown, but he had a real white, bushy Santa Claus beard; and the child seemed quite comfortable with the change from reindeer to alligators. Halfway through, Cora Lee paused to look up at Eleanor.

“Our family told a similar Christmas story in Cajun dialect when Donnie and I were little. This book wasn’t published then, but we loved our family version, we heard it several times every Christmas. I was around twenty when this book came out, and I wrote to the author for this signed first edition.”

“It’s charming,” Sand said. “I’ve never heard it, but the Cajun way of telling makes me feel happy. Interesting,” she added, “that our young friend picked it from among all your picture books.”

Cora Lee, being an artist, had a handsome collection of picture books, and she could hardly resist buying the most beautiful ones that came out each year. She had followed with excitement the progress of Charlie’s book; though it was not a picture book, it had many illustrations, and Cora Lee had predicted after seeing the first sketches and reading the first rough draft that it would have deep appeal to readers of all ages.

Kit hoped so. Charlie’s book washer story, it was based on her own kittenhood, on that frightened and lonely time when she had no one to love her, no one to care if she lived or died.

When Cora Lee had finished reading the rhythmic Cajun phrases, the child reached up for the book. Hugging it to her possessively, she tucked it beneath the blanket beside Kit, and held both the book and Kit close.This little girl might be mute, Kit thought,but she surely made her feelings known.

“I wish Donnie were here to share it,” Cora Lee said. “When we were kids, he always read aloud with such pleasure.” Automatically she glanced toward the window, though she could not have seen his car from upstairs. Kit had not seen it when she arrived; there was only Cora Lee’s car at theother side of the drive, and the squad car-though when she’d crossed the drive she’d padded over a cold patch of concrete that the thin winter sun hadn’t yet warmed, where a car or maybe Donnie’s old pickup had recently stood.

There was no blue van parked in the drive today, so Mavity must be off in the real van, on a cleaning job. Kit had seen Mavity’s ancient VW parked around the side of the garage where Mavity kept it-so as not to offend the neighbors, she said. She said her old car looked like a rusting hulk up on blocks in the yard of some backcountry shack.

The VW didn’t look that bad to Kit, but probably Gabrielle encouraged Mavity to hide it-it was not a sleek new Mercedes, such as Gabrielle herself drove.

“You said your cousin Donnie’s family was killed in the hurricane?” Eleanor was saying.

Cora Lee nodded.“His children, yes. There are a lot of questions about those failed levees, about the shoddy way they were reinforced, and where the federal money went, that was given to the state to do that work. Questions,” Cora Lee said, “that in my view ought to lead to some serious charges. But I guess…I guess I’m getting old and crotchety.”

Eleanor laughed.“You don’t look like you’ll ever get old. But a bit judgmental? Why not? My daddy told me, ‘If you are not brave enough to make judgments about life, you’ll end up with a head full of porridge.’ My daddy wasn’t big on shady politicians, either, and on the folk who allow and encourage them.”

Cora Lee smiled.“There’s plenty of that, in New Orleans. Even as a child, I was aware of the ugly stories about the good-old-boy politics.” She stood up when they heard a truck pull in, and moved to the window. Kit could hear a tractor or some kind of heavy equipment, and already the big chocolate poodle andthe Dalmatian had charged out of the room and down the stairs, barking and threatening.

Kit wanted to see, too, but that would appear too strange. Racing to the window must be traditionally left to the rowdy and protective canines. Instead, she yawned and stretched, and made a show of slowly extricating herself from the little girl and from the quilt and pillows. She gave the child a nose touch, then languidly jumped to the sill beside Cora Lee, rubbing up against her as if for a pet, glancing out only slyly, as if she didn’t give a whit what was out there. Behind her, Eleanor Sand knelt to gather up the little girl, perhaps uneasy at the activity below. “I think we’ll move on,” she said quietly.

“I didn’t know they’d be here so early,” Cora Lee said, picking up Kit and holding her, watching a flatbed truck as it backed carefully up the far side of the drive. It parked well away from Eleanor’s squad car. The forklift ambled between them, to the garage door; and when the two women and the child headed downstairs, Eleanor holding the little girl’s hand, Kit padded down behind them and out the front door.

She paused on the front porch, watching Eleanor’s squad car pull away, and Cora Lee and the truck driver disappear into the garage. The driver was a big, bald, sad-faced man who resembled a grieving bloodhound.

In a moment the garage door rumbled open to reveal the bright, many-colored playhouse that nearly filled the interior. Lori and Dillon stood talking with the driver, both girls gesturing and looking as anxious, Kit thought, as two mother cats protecting their kittens.

But soon, under the girls’ hands-on direction, the truck driver and the skinny, wrinkled forklift driver showed that they could be gentle and careful as they helped the girls separate the house into its three parts. Lori and Dillon insisted on removing all the bolts themselves, but they allowed the two men, under their nervous instruction, to separate and slide each section onto a heavy-duty dolly, and roll it out the door to where the forklift could raise it onto the truck bed.

Kit watched, hiding a smile, as Lori and Dillon shepherded every move, Dillon’s short red hair rumpled every which way, her old blue T-shirt torn and stained. Lori’s long dark ponytail had come loose from its ribbon and hung in a tangle, and her own T-shirt was stained with red and green paint.

The girls might look scruffy, Kit thought, but their finished creation shone perfectly groomed and impressive. They were so excited about the contest, and so afraid some accident would mar their work, that they gripped each other’s hands, white-knuckled as each piece was loaded onto the flatbed. Kit could see, inside Cora Lee’s car, where the bright turquoise and blue and red floor pads waited, along with the rope ladder neatly piled on top.

The two men were tying padding around the three sections when Donnie’s old truck pulled in, the truck he had bought used in the village when he’d arrived by plane from Texas. The tall, slim, graying blond man swung out, grinning. “Looks like you’re all set to go.”

“We’re going to have some pie and milk first,” Cora Lee said. “The girls need fuel before they get to work putting the house back together.” She put her arm around Donnie. “Come join us.”

She looked at Lori, who was fidgeting to get started.“We’ll be up there, Lori, by the time the truck is in place. The men will have to wait in line at the gate and be directed in, and there’ll be a mob waiting.”

“We’ll be in, in a minute,” Lori said, “as soon as they’re finished tying down.”

“Sometimes,” Cora Lee said as she and Donnie headed up the steps, “watching the girls, I feel like I’m a child again, too. The way we used to be,” she said, heading for the kitchen. She turned to look at Donnie. “Fifty years. We’re totally different people, now. And yet…”

“And yet,” he said, “we’re the same people. We’re the same two kids we were. Only the packaging is different.”

Cora Lee laughed.“A bit frayed around the edges?”

Kit padded into the kitchen behind them, watching Cora Lee set out the pie and begin to cut it, while Donnie started the coffee.

“You’re proud of the girls,” he said.

“They’ve worked hard on this project, and with such excitement. They did a huge amount of library research into architectural styles, surveyed every kind of structure and style from French Country to African huts to those Dutch-influenced hex-sign details from the Caribbean-and put it all together in their own way.”

“Including the hex signs,” he said. “I like that.” The hex signs were no more than big, primary shapes-triangles, circles, rectangles-painted on the shutters and walls in bright, contrasting colors.

“I so hope the girls will win,” Cora Lee said. “But whether they win or not, they should realize a nice profit. That money would give Lori a leg up for college, with her father in prison. And Dillon…her folks can pay for college, but she wants to contribute as much as she can. Dillon has come a long way since the bad time she had when her parents nearly divorced.”

“I understand a lot of credit goes to the police chief?”

Cora Lee nodded as she dished up the pie.“Teaching her to ride and handle horses, to be responsible for an animal, that has steadied her. As has Ryan’s training.”

“Ryan Flannery?”

“Ryan hired Dillon as a carpenter’s gofer and then helper. She had to get special permission from the school. Between the two experiences, Dillon’s a different person now, much more sure of herself and what she can do. Much more responsible.” She changed the subject when they heard the girls coming.

“We read theCajun Night Before Christmas, today,” she told him. “Do you know the book? We were grown, when it came out. But it was so like the Christmas stories that your dad used to tell.”

Donnie gave her a faltering glance, as if he wasn’t tracking. Then, “You read it to Lori and Dillon? A picture book?”

Cora Lee laughed.“No, to the little girl who was found in the plaza. Where the murder was reported. An officer brought her up to visit-they just left. I’m sorry you weren’t here, you’d love her. She’s so solemn, and so hurt, Donnie. I wish you could have read some of the book to her; I used to love to hear you read.

“But maybe later. I’m sure one of the officers will bring her back.” She looked up when Lori and Dillon came in, and asked Lori to give Kit some milk and a few crumbs of gingerbread.

“Those were happy times,” she said to Donnie, “those hot summers when we’d play in the walled garden after supper and lie on the grass, and you’d tell a story or read a book to me.”

Donnie was quiet, turned away to see to the coffee. When the phone rang, Cora Lee picked up.“Yes, he’s here. Just a moment.” She handed him the phone.

He answered, listened; then,“I’ll take it in Gabrielle’s study,” he said. “Would you hang up for me? The connection seems faint.”

Gabrielle’s bedroom and sewing room/study were just across the hall from the kitchen. Cora Lee waited until she heard him pick up. When she heard his voice, she reached to hang up. Donnie was saying, “Fine, she’s just fine.” Cora Lee didn’t know what made her pause. She wanted to hear more; she listened for only a moment, then hung up guiltily. Who would be fine? Was he talking about Gabrielle? But there was nothing wrong with Gabrielle.

Or maybe he was talking abouther, because she had rehearsals and then the concert. But who would he be talking to, about her? She wished she’d had the nerve to listen to the rest of the conversation-if the girls hadn’t been there, she might have. Something in Donnie’s voice, as well as his words, left her puzzled.

But then, seeing the girls’ impatience, and that they’d hastily finished their milk and pie, she called to Donnie that they were leaving, and headed for the car.

Opening the front door, she was startled at the brush of fur across her ankle, but then she smiled as the tortoiseshell kit raced past her and up a pine tree. As the girls headed for the car, Cora Lee stood a moment watching the kit vanish across the rooftops, delighting in the cat’s bright and eager nature, and wondering where she was headed.She’s such a strange little cat, Cora Lee thought.So inquisitive and so wildly impulsive.

28

S AUNTERING INTO Molena Point PD behind tall bony Officer Crowley and little Officer Bean, Joe Grey endured the two officers’usual joking remarks about freeloading cats, and leaped up onto the dispatcher’s counter, where he lingered for a session of Mabel’s skilled ear scratching. Mabel Farthy had cats of her own, she knew what a cat liked.

“Youare a freeloader,” she said softly. “But what would the world be without a few bums-charming bums,” she said, seeing his sudden glance. “Sometimes, Joe Grey, I could swear you understand me.”

And sometimes, Joe thought,I need to be more careful, not telegraph my thoughts just because I like someone! Mabel turned away when three calls came in on a fender bender. And Joe, thankful for the diversion, dropped off the counter again, leaving Mabel to her phones and radios.

Strolling on down the hall to where Harper’s office lights were burning, he could hear Max and Dallas talking. The room smelled of leather and gun oil. Behind his desk, Harper looked up when Joe entered, a twisted smile starting at the corner of his mouth-a smile he reserved for cryptic jokes and nosy tomcats.

Leaping to the desk, Joe gave Harper a preoccupied but friendly look, then stepped boldly past the chief’s shoulder into the bookcase as if this office were his space, as if he, Joe Grey, ran the show here.

Harper turned to look at him, the wrinkle in his cheek deepening, then he continued with what he’d been saying. Joe looked at Harper, and down at Dallas, with bored annoyance, as if hoping they’d shut up and allow him to have a nap. Harper was saying, “…came in to bring me a set of prints.” He explained to Dallas how Lucinda had gotten the clay shards, that she had seen the woman drop the pot, and when the woman left, she’d retrieved it. “Wearing clean gardening gloves,” Max said, grinning. “I got a positive from AFIS right away.”

“Well, that’s a first.”

“Prints belong to a Betty Wicken. One conviction for attacking a police officer with a butcher knife as he arrested her brother. This was in Eugene. Ralph Wicken was arrested for attempted kidnapping of a nine-year-old girl. Kid snatched his car keys, slashed him in the face with them, and ran. Dropped the keys in a storm drain.”

Dallas smiled with appreciation.

“Ralph got a year,” Max said with disgust. “A year earlier he’d kidnapped a ten-year-old girl. She was rescued within hours, and wasn’t molested. Parents dropped the changes.”

The officers looked at each other and shook their heads, that silent, disgusted look that Joe knew well. Of all the crimes on the books, the molesting of a child was the most heinous; and when people withdrew charges or tried to protect such a criminal, they joined in the guilt and cruelty.

“Ralph has a dozen arrests for trespassing and loitering around school yards,” Max said, “but no convictions. One arrest for enticement on the Web, that never went to trial. Reports say the guy isn’t too bright. Apparently the sister intercedes wherever she can, tries every way to keep him out of jail, keep him from getting in trouble.”

Max rose to refill his coffee cup, and returned to his chair.“Greenlaws’ intruder was back in the house, this morning. Lucinda went down and talked with her.”

“She didn’t,” Dallas said, shaking his head.

Max laid out the tale that Evina Woods had told Lucinda, the events in Arkansas, Evina watching the Eugene rental then following the Wickens to California. Evina’s stubborn belief that Leroy Huffman had either abducted or killed her niece.

“We have only Evina Woods’s story,” Max said. “I called the sheriff in Arkansas. When I finally got him on the phone, he was less than friendly, pretty noncommittal. Said the niece, Marlie James, disappeared, but a body had never been found. He didn’t say they looked for her. Said she waseighteen, of legal age, which seems to be stretching it a bit. Said the story around town was she’d run off with some guy. He said she was pretty loose.

“That’s not how Lucinda told the story, not how she said Evina described the girl. Evina said a missing report was filed with the sheriff and then with the D.A. I have a call in for the D.A.” Max leaned back in his chair. “So we have no warrant on Leroy Huffman. And no outstanding warrant for Betty Wicken, and nothing outstanding on her brother.”

“Not enough to arrest him as an unregistered molester?” Dallas said.

Max shook his head.“We have enough, with those photographs of the Home and children, to bring him in on suspicion.”

“Where’s our Jane Doe?” Dallas said.

“Sand and McFarland took her up to the seniors’. McFarland is watching the place, keeping out of sight. There’s no connection yet between Ralph Wicken and the little girl, but this makes me uneasy.”

Dallas nodded.“You want me to talk with Evina Woods? See if I can turn up anything more?”

“I think…” Max began, when the dispatcher buzzed him.

“Captain, there’s a call on your line you’ll want to take,” Mabel said. Harper pressed the speaker button. When a woman’s voice came on, Joe went rigid, thinking that Dulcie, after all, was calling Harper about the blue van. But then, listening, the tomcat hid a smile.

Evina Woods wanted to come in. She told Harper she’d only take a few minutes, maybe half an hour, but really needed to talk with him. Joe didn’t know what had changed her mind, but he eased deeper into the bookshelf, intending to hear it all. Max told Evina to come on ahead, and it wasn’t five minutes later that he rose from his desk and went up to the front to meet her.

He escorted her back to his office, walking behind her, asked her to take a seat, and offered her coffee. She refused the coffee, sat rigidly on the edge of the leather chair, laying her purse on a small table near her right hand. Both officers watched the purse and watched her movements. Joe, sharing their wariness, leaped down and wandered around the table, taking a good sniff at the handbag.

He smelled lipstick, orange Life Savers, old leather that was the purse itself. No gun oil. Nothing that smelled to him threatening. Strolling under the credenza, he lay down, well aware of Dallas Garza’s puzzled glance. Rolling over on his back and rumbling a purr, he dangled all four paws in the air-a pose of amusing and beguiling charm that the tomcat had learned from Kit and that, for some reason, always made humans smile. Eyes closed, he could feel the officers study him for a moment before they turned back to Evina.

“This is about the break-and-enter?” Max said.

“The Greenlaws…” Evina gave the chief a direct look. “They’ve given me permission to stay there for a few days. Lucinda…both of them, they’re really nice people, more than nice. Lucinda loaned me some towels and a cot, and told me to turn the heat up so I’d be comfortable.”

“Lucinda came in, this morning,” Max said. “She told us what you told her, about the Wickens, and Leroy Huffman.”

Evina nodded.“I came in, now, because I just talked to my sister. Beryl called my cell phone, about half an hour ago. So strange,” she said, “here I am way out here on the opposite coast, and we don’t call long distance. It’s all local.”

She looked at Max and then at Dallas, and her voice went quiet.“They found…Arkansas Bureau of Investigation found my niece last night. Found her body.”

She was silent a moment, swallowing.“An ABI agent found Marlie in the woods, five miles north of town. She…” She had to stop again, to get control.

Max said,“The sheriff didn’t call us, as I asked him to. I’m waiting for a call from the D.A.”

“The sheriffwouldn’t call. But the D.A…” She went silent as Mabel appeared in the doorway. The comfortably built blonde stepped in just far enough to hand Max a sheet of paper. Joe could smell the scent of the fax machine. Max looked up at Evina, nodding. “Your county D.A.”

“Does he tell you how she was…That she was buried under…” She couldn’t talk for a few minutes. She said at last, “Buried under the remains of a dead deer?” She looked forlornly at the officers. “So…Maybe so dogs wouldn’t track her scent?”

When Evina reached for her purse, both men came alert. Seeing their concern, she unzipped the bag and handed it to Dallas.“There’s a plastic bag in there, with a pair of Marlie’s panties. I…brought it with me for the DNA. In case…I thought…if her body was found here, that might prove that Leroy…” She was trying hard not to cry.

Dallas withdrew the clear plastic freezer bag.“If this matches up with anything on Leroy’s clothes…” He glanced at Harper.

Max nodded.“Go pick him up, Dallas. Bring him in as a person of interest.”

Joe, seeing the pitiful little cotton panties and Evina’s distress, felt his claws digging hard into the rug. Evina smiled at Max, as if she was grateful someone in law enforcement seemed to want to help, seemed to be straight with her. Then suddenly she burst into hard, wrenching sobs. Dallas sat down beside her and put his arm around her.

She looked up at him at last, gulping.“For the first time,” she choked. “Some…someone…who listens. Well, Mrs. Greenlaw did, but…A cop who listens, and cares. Thank you,” she whispered.

It took Joe Grey a while, after everyone left the office and turned out the light, to stop feeling teary, himself. Evina’s reaction to simple decency nearly undid the tomcat. He had just slipped out from under the credenza when Dulcie and Kit appeared in the doorway looking hot and harried.

“Come on,” Dulcie said. “They’re moving the playhouse earlier than Cora Lee thought. The truck’s headed for the school, and so are Cora Lee and the girls. Kit was at the seniors’, and-”

“And the little girl was there,” Kit said, “with Officer Sand, and Cora Lee was reading her a picture book about Christmas with alligators and then they loaded the playhouse on a truck and had milk and pie and when the truck and car left I came over the roofs to get Dulcie and then we…The Wickens will be there by now with the blue van. Comeon, Joe.” And she spun away, Joe and Dulcie following her out of the darkened office and down the hall, Joe yowling at Mabel to let them out.

Mabel scolded him for his impatience as she hurried to open the front door, looking puzzled that they were in such a swivet. The cats galloped through, scorched up the overhanging oak to the roof, and took off for the Patty Rose Orphans’ Home, not really caring, at that moment, what Mabel might be thinking.

29

S LOWING HER CAR and turning in to the drive of the Patty Rose Orphans’ Home behind the forklift and loaded truck, Cora Lee sat a moment waiting to be admitted by the gate guard and admiring the huge Christmas tree that gleamed out through the hall’s two-story windows. Patty had loved to decorate the Home for Christmas, she believed that the children needed, and thrived on, such joyous rituals in their lives. Cora Lee thought about the old-fashioned name that Patty had insisted on for the Home. Though most people called it the childrens’ home, Patty had been adamant that there was no shame in the word “orphan”-that word always put Cora Lee in mind of the New Orleans street children, when she was a little girl.

Maybe ten children living in one room, often with no father in residence, and their mother trying to provide for them. And some children had nowhere to live but the streets, children with no education and little hope for the future. The churches had saved many, giving them hot meals and a place to sleep and trying to find adoptive homes for them. But the children at the Patty Rose Home were so lucky-these kids had more than many children who still had both parents.

Pulling on through the gardens behind the truck to the rear parking lot, Cora Lee hid a smile as Lori and Dillon, crowded on the seat beside her, tried to see everything at once and to assess every playhouse, even though most of them were still in their separate parts. The mansion’s usually tranquil lawns were crowded with people and trucks, and playhouses being unloaded and set into place amid a confusion of workers. Who knew there were that many forklifts in the county? The small houses being bolted together had begun to form a small city of Lilliputian dwellings, some as bright as crocuses, some rustic, some Mediterranean, all with decks and ladders, all fascinating. The girls were wriggling to get out. Cora Lee could hardly wait, herself, for a closer look.

The gate attendant had taken the girls’ names when they came through, and checked them off on his list. Now they followed their own truck to the south side of the Tudor mansion, not far from Anna Stanhope’s studio. Most of that smaller building was hidden by huge rhododendron bushes that would flaunt a riot of reds and pinks in theearly spring. A spot of sun glinted off the slanted skylights that transformed the stone interior into a bright though secluded work space. The artist had spent the last thirty years of her life painting there. When she died, her rich coastal landscapes had been stacked in every room and in the small garage, though most of her work had already sold through several prestigious California galleries. The girls exploded out the door before Cora Lee quite had the car parked.

She watched them swing up onto the truck to help the two drivers release the ropes. Watched the forklift get to work as Lori and Dillon and the truck driver guided the first portion of the little house into place. There was so much noise from the other trucks and from hammering and power tools that Cora Lee could feel a headache beginning to wrap around her temples.

The judging would be the next day, after all entries had been inspected for soundness by a local architect and builder. When, over the noise of the drills and hammering, Cora Lee heard the delighted cries of a flock of children, she looked up toward the mansion.

The two-story Tudor’s dark half timbers shone in rich contrast to its pale plaster walls. In the low winter sun, the steep, shingled roofs cast angled shadows down onto the wide, second-floor deck that roofed the downstairs dining room. The children stood crowded on the deck, leaning over the rail, shouting and pointing as the little houses took shape.

Cora Lee watched as the third portion of Lori and Dillon’s house was set in place, watched the girls bolt the parts together while the drivers held them steady. But when she saw that they had everything in hand, she turned away and headed home.

The girls wouldn’t leave until late this evening, until they’d seen every playhouse that was entered and had rated them all, in their own minds, against their own construction. Then they’d come walking tiredly home. Tired, and…what? Satisfied with what they’d created? Or discouraged? How could they be discouraged? Their house was wonderful. But no matter what their assessment, they’d be a jumble of nerves, not fit to live with until the judging was over.

W ATCHING FROM THE bushes as Cora Lee pulled out of the school yard, the cats moved on in behind her car, trotting between beds of poinsettias and nearly deafened by the banging of hammers and buzz of electric tools and the roars of trucks and tractors. Above them at the mansion, kids were crowded on the roof deck talking and pointing, longing to get inside those small houses where only a child would fit, where a child could step into any adventure he chose. Circling the front of the estate, they slipped in among the tall rhododendron bushes that sheltered the Stanhope studio.

They drew back at once, hissing, crouching down beneath the heavy leaves.

The sagging garage stood open, and the fake blue van stood half inside, the front end sticking out, the rear door open. And from within the house, partially masked by the noise of builders and trucks, came the pounding of other hammers. Then the dry-harsh noise of ripping wallboard, and the ragged, tooth-jarring screeches of old, rusted nails being pulled.

Padding closer to peer into the dark, small garage, the cats saw no way through that cramped space into the house itself, no inner door. Circling the studio then moving around to the front, they looked for an open window, but they were all closed, probably locked, as Dorothy had left them.

In the side yard a giant cypress tree stood shading the mossy roof. Storming partway up, they tried to see in. Sounded like the Wickens were taking the whole house apart.

They could see little through the old dirty glass; the small panes reflected more of the tree and of themselves than they revealed of the room within.

“Maybe,” Dulcie said, leaping to a higher branch, “maybe we can see through the skylights, maybe the rain has washed them clean.” Scrambling up, she sailed to the mossy shingles and looked down through the nearest slanted pane.

The glass was embedded with chicken wire. Joe and Kit nudged up close to her, their noses pressed to the cold surface. Directly below them stood Leroy Huffman, his dark thick hair so close to them that, if not for the glass, they could have dropped onto his head. He was prying at the wall with a small crowbar, carefully removing soft pieces of composition wallboard. The scarred pine floor beneath his jogging shoes was covered with scraps of the dry, flaking board. Across the room, Ralph Wicken sat on the floor, his back to a narrow strip of wall between two doors. He was doing nothing, he sat sullenly watching. At an adjoining wall Betty Wicken was gently chipping away plaster, revealing the chicken wire beneath.

“Why,” Dulcie said, “would one wall be covered with wallboard, but the other one with plaster?”

Joe Grey shrugged. Who knew, with these old buildings? They watched Betty shake back her dark hair, concentrating on her careful work as if not wanting to damage whatever might lie beneath. The cats couldn’t see that her efforts had gleaned anything of interest, only plaster chips.

Leroy’s wall was another matter. The next piece of tan wallboard that he removed revealed, beneath, something that made him step back, his voice rising.

“Got it,” he said, almost shouting.

“Shhh.” Betty hurried to stand beside him. The cats could see nothing more than a rusted screw. No, three screws, lined up one above the other, some six inches apart, holding in place a thin strip of polished wood.

The strip seemed to frame a smooth portion of wall beneath the outer wall, a very white wall, as if plastered, but as Leroy moved aside, they could see it was painted in patches, too. Patches of gray, green, blue shone out, and quickly Betty ripped away more wallboard.

The screwed-on strips and the board they framed ran from floor to ceiling. The cats, their faces pressed against the skylight, watched Betty move along, tearing off more wallboard to reveal the treasure beneath.

After a quarter hour, they had uncovered a four-foot-wide, floor-to-ceiling painting.“A mural,” Dulcie said. “Part of a mural.” For now the two were stripping away the cardboardlike covering of successive panels of painted landscape. With every panel, the green hills shone more vividly, so filled with light and space that the cats might have been looking through the wall itself to the green winter hills that rose above the village: hills that were emerald bright with new grass beneath a wild and stormy gray sky so sharply reminiscent of these last winter weeks. This paintingwas Molena Point, the work so rich and real that the cats could almost hear the wind blowing, feel its cold fingers in their fur. Crouching over the skylight, their noses to the glass, they watched Leroy and Betty slowly remove the remaining covering to unveil the entire work; while on the floor in the corner, Ralph still sat, sulking.

“Poor Ralph,” Dulcie said, watching him. “He can’t be too smart. No wonder she watches over him. A man like that, in prison, wouldn’t stand a chance. He’d be victim of every prison brutality in the book.”

“If heis a child molester,” Joe said, “that’s exactly what he deserves.”

Six panels formed the mural, each maybe eight feet tall by four feet wide, each edged by a strip of hardwood to hold it in place and keep it from warping without marring the work itself with screws or nails. The Molena Point hills ran for twenty-four feet of rolling green that slowly turned to summer brown, in a panorama of the central coast seasons-the stormy winter of the present to the sun-golden burn of summer and then back again.

The sense of space and distance made Dulcie think of C. S. Lewis’s words that she so loved, of spaces larger, and mountains higher and farther away, than a living human had ever experienced. The painting filled Kit with the old wild longing she had known as a kitten and that often still returned to her, a hunger of the spirit that made the young cat tremble. The hills that Anna Stanhope had rendered so magnificently made all three cats want to leap away forever into far and unobtainable distances.

Betty Wicken, working with a much gentler hand than she’d displayed when she threw that flowerpot, undid the screws from the stripping and gingerly removed the first panel. This operation showed another side of the woman, showed her art-gallery background in dealing with valuable wares. She had set the first panel aside, leaning it against the wall, when a heavy vehicle pulled up the gravel drive. She spun around, as did Leroy, staring at the door.

“It’s Ryan,” Joe hissed, looking down over the edge of the roof. “Ryan’s truck.” And before Dulcie or Kit could move or speak, Joe’s gray rump and short tail disappeared over the edge and down the cypress trunk. They leaped after him, scrambling into the bushes, and stood watching.

The truck door slammed, and Ryan headed for the cottage.“Mavity?” she called. “Charlie? Who’s here?”

Trying to think what to do, the cats could only crowd through the door behind her.

When Ryan saw strangers, and saw the painting, she stopped cold, her hand flying to her pocket.“What are you doing?” Raised by cops, she wasn’t slow to react, she saw clearly what they were up to. “Get back! Now! Stand against the wall, now!” The bulge in her pocket might be a gun, or might be a wrench or a screwdriver. “Move against the wallnow! Face the wallnow! Do it now!” She moved quickly, and her split-second reaction was second nature.

Little Ralph Wicken immediately did as he was told; he stood up to face the far wall, and he stood still. Leroy stood still, watching Ryan, undecided about her resolve or whether she was armed. The cats knew she didn’t have a gun, that she wouldn’t come onto the grounds of the children’s home armed. As Leroy made a move toward her, Betty dove at her, swinging a hammer and hitting her a glancing bow; Ryan sidestepped and tripped her. At the same instant the cats leaped and landed on Betty’s back, bitingand clawing. Ryan grabbed the end of Betty’s hammer, bending Betty’s wrist back and jamming the hammer into her ribs. Catching her breath, Betty fell. As Leroy lunged at Ryan, Joe Grey leaped in his face, raking with strong hind claws. Beside him, Kit, too, clung to the man, biting and clawing.But Leroy, despite their attack, swung his hammer a glancing blow at Ryan hitting her hard on the side of the head. She staggered, dropped, and lay still.

Betty spun away, ripped a panel from the wall, and passed it to Leroy.“In the van. Hurry up. Put the blankets between.” She snatched another panel, spattering it with her blood. The cats wanted to go to Ryan.

“They’ll be gone in a minute,” Joe whispered, “be still.”

“I can’t bestill,” Dulcie hissed. “She needs help.”

30

“H OLD THE DAMN door, Ralph! Get out of the way!” Betty stepped over Ryan where she lay unconscious, bleeding onto the stone floor. Quickly she and the two men loaded the panels, piled into the van, and took off with a squeal of tires, leaving the garage door banging.

Leaping to Ryan, the cats crouched over her, nosing and pawing at her, trying to rouse her.“Her cell phone!” Dulcie said, pawing at her jacket pockets and then at her belt, trying to find the little holster. “Where…?”

“The truck!” Kit mewed, and fled for Ryan’s truck. Leaping and scrambling in through the open window, she vanished, her tail waving and then gone.

She appeared again almost at once, her mouth gaping around Ryan’s cell phone. Dropping out the window and bolting into the studio, she laid it at Joe’s feet.

Joe knew how to operate Clyde’s phone, and he’d used Wilma’s. But every phone was different, and it took them precious minutes to understand this one. Finally, with a prayer and a fast paw, he reached the dispatcher-one ring, two, and a familiar voice.

“Thank God it’s Mabel,” he blurted to Dulcie. “Stanhope mansion,” he shouted. “Thieves, struck Ryan with a hammer, she’s out cold, maybe concussion…The old studio…” He heard Mabel speaking to the medics on another line and in a second they heard the siren whoop, half a mile away.Whoop, whoop, coming fast, straight for the school. Joe described the blue van look-alike, gave Mabel the plate number and the number of the tan Suburban with which, he thought, the van might rendezvous. They wouldn’t get far in that conspicuous blue van, they’d have to shift the paintings somewhere. As Joe talked with Mabel, Kit and Dulcie pawed at Ryan and licked her face, trying to wake her.

T WO MILES SOUTH of the village, below the black cliffs, a lone hiker descended to the shore. The tide was unusually low, the sea sucking back into the far distance, leaving a long slope of wet and gleaming sand bejeweled with tiny, sea-washed treasures. Wandering slowly, the woman left a single line of footprints pressed into the silver skein, each indentation quickly filling again with seawater; the cold smells of salt and iodine were strong enough to taste.

Although it was against coastal rules, she bent down now and then to collect a rounded stone or a shell of particular beauty, or a small bit of sea-smoothed driftwood, placing each carefully in the lightweight backpack that she carried over her shoulder. She was twenty-two, with lank brown hair, a lean and tanned young woman who seldom wore makeup. The wind was at her back, pressing her along as she moved north from where she’d left her small, two-door Civic on the cliff above, parked in a pullout, its bumper against the log barrier at the edge of the cliff stairs. Her stride was long and swinging, her delight complete at finding the beach empty on this bright, cold afternoon. Buoyed and excited by her isolation, relishing the perfection of the day that nothing could spoil, she stopped suddenly.

Startled.

Stood very still, sniffing the air, frightened by the unnatural smell.

She stood at a bend in the cliff. She could taste the cloying, sweet smell, it nearly made her retch. She stood staring, then she started forward again, hesitantly, her hand over her mouth and nose to block the smell. Above her the cliff rose some thirty feet, sheer and wet, and black as obsidian.

Just ahead, beyond the stone outcropping, something gleamed. She approached until she glimpsed it, dark and curved, sleek as a beached whale, half hidden beyond the turn in the cliff; whatever it was did not belong there.

Oh, not a baby whale, she thought, recoiling with pity and dread. Donna Reese loved the eerie songs of the whales; she played her wildlife tapes over and over through earphones at night in her college dorm, to help her sleep.

But no, this was not a smooth, water-sleek animal. This was metal. Dark, wet metal. At a change of the wind that drove the stink at her, she gagged, the wind’s shifting gust slapping the sick-sweet stink right in her face, making her stomach twist.

But in a moment she approached, her hand tighter over her nose and mouth.

She saw the fender first, and then the whole car. Water dripped from the metal, water left when the tide had receded. The vehicle was turned up on its nose, badly dented, wedged beneath a hollow of cliff that was being slowly cut by the sea into a shallow cave.

How long had the wreck been here? Through how many changes of tide? Ignoring the need to heave, she cupped her hands to the cracked passenger window, peering in.

She stood a moment looking at the dead man, then looked up at the sheer black cliff and the narrow highway some hundred feet above. Down the side of the cliff she could see fresh scrape marks where the car had gone over.

At the base of the cliff lay jagged humps of broken black rock protruding from the wet sand. Once, millions of years before, this whole coast had lain on the sea bottom. She didn’t know what that had to do with the dead man, she just thought it. The thought sent a thrill of fear through her that made her glance warily behind her at the endless sea, made her think about the frailty of human life.

Moving away from the body and the wreck, she threw up.

When she had emptied her stomach, probably of all her meals for the last week, she thought, her mouth tasting vile both from throwing up and from the permeating stink, she dug into her pack for her cell phone.

Donna Reese, at twenty-two, might be adventuresome and independent and prefer to hike alone without talkative companions, but she carried water, candy bars, and a cell phone. She was generally levelheaded, but now she stood trying to gather her wits, trying to put out of her mind the swollen, ugly body, the transformation that death had bestowed upon what had once been a living man.

And then she dialed 911.

One ring, and a woman dispatcher picked up. Carefully Donna gave her location, told the woman that she’d seen only one person in the car. Yes, he was definitely dead. Swollen. Far beyond need for the paramedics. As she spoke, she longed suddenly to be home, if only back in the dorm, back in her own familiar place in the world, where she’d be safe; and for a moment, she wondered if she had the nerve, now, to drive back toward the village along that narrow and precarious two-lane highway.

A S MAX HARPER moved out with a dozen other police officers, their silent units seeking the blue van and the tan Suburban, Dallas Garza headed for the hospital on the tail of the EMTs, cursing the medic’s slow, careful driving even with its siren blasting, wanting to jam his foot on the gas. He was going to get his hands on Betty Wicken, on all three of those bastards, and he wasn’t sure what he’d do to them. If violent retribution lost him his job, so be it. Swinging a sharp U into the emergency parking beside the rescue van, he moved beside Ryan’s stretcher as they hurried her in through the emergency entrance. She hadn’t moved. She didn’t move now.

In the ER, he hovered over her while Dr. Hamry took a look, cleaned up the wound, and then had her moved to a bed where he could watch her. Ray Hamry was young, maybe forty. A tall, thin, athletic man with short brown hair and blue eyes, tanned from tennis and swimming. He was a man Dallas had known a long time, and respected-but even Hamry could not have all the answers to her condition until he’d examined Ryan further, and run the X-rays and scans. Hamry tried to ease Dallas’s fear and rage, knowing that wouldn’t do much good, that Dallas was going to fuss and pace until he had answers.

T HE THREE CATS couldn’t very well hitch a ride in the rescue vehicle with Ryan or in Dallas’s squad car. Beating it to the station across the rooftops, they were on the dispatcher’s counter waiting for word about Ryan when the call came in about the body, Dulcie and Kit curled up beside Mabel’s in-box, Joe Greysprawled across a stack of outgoing reports. Mabel had the phone speaker on, leaving her hands free for a copying job. The caller was a woman.

She sounded young, and shaken.“There…there’s a dead man. Below the cliff. In a wrecked car. It went over the side, you can see the marks. He’s been dead for a long time. Swollen.” She sounded like she was trying not to retch.

“Where?” Mabel said. “Can you tell me exactly where you are?”

“I…just below the state park. My car’s at the top by the stairs. About two miles south of the village, I think. I was walking the beach, and…the wrecked car’s all sand and mud, and dripping water.”

“How many people in it, besides the driver? Can you see anyone else inside?”

The girl didn’t answer.

“Stay on the line.Please stay on the line,” Mabel shouted, turning to the radio to send two cars on their way. Then, “Are you still there?”

“Yes, I’m here.”

“What kind of car are you driving?”

“White, two-door Civic.” The girl gave Mabel the license-plate number.

“Stay on the line, I’m putting you on hold.” Punching another line, Mabel called the coroner, and then tried to reach the captain and Detective Garza. The cats heard the back door slam as officers headed out to their units. They heard two cars start and race away, and then Dallas came on the line.

“I’m at the hospital.”

“How is she?” Mabel said.

“Concussion, but stable. They don’t know any more, yet.”

“We have a body in a wrecked car, bottom of the cliff, two miles south of the village. Caller says it’s been dead awhile. Two cars dispatched.” Mabel gave him the location, near the cliffside stairs. “Caller’s car’s parked there, a white Civic.”

“I’m on my way,” Dallas said. Mabel kept trying to reach the chief, but couldn’t raise him. It wasn’t like Captain Harper not to answer, either on his radio or his cell phone, and Mabel began to fidget. Joe wanted to tell her that Max was chasing the Wickens and maybe was too mad or too involved to pick up the call, but he could only lie there, mute, edgy, and frustrated.

Ten minutes later, Mabel reached Harper’s cell phone. She was relaying the information about the body when the radio came alive. Four officers were at the scene. Brennan said, “Looks like we might have the Christmas-tree body.”

Three sets of ears pricked with interest, three small bodies tensed.

“There’s a teddy bear in the car,” Brennan said, “and a little girl’s sweater about the right size. Pillows and a blanket, like maybe they’d traveled a ways. No kid, no luggage, no other clothes. Car’s a gray 1997 Toyota Camry. No plates. Nothing in the glove compartment. McFarland’s checking for…Hang on.”

There was a lapse of some minutes. Mabel and the cats could hear background voices and bouts of disturbance that sounded like gusts of wind. Brennan said,“VIN number’s been filed off. No ID on the body. Coroner’s here. See if you can pick up a stolen report on that make of car.”

As Mabel typed the information into the computer, Joe Grey grew increasingly restive. He wanted to be at the scene; Mabel’s electronic command post was good, but it was second best. Mabel was talking with Dallas again when they heard Detective Davis coming up the hall.

Mabel filled her in, and Davis spoke with Garza, and because the victim might have been traveling but no luggage was found, they decided to pull a couple of guys off their beat to check the motels. See if they could find a man registered with a little girl, someone who hadn’t been seen for a couple of days.

Now that they had a body, there was an outside chance they might get an identification through the DNA. At least they’d have DNA to compare with the blood around the Christmas tree.

“Lucky,” Mabel said, “that the lab has two new technicians.”

“Lucky if they stay,” Davis said. “With the cost of living in the area, it isn’t likely.” For over a year the lab had been understaffed, with two desks vacant. And the county was making little effort to raise the salaries for those urgent positions. Cases had been backed up, with resulting complications, and many minor cases let walk or ignored because the arresting officers couldn’t get the latents processed or get the lab work needed to get these cases into court.

“With pillows and a blanket in the car,” Mabel said, “does that sound like the dead man kidnapped her?” She looked around. “Whereis your young charge?”

“She’s with Sand. Eleanor took her up to the seniors’ for a while. No, I don’t buy kidnapping. Informant said she was huddled up to the guy. If you can believe her. Why would…”

Mabel nodded.“Why would she lie? That informant has never led us wrong. I know her voice, I’ve taken her calls enough times.”

“And this call from down the coast? That wasn’t the same?”

“Not at all,” Mabel said. “But the call when Ryan was hurt…No doubt about that one. I’d knowhis voice anywhere.”

The two women were quiet, looking at each other. The cats were quiet, and seemed to be dozing.“How do they do that?” Mabel said softly. “How can those snitches always be at the scene?” She stroked Dulcie nervously. “I think about that too much, Juana. Sometimes it gives me the shivers.” Under Mabel’s stroking hand, Dulcie was getting shivers. On the counter beside her, Joe Grey felt his skin twitch, his nerves so jumpy his whiskers quivered. Kit was very still, as if wishing she could vanish-like a rabbit gone to ground hoping to disappear in the tall grass.

Dallas came back on.“If the motels don’t turn up their luggage, maybe the killer dumped it so we couldn’t ID the victim.”

Davis said,“What about I pull the two rookies, let them do some Dumpster diving?”

Dallas chuckled.“And what about the charity shops?”

“I’ll do that, and take the kid,” Davis said. “She seems to like pretty clothes, as much as you can tell what the silent little thing likes. She might recognize something of her own, a favorite little dress, and go for it.”

“Good idea,” Dallas said. “Gotta go, I’ve got Max on…”

As Davis turned back toward her office, Joe Grey yawned and rose. Davis’s idea, to try to pick up the little girl’s clothes, hoping to find trace material from the victim, was fine. The kid might go for her own clothes. But to find the dead man’s clothes, mixed with all the others on the rack, would be harder. Davis would have to find out when recently donated clothes of the right size had been brought in, if the volunteer on duty even knew. And once she’d narrowed the search to the right size and time frame, she’d still be working in the dark.

While all a cat had to do was walk along the rack, sniffing.

Joe looked at Kit. She was the only one who had been near the dead man, who would know his scent. He twitched an ear. Dulcie and Kit came fully alert, and the three cats leaped down mewling at Mabel until she opened the heavy glass door.

“You cats come to visit, just get settled, and you’re gone again-fickle as all cats, no sense of loyalty to old friends,” she said, smiling.

But even as Mabel turned back to her phones and radio, up on the roof above her head, the tortoiseshell kit looked at Joe, wide-eyed and uncertain.“What?” she said. “Why are you…What did I do?”

“You’re going to find the dead man’s clothes. If we hit the charity shops before Davis…”

“But…” Dulcie said.

“I…The only scent I caught from the roof,” Kit said, “was death. Nothing else, Joe. How could I smell anything else, over that stink?”

“He’d only just died,” Joe said stubbornly. “Try to remember, Kit. Or maybe the scent of the killer is on those clothes, too.”

“The dead man will be hard enough. But I was trying to track the little girl among the geranium smells and all the cops’ scents. I didn’t have time to sort out the killer’s scent. I wouldn’t know the smell of the killer if I stumbled over him.”

Kit smoothed her long fur with a rough tongue.“The child’s scent, yes. I could pick out her clothes from the racks of castoffs, but…Oh!” she said, lashing her tail with excitement. “Of course I can find the victim’s clothes!His scent will be on the little girl’s clothes-and her scent will be on his. She was in his arms, she was hugging him.” And Kit’s yellow eyes blazed with challenge. “I can do that, Joe. I can find both scents!”

31

T HE WOODS BEHIND the high school were dense, not much used except by students skipping class or crowding in at night to party. The narrow road that wound between the scraggly pines was littered with empty drink cans and debris of a less appealing nature. The old tramp wouldn’t ordinarily camp up here, but now, wanting to avoid the village, and never liking the homeless camps down by the river where things could get dicey, he found the woods inviting. After the cops picked him up yesterday, he’d slept in here last night, moving deep in behind a bushy stand of poison ivy where no one would see him, and high school kids weren’t likely to invade. Poison ivy didn’t bother him, he could roll in the stuff and never itch. He was sipping coffee, thinking to open a can of beans for his supper, and congratulating himself on not having encountered a living soul, when he heard a car coming. Breaking branches and crunching rocks.

Beyond the bushes, he watched a van pull in, heading toward him along the narrow dirt road, brushing overhanging limbs and side branches, a blue Chevy van. And a big tan SUV right behind it. Well, hell. Person didn’t have no privacy, nowhere.

Real fast, he scraped dirt over his little fire and rolled up his blanket, did up his kit preparing to move out. But then he hunkered down again, watching the Suburban as it backed around on the narrow road with a lot of hustle and fuss, until it was heading out. He knew he ought to get out of there, but he was too interested.

The Suburban parked with its tail just a few feet from the rear of the van. A tall woman swung out of the van and moved around to open the rear doors at the same time as a muscular guy stepped out of the Suburban and opened the tailgate. Then a smaller man slid down out of the Suburban and, at the woman’s direction, walked back a ways up the dirt road and stood as she told him, watching the street beyond the high school for cop cars.

When the big man and the woman began to transfer the van’s load into the SUV, pulling out panels that stood upright in the van but, going into the Suburban, had to lay flat, the old man was way too curious to leave, too interested in what they had there.

The big panels were pictures-blue, green, glimpses of a stormy sky. The woman was cranky and bad-tempered, the exact same scowling kind of female he’d never cared for. Like the women in his own family when he was a kid, loud and bossy and you couldn’t never trust ’em. She snapped at her partner the whole time as they lifted the panels. She’d pause between loading each, though, to stuff blankets between. Like they was real valuable.

When they closed the doors of both vehicles, real quiet, and got in and headed back the way they’d come, he decided he wouldn’t have to move along after all. It sure didn’t look like they meant to come back. The woman handled the van real nifty among the dense trees. She stopped by their lookout, the little guy. She stepped out, got in the SUV, left the little guy to drive the van.

Smiling, the old man unrolled his blanket again, and sat down. He listened as the two vehicles moved away to Highway One, sounded like they turned right, up the coast. Scraping the dirt off the hot ashes, he fed in a few twigs, hoping to get a blaze going again. The wind was up; he shivered, and sat thinking.

This was the kind of switch, back out of sight, that the cops sure would like to know about. If a fella liked cops well enough to tell’em.

Them cops here in the village were okay. He’d rather deal with cops, sometimes, than some of the scum he met up with. Them cops yesterday, they’d taken him right on into the chief’s office, give him a cup of coffee. Keeping his shoes for evidence of some kind, they’d hustled up a fine pair to replace them. Fit him real good. And afterward that blond cop that picked him up, she’d bought him a real nice deli lunch before she sent him on his way. A real looker, that one. He wondered why she’d wanted to be a cop.

Getting the little fire going and wrapping his blanket around him, he thought about that body that was supposed to have been in the plaza, the stiff they’d lost and wanted the evidence for, wanted his shoes for-and wondered if this switch he’d just seen could have something to do with that.

He didn’t see how. But who knew? He wasn’t no cop.

Wondering, he covered the little fire again that he’d just got started, but didn’t shoulder his pack. He buried it among the poison ivy. Then, thinking about the cold supper he’d have when he got back, he left the woods. The sky above him was gray and dull, the winter evening cold. Shrugging down into his jacket, he headed for the center of the village wondering if that tall blond cop was still on duty. Wondering, if she was there at the station, she might buy him something hot from the deli, for his supper.

T HERE WERE FIVE charity shops in the village, all providing good used clothing, often with impressive labels, to the astute shopper, and offering, as well, an occasional antique treasure that would turn out to be worth considerably more than the buyer paid for it. The senior ladies hit these shops regularly and then sold their finds on eBay, always making a nice profit.

The treasure that Kit was after had nothing to do with monetary gain-and everything to do with nailing a killer. It was late afternoon when she left Molena Point PD heading for the small SPCA resale shop just a few blocks away. She would have maybe half an hour until the stores closed.

As she raced across the roofs and down to the sidewalk, her mind was half on finding the killer’s scent, and half worrying about Ryan lying unconscious in the hospital-seeing over and over again that woman and then Leroy hitting Ryan, seeing Ryan fall, seeing blood start from the wound across Ryan’s forehead.

Kit crossed the last street close on the heels of a pair of gossiping young women who were hurrying back to work in the library. When she heard someone behind her gush,“Oh, look at the cute kitty,” she ran full out, never eager to consort with tourists, certainly not anxious to endure strangers’ too-personal stroking and petting-she could leave that familiarity to the canine crowd. Dogs loved that smarmy attention. Dogs loved the admiration of people they’d never seen before and would never see again. Baby talk from strangers. That stuff sent a dog right to the moon, inanely wagging and wriggling.

Leaping up three steps to the brick alley where half a dozen shops were tucked away, Kit skirted around a planter of red poinsettias, approaching the open door of the SPCA resale shop. She would have to get in and out before Davis and the child did, or the little girl’s new scent would be all over everything. Fresh and old scents all mixed up, and she’d be able to find nothing.

Slipping inside, she melted behind a rack of men’s sport coats, keeping low until she could spot the clerk. Charity shops weren’t heavy on personnel, most of whom were volunteers. Rearing up, she saw a woman behind a far counter, and she could hear a radio playing softly in the back room, as if maybe someone was back there sorting donations.Padding along the racks, and past a display of luggage and tired-looking tennis rackets, she spotted the children’s dresses.

Quickly she sniffed along the little hems, keeping out of sight, forgetting as she often did that she was only a cat, that it wouldn’t matter if the clerk saw her-most shops didn’t mind a cat wandering in. Reaching the end of the rack of little dresses and shirts and pants, she’d found no scent of the child.

She could see no more children’s clothes, and she moved to the men’s racks, again rearing up and sniffing. But, again, nothing.

She left the SPCA empty-pawed, racing for the next shop, four blocks away. She had maybe twenty minutes before the stores closed. Was Ryan still unconscious? Had she come to? What was happening to her?

Had she, upon awakening, remembered cats talking close to her face, remembered Joe Grey using her cell phone? Oh, my. Kit hoped not.

But concussions could cause visions, and a kind of dementia, Kit thought. She didn’t wish Ryan bad luck, she wanted her to be whole and well again. But if those were possible symptoms, then surely Ryan would blame such wild ideas as talking cats on the terrible wound in her head.

At Millie’s Treasures, two clerks were in attendance, two elderly ladies with purple-tinted hairdos. Lurking in the shadows, Kit went through the same drill, padding along beneath tables of old books-world globes-antique radios-flowerpots-hiking boots-handbags-suitcases-rag dolls-you name it, to the rack of little girls’ used clothes-almost at once, she caught the child’s scent.

It was just a whiff, but enough! She was so excited she almost yowled. The child’s scent right there on a little blue dress. Yes! Quickly she moved along the rack, rearing up, searching for more of that little girl’s clothes.

She found two more dresses, and some folded jeans and Tshirts atop a table that smelled of the child. She was almost at the end of a second rack when she heard a familiar voice and she rose up to look, balancing with a forepaw against the end of the rack.

Juana Davis stood in the doorway, holding the little girl’s hand. She looked frustrated, and the child looked tired, worn-out, so pale and docile that Kit wanted to pat her face with a soft paw-that little girl was like a sick little kitten.

Kit knew Juana had to put her through this, and knew the detective would make it as easy as she could. But the little girl looked so ill.Well, if she saw her fatherdie, that night, Kit thought,then of course she’s sick. Sick deep inside herself. Watching the pale little girl, Kit let out a tremulous sigh.And now, she thought,that man’s body has been found, and the department will be working all out to ID him. So strange, she thought,that there was no record of the prints that Dallas Garza lifted at the plaza and on the evidence they retrieved. Where in the world did that man, and the killer, come from, that there are no prints on file?

Maybe therewere a lot of people in the world, as Joe Grey said, who had never applied for a sensitive job or a federal job, who had never been arrested, and who had never been printed in school as a child to help find them if they were lost. Maybe after all, she thought, the human world was still a bit uncontrolled, not all cataloged and accounted for. And that pleased her, that thought satisfied the independent nature of the young cat.

Kit did not like to see everything organized and made docile, she wanted to sensesome stubborn independence among her fellow creatures.

Davis headed on into the shop, walking slowly, talking gently to the child.Bring her here, Kit thought.Right here! Bring her right here! These are her clothes! These! Besides the two dresses and the jeans, she had found two little pairs of corduroy pants, another T-shirt, and a pair of pajamas, all smelling of that particular child. And here they came, Juana heading for the children’s rack, while the little girl’s attention wandered around the store-and suddenly the child came alert.

She stopped, and tried to pull her hand from Juana’s, but Juana didn’t let her go. The child’s eyes were wide, and the hint of a smile touched her pale lips-and with sudden strength she jerked her hand free and ran across the shop straight at Kit.

Drawing back, Kit slipped under the chair. But it wasn’t Kit she was after, it was the heap of stuffed animals and dolls in the far corner. The child passed Kit, never seeing her, and plunged into the little mountain of toys, reaching high among them.

At the very top sat a faded cloth doll with ragged, floppy angel wings, a handmade doll with long and tangled pale hair, a doll with a long white dress, torn and dirty, and with a dark stain on the front, like blood. One little white shoe was missing. The child, climbing to the top of the heap, tumbling animals and dolls all around her, grabbed the angel, hugging it to her, and clambered down again. Stood clutching the dingy creature tight, tears running down her face.

As Juana knelt beside the little girl, Kit drew close behind her, close enough to get a whiff of the doll-she knew a cop’s awareness is as sharp as a cat’s, that a cop misses very little; but Kit was quick. She inhaled one deep scent of the doll then she melted out of sight, vanishing behind a stack of baskets-and thinking hard about the additional scent that clung to the faded angel.

The scent of a man. A scent that left the tortoiseshell kit crouched shivering in the shadows, amazed, hardly able to believe what she had smelled. Not wanting to believe it.

But unable not to believe it.

D ALLAS GARZA SWUNG a U-turn on Molena Valley Road and headed back fast for Highway One, turning north up the coast without sirens, where Mabel had cars moving in-two units up the hill ahead, a third coming fast and silent out of the village, its lights flashing. Two more cars coming down out of the westerly hills, no lights or siren. They’d all be visible from the highway, but there were no side roads where the perps could turn off. They had the van and Suburban in a pincer that would soon close tight. It was hard not to floorboard his unit and run down the bastards, tooling along there with the traffic in the fast lane.

The detective’s usual quiet, laid-back approach was out the window. This was Ryan they’d messed with. This was his niece. Ryan was like his own daughter, and he was damn well going to nail their asses. Weaving in and out, wishing he could use his siren, he cursed the drivers who weren’t watching behind orwho, seeing a cop car in a hurry, didn’t have the courtesy or the sense to get over.

Damn civilians probably thought he was headed for an early dinner. The blue van sure did look like Charlie’s van, from a distance. It was following the tan Suburban with five cars between. Swinging into the right lane and then the bike path, he overtook seven cars on his left, swerved in at the van, and motioned the driver onto the median. He had two units behind him now, Wendell and Hendricks. Usinghis speaker, he told the van’s driver to stay put, that he was blocked in. Told him to get out of the van and stand in front of it, hands on his head. He took off as Wendell and Hendricks pulled up. He swung into the left lane and hit the gas, giving it the lights and siren, speeding after the Suburban. There was no nearby off-ramp. The five cars ahead, all in the left lane, slowed reluctantly and pulled over, and the Suburban took off like it had been standing still, straight into the pincer between two units.

Dallas pulled in behind as they forced the Suburban onto the median. He heard three shots-and saw the blue van in his mirror, careening at him from behind. The explosion of two shots from that driver’s window jerked him to attention. He hit the brakes to avoid ramming the two units, but as he turned to fire behind him, another shot exploded. He spun the wheel, wondering if he’d been hit. A jam of cars ahead. The two units and the Suburban filled the median. Two more units coming fast on the other side, pulling over to divert traffic. His shoulder wasn’t working right.

He could smell his own blood. Damn it to hell. He didn’t have time for this. Where the hell were Wendell and Hendricks? Then his radio squawked, “Officer down. Officer down,” and he knew one or both had been hit. Blood was seeping through his jacket. When he turned to look behind him, the blue van was gone. In a second he heard the siren of the EMT.

He swung out of the unit swearing as McFarland jerked the female driver out of the Suburban, and Officer Bean, standing on tiptoe, rammed the burly passenger against the vehicle, hands on the roof, Bean’s weapon jammed in the small of the guy’s back.

McFarland was cuffing the woman as she fought and screamed. She had dropped her gun, and McFarland had it safe. More sirens as two more units arrived and another EMT. Dallas’s shoulder was beginning to hurt, he couldn’t make his right hand work. Heading for the dark-haired woman as she twisted and swore, fighting her cuffs, he had to forcefully keep himself from touching her, from pounding the hell out of her. They’d damn near killed Ryan and he wanted to see them hurt, see them dead.

32

R YAN WOKE HEARING voices far away, but she couldn’t see anyone. Fuzzy voices. She was dizzy, so dizzy. Pale walls around her swimming into darkness and tilting back again. Something swung at her from nowhere, a hammer, she tried to duck, caught her breath with pain. A woman swinging a hammer, big woman, darkly clad, her voice blasting loud but then faint. Dizzy. The woman was gone. A man’s voice, blurred. “Mabel…it’s Mabel Mabel Mabel…” She was so cold, cold deep in her bones. “Stanhope studio studio studio studio…Ryan Ryan Ryan Ryan…” Ringing in her ears like diving deep underwater. Fuzzy voices all throbbing and she was falling, falling…

Then men’s voices, coming clearer. She reached up to touch them, but she couldn’t find anyone, her hand met cold metal. Metal bars…

A cell? A prison cell? Why would she be in a cell? No, it was a bed, she was under blankets in a bed. She hit out at the bars, but someone pushed her back. She tried to fight but was pushed down hard against the mattress, strong hands but gentle, easing her down. She had no strength…

She woke to a light burning, a metal lamp, and wondered why she’d been asleep when all she’d wanted was to sit up. A figure leaned over her, making her cringe.

But it was Clyde. It was all right, it was Clyde. As he smoothed her sheet and blanket, she remembered being lifted and carried. White paramedic uniforms. Everything after that seemed far away, car doors slamming, men’s urgent voices, a truck engine, lying on a cot or something, bumping along. Blackness and then bright cruel light in her eyes like a knife, and voices leaping so her head throbbed. It was still throbbing, she tried to pull away from the pain, and couldn’t.

“Be still, Ryan.” Clyde leaning over her again, his reassuring voice. “Lie still.” Again she tried to sit up, but again he held her back. “Liestill, Ryan,” he said in a no-nonsense voice. “You’re in the hospital. You’re going to be fine. You have a concussion, and you have to be still. Someone hit you with a hammer. The doctor wants you to lie still. Do you understand?”

She knew there’d been a hammer, she could hear the shattering sound when it hit her and she felt her belly twist sickly. When she moved, her head hurt bad, she guessed she’d do what Clyde told her, she really didn’t want to move. She tried to remember what had happened.

There had been trucks all around, and forklifts. And parts of little houses cut apart…the playhouses, the contest. But then she was in an empty house. How could there be green hills inside a house? Huge green hills in her face, stormy sky…Then strangers. Two men, and the tall woman. Their startled scowls at her, the woman hissing something…swinging the hammer, then another hammer came at her, the crushingthunk that sent her reeling. She remembered falling, hitting the stone floor…She looked up at Clyde. He leaned down over the bars and kissed her. “There were cats,” she said.

“Cats?”

She tried again to sit up, but he wouldn’t let her. “There were cats. I was lying on a stone floor. Cold. Cats were looking down at me. Your cat, Clyde. Joe Grey. But they…” She swallowed, her mouth dry.

He lifted her head enough to guide a bent straw to her lips. She drank, then reached her hand to feel the tightness across her forehead, to feel the thick bandage.“They were talking, Clyde.Talking.”

“Who was talking? The medics? They-”

“The cats. The cats were talking.”

Clyde smiled.“You do have a concussion.”

“I could see light in the roof. Skylights. There were huge green hills inside the room. But then when the cats came, the hills were gone. It was all stone walls. Cold. Cold stone floor, cold under me.

“I was in the Stanhope studio,” she said, looking at him more clearly. “And the three catswere there. Your cat. Wilma’s cat. The Greenlaws’ cat. Standing over me. Talking about me.”

His mouth twisted.“You had a concussion. Dr. Hamry says-”

“Talking, Clyde. I swear.” And in her head, the voices repeated themselves,Mabel Mabel Mabel Mabel…Ryan Ryan Ryan Ryan…She looked intently at him. “I swear. Cats. I heard cats talking. Something about my cell phone, and thenMabel Mabel Mabel…”

Clyde grinned.“That’ll be the day, when acat talks. I wouldn’t want to be around to see that. I’m surprised you didn’t think Rock was there, giving the medics directions.”

“But Rock’s here,” she said, feeling the weight on her legs. “He always sleeps on my bed.” Reaching gingerly down so as not to make her head throb any worse, she felt across the covers for the big hound.

But now the weight was gone. She could feel the warm place, but no one was there. And, had that weight been heavy enough to be Rock? Was that warm patch of blanket under her hand big enough to accommodate an eighty-pound Weimaraner? She looked up at Clyde. It hurt to move her eyes.“Where’s Rock?”

“Will you lie still?” Clyde eased her back. “You’re hurting yourself. It’s dangerous to thrash around like that. The blood…”

“Where is Rock?” she whispered. Under her hand, the warm spot was already cooling.

“Rock’s at my house. He’s fine, Ryan. Feisty, and missing you.” Leaning over, he smoothed her covers again. She felt herself drifting, drifting into sleep…

S HE WAS TRYING to climb out of a dark pit, trying to open her eyes and come awake. A voice beside her said,“Ryan?” She wanted to be helped up, to be pulled up out of the darkness.

“Ryan?”

She opened her eyes, and a harsh light reflected on the pale wall, a stark metal lamp so bright it made her head hurt. This wasn’t her studio apartment, she wasn’t in her own bed, she didn’t know this place. But beside this bed, Clyde sat in a chair, watching her. “You’ve been asleep.”

She was in a strange bed, in a strange room, her head hurt like hell. Gingerly she fingered the bandage.“Why am I…What happened to me? I heard Charlie’s voice, and Hanni. Why is everything so muddled?”

“Someone hit you. You have a concussion. Leave your bandage alone, don’t pick at it. Don’t try to sit up, and don’t wriggle around. You had a blow on the head and if you…”

She turned just a little, to look at him, and her head throbbed. She remembered the stone room, Betty Wicken swinging a hammer and a man with a hammer…

“It’s going to hurt for a while. Everyone’s been here. Scotty; your sister, Hanni; Charlie; Wilma; the seniors; Lori and Dillon…Slipping in, holding your hand for a minute, and then leaving. The doctor pitched a fit. But they were here, touching you for a moment like some kind of blessing.”

“How long have I been here? You didn’t say Dallas was here. Where’s Dallas?” She sat upright, jarring a pain through her head that made her sick to her stomach.“Clyde, where’s Dallas?”

“Chasing the bad guys,” Clyde said easily. “Chasing the people who hit you. He’s fine, Ryan.”

She tried to relax, tried to think clearly.“Charlie was here? I’m missing her book signing, her opening…”

He glanced at his watch.“It’s nearly six, she’ll be there now, for the children-the adult party starts at seven.”

She tried to look sideways toward the windows to see if it was still daylight, but that hurt.“And the contest? The girls…?”

“Their house is all in place. The judging is tomorrow.”

“Clyde, I can’t miss Charlie’s opening. I could just…?”

“You’re not supposed to talk so much. You need to rest, and mend.” He kissed her on the cheek and rose. “The doctor will be in around six. He’ll have the CAT scan and X-rays. He’ll want me out of here, he’s not happy about so many visitors.”

He picked up a gym bag that he’d set on the floor beside his chair. “There’s a guard outside. When Dr. Hamry leaves, go to sleep. They’re bringing a cot in for Hanni, for the night. She’ll be along later, after the opening, in case you need anything extra. I imagine she’ll bring you some party food.” He kissed heragain, tenderly. “I’ll be back in the morning.” He turned away and was gone, disappearing into the hall with his heavy gym bag. Why would he bring a gym bag to the hospital, he didn’t work out in the evenings. As he swung the door halfway closed, she glimpsed a uniformed officer sitting on a straight-backed chair, just outside.

What had she done to deserve a police guard? Or, what had she seen? That she did not remember?

She guessed she slept, because the next thing she knew, more lights burned, the room was bright, and Dr. Hamry stood beside her bed, touching her shoulder. His voice was very soft and caring for such a clumsy-looking big man. She had dreamed about cats. Cats talking. She imagined she could still feel warm fur against her neck and cheek.

N OT UNTIL HE was back in his yellow roadster did Clyde open the gym bag.“I hope you didn’t leave cat hairs on the bed.”

The tomcat stuck his head out, sniffing the cold wind, then stepped out onto the creamy leather seat, stretching luxuriously.“That’s better. I thought I’d smother in there. Did you have tozip the damned thing?”

“It has air vents. What do you think that screen is? That’s why I used the gym bag, so you could breathe.”

“This is yourgym bag, Clyde. You put your sweaty clothes in here. The damn thing smells like a jockstrap.”

Clyde glared, and started the engine. Joe, as they headed for Ocean and home, was still wondering how that bogus, look-alike blue van had been slipped into the school and successfully hidden back in the trees behind the Stanhope house with not one of Harper’s patrol guys seeing it. He looked up when Clyde started to laugh. “What?”

“She thought you were Rock. On the bed.”

“Watch the road. You don’t have to look at me to talk. What’s so funny about that? Rock isn’t some scroungy mongrel, I don’t see being mistaken for Rock as an insult. Anyway, the woman’s half out of it.”

“You have a lot of sympathy. I should have left you in the car.”

Joe looked a long time at Clyde.“You think she’ll be all right?”

“If she lies still and does what she’s told.” Clyde glanced at Joe. “She kept talking about cats. You heard her. Abouttalking cats, Joe.”

“She was out cold, after Betty hit her. Well, we thought she was.”

Clyde turned to glare at him.

“When she’s better, how much will she remember?” Joe said diffidently. Then, “You heard her, her thoughts are all mixed up.”

“Let’s hope,” Clyde said.

“She thinks too much like a cop to believe that stuff,” Joe said. “Talking cats? No way.”

“Charlie figured it out.”

“Charlie’s an artist and a writer. Charlie encourages her imagination, it’s part of her work. With someone like Ryan, who’s all facts and reality, something that far out would never wash. Not for a minute.”

“Ryanisn’t all facts and reality. That’s really unfair. Don’t you think it takes imagination to create the houses she designs?”

Joe looked at Clyde, and shut up. For once, Clyde was right.“Just for the record,” Joe said, “you were so shaken over Ryan that you damned near asked her to marry you.”

“I didn’t do any such thing. Now whose imagination has gone wild?” Turning into their drive and killing the engine, Clyde reached to stroke Joe. “That would screw up our lives. You could never utter another word in your own home.”

“Sometimes even a cat has to make sacrifices.”

Clyde looked surprised.“Not you.”

Joe gave him a long yellow-eyed gaze.

“You’d do that for me?”

“Would I have a choice? If things got too uncomfortable, I could move in with Dulcie and Wilma.”

“I wouldn’t ask her to marry me without settling it with you. We’re family, Joe.”

“Maybe,” Joe said, “it’s time you got married. You’re not getting any younger. Youwould be acquiring a live-in carpenter, electrician, and plumber. And Rock is a very nice dog, as dogs go.”

Clyde swung out and headed for the front door. Unlocked it, flipped on the lights, and scowled down at Joe.“I’m not marrying anyone for her talents at home maintenance.”

Joe leaped to the couch.“You’re not marrying her at all, yet. You haven’t asked her properly. She won’t remember that half-assed hint at marriage when she was just coming to. Talk about a coward’s proposal.” Leaping up onto the mantle, he looked hard at Clyde. “The problem is, you’re not sure Ryan wants toget married. And you’re scared to find out.”

Clyde sat down on the couch. Confirmed bachelor and tomcat looked at each other. It was Clyde who glanced away, and rose again, and headed for the kitchen.

And his bachelor mind was indeed full of questions. There were a lot of reasons why Ryan might not want to get married, at least in the near future. She was still recovering from a bad marriage. She wanted some peace and independence. She was a self-sufficient woman, busy building her own design/construction business. She rented a nice big studio apartment with the room and solitude to work uninterrupted on her blueprints and architectural drawings. Did she really need, or want, to be jammed into the same house with him, on a full-time basis?

He had talked with Wilma about this. Wilma was as close to an older sister as he’d ever have, he’d known her since he was eight and she was twenty-some, and he’d sought her opinions on many matters. Wilma’s judgment was clearly thought out, and sensible.

But in the matter of Ryan Flannery, Wilma had said only“I don’t know, Clyde. Just ask her. If she says no, don’t trash what you two have. Just swallow your pride and go on as you are. Stay the distance, and see where it leads. I like Ryan. Don’t blow your future chances.”

Wondering for the hundredth time what the hell that really meant, Clyde pulled a Mexican dinner from the freezer, stood staring at it, then realized how late it was getting and put it back-Sicily would have sumptuous party food. And anyway, frozen Mexican was reserved only for moments of extreme desperation, when the real thing was inaccessible. As he headed upstairs to change clothes, Joe trotted up past him, hit the desk, leaped to the rafter, and was gone through his cat door. Clyde could hear him galloping across the roof, double-timing for the gallery, the little freeloader.

33

A N HOUR BEFORE Clyde and Joe Grey left Ryan’s hospital room, the tortoiseshell cat sat alert behind a fuchsia vine just outside the SPCA resale shop. The time was nearly five, and the shop would be closing soon. Kit sat quietly listening to Juana Davis speak on her cell phone with the chief. The alley smelled of bayberry from the candle shop across the way. Juana and the little girl sat close together on a hand-carved bench, a small fat duffel bag at Juana’s feet, the child clutching her angel doll tight in her arms, its ragged wings flopping against her.

“Clerk says the doll and clothes, and a small duffel bag the child recognized, were in plastic garbage bags,” Juana said. “Four black bags that were left at the front door before they opened. She remembers because of the doll and the duffel.

“There were men’s clothes in all four bags, but of several sizes. Now they’re mixed in with everything else on the racks. They have a sign on the door asking people not to leave things before they open, but no one pays any attention.”

Kit knew about that. Sometimes, during her predawn prowls, she would sit among the shadows watching a car pull to the curb, watch someone hurry into the alley loaded down with boxes or bags or perhaps a small piece of furniture. Leaving their discards at the locked door, they would hurry away again as if late for work. Once, someone left a nice baby crib complete with mattress, and Kit had enjoyed a little nap before the shop opened.

But this early-morning donation had not been because someone was late for work. Hastily depositing the evidence concealed among other donations might, in the killer’s view, be far more efficient than hiding the clothes in a Dumpster.

But not so, Kit thought smugly.Not this time, my friend! This time you didn’t count on a little kid and her favorite doll.

Nor did you, Kit thought, smiling,nor did you count on the power of a cat’s nose-but the information Kit had uncovered, however, had left her indeed very frightened.

Earlier, in the shop, the child, clutching the doll to her, had gone along the rack carefully picking out her own clothes, pulling each little dress off a hanger and handing it to Juana, looking up at her with trust. From the shadows Kit had watched, impatiently shifting from paw to paw, her whole being filled with the secret she had discovered, with the scent of the man who had handled the doll, the same scent that was on the child’s discarded dresses. Shocked and distressed by what she knew, she was hardly ablenot to blurt it right out to Juana Davis. How she longed for a phone, longed to make just one urgent phone call of her own.

But, afraid she might miss something, she was unwilling to leave Juana. The detective was saying,“They go over them, put aside those that need mending or washing. Clerk said the doll was too fragile to wash, that they’d thought of throwing it away. Said it was too pitiful, too appealing. Clerk wiped it off, put it in the sunshine for a few hours, then laid it on the stack.”

Juana listened; then, softly,“Not a word. But she cried, Max. Silent tears. Cried and clung to the doll.” She listened again; then, “You think that’s smart? Shedoes seem stronger, but…”

Kit could hear the indecipherable murmur of the captain’s voice, then Juana said, “Okay, we’ll give it a try. Sicily’s ‘little snack for the kids’ should be a sumptuous supper, so maybe that will appeal. She hardly touched her lunch.”

Silence; then,“That should be safe enough. We’ll stop by the apartment, give her a little rest and clean up, then we’re on our way.”

As Juana hugged the little girl close, and the child in turn hugged her doll, they rose and headed for Juana’s squad car. Kit watched Davis buckle her into the backseat and tuck a blanket over her knees, then swing in behind the wheel. She spoke on her radio and drove off, turning right at the next corner in the direction of her apartment.

Behind Juana’s car, Kit crossed the briefly empty side street and scorched up an oak tree to the roofs. And she ran, her whole being fixed on what she had learned, and on telling Max Harper, on calling the department. She was crouched to leap a narrow alley, heading for home and a phone, when she stopped so abruptly she almost fell. Clinging at the edge of the shingles, she watched the man on the sidewalk below.

He had stepped from the shadows as Davis’s patrol unit disappeared up the street. Now he was jogging quickly after her, keeping to the late-afternoon shadows along the buildings, his gaze never leaving the patrol car.

Forgetting the phone, Kit followed him, her tortoiseshell coat a dark smear racing across the windy rooftops. As evening drew down and darker clouds moved in over the village, bringing the storm that had threatened all day, and as Joe Grey slipped in through Dulcie’s cat door to escort her as formally as any human paramour to Charlie’s book signing, Kit alone followed the killer. Racing over the roofs, she followed the man who, moving fast along the shadowed street, trailed Detective Davis and the little girl. The man who, Kit was certain, the child could pick out of any lineup.

W HILE KIT FOLLOWED the killer, and Charlie’s human friends spiffed up for the party, Charlie hurried home from the hospital to get dressed. Her visit to Ryan had been brief, and worrisome. Dr. Hamry would know more in the morning.

She hadn’t wanted to leave the hospital, had wanted to call Sicily and say that they’d have to have the opening without her, that to please tell Jennifer Page, the gracious owner of the bookstore, that she’d sign books later for those who bought them, would mail them or deliver them in person. But Clyde, sitting by Ryan’s bed, said she was being foolish. And on the phone, Sicily scolded her and told her to go home at once, get herself dressed, and get her tail over there, that children were already lining up for the signing and that she’d better not show up smelling like horse and wearing boots and jeans. Clyde, gripping Ryan’s cold hand, said that if Ryan had her wits about hershe’d tell Charlie more than that, and that she’d better get moving. She’d left the hospital with the sick, illogical feeling that if she left Ryan alone and she got worse…

“What could you do if you stayed?” Clyde had said. “You’re a doctor, now? A healer? Ryan couldn’t have better care. Even if she took a worse turn, which she won’t, you’d only be in the way.”

“But I’d be here.”

“Go,” Clyde had repeated. “I’m here.”

Sighing, she had left. Had hurried home feeling shaken and vulnerable. She’d quickly fed the horses and dogs and put them up, a chore that could never be neglected; but she hadn’t taken time for a shower. She’d made a quick phone call, then had dusted on some talc, praying she didn’t smell too much like horses, or that the children liked that sweet aroma. Had hurriedly pulled on the lovely gold lam? gown her aunt Wilma had given her. She’d meant to take a nice hot shower, put on fresh new silk lingerie, spend time on a fancy hairdo. Instead she pulled on the gown, quickly bound up her hair with the gold clip, put on a little lipstick, and she was out thedoor again-until she’d remembered the necklace Wilma had given her, and she raced back to slip it on, too.

Now in the car heading back down the hill, hoping she’d locked the door when she left, Charlie was still cursing the Wickens for nearly killing Ryan-if Ryan didn’t mend quickly, Charlie wouldn’t be responsible for what she did to those people. And she was cursing them, too, for making Max miss this special evening. This was the one night that he’d promised to leave work early, get spiffed up in civilian clothes, and escort her to the opening in style-hand her out of her car at the door, offer his arm as they entered, bring her champagne. Promised to forget the department for a few hours. How unrealistic was that? He’d even promised tomake nice to people he didn’t much like.

With the window down and cold air streaming in, she scanned the village below, wondering if the chase was still on for the blue van and the tan Suburban. It enraged her that they’d copied her van. She could hear no sirens from below, could see no whirling red lights moving through the village on the dusky streets or above on the hills. Had Max’s officers already cornered them? The last she’d talked with Mabel-she’d called when she first got home, from the secure line-the department had a tip that the mural panels had been transferred to the SUV. It was against department regulations to communicate information on a chase, but Mabel was careful. She knew, from the way Charlie spoke, that she was on the secure line. She said Max wasn’t part of the chase, that he was down the coast where wreckers were pulling a car and body up the cliff. Was that the body from the plaza? And was that another part of whatever convoluted crime these Wicken people had set in motion?

C HARLIE WOULD NOT learn that Dallas had been shot until she arrived at the gallery and Sicily told her that the detective was, in Sicily’s words, “Just slightly hurt. He may be delayed, they’re taking out the bullet. Just a flesh wound.”

Flesh wound or not, the news sickened Charlie, made her wish someone had shot both the Wickens and that good-for-nothing Leroy Huffman. She spent the evening smiling and trying to be charming and answering hundreds of questions, while inside her worries about Dallas and about Ryan were eating her up, and she wanted only to be at the hospital with them.

S O, THAT WOMAN detective found the kid’s doll and the duffel. Must have found the clothes, too, the way the duffel bag was stuffed full. Standing in the shadows of a doorway half a block up, on the other side of the street, he’d watched her coming out of that used shop, heading for her police unit. That angered him, that she’d found the clothes, he thought he’d disposed of that stuff pretty well. Damn cops.

In a Dumpster, the kid’s pretty clothes would have stood right out. He’d figured they’d dive the Dumpsters. But what made them bring the kid to search the used shops? Sure as hell, no one else but her could spot that stuff, mixed in like it was with all the castoff pants and shirts-he really hadn’t thought they’d drag her around the shops, as puny and sick-looking as she was.

But what the hell? So they had her clothes. What were they going to find? Penney’s and Kmart labels.He hadn’t handled the clothes, except with gloves. This was just cops’ busywork and amounted to nothing.

Worse luck that she’d found that old doll-but why let the doll bother him? So it was handmade, so it might be traced. By the time they’d ID’d the body, if they ever did, or by the time anyone at the other end thought to look for father and child, he’d be long gone where they’d never find him.

Looked like that detective was headed back to her condo with the kid, just as he’d hoped she’d do when the day was done. Earlier in the day, he’d parked his vehicle two blocks from her place, had walked down around the PD and waited a while, hoping to spot her and the kid-then saw them coming out of the charity store. Now, moving fast to keep up with the squad car as shedrove through the crowded streets, he paused in the gathering shadows of a doorway as she swung into the parking garage beneath her condo.

Standing under an overgrown lilac vine that climbed around the door of the closed shop, he could see across the street straight into the garage. She had pulled into her regular slot, near the entrance. He watched her help the kid out and head around to the front stairs.

Once she was inside, she wouldn’t be able to see him from her balcony or windows, not here beneath the thick vine. But he’d be able to see two sides of the condo, looking up between the lilac leaves. Behind him in the shop window was a fancy collection of women’s lingerie, some in pink, printed with purple rabbits, that hefound particularly amusing.

He watched her draw the living-room draperies, and a light went on behind them, throwing a muted glow onto the terrace. Another light came on behind the bedroom shades. He couldn’t see the kitchen window, which was at the back. He wondered if they were in for the evening. It was plenty early, but kids went to bed early. He’d tried earlier to get into the apartment when they were out, but that cop had it buttoned up tight with double dead bolts and special window locks.He’d seen no alarm system, but with the PD just across the way, who knew what they’d worked out? Too easy to blow his cover on a clumsy breakin, give the whole thing away. Finding no easy access, and deciding it was too risky, he’d left, feeling frustrated. And even now, waiting to see what that cop would do next, he was still undecided about the kid.

He waited maybe forty-five minutes, and then both lights went out. Waited another ten minutes, and place remained dark. They didn’t come down the front stairs, didn’t appear in the parking garage.

The narrow back stair let into a fenced area of garbage cans, with a noisy gate, and he hadn’t heard the gate squawk and rattle, though he’d been listening hard in case she slipped out that way. Now, as he watched the condo, a dark cat appeared on the sidewalk, dropping down from some high perch; it stared at him for a minute, damned night prowler, then moved on out of sight. As earlyas it was, it looked to him like the cop had tucked up for the night. Maybe she was scheduled to double back for late watch. She was no spring chicken, she’d want her rest. And that frail kid, she’d drop off to sleep early.

But even when he was satisfied that they weren’t coming out, still Kuda waited awhile longer, to make sure. This was one night that, as long as that cop had the kid with her, he wanted the two of them tucked away safely asleep. This was probably the last time he’d have to worry about it, and he sure didn’t want to blow it.

H ALF A BLOCK in front of the killer, the tortoiseshell kit had dropped to the sidewalk and stood looking at him, sick at what she was seeing. Then she slipped behind a potted fern and into an alley. There she paused, still watching him, wondering what to do now.

He was just a smear of black there in the dark under the vine. A dark figure, still and waiting. She had to tell someone, tell them he was there watching the condo, tell someone quick. But she didn’t want to leave and lose sight of him. Not when he was so close to the little girl, not when he was watching for her to come out. Not now, when he might have decided to make sure she was silenced. Silenced before she could point him out, as clearly as she had found her doll.

She had to warn Juana, tell her the killer was just outside, tell her who he was.Had to tell her who he was. Had to find a phone, before Juana and the child left the condo or before he tried to break in.

Leaping up into a potted tree, she made a wild leap for the roof, heard the branch crack behind her. Scrambling up, nearly falling, she ran. Dulcie’s house was the closest. Fleeing across shingles and tiles, flying from peak to peak, she nearly outran the wind that scudded behind her. She reached Wilma’s panting and her heart pounding, scrambled backward down the nearest oak, and fled in through Dulcie’s cat door. The house was dark, asif Wilma had already left for Charlie’s party. She bolted through kitchen and dining room straight for the living-room phone. Pausing with one black-and-brown paw lifted, and then with the perfect recall that Joe Grey and Dulcie so admired, she punched in the number for Detective Davis’s cell phone.

34

I N THE SOFTLY lit caf?, a fire blazed on the hearth, its reflections dancing across the Christmas wreaths at the caf? windows and across the deep red poinsettias on the tables; firelight glanced through the archway into the bookstore, too, onto stacks of Charlie’s books, onto the bookstore’s Christmas tree, and onto enticing Christmas books that also stood waiting for small hands.

On the other side of the Hub, in the gallery, the white walls shone pristine, showing off only Charlie’s black-and-white drawings and etchings.

This was the children’s time, before the grown-ups arrived, and as Sicily welcomed the first visitors, Dorothy Street shepherded them on inside. None of them saw, behind their feet, the tortoiseshell kit slipping in, too.

Kit paused behind a sculpture stand, and then, seeing that no one had noticed her, she flew up the stairs that led to the gallery’s balcony. Having used Wilma’s phone to call Detective Davis, she’d left the darkened cottage again, racing away to the party. As she sailed over the roofs, the wind’s icy fingers had pushed down into her fur, chilling her through-even her paws felt frozen. Now, pausing halfway up the stairs, she turned to look down at the gallery and to bask in the delicious warmth that rose and spread from the blazing logs in the caf?’s fireplace.

Below her, the gallery’s white walls and panels handsomely set off Charlie’s drawings and prints, and Kit listened to a slim, dark-haired teacher telling the children about the animals-the wild animals that Charlie saw among the Molena Point hills, and the dogs and cats and horses, some of whom lived on Charlie’s ranch. As she explained which were drawings and which were etchings, Kit padded on up the stairs to the balcony and, warmer now, settled between two potted ferns to look down between the rails.

Fresh holly decorated the two archways; the windows of the raftered caf? were not only hung with wreaths but framed with evergreen branches, and in the garden beyond, five little trees wore fairy lights. Delicious smells rose from three long buffet tables in the center of the room, where hot entr?es and salads and desserts waited, all arranged around a big bowl of Christmas eggnog. Soon, as the children finished up in the gallery, they’d be heading boisterously for the fine buffet.

Sicily Aronson had to be patient, caring person, Kit thought,to have invited that wriggly, busy, happy mob of kids before the elegant grown-up party began. Licking her whiskers, Kit tasted the delicious supper smells of turkey tetrazzini, lasagna, tamale pie; and only reluctantly did she remember Lucinda’s cautionary lecture.

“You must not,” Lucinda had said earlier that afternoon, “must not go begging among the gallery viewers, Kit,or among the children.”

“Oh,” Kit had said, “I would never…”

“And you must not,” Pedric had added prophetically, “panhandle the waiters and waitresses, in the kitchen.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t…” Kit had looked back at her dear old couple with well-practiced innocence. And now, as the children swarmed into the caf? and around the buffet tables, she remained obediently on the balcony, doing just as Lucinda and Pedric expected of her. So far.But, Kit thought sweetly,the night is still so young.

Dorothy Street and Sicily stood in the gallery archway below her, watching the children heap their plates, find tables, and tuck hungrily into the delicious fare.

“As if we never feed them,” Dorothy said.

Sicily laughed.“Those kids eat better than most of the village.”

Kit studied the two women. Dorothy, so tailored in black velvet pants and a creamy V-neck tunic, a simple silver belt, and her dark hair plain and sleek. Sicily was dressed, tonight, in a red gauze caftan over a white silk sheath printed with red poinsettias, her long hair twisted up high and held with glittering red clips. Pizzazz, Charlie called it fondly.Maybe, Kit thought.But Sicily Aronson wears exactly the clothes that make her feel good.

Detective Davis and the little girl had not arrived, and that worried Kit. When she’d placed the call in Wilma’s empty house, Davis had thanked her and had promised she’d be careful. That had to mean that, despite the man following her, the detective was still headed for the party. Davis’s implied information was a lot for a cop to tell a snitch; that sharing made Kit feel warm and pleased, that Davis trusted her-that the detective trusted her unknown informant.

Or was Davis jiving her, leading her on because she didn’t trust her, because she thought…Oh, Kit hoped not. That would be too bad.

She hoped, even more, that something would prove her wrong about the man she was sure was the killer, the man who had been watching Davis’s condo, surely waiting for the little girl to appear. Waiting so boldly, right there on the street.

She was lost in thought when Detective Davis and the child did appear suddenly, at the back of the bookstore, coming in from the stockroom, through the back door. Maybe Davis had parked her unit in the alley. The little girl clung close to Juana as the two joined the children crowding in around Charlie’s table, where stacks of books waited for Charlie to sign.

But Charlie wasn’t there, she had not arrived. Up on the balcony, Kit was starting to worry about her when suddenly there she was hurrying in, all out of breath, and causing a little stir as she headed for the low, round signing table just inside the archway to the bookstore.

Charlie might have hurried, Kit thought,she might have a few red hairs out of place, but she looked beautiful. She was wearing the simple gold sheath and the topaz choker Wilma had given her, and her red hair was piled high, strands escaping as usual from the clip that bound it. When all the children had gathered around the table, and Charlie had greeted them, the children sat down on the floor pillows that Sicily had piled and scattered all around, and Charlie told them about the story she’d written, and why she’d wanted to write it. Davis’s little charge sat among the youngest children; the detective took a chair near her, with her back to the wall, where she could see in all directions.

And as Charlie told about the little stray kitten who had no home and no mother, Kit squirmed farther out between the balcony rails, listening. Charlie told how the kitten had tagged along with a wild band because she was afraid to be alone in the wild hills, and how mean those cats had been to her.That’s me, Kit thought.That really did happen. That’s me in the story and in the pictures. And though she could never tell anyone that secret, Kit nearly burst with the excitement of starring in a real book that so many humans would read.

But then, as Charlie talked with the children, she glanced above their heads to the balcony, looking straight at Kit, and she gave Kit the faintest toss of her head. Clearly this meant,Come down, Kit, come here and join us.

Kit looked at her questioningly, and when Charlie gave a tiny nod, Kit flicked her tail and surged down the stairs and fled through the caf?, dodging table legs and children’s feet, then padding diffidently between the seated children.

“She’s my little model,” Charlie said as the children reached to stroke her. “A friend of mine trained her, and she’s a very smart little cat.” The children shrieked with delight when Kit leaped onto the table beside Charlie, and they all rose and flocked around, reaching to pet Kit.

“Is the story real, then?” said a blond little boy.

“It’s a made-up story,” Charlie said. “Made up from what I imagined a homeless kitten’s life would be like. But it’s based on this little cat, she is indeed my model.” She smiled at the children. “I had to imagine how she would respond to the things that happened to her. No two catsare alike, you know, any more than are people.”

“But how did youknow what happened to her, if it was all made up?” asked a solid-looking little boy.

“I did a lot of research into the habits of stray cats. Into things that do happen to them, and how they are able to survive. Often the strays live in colonies, for companionship and safety.Made up is sometimes best when you base your story on fact, on what really could be. I tried,” Charlie said, “not to put anything in that could not have happened, that would be impossible. You take all the facts of whatcould happen, and then you weave stories around them. Does that make sense?”

The children thought about this, and nodded that it made sense to them. They talked about imagination, and where it came from, and then Charlie began to sign their books. And Kit thought, as dozens of little hands stroked her, that she didn’t mindthese little strangers petting her. Not like strange grown-ups on the street. And she thought, watching Charlie,She’s signing my story! She’s signing Tattercoat. And Kit nearly burst with joy.

But as the little nameless girl rose to pet Kit, Detective Davis rose, too, and stood directly behind her, carefully watching the room. The gallery and caf? were filling up now with adult guests, and Davis was growing edgy. And Kit realized that cops in plain clothes were mingling with the crowd, that there were maybe two dozen officers she knew, wandering around like ordinary villagers. She hadn’t seen them come in, she’d been so engrossed in Charlie and the children-and in her own starring role-that she’d missed this vital infiltration.

Beside her, Charlie, signing books, was watching the officers, too. Kit thought Davis must have told her that the killer might appear, because Charlie was as alert as Max’s people. She was ready to move, to get the children out of the way.Oh, my, Kit thought.What will happen? What will happen now? Oh, but Davis won’t take risks. She wouldn’t…These officers wouldn’t… Kit stood on the table beside Charlie, shivering so hard she barely felt the children’s hands smoothing her fur. Was this the only way? When she’d told Davis what she’d seen, did Davis think this was the only way to trap the killer?

Trying to watch the whole room at once, Kit was so shaken she didn’t realize that Joe Grey and Dulcie had slipped in and were watching, too. Not until she caught a movement from the far balcony, where Joe and Dulcie were now looking out between the rails-at her, at the cops, at the children gathered around Charlie’s book table, and at the little silent littlegirl.

B ELOW THE TWO cats, waiters were carrying trays of champagne among the crowd; and in the gallery, already five pieces had“sold” stickers fixed to their title cards. One was a drawing of Joe standing on a rock above the sea looking as big and powerful as a cougar, and Dulcie was sorry to see that one go, she had longed to have it for her own, to see it in their living room hanging just beside Wilma’s desk. But then Joe nudged her, and she realized something was happening. A tension radiated from Charlie and Kit, and from Juana Davis. All three looked wary, and ready to move. And when Kit looked up to the rail at them, she looked so alarmed that Dulcie and Joe tensed, ready to run-or attack. And there were so many officers in civilian clothes mingling with the crowd, every one of them on the alert. Dorothy Street and the teachers were rounding up the children to head for the school’s buses, hurrying them along. And Officer Sand and several more officers had moved closer around Davis’s silent little charge.

Then, as the Patty Rose children streamed out to the street, Cora Lee and Mavity came in with young Lori Reed; and behind them came Gabrielle and Donnie, Gabrielle overdressed as usual, in a green satin gown spangled with glitters and a tangle of mirror-bright necklaces draping her low d?colletage, and a pale fur wrap around her shoulders. She held her left hand up to her throat, where her diamond engagement ring would not be missed. Donnie was more tastefully turned out in a dark sport coat and dark tie, pale blue shirt, and cream slacks.

The silent little girl, standing with Davis at Charlie’s table, looked up between the officers who surrounded her-and suddenly she spun around, trying to pull away from Davis. Davis held her tight, pressing the child against her. The child’s face had drained of all remaining color. Her little body was rigid.

“Poor little…” Dulcie began.

But Joe Grey was racing for the stairs.

Dulcie sped after him, dodging between high heels and polished oxfords, between pant legs and long silk skirts. Ahead there was such a crowd of officers they could see nothing but pant legs. Sneaking through behind the crowd, they crept beneath Charlie’s table.

The room had gone silent. Officers crowded around Donnie French, harshly pushing Gabrielle back. The little girl, backing against Davis, was staring at Donnie, trying hard to speak.

“Tell me,” Juana said softly, kneeling, holding the child close. “Who are you afraid of?” The child pushed harder against her. “Tell me,” Juana said. “It’s important. Did someone frighten you? Who are you afraid of? What did he do?”

The crowd was silent. Not a whisper, not a sound.

The child clutched Davis as if she could hide herself.“Please,” Davis said, turning her gently around to look into the crowd again. Most of those surrounding her were officers, only a handful of civilians. The child, pushing back against Davis as if she could vanish, looked up at the wall of faces, and swallowed. Then, softly, she whispered, “Him.” Her little voice was faint. “Him,” she whispered, pointing into the circle of officers-pointing at Donnie French. Donnie’s face changed from quizzical to cold, to an expression that was icy with fear. He spun around, seeking a way out. As Davis picked up the child, two officers jerked Donnie’s arms behind him. Moving swiftly, they cuffed him. Shielded by other officers, only a few guests could see what was happening. Across the bookstore, the guests who had turned away from the cash register were held back by Officers Brennan and McFarland.

Detective Davis, carrying the child, approached Donnie. The little girl fought to tear herself away, out of Juana’s arms.

“Tell me why you’re afraid,” Juana said clearly, “and then we’ll get away from him.”

“Gun,” the child whispered. Her dark eyes were filled with fear-but then suddenly with something more. Suddenly the little girl looked around at the officers who confined Donnie, at the encouraging looks on their faces, and she seemed to take heart. Eleanor Sand nodded at her. Jimmie McFarland gave her a thumbs-up and a wink, and the child seemed to come more alive. Now, as she faced Donnie French, her dark eyes blazed not with fear but with a rage far stronger than fear.

“He shot a gun at my daddy,” she said, her voice little and thin. “He was my daddy’s friend and he shot him and killed him.” She twisted away from him, hiding her face against Davis, but in an instant she turned back. “He killed my daddy!” she screamed, and she kicked and fought Juana, trying suddenly to get at the man, burning suddenly to strike him and hurt him.

“What is his name?” said Juana.

“James Kuda James Kuda James Kuda,” the child screamed. She stared at him, shivering. Donnie stared back at her, his blue eyes filled with rage, and then the child collapsed against Davis, clutching her and weeping, weeping as if all the tears of her young life-over the death of her mother, the drowning of her siblings, and her father’s grisly murder-were suddenly released. Weeping and shivering in a paroxysm of near hysteria. It was at that moment that Max arrived, his jeans and windbreaker wrinkled and muddy and smelling of seawater.

Charlie didn’t see him, where she stood by the far bookshelves with her arms around Cora Lee-whether to comfort Cora Lee or to hold her from interfering in the killer’s arrest, the cats couldn’t tell. But even as the chief walked in, someonewas interfering, loudly. A dervish of green and spangles was jerking at two officers, trying to shoulder between them, hitting and swearing at them.

“Stop it!” Gabrielle screamed, pounding Officer Crowley’s barrel chest. “Stop it! Get away from him!” But as she tried to free her fianc?, Officer Cameron grabbed her and pulled her back. Gabrielle fought Cameron, tried to fight them all. “Leave himalone! He’s myfianc?. He lives here, he’s Cora Lee’scousin! What is this? What are you doing to him? That child is lying. You can’t arrest a man on some child’s wild lie. Leave him alone, you can’t…”

Cameron jerked her out of the way.“Stop it, Gabrielle. This is police business.” When Gabrielle tried to swing on Cameron, the officer jerked her arm behind her. “Keep it up, lady, ifyou want to spend the night in a cell.”

“I’m going to the mayor!” Gabrielle shouted. “You can’t arrest an innocent man for some wild children’s tale!” As the officers moved the prisoner away, Gabrielle broke away from Cameron, snatched her keys from her purse, and headed for the door.

35

J AMES KUDA SAT in the back of the squad car behind the wire barrier, highly amused by Gabrielle’s rage. If she followed through with her threats, talked to the mayor and hired a lawyer, that would keep her busy for a while, hopefully keep her from nosing around. The car smelled of new leather. Pretty fancy upholstery for a cop car. These cops had it made, in their upscale tourist town withits big money. Well, he’d gotten a bit of it. Would have walked away with more if he’d played his cards closer. Though that would have been hard, in a little burg like this. He just hoped what he did get, stayed hidden, that Gabrielle didn’t go poking around, that she’d spin her wheels trying to defend him, go to the mayor, keep her mind on that for a while, while he talked his way out of this. He always did. Easy enough to go for accidental death or self-defense.

If they did make him, which wasn’t likely, it would be only a few years, and the money would be there when he got out-and plenty more stashed from pastrelationships, as the ladies like to call them.

First thing, get a good lawyer. Gabrielle would help him with that if he could keep her blindsided. She’d never believe it was anything but self-defense, and not likely she’d go poking around in her computer for another couple of months, not until it was time to do her taxes or maybe even June when she’d roll over her CDs. His women seldom turned against him; they liked the sweet talk too much, and liked his sweet, loving ways.

Too bad he’d had to do Donnie, but there was no other way. Too much back in Texas that Donnie knew. Had to admit, he’d let his guard down, there. As loyal as Donnie was, in the beginning, that sure went sour. That was one of the reasons Donnie had wanted to come out to the coast. Make a new start, get away from him before the Texas cops came nosing around and caught Donnie up in the loop, too.

He had to hope these village copswere the soft-living type, with their minds on their fancy cars and on socializing, hope they were like New Orleans cops, partying on duty, taxiing big-name civilians around to the fancy restaurants in their squad cars.

Shackled in the backseat like some dangerous ex-con, he squirmed as the unit pulled in between two chain-link fences and parked in back of the station, next to their two-bit jail. How had this happened, that he got caught? Who blew the whistle on him?

It wasn’t that kid, scared all the time-until tonight. No, something had happened before that. He’d kept out of her way, made sure she didn’t see him, so it had to be someone else that made him. He just couldn’t figure out who.

Earlier tonight, when he saw that detective’s lights go out, he could have sworn the woman and kid had gone to bed, that she wasn’t going out again, wasn’t going to the damned party, and that had been his mistake. But it was Gabrielle’s fault, wanting to hit every party, get dressed up fancy, show off her diamond ring and her boobs.

Could that kid have seen him, sometime earlier that he didn’t know about? Seen him, and pointed him out to that detective Davis? And then the detective had set him up, brought the kid there to the opening. Someone had done a number on him, they’d had half the damned force there in civilian clothes. Now, he’d better be thinking what to do about it, how to slip out of this one.

But maybe, after all, Gabrielle had the right idea. One little kid. What kind of witness was that? A good lawyer, knowing the kid’s background, could easily prove that, seeing her mother die, then most of her family drown, she was real screwed up, emotionally unstable, as they called it. If that kid was all the prosecution had to go on, a good lawyer could make Swiss cheese of their case.

Maybe heshould have killed the kid when he had the chance. Had he turned soft? But he didn’t want a kid’s death on his record. With an adult, he could go for self-defense. But a kid? No way; they’d send him up good, for a kid.

The uniform swung out of the car, pulled him out, shoving his head down so they wouldn’t crack his brain and face a lawsuit. He should have cut out earlier, before the party. He knew that party was a bad idea. Should have given Gabrielle some excuse that would buy him a few hours, tell her there was another job offer up in the city, that he didn’t want to miss it. At least he’d wiped the account pages off the computer, told her he thought there’d been a power surge. Surge arresters didn’t catch them all; he’d told her enough about that, early on, to leave her comfortable with the explanation.

But now the cops would call Donnie’s sister-in-law. And Cora Lee would, too. Louise was the kid’s only remaining family, outside of Cora Lee. He just hoped Louise hadn’t found Cora Lee’s letters that never reached Donnie, that he should have burned. Why was it he liked to save things? He’d hidden them real well, though-little mementos of past accomplishments.

No, she’d never find those letters where he’d stashed them. Kicking himself for letting his guard down, later he stumbled through the cell door, shoved by the fat cop, stood surveying the filthy bunk as he heard the lock click behind him. He should have run. Should have burned the letters…Should, should, should…All his careful planning down the drain. And, sitting down alone in his cell, James Kuda put his head in his hands, trying to figure how hewas going to get out of this one.

I N THE BOOKSTORE, the cats, at the first sign of trouble before the pseudo Donnie French was arrested, had leaped to the top of a bookshelf where they could see what was happening and were out of the way of fast-moving feet. Joe and Dulcie were as surprised as their human friends at what was happening. Only Kit looked smug, watching the action with a cool little smile twitching her whiskers. Dulcie and Joe looked hard at her.

“You better tell us,” Joe said, trying not to smile. “What have you done, this time?”

“I got the killer arrested,” Kit said, failing to look modest. But too much was happening below them for her to explain. As the killer was cuffed and Gabrielle tried to interfere and then headed for the door, it was Charlie who stopped her, grabbing her shoulder, spinning her around and snatching her keys.

“Leave it, Gabrielle.” Charlie’s green eyes blazed, her cheeks were flushed and her red hair was all coming loose. “Let the police sort it out. Let it be, until you’re calmer.”

“Those cops are making a huge mistake,” Gabrielle snapped. “All they want is another statistic, someone to arrest! Iwon’t see Donnie locked in that dirty jail! If Harper does that…The police can be sued, and I intend to talk to the mayor.And to get a lawyer in the morning.”

It was then that Max stepped in, took Gabrielle quietly aside, and asked her when she had last checked the balances of her savings accounts and CDs. Her rage at Harper exploded. She tried to hit him, and screamed insults in his face. Max held her wrists until she calmed.“Listen to me, Gabrielle. Did he use your computer? Didn’t you tell Charlie he made some repairs and loaded some programs for you?”

Gabrielle didn’t answer. Her sullen rage would not let her look at Max.

“Didn’t you tell Charlie that Donnie was a wizard with the computer, that there was nothing he couldn’t fix, that he had straightened out your online problems and made some of your programs easier to manage?”

Gabrielle was white and still.

“Go home, Gabrielle. Check your online accounts before you come charging into the station saying things you might regret.”

Gabrielle looked at Max, pulled away from him, and sat down at an empty table, glaring sullenly. Max turned away and left for the station, pausing to kiss Charlie.“I won’t be long. With Dallas in the hospital, I need to-”

“What happened?” Charlie said. “How bad is he?”

He looked down at her.“It’s a shoulder wound. He was chasing the three who hurt Ryan.”

“I didn’t…I talked with Mabel. But maybe she didn’t want to tell me, just before the party?”

“Shot him twice in the shoulder, but they missed the bone. He’s out of surgery and in the room next to Ryan’s. They have a guard at their doors.” He kissed her again. “I won’t be long. Are you going to take Cora Lee home?”

She nodded.“She’ll want to call Donnie’s sister-in-law, in Texas.”

“I’ll swing by there when I’m finished; we can leave your car, and ride home together.”

And as Sicily pitched in to try to resurrect the party, to try to ease folks and cheer them, Charlie returned to Cora Lee, who sat alone in a far corner quietly weeping for her murdered cousin.

36

L EAVING THE GALLERY after James Kuda was arrested, Detectives Davis and Sand headed for Juana’s condo with the distraught and frightened little girl. In the apartment, Juana turned on the lights and lit a fire while Eleanor gave the child a quick warm bath and put her into pajamas. She sat on the couch holding her, a warm quilt tucked around them. Juana made cocoa, put Christmas cookies on a plate, and carried the tray in by the fire; though she was concerned about their small charge, she was so encouraged that the child could speak and that her spirit had rallied. As horrifying as the sight of the killer had been, this little girl had stood up to him. Healthy anger, Juana thought,had wonderful curative powers as the child fought her way out of a grim darkness. This little girl didn’t shrink for long, when she faced the man who’d shot her daddy, she was mad as hell, and that, in Juana’s book, was healthy progress.

The child, now warm and cozy under the quilt, snuggled up to Eleanor, and gulped down her cocoa and cookies as if she were starving; when Juana took the empty mug from her, to refill it, she reached up suddenly to her.

“What?” Juana said. “You want the mug back?”

A shake of the head.No.

“You want to get up again?”

Another shake.“No,” she whispered. Her white little face was still blotched from crying, and her expression was so needy. “Corlie,” she said. “My name is Corlie.”

“Thank you,” Juana said, sitting down beside them. “That’s very special, to know your name. And do you have a last name?”

“My name is Corlie Lee French,” she said in such a soft whisper that the detective could barely hear.

“Corlie Lee French,” Juana said. “I like that.”

“That man…” she whispered, looking bleakly at the officers.

“Did you know him?” Juana said softly.

“He was my daddy’s friend!” she said in a fast, shivering breath, and hid her face against Eleanor. Eleanor was quiet, holding her-until suddenly a car light blazed across the top of the drawn draperies, and remained there, unmoving.

Tucking the child down on the couch beneath the quilt, the officers rose and moved to the drawn draperies, standing at either side to look out through the crack where draperies met wall. Though Donnie/James Kuda was headed for jail, they didn’t know whether someone else might be involved. They didn’t know yet whether the Wickens were part of this, or whether the two cases were unconnected.

Earlier in the evening, when the snitch had called her, Juana had turned out the lights and then called the department, quickly putting officers in place. Looking down at the street from the darkened window, she had seen the man standing in the shadows just as the snitch had described, a dark presence beneath a tangle of vine against the black windows of a closed shop. She had seen no one else on the street, until a shadow came slipping along an alley.

But the shadow was one of their own, an officer she’d just put in place. She saw, one street over, another darkly clad officer move into position. Satisfied but wary, she had watched until, half an hour later, the dark figure against the building gave up his vigil, maybe deciding Juana was in for the night. She had watched him step out from beneath the vine and slip away up the street, and had listened on the police radio as the two officers followed on foot to where he got into a tan pickup a block away. She had watched the officers’ unmarked car move out a block behind him. And then, on a secure line, she had set the rest of the plan inplace.

Soon the officers tailing the pickup had a make on the truck’s plates, giving a recent transfer of title to one Donnie French. Cora Lee’s cousin Donnie, just as the snitch had said. Thinking, then, that this man was the real Donnie French, she had felt a wave of bitter dismay for Cora Lee, who had been so very happy to rejoin her family.

Hoping that Donnie thought she and the child were tucked in for the night, and hoping that he was headed for Charlie’s opening, she had helped little Corlie dress, telling her it was a game. “We’ll get dressed in the dark. Can you do that?”

The child had known something was up, but she’d dressed quickly and obediently. She had seemed, then, as if she wanted to speak, Juana thought. But she hadn’t, she’d been still and silent as they slipped down the back stairs, where McFarland had a car waiting.

Sitting in the passenger seat holding the child, Juana had asked her,“Do you remember Officer McFarland?”

No sound, no answer; but a small little hand had reached over to the steering wheel, to touch McFarland’s big, warm hand.

C HARLIE, TOO, LIT a fire on the hearth, a comforting fire in the seniors’ house, while Lori made cocoa-both friends employing the homely gestures of caring and nurturing, to try to ease Cora Lee. Cora Lee, seated near the fire, tremulously picked up the phone to call Donnie’s sister-in-law. Before dialing, she looked up at Charlie.

“Would you mind if I turn on the speaker? I’m so befuddled. I’d like you to hear, too, to help me keep things straight. Oh, Charlie, I dread so to speak to her. Louise and Donnie were close after Barbara died.” Cora Lee had found Louise’s number in their downstairs apartment where James Kuda had been staying.

Now, calling Louise in Texas, reluctantly waking her, she told Louise that Donnie was dead, that he had been murdered, and that his little girl was safe.“I had thought that all three children had drowned…One child survived, then?”

When Louise was at last able to talk, and to make some sense, she assured Cora Lee that Donnie’s smallest daughter, Corlie, had indeed survived the storm and that she had been with him on their flight to California.

“Corlie was the only one of Donnie’s girls to survive the collapse and flooding of the school, the only one of the three who could be reached in time.”

It took a long time for Louise to tell what she could piece together of James’s Kuda’s deception. Donnie had known Kuda for years. “James Kuda was in and out of prison,” Louise said. “I didn’t like having him here, I thought him a bad influence on Donnie. He was staying with Donnie, here, until he got on his feet, as he put it. But he…Well, he is charming. He did a lot of repairs to our house, and he…he looked so much like Donnie looked before helost his hair that…Well, I guess I softened to him. Softened too much,” Louise said bitterly.

She was quiet for a few moments while Cora Lee tried to comfort her.“You didn’t know, you couldn’t have known…”

“They named Corlie for you,” Louise said. “Corlie Lee, because when you were kids…”

“He called me Corlie,” Cora Lee said, wiping a tear. Then, “His was such a late marriage. I was so glad for him-it did seem strange to have young nieces when I should, at my age, be talking about great-nieces. And now…Now we have only little Corlie.”

It took some time for Louise to find Donnie’s original letters hidden in the room where James Kuda had stayed. She called Cora Lee back, and then faxed them to her: the letters to Cora Lee that James had always taken to mail for Donnie when he went out early to bike or to run, the letters that were never mailed-that had been replaced by Kuda’s versions: letters giving a new flight time, many weeks ahead of when Donnie had been scheduled to arrive in San Jose, rent a car, and drive down to Molena Point.

“Kuda left here six weeks before Donnie was to fly to California,” Louise said. “He told us he was going back to New Orleans for a while, to help with the flood cleanup.” Then, “Why?” she said. “Why did he kill him?”

Charlie looked up when Max arrived, and beckoned him in, and in a minute Cora Lee handed him the phone.

“I’ll be talking with the Texas Bureau of Investigation in the morning,” he told Louise. “If you would close Kuda’s room, don’t search further or touch or change anything. They’ll have a man out there to go through everything and take evidence. We’ll run his record, but please tell them whatever you can about his background.”

Louise said,“They may find quite a lot. I heard them talking one night, Donnie and James. They stopped when I came in the room. I never…Well, I didn’t ask Donnie about it, later. I was afraid of what I might find out about Donnie, too. Donnie wanted Kuda there, and he’d been through so much…I didn’t want to fight with him. Any kind of stress was hard on him, but squabbling was terrible for Corlie. Corlie…She was in the hospital room, in her mother’s arms, when Barbara died. Her mother holding her, when she died. That took the life right out of the child.

“She didn’t cry for her mother,” Louise said. “And she did not speak again.”

37

I N THE CAR driving home, snuggled beside Max, Charlie was silent, thinking about Cora Lee. She listened as Max told her about the wreck down the coast, and that they thought they might have the missing body of the real Donnie French, of little Corlie’s daddy.

When Charlie didn’t speak, Max drew her close. “Sorry I missed the party. Sorry I broke my promise to get dressed up-and not smell of mud and seawater.”

“I didn’t marry you so you’d dress up and smell nice. I think you smell just fine. But I did miss you.”

“I understand that before the excitement, it was a great party.”

“Sicily did herself proud. I can’t believe we sold over two hundred books, besides the seven framed pieces.” She had sold the drawing of Joe Grey, too, standing like a cougar on the sea rocks, and that sale pleased her. That was to be Dulcie’s Christmas present, Wilma had told her in a whisper.

But no pleasure could mean much compared with the raw pain they all felt for little Corlie. Even the satisfaction of seeing James Kuda in custody was so small, measured against the distress he had caused-the child’s terror and desperate rage, and Cora Lee’s shock at the death of her real cousin; that pain gripped Charlie too deeply to feel joy in much else. She hardly noticed when they turned down their long lane and through the new gate into the fenced yard, was barely aware of the barking of their twobig dogs. So much hurt, at Christmas, that she felt almost guilty at their own happy home and warm, good marriage-as if she and Max had too much, while Cora Lee and that little girl were so hurting. She got out of the car quietly, without speaking. As Max opened the door to the mudroom, she leaned against him.

“What?” He held her away, studying her face. “You can’t take on all the world’s pain.”

“I don’t take it on. It just…I guess that kind of hurt is catching, something bearing down that I don’t know how to sidestep.”

“Don’t let it steamroll you,” he said, holding her tight. “Sometimes you can help more by stepping back.”

She tried to think about that; and she was grateful for his strength and good sense. But then later, in bed, clinging close, she said,“What will happen now? What will you do tomorrow?”

“Soon as we can get a warrant we’ll search his room, pick up latents, fiber samples. You know the drill. And we need a top computer technician. I expect we’ll call the Bureau.” He turned on the pillow to look at her. “You’re asking a lot of questions. You planning a life of crime?”

Charlie smiled.“I don’t think I’m emotionally detached enough. I’d die of fright before I got caught.” She nuzzled into his shoulder. “Guess I’m just trying to ease my distress for Cora Lee. To not dwell on the sense of betrayal she must feel, and the guilt for bringing James Kuda here.”

“She didn’tbring him here, Charlie. She was scammed. It happens. And as for Gabrielle, I wouldn’t cry too hard. She was more than eager to catch a man, and that can be asking for trouble.” And before Charlie could answer, he was snoring.

Sighing, she stared up through the skylight, too distressed to sleep but too tired to stay awake. Tomorrow was Christmas Eve, and it would not be at all the comforting and restorative finale to a busy and often stressful year that she had hoped for.

Loneliness and pain, at Christmas, seemed so much more destructive than at any other time, so much more invasive.

Tomorrow is the day of the contest awards, she reminded herself. She tried to think only of that, tried to put herself to sleep visualizing Lori and Dillon stepping up to the judges’ table to accept the first prize and to hold the check and grin. If she imagined that scene hard enough, made it real enough, then it had to happen.

O N CHRISTMAS EVE morning, a bright sun angled into Gabrielle Row’s room at the back of the tall, rambling house. Hers was a large, spacious rectangle with long windows overlooking the backyard and canyon, its own bath and dressing room, with the smaller alcove furnished as an office/sewing room, where she still produced a few exclusive gowns for her old clientele. Her desk stood in one corner, and already, at eight-thirty, a Bureau agent sat at the computer flashing codes and diagrams on the screen that meant nothing to her. Agent Mel Jepson was young, dark-haired, and sleekly groomed, dressed in a dark suit and tie. He was pleased that only one-fifth of the hard drive was in use, that no one else in the household used her computer, and that she had not turned it on, herself, since she last made a cash transfer, two days ago.

She’d told him that yes, James Kuda had had free access to her room. It being adjacent to the kitchen, she said pointedly. And yes, she had been out yesterday afternoon for two hours having her hair done, and as far as she knew, Donnie-Kuda-had been working in the garden. All of this information seemed to please Jepson.

“I’m not sure I can pull the programs back, but we have a good chance, getting to it so soon, and you may not have used it since it was tampered with. Good, too, that there’s very little on the hard drive.” Jepson was so young that Gabrielle had at first wondered if he was competent, but heseemed well acquainted with the systems. He had a soft way of speaking but a keen, intense way of approaching the computer.

Molena Point officers had already dusted the room for prints, and had lifted fibers and various minute particles, retrieving evidence that would show whether anyone besides Kuda, and Gabrielle herself, had tampered with the equipment.

“It’s a computer glitch,” Gabrielle had snapped when Jepson had first questioned her. “Something happened when the power surged, the document was just lost, that’s all.”

“Really?” Jepson had said. “Can you be sure of that?” He had looked evenly at her. “I’ll do my best with this. It will take, at the least, several hours. If I can bring the programs back, I’ll be contacting the banks themselves to corroborate what we have.”

Gabrielle had turned away and left the room. For a while, as Jepson worked, she had angrily prowled the house-letting anger mask her shakiness, mask her fear that indeed her money was gone. Mask the fact that she might have lost everything, that she could be destitute.

Trying to put down the helplessness such an invasion of her personal life left her feeling, and to put down her rising fear of a penniless future, she had wanted to scream and weep and attack something or someone, and had, when Cora Lee came into the living room, turned on her with rage. But then, when Cora Lee had finally calmed her down, Gabrielle could only say,“The programs are gone, the spreadsheets gone.”

“Oh,” Cora Lee whispered, blanching. “Oh…Oh, Gabrielle. Was Harper right?”

“If itis true, if Donnieis an impostor, it’s your fault! Yours, Cora Lee.You let an impostor into the house,you invited a criminal to move in with us! You let him take me out, let him make promises to me, and you didn’t…You didn’t even…”

“I didn’tknow, Gabrielle,” Cora Lee said, at first shaken, but then her voice going low and even. “I did not know, Gabrielle. And it was you who let him take you out, you who let him make promises.”

“I don’t believe you really didn’t know your own cousin. How could you notknow him? You grew up together. How could you not recognize your own cousin!”

“Gabrielle, it’s been nearly fifty years! He looks like Donnie, like our childhood pictures. I have pictures in my room, I’ll show you-”

“What kind of fool do you think I am? And what kind of friend are you, to let this happen? I trusted you, Cora Lee! And look what you did to me!”

Cora Lee looked at her and turned away.Christmas Eve, she thought, going slowly up the stairs to her room.Christmas Eve, and look what has happened to our lives.

A CROSS THE VILLAGE in the hospital, Ryan and her uncle Dallas were enjoying breakfast in Dallas’s room. Dallas, no longer in ICU, was waiting for the doctor to release him. They were sharing nonhospital pancakes and sausages and had their own pot of coffee, thanks to the changing of the police guard and a rookie who had been happy to go for takeout.

“How come you get to go home,” Ryan said, “and they won’t let me out?”

“You were hit in the head, Ryan. Even your hard head can take only so much. Maybe this afternoon, once you’ve seen Dr. Hamry again.”

She touched her head gingerly.“I want to know just how bad it really is.”

“He told you. Simple concussion, but I insisted on both CAT scan and MRI. He says it’sgoing to hurt for a while. He’ll tell you what to watch for, when and if to call him. He doesn’t want you to be by yourself for a few days, wants someone with you.”

“If there are no complications, I don’t see-”

“Clyde wants you over there, wants to take care of you.”

“Like a mother hen,” she scoffed. But she did not dislike the idea.

He put down his fork, looking intently at her.“Clyde’s good for you. Why don’t you two get married?”

Ryan stared at him.“What kind of question is that? You never ask me that kind of question. You think I need someone to watch over me?”

“He hasn’t asked you?”

She began to eat again, quickly finishing her pancakes. Dallas studied her for a moment.“Askhim, Ryan. You’re not shy.”

“Has it occurred to you that I might not want to get married again? That I might like my single life?” It wasn’t like Dallas to nose into her private affairs, he was always laid-back, never nosy.

Well, they were both edgy, fighting pain. She knew that his gunshot shoulder hurt, despite the painkiller.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Your head hurts.”

“The doctor said the headaches would go away. I wish to hell they’d hurry up.”

Dallas grinned.“The subject of marriage really is none of my business.”

“I will be staying with him,” she said stiffly. “He did ask me that. He said I can sleep on the pullout in his study, so if I need anything in the night…” That made her smile. For a moment she wondered how it would be to live with Clyde in one house, falling over each other, each wanting to keep their own space.

But it wasn’t just the constant togetherness. There was another reason why she could never do that, why she could never marry Clyde. The same reason, she was certain, that kept him from asking her, despite how much they cared for each other.

It was a matter she would find impossible to discuss with him, a secret that he would not want her to know. And yet, if shewas right, a secret that would eat at her until she broached the subject, and got him to talk about it.

38

D ILLON THURWELL, HAVING just arrrived at the seniors’ house, dropped her jacket on a kitchen chair, sat down, and watched, fascinated, as Lori Reed poured orange juice over her cereal. “You do that a lot?”

“Do what? Put…?” Lori looked down at her bowl. “Oh…” She swallowed back a word she wasn’t supposed to say, and stared up at Dillon and Cora Lee. They were both grinning. She didn’t know whether to laugh or scowl at her own stupidity.

Cora Lee put her arm around the twelve-year-old.“We’re all distracted, with everything that’s going on, and with the judging in just a few hours.”

Dillon studied Cora Lee.“Did something else happen? You two look…” Dillon glanced in the direction of the drive. “That big black car out there…Do you have company? What’s going on?”

“It’s a long story,” Cora Lee said. “Lori can fill you in while I dress.” The time was ten-thirty. The awards ceremony would start at noon, to be followed by a buffet picnic, courtesy of Jolly’s Deli.

Dillon watched Cora Lee head for the stairs, then looked at Lori.

“You left early last night,” Lori said. “Before the excitement.”

Dillon poured herself a glass of milk and sat down again, snagging a handful of dry cereal to munch. Lori got up and moved to the sink, started to dump her bowl, and then tasted it. Turning, she set it back down on the table, and with her typically stubborn turn of mind, she ate her breakfast as she’d fixed it. In between bites, she filled Dillon in on the events of the previous evening, on Corlie’s first words, on the child’s damning identification of the killer.

Dillon was quiet a long time, thinking about the man they’d thought was Donnie French, the man they’d both liked because he was fun and was so eager to help everyone. They thought about the real Donnie, whom they’d never known, standing there beneath the village Christmas tree with his little girl in his arms, and that man they thought was so nice,that man shooting him.

“Donnie’s sister-in-law is flying out from Texas,” Lori said. “She called back last night, after Cora Lee talked with her, to say she got a cancellation, a night flight. That she’ll be here in the morning-Christmas morning, to be with Corlie and Cora Lee for Christmas.

“She’s bringing the letters that Donnie wrote to Cora Lee, that she never got. And bringing Cora Lee’s letters to Donnie that Kuda snatched out of Donnie’s mailbox.”

Dillon’s dark eyes flashed with anger. “There’s more,” Lori said. “Yesterday evening Dallas was chasing those Wickens, who hurt Ryan, and one of them shot him.”

Dillon went pale.“He’s not…He…”

“He’s all right, it was his shoulder, didn’t hit a bone. He’s in the hospital, he was there when we went to see Ryan, before the opening, but no one said a word in front of Ryan. Maybe they didn’t want us to know, either. Didn’t want to upset us more than we were.”

“We’re not little children,” Dillon said. “I’d rather have known, even if there wasn’t anything we could do.” Earlier, up at the school, when they heard sirens, the girls had come running to see what was going on. They had stood watching as Ryan, strapped to a stretcher, was lifted into the emergency van. Later, when Ryan was out of ICU, Dillon’s mother had taken them to the hospital for a brief visit. Clyde was there sitting with her. She was disoriented and dizzy. Clyde had smuggled in his gray tomcat, who was lying on her bed, and they thought that was cool.

Lori finished her cornflakes and orange juice, pronounced it delicious enough to send the recipe to the Kellogg company, and rinsed her bowl. Cora Lee returned, looking snug and comfortable in soft corduroy pants and jacket the color of caramel, suede boots, and a suede cap. Heading out to the car thinking about the award, the girls swung from incessant talking to dead silence. Cora Lee, starting the engine, checked herself from saying that the world wouldn’t end if theydidn’t win. She was praying hard that she’d see them walk away with the prize.

But whatever happened, she had no doubt that their bright and innovative playhouse would sell at the auction for a nice price. That thought, however, wouldn’t calm the girls’ competitive spirits.

And that’s as it should be, Cora Lee thought. Even if they didn’t win, the creative high of that long, demanding project wouldn’t vanish. The girls would be down for a while, but the joy of conquering what they’d set out to do, of making something beautiful that others would treasure, would still be a part of them, as would the thrill they got from competing against tough competition. Losing couldn’t take that away.I should know, Cora Lee thought.I’ve lost enough times-but I’ve come out on top just as many times.

And Gabrielle? she thought.Will Gabrielle bounce back and come out on top again, too?

She had left Gabrielle to lick her own wounds. But Gabrielle should feel somewhat comforted, with the Bureau man there; if anyone could bring back those files, Cora Lee thought an FBI technician surely could do it.

And if the money was gone, Gabrielle had a roof over her head; she wasn’t starving, and they’d all do the best they could for her.But right now, Cora Lee thought as she turned up Ocean Avenue,the sun is shining, the judging is about to start, and tonight is Christmas Eve-tonight is concert night. Tonight she must forget everything else in the world and give herself fully to the music.

But then tomorrow, she thought feeling suddenly heavy and dead, as if her heart had stopped,tomorrow Corlie’s aunt Louise will be here. And, too soon, Corlie will go home. We’ll have Christmas together, and then Corlie will be gone again, headed home to Texas…

Turning in to the school’s gate and waiting in line to park the car, she sat still and rigid, caught in the painful realization that she’d tried to avoid. She would soon lose little Corlie, too. Lose all that was left of Donnie.

Dillon spoke, but Cora Lee hardly heard her. She sat swallowing back sudden tears, trying to get hold of herself, trying to come to terms with this additional, painful loss that seemed too much to bear.

39

T HE ALLEY BEHIND Jolly’s Deli, with its fancy brick paving and tiny shops, smelled of roast turkey, though it was not yet Christmas day. The shops’ stained-glass windows glowed with Christmas candles and bright decorations. At the back door of the deli, beside a potted poinsettia, stood an empty plate, its surface licked glossy clean. Three satisfied felines sat before it, happily licking their paws and whiskers.

Dulcie and Kit had spent the morning crouched in the oak tree behind the jail, pummeled by cold wind, eavesdropping on Leroy Huffman and Ralph Wicken-while Joe enjoyed a comfortable two hours lounging in Juana Davis’s office watching Max Harper on Davis’s TV monitor as he interrogated Betty Wicken.

Afterward, the three deployed to Jolly’s alley, following the scent of roast turkey-turkeys had been roasting at Jolly’s for days, for deli slicing and for the Patty Rose picnic, and each morning George Jolly saw to it that the village cats got their share of generous scraps carefully boned and arranged on the nice white plates that he kept for that purpose.

Now, full to bursting, the cats had a leisurely bath and exchanged the morning’s intelligence.

“All they did in that cell was argue,” Dulcie said, “and Ralph whined a lot. Leroy said Ralph messed up the heist by calling attention to them with his fixation over little children, and Ralph said it was the blue van that did them in, that the van had been a stupid idea. I don’t see that we learned much that could be of use to the department. Except-”

“Except,” Kit interrupted excitedly, “Leroy Huffmandid kill that girl in Arkansas. Evina’s niece. Ralph said if he hadn’t done that, killed that girl and then run, no one would have followed them, that Evina wouldn’t have followed them out here, and they wouldn’t be in this fix now, so it was all Leroy’s fault.” As cold as Kit and Dulcie had been on that oak branch outsidethe jail window, it was always satisfying to listen to a couple of no-goods laying the blame on each other.

“I wonder,” Dulcie said, “how they found out Evina was watching them.”

“Betty Wicken saw her,” Joe said. “She finally told Harper-she glimpsed Evina twice in that downstairs window. Didn’t pay much attention the first time, then later caught a glint that looked like binoculars or a camera. She called Leroy to come look, and of course he knew her. That was justyesterday.

“And,” Joe said, “Harper got her to tell him how she knew about the mural. He told her the more she cooperated, the easier it would be for Ralph. She really cares about that little-scum brother of hers. Max said he had enough on Ralph to lock him up for the rest of his life. I’m not sure hedoes,” the tomcat said, smiling. “But he made her believe it. She went on a long time about how hard she’s worked to keep Ralph away from children.”

“Howdid she know about the mural?” Kit said, licking a smear of turkey from her whiskers.

“She worked there,” Joe said. “She worked as a housecleaner for the Patty Rose Home, early in the fall. She cleaned up the old studio after the Home bought it.”

“But the mural was hidden,” Kit said. “How…?”

“Some old book about Anna Stanhope that Betty read when she worked in a gallery in Oregon. It said Anna had completed a mural that had never been on exhibit or listed with any collector. Some collector had looked for it, years ago, on the Stanhope estate. Betty got curious, came down here, and got a job there so she could nose around. She said she pried off a part of the wall, and then patched it.”

“She told Harper all that,” Dulcie said, lying down in a patch of sun, “to protect that no-good brother?”

“She did,” Joe said. “Well, Dorothy Street will soon have the mural back where it belongs.”

“I wonder,” Dulcie said, “will they install it in the school, in the main hall? Or sell it to pay for work on the new classrooms? A valuable mural that the school never knew they had.”

“I thought you were the art lover. When did you get so money conscious?”

“When I saw how hard Dorothy works to support the school. You think this playhouse contest is just for fun? She’s hoping that enough of the builders will donate their houses to the school as tax write-offs so when they’re auctioned, the school can add to the trust fund. You know she has a long list of homeless children waiting.”

Joe did know. It was hard for the state to adopt out older children when, say, something had happened to their parents. Joe yawned. Full of turkey and warmed by the morning sun, he was thinking of a short nap when Dulcie nudged him.“They’ll be gathering for the award.”

Kit was already scrambling up the jasmine vine to the roof, and by the time Joe flipped over and raced up behind them, she and Dulcie were gone, flying across the peaks. This was Lori and Dillon’s big day, and no one wanted to miss it.

They arrived to see the grounds nearly as crowded as when the playhouses were being assembled, but totally different. No trucks or forklifts, now, lumbering among the gardens. No racket of tools and engines. Only Christmas carols from a sound system on the mansion’s balcony, the shouts and laughter of children, and, risen overnight like a Lilliputian city across the lawns and among the gardens, dozens and dozens of bright and amazing playhouses. The cats wanted to explore every one, running in and out as the children were doing, climbing and laughing.

“There’s Corlie,” Dulcie said, watching the child scramble into a castle tower six feet off the ground. This was the first time the cats had heard her laugh. Juana Davis and Cora Lee stood smiling up at her; but beside them, Lori and Dillon looked wilted. This castle playhouse was far larger and more elegant than their house, and it had not only two crenellated stone towers but a stone wall with arrow niches and a drawbridge that left the girls looking sour and defeated.

“It’s overdone,” Dulcie said. “Can’t they see that?”

“Come on,” Joe said. “It’s impressive. You have to be realistic.”

“I like theirs better,” Kit said loyally.

The crowd began to move toward the balcony of the mansion, where Dorothy Street stood with two men.“We’ll know soon enough,” Dulcie said nervously, watching the girls as they hurried toward the balcony and up the stairs where the contestants were gathering. Davis and Cora Lee followed, walking slowly with Corlie between them; and as the cats scrambled into a pear tree, they saw the girls appear at the back of the balcony clutching each other’s hands as Dorothy Street moved the microphone.

The thank-yous and introductions took a long time, and made Lori and Dillon, as well as the cats, fidget with impatience. When at last Dorothy announced the winner, the local contractor who had built the grand castle, and when she turned to beckon him forward, Lori and Dillon turned away from the crowd, long-faced. Cora Lee hurried up the stairs to be with them; but the cats slunk away into the bushes, their own hearts heavy, too.

“I was so sure,” Dulcie said.

“They were so sure,” Joe said sadly, but with a hint of feline disapproval. He might have said the girls had counted their catch too soon. Wisely, he kept his mouth shut.

“There’s still the auction,” Kit said hopefully, lashing her fluffy tail. “That castle’s all for show. The kids all liked Lori and Dillon’s bright house better, with all its decks and holes and ins and outs. I bet it sells for a bundle.” And she scowled out of the bushes, at the winner, her ears and whiskers plastered to her head, her yellow eyes glaring.

40

T HE STAGE OF Molena Point Little Theater was framed with evergreens, and five Christmas trees stood tall behind the white-robed choir; Cora Lee French, the evening’s soloist, was brightly robed in Christmas red.

Cora Lee had reserved, for her friends, a spacious box looking down over the audience to the stage. Only the three cats were seated higher than any human, up among the shadows near the ceiling, comfortably sprawled along a rafter, warm and snug in their exclusive aerie.

In the friends’ private box, little Corlie French sat at the front with Lori Reed, Detective Davis, Captain Harper, and Charlie. Charlie was dressed in emerald velvet, her red hair piled high and caught with a holly sprig. Ryan, seated behind her, wore white fleece and sported a white bandage wound rakishly around her head. Clyde sat on her left, Dallas to her right, his sport coat lumpy with his own hospital wrappings. Wilma, the senior ladies, and the Greenlaws filled the last rows, dressed in a rainbow of Christmas colors. The cats, looking down past their friends’ box, could see the top of Dillon Thurwell’s red head where she sat with her parents. None of the audience looked up among the rafters to discover three cats perched above them-or almost no one.

Wilma looked up once, and grinned; Charlie and Clyde looked, and then Ryan glanced up but immediately looked away again, as if shifting position to ease her aching head. The cats watched her warily.

“Do you think she knows?” Dulcie whispered. “Oh, she couldn’t.”

“Don’t go imagining things,” Joe told her. But, watching Ryan, Joe felt tense and uncertain, too. “She can’t know,” he said reassuringly. “Ryan isn’t…” But then, recalling his argument with Clyde, he shut up and said no more. Had Clydetold Ryan? Oh, hell, he wouldn’t do that.

But, thinking of this, Joe crouched there on the rafter in the darkened theater, silent and uncomfortable, wondering.

Dulcie looked at him, frowning, but then she turned away, giving herself to the music, to the Christmas hymns and carols that had been beloved by humans for so many centuries. Whatever Ryanmight have guessed, she thought, there was nothing they could do about it, and her little niggling worry lost itself in the cascades of magnificent Christmas music, in the joyous paeans to a power greater than anyone on earth could really understand. She didn’t speak, and there was not a sound from the audience below her. And when at last the concert had ended and the stage lights went up, still everyone sat hushed, bathed in the afterglow.

And then applause rang through the rafters so violently that the cats spun around on their beam and raced away, back into the lighting booth, escaping the deafening thunder. Running through the dim and shadowed booth, leaping tangles of cable and wires that seemed as threatening as land mines, they fled out through the window they’d left unlatched, to the cold silence of the roof-to the almost silence.

They listened as the soft echo of applause died below them, and as one last hymn began in a curtain call for the chorus. More applause. And then one more, lighter Christmas song, a merry and warming solo by Cora Lee. And then they heard the hustle of the crowd rising and moving out to the lobby; and the cats headed for Kit’s house, for the Greenlaws’ Christmas party.

Trotting quickly across the cold rooftops, they said little, each small cat still caught in a wonder beyond anything that even these special cats could conjure. Caught in the glorious noise of mankind, which far outstripped the ugliness that seemed, too often, to overwhelm the world of humans.

P AUSING IN KIT’S tree house, the cats sat for a little while watching the Greenlaws’ guests arrive, looking down through the windows, enjoying the bright Christmas tree and the lighted candles, the laughter and the good smells, basking in the tangle of familiar and happy voices on Christmas Eve. Lori and Dillon had arrived, Dillon with her parents, Lori with Cora Lee and little Corlie and Mavity. The two older girls, already eating and laughing, seemed nearly recovered from their painful disappointment.

A disappointment of the ego, Dulcie thought, smiling.Not of the pocketbook. The cats, after the awards ceremony and the buffet picnic and the very satisfying auction, had padded close behind Cora Lee and the three girls as they came down the stairs and headed for Cora Lee’s car, Lori and Dillon holding Corlie’s hands, one on either side.

“That was,” Cora Lee had told them, “the best Christmas presentI could have had, to see your house sell for the highest price of them all.” She looked down at the girls. “You received nearly twice the amount of the prize money. And what thrills me most is to know where your playhouse will be donated.”

“But,” Lori said, “we didn’twin.”

Cora Lee paused by the car, turning to look sternly at her.“You did next best. Your house did better, if you want to look at the financial gain. Think about that, Lori. Your house sold for far more than the winner received. Doesn’t that impress you? You built a wonderful house. You did a fine job on it, and it has given back to you a nice boost for your future, a sizable addition to your college fund. But best of all,” Cora Lee said, looking very serious and cool, “is that it will become a part of the San Francisco Children’s Hospital.” She hugged both girls. “Do you know what an honor that is?” Beside her, Corlie looked up at the girls, her dark eyes bright and needy, as if she very much wanted them to smile.

The cats had watched them drive away, and then, wanting to know what the Bureau man had found in Gabrielle’s computer, and wanting to know what new intelligence had come into the station, they went their separate ways. As Joe Grey headed for the station, Dulcie and Kit raced over the roofs to the seniors’ house.

They had found Corlie already there, snuggled on the living-room window seat with the two dogs, and they could hear Cora Lee and Gabrielle in the kitchen. Joining Corlie and the dogs, pretending to doze but listening to every word from the kitchen, they soon knew that Gabrielle hadn’t even asked if the girls had won, and that she was in no mood to hear the financial good luck of anyone, particularly of little girls.

Mel Jepson had, indeed, been able to bring back Gabrielle’s programs, and he had found all four accounts stripped bare. He had, however, also found Kuda’s accounts, to which Gabrielle’s money had been transferred. The cats marveled at what a skilled computer technician could do. Despite the fact that it was a holiday, Jepson had, with a few personal phone calls, been able to put a hold on the transfer of funds to Kuda’s accounts. “By tomorrow,” he’d told Gabrielle, “if there are no glitches, the money should be deposited back to you.” The cats hoped that would be the case, if only for the sake of the three other seniors. Gabriellewas hard enough to live with, anyway, without this disaster and her resulting emotional furor upsetting the household.

But now, at Kit’s house, trotting across the oak limb and in through the dining-room window to join the party, they put aside Gabrielle’s misfortune as Dulcie and Joe paused on the sill eyeing the long table where that delectable buffet was laid out-and Kit leaped onto a chair, poised to reach up a paw and snag a slice of roast turkey. This was, after all, her own home. She drew back only when Lucinda spied her and gave her a warning look.

But then Lucinda served up three small plates from the buffet and set them on the windowsill: a Christmas feast loaded with rich delicacies that would put down any normal cat, but did not bother these small gluttons. Not until the cats finished every crumb, and looked up, did they see how crowded the room had become.

All their friends had arrived, even Evina Woods. She sat before the fire talking with Max Harper. The cats heard her say she was flying out in the morning, that Cora Lee would take her to the airport when she picked up little Corlie’s aunt Louise. Slipping down from the window ledge and making their way across the crowded room, the cats leaped to the top of a bookcase and settled down to wash, and to listen.

They learned, within the hour, that Dorothy meant to press charges against the Wickens and Leroy for the theft of the mural. That the mural would, indeed, be hung in the main hall of the school. That Max Harper was certain Leroy Huffman would be indicted for the murder of young Marlie James. That Cora Lee was hoping to persuade Corlie’s aunt Louise to stay and visit for a while in Molena Point, to keep little Corlie near her. And that Charlie was so wired about the response to her book, and about the reviews it was getting, that she was already toying with several new writing projects. Comfortably sprawled above the heads of the party, the cats napped, and listened, and enjoyed; and they pronounced the party a success, a needed time of healing for all their friends, a time of comforting one another after a week of distress; a time of getting their balance, again, for the new year to come.

T HAT NIGHT JOE Grey slept in his tower, his windows closed against the icy wind, his cushions pawed into a warm nest around him to replace the warmth of a bed partner, and to block out any private conversation from the rooms below.

I better get used to this, the tomcat thought.This could be the new order of the day.

But Joe had no notion of what was really coming, and how much he would have to get used to. He awoke to thin daylight and the heady aroma of bacon, and decided it was okay to go down into the house.

Pausing a moment to admire the silvery morning around him, he soon slipped in through his cat door onto a rafter, dropped down to Clyde’s desk and then to the Oriental rug. Ryan’s foldout bed was empty. Glancing through the glass door to the upstairs deck, he saw her standing out in the cold, wrapped in Clyde’s warm wool robe, sipping a mug of coffee. He studied her with interest.

Though she had her back to him, Joe recognized clearly the stance and body language that heralded Ryan Flannery’s preoccupation with some new and exciting design problem. Curious, he stood watching.

Ryan had built this upstairs deck atop the carport as part of the total remodel she’d done, which gave Clyde’s one-story house a second floor.Now, Joe thought,what’s she up to? Are we remodeling again? What? Is Clyde planning to enlarge the study?

But even as he stared at her slim back, wrapped in Clyde’s plaid robe, Ryan turned and looked at him, fixing him with a steady green gaze. Eye to eye. Woman to cat, in a too-familiar manner that shocked Joe and made him back away.

“I was just wondering,” she said, stepping back into the warm room, “if the city would let us build a solarium up here-a kind of studio.”

Joe stared silently at her, his heart starting a staccato beat against his ribs.A studio? Clyde has no use for a studio. Why are you telling me?Why are you talking to me?

“Would that be all right with you?” Ryan said.

Joe tried not turn tail and run, or to look terrified. He sat down and washed his left-front paw. Ryan knelt, pulling Clyde’s robe closer around her, and tried to look him in the eye. Joe wouldn’t look at her; he concentrated on his paw.

“Come on, Joe. Did you think I was out cold when you made that call to dispatch? To Mabel Farthy? When you said, ‘Thank God it’s Mabel’?”

Joe looked at her a long time, his heart pounding so hard he felt like he had a herd of drunken mice dancing inside his chest.

“With a concussion,” Ryan said, “it takes a while for a person’s memory to come back. The length of time varies. In my case, it didn’t take long.”

Joe remained safely silent, deeply occupied with his grooming. This was terrible. This was a major crisis. Why the hell wasn’t Dulcie here? She’d know how to handle this woman.

Ryan reached to stroke his ear, but then she drew her hand back.“Joe, I heard Dulcie say, ‘Her cell phone!’ and then Kit raced away. Then, in just a minute, you had Mabel on the line. You said, ‘Thank God it’s Mabel,’ then, ‘Stanhope mansion…’ and then something about thieves hitting me with a hammer.” Ryan smiled. “You told Mabel I was out cold.”

Joe abandoned his pretense at grooming and openly gawked at her.

“Well, of course I kept my eyes shut,” she said. “I didn’t know what I was hearing. Talking cats? I thought I was in really bad shape, having really crazy delusions.”

Joe gave her a look that said he understood. But he wasn’t willing to answer. He could only swallow, his throat as dry as if he’d just eaten feathers.

“It will take a while for us both to get used to this,” Ryan said, rising. “I can understand that.” She looked solemnly down at Joe. “Never fear, tomcat. I’ll keep my mouth shut. This is not the kind of secret I would ever share with the department. Or,” she said, “with anyone in myfamily.” And she turned away and headed downstairs, giving him space, following the enticing aroma of pancakes and bacon.

It took Joe some time to recover sufficiently to follow her. He strolled into the kitchen, where breakfast sat on the stove keeping warm. No one was there but the three household cats eating from their bowls on the rug. From the living room he heard voices. He wandered in, trying to look casual.

Ryan and Clyde were sitting on the floor before the lighted Christmas tree eating chocolates from a box that Ryan had apparently just unwrapped. Ryan looked at Joe, and held out her hand to him. The sparkle of the diamond ring on her finger reflected the colors of the Christmas lights. Third finger, left hand. A ring that had not been there yesterday evening when Clyde brought her home from the hospital, and had not been there a few minutes ago, upstairs, when she knelt talking to him. The empty ring box lay beside the open box of chocolates.

Joe would hear, later, how Clyde had gone shopping before he picked Ryan up at the hospital, would hear all about Clyde’s agonized thoughts that had accompanied this decisive move, how Clyde had wanted to ask Wilma to help pick out the ring, wanted a woman’s opinion. Or maybe Charlie. Or Ryan’s sister, Hanni-except that Hanni’s taste ran to pizzazz and dazzle, and that wouldn’t suit Ryan. Joe would hear about how Clyde thought, should he ask Joe first, to make sure it was okay? Andshould he buy a ring? Or should he just ask Ryan first, and pick out the ring together? Was hesure he wanted to do this? And how would this go down with Joe Grey? Clyde would tell Joe how, when he’d thought about not asking her, a terrible loneliness had gripped him, an emptiness that he had never before experienced.

Clyde did not usually share his dilemmas so freely. Joe would listen patiently to all the mental suffering involved in this commitment; he would hear how, after Clyde had bought the ring, he debated about whether to keep his secret from everyone, in the event that, after all, he would be obliged to return his purchase.

But now the deed was done, and apparently the ring had been accepted, the decision had been made by both parties, and this early Christmas morning, beside the Christmas tree, Joe Grey looked at Ryan, and she looked at him. And the two of them shared a secret that even Clyde didn’t yet know. There they were, the three of them sitting beside the Christmas tree. Joe and Ryan looking at each other. Clyde looking from Ryan to Joe, puzzled-and it was then that Rock bounded in through the dog door, from the back patio, skidded through the kitchen, and crashed into them, licking their faces, licking Joe Grey in the face as happily as if the big hound had a new toy for Christmas.

We’ll see about that, Joe thought, pushing away Rock’s nose with a velvet paw.

But for a long time afterward, that moment would remain frozen in Joe Grey’s memory like some treasured family photograph. He and Ryan and Clyde and Rock, on this early Christmas morning, all together before the Christmas tree, frozen in time as permanently as the preserved images from Pompeii-a Christmas memory to last, perhaps, for all his nine lives.

And then Clyde raised his coffee cup in a toast.“Merry Christmas, Joe. Merry Christmas, Ryan. And Rock. Merry Christmas to all of us, to a brand-new family.”

14. CAT PLAYING CUPID

1

THE NEWSPAPER CLIPPING was yellowed and tearing at the folds, though it had been handled carefully over the years by the detectives who worked the case or who, during the preceding decade, had taken a fresh look at the cold file, reading the missing report on Carson Chappell, and making additional inquiries. Unable to come up with any new leads, each had committed the folder once again to limbo among the department’s unresolved cases.

BRIDEGROOM VANISHES BEFORE WEDDING

Local resident Carson Chappell, senior partner of the accounting firm of Chappell& Gibbs, did not appear for his wedding on Sunday afternoon at Community Church and has not been heard from for nearly a week. His fianc?e, Lindsey Wolf, also of Molena Point, told reporters she last saw Chappell five days earlier, when he set out alone on a camping trip into state park land east of the village…

The file contained a dozen such articles clipped from central California papers, as well as the detective’s original interview with the would-be bride, his case notes, random notes by the various officers who had later studied the case, and several human-interest pieces published over the intervening years. The fact that a well-known accountant and financial adviser had disappeared, and that any prospective bridegroom would go off camping, alone, a week before his wedding, certainly provided reporters with ample questions around which to weave a story.

The most recent clipping in the file, however, did not mention Carson Chappell. It was dated just this previous week, ten years after Chappell’s disappearance, and had been cut from theSan Francisco Chronicle. This was the article that currently interested Detective Dallas Garza as he sat at his desk talking on the phone with Lindsey Wolf, the clipping lying on the desk before him:

REMAINS OF HIKER FOUND IN SEASIDE TREE HOUSE

The skeleton of a man was discovered last evening in a makeshift tree house shelter on the central Oregon coast by a group of Boy Scouts on a weekend camping trip. The victim had apparently died from gunshot wounds, and two bullets were recovered by sheriff’s deputies. The heavily wooded acreage is on private land and is a new campsite for the Scouts’ yearly outings. The body had been disturbed by small animals and possibly a bobcat, but enough of the bones remain for possible identification. Neither the Oregon Bureau of Investigation, Oregon sheriffs’ departments, nor Oregon police have outstanding missing reports of hikers in that area. “All past missing cases have been resolved,” said OBI agent Henley Mills when interviewed at the scene.

This three-pronged congruence of players and events-the sudden availability of someone to work the department’s cold files, the discovery of this body though it was not likely related, and the phone call from Lindsey Wolf-held Garza’s interest. He sat staring at the article as he spoke with Lindsey; she had faxed it to him just a few moments earlier, and then had followed up with the call.

He knew Lindsey casually, she had dated his brother-in-law several years back, starting some months after Chappell disappeared. That was nearly nine years ago. Now, Dallas wondered if he’d been smart to include her file among the cold cases he’d given Mike to work, wondered if it was wise to stir up that old and painful relationship.

But Mike had seemed okay with it, as if he was completely over Lindsey-and Dallas wondered, for a moment, amused at himself, if he hesitated to put Mike on the case because of his own sudden surge of interest. Lindsey Wolf was the kind of woman who too easily stirred a man’s blood, a tall, lovely, creamy-skinned woman in her forties, quiet and self-assured.

He’d already seen the article she’d sent him, he had read it over breakfast a couple of hours before her fax arrived. Now, when he’d asked Lindsey on the phone if she had information on the Oregon body, she’d said, “Not information, no. But I have questions, Detective Garza. Are you familiar with the disappearance of Carson Chappell some ten years ago?”

“I know the case. I wasn’t with the department then, but I’ve read the cold file.”

“I’m on my way up to the city on business-I’m an accountant, as you may remember. I worked for Carson until just before he…Before our planned wedding. We’re into tax season now, and I can’t put that off. I’d like to call you as soon as I return, make an appointment to come in. I have no information on the dead man in Oregon. But I think…I have such a strong feeling that that body in Oregon could be Carson. I can’tget past that idea. I know that seems far-fetched and unlikely, when he was supposed to be up on the state park land, here. That’s what he told me, but…” She paused, her voice breaking. Then, “I need to talk with you about it, I need to talk with someone.”

“Call me when you get back,” Dallas said. “You can try me on the weekend if you like, but I may be hard to reach.”

“Your niece is getting married this weekend?”

“She is,” Dallas said, knowing there had been no announcement in the paper. “I guess you’ve talked with Ryan?” Ryan and Clyde, wanting a low-key wedding without a lot of village interest, had given no notice to the local paper; they meant to send in a brief mention when they returned from their honeymoon.

“It’s a small village,” Lindsey said easily. “I think I heard the news at Jolly’s Deli. Isn’t he doing the catering?”

“I believe he is,” Dallas said. “Call me when you get back, I’d like to hear your thoughts on the Oregon case.”

Hanging up, he sat quietly, his square face and dark eyes solemn, wondering exactly how Lindsey Wolf had felt when Chappell didn’t show for the wedding. Angry. Cheated. Mad enough to…What? Then his thoughts turned to his niece’s wedding, and he smiled. That would be a far different matter; there was no chance that Ryan or Clyde would back out.

This would be Ryan’s second marriage and, he hoped-he knew, damn it-that this would be the right and final one; and Clyde wasn’t about to run out on her. Ryan’s first husband had been a tyrant, a bully, and Clyde was nothing like that-he was funny, low key, completely honest, and without any social pretension whatever-that in itself was refreshing. And Clyde had sufficient determination to make a good match for Ryan’s stubborn nature.

When his thoughts turned back at last to Lindsey Wolf, several questions nagged him. On the phone she had sounded wound tight, her voice sharp and quick, not the way he remembered her-her words now were harsh with raw, untempered emotion that seemed strange considering that she’d had ten years to come to terms with Chappell’s disappearance, with his possible injury or death. Or with the possibility that he’d abandoned her. Her distress seemed too fresh, too overwrought after so long a time.

When the department’s original investigation had come up with nothing on Chappell’s disappearance, Lindsey kept up the search on her own, had kept at it for nearly a year, making contacts, even hiring a private investigator-though at the same time, she’d seemed to get on with her life. After some months of searching and grieving, she’d started dating Mike, apparently needing someone, and they’d grown pretty serious.

But then suddenly something had happened between them that Mike would never afterward talk about. Lindsey had left the village, had moved down to L.A., there’d been no phone calls, no contact that Dallas knew of. She’d started her own accounting service down there, apparently successfully.

And then, almost nine years later, she’d moved back to central California, back to the village, where she wasted no time opening office quarters in a small cottage in the mixed-business area of the casual village, a nice office with living quarters conveniently located above, and she had slipped quickly back into the life of the village.

He’d seen her only from a distance; he wondered if she’d changed much. Was she still as beautiful? His own quickening interest annoyed him. Turning in his swivel chair to face the bookcase behind him, Dallas reached for the other cold files he’d shoved out of the way between copies of the California Civil Code, his hand brushing against the gray tomcat where Joe lay curled up, dozing. Damned cat really had taken up residence, Dallas thought, amused.

Maybe Joe Grey’s nose was out of joint, with Clyde about to be married. Maybe home had already changed, probably the house was in an uproar. Knowing Ryan, they might already be rearranging furniture, cleaning out cupboards to accommodate her belongings. If cats were anything like dogs, the gray tom wouldn’t like any disturbance in his home and routine. Change, to an animal, translated into threat.

With enough provocation, who knew?The tomcat, Dallas thought,might move into the station full-time.

“Things bad at home?” he asked the tomcat, scratching Joe’s ear. “Ryan won’t throw you out, you know. Or,” he said, looking into Joe’s yellow eyes, “could you be jealous of her?”

Joe glared at him, and Dallas grinned. “You’ve had your own way around the house for a long time. Maybe you don’t like competition from a new roommate and her dog?”

The tomcat studied him almost as if he understood.

“And why aren’t you out catching mice instead of schlepping around in here sleeping and cadging treats from the dispatchers? The time you spend in the department, Joe, you might aswell move in and get yourself on the payroll.”

The tomcat turned to lick his paw, and then looked at Dallas sleepily-as if willing him to get on with his own business and leave a cat to nap in peace. Dallas scratched Joe’s head until Joe tired of the attention, sat up, licked the other white paw and gray leg, then washed the white strip down his dark nose.

“Strange,” Dallas said companionably, “that Lindsey was so uptight. I hope that wasn’t guilt talking.”

The gray cat, still washing, raised his yellow eyes to Dallas.

“This wouldn’t be the first time a guilty party brought evidence to the attention of the law,” Dallas told him, “trying to turn away any new suspicions.”

Joe Grey yawned in Dallas ‘s face, lay down again on the bookshelf, and seemed to go back to sleep. Dallas watched him, a grin touching his stern Hispanic face-he found he liked having the cat to talk to.

He’d never cared much for cats until this one, he’d always been a dog man. Pointers, fine gundogs. But this cat, in some ways, seemed more like a dog than a cat. Joe was, for one thing, a pretty good listener, more attentive than Dallas expected cats to be-the gray tom seemed, in fact, nearly as responsive to his moods as were his dogs.

Part of the comfort in talking to an animal-dog, cat, or horse-was that they didn’t offer advice, didn’t tell you what to do. Animals were sympathetic and willing listeners, but they couldn’t repeat what they heard. Couldn’t pass on some casual remark, or the contents of a phone conversation or high-security interview-and as Dallas stroked Joe Grey, appreciating the cat’s admirably mute ways, he didn’t see, when the tomcat ducked his head under the detective’s stroking hand, the cat’s sly and knowing smile. ***

JOE GREY HAD already read the faxed newspaper article over the detective’s shoulder, and from his position on the shelf just behind Dallas’s left ear, he’d clearly heard both sides of Lindsey’s phone call, had heard her tension just as Dallas had, and was equally puzzled by her apparent nervousness and stress.

From what Joe had heard around the village, he thought of Lindsey Wolf as a soft-spoken lady always in charge of herself, a fascinating woman nicely reined in, always in command of her emotions. He knew that his tabby lady had cadged occasional tidbits from Lindsey’s hand in restaurant patios, and that Dulcie liked her gentle ways-but today, Lindsey sounded harsh and nervous, almost brittle.

Dropping down onto Dallas ‘s desk, Joe watched the detective set the Chappell file aside and dig into his overloaded in-box. “We’ll see what Mike can do with the case,” Dallas said, half to himself.

Joe thought it interesting that Dallas ‘s brother-in-law, having just retired from Federal Probation, didn’t take a sensible rest, as any cat would do. That Mike wanted to get right back to work, didn’t want to be idle when he moved down to the village.

Admittedly he’d be working his own hours, though, investigating the department’s cold cases.

“Maybe he won’t want to work the case,” Dallas said, stroking Joe. “Maybe he’ll change his mind, decide not to have anything more to do with Lindsey. Whatever blew up between them,” he told the tomcat, “left him cranky as hell for a long time.”

Joe Grey twitched an ear and rubbed his whiskers against Dallas ‘s hand; Dallas scowled at the stack of paperwork that seemed to grow taller every day.Cops always had too much paperwork, Joe thought, curling up on the blotter, directly in Dallas’s way, so that the detective had to work around him; when Dallas pushed him gently aside, Joe didn’t get up and move, but stretched out, taking up more space and shoving away papers with his hind feet, as he lay thinking about Mike Flannery and Lindsey Wolf.

Maybe when the two had started dating, after Chappell disappeared, it was because Lindsey had needed someone, needed a friend who didn’t make cutting remarks about how Chappell had run out on her, as, apparently, most of Lindsey’s women friends and her sister liked to do. Joe picked up a lot of information among Clyde ‘s friends, from casual remarks at parties or over poker games. He knew that Mike would come down from San Francisco to spend his summer weekends in the village, and that he’d been pretty serious about her. Joe thought the two must have made a handsome couple-tall, sandy-haired Mike Flannery and willowy Lindsey Wolf.

But then suddenly she’d pulled up stakes and moved to L.A., and the way Joe heard it, Mike had never talked about what happened between them.

“Just our luck,” Dallas said, startling the tomcat. “If Mike does take the case, some troublemaker claims that because Mike dated Lindsey, any current investigation is unethical-if it comes to a full investigation,” he said, easing a sheaf of papers out from under Joe. “But, hell, what are the odds that that’s Chappell, up there in Oregon?

“Anyway,” he muttered, as he scanned and then signed a stack of routine forms, “that was nearly ten years ago. And Mike isn’t a member of the department, this is contract work.” He looked at Joe, his square Latino face thoughtful. “Let Mike run with it. Who knows what he’ll find?”

Who knows what’ll happen? Joe thought. And then the tomcat, watching the detective, caught a glimpse of something else besides concern for departmental policy. Did he see a spark of jealousy in those dark Latino eyes? A surge of macho competitiveness over Lindsey Wolf?

“I can’t clear up this mess with you on top of it,” Dallas said. Lifting Joe, he set him down at the end of the desk, determined to clean up his paperwork.Free up the coming weekend so he could enjoy Ryan’s wedding, Joe thought,without a cluttered desk waiting for him.

“This wedding better go smoothly,” Dallas said, almost as if he could read Joe’s mind. “We don’t need to call in the bomb squad.” And that wasn’t a joke, the tomcat knew too well. Just a year ago a bomb explosion had created a near disaster at the wedding of the police chief, the church nearly demolished and several people injured minutes before the guests would have filed in.

A lucky, anonymous tip had averted calamity, had probably prevented a mass murder-a tip that Dallas and the chief still wondered about, the tomcat thought, smiling.

“But no one,” Dallas said, “has a grudge against Ryan or Clyde, not the way a few scum would like to seriously damage anyone in law enforcement.” Ryan and Clyde weren’t cops, but still…Ryan was like Dallas ‘s daughter, and Clyde was a close friend to many in the department.

Praying that Dallas was right, that nothing uglywould happen, Joe looked up at the detective, purring companionably.

“No,” Dallas said, pummeling Joe as if he were a dog, until Joe hissed a warning and Dallas withdrew his hand. “Sorry,” he said. Then, “No, nothing bad is going to happen. This will be a quiet, happy wedding-low key, just as Ryan and Clyde want. The department would take apart anyone who tried to make it otherwise, anyone who tried to harm those two.”

2

INDEED, ON THE day of the wedding there was no bomb threat, no threat of any kind, the casual but smoothly planned ceremony proceeded in a sunny manner quite in keeping with the hopes of the edgy bride and nervous groom-though a dead body had been reported.

The information was relayed to Charlie Harper, wife of police chief Max Harper, the day before the wedding.

A hidden grave had been accidentally uncovered not three miles from the Harpers’ home, where Clyde and Ryan were to be married.

Charlie got the word from a friend, but she didn’t tell Max about it. She had no intention of telling him, not before the wedding and not afterward. On the happy day, long after the wedding cake was demolished, the sentimental tears were all wiped away, and the euphoric couple had been sent off for a two-week honeymoon in California ‘s wine country, still Charlie didn’t tell Max that an unidentified body had been found in his jurisdiction.

Not only was it against the law to withhold such information from the police, it was against Charlie’s principles to lie, even by omission, to the one man she loved in all the world.

But this one time, she had no choice. She couldn’t tell him about the corpse. There was no logical way she could know about the hidden grave. None of their friends would have been up to the ruins that weekend, to discover it and tell her. Certainly she couldn’t tell Max she’d learned about the grave through an anonymous phone call, because any anonymous call would point directly to one of Max’s three unidentified informants.

She wouldn’t put those three in further jeopardy, they already had enough trouble keeping their secret. Anyway, why would one of the department’s regular informants be up there in that isolated location? And why would they call Charlie instead of calling the department directly, as they usually did?

Nor could she tell Max she’d stumbled on the grave herself. She had no reason to be wandering up there among those fallen walls where she had, not long ago, shot and killed a man in self-defense. Max knew she avoided the ruins. And it would be way too bizarre to think she’d slipped away to the old estate just before the wedding, in the middle of cleaning house and fixing special dishes for the buffet, or to think that, on the morning of the wedding, she’d saddled her mare and ridden up there when she should have been filling the coffee urn, icing the champagne, and laying out her good linen tablecloths on the extended kitchen and patio tables.

All during the weekend of the wedding and afterward, while keeping her secret, Charlie tried to work out a scenario that would seem plausible to Max and yet would inform the department of the unknown grave. The wedding was held on the fourteenth day of February, a Sunday, at precisely eleven A.M. The couple had chosen Valentine’s Day only after the weather forecaster solemnly promised that it would be clear and fine.

The day turned out exactly so-a bright morning but cool, the sea breeze cool and fresh, the sky spreading a deep blue backdrop to the masses of white clouds that had piled to heavenly heights above the blue Pacific. The bride wore red, not so much in honor of St. Valentine as because she liked red. Her tailored suit, a muted tomato shade as soft as the spring roses she carried, complemented perfectly her high brunette coloring, her short dark hair, and her intense green eyes.

The groom was dressed in the first suit he’d owned in more years than he cared to count; he’d chosen a pale tan gabardine that would dress down easily to their casual lifestyle. Nor was the happy couple married in the Catholic Church as one might expect of Ryan Flannery’s Irish-Latino heritage. The ceremony took place not on their own patio, as they had at first imagined, but on the wide hilltop terrace of the Max Harper ranch. Besides twenty-some close civilian friends in attendance were as many of Molena Point’s finest as could be absent from the department at one time without encouraging an untoward outbreak of crime in the small village. The couple had chosen a weekend without any local festivals, golf tournaments, or antique-car exhibits, any of which would have put an extra burden on the department.

Chief of Police Max Harper was Clyde ‘s best man. The bride, again breaking tradition, was given away not by one male relative, but by three: her uncle, Police Detective Dallas Garza; her father, retired Chief U. S. Probation Officer Mike Flannery; and her red-bearded uncle Scott Flannery, who was the foreman of her construction firm.

Dallas was in full police uniform, his short, dark hair freshly trimmed. Ryan’s dad, tall, sandy-haired Mike Flannery, wore a dark suit, white shirt, and soft paisley tie. Mike’s brother, Scotty, had chosen the only thing in his closet that wasn’t a work shirt and jeans; he wore beige slacks, a white shirt open at the collar, and a dark green corduroy sport coat that contrasted sharply with his red hair and beard. The three men walked Ryan down the aisle side by side-while Ryan’s big, silver, canine companion looked on from the sidelines, so tense with excitement that the three cats, sitting beside him, thought any minute the big Weimaraner would bolt straight into the middle of the procession: That washis family marching down the makeshift aisle between the rows of metal chairs, and the big retriever shivered with nervous intensity at this obviously important event involving those he loved.

But Rock, sitting close between Charlie Harper’s left knee and Clyde ‘s gray tomcat, with both Charlie and Joe Grey giving him stern looks, managed to remain on his best behavior.

No guest in attendance thought it strange that Ryan’s Weimaraner and the groom’s tomcat, and their friends’ two cats, were in attendance; animals were an important part of their lives. Charlie stood with her fingers touching Rock’s silky head, near his collar, to make doubly sure he didn’t bolt to his mistress and new master; she could feel him quivering under her gentle strokes.

As for the three cats, Charlie wasn’t worried about their behavior. Joe Grey, his tabby lady, and the tortoiseshell kit knew better than many people how to act during such a solemn and important ceremony.

Though, looking down at the cats, Charlie did wonder at Joe Grey’s admirable restraint on this particular day-because this marriage would change dramatically all the rest of the gray tomcat’s life. The fact that Ryan would now be living with Joe Grey and Clyde presented a whole new set of rules and priorities for the tomcat; Charlie had worried considerably about how he’d settle into the new routine.

Any cat would find the addition of a new family member a threat to his place in the household and to his treasured habits, but for a cat who could speak with humans and who not only read the morning paper but expected first grabs at the front page, such a life change had to be stressful. Even though Ryan knew Joe’s secret, had figured out for herself that he was as skilled in the English language as was she, the changes for Joe, as well as for Ryan and Clyde -for all three strong-willed individuals-would be trying. Particularly considering Joe Grey’s secret involvement with Molena Point PD as their prime, though anonymous, informant.

Well, it was no good worrying about difficulties in the Damen household. She expected the three of them would work it out. And as the wedding music of soft Irish folk songs drifted through the outdoor speakers, Charlie centered her attention on the beautiful matron of honor as Ryan’s sister, Hanni, stepped out onto the crowded patio through the glass doors from the Harper living room, leading the bridal procession.

It seemed fitting to Charlie that the bride herself had designed and constructed this part of the Harper home that was now the site of her wedding. This portion of the house was particularly bright and open, the airy living room anchored by tall, heavy pillars and soaring beams and the tall stone fireplace. The floor-to-ceiling glass walls that looked out to the sea over the Harpers’ green pastures, now reflected Hanni as she led the two flower girls, the bride, and her escorts in slow and measured steps across the patio, between the rows of seated guests to the bower of roses where Clyde waited nervously with Captain Harper and the preacher; Charlie had to smile because Hanni had tastefully dressed down for the occasion, with none of her usual flamboyance.

Only Hanni’s short, white hair, in a bright tangle around her smooth young face, could not be dimmed, her natural looks not be restrained by the tailored tan suit, somewhat darker than Clyde’s; she wore none of her usual wild jewelry, but only a thin gold chain at her throat and tiny gold earrings, demure pieces she must have borrowed for the occasion, as they were nothing like her usual bizarre necklaces and pendants and wild rings for which Hanni Coon was so well known. Today, Hanni did not upstage her sister. The bride looked delicious in her soft red suit, and she looked so happy that Charlie felt tears starting, the foolish tears that weddings always stirred in her for no sensible reason.

The Irish folk music lilted softly, the stringed instruments blending with the sea’s rhythmic pounding and with the far cries of the gulls, an earthy-milieu counterpoint to the minister’s voice as he intoned the words of the brief ceremony. Only when he asked for the ring was he interrupted-by the nicker of Charlie’s sorrel mare, from the pasture, which made everyone chuckle.

Joe Grey, watching Dallas Garza and Mike and Scott Flannery give away the bride, caught again a hint of bridling on Dallas ‘s part as he glanced over at Mike, and wondered again if Dallas ‘s competitive look centered on thoughts of Lindsey Wolf.

But when Joe looked at Dulcie to get her reaction, his tabby lady seemed to have noticed nothing, she seemed lost either in the sentimental ceremony or off in some distant thought, and did not even notice his glance. ***

WATCHING RYAN and Clyde joined in holy matrimony, the tabby cat, like Charlie, had to swallow back her own tears. What was it that made females weep at weddings?

She watched Clyde kiss the bride, and then the crowd surrounded the happy couple, laughing and congratulating them, and Dulcie had to hide a wild urge to laugh with delight, not only because of the joyous moment but because practical-minded Ryan Flannery-Ryan Flannery Damen, now-was a member of the inner group, because Ryan had guessed, all on her own, that the three cats could talk to her and understand her, because Ryan had guessed their impossible secret.

As the guests milled around them, the three cats, to avoid the surge of crowding feet, leaped to the top of the cold barbecue, out of the way-cops were a raucous crew, and their civilian counterparts were just as enthusiastic. Rock had joined the fray, yipping and dancing around the newlyweds, abandoning any attempt at obeying Ryan’s carefully taught manners.

The couple was toasted, and toasted again; they danced the first dance, and posed for pictures, and cut the cake. Max put on a tape of Irish jigs, and everyone danced: eighty-year-old Lucinda and Pedric Greenlaw; Dulcie’s housemate Wilma, and Mike Flannery; the four senior ladies dancing with handsome young cops; fourteen-year-old Dillon Thurwell and twelve-year-old Lori dancing with cops, too, their faces flushed, their eyes laughing. Hanni and her husband danced while their three boys inhaled party food. If this was a small, quiet wedding, Dulcie thought, heaven help a cat in the midst of a big, all-out celebration. Atop the barbecue, she pressed close between Joe and Kit, enjoying their human friends’ rowdy pleasure.

By three o’clock that afternoon the party was winding down, the cake had been demolished, only scraps remained on the buffet, and the bride and groom had departed for their drive up the coast.

Most of the officers had gone back on duty. The senior ladies had left, as had Dillon and Lori, the two girls clutching their pieces of wedding cake to put under their pillows. “I will marry a cop,” said red-haired Dillon, winking at portly Officer Brennan. But Lori, with her dad still in prison, pushed back her long dark hair and was silent. Lori didn’t say what kind of man she’d marry.

The party dwindled to a quiet, mellow aftermath, melancholy and sentimental. Why anyone should feel sad after a wedding, Dulcie wasn’t sure. This was the start of a new life for Ryan and Clyde -but while everyone was giddily happy, the cats could not ignore the undercurrent of sadness that now turned folks silent and thoughtful.

But of course Dulcie’s housemate felt sad. Wilma was the closest thing to an older sister that Clyde had, and as happy as she was for him, surely she felt she was losing a bit of him-it would be Ryan, now, to whom Clyde would tell his secrets and ask for advice, to whom he’d voice his dreams and fears.

But Wilma knew that was as it should be, and Dulcie could see that her silver-haired housemate was more happy than sad. Wilma had said to Dulcie more than once that it was time Clyde settled down with the right woman-and Ryan was surely the right woman. Two mates of equal strength, Dulcie thought. Two people honest enough and with enough crazy humor to sustain the hardest bumps that might lie ahead.

From atop the barbecue the tabby cat watched Mike and Dallas and Scotty fold up the metal chairs from the patio and carry them out to Scotty’s truck, to be returned to the furniture rental. All three men looked both well satisfied at this milestone in Ryan’s life, and yet quiet and nostalgic. The cats watched Charlie and Hanni clean up the empty plates and platters and lay out the remaining food in a fresh but smaller array on the big round kitchen table, nesting the dishes on trays of ice. And as the sun dropped and the afternoon grew chill, the few remaining friends retired to the living room, where Max lit a fire on the hearth.

Immediately the cats and Rock stretched out before the blaze, taking the best places. Their friends slipped out of their jackets, shoes came off, a few beers were opened. This was the second party this weekend, and for a while, a peaceful silence reigned as each in his or her own mind wished the newlyweds well, wished them a happy and safe journey on their honeymoon and through a long life. Among their small group only Charlie was strung tight.

Only Charlie and the cats were torn, on this memorable day, by a secret that had nothing to do with the wedding and that they had shared with no one, certainly not with the groom and bride.

To share the discovery of a body with Clyde and Ryan, just now, would only send them off on their honeymoon worried about Joe, about all three cats, as Clyde always worried.

Every time a crime was committed, a robbery or a murder, or in this case the discovery of a corpse, every time Molena Point PD had a new investigation, Clyde worried and fussed. When “that little meddler,” as he called Joe, leaped into the middle of an investigation, and though Clyde knew there was no way to keep the three cats out, still he nagged them, harangued Joe, and was sure the cats would end up hurt or dead. Joe couldn’t convince him otherwise. Arguing with Clyde Damen was as pointless as trying to herd caterpillars.

Charlie had learned about the body yesterday evening as she was getting ready to leave for Mike’s retirement party. She’d had no idea, when she went out to do the last-minute stable chores, that she would soon besneaking into the party, avoiding her friends, and would slip out again quickly, Joe Grey and Dulcie and Kit stealthily following her, and the blood of a fourth cat staining her hands.

3

MIKE FLANNERY’S retirement party, the night before the wedding, had been a casual cookout on Clyde Damen’s patio to celebrate Mike’s moving from San Francisco to the village. Most of Mike’s family had long since removed to Molena Point from the city, Hanni to open her interior design studio, Dallas to sign on as a detective with Molena Point PD, Ryan to escape the husband she was divorcing and to start her own construction firm, and Scotty to work for her.

Mike, having retired the previous week as Chief U.S. Probation Officer for the Northern District of California, had enjoyed an impressive court ceremony before U.S. judge Donald Clymer and then a crowded and congratulatory office party complete with gag gifts, a thick scrapbook of office pictures from past parties and ceremonies, and deeply felt good wishes; Flannery had been a demanding but infinitely fair and well-loved chief. On the day of the ceremony and party, Mike’s rented truck waited, ready to leave San Francisco, packed with the few belongings he meant to keep; the security deposit on his vacated apartment had been refunded, he had sold his aging car and had closed his bank accounts-not that he was in a hurry to depart the city. Not much of a hurry.

Early that evening, as the first partygoers assembled, up at the Harper ranch Charlie Harper, dressed in fresh jeans and a clean shirt, was ready to head down the hills to join the celebration; she had just put an insulated carrier full of potato salad in the back of her SUV, and had gone to feed the horses and dogs and put them up for the night when, from deep within the stable, a small voice spoke to her. She pause, startled. “Who’s there?”

Earlier, opening the pasture gate, she’d moved the four horses into the barn, followed by the two gamboling half-Danes, the big, fawn-colored mutts had let her know that nothing was amiss in the stable by the way they frolicked around her, carefree and untroubled. But now, as she finished graining and started to fill the water buckets, Hestig gave a huff and Selig growled, staring toward the rear door that she’d left ajar for air circulation.

The Harper barn had two rows of stalls facing each other across a covered alley where she and Max groomed and saddled the horses or doctored them. A wide, sliding door opened at the front, and another similar door at the back. This was open only a few inches, and as Charlie paused, watching the dogs, the soft voice spoke again from the shadows.

“Charlie? Charlie Harper?” A voice barely discernible through Hestig’s puzzled rumble.

Charlie took Hestig’s collar, though the dog didn’t lunge or bark. He only cocked his head, watching the dark corner.

There was no one standing there, nothing that she could see, and the chill she felt was not of fear but of anticipation.

The miracle of hearing that small, wild voice here in the barn made her shiver. Quietly she approached the back of the barn until, where the shadows were deepest, she made out a little white smudge crouched and watching her. She knelt some distance from the pale cat. ” Willow?”

There was no answer.

” Willow? What’s wrong? What brings you here?” She knew the lovely feral would never come among humans unless she badly needed help, unless there was terrible trouble for her or her wild band. Fearing that Willow would slip away again, Charlie didn’t reach out to the bleached calico, she did nothing to alarm her-though Willow had no reason to fear her, the catwas feral, as wild and wary as a forest fox; none of Willow’s band of speaking cats trusted humans, and Charlie had indeed been flattered when Willow accepted her.

“What is it?” she said again, softly. “What’s happened?”

But then, watching the frightened calico, Charlie smelled the sharp, ironlike scent of fresh blood-and Willow stepped out from the shadows, watching Charlie with huge green eyes. Revealing what lay behind her. Showing Charlie the small, still form that lay amid scattered wisps of straw on the dark barn floor: a young cat, bloodied and limp.

Charlie wanted to reach out to him, but she remained still. “May I get a light?” she said softly. “I can’t see as well as you. He’s hurt bad, I need to see. Could I turn on the overhead lights? They’re very bright.”

“Turn them on,” Willow said tremulously. “He’s unconscious. Yes, he’s hurt bad, Charlie Harper. It took three of us helping him, carrying and supporting him as he tried to hobble. He’s used the last of his strength. The others ran as soon as we had him safe here-they wouldn’t remain in a human place, and with the big dogs near.”

Charlie rose, switched on the lights, and knelt again, catching her breath at the little cat’s cruelly twisted and bloodied leg. He lay against the stable wall, so limp and small, a young white tom marked with vague, soft gray splotches like Stone Eye, the clowder leader, marked the same as many of the clowder cats-Stone Eye dominated the females, and most of the kittens were his.

Stone Eye’s tyranny was why Willow and a small band of cats had left the clowder, going defiantly off on their own, making every effort to stay clear of him.

“Sage is my cousin,” the pale calico said, nosing gently at the young tom’s ear. “There was a terrible battle. Stone Eye attacked us; we had no choice,” she said ashamedly, “but to run from his warriors.”

At the sound of their voices the young, hurt cat had awakened. He was looking at Charlie rigid with fear.

“It’s all right,” Willow told him. “Charlie’s a friend. It’s all right, Sage.

“His leg is broken,” she said sadly, “and I think the bone might be crushed. Stone Eye did that. I…Be still, Sage. Let Charlie look at you.She’s a friend. Do as I say, and be still.”

The young tom grew still, but remained wary in Charlie’s presence. Gently she touched the angled leg, and felt sick. She could see the jagged bone sticking out beneath the blood-soaked fur. She looked at Willow, desolate. “I can’t mend such a thing. I’ll have to take him to a doctor-a friend. A man we can trust.”

“Not a strange human,” Willow said.

“I promise we can trust him.”

“Can’t you help him, can’t you do this?”

“I’m not a doctor. I would ruin his leg. If I muddled this, he might never walk again-he might not live. This will take skilled hands. Even then…if the bone is crushed…” She didn’t finish. Sage looked so weak, and surely he’d lost a lot of blood. He must be in terrible pain, and that was what sickened her the most.

Watching Charlie, Willow ‘s eyes were huge with distress. “Please, could you try?” She was so afraid, and didn’t know what to do.

“Our veterinarian is a good man,” Charlie said. “He needn’t know what this young cat is. He treats Joe Grey and Dulcie and Kit, and he doesn’t know about them. He’s a kind man, Willow. He’s honest and caring, and he’s very skilled. Please, let me take him there? You could come with us, to calm and reassure him.”

Willow dropped her ears; she bent her head to nudge Sage, then looked up at Charlie. “I will come, but I must return quickly and see to the others. Others are wounded, though not so bad as Sage. I must help with them, lick them clean, do what we can.”

Did Willow, Charlie wondered, not expect Sage to live? So she was committing herself to those who would live? She wanted badly to ask more about what had happened, she knew that Stone Eye could be brutal. But there was no time to ask. Rising, she fetched clean towels from the tack room, and a large metal tray that she used to lay out doctoring supplies for the horses. She folded a towel on this, to pillow Sage’s body. She gathered antiseptic, a bottle of water, and gauze and clean cloths to staunch the blood.

Kneeling again beside Sage, gently she lifted him onto the makeshift stretcher. “Lie still. Oh, please, Sage, lie still.” And she began carefully to bathe the wound and try to staunch the bleeding before she moved him very far. His pain seemed to have eased; she didn’t know whether that was good or bad. If the young cat was in shock, she knew they must hurry.

Willow crouched close to him, speaking softly. “Listen to me, Sage. We can trust Charlie Harper, we must trust her. We must go with her, and you must do as she tells you. She will take us where you will be safe and cared for, where someone with skill can mend your leg so you can walk again. Do you understand?”

Sage blinked and nudged weakly at Willow, as if meaning to say he would try. But he cut his eyes at Charlie, not daring to speak in her presence.

Charlie, pressing gently with gauze pads, got the blood stopped, for the moment. Looking deep into the young tom’s eyes, she tried the same uncompromising tone that Willow used, and that seemed to comfort him. Perhaps such authority seemed secure to Sage, perhaps it translated into safety.

“We’ll go in my car,” she told him, “and that will be frightening for you. You will be safe, I promise. I’ll do my best for you, and so will Dr. Firetti. He won’t know what you are, Sage. You can be sure that I won’t tell him. He’ll be kind, he’ll give you something to stop the hurt, and he’ll mend your leg.”

Charlie hoped she wasn’t promising more than Firetti could deliver; she saw in Willow ‘s eyes the same question. They looked at each other for a long moment. What if the leg could not be mended? What if it must be amputated? Or what if Sage kept his leg, but would be forever lame, unable to hunt properly or to travel fast and far with their wild band, unable to keep up with the clowder?

“Dr. Firetti will do the best he can,” she repeated. “No one,no one, could do better.”

Carefully picking up the makeshift stretcher and heading for her car, she looked down at Willow trotting along beside her, looking warily at the car. Willow stood watching as Charlie tucked the tray safely down on the front seat of her SUV, laid a soft lap blanket gently over Sage, and fastened the seat belt around the tray, securing his rigid little body. He widened his eyes as the belt seemed to imprison him.

“You must lie still. The belt is to protect you, to keep you from falling. The car will seem fast and bumpy. I’ll hold on to you, too.”

Willow hopped up into the car, seeming to swallow her own fear of the great metal machine as she settled gently next to Sage. Charlie, moving around the SUV, swung in and laid a hand on Sage’s shoulder; as she started the engine he went even more rigid, his eyes growing huge with fear.

“It’s all right, Sage. That noise is just the engine. Please be still. Please, don’t hurt yourself more. I promise I won’t let you be harmed-and soon the hurt will ease.”

But Willow said simply, “Be still, Sage. You must mind us! It won’t be long.” It was all Willowcould say-she, too, was shivering with fear of the noisy vehicle as Charlie set out up the ranch lane, driving slowly. When they went over a bump in the gravel road, Sage whimpered with pain, and Charlie felt her stomach twist.

“Dr. Firetti will ease the hurt,” she repeated. “He’ll help you rest and heal.”

Sage blinked up at her in a terrified yet slowly trusting way that made her heart hurt with tenderness. He was in such pain, yet he was doing as Willow and she told him, the terrified young cat was trusting her, and that innocent trust almost undid her.

Heading out on their long road to the highway, she punched in Dr. Firetti’s number on her cell phone. One ring. Two. Firetti answered on the third ring as she turned onto the highway and down the hills toward the village. She thought her call had probably interrupted his dinner. Driving as smoothly as she could on the old, two-lane road, through the heavy dusk, she told Firetti that the cat was a stray she’d been feeding, that she’d been waiting for him to grow a bit tamer before she took him down to be vetted and have his shots.

She told Firetti the cat had been in a fight with another stray. She didn’t know how else to handle the matter. She thought about the possibility of rabies, but she didn’t think that likely; there was not much rabies in their area except for the occasional rabid skunk or bat-and certainly those two bands of speaking cats were far too wise to get near a rabid beast.

But Firetti wouldn’t know that. Under the circumstances, the doctor would probably have to quarantine Sage, and that would complicate matters. Sage was not a cat to be kept in a cage, the speaking cats loved their freedom too well, were too intelligent to tolerate confinement; Willow had had experience with cages, and Charlie knew how stressed she had been.

Well, she’d deal with that problem when Firetti mentioned it.

“When you are healed,” Willow told Sage, “Charlie will take you back to the ranch so you can come and find us, so you can rejoin the band on the far hills.”

“Not back to Stone Eye’s band?” Charlie whispered.

Willow looked up at Charlie, her green eyes flashing with challenge. For a moment their gazes held again, transcending their difference in species; it was a moment that seemed beyond time, where species were no longer separated, where each knew the other intimately; it was an exchange that thrilled Charlie.

“Stone Eye is dead,” Willow told her.

Charlie looked at her, startled.

“Last night, Stone Eye’s warriors slipped into the ruins, stealthy and swift. Stone Eye wasn’t with them, not in the first wave. They attacked brutally. We fought them, but they were fifty or more, and we were only twelve. We couldn’t stand against them, it would have been our end. When they killed two of our young strong cats, we ten slipped away and ran.

“Just north of your barn, they surrounded us again. We dove into a hollow tree that Cotton knew. We left our scent down inside it, for them to follow, and then we climbed. Sage…Sage was with Stone Eye’s warriors.”

Charlie looked down at Sage, shocked.

“Sage ran with Stone Eye,” Willow said. “When our band broke away from him, Sage was young and he clung to the security of that tightly ordered life. I think that sometimes he wanted to be away from Stone Eye’s brutal rule, but other times he was too afraid to leave. He would not come with those who escaped to join our free band. He wouldn’t leave, despite Stone Eye’s cruelty,” she said sadly.

Charlie shivered, trying to imagine the young cat’s indecision and fear.

“But last night,” Willow said, “as they gathered around the tree to dig us out, with Stone Eye yowling orders, we leaped down on them, slashing and raking. In the dark, Cotton throttled Stone Eye before he could twist and grab him-and it was then, when Stone Eye screamed with pain, that Sage saw Stone Eye’s weakness, and turned on him wildly.

“This so infuriated Stone Eye that he flipped over, threw Cotton off, grabbed Sage by the leg and shook and flung him.

“And then Coyote was there, fighting Stone Eye. I’ve never seen such a fight, Cotton and Coyote were crazy with rage at Stone Eye’s brutality to young Sage, they killed him before his warriors could help him.

“When Stone Eye lay dead, Charlie Harper, the cats began to cheer. What a wild sound, that excited cheering breaking the still night. Now…” Willow ‘s green eyes burned at Charlie. “Now we are all free of him. Free of the slave master.” And for the first time that evening, Willow smiled, her pale ears sharply erect, her eyes glowing. “The tyrant is dead, Charlie Harper. Now, Cotton and Coyote will rule, now we will all live free again, and there will be no tyranny.”

But Charlie, slowing behind a creeping truck, only hoped they could keep their freedom. In the world of humans, it seemed to her, there was always another tyrant ready to destroy the meek and gentle, another dictator burning to enslave those weaker than himself.

Willow lifted a paw, watching her. “There is something more, Charlie Harper.”

Charlie passed the truck, then pulled quickly back into the single lane. The evening traffic was growing heavy in both directions on the darkening two-lane.

“We had another death,” Willow told her. “A week before we were attacked. An elderly member of our band. We buried her in the ruins.” Willow ‘s small clowder had lived in the ruins of the old Pamillon Estate, among its fallen walls and crumbling cellars, ever since they’d left Stone Eye’s domination.

“We dug deep to bury her, but we had to abandon the first grave we started. There was a human body there, we uncovered human bones. Old, earth-stained bones. A hand, an arm, part of a shoulder.”

Charlie thought they had found one of the Pamillon family graves, that they had been digging in the old family cemetery.

“We covered them over again, and moved to the soft earth of the old rose garden,” Willow said.

Charlie glanced at her. “But the rose gardenis the cemetery. What…?”

Willow looked up at her. “Yes,” she said softly. “We buried our dead one beside the graves of the Pamillon family, buried her at the back of the garden where the tall old bushes bloom best.”

Charlie pulled over as a speeding driver passed, narrowly missing them. “But where was the human grave?” she said, cursing the harebrained driver.

“It was in a little courtyard outside a bedchamber, a sheltered garden walled in on three sides by the house, and overgrown with bushes and vines. Through a glass door you can see into a chamber, see a toppled dresser and an old, carved bed with tattered hangings.”

Willow flicked her tail. “The strangest thing, Charlie Harper, is that the human skeleton wears a bracelet. The corpse wears a bracelet that bears the picture of a cat. What do you think that could mean?”

“Anyone might wear such jewelry. Millions of humans are fond of cats.”

“But that particular cat…There is another exactly like it, carved into the stone over the bedchamber door.” Willow licked her pale calico shoulder. “Exactly the same cat. Rearing up, with his mouth open and his paw thrust out.”

“Maybe the Pamillons kept cats,” Charlie said. “Maybe other cats lived there at one time, ordinary cats but so dearly loved that they became a kind of symbol-the way people put bumper stickers of dogs on their cars.” But she knew that was a weak explanation.

Beside her, Willow ‘s eyes glowed with unease. “There is more about cats,” Willow said, “there is a book about cats hidden at one side of the grotto. A book about cats likeus, a book about speaking cats. Could the people who lived there have known about us, Charlie Harper? Did someone in that house know about speaking cats?”

Charlie’s pulse had gone cold. Every stranger who knew the cats’ secret was a potential threat to Willow ‘s wild band, and to Joe and Dulcie and Kit.

They were nearly to their turn, the evening traffic now bumper to bumper; though she kept her distance, twice she had to brake abruptly, reaching to hold Sage and to try to calm him; he was very nervous, and he seemed almost panicked with pain. She was so anxious for him that she wanted to race ahead on the wrong side of the two-lane; the slow bumper-to-bumper traffic was maddening.

“Near the human grave,” Willow said, “is a fissure where the walls have caved into an old cellar; several weeks ago Coyote chased a squirrel down there and found a small wooden box tucked among the stones.

“We pulled the box out with our claws. I don’t know what made me fight so hard to free it and get it open. Coyote would have left it, but I had a terrible, urgent feeling that we needed to see inside.

“What clever hands humans have. It took three of us fighting that lid to unhook it. Inside was a piece of folded leather wrapped around something heavy. Inside that was an old book wrapped in frail cloth, a book with a leather cover and gold lettering. We dragged it out of the box and opened it, and in the starlight we read the first pages.”

Charlie turned left on Ocean, headed for Firetti’s clinic. Beside her, Sage lay limp and still, his head down on the seat in a way that turned her cold.

Willow put her face to his face. “He sleeps,” she said softly. “He is breathing.” She was quiet a moment, then, “Some of the tales were the same ancient stories our clowder used to tell before Stone Eye forbade them-he called them the lies of humans, stories about our ancient beginnings. We remembered them from when we were kittens, gathered, of an evening, in the big clowder circle.

“But there were other stories, written by a human who knew about cats of our kind, who had seen them and spoken with them, in another country. Those stories frightened us. We shoved the book back in the box and hid the box again, deep in the crevice. If any cat loyal to Stone Eye had found it, they would have clawed it to shreds.”

“Why didn’t you destroy it,” Charlie said, “when such a record is so dangerous?”

“I don’t know,” Willow said worriedly. “In that book is our history, our story. It gives away our secret, and yet it is our treasure, too, so rich in our own history. How could we destroy it?

“I don’t like that humans would have such a book,” the calico said thoughtfully. “But maybe some humans felt as I do. Maybe they meant to keep our secret, hiding the book carefully. As if they could not bring themselves to tear or burn it? It is a precious thing, that book, those words that tell about us.”

Charlie couldn’t answer; the idea of the book both frightened and excited her, just as it did Willow. But right now…She pulled up to the clinic, praying for Sage, her hand on his limp little body.

4

FIRETTI’S VETERINARY CLINIC occupied two small old cottages just behind the large automotive agency that included Clyde Damen’s upscale auto repair shop. The original houses, one a small frame structure, the newer a one-bedroom cabin constructed of heavy beams and cement blocks, had long ago been joined together by a central kennel and turned into a pleasing professional complex. Dr. and Mrs. Firetti, Mary, lived in the cottage next door. Pulling up in front, Charlie turned to look at Willow. “Do you want to stay in the car, or come in with Sage?”

Willow rose as if to follow her, but then the pale calico, looking out warily at the big building, seemed to lose her nerve. Charlie couldn’t fault her, the poor cat was about at the end of her strength. She’d fought two battles this long day, had run for her life from the first violent attack, then had escaped the warriors a second time and helped the wounded young tom to safety-despite her fear of the human world, she had entered the stable, surely terrified. She seemed, in fact, not only at the end of her strength but of her resolve. Charlie touched her gently.

“Stay here, Willow. If Sage needs you, if he grows nervous again, I’ll come and get you. You’ll be safe here.” Willow looked at her uncertainly.

Charlie reached to the backseat for a soft lap robe to make a bed for her. “I’ll be as quick as I can.” She opened the windows enough so Willow could escape if she chose, enough so she wouldn’t feel trapped. Willow nosed at Sage, and licked the young cat’s ear. She gave Charlie another long look, almost of contentment, as if glad of the chance to rest, and settled down on the blanket. Charlie picked up the stretcher and locked the car doors.

John Firetti met her at the front door of the clinic, his light brown hair ruffled, his bright blue eyes turning at once to Sage. Firetti’s round face, which seemed perpetually sunburned, was filled with concern. Taking the makeshift stretcher, he led her through the empty waiting room and quickly past the door to the kennel, the large, airy central room that connected the two older buildings; this was a solarium-like structure with a high ceiling brightened by skylights. Its cement floor, which could be hosed down, was warmed by hot water pipes imbedded in the concrete. The dogs were barking so frantically that it was all Charlie could do to reassure Sage as they passed. The hospital itself and the cages for the cats were in smaller rooms, away from the noise.

The examining room to which John Firetti led her was warmer than the rest of the building, a small, cozy cubicle with a metal table and two soft, vinyl-covered easy chairs where clients could sit to talk with the doctor. Firetti spent some time examining Sage, then took him back to be X-rayed, asking Charlie to help him.

“Very likely he won’t hold still, Charlie. He’s terrified. I’m sorry about the noise.” During the day, taped music played in the canine section and an attendant was there to soothe and quiet the patients. But this was after hours, and Firetti was alone. “Mary’s off at our daughter’s for the week. You’ll have to hold him, try to calm him.”

“He’ll hold still,” Charlie said.

“Did you say he’s feral?” Firetti said uncertainly.

“He’s a stray. I don’t know whether he’s feral-but ever since I found him hurt, he’s been so still. I suppose he’s in shock?”

Firetti didn’t answer. At the X-ray table, Charlie put on a lead apron and lead gloves, and held Sage the way John Firetti showed her; under her gentle hands, even though they were encased in the thick gloves, Sage remained obediently quiet-but his little body was rigid as he stared up, terrified, at the X-ray machine. Firetti watched him with growing interest as he took the pictures, moving the injured cat into several positions. He had given Sage a shot to ease the pain, and soon, despite the cat’s fear of the strange room and strange machinery, he began to relax.

When Firetti was finished with the X-rays, he said, “This will be a long surgery, and I’ll need to do more tests before we begin. Natalie is on her way in, to help me.” Natalie had been his assistant for many years. He looked intently at Charlie. “I’ll need blood.”

“Don’t you keep a couple of kennel cats for that? The black cats I’ve seen in here?”

“Their blood won’t do.”

Charlie frowned. “You mean cats have blood types, like humans? I didn’t…”

Firetti was silent, watching her. “Cats do have blood types, Charlie. But what I need is not common cat blood.”

“What other kind is there? This cat isn’t some exotic breed. What…?”

“I think you know what I mean. I will need special blood. I’ll need a transfusion from Joe Grey, or from Dulcie or Kit. Maybe from all three. Will you try to round up the cats while I set up for surgery?”

“But…” Charlie stared at him feeling her own blood drain to her toes.

“We’re wasting time,” Firetti said. “I hope they’re not up in the hills hunting.”

She couldn’t speak. She heard the outer door open, heard Natalie call out that she would be right in. Charlie didn’t know what to say to Firetti.

“I know about them,” he said. “I’ve known about these amazing cats since I was a boy, since shortly after my father opened the clinic. I knew Dulcie’s mother, I knew all about her-Genelle Yardley, with whom she lived, died keeping the cats’ secret.”

Charlie looked at him for a long time. How could she tell Joe and Dulcie and Kit this? How could she tell the three cats that one more person shared their secret, even if John Firetti was their friend?

But did she have to tell them?

Couldn’t she bring Willow in for the transfusion, and never mention this to Joe or Dulcie or Kit?

But Willow was so exhausted. When Charlie thought how terrified she would be of the clinic, of the metal table, of a strange human handling her-of the needle plunging in-she knew she couldn’t do that. Besides, such dishonesty showed only disrespect for the cats. Charlie wouldn’t deceive them, that was not how she viewed friendship.

Firetti was saying, “I’ve never told Wilma or Clyde that I know; I didn’t tell the Greenlaws when they took Kit to live with them.” He laughed. “It wasn’t hard to know what the kit was, with her bright curiosity, the way she listened to every word. Of course I’ve never spoken of my knowledge to the cats themselves. They’ll have to know now,” he said quietly.

“They’ll understand,” Charlie said, hoping she was right. Wondering how the three catswould react.

She touched Sage lightly, nodded to John Firetti, and left the clinic, greeting Natalie on her way out, wondering for a moment if Natalie knew, too.

Oh, but Firetti would have told her, if that was the case. Surely he would have.

In the car she told Willow, “He’s given him something for the pain, and to rest. He needs blood for transfusions so he can operate on the leg. As soon as I take you back, I’m going to fetch Joe and Dulcie and Kit.” She was going to tell Willow that Firetti knew about them, but she couldn’t. Willow was already upset, and to Willow, every human who knew their secret represented an additional threat, a worry the feral band must carry with them no matter how far they traveled or how well they hid themselves among the wild, unpopulated slashes of land between the spreading towns and cities.

In the car, as they headed back up the hills, almost as if Willow had read her thoughts, the calico said, “There’s been a human prowling among the ruins. We’ve seen him-or her?-only from a distance, someone dressed in black-black pants and a long black coat. Always the same figure, we think. But driving different colored cars. Coming up that far little gravel lane, from the houses below.”

“Not the larger dirt road?”

“No, never. They drive the car into an old shed down at the end of the property, beyond the dying orchard, then come slipping through the ruins. Searching, always searching. Could they be looking for the book?” she said in a small, miserable voice.

“Where do they search?”

“Inside the house, and in the smaller buildings, too. Whenever we saw them, we stayed away, hid until they were gone. Then we went over their trail, but all we could smell was chemicals. Perfume or something like it, covering all other scents.”

They had reached the ranch; before Willow raced away into the hills, Charlie fetched from the house some leftover roast and a bowl of fresh water. Willow drank and ate quickly.

“Must you go back alone? It’s nearly dark.”

“Our wounded aren’t far away, Charlie Harper. And I’ll be careful. I can smell danger, I can climb, and leap. And I have these,” she said, baring her formidable claws and giving Charlie a little cat smile-and she streaked away past the barn and into the dusky woods, her pale shape vanishing among the thickening shadows.

Worrying because Willow was traveling alone, and puzzling over the prowler at the ruins, Charlie headed down the hills again.Was someone looking for the book? Or maybe for that hidden grave? Pulling into Clyde’s crowded driveway behind Max’s truck, she quickly grabbed her cooler and made for the front door, praying she could find Joe, and maybe Kit and Dulcie, could get them out without argument, and without anyone noticing.

Like the Firetti clinic, the Damen house had been remodeled from a small vacation cottage built during the early years of the last century, when Molena Point was a religion-based summer retreat. Only later had the artists and writers and musicians arrived, to change the persona of the small village from religious to more earthy pleasures. They, too, built cottages, enlarging the village, and now many of the old cottages housed restaurants and shops, or had been connected to become quaint motels. Designer Ryan Flannery had changed Clyde ‘s dumpy little cottage into a handsome dwelling.

First she had transformed the weedy backyard into a beautiful private patio, then had added the second story to provide a new master suite and study, with a deck over the garage and carport. It was here that Charlie found Joe Grey sitting at the edge of the deck washing his paws, looking down at the street, checking out the arriving guests.

“Why the frown?” Joe said softly, turning to look at her. “What’s wrong?”

“Why aren’t you down in the middle of the party?” she whispered. “In the middle of thefood?”

Joe gave her a long, cool look. “Since when have I ever been, as you put it, in the middle of the party food? Don’t you think-”

“Joe,” Charlie said softly, “I need you to come with me quickly, there’s been an accident.”

Joe’s yellow eyes widened with fear.

“No, not Dulcie or Kit-it’s a feral.” She knelt on the deck, facing him, speaking quietly. ” Willow came to me tonight, in the barn. She brought a young, wounded tomcat-there was a battle up at the ruins. Stone Eye attacked them, and Cotton and Coyote killed him.”

Joe looked surprised, then smiled with satisfaction. “Good for them! One less tyrant in the world.”

“I took the hurt cat to Dr. Firetti.” But when she told him what Firetti knew, Joe Grey’s yellow eyes narrowed warily, and his sleek body went rigid with apprehension.

“He’s always known,” Charlie said. “He knew about Dulcie’s mother.” She reached to touch Joe’s muscled gray shoulder. “He’s never told anyone. Never! I believe him, Joe.”

She couldn’t read Joe’s expression; it was a mix of cold feline suspicion and yet a flash of confidence, too, as if he wanted to trust John Firetti, as if he knew, deep down, that he could trust him.

“Firetti needs you, Joe. He needs blood for Sage’s surgery-it has to be the blood of a talking cat, he told me your blood is different.”

Joe looked at Charlie for a long moment, and now his uncertainty had nothing to do with trusting what Firetti had said.Blood? His blood? His stomach had gone a bit queasy, and his paws began to sweat.

Joe Grey had never in his life shrunk from a fight. He could whip any tomcat that challenged him, and could send most dogs running. But the drawing out of his lifeblood was another matter. He already felt violated. He envisioned Dr. Firetti shaving away his sleek gray fur to pale, naked skin, and sticking in a large and painful needle, and he didn’t like the thought.

Seeing the fear in Joe’s eyes, Charlie hid her amusement. “Firetti may need blood from all three of you,” she said diplomatically. “But I know you’ll be the bravest. I guess we’d better fetch Dulcie and Kit, though.” She was guessing that the lady cats, like most women, would feel less stricken at donating a few drops of blood, but she couldn’t tell Joe that.

“We’re here” came a small voice from the roof above them. Looking up she saw two pairs of bright eyes fixed on her-green-eyed Dulcie, her dark tabby coat nearly invisible against the evening sky, and Kit’s yellow eyes as round as twin moons, the tortoiseshell’s darkly mottled fluff lost in the falling night.

“Heknows?” Dulcie hissed at her.“Firetti knows?”

“Blood?” Kit said. “Our blood? Oh my…” But whether the tattercoat was frightened by the thought, or impressed with such an important mission, Charlie couldn’t tell.

“If he needs us now,” Dulcie said sensibly, “let’s get on with it.” And Charlie watched the two lady cats leave the roof, backing down the pine tree, their claws scratching away loose bark, watched them drop to the ground and race to her red Blazer, where they melted into the bushes, waiting for her to open the door.

Picking up Joe without ceremony, garnering an irritable growl, Charlie hurried down, taking the stairs two at a time, hoping she could get through the crowd without anyone stopping her-but from the living room, she heard Clyde’s and Mike Flannery’s voices.

Most of the party was crowded into the back patio, and she could hear only a few voices from the kitchen. But there by the fireplace stood Clyde and his soon-to-be father-in-law in deep and serious conversation. She set Joe down, giving him a look that said he’d better follow her. And quickly she slipped into the living room, snatched up her cooler, which she’d left by the front door, and carried it into the kitchen.

“Potato salad and shrimp dip,” she told Ryan hastily, setting the carrier on an empty chair. “I forgot to shut the dogs in, I have to go back.” And she was gone again out the front door, Joe at her heels, before anyone thought to ask questions.

Holding open the door of her SUV, she pulled out the lap robe and pretended to fold it, hiding the cats as they leaped inside. Backing out of the drive, she hoped Ryan and Clyde were too tightly strung over the wedding to have paid attention to her hasty behavior. They didn’t need this added worry just now.

Well, but of course they were nervous, getting married was a big step. Clyde had been a bachelor for a long time, despite numerous involvements. And Ryan, having only last year broken away from an abusive marriage, was still gun-shy. But,They’ll be good together, Charlie thought.They’ll survive the wedding, get away by themselves, and that’s all they need.

What worried her, as she headed toward Ocean and the clinic, was the changes this marriage would bring to the Damen household. Joe and Clyde had lived together a long time, a bachelor household, the two of them bantering and confrontational, ribbing each other and supremely comfortable in their abrasive relationship. Now, what was in store for the two hardheaded males who were so entrenched in their rough ways? And Ryan…though Ryan had grown up in a household run by three strong-willed men and had learned early to hold her own, she’d never lived with a smart-talking tomcat who was as strong willed as any cop.

Parking in front of the clinic, she and the cats headed for the door, the cats pressing close to her legs. Firetti let them in and urged them on through the empty waiting room to the surgery, where he lifted the three cats onto a table.

“Natalie can’t hear us,” he said softly. “She stopped to tend to another patient; we had a couple of afternoon surgeries, and they’re just recovering.”

There was a short argument among the cats over who would go first. “I will, of course,” Joe said boldly, drawing himself up, his ears sharp, his muscled shoulders gleaming, all macho tomcat and not a sign of fear.

Firetti nodded with approval. “You’re bigger and stronger, Joe. And I’ll take Kit’s blood, too.”

Kit looked smug, and lashed her fluffy tail.

“The blood of two cats should be sufficient, unless there are complications,” Firetti said. “I’d like Dulcie to stay as a backup-like you to stay the night, Dulcie, to be here when Sage comes out of the anesthetic. He’ll need another cat to talk to, he’ll be confused, he-”

“I’ll stay!” Kit interrupted. Charlie put a hand on Kit’s head to silence her.

“He’ll be disoriented,” Firetti continued. “He may not remember where he is, or why. In that state, the fear of finding himself alone and confined among humans could be very hard on him, and he-”

“I’ll stay,” Kit said again. “Sage and I are friends, we were kittens together,I can comfort him.”

Joe and Dulcie exchanged a look, a concerned parental kind of glance that amused but puzzled Charlie. And Dulcie said, “Kit, you don’t want to miss the party.”

“I want to stay!” Kit hissed at her, showing formidable teeth.

“Dulcie will stay!” Joe said angrily, and the two older cats glared at Kit until the tortoiseshell backed away from them, round-eyed with surprise. Charlie didn’t see what all the fuss was about. She didn’t see what difference it made-until she looked again at Kit.

Even cowed by the older cats, the tortoiseshell’s yellow eyes hardly left the sleeping patient. Kit watched Sage intently, and as Dr. Firetti prepared Joe to give blood, Kit crept nearer Sage, nosing at him and worrying, the tip of her fluffy tail twitching, her golden eyes filled with emotions that Charlie had never before seen in the young cat.

So, Charlie thought, hiding a smile.So, is Cupid among us, then?

But why would Joe and Dulcie be against Kit and Sage’s friendship? The tortoiseshell was no longer a kitten, she was a grown cat now.

All through their whispered exchange, Sage lay sleeping on the table, sedated and kept warm. And whatever the problem, in the end Kit and Joe gave the first blood, and Dulcie was left to stay the night.

As the scent of alcohol filled the room, Charlie didn’t like to watch John Firetti draw blood from Joe; the tomcat, despite his macho pretense, lay as rigid as if he were about to be field dressed. When Joe flinched, Charlie flinched. When the needle went in, she felt sharply its stinging bite-she was nearly as shaky and unnerved as she knew Joe was. The big, brawny tomcat suddenly seemed very small and frail-Joe seemed, himself, in need of tender protection.

When Dr. Firetti finished taking blood from Joe and Kit, he called Natalie on the intercom to help with the surgery. Kit refused to go home, so he settled Charlie and the three cats comfortably in his adjoining office; he gave Joe and Kit chicken broth to lap, and tucked them up in a blanket to keep warm, and showed Charlie where he kept the coffeepot. As the friends waited during surgery, Kit’s eyes never left the connecting door, and silently Charlie and the cats prayed for the young feral.

5

AT ABOUT THE TIME Charlie entered Dr. Firetti’s clinic, Mike Flannery was headed for Molena Point PD to pick up Dallas, to go on to the party at Clyde ‘s place. He was stopped at a crosswalk in the center of the village, waiting for a pair of overdressed tourists to wander past, when he saw her-he caught his breath, felt his heart do a flip even after all these years.

She had started across the street when she paused, studying the car uncertainly, looking at the license plate and then to his driver’s-side window; she wouldn’t see much in the reflected light from the setting sun. He put down the window, when she saw who was driving she stepped back, looking as uncomfortable as he felt.

“Mike? I thought it was Detective Garza. The tan Blazer, the police license…The sun was in my eyes…”

“It’s his car,” Mike said. “Hello, Lindsey. Let me pull around the corner.”

He’d dreaded this moment, he hadn’t known how he’d feel when he did see her. He’d considered telling Dallas he didn’t want to work this case.

Well, here it was. So what was he going to do?

Take the case and throw himself back into the old feelings? They were still there, he knew that now. Or distance himself, be polite but turn away from her? Hand the case back to Dallas?

Lindsey had called Dallas early in the week concerning what she thought was a new lead, a body found up in Oregon, time of death maybe ten years ago…If that wasn’t grasping at straws.

She had never gotten over Carson. As far as Mike knew, that was why she’d broken with him and left the village. He’d been pretty shaken when suddenly she’d told him she was moving back to L.A., gave him no reason.

They hadn’t fought, they had been getting along fine, or so he’d thought. He had, in fact, been feeling pretty serious, almost to the point of proposing-a commitment he had not once considered since his wife died.

Lindsey’s excuse for leaving was that she still felt involved with Chappell, that she’d realized she still cared for him. That not knowing whether he was alive or dead had left her unable to commit herself fully.

That had seemed fair enough-even if, he thought wryly, Chappellhad run out on her.

Mike had wondered if maybe she hadn’t wanted to be saddled with his three daughters, but he couldn’t see why, they were all grown up by then and out on their own. Still, though, they were family. Lindsey had not had a pleasant family experience, none of the closeness that had warmed his own life, and maybe she was wary of that involvement.

To Lindsey, having grown up in a dysfunctional family and with an older sister who bullied her, maybe the whole idea of family was abhorrent, was not a relationship she wanted.

But why hadn’t she said so? Why the hell did women have to be so devious? He’d never thought of Lindsey as devious.

For a long time after she left, he’d been angry, bitter.

Strange that now, despite his painful memories, hewanted to work the ten-year-old case, that this last week he had found himself looking at the case as a challenge.

And so who was devious? So who wanted to get back together again, and was afraid to admit it?

Parking in a green zone in front of the library, he watched her approach on the passenger side; the moment seemed almost in slow motion. She was just as beautiful, slim, willowy, her creamy oval face meant to be touched and kissed, her huge hazel eyes too painfully familiar, her soft brown hair floating around her face, changing in the glow of the dropping sun from chestnut to dark gold. Light, feathery brows, no makeup but a hint of pale lipstick. Her hands gave her age more clearly than her face, smooth hands but the veins standing out, her oval nails colored a soft salmon tone. She was around forty-five, ten years his junior. She wore a pale blue sweater with a V-neck over a white, open-collared shirt, her long slim legs easy in faded jeans. She leaned down, smiling in at him.

He reached over, pushed the door open. ” Dallas is at the station,” he said almost curtly. “How have you been, Lindsey?”

“I…Fine,” she said uncertainly. “And you? I talked with Dallas a few days ago. I had to be out of town, I didn’t know when I’d be back, to make an appointment. When I saw the car, I thought…” Slipping into the car, she studied his face questioningly, her hazel eyes picking up amber lights. “You’ve retired, Mike. You’re moving down to the village?”

“I’m staying with Dallas at the moment.” He didn’t tell her he’d be moving into Clyde’s house, would be staying there alone while Clyde and Ryan were on their honeymoon, nor that he’d then be moving into Ryan’s vacated apartment. Was he afraid he might weaken and ask her over? Afraid she’d ask herself over? His reticence both amused and annoyed him, he felt as awkward as a kid.

He told himself he was just protecting his privacy. It was true that he’d been looking forward to some downtime, to a period of quiet isolation during which he could do a little unhurried work at his own pace, his own hours. His daughter’s big, airy studio with its expansive view of the village rooftops and of the sea beyond was just what he wanted, an ideal bachelor pad.

Was that what he was afraid of? That he’d invite her up? Afraid to be alone with her?

So why the hell, then, did he take the case?

Her smile was like the sun coming out. She made him feel too vulnerable; he hadn’t meant to be thrown back into this. He’d intended to keep the investigation strictly business-or that’s what he’d told himself. He’d thought he’d see her again and it would mean nothing, just old friends who’d moved on. Had told himself that was a long time ago and now they were both different.

But now, suddenly, it was all with him again. Every detail of their time together seemed like yesterday, their casual dinners at her place, their runs on the beach, nights before the fire, holding her close.

Forget it. Keep your mind on the case. Or step back, tell Dallas you don’t want to work this one. He looked at her sternly. “Why, after ten years, have you decided to pursue the case again?”

“You know I spent a year, after he disappeared, trying to find him, Mike. You know how I pushed the police and the California Bureau of Investigation. You know I didn’t have any evidence that would put him across state lines, that would make it a case for the FBI. But now, maybe there is something.”

He studied her, seeing how tired she looked suddenly, and older.

“When Carson disappeared, I came up with nothing but dead ends. You know I was weary, so scared and worried for him sometimes-not knowing whether something awful had happened to him, whether he was dead or hurt somewhere. And then at other times so angry, feeling totally betrayed. Wishing, if hehad walked out on me, that he’d just told me, and broken it off.” She reached to touch his hand. “Have you forgotten how it was, Mike?”

He hadn’t forgotten. But he’d thought that, over the years, she would have come to terms with this, with not knowing-just as he had turned off the memory of her, or thought he had.

“When I felt so down, you helped me to heal. Without you, Mike, I couldn’t have gotten through that year.”

She was making him uncomfortable. Had she needed him, then, only for the sympathy he supplied?

But she looked at him with sudden fire in her eyes, a look that startled him.

“Now…,” she said, “maybe there is something. Maybe Carson has been found. Did Dallas show you the clipping, the body found last week, up in Oregon? A hiker, somewhere deep in the forest, some private land that I guess no one goes into much. The man was ahiker, Mike. They have his backpack, what’s left of it. I can’t get this out of my mind.”

“I read the article,” he said noncommittally. “But Carson was supposed to have gone camping near the village.”

Camping, the week before their wedding, up in the hills south of the village. Lindsey had had no plans to go with him, she’d said there was a lot to do even for the simple wedding they’d planned, reminded him it was tax season and she had too much work to do, and that anyway, she’d never liked camping.

He remembered her saying, “Carson likes to hike alone, he likes those times of solitude-we both believe there are some things each of us can enjoy alone,” and she’d laughed softly. “I don’t like sleeping and cooking out in the cold, with no hot shower in the morning.”

She’d worked for Carson Chappell’s accounting firm at the time. She’d said that three of her biggest accounts had sent in very late tax figures and that she’d needed to finish those. Each of Chappell& Gibbs’s employees had been solely responsible for their own accounts; she’d said Carson ‘s accounts were all in order and filed.

Now, she looked at him levelly. “I want to know if that hiker in Oregon is Carson. Is that so hard to understand? I know it’s unlikely, but…If I could put an end to it, to the questions…

“When I saw that newspaper article, I had this…certain feeling. A sudden jolt, as if Iknew.” She looked at him intently, her hazel eyes now as green as the sea. “I felt so sure. And I needed again, desperately, to find out what happened to him. To find out, and to let go of it at last, for good.”

They looked at each other for a long time, Lindsey’s hands folded quietly in her lap. “I know it’s grasping at straws. Carson didn’t say anything about going to Oregon, he told me he’d be hiking just above Molena Point. He gave me a map, marked where he planned to go.” The betrayal and hurt in her eyes was just as raw as it had been ten years ago.

When she’d reported Carson missing, there’d been searchers all over the open land above the village, crisscrossing the miles of woods and hills that made up the state park land. The county sheriff, then the forestry department, volunteers, tracking dogs…They’d found no sign that Chappell had ever been there.

Mike studied her for a moment, then started the engine. “I’m headed for the station to pick up Dallas. We can talk there for a few minutes, maybe set up something for Monday.” Pulling out into the slow village traffic, he could feel her watching him and he wondered again if this was smart, taking this case.

Sitting turned away from the door, she glanced into the backseat at the dog-hair-covered blanket, and smiled. “You have a dog? I miss Newton, I finally had to put him down.”

“The blanket belongs to Dallas ‘s pointer,” Mike said. “The last of many, and he’s getting along. Timber’s partner died this last year, so Dallas takes Timber with him when he can-no, I have no dog now, it wouldn’t have been fair to confine a big dog in the city.”

“And little dogs don’t appeal,” she said, remembering. He didn’t mention that he would be babysitting Ryan’s Weimaraner this coming week, that he would be running the dog on the beach, as they used to run Newton.

She was quiet for some time, then, “Your girls are doing well?”

When Mike’s wife died of cancer, her brother Dallas and Mike’s brother Scotty had moved in with him to help raise the girls, to share the time-consuming responsibilities, to fill a little of the emptiness, to offer steadiness and love.

They had lived in San Francisco then; he’d met Lindsey during a family weekend at their Molena Point cottage; she had been the first and only woman he’d dated since his wife’s death.

They’d packed a lot into their discreet weekends when he could get away to the village or could meet her somewhere halfway, along the coast. Lindsey had been interested enough in his family, from a distance; she had asked about the girls and enjoyed seeing their pictures, but she’d made it clear she didn’t want to be involved.

“The girls are doing well,” he said briefly, never having liked her distancing herself.

All three girls had turned out to be strong and resourceful young women. They worked for what was important to them, and they could take care of themselves. Hanni was a bold and original interior designer, Ryan an equally inventive architectural designer and hands-on building contractor. And their older sister, with a degree in economics from Stanford, had married an electrical engineer and moved to the East Coast where they were raising five fine kids. He had eight grandchildren, counting Hanni’s three boys.

Maybe now, he thought, Ryan and Clyde would decide to have a family. Or not. Whatever they did, he felt more than sufficiently blessed.

He felt lucky, too, that in the process of raising the girls, he and Dallas and Scotty had grown as close as any brothers ever were. They’d run a tight household, and had taught the girls as many skills as they could.

Turning in through the wide parking area that served the Molena Point courthouse and the PD, moving in between its gardens and oak trees, he parked in a reserved slot in front of the station, then turned to look at her.

” Dallas said you still have Carson ‘s clothes and personal possessions?”

“I’ve kept everything that was in his apartment-clothes, books, even the kitchen things-everything but the furniture. After the police were finished with the apartment and the office, everything they didn’t hold for evidence was given to his mother. When she died, four years ago, she left a simple will that gave those things to me. I put it all in a small storage locker here in the village.

“I had to come up from L.A. to claim it, and I didn’t want to ship it down there. Didn’t want it handled any more than necessary. I thought that someday the police might want to look at it all again.”

Mike swung out of the car, and before he could move around to open her door, she was out and on the sidewalk. He caught a glimpse of the two of them approaching the glass door to the station, and was startled by the rightness of the reflection, his lean build and her slim, long-waisted figure seeming to cleave together naturally. Watching the reflection, he felt as if they had never broken off their relationship.

He held the door for her, and when he looked up, Dallas stood in the foyer, beside the dispatcher’s counter, watching them with that unreadable, dark-eyed gaze that would intimidate the hardest felon. The Latino detective was freshly shaved, his short, dark hair newly cut, and was dressed for the party in jeans, a white turtleneck, and a tweed sport coat. The look on his face, as he studied Lindsey, gave Mike pause. It was a look of interest that Mike seldom saw in his brother-in-law’s eyes-Dallas ‘s warm Latin temperament embraced his good hunting dogs in a far more constant manner than it had ever done with any of his short-lived love affairs.

Mike tried not to bristle at Dallas ‘s interest as they moved down the hall to the detective’s office where Dallas made Lindsey comfortable in the leather easy chair and offered her coffee, which she refused. There was a brief discussion of what the cold file contained, and they made an appointment with her for late Monday morning, at the station, the morning after the wedding. If not for Dallas ‘s watchful interest, Mike might have asked her to join him for breakfast before they were to meet. Dallas rose first, to escort Lindsay out to the front. Watching the two of them walk down the hall together, Dallas’s broad, tweed-covered shoulders and dark hair, Lindsey’s slim, graceful walk in the pale, faded jeans and sweater, the two of them looked, he thought, startled, as ifthey had known each other for a long time-maybe it was a trick Lindsey had that he’d never before noticed, maybe her way of bonding with a man.

Or maybe her compliance was totally unconscious. Whatever the case, the effect was charming-or, in this instance, damned annoying.

He didn’t want to be at cross purposes with Dallas, certainly not just before Ryan’s wedding. He watched Dallas escort Lindsey out, then he and Dallas headed for the party, saying little on the short drive, their silence not their usual easy quiet, but tense-they were, for the first time he could remember, at odds over a woman.

But as they pulled up in front of Clyde’s house, he looked at Dallas and grinned, and they put their bristling aside and went in, wisecracking and looking for a beer.

6

AFTER THE BLOODLETTING, as Joe Grey thought of his stress-filled donation of vital bodily fluids, the tomcat lay safely on the couch in Dr. Firetti’s private office snuggled among Dulcie, Kit, and Charlie, listening to the doctor’s voice from the surgery and the occasional sound of instruments clicking against the metal table-and thanking the great cat god that he was out of there.

“How did it go?” Charlie said, gently stroking him. “You seem a bit pale.”

Joe glared up at her. “How can a cat look pale? You can see beneath my fur?”

“Your expression is pale. Wan,” she said. “Inside your ears is pale.”

In truth, he felt pale. Felt wiped out. His paws were still sweaty, and he could still feel the cold metal table under him, where he’d lain half blinded by the harsh hospital lights reflecting off the table and the bright metal instruments and glass tubes; he could still feel that huge needle going into his little cat vein-he’d tried to be macho when his foreleg was shaved, his sleek gray fur stripped away to pale, naked skin and blue veins and then that huge needle was plunged deep in and his lifeblood drawn from his body into a syringe big enough to bleed a cart horse.

How could a heretofore kind and caring doctor coldheartedly remove all his life-sustaining juices? As Firetti had drawn the plunger back farther and farther, extracting more blood than any cat couldhave inside him, Joe had resisted a terrible urge to claw and tear at the doctor. In fact, though, with the needle in him, he’d been afraid to move at all and cause himself further damage-but then, when he’d glanced across at Kit expecting to see her trembling and cowering, what he saw had shattered him.

There she lay on the next table, calmly purring while she was shaved and the needle was inserted and her blood burbled out into the vial.Purring. As mindlessly relaxed as a stuffed teddy bear-her cool nonchalance had left him furious and shamefully embarrassed.

The fact that Firetti had said he’d take less than sixty cc’s had no meaning for Joe. And it wasn’t Firetti’s blood.

At least Dulcie hadn’t seen his cowardice, she hadn’t been in the operating room;she’d been out here with Charlie lounging in Dr. Firetti’s office, supplied with catnip, a bowl of turkey tetrazzini gourmet cat food, a cuddle toy, and a soft blanket.

Now, listening to Firetti’s and his assistant’s voices resonating softly from beyond the closed door against the harsh sounds of metal on metal, he pictured scalpels and other sharp cutting instruments, and he felt sick and hurting for poor Sage-every alarming TV show he’d ever seen featuring veterinary surgery came back to him. Why had he ever watched that stuff? He vowed never to watch again. He was glad Clyde and Ryan’s taste in TV ran to turning off the set and snuggling before the fire or opening a good book. Beside him, Charlie was still fussing over him, stroking him way too gently.

“You want more custard, Joe, to get your strength back?”

“I’ve had three.”

“I expect Kit seemed braver,” Charlie said, as if reading his mind. “I expect she seemed more stoic in the matter of blood and needles?”

Joe stared coldly up at her.

“Human males are the same,” Charlie said. “It’s in the genes, that sudden weakness at the sight of blood.”

“Cops can handle blood,” Joe said irritably, wishing she’d mind her own business.

“Cops get used to it early, they have to. Anyway, you don’t shrink from mouse blood.”

“Mouse blood is notmy blood.”

Beside him, Kit had begun to squirm, as nervous as a rat on a hot stove, pawing the blanket one minute and deadly still the next. She didn’t take her eyes from the inner door to the surgery. Her tortoiseshell ears were sharply forward, picking up every faint sound, her whole being focused on the young tomcat lying in there under the knife. Joe had seldom seen her so distressed; he watched her uneasily.

“You and Sage were kittens together?” he asked.

“Ever since my momma abandoned me where the clowder roamed. I remember her taking me there, carrying me by the nape of my neck swinging and jiggling through the tall grass. She laid me where the clowder would find me then she went away again and I think she was sick. I guess she died,” Kit said sadly. “I followed the clowder, but they kept chasing me away. Sage was little, too, but he was Stone Eye’s nephew, he belonged with them. I was an outsider, they didn’t want me. Stone Eye didn’t want me, and they all did as he told them. He didn’t want any kittens besides his own. Sage was the only one who liked me, and he would sneak away to be with me. I was terrified of Stone Eye, but I needed to stay with them, I was only small and I needed the safety of that big band of cats. I didn’t know how to hunt, and there were foxes and raccoons and coyotes in the hills.

“Sage stood up for me against the other young cats, and then one day Stone Eye mauled him real bad for being my friend. You can feel the scars under his fur.”

She pricked up her ears at a new sound from the surgery, as if a table had been rolled across the room. Then all was still except the doctor’s voice, too soft to understand.

Charlie said, “What happened after Stone Eye mauled Sage?”

“After that, Sage didn’t fight for me anymore, but he still slipped away so we could be together. He helped me hide from the others and sometimes he’d lead the bullies away. And he brought me scraps from a kill or a garbage dump.”

Kit frowned, her ears back, her whiskers flattening against her cheeks. “But still he thought Stone Eye was a good leader. He said we needed to be ruled by a strong paw. I never understood that, I never believed it had to be a cruel paw. When I got older, we argued a lot,” Kit said, staring worriedly toward the closed door.

“Sage wouldn’t run away from the clowder when I did, when I found Lucinda and Pedric up on Hellhag Hill and knew we were meant to be together. He was afraid to leave the clowder, he said only Stone Eye could protect us. He didn’t trust Lucinda and Pedric, he had no faith in humans. I’m surprised he let you touch him, Charlie.”

“He had no choice,” Charlie said. “He was too hurt and weak to run. And Willow was right there, telling him to be still.”

Joe looked at Kit for a long time, wondering. Earlier, when Charlie had first carried her into the surgery, when she’d first seen Sage, she had looked sick with fear for him, had let out a wailing mewl of shock and distress at how broken and weak he was. Even after they’d had their legs shaved and blood drawn for Sage, and Dr. Firetti had carried them in here to his office and to Charlie, Kit had been so filled with pain for Sage, it seemed her little cat heart would break-and yet there was this difference between them, which so deeply bothered Kit, Sage bowing to the tyrant’s oppression while Kit defied such bullying. ***

IT WAS MORE than an hour later when Dr. Firetti came out of the surgery wearing a clean lab coat and smelling of hand soap, and sat down to talk with them. Charlie, having left Joe and Dulcie and Kit in the office for a few minutes, had returned with her aunt Wilma. Dulcie’s housemate, dressed in jeans and a red cashmere sweater, her gray hair tied back with a red cloisonn? clip, sat now at the other end of the couch, holding Kit on her lap as Kit licked up a bowl of rich chicken soup. Dulcie lay behind Wilma along the back of the couch, her head on Wilma’s shoulder.

Knowing the cats would be weak and emotionally wrung out after giving blood, Wilma had brought a thermos of canned soup, quickly warmed in Clyde’s kitchen, and an array of party food from the buffet. Joe, at the other end of the couch, was gulping his share of shrimp canap?s and little ham rolls stuffed with an assortment of cheeses, all therapeutic, of course.

“Sage did very well,” Dr. Firetti said, “and is resting comfortably.” Charlie smiled at the reassuring words used by most doctors. “The femur was broken in three places, so I’ve put in a metal plate, which is our best chance for sound healing. And I’ve put a pin in the one break in the tibia.”

Charlie shivered. “Will he use the leg again?”

“I’m hoping he will, that it will heal as strong as it ever was. All we can do now is keep him quiet, care for him. And pray,” Firetti said. “I want to keep him for a few days, to watch him. Then, Wilma, you’re taking him home with you? That’s closest,” he said, “in case you need me at odd hours.”

Charlie said, “I’ll have to tell the Greenlaws that you know about the cats. And we’ll have to tell Clyde and Ryan.”

Firetti nodded. “Then Ryan knows, too?”

“She figured it out for herself,” Charlie said. “It’s a good thing she did.”

Dr. Firetti laughed. “That would be an impossible situation after they’re married, if Joe couldn’t talk in his own house.”

Joe looked at the doctor with more warmth, assessing this man who had, for all these years, known their secret and never said a word. “No one,” Joe pointed out, “seems worried that I’ll hold my own with those two. Ryan Flannery can be just as stubborn and smart-mouthed as Clyde.”

Firetti smiled. “I wasn’t worried about you, Joe. I don’t think you’ll have a problem.”

Joe just looked at him.

“You’ve done all right keeping your investigations secret, holding your own with the law.”

All five stared at Firetti. Wilma said, “You knew this, too? The police part?”

Firetti nodded. “It took me a while to figure that out. But I’ve known about the cats since long before Dulcie was born, Wilma. I was doctor to her mother.

“My father, when I was a boy, years before I grew up and went off to school and then joined the practice…he treated several generations of speaking cats. When I was about ten, a Molena Point woman married a Welshman and they resettled in the states, in Molena Point, near her family. They brought with them four pairs of speaking cats.

“They planned to breed and sell them, but of course they didn’t tell the cats this. When two grew very ill, they were forced to find medical care, and they came to my dad. The way those cats responded to medication he found very strange-it took him a long time to treat them, they had lymphadenitis, but they didn’t respond well to penicillin. He brought them through, but their reactions puzzled him.

“He had read tales of unnatural cats in parts of Wales and Ireland, and now, when he researched the matter, he began to suspect there might be some truth in the stories, as impossible as they seemed.

“And then, when he examined the cats’ blood, he found it was not like any known type, not A or B, not AB. And of course it was not like any of the several subtypes, which were discovered more recently. AB is, in itself, extremely rare, but this blood was none of those, it was different. Confronted with this irrefutable fact, he began to believe the tales.

“He could find no medical reference to help him, not even the newest, ongoing studies-no medical research even in the British Isles, where he thought there might be more such cats. Either no other speaking cat had ever been in a veterinarian’s office, at least with an illness that would stir curiosity, or any other doctor who had known the truth had kept it secret.

“Of course, his investigations were done quietly, he daren’t tell anyone what he suspected. He could ask no doctor or medical facility for any kind of help, he had only the myths and folk tales-and the unrecorded blood type.

“At one point, he was inclined to diagnose himself with mental derangement, was convinced he’d lost his grip on reality. He grew so upset that my mother intervened. In her direct way, she went right to the cats.

“When two cats were brought into the clinic for nail trimming and shots, she insisted they speak to her, and she told them why. She explained how upset the doctor was, and how carefully he had kept their secret. At last one of them did speak.”

Firetti smiled. “She was determined the young cat would answer her. But when he did, the experience left her deeply shaken. The cats told her that the Welsh couple, in order to get them to travel willingly, had promised that in America people would treat them like gods, that they would live pampered lives, would enjoy total freedom to come and go as they chose, and would enjoy, as well, all manner of fine foods and luxuries.

“When they arrived in the village, the couple kept them inside the house, saying they must wait until the time was right to announce themselves to the public. The cats were here, and so far were being treated well enough, though nothing like they’d been promised.

“But after many months of being shut in, they grew restless and morose, and determined to leave that place.

“They found the door and window locks a kind impossible for a cat to open. They grew more and more worried, they ceased to trust the couple, and soon they would not speak unless they were tormented and forced to.

“Then the couple sold two pairs. The other four cats were enraged, there had been no talk of selling them like common beasts. The buyers lived in the village, and when one pair of cats had kittens, which is rather rare, the buyers in turn sold them. When the cats in the Welsh house learned this, that they were indeed being treated like livestock, they wanted only to get away.

“They tipped a bookshelf over against a window, breaking the glass, and escaped. They searched for their friends, were at last able to find the four, they freed them.

“One of their descendents was your mother, Dulcie. She remained with Genelle Yardley all her life. You were born on Genelle’s bed. You were the only one of the small litter that would grow up to speak.” He looked from Dulcie to Wilma, then stroked Dulcie. “Genelle felt certain, when Wilma took you home to be her kitten, that if and when you did speak, Wilma was the kind of person who would guard your secret.

“But years earlier, when the captive cats were all free, they headed up into the open hills, where they soon found the lush acreage of the Pamillon Estate. The property was beautiful then, with vast gardens, flowering bushes and trees among which to hide, and there they took shelter. There were several branches of the Pamillon family living there then, in the mansion and in several guest cottages that have since become uninhabitable.

“The cats lived on the estate through several generations, and they were fed and loved by the Pamillons. My father doubted anyone knew the truth about them, doubted the cats ever spoke to anyone. But there was one daughter, Olivia, who seemed especially fond of her cats, and he wondered sometimes about her.

“I was in my second year at Davis when the Pamillons undertook some repairs and remodeling of the estate. It may have been then that most of the cats moved away, into the farther hills-there were fewer and fewer visits from the Pamillons for shots or to treat an occasional illness.

“And then, at about that time, there was some kind of dissent within the family, and gradually the extended family, aunts and uncles and their children, moved away and seemed to lose interest in the property. Olivia remained, living as a recluse in just a few rooms. She stayed active in the village for a long time, but then as she grew older she fired gardeners and housekeepers and maintenance people, and let the estate fall into disrepair. There were two cats she would bring to me for shots, but I felt sure the rest had moved on.”

“Maybe,” Kit interrupted softly, “maybe they traveled way south, on the coast, where I guess I was born, the place I first remember.”

“Maybe,” Firetti said. “I went up to the estate occasionally because I was concerned about Olivia. I didn’t see any other than the two cats that stayed with her. I always thought the family held on to the property simply for the increasing land value. It’s a big, sprawling family, all scattered now, and apparently at loggerheads with one another. The estate has been divided and redivided, with numerous deeds and trusts and wills drawn in such a way that no one can sell his share without approval from the others. I know one attorney who did some work for the Pamillons, and he said the titles and legal entanglements were almost impossible to sort out and set straight, with so many conflicting restraints and demands.

“It was knowing about the speaking cats,” Firetti said, “that started me feeding and trapping the stray cats of the village, as my father had done. He fed and trapped all the feral cats around the wharf and the village, and continued to do so long after he retired. He spayed and neutered them and gave them shots to keep them healthy and then turned them loose again.” He laughed. “That might have been the first TNR program.

“He made very sure, of course, that none was a speaking cat. Not much chance, they were too clever to be trapped. He would have sheltered such a cat if it so chose, would have brought a speaking cat here to live, if the cat wanted such a life.

“He was already gone when I met Joe and Dulcie.” Firetti looked down at the cats, sitting on the couch listening so attentively. “You were only a tiny thing, Dulcie, when Wilma brought you for your first shots. Though I knew who your mother was, the talent is not passed on to all the kittens in a litter. But from what Wilma told me about you, from your stealing of the neighbors’ pretty clothes, for instance, I suspected that you were special and that one day you would discover your talents.

“And then you arrived on the scene, Joe. In the beginning, you and Clyde were just as clueless about who you really were.” Firetti smiled, his blue eyes crinkling. “I knew when you and Dulcie discovered the truth. I would see you around the village, see the changes in your relationship, see your looks at each other.

“And then, strange things happened in the village. When the owner of the car dealership was murdered, the way the police captured the killers was odd. I was fascinated by the details of that investigation-and I began to see what you two cats were up to.

“From then on, I paid attention to crime in the village. I listened to the sometimes puzzled remarks of one officer or another about cats showing up near a crime scene. And when you came to live with the Greenlaws, Kit-and I heard Officer Brennan’s story about a cat jumping from a roof onto a burglar’s head, didn’t that make me laugh.”

“I kept it all to myself,” Firetti said. “All this time, I’ve just enjoyed the ride.”

Charlie studied Firetti’s smooth, oval face, his direct gaze, and was warmed by his quiet kindness. But then she thought, would nothing in the world make him tell what he knew?

There would be huge money in revealing the cats’ secret, in bringing speaking cats to the attention of the world-the attention of avaricious promoters and the hungry news media.

But that was insane. John Firetti had been silent for so many years, when he could have sold out the cats at any time. Why wait until now?

No, despite money or power, here was one man who would remain true. John Firetti, like Max and the few other men she most admired, would not suddenly turn corrupt, would not deliberately use the innocent for financial gain. Here was one man who would not reveal this most hurtful of secrets, Charlie was certain of that.

7

FROM THE LIVING ROOM, through the big, open kitchen, and out onto the walled patio, Clyde Damen’s house was filled with the beat of Dixieland and the happy voices of Clyde’s and Ryan’s friends, who had gathered with Ryan’s family and with more than half the officers of Molena Point PD. The smell of hickory smoke and barbecued ribs filled the early evening; coolers stood about brimming with iced wine and beer. In the kitchen, where the big round table was loaded with appetizers and deli salads, Ryan stood replenishing a platter of cold cuts. She wore an apron over her jeans and T-shirt, a bridal present from her dad, printed with prim, old-fashioned sayings that made them both laugh…PRETTY IS AS PRETTY DOES…GENTLE JANE WAS GOOD AS GOLD, SHE ALWAYS DID AS SHE WAS TOLD…SUGAR AND SPICE AND EVERYTHING NICE…None of the clich?s fit her, she was not a woman who valued sugar and spice and coy blushes. She was refilling the bread tray as Clyde came in from the patio.

He put his arm around her. “Where are the cats? Have you seen Joe?”

She gave him a puzzled look. “Charlie went off with them, with all three. She…sort ofsneaked out of the house.” Her eyes searched his. “What was that about?”

“I don’t know…Sneaked?”

“Sneaked. She and Joe, fast and stealthy. Dulcie and Kit were waiting outside. That was over an hour ago. What are they up to?” Ryan was so new to the cats’ true nature that she had no idea what might be normal behavior for them or for their human friends.

Clyde stood frowning at her. “Why would she…? What’s going on? Theysneaked out? What the hell…?”

“There…,” she said, looking away through the crowded living room where she could just see out the front windows. “She’s back, her car is pulling up…”

As they waited for Charlie and the cats, she busied herself refilling the bowls of deli salads. Clyde said, “You nervous about tomorrow?”

“Don’t talk about it, I’m a basket case.”

He grinned, and kissed her. They looked up as the front door opened.

Charlie came in with Kit riding on her shoulder and Joe Grey strolling beside her, rubbing against her ankles. There was no sign of Dulcie. As they crossed the living room, Joe looked up at Charlie and gave her a whiskery smile, then swaggered ahead toward the kitchen, brushing through the crowd against bare legs and sheer stockings and pants legs, his stubby tail erect, his white nose lifted to the rich smells from the buffet and barbecue. The tomcat and Charlie and Kit all looked so patently innocent that Clyde was afraid to hear what this was abouthe wasn’t sure hewanted to know what they’d been up to.

“Hi,” Charlie said, joining them, balancing Kit as she took a piece of bread and reached for a beer.

“Where have you been?” Clyde said. “Where’s Dulcie?” He saw how pale she was, her freckles a dark spill across ashen cheeks. “What happened to Dulcie?” he said quickly.

“She’s fine,” Charlie said, clutching Kit to her. “I have to talk to you. Can we go somewhere? It’s…Ryan, you come, too.”

Clyde picked up Joe, looking deep into the tomcat’s yellow eyes but seeing no answers, only that same innocent stare. They headed down the hall to the guest room-this had been Clyde ‘s bedroom before Ryan added the new upstairs master suite. It had now been redone for guests in a far more luxurious manner than Clyde had ever wanted. Ryan’s sister, Hanni, forgoing her designer’s markup, had chosen golden oak and wicker furniture and three of the bright Oriental rugs that she imported. The bedcover was a puffy patchwork of East Indian prints nearly as rich as the rugs. The white plantation shutters, in the daytime, would reveal the twisted branches of the oak trees outside the window. Mike Flannery’s leather bag stood on the floor beside the open closet, where a few of his clothes hung at one end of the otherwise empty rod. His leather briefcase lay open on the wicker desk, revealing half a dozen file folders stamped MOLENA POINT PD.

“Looks like Dad can’t wait to get rid of us,” Ryan said, laughing, “and have the house to himself.” Mike had moved in with Clyde a day early, to get acquainted with the animals and learn their habits.

He would not, of course, learn all their habits. Joe Grey had been lectured several times about his behavior around Mike Flannery, about his tendency to tease and create problems-about what would happen to him if he made trouble.

Shutting the door behind them, Clyde dropped Joe on the bed, and he and Charlie and Ryan sat down at the wicker card table before the window. Kit slipped from Charlie’s shoulder to the table, and Joe leaped up to join her. Both cats looked nervous and wrung out.

“Dulcie’s fine,” Charlie repeated. “She and Wilma are…doing a favor for a friend.”

“What friend?” Clyde said suspiciously. He hadn’t seen Wilma leave the crowded house.

“A cat,” Charlie said. “One of the wild band. He came to me tonight at the ranch; I was just ready to leave, and there was Willow hiding at the back of the barn, crouched and frightened. She…they…” She wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her sweatshirt.

Clyde reached for the box of tissues from the desk, surprised to see Charlie cry. Charlie never cried. She seemed surprised herself.

“They’ve left the ruins,” Kit interrupted, “Willow’s clowder…They’re going back with the wild band, there was a terrible battle and Cotton and Coyote killed Stone Eye, and the whole band is free again, Cotton and Coyote will rule now but Sage was hurt bad…” Kit was so worked up she was shifting from paw to paw. “…wounded and bleeding and in pain and Willow took him to Charlie and Charlie doctored him and then took him and Willow to Dr. Firetti and he-”

“He had to operate,” Charlie cut in. Kitcould run on. “Firetti needed blood.” She looked intently at Clyde. “He said it had to be special blood. From a special kind of cat.”

That got Clyde ‘s attention. Beside him, Ryan was silent, her green eyes turning from Charlie, to Clyde, to the cats. Sometimes lately she felt as if she’d been dropped into Neverland.

Charlie put her hand over Ryan’s hand. “Dr. Firetti said, ‘I think you know what I mean. I will need special blood.’”

“He knows,” Clyde said, swallowing. “All this time? Taking Joe in for shots…? Oh, my God.”

“He’s known since he was a boy,” Kit interrupted, “and his father who was the vet before him knew, someone brought speaking cats here from Wales and started to sell them and the cats hadn’t agreed to that and they escaped and that was the beginning of our clowder and…”

Listening to Kit’s high-speed monologue, Ryan felt seriously unbalanced. She was barely used to Joe’s acerbic comments, was still startled every time the tomcat spoke to her-was barely used to the fact that the catscould talk, and now here was Kit rattling on at a speed that left her giddy.

“And shaved our front legs,” Kit was saying, thrusting out her own naked forearm for all to see, “and stuck needles right in under our skin into our veins and drew out so much blood I felt weak and fainty and then Dr. Firetti gave us broth and custard and roast beef that Mrs. Firetti sent over and then Wilma brought us chicken soup and party food and we felt stronger,” she said, sucking in a breath, “but our poor fur, Joe’s beautiful silver coat and my dear black-and-brown fur that I groom every day all spoiled and our skin all naked and cold and will it ever grow back again?”

“It’s only a small shaved spot,” Charlie said softly, taking Kit in her arms.

Ryan, with a sense of walking on quicksand, reached to gently examine Kit’s shaved forearm, the dark veins showing boldly beneath the paper-thin skin. “I’ve had dogs shaved like this,” she told Kit. “It doesn’t take long to grow back. A few days, it will already be bristly. But how is Sage? How is the patient?”

Clyde put his arm around Ryan, hugging her. She was so cool, was fitting right in with this madness.

“He’s doing fine,” Charlie said. “Wilma’s up there with Dulcie, in case they need more blood. She’ll call when he’s fully awake, when they know how the surgery went. Dulcie will stay there overnight. Dr. Firetti plans to sleep in the surgery, on a cot, but he wants another speaking cat near when Sage wakes, a cat he knows, to reassure and calm him. Being inside a building, in a cage, will terrify him until he’s fully conscious-a wild little animal like Sage, with no other cat to talk to…”

“We have to tell Lucinda and Pedric,” Clyde said. “They-”

“I…,” Kit began, crouching on Charlie’s shoulder, ready to drop to the floor, ready to race through the house searching for her humans, to be the first to tell them. Hastily Charlie grabbed her and held her securely.

“I’ll find them, Kit,” Charlie said. “You stay here. You can’t talk to them out there.” Setting Kit firmly on the table and giving her a threatening look, Charlie went in search of the Greenlaws. Behind her, Kit fidgeted. Clyde and Ryan rose to follow, Clyde promising to bring the cats a plate of party food.

“Heavy on the shrimp,” Joe said, “and the ribs.”

“And some of those little quiches,” Kit said, reluctantly settling down. “Nice and fresh from the oven.”

Clyde gave the two a long look, then moved down the hall with Ryan, shutting the door behind them, Ryan pressing her fist to her mouth to keep from collapsing into uncontrolled laughter.

“Am I dreaming?” she asked him softly. “Am I making this up? Have you lured me into some alternate world?”

He paused in the hall, drawing her close and kissing her. “Does that feel made up? If you think you’re dreaming, come on upstairs…”

She laughed and kissed him back, then slipped out of his arms and headed back to the party, holding his hand. But all the rest of that evening she wasn’t really certain they hadn’t slipped, together, through Alice ‘s looking glass or through some other innocent-seeming portal into a startling new universe. The kaleidoscopic events, since the morning that Joe Grey had spoken to her for the first time-Christmas morning, the morning Clyde proposed to her-had left her waking suddenly in the night laughing out loud and then seriously questioning her sanity.

But then she thought, trying to steady herself,Tomorrow we’ll be married,and that’sreal. How many women marry, for life, into the family of a talking cat?

8

CHARLIE FOUND LUCINDA in the kitchen setting out a plate of homemade cookies on one side of the round table that was loaded with party food. The tall, older woman was so thin that when Charlie put her arm around her, she could feel every bone-but bone covered in lean muscle. Even at eighty-some, Lucinda Greenlaw was healthy and strong; she did most of her own housework and walked several miles a day. “I need to talk with you,” Charlie said softly.

Lucinda looked at her, startled.

“Nothing bad,” Charlie breathed, “only private. Kit will tell it later, but she’s-”

Lucinda laughed. “So impetuous you can’t get in a word. Come on, Pedric’s in the laundry.” And Lucinda headed across the kitchen, away from the crowd. Charlie, following her, heard through a tangle of laughter Dallas ‘s raised and angry voice from the living room and Mike’s sharp retort.

What was that about? Mike and Dallas never had words. Glancing across the room, she caught Ryan’s eye. Ryan shook her head almost imperceptibly before she turned away.

On the closed laundry door hung a little sign:PLEASE DO NOT OPEN, which Clyde had posted to give the three household cats some semblance of quiet and privacy-none of the three liked loud parties. Two were elderly, and the younger, Snowball, had always been shy. Slipping the door open, they found Pedric sitting hunched on the bottom bunk, his head ducked beneath the upper bunk of the animals’ bed, petting the three cats. Snowball lay in his lap, and Scrappy and Fluffy were snuggled in the blankets next to him. The cats had shared the two-bunk bed with the two old dogs until Barney, the golden, and then Rube, the black Lab, had passed away. Snowball was still grieving for Rube.

Against the party noise beyond the closed door, Charlie told the Greenlaws about Willow and Sage, then about John Firetti knowing the cats’ secret. Neither of the two tall, thin, eighty-year-olds seemed too surprised; it took a lot to amaze Lucinda and Pedric.

“I always thought,” Lucinda said, “that John Firetti acted a bit strange around Kit. When we first took her in for her shots, he looked at her for a long time without saying anything, and then he seemed toexpect her to lie still and behave herself. He asked if she’d had her kitten shots, and when I told him we didn’t know, that she was a stray, he asked where we’d found her,” Lucinda recalled. “When we said Hellhag Hill, there was a sudden light in his eyes, a gleam of excitement, then he quickly looked down.”

“But,” Pedric said, “mostly it was his assuming Kit would lie still. Why would he think he could just look at her and tell her it would hurt more if she wiggled, and she would hold stone still for him? I thought at the time that it was his tone, that he had a unique understanding of a cat’s nature, that his voice and inflection somehow told his patients he expected them to behave.

“But later,” Pedric said, “we wondered.”

“Apparently hedoes have a unique understanding,” Lucinda said, smiling. “More understanding thanI ever guessed. We did think it strange, though, that he never suggested spaying her. He never brought up the subject. And of course we didn’t.”

“Well,” Charlie said, stroking Snowball, “looks like I’m more shaken by this than you two. I never imagined…”

But when she looked at the older couple, who had recently been through a frightening kidnapping that could have cost them their lives, who had escaped unharmed with great resourcefulness, she knew there wasn’t much that would shock the Greenlaws-until she mentioned the hidden book.

When she told them more about the battle at the ruins, and described the old volume the ferals had found, Lucinda’s eyes brightened with excitement. “Where is it, Charlie? What did they do with it?”

And Pedric was burning with even more excitement. “More tales of speaking cats! Do you think…Are there stories we’ve never heard?” Charlie could imagine the old man avidly reading those tales, and memorizing every word. ***

BEYOND THE LAUNDRY room’s closed door, as the three discussed the mysterious volume, Mike Flannery and his daughter had left the crowd, heading up the open stairs to the new second floor, to the construction project that had marked the beginning of Ryan’s romance with Clyde. On earlier visits Mike had seen the impressive addition Ryan had built for Clyde when they’d first met; now Ryan wanted to show him how she would add her own studio. Carrying fresh cans of beer, leaving behind the sounds of the party, neither father nor daughter glanced back to see the gray tomcat pad watchfully out of the kitchen to follow them, they didn’t see him slink up the stairs behind them to the master suite and into the shadows beneath the king-size bed.

Joe ignored a twinge of guilt at spying on his friends. At breaching father and daughter’s privacy. Dulcie would have said, “Can’t they have a few minutes alone, the evening before Ryan’s to be married? Do you have to be so nosy?”

But of course he was nosy, he was a cat. Cats were driven by nosiness, they were masters of curiosity. The investigative instinct was their finest mark of uniqueness, and who was he to go against basic feline nature? He followed. He hid under the bed. And he listened. And if the stab of guilt continued to accompany the tomcat’s eavesdropping on his about-to-be housemate, Joe thought Ryan wouldn’t really mind, that he could talk his way around her annoyance. ***

THE NEW ADDITION had a high ceiling of open rafters, where Ryan had raised the hip roof of the old one-story cottage to form two walls of the new second floor, then added new window walls. Mike admired again the stone fireplace she had built in the master bedroom, the compartmented bath and dressing rooms, and Clyde ‘s cozy study. When Ryan was little, she’d loved to draw floor plans and elevations. Every minute she wasn’t riding or working with the dogs, or going out on construction sites with her uncle Scotty, she was inventing her own house designs. Mike had only smiled when her teachers complained that all her school papers and notebooks had little floor plans or architectural details in the margins, sketches quickly made to record some fleeting idea.

Passion, he thought. The child had had a passion for what she loved, for what she knew she wanted to do with her life.

She had never abandoned that drive; she had learned her carpentry skills from Scotty, had studied structural design, had never wavered from the intensity of her goal. Now, having gotten where she wanted to be, she relished the work she did.

So many kids, Mike thought, didn’t seem to feel strongly about anything, didn’t have any kind of ongoing passion, any dream to follow and fight for. Did today’s schools take it all out of them? Or was it the canned culture they grew up in? He thought sometimes that an entire generation had morphed into mind-numbed spectators, that their passion had so badly turned in on itself that they were able to hunger only for the quick, immediate sensation with no meaning.

Well hell, wasn’t he getting jaded. He guessed he’d worked too long among criminal types-maybe it was time to turn his back on law enforcement before he grew really bitter.

Shaking his head, both amused and annoyed with himself, he put his arm around Ryan. “You did a great job with this house,” he said, studying the details of the master suite, the deep window seat beside the stone fireplace, the Mexican-tile floor and carved doors. “And it’s a perfect arrangement for a couple. Almost,” he said, laughing down at her, “as if youexpected to move in.”

Ryan laughed, and blushed a little. “I expected someone would. I didn’t think Clyde would remain a bachelor forever, he didn’t seem the type-despite his philandering ways.”

“That’s in the past for Clyde,” he said reassuringly. “Where will you put the new studio? You plan to enclose the deck over the carport?”

“No, the studio will go just behind it.” She crossed Clyde ‘s study to the glass doors that led to the upstairs deck. “We’ll leave the deck, put the studio back there, over the dining end of the kitchen-if we can get the permit.”

She turned, pushing back her short, dark hair. “After the battle I had on the last job, I’m not looking forward to another hassle with city planning-to a fight that has nothing to do with standard building codes. I should be used to it, it goes with the territory. But I never will be.” She looked up at him, her green eyes angry. “I understand sensible restrictions to protect the lovely setting of the village, but-”

“But what you can’t abide,” Mike said, “is high-handed authoritarianism for no reason but personal power.”

She laughed. “Those people don’t own the world,” she said. “But they sure like to think they do.” Molena Point’s building codes and the patronizing attitude of its building inspectors were a sore point among most of the village contractors, except for those few who passed sufficient sums under the table.

“What if they won’t okay the studio?”

She studied him. “We’re not buying them off, if that’s what you’re thinking. I can take over the downstairs guest room, though I’d rather not. Clyde likes having a guest room, and so do I. And I really want a studio with a view, I like to look down on the rooftops when I’m working. That’s why I like the apartment.

“If they flat-out refuse the permit,” she said, “if I get tired of fighting them, and if you’ve found a place of your own by then, I’ll keep the apartment as my studio. Not as convenient for late-night fits of inspiration, but I can have a small setup here, in a corner of the study. I really do need the apartment’s downstairs garage for equipment storage. If I don’t have that, I’ll have to rent space somewhere.”

She pulled a blueprint from a stack of papers on Clyde ‘s bookshelf and unrolled it on the desk; as Mike looked over the studio’s floor plan, she studied her dad. “You had a little tiff with Dallas?”

He looked at her and shrugged. “A small difference of opinion, nothing important.”

She waited.

“Something about the Carson Chappell cold case,” he said.

Ryan hid a smile. “Lindsey Wolf is lovely.”

Ignoring that, he studied the blueprint intently, looking over the interior elevations, nodding with approval at the high, slanted ceiling with its long skylights and the small, raised fireplace in the far corner between the glass walls, its stone matching that in the bedroom.

“Plenty of room for my drafting table,” she said, amused by her dad, “for file cabinets, computer, and a deep storage closet here for drawings and blueprints.” Was he getting serious again about Lindsey? Ryan thought Lindsey was the only woman he had ever really cared about since her mother died.

“The plan’s perfect,” Mike said, “and it would be nice to be able to work at home. Not to mention my being able to keep the apartment,” he teased. “I’ll think good thoughts.”

“Maybe the construction gods will smile. Maybe, by the time Clyde and I get back from our honeymoon, the permit will be waiting for us. But I’m not holding my breath.” Her green eyes searched his. “Are you okay with staying here while we’re gone, taking care of Rock and the cats? I could take Rock up to the Harpers’.”

“I’m looking forward to having a dog again, even if he is only on loan. Looking forward to long runs on the beach, walks around the village, taking our meals at the patio restaurants. With that handsome fellow at my side, I can pick up any good-looking woman I choose.”

“You’re an old rounder, you know that? Tell me more about the cold case.” Watching him, she curled up comfortably on the leather couch, sipping her beer.

Mike stretched out in the club chair, his long, lanky frame easy in his worn jeans and faded T-shirt. “You’re pumping me, but okay.”

He felt uncomfortable telling her about meeting Lindsey on the street earlier that evening. “I’d already read the file,” he said. “I wasn’t sure I wanted to work this case, but it has the best contacts. Not only Lindsey, but her sister and some of the crowd they ran with when Chappell disappeared, quite a few of their friends still in the village.”

“I always thought that was a strange thing to do,” she said, “to go off camping just before his wedding.” Glancing down at her engagement ring, she frowned.

“That won’t happen to you and Clyde-you couldn’t drive Clyde away with a club.”

“I know,” she said, smiling smugly. But still a coldness held her, a sudden sense of misfortune, and she saw again the day of Charlie and Max’s wedding. The explosion in the church, debris suddenly hanging in the sky then starting to fall in slow motion, and a split second later the deafening boom of the blast. Parts of the church walls flying everywhere, mixed with white flower petals floating down and bits of silver fluttering all around her, silver foil that forensics would later identify as the elegant wrapping paper in which a “wedding gift” had been detonated remotely.

She thought, shivering, about her own wedding day tomorrow, about the gathering at the Harpers’ house-so many law enforcement people in the wedding party, so many prime targets. And for a long moment, an unreasonable wave of dread held Ryan cold and still.

9

DON’T LET THE EXPLOSION at the Harpers’ wedding eat at you,” Mike said. “Things like that don’t happen twice. Or…” He looked at her more closely. “Is there something else bothering you?” Sounds of the party drifted upstairs to them, and to the tomcat listening from the adjoining room beneath the king-size bed. “You don’t have second thoughts about marrying Clyde?” Mike asked. “You’re not regretting this new step in your life?”

“Oh, it isn’t anything like that. It’s just…Maybe I’m a bit tired.”

Therewas something else, of course, something she couldn’t share with her dad, ever. “It’s…someone else’s secret,” she said inadequately, “that I’m committed to keep.”

“Well, that’s okay, then,” he said easily. Then, “You care if I take Rock in to the station now and then? He’ll be bored out of his mind if I leave him here all day, this breed was never meant to be idle.”

“Take him, if Max doesn’t mind. Rock loves a crowd, it would be good for him.” She studied her dad. “Dallas and I’ve talked about training him to track. He tracked Charlie when she was kidnapped, he figured it out on his own, and showed a fine natural skill. But then, he loves Charlie.”

“No question he’s smart and eager,” Mike said. “He’s how old? Three? It’s easier to start a puppy. But Rock…the way he watches a person, wanting to be part of the action, wanting todo something. He needs some kind of work.”

She knew that too well. A dog like Rock, with so much desire and drive-he was too fine an animal to be lying around doing nothing, or looking for trouble. But she never seemed to have the time to give him what he needed, there weren’t enough hours in the day.

From the shadows beneath the bed, Joe Grey listened first with amusement, then with rising interest at the idea of training Rock to track, to find felons or lost children. This, the tomcat realized, might solve the problem that had been eating at him. The dilemma for which, until this moment, he’d had no solution.

Rock could find the body that neither Charlie nor the secret snitches dared report.I can teach Rock to track! I can train a tracking dog in ways no human ever dreamed! And then…

The more he thought about the idea, the better he liked it. He lay working out the details, deciding which humans to enlist, to do the legwork, as it were, and by the time Ryan and her dad headed back downstairs, the gray tomcat was grinning with anticipation.

Quietly he followed father and daughter down to the living room where Clyde was changing discs in the CD player, putting on some old ragtime from early in the last century-how many cat lifetimes ago? Hiding his grin, he sauntered past Ryan and Mike and Clyde, leaped to the back of the love seat and to the top of the six-foot bookcase, startling Mike, who stared up at Joe as he stretched out with his paws hanging over the edge.

“That cat sneaks around like an undercover agent.”

“Nature of the cat,” Clyde said easily, setting aside some discs. “It’s the sneaky cat that catches the mice.” And he turned away to sort through the remaining CDs.

Ryan had turned away, too, hiding a grin as she brushed lint from her jeans. Behind Mike’s back she glanced up to the bookshelf where Joe was washing his paws. She winked at him, then turned back to Clyde. “We were talking about Lindsey Wolf,” she said. “She’s lived in the village off and on. Do you know her?”

“I used to see her in the vet’s office,” Clyde said. “She had a golden retriever, and we’d swap anecdotes.” He glanced at Mike. “Didn’t you date her for a while? Is that the cold case you’re working, her fianc?? What was his name? Chappell? Some people said he got cold feet, bailed out because he really didn’t want to get married.”

Mike nodded. ” Carson Chappell. Lindsey came to Dallas because of an article in the paper, the skeleton of a hiker found up in Oregon. Apparently died about the time Chappell disappeared.” Mike stepped to the bookcase to stroke Joe, wanting to know the tomcat he’d be caring for. “Not likely it’s Chappell, but Lindsey’s fixed on the idea.”

“I heard Lindsey moved back,” Clyde said, “moved her accounting practice up here. I’ve seen her sister around the village lately, too. That should be interesting, the two of them in the same small town again; I think they were both dating Chappell, and Lindsey was pretty angry about it.”

Mike smiled. “I guess there’s no love lost.” He stroked Joe for a few moments, studying the tomcat a bit too keenly, then turned away and stretched out in a leather chair, eyeing Joe’s clawed and furry easy chair with such obvious amusement that Joe bristled.

What’s wrong with that chair? That chair is a masterpiece of feline creativity, it’s a rare art form. Some people have no taste.

Clyde was saying, “Lindsey told me once that she and Ryder have been crosswise since they were kids. I guess, when Chappell started seeing Ryder on the sly, that didn’t go down too well. Then Chappell and Lindsey announced their engagement, and then Chappell disappeared. About the same time, his partner’s wife moved away, and of course village gossip had it that Nina Gibbs and Chappell ran off together.”

“It isn’t rumor,” Mike said, “that after Lindsey moved back to L.A., her sister showed up with Ray Gibbs, Chappell’s partner. He and Ryder are still together, they have a place in the city, and they’re buying a condo in the village.”

“You’ve been busy,” Ryan said. “And Gibbs never found his wife? Never heard from her?”

“Not that anyone knows,” Mike said. “I haven’t talked with Gibbs yet.”

Above, on the bookcase, Joe Grey might have added his own take to the scenario. His thoughts might be off the wall, but he couldn’t leave it alone. That hiker up in Oregon died some ten years ago. And what about the skeleton Willow had found among the Pamillon ruins? How old was that body? Two unidentified skeletons, discovered within the same week. Nothing at all to indicate a connection. And yet…

The tomcat didn’t believe in coincidence. Too often, in the world of criminal investigation, if one looked deeply enough one would come up with some oblique and overlooked relationship between seemingly unconnected incidents. While the assumption didn’t hold true in every case, the general concept had served Joe well.

This time, am I way off base? When Dallas and Harper get a look at that body in the ruins-as soon as we set them up to find it without involving the secret snitches-and when the coroner establishes a time of death on it, what will we have then?

Only forensics could date the Pamillon body. And first, the law had to find it among those isolated ruins where no one ever went, not picnickers, not even many lovers wanting privacy, the Pamillon ruins being too eerie for most lovers.

In short, it wasn’t likely anyone was going to accidentally stumble on that lost grave, not without help. And, for sure, the report daren’t come from the cops’ favorite but unidentified snitch.

The cops get a tip that something’s dug up a body there-and how else would it get uncovered? And they wonder about the feral cats around the ruins. He could just hear Dallas: “Something dug it up. And there are cats all over that old estate. Would a band of cats dig up a body? But even if they did, who the hell found it? Who was up there to call in the report? That voice-sure as hell, that was our phantom snitch. What was he doing up there?”

Right. The cops start asking questions, that’s way risky. A cop’s as nosy as any cat. A cop starts wondering about cats and dead bodies and that could be the end of feline investigative work for the rest of recorded time.

No, fate needed a little help here to keep the snitch out of the picture. And excitement filled Joe as, crouched atop the bookcase, shutting out the conversation around him, he laid out his scenario.

How long, he wondered, once the coroner had dug up the Pamillon bones, would it take to get them dated? Sometimes the lab came through right away, sometimes forensics could be backed up and maddeningly slow. And how long until the department had a more definitive date on the Oregon body? All across the country, law enforcement was shorthanded, short of money, backed up for months and sometimes years, pushing court cases into gridlock and even forcing the court to let a suspect walk-while the government spent billions of dollars, Joe thought, on programs that benefited no one but the paper pushers.

Bottom line: he had no notion how long, after the body at the ruins was “found,” until the department would have a comparative age on the two sets of bones and there was any real basis for his gut feeling. For a cold case, there could be a long wait. This was not a killer awaiting trial.

Not yet, it isn’t, Joe thought.But with luck, it will come to that. Joe Grey was not a patient tomcat.

Nor did he ordinarily indulge in the kind of presumption that now held his attention. His attempt to connect the two bodies was squirrely, but he couldn’t shake his feeling that therewas a connection-and the more he thought about his plan to anonymously report the body, the more he liked the scenario.

To pull it off, the body would have to remain buried in the earth of the Pamillon ruins for another week, given the fact that tomorrow was the wedding. Well, that couldn’t be helped, he’d just have to live with that. ***

IT WAS EARLY the next morning, three hours before the wedding, when Wilma and Kit went to visit Sage and pick up Dulcie; the clinic was closed on Sundays. Dr. Firetti let them in the side door. He was smiling but looked like he could use a night’s sleep; there were smudges under his eyes and his usually ruddy color was pale. In the recovery room, they found Sage and Dulcie in a big cage with its door open, Dulcie lying close to the patient, yawning. Sage was awake and licking up a little warm broth. He looked very small and frail wrapped in the heavy white bandages and with the cast on his leg.

“He’s done very well,” Firetti said. “I think he’s out of danger, barring something unforeseen. Dulcie helped a great deal to reassure him when he came out of the anesthetic. She didn’t have to give blood,” he said, smiling, “though I used most of what I had.

“With the metal plate and pins in, the leg should heal just fine. The thing now is to avoid infection.” Firetti lifted Kit into the open cage beside the patient, so she could visit. “I’d like to keep him another day, to watch him. Isn’t the wedding today?”

“Yes, it is,” Wilma said. “I can pick him up tomorrow morning, early. Shall I call first?”

Firetti nodded. “Please. When you come for him, I’ll give you instructions and show you how to change the dressings.”

Wilma was a stranger to Sage, and the young, bleached calico looked up at her warily; but Dulcie and Kit were obviously comfortable with her, and soon he relaxed.

“Was it very bad?” Kit asked him, glancing around uneasily at the wire cage. She did not like to be inside a cage, even with the door open, and she didn’t like to see her friend there. Didn’t like to see him all bundled up in those heavy bandages, either.

“The doctor is very kind,” Sage said sleepily. “Very kind and good.” And he laid his head down beside his empty bowl. “I don’t hurt anymore…,” he said, and he was asleep again, still groggy and worn out.

Wilma gave Dr. Firetti the custards she had brought, and she and the two cats left, Kit looking back at Sage until the office door closed and she could no longer see him; and in the car the tortoiseshell hunched down miserably, thinking only of her friend. “I just wish…,” Kit said forlornly, “I wish…I wish Stone Eye could die all over again, slowly and painfully!”

“This is Clyde and Ryan’s wedding day,” Wilma said. “Are you going to feel all sour and grumpy and makethem feel bad, and spoil their happy day?”

“I’m not,” said Kit. “I mean to smile and purr. But right now I mean to feel bad just for a little while.” And she turned over on the seat with her back to Wilma and Dulcie and said not another word as Wilma headed home to dress for the wedding. ***

FROM THE CRACK of dawn, Clyde and Joe’s house was a turmoil of prewedding excitement that made the tomcat laugh, but that he wouldn’t have missed. Mike left early to help Max pick up the folding chairs. Max called later to see if Clyde needed any assistance, and Clyde snapped that he could still dress himself, thank you. Max told him, “Don’t forget the rings,” and Clyde and Joe argued fiercely about which pocket to put the rings in, which was arguing stupidly about nothing. And then at last they were in the sleek Cadillac Escalade that Clyde had borrowed for the honeymoon trip-borrowed because Ryan had said that, if they were going to be tooling around the wine country with all those great antiques stores, they’d better take her pickup. And Clyde said he wasn’t going on their honeymoon in a pickup. “So,” Ryan had said, “if you’re such a snob, borrow an SUV,” and Clyde had gotten a two-year-old, top-of-the-line loaner from the dealership where he had his automotive shop.

Dulcie had come over the rooftops to ride to the wedding with Joe and Clyde. She had, after her long night at the vet’s, a great need to be close to Joe. Waiting for Clyde, the two cats leaped into the front seat of the pearl-colored Escalade hoping the groom wasn’t going to be late. “I never want to see you in the hospital,” Dulcie said, snuggling against Joe. She didn’t say, Please take care. But Joe winced because that was what she was thinking. He hated being told to be careful, that kind of female meddling made him feel totally caged. But then he looked at her, saw how tired she was, and tenderly licked her ear.

The luxurious SUV had creamy leather upholstery, an OnStar GPS system, and, best of all according to Ryan’s assessment, it had a good strong trailer hitch-if she found some irresistible architectural pieces that wouldn’t fit inside, they could haul them home in a rental trailer. Clyde had scowled at that. This was a borrowed and like-new vehicle, as pristine as the day it came off the floor. Now, in the back of the vehicle, besides the couple’s two suitcases, were half a dozen thick blankets, presumably to protect the interior, and two coils of rope.

“Some honeymoon,” Joe said, “hunting for dusty old stained-glass windows and distressed paneling with spiders in the cracks.”

“They’re happy,” Dulcie said. “Who knows, maybe they’ll come home with some ancient car Clyde can’t resist.”

“Just what he needs, another deteriorating Packard or Maxwell. Some pitiful wreck just crying out for loving attention.”

Dulcie laughed. “They’re a couple of nutcases. They’re not planning a honeymoon, they’re off on a treasure hunt.” But, watching the groom lock the front door and head for the car, looking very nice in his new tan suit, white shirt, and the first tie he’d worn in months, the cats smiled with tolerance for their crazy human friends.

10

WHAT A JOYOUS wedding it had been, with all the friends gathered on the Harpers’ bright patio, the sun glinting off the far sea, the smell of spring in the air, and the lilting Irish music reflecting the bride and groom’s shy excitement. Joe and Dulcie and Kit had crowded among their human friends at the edge of the makeshift aisle, watching Ryan slowly approach the minister, looking radiant in her soft red suit; the joyous ceremony stirred tears among the guests, and then stirred happy laughter. But now the wedding toasts and good-natured ribbing were over, the bride and groom had long ago departed to drive up the coast in their borrowed chariot, and the bright day was slipping toward evening.

Most of the guests had left, many of Harper’s officers reporting to the station for second watch. Dulcie had left with Wilma, and Kit with her elderly couple. By eight o’clock, only Ryan’s dad and her two uncles remained with Charlie and Max-and of course Joe Grey and Rock, dozing before the fire, waiting for Mike to take them home.

Joe, full of buffet treats, watched Dallas and Scotty shrug on their jackets, both men quiet and reflective, heavy with fatherly nostalgia. As if each wished, for a moment, that they could go back in time, that Ryan was small again, still their feisty little girl learning all over again to ride, to train the hunting dogs, to cook and keep house and to use properly Scotty’s carpenter’s tools. As the two men swung out the door, Scotty’s red beard catching the light, behind them Mike Flannery, muttering that he’d have to buy a car soon, pulled on his coat and fished out the keys to Clyde’s antique yellow roadster, in which Ryan had driven to her wedding, Rock sitting tall and dignified beside her.

Charlie picked up Joe, holding him against her shoulder, and she and Max walked out to the car with Mike, where she set Joe on the front seat. As the silver Weimaraner leaped obediently into the backseat, Mike looked at Joe and then at Charlie. “Where’s the cat carrier?”

“Doesn’t have one. He’ll be all right,” Charlie told him.

“A cat can’t ride loose like that. This is an open car. I don’t-”

“He’ll ride just fine,” Charlie said, stroking Joe. “He likes cars. He’ll mind you just as well as Rock will. Watch,” she said, turning a sly green-eyed look on Joe.

“Get in the backseat, Joe,” she said, tapping the backseat beside Rock. “Backseat! Now!”

Joe gave her aJust-you-wait, you’ll-get-yours look, but hopped obediently into the back.

“Lie down, Joe.”

Joe lay down beside Rock’s front paws, glaring at Charlie.

“Stay, Joe. Stay until you get home.”

Mike stared at Joe and stared at her. He shook his head and had nothing to say. Both cat and dog turned the same expectant expression on him, as if willing their human chauffeur to get a move on, making the tall, sandy-haired Scots Irishman swallow a laugh. “That,” Mike said, “is a pretty unusual cat.”

Max looked impressed, too-but as much with Charlie’s expertise as with the behavior of the gray tomcat. Ever since Charlie had published her book about the journey of a little lost cat, he had seemed almost to hold in reverence his redheaded wife’s uncanny knowledge in matters feline-and now thatTattercoat was selling so well, Charlie’s e-mail was filled with fan letters saying the same:How did you learn so much about cats? It’s almost like you can speak with them and understand them…I’ve had cats all my life, but there’s so much in your book that I’ve never known…I’m convinced the cat herself wrote this book…

And that, of course, was the case. This was Charlie and Kit’s secret, the tortoiseshell was, indeed, Charlie’s collaborator. Kit had told Charlie her own story, from the time she was a small kitten-though Max would never know the truth, Charlie thought, smiling to herself.

Joe, curled down between Rock’s front paws, glimpsed Charlie’s secret amusement in the flash of her green eyes, a quick sharing that neither Max nor Mike would correctly read; then the tomcat turned away, pretending to doze as Mike started the engine and headed the yellow roadster for home. ***

AT HOME, IN the Damen kitchen, Mike fed Rock and the household cats. He fed Joe, too, reluctantly. “How can you eat again? You’ll be sick after all the party food.” He stood scowling down at Joe. “Did Clyde mean it when he said you could have anything you want, and as much as you want?”

The tomcat looked back at him, wide eyed and innocent. He loved this, loved when people talked to him not knowing he could have answered them. Such earnest, one-sided conversations were so amusing that he often had to turn away and pretend to wash, so as not to laugh in their faces.

Mike went into the laundry to tuck the other three cats in for the night in their cozy quarters, fluffing their blankets and pillows, and petting and talking to them. Snowball was the needful one; Scrappy and Fluffy were quite content with each other. Mike gave the little white cat a long time of extra attention, moving away only when she dozed off under his stroking hand.

Back in the kitchen, he picked up Rock’s leash. As the silver hound pranced and huffed, Mike stood regarding Joe, uncertain whether he should keep the tomcat in for the night, or let him roam as Clyde had instructed.

Clyde said Joe could come and go as he pleased, night or day, that the tomcat was to have free access to both cat doors, 24/7-to the cat door that opened to the front porch, and the one high among the upstairs rafters, which led out to Joe’s tower and to the roofs of the village.

Mike didn’t approve of cats out at night to wander the streets, unseen by hurrying drivers, but he did as he’d been told. He headed out with Rock, locking the front door and leaving Joe on his own. Telling Rock to heel, he headed through the village and toward the shore. ***

THE WEIMARANER HEELED nicely on a loose leash. Mike looked back several times, half expecting to see the tomcat following them or see him racing above them across the rooftops-though with the party food that cat had gulped down, he was probably curled up on the couch belching and sleeping it off. He hoped, when he got home, Joe hadn’t upchucked all over the living room. He’d never seen any animal eat that amount of food, all of it rich, without coughing his cookies and blowing his liver. But Clyde swore the cat was in perfect health.

The waxing moon brightened the rolling breakers, silvering the skein of wet sand where he and Rock jogged close to the water. Rock wanted to pull, wanted to race to work off steam. Mike ran with him but wouldn’t let Rock loose until he knew the dog better. He wished Lindsey were with them, running on the beach with her golden retriever as they used to do, wished she would appear suddenly out of the dark, running beside him-a fanciful dream. He put it aside, and thought instead about his coming years of retirement.

Starting a new life. Not with Lindsey, as he’d once thought, but that was all right. He was free of heavy demands. His time was his own to do with as he pleased. Free of his long and often vexing commitment to the increasingly frustrating workload of the U.S. court.

The fact that he wasn’t chained to a desk anymore, that he didn’t have to hit the office Monday morning, should have left him feeling like a kid at the beginning of summer vacation.

But already he was beginning to see that retirement might have its downside, already he felt himself missing the security of a set routine-with that steady, longtime support suddenly withdrawn, he felt for a moment as if he had no anchor.

How juvenile was that!

He guessed everyone, when they retired, felt that way for a while. But the fact that he did deeply annoyed him, as if he had no more inner resources than a wind-up mannequin.

He knew he’d miss some of his coworkers, but they’d be in touch, the city wasn’t that far away. He’d miss his two favorite judges, but he sure wouldn’t miss some of the other federal judges. The deterioration of the judicial system, on all levels, was one thing he was not ambivalent about, he was damn glad to be away from that breakdown.

His only regret was that he hadn’t been able to do more to hold the line, to maintain the principles on which the federal courts had traditionally been based. The change in the quality of judges and their misuse of the law, both at local and federal levels, were hard to live with. Very hard, when the results of that disintegration were too many felons walking the streets committing more crimes, robbing and raping and killing law-abiding folk.

Bitter, he thought.Getting old and bitter.

But he hadn’t been old when he’d started that battle, he’d fought it for twenty-five years. He had to admit, he was tired. Tired of locking horns with elected officials who didn’t have a clue as to the damage they were doing or didn’t give a damn.

Around him the night was very still, the only sounds the crashing of the breakers and Rock’s excited panting. Where the bright waves rose and fell, a seal surfaced suddenly and it was all he could do to hold Rock, to stop the big silver dog from plunging in and swimming after the animal-when the ninety-pound Weimaraner abandoned his manners and set his mind to something, he was a powerhouse.

A hardheaded powerhouse, Mike thought,the kind of dog, if he’s well trained and well directed, will work his heart out for you. The obedience simply had to be on Rock’s terms, on terms of mutual respect.

To settle Rock down Mike did a two-mile run with him. Turning back at last, winded, they stopped at the foot of Ocean, where Mike brushed the wet sand off Rock’s belly and legs before they headed home.

Now Rock walked easily at heel, just tired enough to wag and laugh up at him, his panting expression filled with happiness.

“You don’t miss your mistress and your new master?” Mike asked him. “You don’t miss Ryan?”

At the mention of Ryan, Rock came to full attention, tensed to leap away again, and looking all around into the night searching for her, sniffing for her scent.

“She isn’t here,” Mike said contritely. “I just meant…It’s okay, boy,” he said, patting Rock’s shoulder with a hard and reassuring hand and then rubbing his ears. “It’s okay, she’ll be home soon.”

At his steadying voice and at no further mention of Ryan, and when the silver dog could not pick her scent from the wind, he at last settled down, looking up at Mike as if almost trusting him, as if hoping he could trust his new friend.

“You’re a fine fellow,” Mike told him as they walked up through the moonlit village and past the open small and charming shops and restaurants, past couples and foursomes leaving the caf?s or looking in boutique windows at the elegant wares. Leaving Ocean, turning down Clyde ‘s street and entering through the back gate into the patio, he toweled the big Weimaraner dry, and then in the kitchen gave him fresh water. As he made himself a cup of coffee, the gray tomcat wandered in, yawning, staring up at him.

“You can’t be hungry. It’s a wonder you’re still alive. I hope Clyde doesn’t start feeding Rock like that, sneaking him rich snacks.” Strange, he thought, that the tomcat was in such good shape, his sleek silver body muscled and lean. He gave Joe a small snack of cold steak that Clyde had left, watched Joe gobble it, then carried his coffee down the hall to the guest room, the cat and dog crowded at his heels.

Opening his briefcase he flipped through the files and laid the Carson Chappell folder on the night table. As per Clyde ‘s instructions, he told Joe and Rock they could sleep on the bed-a useless gesture, considering that the two were already tucked up together hogging most of the king-size mattress, Joe Grey stretched out across the big dog’s front legs. At Mike’s voice, the cat looked up at him with bold yellow eyes, keenly assessing him, then closed his eyes and tucked his head under.

Ready for sleep, Mike thought, watching the tomcat. And he pulled off his shoes and shirt, preparing for bed, looking forward to a cozy evening tucked up by the fire accompanied by the sleeping dog and cat as he went over the Carson Chappell file.

11

THE MOMENT MIKE went into the bathroom to brush his teeth, Joe Grey’s eyes were wide open again, his attention fixed on the Chappell cold file as keenly as if he’d spotted a rat lumbering across the white sheets. Hungering to get at the information, he debated whether to try for a look while Mike was out of the room.

Right. Mike comes out and catches him pawing through the file, and then what? Could he pretend to be sniffing the scent of mouse in the department’s archived papers? Well, sure, that would explain a cat’s interest.

He waited impatiently until Mike returned, wearing navy pajama bottoms and a short robe; he watched the tall, lanky Scots Irishman light the gas logs in the stone fireplace, set the glass screen in place, and then slide into bed, propping the pillows behind him. Then Joe, making a show of stretching and yawning, sauntered up the bed to Mike’s pillow. Yawning again, he curled up beside Mike purring with such sudden affection that Flannery did a double take, frowning down at him.

“What’s with you? You miss Clyde already? Is that why you’re not out roaming the streets? You’re lonesome? Well, dogs get lonely, so I guess cats do, too.” And Mike spent a few moments scratching Joe’s ears.

But soon, still absently stroking Joe, he was scanning the Chappell file-and Joe, sprawled among the pillows near Mike’s left ear, was just as eagerly soaking up additional details of Carson Chappell’s disappearance and of Lindsey’s search for him.

But as Joe read, he watched Mike, too, and was slyly amused.

Where the original report discussed Lindsey and Carson’s relationship, Mike’s expression changed from interest to what surely resembled jealousy. In the ten-year-old report, Lindsey had assured the interviewing detective that she and Chappell were very much in love and that he would never have left her. They had planned a honeymoon in the Bahamas, they’d had their plane tickets and hotel reservations and had intended to go directly from the church to the airport. They had planned, on their return, to move into a cottage in the village, on which Carson had made a sizable down payment-they had intended to move their furniture and other belongings in two days before the wedding, the day that Chappell was due home from camping. Lindsey said they had wanted, when they arrived back, to be already comfortably settled in their new home.

In the short quotations that had been included among the dry sentences of the case file, it wasn’t hard to read Lindsey’s shock when Carson didn’t return; Joe could detect nothing contrived or uneasy in her recorded answers, though without the sound of her voice, the intonations, and the facial expressions, it was difficult to make such an assessment. It wasn’t hard, though, to imagine a bride-to-be’s growing despair when there was no word from the intended bridegroom.

At that time, neither Lindsey nor the police had found the plane tickets, not in Chappell’s apartment nor in his office, these had disappeared as surely as had his passport.

Halfway through, Mike set aside the file and sat quietly staring into the fire, a deep and preoccupied look, almost a dreaming look, that Joe studied with interest. Was Flannery keener on finding Chappell? Or on rekindling his relationship with Lindsey?

But that was unfair. Maybe Mike wasn’t sure, himself, where his conflicted emotions wanted to lead him.

Only when Rock stirred in his sleep and turned over did Mike come back to the present, reach for the steno pad, and begin making notes. Joe, easing higher up on the pillow, positioned himself where he could read them clearly. Mike glanced at him, frowning, but didn’t push him away.

Most of Mike’s notations were questions, or lines of investigation that he meant to pursue, and many were the same questions Joe had. When at last he put down the pen and sat staring at the fire again, Joe wished he could read this guy’s mind, wished he could follow Mike’s thoughts and not just the words on the paper.

But soon the tomcat’s own thoughts turned back to that one perplexing connection, to the unlikely coincidence of the two bodies coming to light in the same week. Why did he keep imagining a relationship between them? There was nothing to hint at that, except the timing of the two discoveries.

Or was there some clue in the file, or in something he’d overheard, that he didn’t know he was aware of? Some minute detail, caught in his memory, that kept him returning to that improbable conjecture?

No one knew, yet, even if thatwas Chappell up there in Oregon. Only Lindsey Wolf seemed convinced. And, the tomcat thought, why was she so sure? Did Lindsey know something that was not in the report, and that she might not have told the law?

But why would she hold back information, when she seemed so committed to finding Chappell?

Was she, in some way, covering up her own guilt? Certain that Oregon would identify Chappell, and trying to establish her own innocence?

Dulcie would tell him he was chasing smoke, batting at shadows, that he was way off, on this one-but he couldn’t leave it alone. His gut feeling was that therewas a relationship between the bodies, and that maybe Lindsey knew that.

Or was he as batty as if he’d been bingeing on catnip?

He watched Mike open the file again and flip to several handwritten pages tucked at the back: three pages of notes on plain white paper, and a yellow, lined sheet with different handwriting. Having to shift against Mike’s shoulder again to see around his arm, Joe pretended to scratch his ear.

“You better not have fleas,” Mike said absently, knowing that Clyde had the animals on medication against such small, unwanted passengers. The white pages were dated six years ago, the yellow one three years later. That one was signed by Officer Kathleen Ray. That would be about the time Kathleen had come to work at Molena Point PD, Joe thought, not long after he, himself, started hanging around the department when he’d first discovered he could talk and could read and, most alarming, that he was thinking like a human-and, more alarming still, was thinking like a cop.

Mike shifted position again. And again Joe craned to see the file, wondering what Lindsey might have told Kathleen, who was a kind, sympathetic person, that she wouldn’t share with a male officer. But as he read Kathleen’s notes, he had to remind himself that Lindsey wasn’t under suspicion here, that she was the one who had filed the missing-person report.

Lindsey had repeated to Kathleen the gossip about Carson having had several women on the side while Lindsey and he were engaged, including Lindsey’s sister, Ryder. Kathleen’s interviews with Lindsey’s friends had produced the same comments. When Kathleen asked Lindsey about the wife of Carson ‘s partner having left her husband, Lindsey said she doubted there was any connection.

Partner Ray Gibbs, when he had originally been questioned about Carson ‘s disappearance, had seemed open and cooperative. He had been straightforward about Nina leaving him, and had produced a letter from her saying that she would not be back. She did not mention divorce, and Gibbs had speculated that she might not want a divorce, hoping one day to inherit his share of the firm. He said she didn’t know that wasn’t possible, he was sure she didn’t know the terms of the incorporation agreement. A photocopy of her letter was in the file, and the original had been booked in as evidence.

The plane tickets for Lindsey and Carson ‘s honeymoon turned up several months after Carson disappeared; they had been used for a reservation in the name of Mr. and Mrs. Carson Chappell. Neither the flight attendants or airport personnel had been able to describe the boarding couple. Officers had, a week after Chappell disappeared, found Nina Gibbs’s car in short-term parking at the San Jose airport, but had turned up no flight ticket issued in her name.

Joe thought the simple solution, that Chappell and Nina Gibbs had run off together, should have resolved the case for Lindsey. But not so. She had kept after the department to search for him, and then later had continued the search on her own. It was during this time that Lindsey and Mike began to date.

Joe thought she must not have involved Mike in trying to find Carson or he would have gone into the department and read the file then. Maybe because Mike worked for the federal courts, his reading of the file might have presented a conflict of interest somewhere down the line? So Mike had deliberately kept his distance from the ongoing investigation? He watched Mike turn back to Kathleen’s notes.

Lindsey told Kathleen that she’d known Nina Gibbs only casually, that because of Gibbs’s and Chappell’s partnership, they had attended the same functions, that Nina had been friendly on some occasions but withdrawn on others; in short, that they’d not been close. Joe was so intent on the notes about the Chappell& Gibbs partnership agreement that he didn’t notice he was digging his claws into Mike’s shoulder until Mike swore and pushed him away.

It took him a few minutes to get positioned on the pillow again, drawing a stern look from Flannery. According to the partnership agreement, if either partner became incapacitated, could not or would not participate as a working member of the firm, the court was to dissolve the company after a year, and the assets were to be sold. When Chappell didn’t show in the allotted time, the firm was sold, Ray Gibbs received half the proceeds, and Chappell’s mother the other half. Chappell& Gibbs had had a sound business, showing healthy annual profits, and there seemed to be no reason for either partner to have wanted out.

A recent notation at the bottom of the yellow sheet, written by Max Harper just a few months ago, said that Ray Gibbs had divorced Nina, who, as far as the department knew, had not reappeared, and that Gibbs and Ryder Wolf were living together, dividing their time between a San Francisco condo and an apartment on Dolores, in the village.

Finished with reading the memos, Mike set the file aside and leaned back among the pillows, lost in thought. From the look on his thin face, Joe guessed he was thinking not about Carson Chappell but about Lindsey; he sat stroking Joe so sensuously that Joe twitched and stared at him and backed away, his retreat jerking Mike from his reverie.

But it was some time before Mike rose to extinguish the fire. Joe, yawning, padded down to curl up against Rock, receiving a long, wet lick across his ears and nose. He’d grown almost used to dog spit, but soon his wet fur began to feel chilly. As he burrowed deeper against Rock to get warm, he wondered how long it would be before they had an ID on the Oregon body, wondered whether the Oregon investigators were thorough enough to come up with a sample of the DNA.

But DNA to matchwhat?

Was there, among the evidence the department had retained on Chappell, any item belonging to the killer that would produce the needed match to DNA found in Oregon? And, he wondered, when forensics began work on the body from the Pamillon ruins, could they get a match on that DNA? Would the lab find anything that might link that body to the Oregon corpse?

But why was he chasing after phantoms? Why was he so fixated on some relationship between two bodies that had lain, for so many years, some five hundred miles apart?

Well, he’d have his first look at the Pamillon grave in the morning, Joe thought, drifting off to sleep. And who knew what he and Dulcie and Kit would find?

He’d barely closed his eyes when he blinked suddenly awake, staring into the first light of dawn filtering in through the accordion shades. Rolling over, he looked at the clock-and came wide awake. Six bells. Dulcie would pitch a fit. He’d said he’d meet her and Kit before daylight-it was a long run up the hills to the Pamillon estate. Padding lightly across the bed, trying not to wake Mike, and only momentarily waking Rock, who sighed and rolled over, Joe fled down the hall, up the stairs to Clyde ‘s study, and onto the desk. Leaping to a rafter, he was through his cat door and into his tower-and smack into the stern faces of two scowling lady cats.

There they sat, chill and austere, coolly assessing him, their paws together, their ears at half-mast, regarding him as they would a rude and misbehaving kitten.

“Overslept?” Dulcie said. Her sleek, brown-striped tabby coat was immaculately groomed, every hair in place, her green eyes piercing him. Beside her, Kit’s long tortoiseshell fur was every which way, as if she’d had no time to groom. Kit looked at him just as impatiently as Dulcie had, lashing her fluffy tail.

He thought of all kinds of excuses: that he’d overslept because he wasn’t used to sleeping in the guest room, wasn’t used to sleeping with a stranger whose snores were different from Clyde ‘s. But neither lady looked patient enough to listen to the shortest explanation, their twin stares said,We’ve been waiting an hour. The sun’s nearly up! Come on, Joe. Move it!

Sheepishly he slipped past them and out through the tower window to the shingled roof and took off fast across the rooftops, Dulcie and Kit running beside him.

At Ocean Avenue they scrambled down a honeysuckle vine, crossed the empty eastbound lane, and turned to race up Ocean’s wide, grassy median beneath the dark shelter of its eucalyptus and cypress trees, heading for the open hills, heading for the unidentified grave.

12

ABOVE THE RACING CATS, the Molena Point hills rose green with new grass, their emerald curves bright against heavy gray clouds; the damp grass soaked the cats’ paws and fur as they raced ever higher above the village.If a cat had wings, Dulcie thought, running beside Joe and Kit,we’d flyover the hills, we’d see all our haunts below us, see all our world laid out…The scattered gardens and the dark oak woods, the red roofs of Casa Capri where those helpless old people were murdered. Janet Jeannot’s studio, burned down when she was killed. We’d see Mama’s house where I played lost kitty to spy on her crooked son, we’d see all the houses we’ve tossed, finding evidence. And just up there, she thought, pausing and rearing up to look,I’d see the broom bushes where Joe and I first met, where the moment we stood so close, face-to-face, after I’d watched him in the village, the moment he was so close to me, I knew that I loved him. And there above us, she thought, swerving closer to Joe through the fresh, damp grass,there where the ruins rise up like broken towers, there’s where Charlie shot the man who kidnapped her.

Soon their paws pounded through the rubble of broken stone walls where they’d once seen a cougar, the beautiful prowling cougar that might have eaten them.The cougar, Dulcie thought, glancing at Kit,who so enchanted the tattercoat that she touched him while he slept-and then ran like hell.

Up the last steep incline, racing up, they stopped at the foot of the first garden wall, broken and rough, a relic of jagged stone, beyond which the old house rose up among its tangles of half-dead oak trees. All three cats were thinking of what they would find, of the human body, lost and forgotten, a forgotten soul all alone among the decaying buildings.

Weeds grew tangled among old and dying bushes, crowding against the sides of the rambling, two-story mansion. At the front of the great house, where walls had crumbled away, the rooms stood open to the world like a stage, revealing peeling wallpaper and broken, moldering furniture: the hoary set of a macabre theatrical production that seemed about to begin, that waited for them, chill and silent-then the off-key blather of a house finch broke the spell, and from the fields beyond, the bright crystal song of a meadowlark. Then the lark’s song was rudely hushed by the harsh cawing of a crow that perched ahead of them on the mossy roof, staring belligerently, his bright glare keenly accusing, his raucous voice scolding indignantly the presence of invading cats.

Rearing up, Joe eyed the big black bird. “You thought all the cats left here? You’re telling us to go, too? Too bad, buddy. Come on down if you don’t like the drill. We’ll put an end to your misery.”

Dulcie smiled. “Count me out. I’d as soon eat vulture.” The crow cawed rudely. Kit studied him, lashing her fluffy tail as ifshe would surely eat him. But then, forgetting the nervy bird, she raced away toward the back of the mansion, toward the kitchen and the old cellars and the grotto that was their destination. Joe and Dulcie followed.

Paying attention to Willow ‘s directions as Charlie had repeated them, moving past the kitchen and around the house among tangles of broken walls and overgrown bushes, they trotted under tall, dirty windows that had once sparkled with candlelight and with flickering flames from the hearth.

Rounding a jutting wall, they came to the small terrace sheltered between two wings of the house, a space just large enough for a bit of garden, a moss-covered stone bench, and, perhaps at one time, an outdoor tea table and chairs, furniture that would long since have rusted away or been destroyed by storms. The terrace bricks were dark with decades of dirt and overgrown with moss. On two sides of the sheltered terrace were raised planting beds but on the third, against the house, a sinkhole opened into a crumbled cellar.

Nearer them, flanking the terrace, a weedy garden plot had been freshly dug into, the disturbed earth crisscrossed with paw prints.

As Joe and Dulcie stood looking, and scenting the earth, at the side of the terrace Kit looked into the house through cracked French doors, pressing her nose to the grimy glass. Within lay an old-fashioned bedchamber that had once been elegant. She could see a smooth stone fireplace, a cream-colored Victorian bed, a toppled dresser, a matching dressing table and little chair, and a carved dressing screen that lay fallen against the rotting silk bedspread. The bed’s silk canopy hung in shreds as delicate as spiderwebs. Kit imagined an elegant woman wrapped in a diaphanous dressing gown, coming out into the garden to sip tea among the ferns and flowers where, now, the planter beds held only weeds, dead leaves, and an overgrown jasmine that had tangled itself over dead bushes.

Dulcie joined her, and the lady cats were still a moment, filled with dreams of being human ladies, Dulcie dreaming of silk and velvet garments and cashmere wraps, as she had dreamed all her life. Not until Joe huffed softly did the two give up their fantasies, and the cats began to dig in the flower bed where the earth had already been dug, Joe and Dulcie carefully pawing away the rotted leaves and earth so as not to disturb the frail bones that surely lay beneath-but Kit, in her enthusiasm, kicked out earth like a dog.

Joe stopped her. “You’re destroying evidence. You know better.”

She hung her head.

It was Dulcie, going slowly, with gentle paws, who soon stroked something small and rigid. She stopped digging, and delicately brushed away the earth until, at their feet, lay little dark bones clean of flesh and stained brown by the earth, seeming as frail as the bones of a long-dead bird.

The sight of a human hand so diminished and helpless sickened Dulcie. She turned away and sat down, her head down, her ears down, her heart feeling empty.

This was not the first human grave they’d ever found, and the other graves had upset her even more, for they had held the bones of little children. That memory had stayed with her in nightmares, and now it returned again, to leave her shivering.

Why does this upset me so? The bones of animals don’t bother me, the bones of rats and mice or of a dead deer in the forest, they are just natural bones.

But a dead human is nothing like a dead animal.The remains of a dead human should be treated with respect, should not be hidden and abandoned. A human body without proper burial, a proper marker, without ceremony and closure, is a tragedy of disrespect. As if that’s all there is to a human, these moldering bones, and nothing more at all.

Seeing her distress, Joe pressed close to her and licked her ear, his silver coat gleaming in the slant of early morning sun. Dulcie’s green eyes were filled with mystery. “Were catsmeant to find this grave?” she whispered. “First the ferals found it. And then we came…Were we meant to come here?”

Joe just looked at her. He didn’t like that kind of question. He began to dig again, carefully but steadily, until he had uncovered the side of the skull and then a line of spine defining the throat. He tried to work as carefully as he knew the coroner would; and soon his digging paw revealed the outer rim of the shoulder. Joe had begun to uncover the arm when suddenly he stopped.

Dulcie and Kit moved closer and the three cats stood transfixed, their eyes on the frail wrist-on the bracelet that circled the wrist, still half buried in earth. It was a wide gold band embossed with the image of a cat. A rearing cat, just as Willow had described, a cat holding out its front paw as if beseeching, or perhaps commanding.

“Where is the other cat?” Dulcie whispered. ” Willow said-”

“On the lintel,” Kit said. “There, over the French doors to the bedchamber. Same cat, with its paw out.”

Who was this woman, so fond of cats that she wore a feline signet? That she had the same cat carved over her bedchamber? If thatwas her bedchamber, if this wasn’t a stranger buried here.

But a stranger whose bracelet showed the same cat as on the lintel? Not likely.

At last they covered up the poor, vulnerable body, and with careful strokes they roughed up the loose earth until they had destroyed all the paw prints-their own, and those of the ferals.

“One thing for sure,” Dulcie said, “we can’t report the body-the department knows there are cats up here. Those guys are already too curious since seeing the ferals attack Charlie’s kidnappers.”

“Why do wehave to report it?” Kit said. “Who knows how long that body’s been here? What difference…?”

Joe and Dulcie turned to look at her. “Someone,” Dulcie said sternly, “wants to know what happened to this woman.”

“But what about the book?” Kit said. “The book Willow found? Maybe that will tell us.” And the tattercoat leaped across the garden toward the dark fissure where the wall had caved into the cellar.

“Don’t, Kit!” Dulcie cried. “Don’t go down-” But Kit had already disappeared into the dark hole among the fallen stones-and before Joe could snatch Dulcie back she had leaped after her, disappearing in the blackness. Joe was poised at the brink, ready to go down, or haul them out, when with considerable thrashing they emerged again dragging a small, heavy-looking box between them.

It was made of dark wood, and when they had pawed open the lid to reveal a leather packet, then had clawed open the packet, they found inside a package wrapped in frail and yellowed cloth. They could see where Willow had unwrapped the thin linen and then rewrapped it, where the cloth was folded differently, revealing darker creases. Several white cat hairs were caught in the folds. There were no markings on the box, or on the leather packet.

Lifting out the wrapped book, they laid it on paper, which they had spread on the bricks. The leather cover was old and dry, and was embossed in gold:Folktales of Speaking Cats and a History of Certain Rare Encounters.

“No one,” Dulcie hissed angrily, “no one should write about speaking cats.” The author’s name was Thomas Bewick. What cruel impulse had made this man reveal their secret? Why had he done such a thing?

But despite its content, the book was frail and beautiful, and Dulcie’s touch was feather soft as she turned the dry, yellowed pages.

At the beginning of each chapter was the color etching of a cat, each with a motto or homily.

She speaks of a world beneath the meadow, where the sky is greener.

They prowl the night, listening. And to whom will they tell their secrets?

The cats read in silence, scanning the passages, and soon Dulcie’s tension eased and she began to purr: These stories were only myths and folktales, all were innocent enough, folktales about magical cats written in a fairy-tale manner that no human would take for fact. That was all the book would be to the uninitiated, a collection of fairy tales, stories about cats who spoke to kings, cats who vanished into cavernous worlds beneath the earth, cats who led lost children from war-torn medieval cities. Indeed, their own ancient heritage lay between these pages, but so well disguised that few humans would dream there was truth to the stories.

Dulcie and Kit were transfixed, but the tales made Joe edgy, turned him increasingly irritable; he didn’t have the temperament for this, his yellow eyes burned with impatience.

It was enough for Joe to live in the here and now, he didn’t need fairy tales to explain himself. The world could take him or not, as it chose, and to hell with the past, he preferred to leave all foolish conjecture to dreamers-and Dulcie preferred Joe just as he was. A tough, practical tomcat who faced the world straight on. A four-legged cop who hid very well the tender streak deep within.

“And what,” the tomcat said, staring at the gold-embossed volume, “what do we do with this? There’s nothing safeto do with it, Dulcie. Except bury it again. It’s too heavy to carry, and we can’t let someone find it.”

Dulcie looked dismayed. “We can’t leave it here, it will rot.”

“It hasn’t rotted yet.”

“It’s old and frail, Joe. I don’t think-”

“If we carry and drag it down the hills, we’ll rip the leather, tear the pages. And if we haul it in the box, we’ll need our little cat spines adjusted.”

She sat down and washed a front paw.

She wanted this book, she wanted to read the rest of it. Wanted to look into the back pages, wanted…

Joe Grey sat down beside her and licked her whiskers. “I guess if you want it that bad,” he said softly, “Charlie can get it for us.”

Dulcie looked at him uncertainly. “Charlie hasn’t been up here since she was kidnapped. She doesn’t come here anymore.”

“She will for this. She will if we nudge her. Shehas to be wondering about the book. She has to be as curious as we were. Do you think, after Willow told her there was a book about speaking cats, that she isn’t wild to see it?”

Dulcie looked at him bleakly. “Maybe she won’twant to come up here, where she shot that man. She’s already worried about how to report this grave. Maybe-”

“Leave it to me,” Joe said, smiling a sly, tomcat smile. “I have a trade for Charlie. A trade that will make her happy to do what we ask. She’ll fetch the book, and she’ll do it gladly.”

13

CHARLIE STOOD at the top of the cliff watching the sea, thinking about little Sage. It was nearly noon and the tide was coming in, the waves crashing and foaming against the rocks far below, turning them glistening black; the surf’s wild and gigantic power, the vastness of the sea and of the earth itself, made a creature as small and hurt as Sage seem to her all the more helpless.

The fear and confusion that that little wild cat must have felt coming out of the anesthetic, waking in a strange world inside a building, not remembering how he got there, finding himself in a cage, hurting and sick and afraid. Even with Dulcie there to calm him, he must have been terrified.

Well, but he was being gently cared for now, with a special understanding that the young cat would find in no other doctor. She was still amazed that for all these years, John Firetti had looked upon the speaking cats as a natural part of his life.

It was strange, too, that she, when she first discovered the truth about the cats, had felt that such cats should have been a part of her life all along, that not knowing about them had left something incomplete in her world, left it flat and dull. She’d not been surprised that, once she shared the cats’ secret, a buoyant feeling of richness had filled so many of her life’s empty spaces.

She thought about the day she and Ryan and Hanni had been returning from their weeklong pack trip, riding home across the open hills, the day that Willow and her wild band first appeared to her, slipping out of the pine forest.

Glimpsing the little phantom beings secretly following her, wonder had gripped her, the same thrill that had touched her the night Willow had come to her, needing her, trusting her enough to seek her out.

Now, turning away from the cliff’s edge, she stepped back into the Blazer and headed down the hills to Dr. Firetti’s clinic, down Highway 1, a left at Ocean and a left again at Beckwhite’s Fine Cars, where she glanced absently at Clyde ‘s automotive garage.

Clyde and Ryan on their honeymoon, she thought, amused. She’d never thought it would happen. No little beforehand hints, no asking for help picking out rings, no sharing of plans and secrets, though the three of them were close friends. The two had been dating for a while, but Clyde had dated a long string of women, including Charlie herself.

But then, Christmas Day, Clyde had started calling all their friends with the big announcement. Wilma said Dulcie had been so surprised she nearly did flips. The little tabby had just clawed the wrapping off her Christmas gift, which turned out to be Charlie’s portrait of Joe Grey, so she was already giddy, wired with excitement when they heard Clyde ‘s news. To learn that he had actually proposed, that he and Ryan meant to take the big step…no one had thought it would happen.

Parking at the side of the clinic, she paused to retie her red hair with its ragged ribbon, then grabbed her package off the seat, got out, and locked the car. She had brought half a rare filet for Sage, from last night’s dinner. Through the clinic’s front window, she could see Wilma inside the crowded waiting room.

The door was blocked by a man in shorts and sandals trying to pull his basset hound away from a pair of fluffy “designer” mutts, while a black cat in a carrier hissed angrily. At the other side of the cheerful room, with its wicker chairs and hanging plants, Wilma was chatting with the receptionist, dark-haired Audrey Cane, about Audrey’s young German shepherd; Audrey was radiant with pride in the dog’s talents, was sharing her plans for his training when John Firetti came out and led Wilma and Charlie back to the small, quiet recovery room.

Sage lay in his large cage, the wire door propped open, looking helpless in his bandages. When he saw Charlie and Wilma, his eyes brightened and he got clumsily to his feet, wobbling in his cast; the doctor reached to steady him.

“Get him to drink all he can,” Dr. Firetti told them as he lifted Sage into Wilma’s carrier, onto a soft blanket. “You shouldn’t have a problem getting him to eat, he’s hungry as a wolf. Aren’t you, Sage?” He looked seriously at Charlie. “Max doesn’t know about the cats?”

“He doesn’t need to know,” Charlie said. “Later, when Sage comes up to us, we’ll be careful only to talk when we’re sure Max is gone. Sage will have a nice bed in my studio, and another in our bedroom at night. I’ll tell Max he’s a stray I’ve seen hanging around, that I found him hurt.”

“And how will you explain that you didn’t ever tell him about this stray, when you tell Max about every animal that comes around the ranch, the wild fox you like to draw, the skunk…You’ve drawn them all, and Max has seen them all.”

“I’ll think of something. Preoccupation with the wedding…Mind on a new book…”

Firetti nodded but looked unconvinced. Cops didn’t buy easily into even the most reasonable alibis.

“I have Sage on antibiotics,” he said. “He doesn’t mind taking pills if you put a dab of butter on them; he’s a good patient.” He glanced toward the closed door. “Of course the staff doesn’t know. They say he’s an amazing patient, that he does just what they want.” He winked at Sage, and doctor and patient exchanged a long and trusting look. Then Firetti laid out the medicines they were to take home, and went over the times and doses.

“I want to see him every day for a while. I’ll stop by the house, Wilma, if that’s all right-Sage can tell me how he feels, and I’ll change the bandages.” That was more than all right with Wilma. They set a time for his visits, and within half an hour the three were headed for Wilma’s house, Sage’s carrier strapped into Wilma’s car, Charlie following in her red Blazer. ***

WILMA HAD SET up a bed for Sage near her desk in the living room where she and Dulcie liked to sit by the fire at night; she had covered the blue velvet chair with a puffy comforter, and had taped several sturdy boxes together to form a wide, shallow set of steps from the rug to the chair. Behind an end table was a sandbox, and on the floor beside Sage’s chair was a plastic tray big enough to hold his water and kibble bowls. They entered the house through the back door, into Wilma’s bright blue-and-white kitchen. A welcoming committee awaited them-Joe and Dulcie and Kit looked up from a plastic bowl where they had been enjoying leftovers from last night’s dinner, and the three followed Wilma through to the living room where she set down the carrier.

As she and Charlie settled Sage in his new bed, Kit leaped up and curled carefully beside him on the soft comforter, staying away from his cast. Wilma headed for the kitchen, and soon the house smelled of fresh coffee, warm milk, and warming cinnamon buns, soon Charlie carried a tray through to the living room, setting it on the coffee table. “You’re taking the week off?” she asked her aunt as Wilma poured the coffee.

Wilma nodded. “I plan to do my taxes-last minute, as usual, with Sage to keep me company. We’ll have a cozy fire in the hearth, and I have the CD set up with Dulcie’s favorite music, which maybe Sage will like.”

“And my bandages off soon?” Sage asked shyly.

“As soon as the doctor allows,” Wilma told him. “Meanwhile, all the steak and custard you can eat.” She pushed back her long silver hair where it had escaped its ponytail. “You’re our guest, Sage. You mustn’t be shy about asking for what you want.”

“Or shy about getting spoiled,” Dulcie said. “A few days with Wilma and you won’t want to go back to the clowder.”

Sage looked uncertainly at Dulcie. The young cat was still trying to get used to the idea of feline/human conversations, was still trying to decide just how one behaved among humans.

And he was still trying to get used to being shut within solid walls. Confined in a manmade structure, it seemed to Sage that a part of him must have gone missing. The open hills, the wind, the shadowed woods had all been taken from him, had left him feeling incomplete and small.

Kit, lying close to him, watched him intently, her round yellow eyes just inches from his, gazing at him as if trying to see into his very soul, as if trying to know the young tom’s deepest thoughts. That unnerved Sage, but excited him.

“You’ll stay here with me,” Wilma told Sage, “until I go back to work, then you’ll go to Charlie’s house, at the ranch, and that’s nearer your own hills and woods.” She looked at Charlie. “First day I get back, I start training the new reference librarian.”

Charlie looked so alarmed that the cats came alert, watching her. “You’re not planning to quit? The new librarian isn’t taking your job?”

Dulcie looked at her housemate in amazement. She’d heard nothing of this. If Wilma quit her job as a reference librarian, she’d have to give up her library office where the cat door opened from among the bushes outside, the door that let Dulcie into the closed library at night.

No more midnight prowling among the books? No more pulling books from the shelves, dragging them up onto a table where she could read alone and unseen? No more nighttime adventures into exotic lands and distant times?

“I’m not quitting,” Wilma said quickly. “Only cutting back. And we do need more help. The new librarian will be full-time, and that will give us more actual hours, even with the reduced schedule I’ve set for myself.” Wilma didn’t have to work, she had an adequate federal retirement pension from her first career as a probation officer.

Still, Charlie looked uneasy. “You’re not…You’re feeling all right?”

“I’m feeling fine. Don’t fuss,” Wilma scolded. “I’m not sick, there’s nothing wrong with me, there are simply some other things I’d like to do. How could I quit? How could I give up my library key?” Wilma said, mirroring Dulcie’s thoughts. “How could I give up my office, and Dulcie’s cat door? Who knows, I might even start riding again.”

“Are you serious? You can ride Redwing all you want, she really needs the exercise. If…”

Charlie paused, watching Joe. On the desk, the tomcat sat at rigid attention, studying Wilma and then turning his gaze on Charlie, watching the two of them so fixedly that Charlie shivered. Joe’s yellow eyes were far too intent and calculating. Whatever he had in mind, he made Charlie feel like a cornered mouse.

“This is perfect,” Joe said softly, turning to watch Wilma. “Are you serious about riding again?”

Wilma looked at him warily.

“This couldn’t be better,” Joe purred. “This fits right in with our plans.”

“What plans?” Charlie and Wilma said together.

A slow smile spread over the tomcat’s face, sending both women into a paroxysm of suspicion. “What?” Wilma said. “What’s in that sneaky cat mind, that you think you can get me to do?”

14

AT LEAST CHARLIE’Sacting sensibly, Joe thought as he leaped from a pine tree to the tiles of the courthouse roof-a lot more sensibly than Dulcie.

Dropping down onto the lower roof of Molena Point PD and then into the branches of the ancient oak that sheltered its front door, he stretched out along a branch, thinking about his plan.

“You’re a fair poker player,” Charlie had said when he’d told her what he had in mind. “Wilma and I get the book, which is too heavy for you to carry down the hills without tearing the pages, and you see that the department finds the body without involving me or involving you cats.”

“That’s it,” Joe had said, smoothing his whiskers with a white-tipped paw. “I can talk with Ryan myself if you’d like, to put things in motion. But I’d have to wait until they get back, I don’t think she’s up to talking with me on the phone yet-she’s still getting used to face-to-face discussion.” Joe and Dulcie had been sitting on Wilma’s desk as, on the blue velvet couch, Charlie and Wilma finished their coffee and cinnamon buns and, in the easy chair, Kit napped, curled up on the comforter with Sage.

“I’ll call the honeymooners tonight,” Charlie said. “I’m sure they can’t wait for people to disturb them.”

“It’s a good deal for Ryan, too,” Joe had pointed out. “She’ll love the plan, she’ll be happy you called.”

Charlie sighed. “A honeymoon, Joe, by its very nature, is-”

“What kind of honeymoon? Those two are up there scrounging through junk shops and wrecking yards. How romantic is that?”

“I’ll call her,” Charlie said, looking helplessly at the tomcat.

Joe gave her a satisfied smile, leaped down from the desk, and headed for the kitchen, pausing only to scowl pointedly at Dulcie. He was nosing through Dulcie’s cat door when Dulcie, following him, pushed him aside, cornering him against the washing machine. Her green eyes blazed. “What are you angry at me about? What did I do?”

“You’re matchmaking, that’s what you’re doing.”

“Matchmaking?”

“You needn’t smile so fatuously over them, you needn’t encourage them.”

“Shhh, keep you voice down. I can’t make herignore him, he’s her friend. And why would I? He’s weak and hurting, the poor cat needs sympathy. Kit grew up with Sage, they were kittens together, she-”

“They’re not kittens anymore. She’s smitten with him. And you’re not doing a thing to discourage her.”

“Why would I discourage her? Why would I want to?”

“You’re just like every other female! So damned romantic you lose all perspective. No more common sense than a chicken.”

Dulcie stared at him, her paw lifted to slap him. “You’rejealous!” she hissed. “You’re…You…Oh!” And she spun away, her ears down, her tail tucked under.

“I’m notjealous!” he snapped, snatching her back with a hasty paw, his claws locked in her fur, his eyes blazing with amazement. “How could I bejealous! I think of her as a kitten! She’s like our kitten! I feel like we raised her together.”

She simply stared at him.

“Listen to me,” he said angrily. “Remember how hard it was for Kit to leave the wild? What she went through when she felt pulled both ways, half of her wanting to go feral again, running wild, half of her wanting to be a part of human lives in her very special way? Do you remember how hard that was?

“But she did decide,” he said, “and she was so happy and proud of herself. She’s doing more here than in the wild. Think of the crimes she’s helped solve. She’s so full of life, so clever and inventive…But now, with Sage pulling on her, she’ll soon be torn apart again! If they become a couple, when Sage is ready to return to the wild, what do you think Kit will do? Youwant her to follow him? Youwant her to leave the village forever? You want never to see her again?”

“She wouldn’t do that. This is her home. Maybe Sage won’t return to the clowder. Maybe-”

“What else would he do? He doesn’t like the human world. The minute he’s healed, he’s out of here, headed for the hills. And Kit with him, just as sure as mice have tails. Is that what you want?” And he shoved out the cat door, scorched up a pine tree and across the roofs, heading fast for Molena Point PD.

Now, dropping from the oak branch down into a bed of cyclamens near the front door of the station, he stalked between the bright red and pink blooms and up the steps, and peered in through the bulletproof glass.

The reception area, with its electronic control center and its one holding cell, was empty except for the cats’ favorite dispatcher. Watching blond, middle-aged Mabel Farthy busy at her computer, he reared up to claw at the glass, demanding her attention.

Mabel looked up, saw him, and frowned with exasperation. But she rose, hurried out from behind the counter, and swung the heavy door open.

“Come on, Joe. How do you know when I’m right in the middle of something urgent? And how did you know I have carrot cake? Come on, up on the counter, if you want some. Where are your pals?”

Heavily Joe jumped to the counter, his belly so full of Wilma’s cinnamon rolls that even his favorite carrot cake didn’t appeal. But he wouldn’t hurt Mabel’s feelings-couldn’t afford to hurt her feelings and sour their relationship, Mabel Farthy was their entr?e into the building. And Mabel’s electronic realm, her ability to reach every law enforcement agency in the U.S. and beyond, gathering information from them, was the cats’ entr?e into the department’s most sensitive intelligence.

Besides, he liked Mabel. He would never hurt her feelings by rejecting her lovingly made offerings.

Mabel spoiled her own cats, and she loved bringing treats for “her three freeloaders” and petting and talking to them. Now, although Joe thought he’d burst, he ate the carrot cake slowly, choking down each delicious bite and purring extravagantly for Mabel-while praying he wouldn’t upchuck on her clean counter. He could hear, down the hall, the chief’s voice from his office, in a tense discussion with a woman.

Would that be Lindsey Wolf? But it was still early, not yet eleven-and her appointment wasn’t with Max Harper but with Mike and Dallas. Keen with curiosity, he finished the cake, rubbed his face against Mabel’s arm by way of thanks, and dropped heavily to the floor, belching delicately as he headed down the hall.

Lights spilled from the office doors he passed, from the conference room that smelled of overcooked coffee, and from the report room where the faint click of computer keys told him several officers were catching up on their reports. Only the interrogation room was dark; Joe was passing that small windowless space with its little table and two straight chairs when, from Harper’s office ahead, the woman’s voice grew sharp and authoritative.

“This is most important, Captain Harper, or I would not have disturbed you.”

Slipping in through the chief’s open door, Joe vanished beneath the credenza.

Max and the woman stood in the center of the room, as if she had just entered, and as if he didn’t mean for her to stay long.This was Lindsey Wolf? This showy, sleekly made-up woman? This was not what he’d expected. She was some looker, all right, but she sure wasn’t the soft, tastefully clad, restrained beauty he’d pictured from Mike’s remarks and from Clyde ‘s description.

She was maybe in her forties, though it was hard to tell with humans, particularly women. Her sleek, brown, shoulder-length hair shone with red highlights as perfectly shaded as the color in a cosmetics commercial. Her makeup was artful, too, but not the subtle glow that Joe had envisioned. Her brown eyes, gazing up at the chief from beneath mascara-thick lashes, were way too friendly for a meeting that should be businesslike; she stood too close to Max, looking up at him in a way that was far too familiar.

Harper stood his ground, watching her with that closed cop look in which Joe read sharp dislike, a look that sometimes alarmed the tomcat but usually amused him. Max was holding a clear plastic bag; inside, Joe could see a small sheet of letter paper, carefully hand-printed with a blue pen.

“Why did you wait until now to bring us this, Ms. Wolf?”

So this glamorous creaturewas Lindsey. Joe tried to put this new view of her into perspective, but this certainly changed his opinion of Mike Flannery’s taste in women.

“I didn’t bring the letter to you at the time I found it,” she said more equitably, “because I was afraid for my sister.”

“Afraid for her?” Harper said coolly.

Beneath the credenza, Joe frowned.

“Please, Captain, call me Ryder.”

Joe did a double take-but of course he should have guessed, that this was Ryder Wolf, and the belated revelation left the tomcat highly irritated at his own miscalculation.

“As you can see,” she said, “the letter is dated three days after Carson disappeared, the same week Nina Gibbs vanished. I found it only a couple of years ago, in my sister’s dresser, when I was looking for a sweater I’d loaned her. When…when I read it, I was afraid to bring it in.”

“Why were you afraid?” Harper looked increasingly uncomfortable with her standing so close, but he refused to back off and give ground.

“If anything terrible had happened to Carson, I was afraid this letter would make Lindsey appear to be a suspect.”

“Why is that?” Harper was having trouble keeping his temper. A nerve had started to twitch at the side of his face, matching the spark of impatience deep in his brown eyes.

“When you read the whole letter, you’ll see. Nina told Lindsey she feared that her husband meant to kill her and Carson, that Ray would come after them, and that Ray had a gun. She begged Lindsey’s forgiveness for going away with Carson, and asked Lindsey to take the letter to the police, said there was no one else she could trust to do it.

“Apparently, Lindsey didn’t do that,” Ryder said. “She must have received this right after they left. If she had brought it to you then, you might have extended the search for Carson. And I don’t think I’d have found the letter. Wouldn’t you have kept it as evidence?

“After Lindsey reported Carson missing, I was interviewed by one of your detectives. I didn’t know about the letter then, of course. The detective mentioned nothing about Nina, didn’t question me about her. Wouldn’t he have, if he’d seen this?”

Harper remained silent.

“Then, when I found the letter, I was certain she’d never shown it to you. That upset me because if she’d brought it to you right away, you might have stopped whatever happened. I thought that because she didn’t, that would make her look guilty, like some kind of accessory.”

“So you thought all along,” Harper said, “that something had happened to Carson?”

“I thought it might have. And then yesterday when I saw that newspaper article, the hiker’s body up in Oregon…You said you had a copy of that?”

Harper nodded.

“I thought…I wondered if that could be Carson. That’s why I came now, because of that hiker, because maybe this letter is right, maybe Ray did follow him and kill him.”

“Why come to me at all if you’re afraid Lindsey will be implicated?”

“I…I guess my conscience,” she said demurely. “Though certainly Lindsey would never kill anyone, certainlyshe wouldn’t follow Carson, no matter what he’d done. That’s not in her nature.

“I’m sure she never owned a gun,” Ryder said. “Like me, she’s afraid of guns.”

“Do you have the envelope this came in?”

“I didn’t find it. Just the letter, tucked among her sweaters.”

Harper was silent, his thin, leathered face as expressionless as stone.

“I know Lindsey would never deliberately withhold information. I think she was so upset, she just didn’t think about what sheshould do. But…” She stepped so close to Max that Joe expected her to reach up and touch his face with those long, well-manicured fingers. Ryder Wolf’s cherry nail polish exactly matched her red lipstick; when she looked up at Max, all Joe could see was lipstick and mascara-and all he could think was that he wanted a look at the letter.

Max tucked the plastic-wrapped letter into a file on his desk and moved toward the door, effectively herding Ryder Wolf out; she was moving reluctantly when Joe heard Mike Flannery’s voice up at the dispatcher’s counter, and a softer female voice-and immediately Ryder stepped back into the office, slipping around Max, putting herself out of sight of the hall.

But at this little maneuver, Max took Ryder’s elbow and moved her firmly into the hall-where she came face-to-face with her sister.

Joe, slipping out from under the credenza, crouched behind Max in the doorway, watching.

Yes, this was the way he’d imagined Lindsey Wolf. Peaches and cream subtle, a treasure of cleanliness and soft tones that contrasted with her sister’s bright, attention-demanding packaging.

Lindsey Wolf was a woman to turn heads, a woman any man would want to follow. Soft brown shoulder-length hair that changed color with the light. Hazel eyes lighter than Ryder’s, with no harsh makeup, kind eyes touched with a smile. Her oval face was creamy smooth, and she wore only pale lipstick.

There was a strong resemblance in height and build, in the shape of their faces, and in their fine bone structure, but there the likeness ended in the two sisters. They looked at each other for a long moment, Lindsey’s expression puzzled and questioning, Ryder’s look stony. She drew herself up stubbornly, as if expecting Lindsey to scold or attack her.

“Why are you here?” Lindsey asked her.

“To inquire about that article in the paper.” Ryder looked at her archly. “To see if there could be some connection with Carson Chappell. You have seen the article? A lost hiker, a man who was never found…”

“I saw it,” Lindsey said. ” Carson wasn’t hiking in Oregon, he was here in California.”

“That’s what he told you.”

“And you know differently? What do you know, Ryder?”

“I just thought I’d ask. See what the police might know. I didn’t mean to step on any toes-or get you in trouble.”

“Why would you get me in trouble? And why, after all this time, would you care?”

Captain Harper took in the exchange without expression, but Mike Flannery clearly showed his annoyance. Lindsey stepped back as Ryder edged past her up the hall toward the front door.

But when Max had seen her out, and Mike was escorting Lindsey down the hall toward Dallas ‘s lighted office, Max called Mike back. “Why don’t you buy Lindsey a cup of coffee?” Max said, nodding toward the conference room. “Take a little break, give me a few minutes with Dallas on several matters.”

Mike took Lindsey’s arm, his eyes meeting Max’s with a question that received only a level look, then guided her back up the hall toward the conference room, toward the smell of overcooked coffee.

15

IN CHARLIE’S BIG family kitchen, the coffee was freshly brewed; Wilma and Charlie had finished their pastrami sandwiches and were feasting on the first strawberries of the season, gleaming in a glass bowl on the table and liberally dusted with powdered sugar.

“This is agood time for you to start riding again,” Charlie said. “Of course you don’t forget. All your childhood years on a farm before you moved here, how could your body forget? Come on, finish your lunch and let’s head out.”

Wilma was not a timid person. And how often in the past years had she toyed with the idea of having a horse again? Now that Charlie had offered a place to keep a mount, how could she do otherwise than return to that freedom she’d known in childhood?

“The two of us together,” Charlie said, “going up to the ruins, really would look less suspicious if Max finds out. Not that I mean to tell him, but…”

“It’s been hard,” Wilma said, “keeping secrets.”

“As if I had a choice.” Charlie rose to carry their dishes to the sink. “When Max proposed, you know that was my one concern, that I’d have to lie to keep the cats’ secret.” She looked desolately at Wilma. “I didn’t know, then, half how hard that would be.”

She put the remaining strawberries in the refrigerator and unplugged the coffeepot. “I’d always believed that in a good marriage you wouldn’t ever have secrets, would never have to lie, that a solid marriage is based on trust.

“I still know that’s true. But here I am lying to him nearly every day, or holding back information, which is the same thing.”

“Most marriages,” Wilma said wryly, “don’t involve this kind of secret.” She put their dishes in the dishwasher, they grabbed their jackets, locked the door behind them, and headed for the barn.

In the fenced-in pasture, the two big, half-breed Great Danes raced to the gate, anticipating a run, but Charlie, rubbing their ears, told them they had to stay home. They watched longingly as their master disappeared into the stable-she didn’t want them following, nosing around the ruins and sniffing out the buried corpse. While that would be a natural way to “discover” the body, those two would tear up the grave, scatter the bones before she could stop them.

And, worse, their discovery would destroy Joe Grey’s plan, which, she had to admit, was very close to brilliant-though it would be a few more days before Ryan and Clyde got home and Joe could put his scenario into action. It was a crazy plan, but one that would accomplish a mission near to Ryan’s heart, a project that Ryan had put off for some time.

Bridling Bucky, and watching Wilma, Charlie knew that her aunt had forgotten nothing. Wilma already had the mare brushed and saddled, had checked her feet, and was leading her out into the yard to mount up. And the look on Wilma’s face as they headed their horses around behind the barn and up the little trail through the woods was enough to keep Charlie smiling for days. This was what Wilma needed to balance the depression and perhaps fear that could bedevil a person as he or she grew older, even her cheerful and courageous aunt-fear of becoming ill and incapacitated, and, for many, an innate sadness at leaving this world, though she’d seen none of that in Wilma.

Now, if Charlie knew her aunt, she’d soon be shopping for a horse of her own. Wilma was, after all, only in her sixties, way too young to stop doing the things she loved best.

They rode side by side as long as the trail permitted, then Wilma let Redwing take the lead, as the mare wanted to do. Max’s big buckskin gelding always deferred to Redwing, usually with a twitch of his ears that Charlie knew was tolerant male humor. They talked only intermittently, enjoying the silence of the woods, the call of a squirrel, the hush of wind in the trees. Redwing snorted at the skittering of small animals racing to hide from them, and once she shied away, but Wilma sat her easily. The birds were busy building nests, calling out their mating songs. They were up on the open hills, above the woods and above the Pamillon ruins, when Wilma turned in the saddle, looking back at her.

“That body, Charlie…isn’t there a family cemetery on the property? Could that simply be one of the family graves? Could the cats…?”

“There is a cemetery, but it’s in the rose garden at the far north end. Willow said this grave is right beside the house, in a sheltered patio adjoining a bedroom. Who would bury a dead relative outside a bedroom? Where, every time you stepped out the door or wanted to have tea on the terrace, you were walking on them?”

Wilma laughed. “The Pamillons might. They were a strange bunch. I guess they still are. The way they divided up the property, all entangled in trusts and wills that have never gotten sorted out, refusing to get together, leaving this valuable land to fall to ruin.”

“I didn’t think there were any Pamillons left, at least not around here.”

“Nina Gibbs was the last I know of to live nearby, the others are scattered who knows where. Olivia Pamillon was Nina’s aunt.”

Charlie moved Bucky up beside Redwing, looking with amazement at Wilma. “Nina Gibbs? Ray Gibbs’s wife? The woman people said ran off with Carson Chappell?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Mike’s working the Chappell case, it’s one of the cold files Max and Dallas gave him.”

“I wish him luck,” Wilma said. “Some people think Carson ‘s still alive, that he and Nina are living somewhere romantic like Trinidad or the Bahamas.”

“You didn’t hear about the body, the one in Oregon? It was in the paper.”

Wilma looked at her, waiting.

“A hiker’s body, apparently. Been in the woods for years. Lindsey Wolf thinks it’s Chappell.”

Wilma was silent, frowning, thinking about that. Moving down the hill and into the ruins, approaching the front of the mansion, the horses began to snort at the specter of ragged, fallen walls tangled among the fallen oaks, at the open caves of the mansion’s front rooms. Bowing their necks, backing and snorting, they wanted to wheel away. Urging them on, the riders moved around the far side of the rambling structure, where the rear walls stood intact.

Dismounting, they haltered the horses and tied them to a healthy young oak, one of a new generation of saplings striving to reclaim the land. They made their way on foot over the rougher ground, over the rubble of fallen garden walls, skirting the back of the mansion, seeking the small sheltered grotto that Willow had described among the jutting wings and unexpected terraces.

They found the sheltered garden with its overgrown bushes and weeds, tall grass pushing up between the brick paving. Past a central flower bed, at the back of the grotto, a short wall had collapsed into a cellar, just as Willow had described. Was this damage perhaps from an earthquake? The adjoining walls of the bedchamber looked solid enough.

“Looks like this was a closet jutting out,” Charlie said. “Maybe one that had been added on?”

“Perhaps,” Wilma said. “I’ve been told the cellars run all under the house-wine cellars, root cellars, who knows what? Old Frederick Pamillon believed in building to last, and I guess that included basement-deep foundations. He was a civil engineer, you know. Highways, bridges, big projects.”

“Maybe he built solidly,” Charlie said, kneeling down to look into the cellar, “but the closet itself has only a slab under it, no foundation. The slab is tilted into the cellar. You’ve been researching Frederick Pamillon?”

“For library patrons, but not recently. It’s all there in the local history department. Olivia Pamillon was a well-known figure in the village, and during her time there was a lot of interest in the estate. When the property began deteriorating, the historical society kept after her to repair it. Olivia may have had reasons for not doing so, perhaps because of the tangle of multiple owners. Or maybe she was just interested in other things. She had a busy social life, lots of charity projects, though she no longer entertained at the mansion. That was some fifty years ago.”

Charlie lay down on her stomach, looking deeper into the black hole beneath the fallen wall, then reaching in. She hoped there weren’t spiders. She could tolerate common spiders, but the brown recluse, with its flesh-eating bite, frightened her, and she’d forgotten to bring gloves.

She could feel what remained of the closet floor, several inches above the tilting slab. There was a space between the two. Reaching in, her fingers stroked something smoother than the slab or the floor. Yes, something wedged there, she could feel a smooth corner of what might be the small wooden box.

Sliding in on her stomach, hoping that more of the wall wouldn’t fall, or the box drop out of reach, she worked it free and drew it out. Rising, she spread her jacket on a mossy bench, and opened the miniature chest.

Carefully she lifted out the leather wrapping, stirring a fine powdering of disintegrating leather. Leather dust came away on her fingers.

Within lay the cloth-wrapped book. Lifting it out, she laid it on her jacket. The linen wrapping was dry and frail, the folds stained brown, with paler lines where it had been refolded. And it was marked with faint, dusty paw smudges that made her smile.

The book was old and looked handmade; the leather covers seemed to be hand tooled and were embossed in gold, the pages a thick, rich paper yellowed with age. The long title of the little volume startled both women:Folktales of Speaking Cats and a History of Certain Rare Encounters.

Gently Wilma turned to the title page. “Thomas Bewick,” she mused. “He lived over a century ago.” The date of publication was 1820. “He was a typographer and engraver…”

“I remember his wood engravings,” Charlie said, “from art history.”

Wilma nodded. “I studied him in my library courses, and I’ve done several research questions on him.” She frowned. “He’s well represented in histories of that era, but I don’t remember this title. He didn’t produce that many books that I’d forget this. Certainly if I’d seen it in recent years, since I learned the truth about the cats, I would have been terribly upset.”

She looked at Charlie, puzzled. “He would have been in his midsixties when he published this-after he published Aesop’s Fables, some years after he didLand Birds, andWater Birds, andA History of Quadrupeds. If this is a genuine Thomas Bewick, Charlie, and if it’s as rare as I think, it could be worth a fortune.”

The two women knelt side by side as Wilma carefully turned the dry pages. The text was deeply embossed in a handsome, old-fashioned typeface-they could see where Willow had turned pages, too, could see the little, faint smudges.

Wilma had read all the old stories and history she could find about ancient and unusual cats, and had listened to many medieval tales and earlier folklore recited by Pedric Greenlaw. But she had never come across these stories. Still, the book seemed harmless enough, there was nothing to indicate that speaking cats were anything but fiction, ancient and entertaining myth-until they turned to the last third of the volume.

The last chapters were given over to Bewick’s personal observations, which he presented as being true. The author’s encounters with cats that spoke to him, his experiences while on a walking trek across the Scottish highlands, left Wilma and Charlie deeply shaken.

Closing the book at last, Wilma looked at her niece. “Bewick knew about the cats, and whoever buried the book knew.” Turning to the front, to the flyleaf, she read aloud from a child’s round, neat script.This book belongs to Olivia Pamillon. Christmas 1922.

Charlie rose to look above the French doors, staring up at the rearing cat. “If there are cats embossed on the building, then did the whole family know?”

“Maybe Olivia added the carving,” Wilma said, “when she lived here alone, maybe contracted to have the carving done then?”

“Dr. Firetti said some of the cats who escaped from the Welsh couple came here, he said that was at the time the mansion was falling into disrepair.” Charlie pushed back a lock of red hair. “Olivia could have overheard the cats whispering among themselves, could have discovered their talents, then. She would have been terribly excited to find out that what she already believed, from this book, was indeed real.”

“Or maybe sheknew, all her life?” Wilma said. “Remember, when Olivia was small, many of the Pamillons traveled in Europe and Great Britain. The grand tour, it was called then. Maybe they learned about the cats on those journeys? Maybe even brought a pair back with them, years before the Welsh couple brought more?”

“Imagine, if there were speaking cats here on the estate during Olivia’s last years,” Charlie said, “when she was alone. Maybe they were her only friends. She could have become obsessed with them. People think she turned strange and reclusive, but maybe that was simply her preoccupation with the cats.”

The two women looked at each other, both wishing they could see into the past. “Whatever happened,” Wilma said, “I find it strange that she didn’t destroy the book, to keep safe the cats’ secret.”

Charlie rewrapped the book and placed it in the box, and slipped the box into the little backpack she’d brought, where it would ride safely; she rose, wondering where the book would lead them now that it was unearthed again. And knowing that, above all else, in the end it must be destroyed, and feeling sad about that.

16

THAT EARLY AFTERNOON while Charlie and Wilma examined the rare old book, their horses waiting patiently among the fallen walls, down at Molena Point PD, Joe Grey paused uncertainly in the hallway. Crouching on the cold floor, he wondered whether to follow Mike and Lindsey into the coffee room, or stick with the chief as he headed for Dallas ‘s office carrying the plastic-wrapped letter.

The letter won. Quickly he slipped inside behind Max’s heels and ducked beneath Dallas ‘s credenza. Crouching in the shadows, he watched as the detective ended his phone conversation and looked up at the chief. “That was Oregon. You won’t believe this.”

“They’ve ID’d the body?”

Dallas grinned. “From the dental records. It’s Chappell.”

“I’ll be damned,” Max said. “Had to be Greg Emerson, he’s the only dentist I know who keeps records that far back. Keeps everything, that storeroom over his office is crammed with files. Ever since that cold case where records had been destroyed and he tried to do it from memory.”

“He went right down to the office last night,” Dallas said. “Found the file-called me around midnight. I met him here and we called Oregon. Palmer, at OBI. They compared the details over the phone, got a perfect match. Emerson’s overnighting them a copy of his film.”

Max shook his head. “So Lindsey Wolf was right. What kind of odds are those?

“Or what does she know?” Dallas said, frowning.

“Looks like this isn’t a cold case anymore,” said the chief. “You want to take it? Here’s something you’ll need. Ryder Wolf brought it in. Here are the notes I made.” He laid the bagged letter and a notepad on the desk, and turned toward the door. “Have to be in court,” he said shortly.

Dallas watched him disappear up the hall. After he’d read the letter and Max’s careful notations, he buzzed the coffee room, told Mike to bring Lindsey back.

As their footsteps approached along the hall, Joe sauntered out from beneath the credenza, hopped up on the couch, and stretched out full length, in plain sight. He wanted to get a better line on Lindsey Wolf. You could tell a lot about a person by the way they reacted to animals, particularly to cats. Cat lover, probably okay. Cat hater, beware.

He knew this theory was an oversimplification, he’d met a few ailurophobes who were decent, honest folk. And he’d met a number of cat lovers who’d rob a person blind, including one full-blown psychopath who was a real pushover for cute kitties.

But still, the premise had merit; one didn’t have to abide by it completely, it was just one more guidepost in the feline roster of clues to the human mind. He wanted a line on Lindsey Wolf, wanted to know what made her tick.

Well, he thought, shehad had a dog, a golden retriever. He understood she’d treated the animal well, and that was in her favor. He watched her intently as she entered, Mike walking close behind her looking very possessive.

She seemed at ease in the office, had none of the telltale signs of nervousness. She exchanged pleasantries with Dallas, then sat down on the couch near Joe and reached to stroke him as if it was the natural thing to do. She smelled good, like soap and water.

“What a beautiful cat.” She looked up at Dallas. “Is he yours? Hello, tomcat,” she said softly. “You run the shop around here?”

Dallas grinned, and Joe had to hide his own smile. Even the fact that she realized, right off, he was a tomcat was in her favor. Most people, on first meeting, didn’t care or bother to check things out. Her hazel eyes were kind as she looked deep into Joe’s eyes. “Are you the department mascot? What’s your name, big fellow?”

Mike stood by the desk watching her, both men assessing Lindsey just as keenly as was the tomcat. Was her animal-friendly gentleness an act, to gain favor? Of course she knew she was being judged, though if that made her nervous, it didn’t show.

“That’s Joe Grey,” Dallas said, leaning back in his desk chair. “He has another home; he hangs around here because the dispatcher brings him fried chicken.” He glanced at Mike, then looked back at Lindsey. “We have an ID on the body in Oregon.”

Lindsey’s stroking hand went still. She searched the detective’s face. “It’s Carson,” she said softly.

Dallas nodded. “OBI got a match on the dental records. Your theory was a long shot, but it turned out to be right.”

Joe could feel the sudden tension in Lindsey’s touch, but then she began to stroke him again. Mike sat down at the other end of the couch. “He didn’t abandon me, then,” she said softly, her voice catching. “He didn’t run out on me, on our wedding.”

Dallas said, “Whywere you so sure that was Chappell? Is there more, something you haven’t told us?”

“Nothing,” she said, searching his face. “I’ve told Mike everything I can remember, or it’s in the file.” She studied Dallas. “The paper said the sheriff found bullets.” She leaned forward a little, her hand still. “Did someone shoot him? Did they find a gun? Can they identify who did it?” She slumped back, and started stroking again. “Why would someone shoot Carson? I didn’t think he had any enemies, nothing he ever mentioned. Is there anything to lead to the killer? Or was this a random thing?” Her hand on Joe’s shoulder was suddenly too tight, and he thought she was doing more talking than was needed. “Do they know what he was doing up there?”

“He said nothing to you about going to Oregon?” Dallas asked. “No last-minute change in plans?”

“Nothing. That wasn’t at all what he planned…what he told me he meant to do,” she said, faltering.

At the other end of the couch, Mike sat watching her. She looked pleadingly at him. “Why did he go there?” she said almost inaudibly. “Whatwas that tree house? Was that something Carson put together for shelter? Or was it something he found or knew about? Did other people use it?”

“It was there before he died,” Dallas said. “It’s old, rotting away now. A crude shelter made of log slabs-discards from the lumber mills-nailed together for a floor between the branches of a large oak, with two slab sides to cut the wind and a shed roof of the same material. It must have leaked, even then. Chappell had pitched a pup tent on the platform, under the roof.

“When the sheriff’s department located him, the owner of the property said the structure had been there as long as he’d owned the land, some thirty years. He has fifty acres up there, running back from the coast, most of it overgrown forest. He told the deputies he seldom went there, seldom goes into those woods.”

“Wouldhe have shot Carson?” Lindsey asked. “Because he was trespassing? But if he never went there…Or could someone…” She went very still, her body rigid, but she was still holding on to Joe.

“Did they find Carson ‘s backpack?” she said. “I guess there was no billfold, or they could have identified him. Did it look like he was robbed?”

“The backpack had been torn into,” Dallas said, “the contents scattered, but apparently by animals.”

“The paper said a bobcat.”

Mike looked at her as if he wanted to hold and comfort her. Lindsey remained still, except for her left hand, where she was kneading Joe’s shoulder too hard. He felt her shiver but then she seemed to take herself in hand and relaxed, watchful and waiting.

“Now that we have an ID on Carson,” Dallas said, “this is no longer a cold case. Our department will be handling it in cooperation with Oregon.”

She nodded, gripping Joe harder.

“There’s something else,” Dallas said. “The deputies found a second backpack.”

Again her hand clutched Joe so tightly he had to stop himself from slashing out at her.

“A backpack,” Dallas told her as gently as he could, “containing a woman’s clothing and makeup kit.”

“I see,” she said softly. “Then if he was shot…did awoman shoot him?” She gripped Joe so hard that he wondered if a cat could record these reactions as accurately as a lie detector. There were cat therapists for the ill and lonely. Why not cat interrogation assistants?

“Can they identify the gun?” she asked hesitantly.

“They haven’t found a gun,” Dallas said patiently. “They’ve sent the bullets to ballistics, to record the rifling, but they have no gun to match them to. Did Carson own a gun?”

“He never mentioned one. He never talked about guns, and I never saw one.”

“Would you have any idea of a gun that might have been used?”

She shook her head.

“Do you have a gun? Have you ever owned one?” Dallas asked.

“I’ve never…I guess I’m a little afraid of guns.”

Dallas was quiet for a long time. Mike sat, watching them, his expression unreadable.

“One other thing,” Dallas said, rising and coming around the desk. He handed her the plastic-wrapped letter. “Do you recognize this? Have you ever seen this?”

She turned the plastic over and back again, examining the letter within; it was addressed to her. As she read the handwriting through the clear plastic, so did Joe Grey.

“It’s written to me, to my name, but I never received this. This is dated just after Carson disappeared. Have you had it all this time? Do you have the envelope? Why would…” She looked up angrily at Dallas. “Why didn’t someone do something about this? This might have saved his life!”

Her left hand was trembling against Joe. “Who sent this? Why did no one show me this?” She studied the printing with rising anger. “Why wasn’t I shown this when Carson disappeared?”

“We didn’t know about it,” Dallas said. “It was brought to us today.”

She looked again at the date. “But where has it been? For nearly ten years! My God. If I’d received this and brought it to you, Carson might still be alive. If you didn’t have it, where was it?” She withdrew her hand from Joe, balling it into a fist, pressing her fist to her mouth. She was silent for a very long time. Neither Mike nor Dallas showed any expression.

At last she seemed to gather herself. When she looked up again at Mike and Dallas, her voice was uncharacteristically harsh. “Ryder?” she said. “Did Ryder give you this?” She looked from Mike to Dallas. “Ryder gave you this. But why? Why didn’t she bring it to you then? Why would she keep it all these years? She knew? Ryder knew where he was? All this time?”

Dallas shook his head. “Ryder said she’d just found it. You’re sure you’ve never seen it?”

“No,” she said, her voice catching again. “No, never.”

“This is a fresh investigation now,” Dallas said more gently. “And very likely a murder case. You’ll need to expect this kind of questioning, and more, until it’s resolved.”

She nodded and sat quietly.

“Would you feel like going over the file now?” he said. “Over the things we need to clarify?”

“Yes.” She swallowed. “That’s fine.”

Easing back into the leather cushions and pulling Joe gently up into her lap as if for support and comfort, she glanced at Mike and reached to take his hand. Behind the desk, Dallas leaned forward.

“Carson Chappell and Ray Gibbs were equal partners in Chappell and Gibbs?” he said, taking a new and different tack.

“Yes, equal partners.”

“And you worked for them?”

“Yes, until Carson disappeared. Afterward, I couldn’t stay there, it was too painful. After a few months, I left the firm. Later that year I started my own accounting business.”

“When Chappell didn’t return, what happened to the firm?”

“After twelve months the court put Carson ‘s half into a trust for Irene, his mother, in case he should reappear. Irene Chappell became the silent partner, and Ray Gibbs ran the firm.”

The detective knew all this, as did Mike. Joe had seen it all in the file. Was Dallas giving her a breather from the more painful questions? Or did he think that even these straightforward questions might trip her up? Was he checking her story from ten years ago against what she’d choose to tell him now? This was not only Dallas ‘s case, now, but an interdepartmental, interstate investigation.

“And Ray Gibbs seemed to manage the firm in a professional way?”

“No,” she said quietly. “After Carson disappeared, Ray didn’t run the business well. That was another reason I left, I didn’t like to see that. He let things go, little details that soon multiplied into problems. I heard much of that from employees with whom I stayed in touch.

“Finally,” she said, “Irene’s trustees forced Ray to sell his share. Under the trust agreement, she had the right of first refusal. She bought the business and created a new trust to manage it, using the same three trustees. Her health wasn’t good, she had diabetes with several complications, and her trustees hired someone new to run the firm.”

“And the trustees were?”

“George Walker, who was a local bank president; Alan Seamus, who managed one of the golf courses; and her attorney, Marvin Wells.”

Dallas nodded, scanning the notes in the file. “And the manager they hired? How did he do?”

“Apparently, only passably well. About a year later, the trustees liquidated the business. I was in L.A. by then.”

“And you had no share in the business at that time?”

“I never did, I’d been only an employee.”

“How much did Irene get for the business?” Dallas said. “And where is she now?”

“She died last year, you must know that, Detective. She was an old, sick woman. I don’t know how much she got, I was in L.A. “

“The original interview says she was very fond of you. When she died, how much did she leave you?”

“She didn’t leave me anything,” Lindsey said, stiffening. “Except for Carson ‘s personal belongings, which I don’t think are of any monetary value. I was fond of her, and when I lived in the village we had lunch now and then. But we didn’t talk about personal business, certainly not about money. She was a very private person.”

Joe supposed that, after Carson disappeared, the department had checked Lindsey’s bank accounts and net worth. He knew Dallas would now do that again.

Soon Dallas finished with his questions, checked his watch, and rose. Shoving some papers in his briefcase, he told Lindsey he had an appointment, thanked her for coming in, nodded to Mike, and left the office.

Mike and Lindsey remained only a few minutes, idly talking, and then followed Dallas out. Joe thought Mike should be more relaxed with her now, since he wasn’t running an investigation, but instead he seemed ill at ease.

But then, as Joe followed them up the hall, Mike said, “You want to have dinner tonight? Maybe Lupe’s Playa-if you still like Mexican?” And Joe didn’t know whether to read romance into the question, or whether Mike wanted to pursue more questions on his own, or whether he had doubts, maybe new ones, that kept him operating in cop mode.

“I’d love to have dinner,” she said. “Of course I still like Mexican, and I love Lupe’s.”

And that was fine with Joe Grey. At Lupe’s he could settle comfortably atop the patio wall above Mike and Lindsey’s table, get their attention, pour on the charm until they’d fixed a plate for him, and then comfortably eavesdrop while enjoying an appealing selection of his favorite Mexican delicacies.

17

DINNER AT LUPE’S PLAYA didn’t turn out as the tomcat had planned. While Mike and Lindsey enjoyed an array of delectable Mexican dishes, Joe left the restaurant with a hollow belly, feeling grossly neglected. Heading hungrily home over the rooftops, followed by the aroma of enchiladas and chiles, he prayed fervently that Clyde and Ryan would be home soon so he could once more indulge freely in the delicacies to which he was accustomed.

The minute Mike had left the house, tonight, in Clyde ‘s yellow roadster to pick up Lindsey, Joe had hightailed it over the rooftops to Lupe’s, to crouch on the patio wall, concealed among the branches of a bottlebrush tree, waiting for them to arrive and be seated. At Lupe’s he couldn’t drop down to the patio’s brick floor and wind charmingly under the tables mooching handouts. Unlike other village caf?s with outdoor dining, Lupe’s frowned on cats among the guests’ ankles. At Lupe’s he had to wait atop the wall for Clyde to hand him up his supper-and tonight he’d expected to do the same. Expected to yowl at Mike and make up to Lindsey until the two shared their orders with him, passing up a bitof tamale, or enchilada, or chile relleno.

But not so. When the couple entered, they were seated not against the wall, as Clyde always requested, but near the center of the patio, next to a table of loud folks in a partying mood.

There was no way he could cadge a treat. Worse, with the surrounding talk and laughter pounding at him from dozens of tables, he had to strain to hear even snatches of their conversation; he could barely make out Mike’s questions, or Lindsey’s soft answers.

He heard Lindsey say, “It’s a shock, but…,” then something more, then “…know where she got…” Then again something the tomcat couldn’t hear. And then during a lull in the surrounding noise Mike said, “If not Nina, do you have any idea what other woman might have gone with him?”

Loud laughter from the four couples at the next table drowned out Lindsey’s answer. They were celebrating the skinny brunette’s birthday, and her laughter was the loudest. When at last they quieted, Lindsey was saying, “…but did the sherifflook for a second body?”

Mike said something Joe couldn’t hear, then during another short silence he caught snatches of Lindsey’s words. “If that woman…her clothes in his pack?” Another loud burst from the happy diners, then Mike said something that made Lindsey look the way she had in Dallas’s office as she read the plastic-wrapped letter, made her go pale and still and rigid. Joe was watching her so intently, pushing out from among the bottlebrush leaves, that he almost fell off the wall. There was more laughter from the party table, then two waiters appeared with loaded trays and began serving the revelers-and soon all was still there, as the diners concentrated on their sizzling platters, and Lindsey was saying, “…didn’t know her that well, she would never have confided something like that. If she’d had a gun, with California ‘s strict gun laws, surely she wouldn’t tell anyone.”

“Was she coming on to Carson, back then,” Mike asked, “despite the fact that her husband and Carson were partners?”

“That could have been,” she said, looking down, twisting her hands in her lap. “I didn’t see much of her, she was my boss’s wife, but I didn’t like her much, and I guess she felt the same.” At the next table several people were talking at once. Mike leaned closer to her, lowering his voice. He looked at her for a long moment, then put his arm around her, his words soft and private. Joe crouched on the wall for a few moments more, but when the large party of diners had demolished their dinners enough to start talking again, even louder, he gave it up, abandoned his supperless vigil, and headed home ravenously hungry, royally out of sorts, and having learned very little of interest.

He was in the kitchen morosely eating dry, tasteless kibble when the two came in, the heady scent of Mexican food wafting in with them to further enrage the tomcat. At the sound of the front door opening, a commotion of barking rose from the patio where Mike had left Rock for the short time he’d been absent. Joe sat in the center of the linoleum floor listening to Rock scratch at the locked doggy door. He scowled up at Mike and Lindsey as they came through to the kitchen smelling unkindly of Lupe’s Playa-scowled until he saw that Lindsey was carrying a small, white Styrofoam box.

Abandoning the kibble, he rubbed against Lindsey’s ankles, purring loudly.

She stood holding the box, looking uncertainly down at him. “Yousure this won’t hurt him? It’s awfully spicy.”

Mike shrugged. ” Clyde says to give him anything he wants. Chinese, curry, Mexican. Says the cat’s never sick.” But Mike, too, regarded Joe with misgiving.

Joe, leaping atop the counter, yowled demandingly in their faces. He wished he had a tail to lash. Having lost his tail when he was a kitten, he missed it only when a wildly switching appendage could augment a repertoire limited, temporarily, to imprecise yowls and hisses.

“He’s so hungry,” Lindsey said. “The poor thing. If you’re sure it’s all right…”

“It’s what Clyde said to do. If he gets sick,” he said, grinning, “you get to clean it up.”

She opened the box. Joe rubbed against her arm, purring louder than ever. When she set the container on the counter before him, he shoved his face into the still warm enchilada, lapping and slurping. Heaven couldn’t be better than this.

But did the two have to watch him? Did they have to laugh? Didn’t it occur to them to give a cat a little privacy?

Joe didn’t emerge from the Styrofoam carton until he’d licked the plastic clean, until he was replete and purring with enchilada, chile relleno, and beans. Outside the back door, Rock was still pawing and yipping impatiently. Mike had sensibly left him there until Joe finished his supper-Rock’s digestive system, unlike Joe’s, couldn’t handle such rich treats. Joe remained on the counter washing his paws and whiskers as Mike let Rock in, gave him some kibble, then fixed cappuccinos for himself and Lindsey. When the couple retired to the living room, where Mike lit a fire, Joe sauntered in past Rock, who had stretched out on the rug, and leaped into his own clawed and fur-covered easy chair, where he curled up pretending to doze as the couple settled cozily on the couch. Mike was saying, “You and Ryder have always been at such odds? Even when you were children?”

“We never got along, it was always war.”

“That had to be stressful. Is that why you never told me much about your childhood?”

“It’s painful to talk about, painful for me to go back to that time. Even when we were little, Ryder always demanded to be boss. She’d pitch a fit to get her way, and it was easier to let her have it.”

She sipped her cappuccino, her hazel eyes sad. “She’d get me into trouble for something she did, and Mama never believed me. I guess that’s a common enough scenario, the world over. But even so, it hurts.”

“And you didn’t fight back, didn’t stand up for yourself?”

She shrugged. “Ryder was two years older, and she was the beautiful one, she was Mama’s girl. Our father died in a highway accident when I was five, he was a trucker. After he died, I had no one to stand up for me, no one who really cared. I was the throwaway child.

“Later, the few men Mama dated, none of them made friends with me. It’s strange-they were all weak men, nothing like my dad. Almost as if Mama didn’t want them to compete with him? I never knew the answer.

“But then George came along,” she said, the sadness leaving her face. “She started dating George Afton. They were married when I was twelve. He was older than she, a coach at a private academy in Sacramento, and we moved there. It was a coeducational academy, but boys and girls had separate classes. Ryder didn’t like that, she didn’t like any of the rules. She didn’t like wearing a uniform, didn’t like being separated from the boys. I liked it all-the rules made me feel safe, as if someone cared about me.”

Tears glistened in her eyes. “George was the first person who ever stood up for me after Dad died.” She found a tissue in her pocket, was silent a moment, shook her head with embarrassment. “He defended me against Ryder and against Mama. He made Ryder back off, and he showed me how to stand up for myself.” Joe could see this wasn’t easy for her. “He taught me how to get back at Ryder, to give as good as I got. He showed me how to do that quietly if I could, or,” she said, grinning, “sometimes, not so quietly.”

She sipped her drink, leaning comfortably against Mike when he put his arm around her. “When George entered our lives, Ryder started treating me with some respect. It didn’t make her like me more, but it got her off my back.”

She gave him a wry smile. “She’s never forgiven George for that change in me. She’s never forgiven me.

“George tried to help Ryder, too, tried to get her interested in something that would deserve all her abundant energy. But it never happened. All she cared about were boys, clothes, movie magazines-she had a terrible hunger for surface pleasures, a voracious hunger for glitz and glamour.”

Lindsey looked down again at her hands, as if only they were neutral, offering a calm focus. “It’s a waste. Ryder’s beautiful, but what’s come of it? She’s not happy, far from it. And I’m not happy when I’m around her. I wish she hadn’t come back here, I wish she’d stayed in L.A. “

“She came because of Ray Gibbs?”

Lindsey nodded.

“And your opinion of Gibbs?”

“Oh, that he’s…an opportunist.” She looked at Mike intently, then burst out laughing. “The guy’s a sleaze. What else could you call him?”

Mike laughed, and touched her cheek. “That wasn’t a pleasant childhood. After your father died, you were lucky to have a second chance, lucky that George came along.”

She looked grateful for his understanding. “George’s friendship meant everything to me, he showed me the strength to grow up without losing myself. Without going off the deep end and getting into trouble.”

Mike looked at her for a long moment. She had tears glistening again, and she leaned into him. “It’s silly to be so emotional,” she said, “after so many years. I just…I guess I’m easily undone, just now.”

He kissed her and held her. Embarrassed, Joe Grey dropped off the chair and padded silently out of the room, heading upstairs to his tower, to the cool, empty, impersonal winds of the roof. Private was private, he was not a voyeur.

But even so, he spent the next week listening to Mike’s side of their increasingly romantic phone calls, watching Mike dress to take Lindsey out, or watching the two of them cook dinner together in Clyde’s comfortable family kitchen, laughing and easy with each other. Who knew a romance could progress-or be rekindled-so quickly?

But they had been very close once. And he had to wonder if this reawakened romance was indeed mutual. Or if Lindsey, despite what seemed to be her genuine and honest caring for Mike, despite her quiet charm and the touching account of her childhood, was only putting Mike on, winning him over again after their long separation-winning the law to her side.

No one could be sure, yet, that Lindsey Wolf wasn’t simply a very good actor. No one could be certain that she hadn’t killed Chappell.

The most obvious scenario was that she’d found out he’d taken another woman with him to Oregon, had followed them in a rage and shot him. Or shot them both.

If so, where was the woman’s body? Or had she not been shot, but escaped, seen the shooting and run?

And where did Lindsey dispose of the gun? He thought she wasn’t bold and arrogant enough to have kept a murder weapon that could easily lead back to her.

Had she buried it in that Oregon forest, thinking it would never be discovered? And then, ten years later when she read that the body had been found, she’d panicked? Afraid of what the cops might find, had she, with practiced innocence, contacted Detective Garza wanting to learn what the department knew or guessed? Wanting to know if Oregon had any evidence pointing to her? Wanting to know if she should run, but at the same time hoping to charm and distract the law? But that would be foolish, and would take more brassy nerve than Joe saw in Lindsey. If, indeed, he was seeing her clearly.

And what if Lindseyhadn’t killed Chappell, buthad received that letter? What if she’d suspected Chappell was in danger but hadn’t gone to the law, if she’d simply let the murder happen? If so, then wasn’t she as guilty as the killer, when that letter, in the hands of law enforcement, might have saved Chappell’s life?

One minute the tomcat had the gut feeling that Lindsey, despite her gentle charm, was lying, that she’d known for ten years that Chappell was dead. And the next minute he wanted badly to trust her and thought it more likely that Ryder had forged the letter, that maybe Ryder, or Ray Gibbs, had killed Chappell.

And, sprawled among the cushions in his rooftop tower, Joe thought the quickest way to find out was to move in with Ray and Ryder. Play lost kitty. Move in as a homeless stray, get cozy with them, listen to their conversations, toss their condo, see what he could learn.

Right. Get cozy with Ray Gibbs and Ryder Wolf. Play up to Gibbs, and Gibbs snatches him up and rings his little cat neck, or tries to. And for all he knew, Ryder could be just as vicious.

But what the hell, he was a big, strong tomcat. Those two sleazeballs couldn’t intimidate him. And it might be interesting, doing the lost kitty act.

He had soon talked himself into it, soon felt okay with the deception. “A piece of cake,” he said later when he told Dulcie his plan.

“Are you out of your furry mind? Move in with Ryder Wolf and Ray Gibbs? That Gibbs is a creep, Joe! He was Chappell’s business partner. He could be the killer, he might have had plenty of reason to kill Chappell.” They were crouched on Dulcie’s roof, watching for wood rats on the hill behind the house, speaking softly so as not to draw the attention of Wilma’s neighbors.

“He could have had something crooked going with the business,” Dulcie said, “and Chappell found out.” Her green eyes narrowed. “Do you know what went on in the firm, back then? Have you bothered to research that?”

“If Gibbs had anything to do with Chappell’s disappearance, Dulcie, the cops would have found out ten years ago. I read the file. Gibbs was the first one they looked at, the business partner, the possibility of embezzlement. Don’t you think they looked? A detectiveand Chappell’s trust officers went over all the books and found nothing.”

“But-”

“And Gibbs wouldn’t have killed him to inherit Chappell’s half of the firm,” Joe added, licking his paw. “That all went to Chappell’s mother, Gibbs didn’t get a cent.”

“But maybe Gibbs didn’t know that.”

“He had to know, it was all in the corporate papers. And two years before Carson disappeared, when Chappell and Gibbs caught one of their accountants embezzling funds, Gibbs went right to the law and to the newspaper. Laid it all out, furnished the DA with enough evidence to convict the employee, cooperated in every way.”

“Maybe that was a setup, to make Gibbs and the firm look good.”

Joe sighed. “Harper investigated it himself. In Harper’s report, they were squeaky clean.”

Dulcie flicked her tail. “I still don’t like you moving in with them, pretending to be a helpless stray.”

Tenderly Joe licked her ear. “You played lost kitty after Janet Jeannot’s murder.”

“This feels a lot more threatening than moving in with that nice old woman and her crooked son, spending a week among her collection of China figurines trying not to knock them over. She was right there in the house, he wouldn’t have dared hurt me-though I did worry about being trapped in there. It’s too easy to get shut in, Joe. If those two suspect you-”

“I’m acat, Dulcie.A stray cat. What would they suspect? That I’m a cop in cat skin, working undercover?” He nuzzled her whiskers. “Their purchase of the condo closed this morning. They’re moving in this afternoon. I’ll give them the day to get settled, then join them. If you want to help, you can play lookout, run surveillance for me.”

Dulcie was silent.

“Are you up for this?” Joe said impatiently. “Or do you mean to let me get skinned all alone?”

Dulcie looked him over, and sighed. “If you plan to play starving kitty, you’d better start fasting. Try to drop some of the fat off your ribs.” And she stalked away, her ears back, her striped tail lashing, her green eyes dark with unease.

18

DESPITE DULCIE’S DISAPPROVAL of the plan she was there the next evening waiting for Joe, crouched on the roof above the Wolf/Gibbs second-floor condo as the tomcat, sucking in his belly in a forlorn charade of starving stray, of dejected homelessness, prepared to charm his way into enemy territory.

The small, five-condo complex was tucked atop a row of village shops, the apartments surrounding a small roof garden that could be reached from the street below or from the underground parking garage by elevator, or by a stairway whose narrow steps were faced with bright, hand-decorated tiles. The views from the condos were of the village rooftops, of the small shops and caf?s below and the sea beyond. The Wolf/Gibbs unit faced Ocean Avenue with a private balcony overlooking that wide, divided street and its tree-shaded median.

This evening the sliding glass doors to the balcony stood open to catch the breeze, and through them drifted the voice of a national anchor, treating pedestrians on the street below to the early evening news. Joe, padding silently across the condo roof, left Dulcie beneath the branches of an overhanging oak and dropped down to the balcony where he peered in through the sliding screen.

Ray and Ryder had made short work of moving in. The living room furniture was already in place, and the happy couple sat on the couch having a drink and watching the overwrought commentator. The entire room looked as if it had been decorated by Rent-A-Center, Ray and Ryder taking advantage of a discount for the shopworn condition of the oversize off-white upholstered pieces and the matching white coffee and end tables flamboyant in design and scarred from frequent use. A vase of artificial mauve roses graced the ornate coffee table.

The couple seemed entranced by the news, with the latest lurid details of the latest high-profile murder, this one a multibillionaire widow found dead in her Rio de Janeiro penthouse. They were drinking something pink and tall with little flowered umbrellas tilting to the sides of their glasses, a drink that was highly amusing in the big hand of sweaty Ray Gibbs with his two-day growth of beard, his black jeans, and his black T-shirt emblazoned with a skull. Holding the delicate glass in meaty fingers, he laughed at the news shots of the murdered woman’s bloody body. Joe watched him with disgust and an unwelcome fear as he decided how to play this hand; crouching even this close to Gibbs made his paws sweat.

Should he finesse the sliding screen open and stroll on in, boldly treating the couple to his macho charm? He’d known several ordinary cats to handily open a screen door. Or should he push his nose at the screen and give out with the pitiful mewls, cringe, and play frightened kitty? See if a gentle stroke and a kind word were forthcoming-or a thrown shoe? He paused, debating, looking Gibbs over.

Ray Gibbs was a handsome man fast going to seed; he looked to Joe like a heavy drinker, with his cheeks starting to puff and his eyes baggy. He was maybe forty-five, about six two, well set up, but soft around the middle. His dark hair, though not excessively long, was ragged and could stand a good trim. What did young, well-turned-out, glamour-conscious Ryder Wolf see in the creep?

Money? Or maybe Gibbs was really good in bed? Whatever the case, the longer Joe watched him, the more he disliked the man-and the more certain he was that he didn’t want to barge brazenly in and lock heads with that hulk.

Maybe better to win Ryder over first, try to get her on his side, though he didn’t think she’d be a pushover. He glanced up at the roof, at Dulcie’s dark silhouette in the shadows of the oak branches. Her green eyes were intent on him. Taking heart from her claw-quick backup, knowing his lady was a tiger in a fight, he moved into the path of light that fell through the living room sliders, dropped his ears and sucked in his gut again, and let out a weak and tremulous mewl. A faint and frightened cry that neither Gibbs nor Ryder heard, apparently, over the loud deodorant commercial that now demanded their attention.

He tried again, louder, a plea so pitiful that Joe almost felt sorry for himself.

This time Ryder heard him. She half-rose, staring toward the door. “What’s that? What the hell is that?”

Gibbs turned to look. “A squirrel or something. What the hell’s it doing at the door?”

When Joe mewled again, Gibbs grabbed a folded newspaper. “A damn cat!” he said and headed fast for the screen.

“Mewwwoooooww,” Joe cried pitifully, crouched and subservient but tensed to run like hell. In one move Ray shoved the sliding screen back and swung the paper-but Ryder was behind him. She grabbed his arm. “Wait, Ray. Look at it, it’s starving.”

“It ain’t starving, look at that gut.”

Look at your own gut, Joe thought, primed to run as Gibbs towered over him.

“Oh, the pitiful thing.” Ryder knelt and reached out to him. Which only went to prove, after all, that you couldn’t always judge human character by a person’s response to an animal in distress.

“Come on, kitty,” Ryder said in a high, fake voice. Joe cringed and shivered. “Oh, look at him, Ray, he’s pitiful. And you’ve scared the poor thing.”

Hiding a smile, Joe rubbed against Ryder’s ankles, followed her into the living room and, at her baby talk and beckoning, followed her straight through to the kitchen. Ray stood watching them, scowling and fidgeting as if he’d like to get his hands on the damned cat.

In the kitchen Ryder poured milk into a bowl and set it on the floor. Joe was not a big fan of milk, and this milk was fat free, thin, blue, and disgusting. He lapped it up as heartily as he could, trying to look grateful, making a mighty effort to purr as he choked it down.

He cleaned the bowl as a starving cat should, wanting to upchuck the disgusting liquid, then followed her back to the living room and jumped on the couch close to her, prepared to snuggle down and treat her to a session of grateful purrs.

Ray, with one hard swat, slapped him to the floor.

Ryder looked angrily at Ray, but she made no objection. “Cats on the floor,” she told Joe sternly, shaking her finger at him-one minute kitty’s best friend, the next minute to hell with the cat as she submissively knuckled under to her lover. Joe looked at her narrowly but, remembering his mission, switched on the pitiful again, rolled over on the carpet looking up at her-and putting himself farther away from Gibbs.

Ryder leaned down, stroked him, and gave him the baby talk. “Leave him alone, Ray, he’s not hurting anything.” But she didn’t invite Joe back on the couch.

For the next hour Ryder was all sugar to the stray kitty, leaning down every few minutes between sips of her fresh drink to pet him as if to apologize for Ray’s rude treatment. Ray looked so annoyed that Joe wondered just how much information he’d be able to collect before this guy tried to strangle him.

But then, as darkness drew down and the glow of shop lights shone up from the street, Ray started talking about dinner and soon the couple left the couch, to dress. Joe, waiting impatiently for them to get out of there and leave him to search the place, could see into the bedroom and could hear them talking about an evening on the town, and that suited the tomcat just fine.

He watched Ryder shimmy into a short black dress, pulling it down over black panties and bra. Ray seemed to think that straightening his black T-shirt and brushing off his jeans was all the cleaning up necessary-that, and pulling on a pair of lethal-looking black boots with metal toes that could kill a cat with one kick.

Just before they left the condo, Ryder called the kitty into the kitchen again, where she unwrapped half a cold hamburger, scraped off the mustard and onions, broke it up, and put it on a paper towel on the floor next to a stack of packed moving boxes. “You be a good kitty, okay?”

“You’re not leaving that cat inside. Put it out, Ryder, before it makes a mess and stinks up the place.”

“He has no home, Ray, or he wouldn’t be here. It’s getting cold out. Look at how beautiful he is, just the color of that silver satin dress you bought me.” She looked up at Ray, batting her mascaraed lashes. “Someone’s dumped the poor thing, or has moved away and abandoned him.”

“The way Nina left me,” Ray said. His laugh made Joe shiver.

“We can leave the balcony door open,” Ryder said, “so he can go out if he needs to. No one’s going to climb in here over the roofs. And what would they take?”

Ray glanced toward the bedroom, scowled at her as if she’d lost her mind. But he left the sliding screen cracked open, turning once to stare at the apparently sleeping tomcat, a hate-filled look that made Joe’s fur crawl. The moment they were gone out the front door Joe was up again, ready to toss the place.

Padding out the open slider to the edge of the terrace, he peered down between the decorative wrought-iron rails watching them cross Ocean and turn in at the first restaurant that had a bar. When they’d disappeared he reentered the apartment, heading first for the bedroom where he could see several stacks of movers’ boxes jammed in the corners and around the door, all apparently sealed tight.

He didn’t much want to shred the tape and rip the boxes open, leaving awkward evidence. First, he tossed the room, clawing open the drawers in the nightstand and dresser looking for letters, for anything with hand printing like the letter Ryder had brought to the station. They hadn’t unpacked much. He found a wadded-up grocery list in a neat, cursive handwriting; he prowled the closet and its high shelf, searched under the bed and behind the pillows, and under and between the mattress and box spring as deep as he could reach. He left the sealed cartons for the moment and headed for the kitchen, where the boxes were already open.

Yes, five cartons stood on the floor by the dinette table, their flaps loose but still filled with dishes and pots and pans jumbled together with cans of food and a few articles of clothing that had been used as packing, and that smelled of Ryder’s musky perfume and of Ray’s sweat. Did Ryder intend to put all this directly in the cupboards, or did she mean to wash them first? Nocat would eat food smelling of human sweat, to say nothing of human feet.

Burrowing down into the nearest box, he knew this venture was a real long shot. And yet…What if he did find the same hand printing-or found a gun?

The odds were great against finding a gun in this tangle-and greater still that it would be the murder weapon after all these years. Ridiculous odds. And yet…That twitching sense of needing to do this kept the tomcat digging.

He was tunneling between bottles of cleaning liquids, trying not to spill any on himself, when he found, tucked among a stack of Ryder’s hastily folded sweaters, a small box of linen stationery, its lid embossed with a logo and with BARTON’S FINEST LINEN-WEAVE LETTER PAPER, SINGLE FOLD. Pawing off the lid, excitement making his fur twitch, he inspected the envelopes and felt his heart pound. This looked like the same kind of paper as Ryder’s letter, and when he eased the envelopes aside, the pages with their rough edges looked to be an exact match. Same color, same weave, same feathered borders. So good a match that he wanted to yowl with success-fate had smiled on him, big time.

Or he hoped it had.

With velveted paws, trying not to leave claw marks or paw prints, he worked the lid back onto the box then eased the box into one of Ray’s Tshirts, wishing, as he so often did, that he had opposing thumbs for these complicated maneuvers.

But with agile claws, and using his teeth, he managed to twist the ends of the shirt into a crude knot. Dragging his smelly package through the condo and out onto the balcony, he crouched beneath the overhanging oak. And, with the knot of the T-shirt clenched tight between his teeth, he leaped up the trunk, dragging his burden between his forelegs. He climbed awkwardly, the bundle scraping along under his belly. One last leap, from the tree to the roof, the package swinging precariously over empty space, and Dulcie reached out with fast claws and snatched it-and snatched Joe, too, to safety. He landed in her face, the package between them.

She nosed at the T-shirt, grimacing at the smell, but clawing with curiosity at the knot Joe had tied. “It stinks, Joe. Stinks of Ray Gibbs.”

“Couldn’t help it. Look what’s inside-it’s the stationery. At least, it looks the same as what Ryder said she found.”

“Oh, my. If it is, we have proof she was lying.”

“But it isn’t enough,” Joe said.

“But if it’s the same, if it can prove that Ryder wrote the letter-”

“Forgery, if that’s what the letter turns out to be, isn’t evidence of murder.” He looked at her intently. There was a sample of Nina’s handwriting in the cold file, but could that help identify hand printing? “I want to find the gun, Dulcie. I’m going back in. There are open boxes I can get through in a hurry, and then a whole stack of unopened ones.” Dragging the dark package beneath the oak’s overhanging limbs and out of sight, he said, “If I can open those boxes from underneath and crawl up into them, maybe they won’t notice for a while.”

She peered over the edge of the roof to the patio’s open door. “I’ll come, it’ll be faster.” And she crouched to leap down.

Joe stopped her with his teeth in her shoulder.

“Come on, Joe, before they get back.”

“If you come, we won’t have a lookout,” Joe said reasonably. “If Kit were here instead of-”

“Well, she isn’t,” Dulcie said shortly. “Comeon. We can listen for them.” And as they leaped down to the balcony, she said, “Howcould that slob Gibbs be an accountant? That’s a respectable profession, or supposed to be.”

Joe padded to the rail again, scanning the village for any sign of the absent couple.

“Gibbs owned half the firm,” Dulcie said, pausing by the open screen, “but he looks and talks like he just wandered in off skid row.”

“Whatever Gibbs is, Chappellis up there in Oregon, apparently shot twice, and if we can find the gun…”

“If he has a gun, won’t he be carrying it?”

“You don’t think he’d carry the same gun, do you? If he gets caught with that one on him…If he has that gun, Dulcie, it’ll be hidden somewhere.”

Dulcie looked at his determined scowl, refrained from pointing out that the murder had been nearly ten years ago, that a lot of gun trading could occur in ten years, and slipped beside him into the condo, through the open screen.

19

IT TOOK ALL of Joe’s and Dulcie’s strength to tip over a box, at an angle against the dresser, slice the tape with rigid claws, and rip open the bottom of the carton. Tunneling up inside, they dug among layers of clothes and sheets and towels and through a tangle of dog-eared paperback novels. They found no gun. They had reached the top, nearly smothered, when they heard footsteps on the outside stairs, then Ray’s enraged voice just outside the front door, Ryder’s angry retort, and a key turn in the lock.

Backing out of the box fast and pushing it upright, they fled for the living room just as the couple entered. Like a shadow Dulcie slid under the couch. Joe leaped into the white upholstered chair and curled up, pretending to be asleep. Why were they back so early? The two had hardly had time for a drink, much less dinner.

Ray barged in ahead of Ryder and stomped through to the kitchen; they heard him open the refrigerator and pop a beer. Ryder stood in the living room, her fists clenched as if trying to collect her temper. Joe heard Ray open a cupboard and slam what sounded like a jar onto the counter, heard him unscrew the lid and soon smelled peanut butter.

When Ryder seemed calmer, she crossed the living room and stood in the kitchen doorway, watching him.

“That tears it!” Ray snapped at her. “Your sister snooping around. What the hell was she doing in there?”

“She was having a drink. What else would she be doing? Don’t be so suspicious.”

“Why would she drink with a cop? He’ssome kind of cop, I’ve seen him around the station. What’s she up to? Why’s she nosing around, hanging out with cops? What did she say about the letter?”

“I don’t know what she said. I gave it to that Max Harper, the chief, and I left. How would I know what she said?”

Ray was silent; Joe could hear him scraping a spoon or a knife into the peanut butter jar.

“I still don’t understand why you wanted me to write that letter,” Ryder said, “when it lays the blame squarely on you.”

“I was already a suspect. Even if I didn’t kill him. Ten years ago, when he disappeared, they grilled me like I was Mafia or something. Itold you, if the case is being looked at again, that letter’ll throw them off. Can’t you understand that? If thatis Carson up there, and your sister had that letter all the time, then that throws the guilt on her. And why would you care? Better her than you.”

“Why would they suspect me?”

Ray’s laugh was sarcastic. “Think about it. If that body turns out to be Carson, and if the cops think that letter is for real, Lindsey will look guilty as hell. But if they find out it’s a fake, you’re the one in the hot seat. Either way, they’ll quit suspecting me, I’ll be off the hook.”

There was a long silence.

Ray scraped more peanut butter, most likely eating it from the jar.

“You don’tthink that’s Carson up there,” Ryder said coldly. “Youknow it is! You said Carson took off for Europe with your wife, you said you had proof.You said if I wrote that letter it would take the heat off you and wouldn’t hurt anyone. You said that couldn’t be Carson because he was out of the country, but now you’re saying…” The floor shook as she moved fast across the kitchen. There was the sound of a slap and scuffling and a jar fell to the floor, bouncing.

“They never flew to Europe,” she screamed at him. “You’ve known all along he’s up there.You killed him!You made me write that letter laying the blame on my sister!”

“What difference! You hate your sister. Hell, they don’t even have an ID on that body. How would they get an ID?”

“That’s what DNA is for.”

“Those police labs are backed up for years. You think they’re going to waste time on a ten-year-old corpse?”

Gibbs, Joe thought, would freak out when he learned Oregon had already ID’d Chappell. The tomcat smiled, wondering how many felons had been taken down by their own blind stupidity.

“They’ll ID him,” Ryder snapped, “one way or another, and now I’ve set Lindsey up. You said-”

“I just want her to quit snooping around. Stop her from messing around with those cops. Why’s she running with that cop, following us tonight?”

“How could they follow us? They were already in there, their drinks were half finished.You killed Carson, and now you’re worried about mysister snooping onyou?”

“You talk about snooping!You went through Nina’s things after she left.”

“I thought I might find something to show where she went, something a woman might notice that you wouldn’t.”

“That’s a crock,” Ray snapped. “By then, you were glad she was gone…But earlier, before she started seeing Carson, you and Nina got pretty close. What secrets did she tell you, Ryder? Did she tell you where she went when she used to go off by herself? I followed her once, up in them hills,” he said. “She was looking for something. Poking around those old ruins. Did she tell you what she was looking for? She damn well never told me!”

“Ifshe wouldn’t tell you, why should I! It was personal, it was about her aunt, nothing to concern you!”

“Money? Was that it?” he scoffed. “What, her crazy old aunt left buried money?”

“It was a keepsake, something of sentimental-”

“Oh, right! Nina was real sentimental!”

“Leave it alone, Ray. It was nothing that concerns you.”

“Everything concerns me!” The scuffling started again. A thud shook the floor, as if someone fell or was slammed hard against the wall. Joe and Dulcie left their cover, creeping closer to look, peering into the kitchen.

“Bastard!” Ryder shouted. “You followed him up there! You killed Carson!”

“I didn’t kill him! How could I when he was in Europe? I just don’t like cops nosing around.” There was a long silence, then, “You were crazy with jealousy when Lindsey told you she and Carson were getting married.You wanted Carson, you were hot as hell for him. You followed him up there and-”

“How could I shoot him when I’m scared of guns?”

“How did you know Carson wasshot?”

“Lindsey told me. It was in the paper, for Pete’s sake.”

“I didn’t see that in the paper. And you and Lindsey hardly speak. Why would she tellyou anything?” Ray hit her again, and she came storming out of the kitchen. The cats vanished under the couch. Peering out, they saw her grab her purse and slam out of the apartment banging the front door so hard Joe was thankful they hadn’t tried racing through.

“Out,” Dulcie whispered the moment the room was empty, “Out of here, now!” But even as they fled for the sliding screen, Ray emerged from the kitchen. He saw them and lunged for them, burning to take out his rage on anything that moved-as he grabbed for Dulcie, Joe leaped in his face, digging his claws deep, raking Gibbs’s whiskery flesh. He leaped free before Ray could grab him and was out the door beside Dulcie, across the balcony, and up the oak tree. As Ray burst out, they streaked higher among the concealing branches. Ray stood on the balcony swearing, staring up into the tree. At last he turned back inside, slamming the glass slider and pulling the draperies. ***

HALF AN HOUR EARLIER, in the sunken patio of the Running Boar, at the table closest to the stone fireplace, Lindsey Wolf and Mike Flannery sat talking softly as they sipped their hot spiced rum. In the early twilight, the patio was darker than the streets above. The fire on the hearth cast a ruddy, dancing glow across the small tables and onto the faces of the half dozen couples who sat enjoying early cocktails.

“It was only a little one-story cottage,” Lindsey was saying, “built during the days when the village was a religious retreat. In the old photos I have of it, the roof was really low, mossy, and sagging. Whoever renovated it and added the upstairs made a great attic living space.”

“You were lucky,” Mike said, “to find a combination office and apartment.”

“Iwas,” she said. “Perfect location, two blocks from Ocean. And the office is just right, with its open beams and fireplace-a far cry from the generic office I rented in L.A. And this one is all mine,” she said, her eyes crinkling with pleasure, “bought and nearly half paid for.”

She looked into the fire, sipping her toddy, then looked back at him, her hazel eyes dark in the dusky light. “It’s good to be back, Mike. Despite all that’s happened, despite having to face this pain and ugliness again.”

“Whydid you leave, Lindsey? You’ve given me excuses. But why, really?”

She looked at him for a long time. The waiter appeared, then turned away again as if loath to interrupt their intimate exchange.

“To simply say you were all mixed up,” Mike said, “that left me pretty uncertain. Mad as hell one minute, ready to fly down there the next minute and demand some straight answers-and then the next minute resolving to put it behind me, to forget you and move on.”

“And you did move on,” she said softly. “Why did you, Mike, why did you let me go?”

His jaw hardened. “What the hell? You were doing no more than playing hard to get?”

“No, I…I didn’t mean…”

“I didn’t think you were that childish, Lindsey. I didn’t think…” He stopped and turned to look behind him, where she was staring, watching the couple who had come down the five steps from the street. A big, scruffy-haired man in black jeans and black leather jacket, and Ryder, wearing a short, low-cut black dress, her tawny hair fluffed around her shoulders; Mike noticed again how closely Lindsey resembled her sister.

Seeing Lindsey, they paused at the bottom of the short stairs, and the man’s voice rose. “What the hell is this, Ryder!” He clutched her shoulder, spun her around, and dragged her back up the short flight. “Christ! Sitting there waiting for us! What did you do,tell her you were coming here?”

“I didn’t tell her anything, I didn’t know where we were going! I hardly speak to her!” Ryder hissed. She mumbled something more that Mike and Lindsey couldn’t make out as Gibbs hurried her away.

Behind them, Lindsey had gone pale. Mike put his arm around her, and she leaned into him. He searched her face sharply.

She shrugged. “Ray never liked me.”

“He was your boss, one of your bosses.”

“He…came on to me once, pretty roughly. In the file room. I told him if he did that again, I’d tell Carson-and that I’d file charges against him.

“He pretty much left me alone after that.”

Mike took her hands to warm them, they were cold and shaking-but whether from distress or from a harsher anger, he couldn’t be sure. ***

BACKING DOWN the oak tree to the roof of Gibbs’s condo, the cats licked bits of oak bark from between their claws, but Joe couldn’t wash away the sour taste of Ray Gibbs’s stubbly face.

“I wish,” Dulcie said, “you’d slashed his throat, down to the jugular.”

Joe smiled, wishing he had, too.

“Gibbs shot Carson Chappell,” Dulcie said. “He accused Ryder to make himself look innocent.Is there a gun hidden in there? Or is it buried in that Oregon forest? I guess,” she said with distaste, “I guess we’ll have to go back and toss the rest of the place.”

“Not tonight,” Joe said. He wasn’t going in again with Gibbs there. And more important was to deliver the box of stationery. He tried to decide where was best to leave it. At the back door of the station? Haul it through the window of Dallas’s Blazer and drop it on the seat?

How many pieces of evidence, over the years, had they dragged across the village to deliver to Molena Point PD-each time increasing the unease of Max and his officers over the identity of the unknown snitch? How many times had they made that delivery just hours after someone in the department expressed a need for such evidence? Or after some development that cried out for additional information?

It wasn’t half a day, now, since Ryder had brought in the letterin front of Joe Grey. Then an anonymous someone provides the detectives with a lead to the source of the letter. The cats looked at each other, thinking about that. And they left the condo hauling the black T-shirt over the dark rooftops, taking turns dragging it, moving directly away from Molena Point PD.

Carrying it perilously between them across spreading oak branches above the narrow streets, taking a circuitous route above the dimmest streets to avoid being seen from below, they at last backed down a pine tree in Wilma Getz’s garden and, with difficulty, were just able to force the package through Dulcie’s cat door, into the laundry.

They could hear Wilma in the kitchen, at the sink, could hear the water running. Dragging their prize through, they dropped it by the kitchen table.

“What?” Wilma said, turning from the sink where she was washing salad greens. She eyed with suspicion the wad of black T-shirt, lying like something dead on her clean blue linoleum. “What?” she repeated.

The cats looked up at her innocently.

“What?” she said a third time, not liking their wide-eyed stares.

“Evidence,” Joe said. “We need to leave it here for a while.”

“What evidence? Evidence to what? What have you two stolen now? Who’s going to break in here looking for it?”

Joe said, “You can’tsteal evidence. Evidence, by its very nature, is-”

Wilma wiped her hands on her apron, her look stern, her eyes never leaving Joe. Dulcie was silent, watching the two of them, thinking that over the years Wilma had grown as acerbic as Clyde-though she knew very well that, in the end, Wilma would join them in hiding the box of stationery.

The upshot was that Wilma put the black package in a shoe box and hid it at the back of her closet until the cats chose a more opportune time to deliver it to the law. Then, returning to the kitchen, she fixed them a snack of crackers, Havarti cheese, and deli turkey. “I have,” she said as she added a plate for herself and poured a cup of tea, “I have something to tell you.”

It was now that Sage woke and came hobbling out to the kitchen, encumbered by his cast and bandages. Kit padded sedately beside him, quiet and responsible, quite unlike herself. When Wilma lifted Sage into a chair, Kit leaped up beside him.

Wilma set the cats’ plates on their chairs. “While Charlie sat with Sage and Kit this afternoon, I did some research in the library.” She looked very pleased with herself.

“I looked first in the computer index of local history, and then went to the microfilm reader. My arm’s sore from cranking through back issues of theGazette. I thought I’d find it in the society pages, hoped I would…”

She paused to sip her tea. “And there it was,” she said with excitement.

“There what was?” Dulcie and Kit said together, lashing their tails with impatience.

“A picture of the same rearing cat.”

“In the society pages?” Dulcie said.

“The society pages. I thought I remembered it. I had an idea about what year it was from helping a patron research Molena Point in the 1920s. And there was the picture, just as I remembered. A photograph of Olivia Pamillon, a close-up of four women dressed for a charity ball.”

“And?” Dulcie said, fidgeting. She hated it when Wilma dragged things out, and she knew Wilma did it on purpose.

“She was wearing the bracelet,” Wilma said. “The rearing cat was quite clear.”

“Then thatis Olivia’s body,” Dulcie said. “But why would they bury her in that little courtyard and not in the family cemetery?”

“That I haven’t found out,” Wilma said. “I did find her obituary, and it says she’s buried in the family plot.”

“Did her family change their minds at the last minute?” Kit said. “Why would they?”

“Or,” Joe said, “did someone move the body?” The tomcat looked around at their unlikely little group, four cats in chairs and one human with her silver hair looping out of its ponytail. “Or,” Joe said, “is thatnot Olivia, in the grotto? Is that not Olivia, wearing her bracelet?”

20

IT WAS LATE the next morning when Clyde and Ryan returned home from their honeymoon. Joe Grey was napping in the sun on the roof outside his tower, taking a little personal time after facing off with Ray Gibbs the night before. He woke at the faintly familiar sound of the car slowing, and looked over the edge of the shingles.

The sight of the Damen entourage pulling up the street was so amazing that he nearly rolled off the roof. Standing with his front paws in the gutter, taking in the scene, he wished Mike were there to observe the newlyweds’ spectacular homecoming-talk about a pair of nutcases!

Early that morning Mike had gone off to the station, having cooked breakfast for Joe, a more than adequate omelet-though he had offered no imported sardines, a condiment the tomcat considered essential with his breakfast eggs. Joe couldn’t talk to Mike, couldn’t demand sardines. Sometimes he didn’t know how he’d survived before he discovered he could speak. All that incessant meowing just to get his message across and half the time people would stare blankly down at him with no clue at all, looking incredibly mindless.

Though he had to admit, despite their communication problems, Mike was fairly responsive-and he did make a pretty good omelet. This one was with sausage and goat cheese, a combination that Joe intended to bring to Clyde’s attention.

He wondered if Ryan would be making the omelets from now on. Not likely-she’d made it clear she’d rather repair the plumbing than cook a meal. But now…

The SUV had pulled into the drive, his family was home, and what a laugh. He couldn’t see much through the vehicle’s tinted windows, but it was so heavily loaded that it rode way low on its axel, and the tangle of castoffs tied to the top of that shining, cream-colored Escalade was enough to make a whole gaggle of cats crack up laughing. There was a carved mantel undoubtedly ripped from some decrepit house before the wrecking ball hit it. Five lengths of carved stair rail, ornate and dirty. A pair of heavy carved doors and various other odd-looking building parts Joe couldn’t identify. Further insulting the nice Cadillac SUV was the orange rental trailer hitched behind it, riding equally low, loaded with two more bulky mantels, five big cartons sealed with tape, and a dozen stained-glass windows carefully stacked, with folded blankets tucked between them.

Where was Ryan planning to put that stuff?

Clyde swung out of the Escalade, but Joe couldn’t see Ryan-then a big orange rental truck came up the street and turned into the drive, beside the Cadillac. Ryan, at the wheel, looked jaunty in a Windbreaker and baseball cap. This was the blushing bride’s demure return from a romantic honeymoon? As Clyde crossed the yard, Ryan stepped out of the rental truck flinging her cap on the seat. Both were dressed in worn old jeans and Tshirts, Ryan’s short, dark hair more than usually mussed and a streak of dirt across her nose, and Clyde with a big purple bruise on his arm. The newlyweds looked, not like a couple glowing from a week of romantic indulgences, but like a pair of traveling junk dealers.

If this was how they’d started their marriage, who knew where it was headed. Who knew where this pack-rat insanity would lead? As Joe hung over the roof peering down, Ryan, heading for the front door, seemed to sense him there above her. She paused to look up.

“Come on, Joe, come on down and greet the bride and groom-greet your new housemate.” Then she halted, listening for the sound of barking from the patio but hearing only silence. “Where’s Rock?”

Joe slipped across the roof and into his tower, then in through his cat door to a rafter above Clyde’s study. Dropping down to Clyde’s desk, then to the floor, he bolted down the stairs and into the living room-he couldn’t hold back his laughter as Clyde carried his dirty-faced bride across the threshold, he laughed so hard he thought he’d choke himself.

“Is this how you’re starting your new life? Looking like a pair of itinerant trash peddlers? Where have you two been?”

“When you’ve finished laughing,” Clyde said coldly, “would you like to welcome us home? Would you like to welcome your new housemate?”

Ryan had her fist to her mouth to keep from laughing, too, her green eyes merry, her cheeks flushed.

“You’ll get used to him,” Clyde said. “I hope you will.”

“Where’s Rock?” Ryan repeated suddenly, looking worried.

“At the station with Mike,” Joe said. “Making nice to Mabel, begging cookies.”

Ryan smiled. “Scoffing upyour treats,” she said with perfect understanding.

Joe grinned at her. “Where,” he said, “are you going to put all that stuff?”

“Not stuff,” Ryan told him. “These are treasures, Joe! Architectural gems. I’ll put them over at the apartment, in the garage. You didn’t think we were bringing it all in here?”

Joe looked at her in silence, the kind of unblinking cat stare that made people begin to fidget.

“Well,” she said, “thereare one or two pieces that I’ll slip into the carport until I’m ready for them upstairs. You want to see?”

He really didn’t want to look at the torn-out parts of old buildings that Ryan insanely coveted, but she was so thrilled with her discoveries. He couldn’t refuse, couldn’t hurt her feelings.

“I want you to see the mantel,” she said. “I’ll be saving that for some really special job. Beautiful hand-painted tiles, Joe, and it’s in wonderful shape.”

So, tiles. Joe yawned.So, okay.

“Tiles,” she said, “painted with cats. It came from Los Gatos, the city of cats, from a big old house that was torn down. It’s charming, please come and see.”

Cats? Curious, Joe trotted beside her out to the rental truck, leaping in when she opened the back doors-at once he saw the mantel and felt his fur bristle.

The face of the mantel was set with blue and white tiles, each six inches square, each painted with a cat: cats hunting, cats sleeping, cats rolling over, everything a cat could think to do. But it was the cat on the center tile that held his attention. This was exactly the same cat that appeared at the Pamillon mansion, the rearing cat carved over the doors to the bedchamber. The same cat that was embossed on the dead woman’s bracelet, rearing up with its paw thrust out in an attitude of austere command.

Joe stared at it for a long time, then he leaped to the top of a wooden crate, face-to-face with Ryan. “What did the dealer tell you about this?”

“Not a lot,” she said, frowning. “What’s wrong? I thought you’d be pleased.”

“What did he tell you?”

“That the house was built by a cousin of the Pamillon family, the family that built the mansion,” she said, gesturing in the direction of the hills and the old ruins. “What is it, Joe? What’s wrong?”

“Charlie told you about the body up at the mansion?” Joe said.

“Yes, she called us.” Ryan glanced out through the open tailgate at the neighbors’ houses. “Let’s go inside where it’s private.” She picked Joe up from atop the crate and slung him over her shoulder with a familiarity that both amused and pleased the tomcat. She smelled of cinnamon and of seasoned lumber. Heading inside, she set him on the couch and sat down beside him.

“What?” she said again, her green eyes searching his, wide with curiosity. “Whatabout the mantel?”

“The cat in the center,” Joe said. “The rearing cat. The body that the ferals found…It’s wearing a bracelet with the same cat.”

Ryan was silent, thinking about this. Clyde had sat down beside her and was holding her hand; he watched the two of them, saying nothing.

“And that cat is carved on a lintel, too, over a door of the mansion. The same cat as on the bracelet and on that tile.”

Ryan looked at him for a long time. “I don’t know what it means,” she said, “but maybe we can find out. Charlie told me your plan-if that works, maybe we’ll be closer to knowing what all this means.”

“And?” Joe said nervously. “You think the plan will work?” Was she going to buy his idea? Or was she going to start hedging, saying it might not work, might be nothing more than an off-the-wall cat dream?

Ryan was silent a moment, then laughed and reached to pet him. “It’s a great idea, Joe! It’s inspired!”

Joe looked up at her and purred, and was glad Clyde had chosen, so well, their new housemate.

“I tell Dad I want to test Rock,” she said, “to see if he has tracking potential. He’ll say I’m crazy, that there’s no point testing him until he’s had some training, no matter how naturally talented he is, that I would never be able to teach Rock anything in one day, that it doesn’t work that way.” She sat very still, looking at Joe so deeply that he began to shiver. Then, “He’d be right, you know. It’s absolutely nuts, no human could train a dog that way. But,” she said softly, “I think maybe you can,” and she grinned at him. “Let’s do it. Let’s go for it, Joe.”

21

THREE THINGS HAPPENED the morning after the honeymooners returned home. Ryan and Clyde and Joe Grey put the first step of Joe’s plan into action-the vital, pivotal step upon which the success of the operation depended. Kit and Sage argued hurtfully, and not for the first time. And Kit discovered Ray Gibbs lurking behind Molena Point PD, looking around warily as he shoved something against the locked back door.

The cats’ argument had begun the evening before at the Greenlaw home as Kit and her two humans, and Wilma and Dulcie and Sage, gathered for an early supper and a reading of the Bewick tales; it was that reading that sparked Sage’s sullen response and Kit’s anger.

The Greenlaw house was one story at the front but two at the back; the daylight basement had been converted to a separate apartment, which still stood empty, waiting for the right tenant. The view from both floors was of the village rooftops and the hills beyond.

Surrounding the house, Lucinda’s garden shone bright with early spring flowers, but the evening was chill, and within the cozy rooms a cheerful fire burned on the hearth. As the Greenlaws and Wilma settled down for supper in the corner dining room, they looked out over hills awash in golden light as early evening tucked itself down around the village. Wilma had brought a salad to complement Lucinda’s shrimp Creole, and for desert Pedric had baked a key lime pie. The three cats ate on the kitchen floor where they could splatter Creole sauce without regard for the rugs and furniture; already Sage’s pale fur and white bandages were splattered with tomato sauce as if he’d just endured a second bloody encounter. Whoever said cats ate tidily hadn’t seen these three, particularly when shrimp was on the menu. Only Joe Grey was missing; the tomcat was not a big fan of the ancient Celtic tales-and after supper, as everyone settled before the fire, it became apparent that Sage felt the same. As the humans sipped their coffee, and the cats licked the last splashes of Creole sauce from their paws, and Pedric read about doors that led beneath the green Celtic hills into under-earth worlds where lived cats that spoke like men, Sage grew increasingly uncomfortable.

The stories made Dulcie and Kit shiver with wonderful dreams, but Sage turned his back and curled up tight, his face hidden, not wanting to listen. Kit watched him, frowning.

Pedric read of cats appearing suddenly in ancient villages then disappearing, and the villages filling as suddenly with human strangers. His scratchy voice told of how an orphan child followed music from within a hill, and entered through a door carved with a rearing cat. “‘And there,’” Pedric read, “‘lay an ancient world, its sky as green as emerald, a world all peopled with cats who spoke like men.’”

But if Bewick’s retold folktales made Sage uneasy, it was the author’s own experiences with speaking cats as he rambled on a walking journey across Scotland that startled everyone, his encounters at crofts and farmhouses where the country families gave him lodging.

“‘I had been, in this short tramp, particularly charmed with the border scenery; the roads, in places, twined about the bottoms of the hills, which were beautifully green, like velvet, spotted over with white sheep, which grazed on their sides, watched by the peaceful shepherd and his dog.

“‘But it was the cats I met in that part of the country, the strange and unnatural cats that gave shocking credence to the folklore of the region. These were the speaking cats of legend,’” Bewick wrote, “‘and one cat in particular, who lived in a small thatched cottage with an old grandmother, entertained me with the gossip of that region, telling stories of the weddings and births, and, purring slyly, telling me the misdeeds of his human neighbors; and he related heartrending tales, too, of the ferocious battles among the region’s forbearers, where wars seemed a way of life.

“‘But no war, no atrocity, nor wonder of the land itself, could match the amazing existence of that cat and of those four like him whom I met on my Scottish journey. Even the folktales which I have published herein cannot begin to match that wonder. And surely those stories were based far more on fact than most men could ever guess.’”

Wilma recognized passages that were the same as in the more common edition of Bewick’s memoir, where the folktales and encounters with speaking cats did not appear at all. She’d never seen this rare composite, she hoped that perhaps Bewick had printed only very few copies. When Pedric closed the book, they were all wondering how many people over the years had read these same pages, how many well-meaning folk had shared Bewick’s discoveries, not thinking how dangerously cruel such knowledge could be when passed on to others, how it could inflame human greed.

Sage, by this time, was fidgeting and scowling. Everyone watched him, but Kit most of all, her dark ears back, her tail twitching with irritation. When Pedric had finished reading, she crouched for a long time looking at Sage, then she rose to prowl the house, her tail lashing, her yellow eyes blazing; and soon she slipped out of the dining room window and across the oak branch to her tree house where she could be alone.

Quietly Dulcie followed her, concerned for the young tortoiseshell. She found Kit curled up on a cushion in the far corner of the tree house, still scowling, her fluffy tail tucked morosely beneath her. Dulcie approached, sniffed at her, and curled up beside her.

“What, Kit? What’s wrong? Sage doesn’t like the old tales, but why does that bother you so? Joe doesn’t like them either.”

“That’s different,” Kit said, hissing at her.

“Can’t Sage have his own likes and dislikes? You’re his friend, you should understand that. Or maybe more than his friend?”

“It’s the way he…,” Kit began miserably. “He so hates the old tales where there are heroes, where there are brave cats saving the weak. He calls those stories foolish.” She looked crossly at Dulcie. “That’s what Stone Eye told him, and he always believed Stone Eye, he thought Stone Eye knew everything-when all he really knew was how to bully us.”

“But Sage turned on Stone Eye,” Dulcie said, puzzled. “Sage fought him, and helped kill him.” This was more complicated than she’d imagined-and more important to Kit.

“Yes,” Kit said, “I thought he’d changed. Maybe he did for a little while. I thought after the battle, with Stone Eye dead and the clowder free again to run and live as they choose, I thought Sagesaw what a tyrant Stone Eye was.

“But he hasn’t changed,” she said sadly, tucking her nose under her paw.

“But you love him, Kit?”

Kit looked up pitifully at Dulcie. “I love what he could have been. Whatwe could be, running free together on the hills and no one to beat us down and fill us with ugliness…

“But I can’t love that he still worships Stone Eye’s cruel ways. I don’t want to be with him if those ways are still part of him.” And miserably Kit closed her eyes and ducked her head again, shivering.

Dulcie lay beside her for a long time puzzling over Sage and hurting for Kit, and the evening ended, for all of them, not filled with the joy Dulcie and Wilma had expected from hearing the old tales, but with unease all around. ***

THE NEXT MORNING Kit didn’t appear at Dulcie and Wilma’s house to share breakfast with Sage, as she had every morning since he’d arrived. When they had finished their pancakes and she still hadn’t come, Wilma phoned Lucinda.

“She slipped out at first light,” the older woman said. “She isn’t there?” she said worriedly. “I saw her padding away over the farthest roofs, her head down and her tail dragging, and I thought…She was like that all night, would hardly talk to us. I’m frightened for her, Wilma. I’m frightened that she’s sick; she says not, but…”

Dulcie lifted her nose from her syrupy plate. “Tell Lucinda she’s not sick. I know what’s wrong, I’ll go and look for her,” and, licking syrup from her whiskers, she took off though her cat door, raced through Wilma’s garden, and up a tree to the neighbors’ roofs. There she paused a moment, then headed for the library-this morning was story hour. Sometimes when Kit felt blue, she would join the children while they were read to, wanting the warmth and love of the children petting her and the joy of a good story for comfort.

Across the rooftops to the library’s red tile roof Dulcie raced, and down a bougainvillea vine to the front garden, where she reared up, looking in the big bay window of the children’s reading room.

Yes, there was Kit crowded among the children on the long window seat. Dulcie could hear the librarian’s story voice, and the kids were laughing.

Waiting for the story to end, Dulcie padded in through the open front door as if to make her official library rounds, preening and purring while the patrons and librarians petted and spoiled her. She was, after all, the official library cat. When she didn’t appear on a regular basis, Wilma was deluged with questions: Was Dulcie all right? Was she sick? Did she not like the library anymore?

It was nearly an hour later when Kit came padding out of the children’s room. When she saw Dulcie, she followed her out into the garden and up to the roof, but when they were alone, she said nothing. She paced irritably, as fidgety, now, as she had been dark and morose the night before.

“What?” Dulcie said. She was grateful for the change in Kit, that she no longer seemed to be grieving. But what was wrong now? The curved roof tiles felt cold under her paws, the shade of the overhanging cypress tree damp and chill as she watched the pacing tortoiseshell.

Kit paused in a patch of sunshine. “I saw that man this morning on my way to the library. That Ray Gibbs. I saw him at the PD, he sneaked in through the back gate to the police parking lot and up to the back door looking all around not wanting to be seen and he left a note there with a rock on it to hold it down and then he sneaked away again, fast.” Now, though she seemed as eager as ever in telling what she’d seen, just beneath that paws-over-tail earnestness was the same flat pall that had subdued Kit last night, her eyes not quite as flashing, her enthusiasm not bursting out like rockets, as was her way. That saddened Dulcie, that made her feel flat and grim, too.

“Maybe the note’s still there,” Dulcie said, hoping to distract and cheer Kit, and she crouched to run, to head for the PD.

“No,” Kit said. “Officer Brennan saw it, coming to work. He picked it up. What would…?”

Dulcie imagined hefty Officer Brennan bending down in his tight uniform and picking up the note. “If Brennan found it, then it’s inside, on someone’s desk. Come on.” And she took off across the roofs, glancing back to make sure Kit was with her.

They arrived on the courthouse roof just before the change of watch. Backing down the oak tree, they waited, crouched in a bed of Icelandic poppies, for someone to open the heavy glass door so they could slip inside.

“You feel better this morning?” Dulcie said softly. “You want to talk about it?”

“No. Yes…No.”

“He’s still your friend.”

“I suppose.” The joyous young tortoiseshell seemed to have slipped away again, leaving only a morose shadow of what she should be, and Dulcie hurt for her.

They were quiet for a while, waiting to get inside, the morning brightening around them, cars pulling into the parking lot beneath the big oak trees as folk went to their jobs in the courthouse. Most of the officers were going in and out of the back this morning, they could hear car doors slam behind the building. But then a uniform approached the door. “Come on, Kit, here’s Wendell.” And the cats slipped out from among the poppies and skinned inside on the heels of the young officer. ***

LEAPING TO THE dispatcher’s counter, waving their tails, they smiled at Mabel Farthy then wandered down to the end where Detective Davis was talking on the phone. Kit looked at the note Davis held and cut her eyes at Dulcie, hiding a little smile, as if she recognized the look of it, and that was the first smile Dulcie had seen all morning. Davis was saying, “Brennan brought it in, it was tucked under a rock at the back door.”

The note was typewritten, and unsigned. When Dulcie reared up, rubbing against Davis’s shoulder and her face brushing against the phone, she could hear Harper’s voice clearly. “Typewritten or computer?”

Davis petted Dulcie absently, glancing down to see if the tabby was depositing cat hairs on her dark uniform. “It’s a printout.” Beside her, Dulcie read it quickly.

Police Chief Max Harper:

Regarding the reopened investigation of Carson Chappell’s disappearance: When Lindsey Wolf reported Chappell missing, she lied to the detective about where she was. She was not in the village. She rented a car from Avis and was gone all week. Here is a photocopy of the dated rental receipt in her name. I do not know where she went. Good luck in this investigation.

Had Ray Gibbs written this? Dulcie wondered. Or Ryder? She hadn’t seen a computer in the condo. Maybe Ray had a laptop tucked away somewhere. Or he could have used a library computer. But were these Gibbs’s words? Was his English that good? Well, hehad held an executive position as half owner of Chappell& Gibbs, no matter how unfit he seemed for that kind of work.

Davis said, “Who the hell drops these things? Is this one of our snitches?”

The phone crackled as Harper said, “Whoever dropped it, why wait until now?”

“My gut feeling is that Lindsey Wolf isn’t the kind to follow Carson up into the forest and shoot him,” Davis said.

But, Dulcie thought, could anyone say for sure what another person would do? Could anyone be positive that another person wouldn’t commit a crime completely out of character, given sufficient cause and the right conditions? And she could see that despite what Davis said, the officer knew that was so.

Had Lindsey killed him, despite how nice she seemed? Did Lindsey have the missing gun that they hadn’t yet found in Gibbs’s condo? And the romantic little tabby thought,Oh, if Lindsey turns out to be a killer, that will break Mike Flannery’s heart.

“I’ll see if I can lift latents from the letter,” Davis was saying, “or get it off to the lab.” And as Davis hung up, Dulcie dropped down to the counter.

Now, with this new piece to the puzzle, with two anonymous notes in the mix, Dulcie burned to bring the box of stationery to the detectives. And she burned to slip into the condo again, look in the remaining boxes for a laptop and maybe a small printer, for a gun, and for samples of hand printing. And she left the station beside Kit thinking, with sweating paws, about another break-and-enter within those confining walls.

22

IT WAS JUST dawn when Ryan’s red pickup headed up the hills on the narrow dirt road that led to the Pamillon estate. Sunrise stained the green slopes and sent a rosy glow into the cab. Ryan drove, her dad sitting in the front beside her. Behind them Rock rode restlessly in the backseat of the king cab, his short tail wagging madly: Adventure lay ahead, he sensed Ryan’s intensity, and the big dog quivered with anticipation.

Mike sat turned, watching him but thinking about Lindsey, who had gone on an errand with Dallas this morning, and the Scots Irishman was as restless as the Weimaraner. Ryan watched her dad with amusement, knowing that he was jealous, jealous that Lindsey was with Dallas, and she turned away to hide a smile.

Dallas, now that he had an ID on Carson Chappell, had wanted a look at Chappell’s belongings, which Lindsey had stored in a locker up the valley. A perfectly straightforward errand, but it had Mike fidgeting.Dad, you’re getting serious, she thought, grinning.

The day before yesterday, when Ryan and Clyde had gotten home from the wine country, her dad had swung by the house to bring Rock home, to drop off Clyde’s roadster, and to pick up his clothes; Lindsey had followed him in her Mercedes. He’d said they were off to the dealerships, that it was time he bought a car, that they’d have an early dinner up the coast. In Ryan’s opinion, when a guy took his date with him car shopping, he was hooked-and now this morning Lindsey was off with Dallas on a perfectly innocent errand and he was as jealous as a kid.

But as Ryan came up over the last hill below the Pamillon estate, she thought she’d have her dad’s full attention very soon. That for the next hour, Lindsey would take a backseat to what was about to happen.

Mike thought this venture to “test” Rock’s tracking skills was foolish, he’d made it clear it could do more harm than good, could create problems with Rock’s future training-but early this morning, in the dark hour before dawn, Clyde and Joe Grey had left home in the roadster, heading up here to the ruins to execute their part of the plan.

Mike didn’t have a clue to what he was about to witness. He knew Clyde had laid a trail, but he thought he was going to see a confused, uncertain dog or a dog running crazily off after squirrels or deer, that he was going to see a very embarrassed handler. But in a few minutes, her good dog was going to prove Mike Flannery way wrong. Was going to show Mike the impossible-and was going to win her a hundred-dollar bet. She could already feel that crisp bill lining her pocket.

Mike didn’t often gamble. When he did, his bets were penny ante, never for a hundred bucks, but this morning he knew he couldn’t lose.

He believed he couldn’t lose, Ryan thought smugly. Yesterday she and Clyde, and Joe Grey, had worked with Rock up at the Harper ranch, with only Charlie to witness their bizarre training session as, quickly and efficiently, the gray tomcat had instilled in Rock a hunger for tracking, an intent focus, that would have taken a human trainer months to accomplish.

Joe’s tutoring was inspired. The tomcat employed a brilliant show-and-tell method that no human trainer could ever duplicate.

Rock already knew the word “Find” that Clyde and Ryan used around the house: “Find Clyde,” or “Find Ryan.” Before Joe’s first training session, Rock had considered the command a word to be obeyed, or not, depending on his mood.

Now, after Joe’s training, that word brought the big dog to full attention. The command was no longer arbitrary.

Now, they must never again use “Find” in a casual or unthinking way. Now, “Find” must be reserved only for Rock’s serious work.

Yesterday afternoon, before Ryan and Rock arrived at the ranch, Clyde had walked a complicated trail through the Harpers’ pastures, leaving his scent in the air and on the low grass and earth, a trail that only an animal could detect, then he had vanished into the woods.

When Ryan and Rock arrived, her command to “Find Clyde” had garnered only a happy, doggy smile. Not seeing Clyde nearby, Rock had laughed up at her and was about to race away to the pasture to play with the two Harper dogs when Joe Grey took command.

The tomcat moved in front of Rock, fixing him with a bold gaze.“Find Clyde! Find Clydenow!”

Rock had always paid attention to Joe. The phenomenon of a talking cat had never quite lost its shock value. Now, when Joe commanded, Rock cocked his head, staring down at Joe, his ears up, his short tail wagging. Of course he had caught Clyde’s scent, but Clyde wasn’t in sight, so what was all the fuss?

Joe put his nose to the ground, sniffing up Clyde’s scent, and again he told Rock to”Find! Find Clyde now!” and he set off on the trail in a passion of excitement, the tomcat’s every move meaning business-and Rock came to full alert. Touched with doggy awe of the tomcat, the Weimaraner put his own nose to the ground and fell in beside Joe, drinking up the scent, huffing with Joe’s challenge: This strange tomcat was, suddenly, keenly fixed on matters of mysterious importance.

Following Joe’s lead, Rock stayed intently on Clyde’s trail back and forth along every turn and backtrack that Clyde had made. Joe’s intense concentration was the key. This predatory pursuit of the trail by another animal awakened in the Weimaraner’s blood all the skills he was bred to. Soon he was racing ahead of Joe, nose to the trail, caught in the deep animal thrill of tracking, experiencing an explosive epiphany in his doggy soul-this pursuit spoke to the Weimaraner’s deepest needs, to a genetic hunger older than the breed itself, to an imperative as ancient as Rock’s wolf ancestors. He knew nothing but the scent he tracked, he flew after it, he wheeled and doubled back and plunged ahead through the woods, cutting sharply around the oaks and pines. He never wavered onto a rabbit or deer track, though Joe said later that those smells had been fresh and enticing.

When at last Rock found Clyde hiding in the woods, he keened a sharp, quick series of barks and plowed into Clyde, leaping on him, yipping and whining. The two of them tussled roughly, Clyde laughing and Rock barking with pleasure. The word “Find” had become a red flag of fierce excitement, the lesson imprinted so sharply on his keen Weimaraner mind that it would never be forgotten.

That same afternoon, under Joe’s direction, Rock had tracked Ryan with equal focus and joy. And just before supper he’d tracked Charlie. When he found her hiding in the hay barn, he was all over her-manners were on hold when it came to tracking, manners would be considered later, under different circumstances. Right now the key was enthusiasm and joy, and the team let Rock know he was the most wonderful dog the world had ever seen.

Ryan had been so thrilled with the performance that she had hugged Joe Grey, nearly smothering him, hardly knowing what to say to him. “If you weren’t so valuable to the department, you could be a professional dog trainer. Except Detective Davis, for one, would rather you stayed on as snitch, forever.”

“What?” he said, shocked. “She doesn’t know! What did she say?”

“She doesn’t know,” Ryan said, laughing, teasing him. “But after Christmas, after you three helped nail the man who killed that little girl’s father, Juana said she didn’t care who the phantom detectives were, she just hoped they’d be on the job until hell froze over.”

Joe smiled hugely, couldn’t stop smiling. He watched Ryan stroke Rock as the big dog leaned happily against her. “He’s ready for tomorrow,” he’d told her. “More than ready.”

She’d hugged him again, and kissed his ear. “This is a miracle, Joe. And Dad thinks our test is going to bomb.” And she and Joe Grey grinned at each other. This time, this one time, Mike Flannery would have egg on his face. ***

SO IT WAS that early this morning, before daylight, before Mike and Ryan set out, Clyde and Joe had driven up to the ruins where Clyde walked a circuitous, wandering path that ended at last within the grotto beside the unknown grave. There, with a stick, Clyde had uncovered one bony hand so that Rock, and then Mike, couldn’t miss the body.

Joe, losing himself among the fallen walls, had stayed well away from Clyde’s trail so as not to lay his own scent and divert Rock. As the sky began to lighten, stained by the brilliant sunrise, Clyde could just see the tomcat atop a far wall, a gray shadow, rearing up for a moment to watch Ryan’s red truck make its way up the narrow dirt road.

Quickly Clyde scattered a few leaves over the skeletal hand, then settled down on the mossy bench with a book, waiting for Rock to find him.

But he didn’t read much, he was too interested in the drama about to unfold. In the cool little grotto surrounded by overgrown jasmine vines and camellia bushes entangled with the weeds, he listened to the truck pull in among the fallen walls. Standing concealed among the shadows, he watched Ryan and Mike swing out, Ryan holding Rock on a short lead. They were perhaps a third of a mile away. Clyde watched Ryan open a plastic bag containing one of his own dirty socks and present it to the Weimaraner. She would be saying,“Find Clyde. Find Clyde now.”

He watched Rock sniff the sock, then sniff the ground, then stare up at Ryan. Rock circled, and circled wider, pulling her along-and suddenly, his short tail wagging madly, he took off fast, his nose to the ground, forcing Ryan to run; as the big dog sped along the scent, Clyde could hear Ryan’s occasional encouragement, hear Rock’s faint huffing, and hear pebbles being dislodged as Rock scrambled among the fallen walls.

He’d catch it tonight, he thought, grinning, for the rough route he’d laid, for every one of Ryan’s scratches and bruises. He watched the two disappear and reappear beyond tangled walls and fallen trees and then among the sheltering wings of the house itself, watched Mike following at some distance, an incredulous frown on his face, a hard look of disbelief-as if sure that his daughter was scamming him.

Clyde could still see Joe among the far rubble, observing the unfolding drama from atop a pile of broken concrete, his gray coat barely visible as he watched Rock’s sure and steady progress. Clyde found it hard to believe that that lovely woman leaning back on the lead, that beautiful, lithe woman with the short, dark hair, her lovely green eyes lifting up to him once, that beautiful woman in the faded jeans curving so enticingly over her tight little butt was his wife. That tough, gentle woman speaking so softly to Rock and with such contained excitement as the big dog pulled her along between the fallen walls and dead trees.

He watched the Weimaraner make a sharp turn around the broken gate just as he, himself, had done earlier, then circle the remains of a collapsed toolshed, then wind twice through the tangled, half-dead fruit orchard-and head straight for the grotto. Rock’s nose was up now, air scenting Clyde, as sure and skilled as any seasoned tracker-then suddenly Rock saw him. Jerking the lead from Ryan’s willing hand, he streaked for the grotto, leaped on Clyde, barking and roughhousing. Ryan hurried in, Mike behind her, saying exactly what they’d expected.

“You’ve been training him! This is no test, you two! This is a seasoned tracker. This is a scam! The bet’s off, my girl.”

“How could I train him?” Ryan said indignantly. “When have I had the time? We’ve been on our honeymoon, in case you hadn’t noticed.You’ve had the dog all week.” She sat down beside Clyde on the bench, hugging and praising Rock, then looked up at her dad again. “The bet’s not off. I’ve had no time to train him.”

Mike looked at his daughter patiently. He knew he’d been scammed but he didn’t know how.

Ryan smiled and shrugged, looking blank. She daren’t look at Clyde, she knew they’d both laugh and they couldn’t afford to do that. This was not a joke that could be told later, this was a secret they must keep forever, that they could never share.

And it was then, as she pummeled Rock and looked up secretly at Clyde, that the dog swung suddenly away from her, scenting eagerly toward the bushes. She grabbed his collar.

“What?” she said softly. “What is it?”

Rock was at full alert, huffing in deep breaths.

Snapping on his lead again, keeping the big dog close, she let him pull her. Rock was on perfect point, steady and intent, his attention focused on a few small, frail bones barely visible beneath the rotting leaves.

23

RYAN KNELT BESIDE Rock, holding him while Mike pulled aside the overgrown bushes. “What do you have, boy?” she said softly, trying to sound puzzled. “What’s there?”

But when Mike, parting the overgrown camellia branches, saw the small dark bones of the fleshless hand he grabbed Ryan’s shoulder, pulled her and Rock back so they would disturb nothing more.

“What the hell?” Clyde said, moving up beside them, looking down at the frail hand then looking up at Mike as if his father-in-law could explain this. “He’s found…Someone’s buried here?”

“Apparently,” Mike said, frowning at Clyde. He looked at Ryan for a long moment without expression, and she felt her heart sink. He knew something was going on, her dad could smell a scam a mile away. Why had she thought they could pull this off?

But they had to make him believe this was an innocent discovery, they had no choice. “Could this be a family grave?” she said, looking beneath the branches as if for a grave marker or tombstone. But again Mike pulled her back. “Let the department look, Ryan.”

“I didn’t think…,” she said, and stood with her fist to her mouth, as if embarrassed that she might have disturbed evidence, and distressed by the grisly discovery. She watched Mike flip open his cell phone to call the department, listened to his short discussion with Dallas when Mabel had patched him through.

“Dallas is still up the valley,” Mike said. “He and Lindsey-headed this way.”

The three of them stood in the silence of the ruins staring at the dark, frail bones and at the gold bracelet half covered with earth. The only sounds were an occasional birdcall, and the scrambling of a squirrel among the crumbling walls. At last Mike turned, studying Ryan again. “Rock did great. But that was no test, he’s had training.”

“I swear. We just got home! I haven’t had time to do any training. This was the test! To see if wewant to train him.”

Mike was silent.

“Iknow he did great. I’m so proud of him,” she said, kneeling to hug Rock again. “But he’s bred to this, and he’s so bright and eager-and he did track Charlie when she was kidnapped. Maybe that’s all it took, that one time of being really committed, and he settled right in.”

Mike looked at her coolly, knowing as well as she that her explanation wouldn’t wash. “Whatever you’ve been doing,” he said quietly, “it’s working just fine.” And he turned away from them as if listening for the sound of tires on the dirt and gravel road, though Dallas should be another fifteen minutes or more.

“I’ll have a look around,” he said, “meet Dallas around front, show him where we are.” And he moved off toward the building, walking slowly and studying the ground. Behind him, Clyde gave Ryan an uneasy look, and she shook her head with concern. Not only did he not believe her, he was hurt that she would lie to him, and that in turn hurt Ryan.

From the roof above, Joe Grey watched and listened uneasily, his paws kneading with distress because Flannery wasn’t quite buying this. The tomcat, having made his way up a dead oak to the roof of the two-story mansion, was crouched, now, on the lower roof of the bedchamber wing concealed by overhanging branches, as worried as Ryan and Clyde by Mike’s skepticism.

Earlier, watching Rock find Clyde, he’d wanted to cheer, had felt wild with the thrill of the big dog’s eager skill and of his own training technique. He’d watched Rock find the grave, then listened as Mike called Dallas to report the body. Now, listening to Mike tramp away over the fallen rocks, he watched Clyde cuddle Ryan close.

“Did he buy it?” Ryan was saying softly, trying to reassure herself.

“He’d better have,” Clyde said. “Why wouldn’t he? Rock was sensational. He might argue that you’ve been training him, but he’ll never guess the truth.”

Rock, at the sound of his name, pressed close against their legs. Both Clyde and Ryan were quiet, petting him and staring down at the dirt-stained bones, wondering what, exactly, Mike Flannery did think. And above them Joe crouched, wondering the same, then wondering about what he’d heard earlier at the far end of the grounds where a stand of eucalyptus trees sheltered an old, half-fallen garden shed.

Twice he’d thought he heard noises among the rubble, but when he galloped across the broken walls to look he’d seen nothing move, and had smelled nothing unusual among the sharp, nose-tingling scent of the eucalyptus trees. Deciding it had been only a squirrel scrabbling about, he hadn’t gone on to the decrepit shed, he’d hurried back to the wall, not wanting to miss the moment when Rock found the body.

Below him, Clyde and Ryan sat down close together on the moss-covered concrete bench, Rock leaning against their knees, the three of them happy just to be together, content in the peaceful surround. For a moment, watching them, Joe felt a sharp pang of loneliness-or was it a stab of jealousy?

It was at this moment that Ryan looked up at him. She wasn’t surprised to find him there. She grinned at him, and winked. Clyde looked up, the three of them shared a long look filled with pride in Rock, and in what they had accomplished. The little family remained so, Joe on the roof, the three below quietly snuggling, until they heard from down the hill, beyond the mansion, tires on the gravel road.

They listened to the vehicle approach and then pause, its engine idling, and they could hear another car behind it. They heard men’s voices, then the crunch of tires again. And in a moment Dallas’s tan Blazer came into view around the far end of the mansion, careening over the rough ground, followed by the coroner’s white Ford van and then Detective Davis’s car. They could see Mike in the backseat of the Blazer, showing Dallas the way.

As they parked near the grotto, Lindsey got out, too. She was wearing a white tank top and jeans, a Levi’s jacket thrown over her shoulders. She paused as if asking Dallas a question. He nodded, and they headed for the grotto while Davis backed her car around, for easy access to her trunk, to the evidence chest and her several cameras. The coroner pulled up beside her as Juana stepped out; the detective was in uniform as usual, dark skirt and jacket, dark hose and black Oxfords. Dr. Bern wore an old pair of jeans and a sweatshirt.

The darkly clad, square Latino woman and the younger, bald-headed coroner made several trips carrying their equipment into the grotto, setting it down on the brick paving, away from the grave. As Dallas asked questions of Ryan and Clyde and Mike, Lindsey stood some distance away, staring across at the grave. Joe could read nothing in her expression.

Was she imagining those other weathered bones, up in Oregon, thinking about Carson Chappell’s skeleton, lying alone in that remote forest? Thinking about Chappell dying there, alone?

As Joe watched, the abandoned grotto that had lain peacefully for so long with little intrusion was suddenly alive with activity, with the bustle that always seemed out of place as the living intruded on the silent and helpless dead.

Yet only this controlled invasion by police investigators could help the dead now. Only this obsessive examination of the remains, and the accompanying prodding into their personal lives, could vindicate the dead.

But suddenly Joe’s attention centered again on Lindsey. What was wrong? She had taken a step forward to see better, was pressing her hand to her mouth, staring down into the grave.

Dallas, looking across at her, shook his head slightly. Their glance held for only an instant. Neither spoke. What was this, what was happening? Surely something about the scene engendered a shock of recognition.

Why did the hand of a skeleton evoke that alarmed response? Was it something about the bracelet? What did Lindsey and Dallas know that seemed to be secret? And, watching them, Joe realized he’d been making some huge assumptions.

He’d been thinking of the body as a victim, but they didn’t even know if this was a body, it might be only a buried hand. If a body was there, no one knew yet if it was a murder victim or a natural death, only John Bern could determine that. This woman might, indeed, be a peacefully demised member of the Pamillon family, duly laid to rest in her own private garden.

Joe watched Davis shoot several rolls of black-and-white film and then some color, and then record the scene again with the video camera. Then, kneeling, Davis helped the coroner with the slow process of uncovering the frail bones.

They bagged and labeled the fragments of rotting garments, too, gently brushing away the dirt with a small, soft brush in order to discover minute debris, though after this length of time, given rain, wind, and small animals, perhaps nothing useful remained. Watching their tedious work, Joe glanced at Clyde and saw that he didn’t look well. He was pale and seemed ill. Leaning out over the edge of the roof, Joe studied his housemate with alarm. A dead body shouldn’t upset Clyde, he was used to crime scenes.

Unaware of Joe’s scrutiny from above, Clyde was totally fixed on the body that was slowly being revealed. And suddenly he didn’t like watching.

He had, indeed, in his lifetime witnessed any number of crime scenes and considered himself an unemotional observer. But now, as John Bern worked the earth and rotted cloth away from the skeleton’s frail leg bones, a shock turned Clyde’s stomach queasy: The thin femur bones encased in a pair of heavy hiking boots seemed as surreal as a scene from some science fiction movie.

The leather laces were still tied, and he thought crazily, how could a skeleton untie its own boots? Fragments of dirty hiking socks were stuck to the thin bones, and the incongruity, the sense of the unreal, turned him cold. He glanced at Ryan, expecting her to respond with equal unease. But his bride just stood looking, quiet and unruffled.

“Did Olivia hike?” she asked Dallas. “How strange. I imagined her…She was so into social functions. Fundraisers, high tea, charity bazaars. I didn’t picture her tramping the hills. The photos I’ve seen of her…they were all in elegant dresses.”

“The Pamillons had horses,” Bern said. “Haven’t you seen pictures from the thirties, of riders wearing laced-up boots over those flaring pants?”

“I guess I have,” Ryan said. “But why would they bury her in riding clothes?”

During this exchange, Lindsey had moved out of the way of the coroner and detectives, and stood pressing close to Mike. He had his arm around her, but she was so rigid that Joe thought she must be trembling. The tomcat was so interested in her reaction that he nearly lost his footing on the roof’s rotting edge-hastily he backed away.

Wouldn’t that be a crock, Clyde’s tomcat falls off the roof smack in the middle of the crime scene-a cat who should be down in the village hunting mice, doing cat things. Clyde would have to explain why he had brought his cat up here, and Mike would want to know if Clyde had needed his cat for Rock’s tracking test, would want to know if Clyde had used cat scent to lay the trail, and wouldn’t that blow it!

John Bern was numbering and labeling the bones, while Dallas examined the space around the grave in widening circles, collecting samples of earth and debris, his square face serious and intent. He was reaching beneath the overgrown camellia, carefully sorting through dead leaves, when he froze, his hand in midair.

“Something’s here,” he said softly, lifting away dead leaves. John Bern turned to look, then knelt beside him.

Carefully the two men cleared away leaves and earth until they had revealed a slab of pale marble, rectangular and precisely cut.

“‘Olivia Pamillon,’” Dallas read, “‘1880 to 1962.’”

Ryan looked at Clyde, stricken. Above, on the roof, Joe Grey crouched low, his ears down. This was a legitimate grave? A proper internment into which they had no business digging? The three of them had fabricated their complicated ruse, had brought Bern and the detectives up here for this? Had brought the law up here for nothing? And now they must watch, hiding their shame, as the frail bones were covered again-must hope, Joe thought crazily, that Olivia Pamillon’s spirit could still rest in peace and wouldn’t haunt them for the rest of their living days.

“Why,” Davis said, “would they bury a family member here, and not in the family plot? And why without a casket?”

“These bones-” Bern began.

It was then that Lindsey stepped forward, touching John Bern’s arm. “That is not Olivia Pamillon,” she said softly. “That body is not Olivia.”

“No,” Dallas said, “it doesn’t appear to be Olivia. Unless…” He looked at Lindsey. “Unless there were two bracelets.”

24

IT HAD BEEN two hours earlier that morning when Dallas picked up Lindsey at her apartment and they headed up the valley to her storage locker, to go through Carson Chappell’s belongings. Across the green hills, fog drifted in a pale scarf that feathered and vanished as they moved inland up the two-lane road between pastures and small farms; in the yards of the scattered houses, yellow acacia trees bloomed, their honey-scented flowers bright against the pink blossoms of plum and cherry trees; daffodils buttered the meadows in wild clumps; and new colts played and rolled in the wet grass. Lindsey drank in the freshness of the valley, trying not to think about facing Carson’s belongings again, not to think about opening those musty cartons that had been untouched for nearly ten years, about handling those small possessions that would stir her painful memories.

“The things we shared,” she said, looking over at Dallas. “So sentimental and silly, you’ll wonder why I kept them. Old theater tickets when we’d had a lovely evening. A sweater I knitted for him that he tore on a fencepost. And the photograph albums from our trips together, and from office parties.”

“How many albums?”

“Maybe a dozen, but most are from before we met.”

“How long did you work for Chappell and Gibbs?”

“Four years. We dated for about two years before he…disappeared.”

She didn’t want to look at the pictures again, she didn’t want to stir it all up. Didn’t want the weight, again, of the memories she had managed to put away. Why had she kept everything? Right now, she wished she’d tossed it all. Wished she’d never seen that newspaper clipping, wished she hadn’t started this. What compulsion had made her come to the police with that clipping?

Dallas watched her with interest. She was more reluctant than she should be, considering that she was responsible for this investigation, thatshe had come to him. If not for her intense curiosity, Oregon might never have made the connection, might never have ID’d Chappell.

Probably he and Mike, seeing the article and looking over the cold cases, would have followed up. Or not, he thought. There’d been no indication that Carson had ever gone up there, that he’d ever left the state.

“Still looks new,” Lindsey said as they approached the storage locker complex. “It was built the year I rented the smallest locker.” The building was well maintained and still looked fresh. It had been designed with the charm of the area in mind, white plastered front, red tile roof, handsome plantings, so that it was not an eyesore in the community. The narrow gardens skirting the outside walls had grown lush now, with tall yellowEuryops, and lavender and early daylilies.

Dallas pulled the Blazer in through the wrought-iron gate, past the white stucco office, and on in between the rows of freshly painted metal buildings. The driveways had been swept clean. Her locker was in the center of the third row, a small, six-by-eight cubicle with her padlock on the door. Inside, it was half full of stacked, sealed boxes, and one filing cabinet that held her own back tax receipts, which she had seen no need to cart with her to L.A.

After the police had gone over his apartment, Carson’s mother had sold his furniture but had kept his clothes and personal papers and all the other small detritus of Carson’s life. Much of that life Lindsey had never known, had never been shared with her. Carson had kept the years after college to himself, didn’t talk much about them though he’d been free enough with stories from his earlier years at Cal, and with stories of his childhood growing up along the Oregon coast.

Was that why he’d slipped away to Oregon? A sudden longing for the places he’d known as a boy? A sudden urge to be among the woods of his childhood, a last look back before he settled down to their new life? A need in some way so private that he hadn’t wanted to discuss it?

Dallas had brought with him a lightweight folding table to make their work easier, and a small box cutter, and as he pulled out the marked cartons that he wanted and set them on the table, she slit them open and carefully laid out the contents, starting with the boxes of household linens and pots and pans and dishes-the black skillet crusted on the outside with years of buildup that Carson hadn’t bothered to remove, the ugly set of yellow-and-brown dishes he’d promised to take to Goodwill, the espresso machine she’d given him for Christmas a few months before they were to be married.

Opening a box marked “Miscellaneous,” examining coasters, an ashtray, a handful of keys, Dallas said, “This was all Carson’s? None of it was yours?”

“The vases,” she said, unwrapping the last of the three. “He never had cut flowers in the apartment, so I brought these-two of them. I don’t remember this one,” she said, holding up the more garish one with distaste. “It doesn’t look like anything Carson would choose.”

Wearing gloves, as he’d asked her to do, she set the vases aside and opened a small leather box containing four old watches, three pairs of dark glasses, and two tie tacks.

“I’ve wondered why Carson’s mother kept all this. And why I keep it. Irene said in case the police might want it later. Sometimes I’ve thought that was sensible, sometimes that it was foolish, that his mother just couldn’t bear to throw it all away-and that maybe I felt the same. Whatdo you expect to find?”

“I don’t know. That’s why we’re looking. As I said, anything strange or out of place-like the vase. Anything that makes you curious or uneasy.”

Opening the box marked “Papers and Files,” she laid out the musty folders. There were a few letters in one file, none that seemed very personal.

“And all that we’ve looked at, so far,” Dallas said, “was Carson’s? None of it’s yours? What about the linens and clothes?” he said, indicating several boxes they hadn’t yet opened.

“I don’t remember anything of mine. Therewere some women’s clothes when his mother packed up.” She reached for a box labeled only with a question mark. “None of this was mine,” she said softly. “I’ve never known whose they were.”

“You never lived in that apartment?”

“I never lived with him. I’ve never been in favor of that. It seems so…” She frowned, trying not to sound stuffy or say too much, but wanting to put into words what she felt. “An affair, yes, if you’re serious. But to live together unmarried seems-so indecisive,” she said lamely. “So…uncommitted.” She felt her face burning. “That sounds prudish and old-fashioned.But living together seems such an easy way out. A casual stop at a fork in the road, knowing that later you can easily change your mind and go another way. I don’t like that-I hate the idea that such a relationship isn’t important, that tearing it apart doesn’t matter.”

Embarrassed and uneasy, she busied herself emptying a box of tapes and books. Dallas was silent, watching her.

“I consider your view refreshing,” he said quietly. “That kind of relationship should not be incidental and ephemeral.”

She still felt uneasy. “Makes me sound like I should be wearing laced corsets and twelve petticoats.”

“When Carson disappeared,” he said, “apparently there was a good deal of gossip about other women. That had to have upset you, to wonder if hehad been so casual and secretive after making a serious commitment.”

She looked down, nodded. “My friends kept saying, what else should he be? All men expect to play the field, to get away with whatever they can.”

Dallas busied himself going through the small boxes of old belt buckles, pocketknives, an old camera, a couple of camping knives. He checked the camera for film and found it empty. “That’s what some people want our society to be. Easy sex. Easy drugs. Easy crime. The more that people promote those ideas, the more infectious, and destructive, they become.”

Lindsey looked at him directly. “That is very refreshing. How…how does Mike feel about that?”

Dallas smiled. “Ask his daughters. I lived with Mike and his brother while the girls were growing up. Those girls never bought into the glitzy popular trends, they knew too much. They understood how such views weaken and destroy a culture. They knew the details of many of the cases we worked, they were too well informed to get sucked in.”

Turning away, he set the resealed box on the stack they had sorted through, and picked up the one marked “Albums.” She felt a chill watching him open it. This one would be painful. All the photos of her and Carson, sometimes with friends, or pictures they’d taken of each other on day trips hiking south of the village.

They spent the next hour going through album pages, Dallas asking people’s names and where certain pictures had been taken, Lindsey recalling all she could while trying to numb herself to the memories.

There were pictures from the office, taken at office parties, Ray and Nina Gibbs hamming it up, looking so happy together. Nina overdressed in her too bright outfits and too much jewelry. Lindsey could see, in every shot, the gold bracelet Nina always wore.

“The bracelet was an heirloom,” Lindsey said. “It was the only thing about which I ever heard her make a sentimental remark, ever show any warmth regarding her family.”

She studied the last page, a party shot of herself with Carson and her sister, Ryder. “One of our clients’ homes, the Richard Daltons’. That was when Ryder still lived in the village.” She lifted the album, looking closer. In the picture, the glance between Carson and Ryder had always made her uneasy. She looked a long time, then closed the album.

He said, “That picture disturbs you. Why?”

She felt herself blushing. “I…She was always a flirt, my sister.”

Dallas nodded, and began to pack up the boxes. “I’d like to take some of the albums and the box of women’s clothes back to the station. As the investigation progresses, maybe something will strike a note, make a connection.”

“Take anything that might help. And you can always come back later, I’ll have a key made for you.” She taped up the last box, they stacked them neatly, folded up the table, locked the door, and headed out. They were halfway back to Molena Point when Dallas took a call on his cell phone. When it buzzed, Lindsey automatically touched her pocket, then remembered she’d left her phone at home, on the dresser-as she often did when she thought she wouldn’t need it. Calls from clients could go on message, she didn’t like being tied to the office once she’d locked the door behind her.

“How old a grave?” Dallas was saying. “How much of the body did you…?” He paused, listening, talked for only a minute more, then pulled over to the shoulder of the two-lane, where he could park.

“I need to make a stop, up in the hills. There’s a turnoff just ahead. You have time to ride up with me? It’s the old Pamillon place. It would save me half an hour.”

“Of course,” she said, interested in his sudden tension. “I have time.”

Pulling onto the road again, he said, “You needn’t look at the grave, you can stay in the car if you like.”

“I know it’s silly, but I guess I don’t want to look.” Yes, she would just stay in the car, sit quietly, take time to steady herself after this morning, after opening wounds that were still raw, that she very much wished she hadn’t been foolish enough to stir into new life.

25

AS DALLAS AND LINDSEY headed for the Pamillon ruins, down in the village, in Wilma’s garden, the tortoiseshell cat crouched beneath the Icelandic poppies, scowling angrily at Sage, who, impeded by his bandages and cast, had backed, hissing, into a pink geranium bush. From beyond the blooms Dulcie watched with dismay the two young cats whose argument had turned hurtful and rude.

They had come out to wait for Charlie to arrive in her SUV, to take Sage up to the ranch for the remainder of his recovery. Kit had meant to go with him, had longed to stay close to him, but after three bad-tempered confrontations this week, and then this angry bout this morning that had nearly come to teeth and claws, Kit didn’t know what she wanted.

The argument had started during breakfast, which Kit hurried across the rooftops to share with Sage and Dulcie. As the three cats crouched on their cushioned chairs enjoying scrambled eggs and bacon, Sage told Wilma with amazing boldness that Thomas Bewick’s book should be destroyed at once, that the pages must be ripped out and torn to shreds before they were seen by another human.

Wilma, despite her revulsion at destroying the rare volume, meant to do just that, once she and Charlie and the Greenlaws had enjoyed the small volume for just a little while-but she didn’t have a chance to say anything, she’d barely opened her mouth when Kit lit into Sage.

“That book’s too valuable to burn,” the tortoiseshell hissed. “It’s old and handmade and rare!” Wilma didn’t know whether Kit had absorbed that biblio-friendly attitude from enjoying the library with Dulcie or from her two human housemates who would find it impossible to mutilate a book.

“A beautiful book was never meant to beburned!” Kit said, growling at Sage. “What do you know! You’re feral, you know nothing, you don’t understand!”

Wilma and Dulcie had watched her, shocked that she would be so hurtful. Sage stared at her then turned silently away, hiding his face. Though Dulcie had held her tongue for the moment, Wilma wouldn’t stay out of the matter. Hastily she had fetched the Bewick book from her locked desk and shown the cats what else she’d found, during the small hours of the previous night.

Because the book’s binding had puzzled her, she had examined it several times. The front cover was the traditional board with embossed leather glued to it, but the back one seemed slightly padded between the leather and the board. The edges of the leather were fixed in the traditional way beneath the gold-decorated endpapers, which were richly printed with a pattern of tiny paw prints among delicate ferns and leaves. But there was one place that seemed a little loose, as if perhaps it had been gently lifted, at some time, and then glued down again.

Late last night, while Dulcie and Sage slept, Wilma had risen from her bed, her curiosity fixed on that one small portion of the back endpaper. Slipping barefoot into the dark living room, turning on the desk lamp, she had examined the book again. As curious as any cat, she had carefully worked at the old, dry paper until she’d loosened it enough to peer beneath. This was a difficult thing for a librarian to do. Guilt had filled her because she was devaluing Bewick’s work. But she was sure someone had already tampered with the endpaper, and she wanted to know why.

She had wondered, ever since she and Charlie retrieved the book, if Olivia had hidden it because, though unwilling to let anyone else see it, she couldn’t bring herself to destroy it. She still had no real idea of the book’s value, though she had researched Thomas Bewick on the Web and in bound catalogs in the library. The highest price for any edition had been a little over a thousand dollars. But this title had not been listed among those auctioned or for sale, had not appeared in any source she could find.

From the writing style, the typeface, and the style of bookmaking, she was certain this was truly Bewick’s work. And last night, when she’d peeked with infinite care beneath the loose endpaper and discovered a thin sheaf of papers hidden there, she’d felt a sharp wave of terrible excitement.

Carefully she’d drawn out the handwritten pages. She’d thought at first these were Bewick’s letters, and wouldn’t that be a find. The papers were yellowed and dry, the ink faded.

But though the letters were old, they were not by the author. She had read them through, then put the frail missives in a heavy envelope and tucked it into her lower desk drawer along with Bewick’s book, and had carefully locked the drawer.

Now this morning, because of the cats’ angry confrontation, she’d retrieved the letters and read them aloud. They chronicled the experiences by three generations of Pamillons with a succession of speaking cats. She wanted to show Sage that others had known about them yet had been careful to keep their secret. But she also wanted to show Kit that secretsdid get passed on, that Sage was right to be wary-she’d shared the letters hoping to foster a better understanding between the two cats.

Once she read them aloud, she’d locked up the envelope and the book again and had gone off to work, leaving the three cats to wait for Charlie and praying they’d settle their differences.

But immediately the argument began. Sage wanted to try the lock, get at the book, and destroy it at once. Dropping awkwardly down from his kitchen chair, he’d hobbled through to the living room and attacked the drawer, clawing at the lock until Dulcie drove him back.

“This is my house! Wilma will take care of the book in her own time, in her own way.”

“How can you be sure?” Sage hissed.

“Iam sure. I trust her with my life-every day I trust her to keep our secret.”

“Even if she means well,” Sage had growled, “even if she means to destroy it sometime, if she doesn’t do itnow, someone could find it. If it’s so valuable, someone could steal it, to sell. Maybe someone’s already looking for it-Willowsaid there was someone searching among the ruins.

“If they find it and read it,” he hissed, “they’ll come looking for us, too, looking for speaking cats!” He’d glared at Dulcie, his ears flat, his eyes blazing, and he’d attacked the desk again.

Together Dulcie and Kit drove him through the house and out the cat door into the garden, both lady cats hissing and clawing at him. There he’d waited alone, crouched miserably among the poppies, watching for Charlie’s car, waiting to be taken away from this place.

But then at last Kit had slipped out again among the flowers to make up and be with him; Sage was her lifetime friend, her dear companion, and Kit did not want to see him hurting.

Dulcie had followed her, but then drew back as Sage told Kit how Stone Eye would have destroyed the book. “That was why we attacked Willow’s band,” he said angrily. “Becausethey knew where the book was hidden. Stone Eye had known about the book for a long time, and he wanted it gone.He would have clawed it to shreds.”

Dulcie listened, shocked. She had watched Kit race back into the house lashing her fluffy tail, and when Charlie came to pick up Sage and Kit, only Sage was there, alone among the poppies.

“Where are Dulcie and Kit?” Charlie asked, glancing toward the house and then kneeling among the flowers, lifting his calico-smudged white face to look at him more clearly. “What’s wrong?”

“Dulcie’s in the house,” he growled.

“And Kit?”

Sage shrugged. “With her, I guess.”

Charlie looked at him for a long time, then picked him up and settled him in the car. “Stay here, Sage. Be still and stay here.” Her voice said she would brook no nonsense. And she went in to find the lady cats.

She found Dulcie sitting on the desk, but Kit was huddled behind the couch. When Charlie hauled her out, and got to the cause of the argument, she insisted Kit come up to the ranch with the young tom.

“I mean to show Sage my book, Kit, with the drawings of you. I’m thinking of doing some drawings of Sage, and of you two together.” This was what Charlie called a white lie, but it forced Kit’s attention, bristling with jealousy.

“You wouldn’t draw him,” the tortoiseshell whispered.

“Why wouldn’t I? He’s a very handsome young cat.”

“Because…Because he’s all in bandages. You don’t want-”

“That might be quite interesting,” Charlie said. “I might even do a book about Sage and how he was attacked.”

“You wouldn’t!” Kit hissed, flattening her ears, glaring up at Charlie. “You wrote a book about me. Why would you want to write one about Sage!”

“Well, of course if you don’t want me to take him up to the ranch and take care of him…Don’t want me to fix him a big bed and special treats, if you don’t want to come up and share the nice shrimp I bought, and the roast beef and rum custard, and make sure I change his bandages the way Wilma does-if you want Sage to be all alone, to go back alone to the clowder and never see him again…”

Glowering at Charlie’s blackmail, Kit stalked through the house and out the cat door to the car, her ears flat, her tail low. When Charlie opened the door, she leaped in past Sage like a streak, over the back of the seat and down onto the shadowed floor among a tangle of bridle parts and sketch pads. There, crawling under a strong-smelling saddle blanket, she rode in sulking silence.

Kit didn’t know how she felt. She cared for Sage, but he enraged her. She wanted to be with him, but she didn’t. She felt a terrible disappointment in him for wanting to destroy the beautiful book. And why did he have to admire and try to be like Stone Eye? Wasn’t there more to Sage than that hard and narrow view? Hunched in the dark under the horse blanket, Kit put her chin down on her paws and tried not to think about Sage, and could think of nothing else.

And when they got to the ranch, the moment Charlie parked and opened the door, Kit leaped out and raced straight to the barn and burrowed in a pile of straw. There she spent the rest of the morning, wishing Sage would come out and apologize, and ready to tear him apart if he tried.

26

CORONER JOHN BERN’S bald head and glasses caught the light as he turned to look at Lindsey. “Who did you say this is?”

She stood at the edge of the freshly turned earth looking down at the grave, at the frail dark bones, at the thin legs in their heavy boots, at the skeletal arm and gold bracelet. “I said I don’t think this is Olivia Pamillon.”

She was surprised when Bern nodded as if agreeing with her. “This is a far younger woman. The incomplete fusion of the skull, the lack of degenerative changes…We’ll do some studies in the lab, but this can’t be Olivia. She was active in the village well into her seventies.” He looked at her questioningly. “Do you know who this might be?”

Everyone was still, watching Lindsey. She glanced across the grotto to Dallas. “Nina Gibbs?” she said hesitantly, looking back at Bern. “Could this be Ray Gibbs’s wife, who went missing?”

Above, on the roof, Joe watched her with interest. Despite the hesitancy of her response, he thought she was very sure.

“But that has to be Olivia,” Ryan said. “The bracelet…I remember now, I read about it when I was doing research for the Stanhope studio renovation. She always wore it, didn’t she? A gold bracelet with a cat on it, a one-of-a kind piece that was designed for her.” She’d started to say, that seemed to have some special meaning, then realized what shewould be saying, and became silent.

Dr. Bern shook his head. “I don’t know about the bracelet, but this isn’t Olivia. These are the bones of a woman half her age, maybe thirty to forty.”

“And,” Lindsey said, “Nina has…had the bracelet. She wore it long after Olivia died. She told me there was only one, that her aunt had left it to her.” She looked at Dallas, and glanced toward the Blazer.

“We have pictures,” Dallas said. “From Lindsey’s locker, shots of Nina wearing it.”

“Nina told me once,” Lindsey said, “…it was at a party, when she’d been drinking…that the bracelet held the key to great wealth. I have no idea what she meant. She said it as a sort of drunken bragging, but of course she didn’t explain.”

John Bern looked away toward the distant rose garden, where its overgrown bushes crowded among the Pamillon family headstones. Saying nothing, he moved toward the old, neglected cemetery. Everyone followed him but Dallas, who remained with the grave-and Joe Grey on the roof above.

The tomcat watched across the far rubble as Bern eased in among the tangled rosebushes, carefully pulling aside thorny branches to examine the old headstones and marble slabs. Three ornate marble angels stood up among the sprawling bushes and the figure of a little winged child. Bern moved among the Pamillon dead slowly until at last he paused, not beside a headstone but at an unmarked patch of earth that, Joe could see, had settled into a shallow concavity. The tomcat, dropping down a honeysuckle vine, out of sight, fled through the morning shadows between the fallen walls and up onto a pile of stones where he could see better-could see that at one end of the unmarked, sunken grave the soil had been disturbed. As if a marker had been removed?

Both Bern and Davis photographed the area from many angles, capturing shadows and indentations. Then they both dropped to their knees as if praying for the souls of the surrounding dead, and carefully searched the hard earth around the unidentified concavity for fragments, for minute shreds of cloth or a lost button, for footprints or any foreign debris.

Watching from among the tumbled stones, Joe grew increasingly impatient because he couldn’t examine the grave site himself to sniff out scents that no human would discover. He waited, fidgeting, for nearly an hour before Bern and Davis returned to the grotto and the body to finish labeling and boxing up the bones.

Only when everyone had left the family cemetery did Joe conduct his own investigation. Sniffing every inch of the unmarked grave and its surround, he found very little. Once he caught a whiff of an unfamiliar perfume or shaving lotion, but it was so faint and so entwined with fresh human scents now, and with the smell of the few roses that still bloomed, that even a cat couldn’t sort it out; he returned at last to the roof above the grotto, having learned nothing.

Bern and Davis were packing up their equipment, preparing to leave. Joe watched Dallas cross the grotto, dropping into his pocket a small paper evidence bag containing the last item Dr. Bern had found: two minuscule lumps Bern had unearthed beneath the body, at the bottom of the grave.

If these were what Joe thought, they must have settled during the preceding years, possibly falling as the flesh decayed around them. He’d gotten a clear look as Bern bagged them, and he was sure they were bullets crusted with detritus and earth.

Joe found it interesting that as Ryan and Clyde helped carry the coroner’s cases to his car, the newlyweds moved close together, as if, in the face of death, they needed to touch, to reassure each other of their own well-being and safety. And when Joe looked at Mike and Lindsey, they were behaving the same, Lindsey leaning into the tall, lanky Scots Irishman, his arm protectively around her. They glanced up when Detective Davis looked in their direction, then turned away as Davis headed for Detective Garza.

Joe watched Davis slip a small plastic bag from the pocket of her dark uniform. He could see a half sheet of paper inside. Was that the note Ryder had brought in earlier? But why bring it here? It was already logged in, and Lindsey had already seen it. The look on Davis’s face was one of half annoyance, half amusement. As she handed Dallas the small evidence bag, Joe slipped silently along the edge of the roof until he was just above them.

Whatever this was, it wasn’t the letter Ryder had brought, this wasn’t hand printed, but typewritten on smooth white paper.

“Brennan found this at the back door this morning,” Davis said. “Just after change of watch. No one saw who left it, and there are no latents.” The look between the two detectives was one the tomcat knew well, that wry glance of frustration that heralded another anonymous tip, both welcome and highly frustrating.

But this wasn’t Joe’s tip. Nor, surely, anything Dulcie or Kit would have taken to the station. Edging farther over the lip of the roof, Joe read the letter over Dallas’s shoulder, watched Dallas glance across the grotto at Lindsey, much as Davis had done.

Lindsey was watching them, the end of her scarf thrown back over her shoulder, her tan very appealing against the white tank top. At that moment, Joe would have given a brace of fat mice to know her thoughts.

But he would give a lot more to know them if the detectives shared the letter with her.

Police Chief Max Harper:

Regarding the reopened investigation of Carson Chappell’s disappearance: When Lindsey Wolf reported Chappell missing, she lied to the detective about where she was. She was not in the village. She rented a car from Avis and was gone all week. Here is a photocopy of the dated rental receipt in her name. I do not know where she went. Good luck in this investigation.

The letter was indeed like something the real snitches might have discovered and stolen and taken to the detectives, and that angered Joe. He wanted to know who had left this, wanted to know if the message was true or if the killer had written it to lay the blame on Lindsey.

He didn’t want to think she’d killed Carson. Despite his uneasy questions about her, he wanted to believe her.Wanted her to be telling the truth. Below him, Dallas was saying, “I’d like Lindsey to read this.”

Davis said, “You think that’s wise?”

“In this case, yes.”

She nodded, and he motioned Lindsey and Mike over. They read the printout together. Lindsey stood a moment staring at it, then looked up at the detectives, flushed and scowling.

“Who gave you this? Where did you get this?”

“It was left at the station this morning,” Davis said. “We don’t know who left it.”

“Can you fingerprint it?”

“I tried,” Davis said. “There’s nothing-we’ll see what the lab can pick up.”

“It’s not typed,” Lindsey said, examining the paper through the plastic. “It’s too even. Looks like a printout. Is there some way you can trace a printer?”

“We’d have to have something to go on,” Davis said. “Another example from the same printer, and even then…Were you out of town the week Carson disappeared?”

“No. That was the week of the wedding. May I see the receipt?”

Davis turned the plastic over, to show the Visa receipt. Lindsey looked at it, and nodded. “That’s my credit card number. But there’ve never been any forged charges against it, I check carefully. I’ve never had any theft.”

“Would you still have that Visa bill?” Davis said, clearly not expecting that she would.

“I would if there were any business expenses on that one,” Lindsey said. “And there usually are. It would be in my tax returns for that year.” She looked at Dallas. “They’re in the locker, in the file cabinet.” Her hazel eyes were still angry, her cheeks flaming. “This is…What’s he trying to do?”

“Who?” Davis said.

“Ray Gibbs,” Lindsey said, looking at Davis. “If that body is Nina, then this note has to be from Gibbs. Or…” After a moment, she said, more quietly, “Or…Oh, not my sister?”

“What makes you think it was Gibbs?” Davis said. “Or your sister? This could have nothing to do with them.”

“It has to do with Carson’s death, and maybe with Gibbs’s wife, with Nina,” Lindsey said, glancing away, toward the grave.

Davis said, “Why are you so certain the body is Nina?” Davis had taken over the interview, and Dallas seemed content to let her run with it.

“She always wore that bracelet, I don’t think I ever saw her without it. Wore it all the time, just as her aunt did, before her. Unless…,” she said, “unless the story about there being only one bracelet wasn’t true, unless there was another.”

“Or,” Davis said, “unless Nina gave it to someone.”

Lindsey frowned at the detective. “That doesn’t seem likely. Nina seemed to place some special, almost mystical value on it.”

“Can you explain?” Davis said.

“I don’t really know. Maybe sentimental value. I think she was truly fond of her aunt. She said once that the bracelet was the one thing that Olivia Pamillon treasured.” She looked toward the now empty grave. “Olivia’s bracelet, circling that bare bone.” She shivered. “Like a manacle holding Nina there.” And she turned away, into the shelter of Mike’s arms.

Above, on the roof, Joe watched her intently. What a strange thing to say, to read into a simple bracelet with an innocent cat embossed on the band. Below him, both detectives watched Lindsey without expression. And Joe thought,A bracelet embossed with the emblem of a secret that Olivia Pamillon carried all her life? And as Clyde and Mike and Ryan turned to leave, the tomcat, staying out of sight, headed fast across the roofs toward Clyde’s roadster, Lindsey’s words repeating in his head,Like a manacle holding Nina there…like a manacle…

But, galloping across the roofs trying to put Lindsey’s comment in perspective, he stopped suddenly and crouched, very still, watching the jutting wing of the mansion beyond the grotto, where he’d glimpsed a figure slipping away. Darkly dressed, visible only for a second, moving fast. Someone near the grotto, listening, and watching.

There! He saw the figure again moving swiftly to vanish beyond the broken walls, moving toward the old shed, and then gone.

27

ALONE IN THE BARN, wishing Sage would hobble out and apologize to her and say he’d been wrong, say that Stone Eyehad been an evil tyrant and the clowderwas better off without him, and knowing Sage would never do that, Kit began to smell a lovely aroma from the kitchen. Charlie’s delicious shrimp casserole. Crouching in the straw feeling lonely and neglected and sniffing that heady scent, growing hungrier and hungrier but unwilling to go in the house and face Sage and make up-he’d have to apologize first-she waited. Maybe Charlie would come out and would understand and would maybe bring her some nice shrimp to eat and tell her she was right and Sage was wrong. Listening across the yard to little sounds from the kitchen, she longed to hear the door open and Charlie’s footsteps approach. She felt sure Charlie could make everything all right.

But Kit waited a long time before Charlie appeared in the barn, calling out to her. Then she waited a long time more, letting Charlie call and call, before she came out from her hiding place in the pile of straw.

Immediately Charlie picked her up, scowling down crossly but gently stroking her. Charlie did not apologize for Sage’s behavior. Nor did she sympathize with Kit. She simply headed for the house.

But before they went inside, into the big kitchen, Charlie sat down on the steps, holding Kit tenderly. “You’re hurting, Kit. You feel all alone, and Sage doesn’t understand.”

Kit sniffed.

“Do you think Sage feels alone, too?”

Kit didn’t care.

Charlie took Kit’s wild little black-and-brown face in her hands, looked into her angry yellow eyes. “Do you think he understands why you’re angry? Really understands?”

Kit didn’t care about that either. If Sage didn’t understand now, he never would. She’d said it plainly enough.

Hadn’t she?

“Do you think,” Charlie said, “that you might have been thinking like a kitten who expects to be understood but neverreally explains what’s wrong?”

Kit glared at her.

“Do you think, if you explained to him that the wayhe sees life is a threat to the freedomyou see in life, that he would understand?”

Kit was quiet, thinking. Charlie said nothing more. She rose, carrying Kit, and in the kitchen she set her down on the window seat, at the far end, as far as possible from where Sage was tucked up among the cushions. His head was down, his eyes closed in misery.

Charlie served each of the cats a plate of warm shrimp casserole, each in their own corner, then set her own plate beside a green salad and sat down at the table. She didn’t talk as she ate, didn’t seem to notice them. She sat enjoying her early lunch and reading some manuscript pages from the book she was working on. The cats ate in grim silence-though anger didn’t seem to spoil their appetites. They ate fiercely, as if tearing at fresh kill, glancing at each other only occasionally.

After a long while, as Charlie ignored them, their glances grew more frequent and then gentler. And as the soothing effect of the warm shrimp eased and cheered them, they looked at each other more kindly. Charlie gave no sign that she noticed. When she’d finished, and rinsed her plate, she left them alone and headed back to her studio. But in truth, she was so upset by the cats’ battle that she wasn’t sure she could work, not sure she could put herself back into the fictional world that she built around her as she wrote.

Oh, Kit, she thought,do you love Sage? Love him enough to follow him back into the wild despite your differences? To follow him even when you can’t agree on what’s important in life? Indeed, two sets of their deepest beliefs were at cross purposes here, just as could happen with humans, one set of values deeply threatening the other.Oh, Kit, don’t go if you can’t be happy. Don’t go if you can’t believe alike, don’t go and leave us, only to be miserable…

But now all Charlie could do was leave them alone, so her interference didn’t muddle their relationship, and hope they’d sort it out.

Getting back to work on the new book, soon immersed in the tangle of the story, still Charlie was aware of the cats’ softer voices, as if they were making up. Later, when she heard only silence she rose and went to look.

They were napping, curled peacefully together. She turned away, smiling, and soon she was deep in the book again, deeply relieved that silence reigned from the kitchen. Later, if she was aware of a soft metallic sound, she ignored it.

It was late that afternoon when, finishing her work for the day, she went into the kitchen and found the window seat empty and a glass panel above it open six inches. Alarmed, afraid the cats were gone, she had turned away to search the house when Kit came bolting in through the window behind her, her claws scrabbling on the sill, and raced to her, smearing dirty paw prints across the cushions.

“He’s gone, Charlie. I woke up and he was gone, we were asleep and I was dreaming and then I woke up and the window was open and Sage was gone and I followed his scent that leads into the woods and I’m going back after him but I came to tell you so you wouldn’t worry…”

Charlie grabbed her before she could leap away. “He’s hurt, Kit. I’ll come with you! He’s awkward and clumsy in his bandages and cast, and it’ll be dark soon. He mustn’t be out there alone, he can’t defend himself!” Carrying Kit, Charlie snatched up her jacket, shrugged it on while juggling the tortoiseshell, and they were out the door and heading for the woods.

“Now, Kit,” she said, setting her down. “Now you can track him.”

And Kit was off, following Sage’s scent around the barn and straight into the heavy woods, tracking the crippled cat while already the shadows of evening were running together toward night. ***

JOE WAS IN a dither to leave the ruins and get back to the village. Having seen the shadowed figure slip away among the broken walls, he paced the mansion’s roof beneath overhanging limbs willing Clyde to hurry, willing the detectives and coroner and everyone to get back in their cars and leave so he and Clyde could search for the guy or follow him.

The dark intruder had been spying close enough to the grotto to know they had exhumed a body. If that mysterious presence was the killer, he’d surely run.

Had he known they’d be there looking for the grave? Joe wanted to alert the two detectives, but he could not.

And he couldn’t alert Clyde or Ryan; they stood in a huddle by the cars with John Bern, Mike, Lindsey, Dallas, and Juana Davis. Joe couldn’t even go up to them and yowl, couldn’t make his presence known. He could just hear Mike:You brought your cat up here, Damen? Rock was following cat scent! You laid a trail of cat scent! No wonder he tracked like a pro.

And he couldn’t alert the dispatcher, Clyde had the phone on his belt. Even if he had a phone, how could he tell the dispatcher that Davis and Dallas had just missed a fleeing eavesdropper? It would look like the snitch was right up there in the ruins with them, that’s how it would look.

And once he got Dallas and Davis wondering why the snitch was here and how he’d known they were coming here, got them looking for him, combing the ruins to find him, that could be trouble, big time. For one thing, he hadn’t covered his paw prints, he’d assured himself that after they left, the wind that softly blew across the hills would wipe away those telltale marks, would destroy his recent trail through the cemetery.

No, the only option he had was to slip through the rubble and into the open roadster without being seen, hunch down on the floor under the lap robe, and pray for Clyde to hurry. He was crouched to leap off the roof when he heard a car start from the direction of the old wooden shed, a soft, smoothly running engine. He reared up, staring through the falling dusk.

There! There it went, a small, dark car sliding away between the dead oaks, over the thick carpet of rotting leaves that covered the narrow back path-and it was gone, down the narrow back road, hardly more than a trail, that would lead out, north of the village. Faintly, he could hear rocks crunching under its tires where the leaves were thin.

When he turned to see if anyone else had heard, they hadn’t, no one was looking in that direction. They were too far away, that faint hushing only a cat would hear.

He hoped the rough lane would tear out the underpinnings of the sleek, navy blue coupe, prayed the driver would get stranded in plain sight.

But no such luck. Already the car was gone, dropping down the hills where it would be lost among the narrow streets and small crowded cottages. Racing through the roof’s shadows where trees overhung, he slicked down a dead oak and galloped across the rubble to the old shed.

It was half falling down, evening light shining in through the cracks. Investigating the dry earth within, he found tire marks, then sniffed in and around the rough walls for human scent over the stink of lingering exhaust. He detected a trace of shaving lotion or perfume, but it was so mingled with car smells and the stink of lantana vines growing in through the roof that he couldn’t make much of it. He wasn’t sure he could recognize the same smell in another setting, or even on the human source.

The tire tracks were equally disappointing. Rows of chevrons that he committed to memory, but that were so common they didn’t mean much. He could detect no nick or scar to further identify the tread. When he heard the faraway voices change and fade and engines start, he sped for Clyde’s roadster.

Leaping in, he waited on the floor, suffocating under the lap robe as he tried to lay out a plan.

If he told Clyde what he’d seen, would Clyde try to find the vanished car? Or would he only demand that Joe leave this alone? Ryan wasn’t riding back with them, she wouldn’t be there to defend him. At last Clyde swung into the roadster, flipped the blanket aside, and looked down at him, smug and satisfied.

“That did go well. I have to admit, Joe, your scam was a stroke of genius. The coroner has the body, and Rock is now a trained tracker! I guess you know Ryan’s way proud of you.”

Joe smiled. He decided not to mention the darkly clad eavesdropper and spoil the moment with a fresh argument. He did his best to look both modest and innocent.

Ahead, the line of cars pulled around the side of the forlorn old mansion between the dead trees and broken walls, to the wider dirt and gravel road that led to the village. The coroner’s white van, Juana Davis’s blue sedan, then Dallas’s Blazer. Then Ryan’s big red king cab. Clyde’s yellow roadster joined the end of the line, the tomcat crouched out of sight on the seat. ***

IN THE KING CAB, Rock rode on the front passenger seat beside Ryan, his head out the open window, drinking in the wind. Ryan didn’t usually let the big dog put his head out where grit and stones could injure his eyes, but just this once he deserved a treat.

In the backseat beside Mike, Lindsey was silent, deep in thought, looking so solemn that Mike wondered what she’d do once they’d dropped her off at the station to pick up her car. Her expression of hard determination made him uneasy, he preferred the smiling, soft-spoken Lindsey Wolf he’d grown to care about all over again-if he’d ever stopped caring. This angry, alert side of her was worrisome. Her whole take on the morning’s events was worrisome.

She seemed so certain that the corpse was that of Nina Gibbs. Seemed just as certain that Ray Gibbs had killed Nina, as sure as if the coroner had already determined identity and time of death, or as if Oregon had found trace evidence of Nina in Carson’s tree house. Mike had never known Lindsey to let her imagination run so wild. He didn’t try to convince her otherwise, didn’t argue with her, he only wondered how prone she might be, given the mood she was in, to doing something foolish.

No one could be that sure what she might be thinking. Did her stubborn certainty have some basis? Were there facts about the case she wasn’t telling them?

As Ryan turned down Ocean and into the village, driving slowly, stopping for a group of tourists headed through the gathering dusk for the lighted shops and restaurants, Mike took Lindsey’s hand. “You’re going home when you’ve picked up your car?”

She nodded, glancing out the window. “I think I’ll rest a little, then I have some work to finish up that I promised for tomorrow. I’ll have a sandwich for supper, at my desk.”

Not until they pulled into the courthouse parking lot, when Lindsey was fishing her keys from her pocket, did she really look at him. She squeezed his hand, and smiled.

He looked at her levelly. “You’ll be in the office, then?” he said uneasily. “You don’t mean to do something foolish?”

She looked surprised and laughed, and swung out of the truck, turning to talk through the open window. “Because I said that was Nina, in that grave? Because I said…” She shook her head. “Even if that is Nina, what could I do?” She touched his cheek with gentle fingers. “I wouldn’t know how to run some kind of investigation, if that’s what you’re imagining. And I know better than to interfere in cops’ work.”

Her words eased him, made him think his own imagination had gone astray. And yet as Lindsey leaned in to brush a kiss across his cheek, then headed away toward her car, Mike watched her not with his usual lusty interest but with questions.

He had a strong urge to follow her, at least swing by her office in a little while, see if her car was still there in the little parking alcove.

But he immediately chucked that. He wouldn’t breach her trust and privacy. He didn’t want to smother her any more than he’d want to be smothered. And, determining to do the honorable thing even while his instinct told him he was wrong, he settled back, riding home with Ryan to pick up his car.

28

IN THE COURT HOUSE parking lot, Lindsey waited in her car until Ryan’s red truck pulled away and disappeared up the street, and Dallas, who had turned in just behind them, had gone into the station. When she could no longer see the detective’s shadow inside the door, she started her car and left the courthouse, heading across the village to Ray Gibbs’s condo.

The more she saw of Gibbs, the more frightening he became. The longer Ryder was with him, the more her sister seemed to take on his crude style, and this distressed Lindsey. Ryder didn’t need Gibbs’s trashy influence on her behavior and her future.

Nearing the condo and slowing, she wasn’t sure what she meant to do. Having convinced herself that the body in the ruins was Nina, she wanted to confront Gibbs, confront the two of them.

And…what?

Accuse them? See how they reacted?

Yes, she could do that. Put herself in danger, and force Gibbs to run. Destroy whatever procedure Detectives Garza and Davis meant to follow.

Yet the anger and hurt that seethed inside her, the sense of injustice, made her burn to take action, to do something positive.

Two blocks before she reached the condo she rummaged in her purse for her cell phone, for a bit of added security-and remembered that she didn’t have it. Had left it on the dresser. Had thought she wouldn’t need it at the locker, left it collecting her clients’ messages to play back later.

She thought of going back to get it, but that would take time. For no reason, a sense of urgency filled her. Instead of going back, she looked for a parking place where she wouldn’t be seen from the upper windows.

She had no proof that the body was Nina’s or that she’d died about the same time as Carson. Or that Ray Gibbs had killed either of them. She was following her own line of reasoning, which could be way off base. But she felt so sure that jealousy had been the motive. Ray jealous because he knew Nina was with Carson. Or Nina jealous because Carson was getting married. Maybe she’d followed him up there. And maybe Ray followed her, to kill them both.

All conjecture. But jealousy was among the most ancient reasons for murder, along with hatred and greed. Basic emotions dating back to the time of the caveman-and that thought brought a bitter smile, because the more she saw of Ray Gibbs the more she saw in him exactly that caveman mentality, an uncaring creature who hadn’t quite made the grade to full humanity. ***

WHEN CLYDE PULLED into their drive behind Ryan’s truck, Joe slid out of the roadster on the far side where Mike wouldn’t see him and dove into the bushes, his mind filled with Lindsey’s determined look as she’d gotten into Ryan’s truck with Mike to return to the village-but determined to do what? Had she told Mike she was going straight home, to get to work? After all, it was tax season. From the look on her face, Joe thought she meant to do otherwise.

Mike had left his new Lexus van parked in front of the Damen house early this morning, and now he and Ryan stood beside it talking as Clyde made a show of calling Joe.

Waiting a few moments to make it look good, Joe sauntered out from the bushes as if he’d been there all the while, sleeping or hunting gophers. He glanced at Ryan, a sly and conspiratorial exchange. He rubbed against Clyde’s ankles in loving greeting, a nice touch that didn’t escape Mike. Then he trotted off across the little front lawn, skinned up the oak tree, and disappeared from their view in acceptable feline style. And he took off across the roofs, heading fast for Gibbs’s condo. Clyde had no time to call him back, and couldn’t have argued with him anyway in front of his father-in-law. ***

AT MOLENA POINT PD, Dulcie knew neither that Sage had run away and Charlie and Kit were following him, nor that at that moment Joe was bolting across the roofs above her, heading straight into trouble. She sat on the dispatcher’s counter sharing Mabel’s roast beef sandwich, waiting for an update on what had happened at the ruins, waiting impatiently for Joe.

Looking out the glass door, she saw Ryan and Mike drop Lindsey off, saw Rock in the king cab happily hanging his head out the window. She’d heard enough from Mabel’s conversation with Dallas to know that Rock had found the grave, and that both detectives and the coroner had been called. She was excited for and proud of Rock. And she was proud, indeed, of Joe, that he had pulled this off. She was licking roast beef from her whiskers when Ryan’s pickup moved away and Dallas’s Blazer pulled into the red zone.

Hurrying in, Dallas stopped at the desk to speak to Mabel. A moment later, down the hall, Detective Davis came in from the back parking lot, heading for the front desk.

“You want to bring Gibbs in?” Dallas asked her. “As a person of interest?” That brought Dulcie to full attention. Ray Gibbs? Why would…?

“If he’s innocent,” Davis was saying, “he should be eager to find out if that’s Nina, to help us ID her-relieved to know what happened to her.”

Oh my, Dulcie thought.Was that Nina Gibbs, in that grave?

“Maybe he can come up with the name of her dentist,” Dallas said. “We’ll bring him in.”

“And set up a watch on their condo?” Davis said. Dallas nodded. They glanced up as Mike Flannery pulled up out front in his new van, which he’d left at Clyde’s early this morning. He came in frowning, stood absently petting Dulcie.

“What?” Dallas said, watching him.

Mike frowned. “Lindsey worries me. When I let her out to get her car, when she thought we were gone, she took off like a scalded cat.” He glanced at Dulcie and grinned as if he’d made a politically incorrect blunder. Dulcie had to wash her paws to hide her amusement.

“It’s tax season,” Dallas said, and headed down the hall. “She’ll be covered up with work.” He turned into the conference/coffee room, where Dulcie could hear him giving orders to one of the officers to get into civilian clothes, take a civilian car, and start a watch on Gibbs’s condo. The tabby sat staring out through the glass door, watching impatiently for Joe, to tell her exactly what had happened. With everyone back from the ruins, from exhuming the body and photographing and taking evidence, Clyde and Joe should be home, and the first place Joe would head would be the station, not to miss any follow-up on the unidentified body. Eagerly Dulcie waited-she waited a long time, but Joe Grey did not appear. ***

JOE, HAVING DESCENDED from the roofs to Fourth Street, was crossing a busy side street, padding impatiently along in the wake of a pair of dawdling tourists to avoid being squashed by oncoming cars, when he saw Lindsey’s car a block ahead, moving slowly toward the condo. Reaching the curb, he ran, brushing against a woman’s bare ankles, startling a scream from her, ran dodging other legs, keeping the tan Mercedes in sight. When Lindsey pulled over, parking beneath a small oak that would shelter her car from the view above, Joe dived into the shadows of a shop door. Watching her swing out fast and hurry into an antiques shop, the tomcat smiled-she was in such a rush that she’d left the driver’s door ajar. Or maybe had left it so on purpose, for a quick reentry?

She stood within the shadows of the shop looking out, watching the condo. Why would she think she’d have to move fast? She must really believe that was Nina in that grave, and that Gibbs or Ryder had killed her. That was a lot of conjecture. And even so, why was she in such a hurry?

Had she seen the spying figure, seen it slip quickly away? Had sheseen Ryder or Gibbs watching them? Or was she only guessing?

Crouching behind a redwood planter near where she’d parked, Joe settled in to wait. He’d barely fixed on the condo again when Ray and Ryder came hurrying down the outside stairs, Ray carrying a duffel bag, Ryder dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, Levi’s jacket, and old jogging shoes-he’d never seen her when she wasn’t dressed to the teeth. Racing down into the condo’s garage, they disappeared. At the same moment Lindsey left the shop, moving fast, heading for her car.

Joe moved faster. Under the cover of the planter and a pair of tourists, he reached the car before her, slipped in through the cracked-open door, was inside and over the backseat, crouching on the floor, when Lindsey swung in.

Quietly she closed the door and started the engine. Behind her, Joe took a chance and reared up-just as a dark blue Honda Accord came nosing up out of the parking garage. He dropped down again, fast. Was that the car he’d seen at the ruins? Sure looked like it, small navy blue coupe. Ray was at the wheel and Ryder beside him.

Lindsey waited for three cars to pass, putting them between herself and the Honda. Then she took off slowly, following Gibbs and Ryder through the tangle of cars that crept along the narrow streets.

From the floor of the backseat, Joe had no view of the street, only of the shingled, angled rooftops. She turned left, which would send her back toward Ocean. There she turned east, in the direction of Highway 1.

When she stopped for the light at the top of the hill, Joe, staring up through the window, could see the signal change to the green arrow. She turned left, up 1, heading north. Watching the tops of the cypress and pine trees swing by, he had no idea where this ride would take him. He was alone, at the mercy of Lindsey’s judgment. And she was alone, possibly following a killer.

She didhave a phone? he thought. She must have, she ran her own business, surely she carried a phone. Had she already called the station to tell them what she was doing? Would there soon be officers behind them, to take over this unprofessional surveillance before it turned into a chase?

Or would she think Dallas wouldn’t pay any attention to her if she called? Would tell her not to mess in police business, to lay off and go home?

She had her windows cracked, and the smell of pine trees filled the car, soon accompanied by the salty iodine smell of the bay where Highway 1 would be near the shore. Now, on the left, he could see only sky through the windows above him, and once in a while a gull sailing over. He knew they were moving north.

Was Gibbs only heading up the coast to one of the small beach towns? Orwas he running, making for a connecting freeway, for some distant destination where, if they stopped, a cat might find himself forced out of Lindsey’s car for any number of reasons? Where a cat had no backup, where a cat could find himself abandoned in a strange town, alone and on his own?

29

RIDING CROUCHED on the floor of the backseat, Joe couldn’t see anything but sky, and, despite the fact that this was a nearly new, upscale car, the noise and vibration on the floor were singularly unpleasant, and he was breathing gas vapors that humans apparently didn’t notice. But more frustrating, he couldn’t see the road signs. Couldn’t see where they were headed, he only knew they were still going north.

Also, unable to see the traffic and see what the driver was doing, he worried about Lindsey’s driving skills or the lack thereof. With the way she was changing lanes, he felt sure she was still on Ray’s tail, trying to stay out of sight but not lose them.

What was she thinking as she followed them? Wondering if she’d alerted them so they’d drive farther and longer, trying to ditch her? He wasn’t proud of himself that, apparently, either Ray or Ryder had been lurking among the ruins all morning and he nearly hadn’t seen them at all from his broad vantage point on the roof.

Well, but Rock had missed them, too, even with his tracker’s nose. Weimaraners were adept at both sight and scent, bred to both kinds of hunting. But this morning, honed in on his all-consuming objective to track Clyde, the good dog had apparently not seen or smelled their stealthy presence.

Careening up the freeway on the floor of the car, unable to see much but sky, Joe thought that right then, he would sell his kitty soul for a phone to call the station, a chance to whisper into the speaker and hear a cop’s friendly voice.

Getting soft, Joe thought crossly.Relying too much on human technology. On the electronic conveniences that had become so much a part of his life. But he liked the luxuries of the human world, no denying it. Liked using the phone both to call in tips to the department and to spy on and harass the perps-to say nothing of calling his favorite deli.

Clyde had once suggested a collar with a tiny, voice-controlled cell phone attached. But despite any excuse they could think of for a cat wearing a phone, such an encumbrance would generate too many prying questions. Besides, he hated the thought of a collar, which seemed to Joe nearly as bad as a straitjacket. ***

THE WOODS WERE growing dark, but the sky was still silver beyond the dark branches that laced above Charlie and Kit; hurrying ever deeper through the black woods, they had tracked Sage for over a mile. Charlie couldn’t believe he’d come this far, hindered by the cast and bandages, yet stayed ahead of them. But Kit still followed his fresh scent, and Charlie, following Kit, stared into every shadow, watching for the young tom’s pale coat and the white gleam of bandages.

She had, shortly after starting out, made Kit wait for her, safe in the branches of a pine, while she hurried back for a flashlight and a bottle of water and, feeling silly but thinking better safe than sorry, had strapped on her holstered.38. The woods would soon be pitch-dark, and there were coyotes and sometimes a bobcat that would be a danger to Sage and Kit. Even an occasional cougar visited these wild hills, and cougars living so close to humans had grown bolder than Charlie liked; several dogs had been killed, as well as a neighbor’s nice yearling colt; that had truly sickened her.

Kit stopped suddenly, staring back at her. “Did you hear that?” she whispered. “A twig breaking, something moving…” Then Kit leaped ahead so fast that Charlie had to run to keep up and made too much noise, stepping on twigs. Unlike Kit, she couldn’t run in silence; blackberry vines clawed at her, tripping and slowing her. The next time Kit spun around, Charlie stopped dead still. This time they’d both heardit. A scream. Loud and blood chilling. A cat’s scream of rage and challenge-answered by the high, yip-yipping of coyotes.

Hastily Charlie scooped up Kit to keep her safe, tucking her flashlight under her arm and releasing her holstered.38. Another series of yips and another scream of rage, and the dry scrambling of claws on a tree trunk. Kit clung to Charlie’s shoulder with claws deep in her jacket. The enraged scream could only be Sage, and as she swung the light around, snarls greeted them. Two big coyotes were leaping up the trunk of an oak tree. Above them Sage clung barely out of reach, barely keeping his balance on the thin branch, his bandaged leg hanging down as the beasts scrabbled and leaped at him.

Kit tensed on her shoulder, ready to leap at them but Charlie dropped the light and grabbed her. Kit fought to get free. Charlie held her tight, the beam from her fallen flashlight canting off uselessly into the treetops, barely showing the beasts-until suddenly the larger coyote spun around and faced her, his eyes caught in the light. He was nearly on her, Kit clawing into her shoulder to leap at him, he was inches from her, he seemed right in her face when she fired.

He dropped, twisting, then came at her again. She ran backward away from him, fired again, two shots. He dropped and lay still. His companion, who had paused among the trees, suddenly charged her. This was behavior she would not have expected from coyotes. She fired twice more and he dropped. Only one shot left. Feeling in her pocket for her reloader, she stood staring down, sickened, at the two dead coyotes lying at her feet, hoping there were no more. On her shoulder, Kit was shivering.

“Could you ease up a little, Kit? Before you claw me to death?”

Kit eased back her claws and lay more gently across Charlie’s shoulder. Above them, Sage still clung to the branch, his eyes huge, his injured leg dangling. Charlie holstered her gun and reached up to him. She got one hand on the pale little cat but was afraid to drag him off, afraid to injure him even more. ***

IT GREW HOTTER on the floor of the car. Traffic was heavy and fast. Lindsey did a couple of uncomfortable swerves that made Joe wonder if he’d get out of this in one piece, with his sleek silver hide intact. He had no idea whether she’d lost the navy blue Honda or was still on its tail, but from the way she was changing lanes, ducking in and out of traffic, he was convinced she still had them. Twice he heard her rummaging in her purse. Looking for her phone? Trying to find it down among the incredible debris women carried in their purses? Or…? Oh, hell! She hadn’t left it at home?

She didn’t have her phone? She hadn’t called the station? No help was on the way? He remembered Mike laughing once, because she so often left her phone at home.

“What good is a phone, Lindsey, if you don’t carry it?” They’d been cozied up after dinner, on the couch, Joe and Rock stretched out on the rug before the fire.

“I carry a phone when something’s urgent,” Lindsey had said, “which isn’t often. You think that’s weird?”

“I guess not. Maybe that’s sensible,” Mike said, frowning and drawing her close. Sometimes this budding romance made Joe feel warm and safe, at other times he’d wondered where it was headed, and had wished both he and Mike knew Lindsey better. Had she scammed Mike once, then left him? And now was deceiving him again?

They were approaching Watsonville, he could tell by the smell of green vegetable crops and strawberries. If he could see out the window, there would be miles and miles of strawberries. She changed lanes again suddenly and sped off the freeway, slowing as she curved up the ramp. Above him through the window loomed a sign announcing FOOD/GAS/LODGING. She changed lanes fast again, and swung into a gas station; gas fumes were sucked into the car. She made several turns, as if pulling around back. Moving out of sight of Ray and Ryder? If, indeed, she was still with them.

When she left the car, when Joe heard her walking away, he peered up through the back window, ready to dive down again. She moved away fast, glanced once at the gas station’s phone booth, which stood in plain sight, but didn’t pause.

Across the side street was a Burger King, and there was the navy blue Honda, parked at the far side. Through the reflections of the restaurant window, he could just see Ray and Ryder standing at the counter.

Lindsey, keeping several parked cars between herself and the Burger King, hurried inside the gas station’s little convenience store.

Now it was hard to keep her in sight through the sign-cluttered glass. Slipping up onto the back of the front seat where he could see better, Joe lay along it watching her speaking with the clerk behind the counter, an overweight grandmotherly type. The way the signs were placed, the clerk was more visible. Grandmother or not, she looked surly and rude. Soon they were arguing. Joe guessed that was a pretty stressful job, behind a gas station cash register, never knowing when some innocent-looking customer would pull a knife or a gun and you’d be cleaning out the till, praying he wouldn’t kill you after you’d handed over the cash.

The clerk shook her head again, scowling at Lindsey. Lindsey seemed to be pleading with her while at the same time turning to look out the front window, across to the Burger King. Joe could still see Ray inside, watched him step down a short hall, maybe toward the restrooms. Or maybe there was a phone back there? Who would he be calling? Had they made Lindsey? Had he some plan to get her off his tail?

When Joe peered into the convenience store again, Lindsey was doling out money to the clerk. The next minute she was dialing the phone on the counter, making Joe wish he could read lips. Her eyes hardly left the Burger King. Was she calling the station? Had she dialed Mike? His ears pricked up when she got someone on the line. She was talking fast, using her free hand to gesture across the street as if the listener could see her. She hung up quickly as Ryder and Ray came out of the Burger King carrying two white paper bags.

Slipping out the door, she double-timed it behind the gas pumps and slid into her car. Joe was on the floor again, crouched behind the seat, tucking his white paws under, keeping his white nose down. As Lindsey slammed the door and started the engine, he would have given one of his nine lives to know if she’d reached the department. To know if they could expect some backup before things got dicey.

30

THEY WERE ON the highway again, still moving north. Joe was getting used to the vibration on the floor of the Mercedes, which seemed to have turned into a rumbling purr and was making him sleepy. Was he actually going to drift off while roaring down the highway not knowing where he was headed or what would happen to him?

He had no idea who Lindsey had reached on the phone, but certainly she must have called the department. Had she talked with Harper? Dallas? Had they put out an alert on the navy blue Honda? Or did they not have enough on Gibbs to do that? So far, Ray Gibbs was really only a “person of interest.”

They were still on Highway 1, he could smell the sea. He kept wondering why, if Ray and Ryder were trying to avoid arrest, they’d chosen this slower route. Why hadn’t they taken the busier, multilane 101? After they seemed to be in a hell of a hurry to get out of the village, here they were tooling along by the narrow, scenic route like a couple of tourists.

Did they think they’d be expected to go the other way? Think that with more cops on the 101, maybe watching for them, they’d be spotted more quickly?

Or were they not running? Had that not been Ray’s Honda leaving the ruins? Was this some big fat coincidence, could both he and Lindsey be wrong despite the couple’s hurried departure? Were those two simply driving up the coast for the weekend, with no notion that Ray’s dead wife might have been found? Were they maybe headed innocently to visit friends in Santa Cruz or Half-Moon Bay?

If thiswas a wild goose chase, and if Clyde learned about it, he’d never hear the last, Clyde would rag him for the rest of his nine lives.

Which, given his present situation and Lindsey’s erratic driving, might not be too long.

But what if that dark figure slipping through the ruins had not been Ray or Ryder searching for the possibly valuable old book?

He wondered what Nina might have told Ryder about her aunt Olivia at the time the two were friendly, before they both set their caps for Carson. Would Nina have bragged about some rare old book in the family, a book that had vanished when Olivia died?

He wondered if Olivia, finding herself very ill, had hidden the book, not wanting Nina to have it and sell it. Not wanting to destroy it, but vowing to keep the cats’ secret, she’d have no other choice but to hide it.

Olivia dies, but Nina knows about the book and has a nice little drama to recount. She tells Ryder, and then after Nina disappears, Ryder thinks about the story, and starts going up to the old estate looking for Olivia’s treasure. Starts looking again after she returns from L.A., maybe venturing down into that labyrinth of old, crumbling cellars and up into the unsafe rooms among the mansion’s fallen walls?

But she didn’t find it, did she! he thought, smiling. ***

DULCIE WAITED AROUND the station for nearly an hour, fidgeting and biting at nonexistent fleas, but Joe didn’t come bolting in. She was burning to know what had gone down this morning. Dallas was back in his office, very likely filing his report. She wanted to go back there and read it. Or should she join Mike in the conference room where he, too, was recording the morning’s events while stoking up on stale coffee?

She was about to head for the conference room when a sleazy little woman in pink tights came in the front door to complain about a traffic ticket. And then, at the desk, Mabel routed a call through to Dallas that, in seconds, brought the detective double-timing up the hall shouting at Mike. “It’s Lindsey, she’s following them!”

Both men raced out the front door, piled into the Blazer, and spun out of the parking lot, their red light whirling. At the radio, Mabel put out an APB on Lindsey Wolf’s tan Mercedes and on Ray’s Honda Accord. The little woman in her pink tights had backed up against the holding cell, out of the way. Dulcie felt cold clear to her paws-now she knew where Joe was.

Call it instinct, call it feline perception. She felt certain that, somehow, Joe had hitched a ride with Lindsey.

Everyone else was back from the ruins but Joe. Dulcie didn’t know the details, but instinct told he’d slipped into Lindsey’s car. Or, worse, had managed to crawl into Gibbs’s car. Either way, Dulcie’s paws were icy with dread.

She sat thinking for only a moment, weighing her options. And as a trio of uniforms hurried in, she slid out the front door, past their ankles, skinned up the oak tree, and took off across the roofs, speeding for Joe’s house and Clyde. ***

DESPITE HIS NERVOUS state and the fast and careening ride, Joe dozed; he woke to the rumble of heavier traffic, as if they were now on a busy freeway. And soon, peering up through the windows at a sky turned hazy with smog, he glimpsed a dark airport sign flash by overhead: SAN JOSE INTERNATIONAL. Lindsey had turned inland, he could hear the big planes taking off, one coming right over them, nearly deafening him. Was she still with the Honda? She had the air-conditioning on, and he could see by the flat, smoggy sky that it was hot here, a haze-filled scorcher.

If Ryder and Ray were headed to the airport to catch a plane, would Lindsey try to get a ticket, maybe on standby, and follow them? Right. And leave her locked car in short-term parking among acres of empty cars, leave him shut in a sweltering vehicle. He stared up at the door lock, wondering if he could open it. Every make and model was different, and this one didn’t look easy.

If he couldn’t slip out before she slammed the door, he’d be imprisoned alone with no phone and no one to hear his yowls for help. Trapped in the hot car as the heat built and kept building…How long could he live in heat that would peak at far over a hundred? How long before he keeled over from dehydration, turned up his claws, and breathed his last?

Shaken by the thought of increasing thirst and a slow and agonizing bodily shutdown, he prayed fervently to the great cat god that he could open that lock-yet even hidden by the back of the seat he was reluctant to reach up an exploring paw and try it, afraid he’d make some little noise or that she’d glimpse his paw in the space between the seat and the door. Tempted as he was, he remained crouched in a frightened funk as more airport signs flipped by overhead on their tall poles. She slowed at the sign for short-term parking.

They sat idling, as if there were cars lined up ahead. Was the Honda up there in front of them? He heard the gate arm rise five times, as the drivers ahead stepped on the gas and pulled through.

Was Ray leading her into a trap? Wanted her to park inside that cavernous, covered, fenced lot, where he could get at her?

As wild as that seemed, if Ray or Ryderhad killed Carson, and maybe Nina, what difference was one more murder? Had Lindsey thought of that? Did she realize how foolish she might be to follow them?

He kept puzzling over why, after their argument in the condo, the couple was fleeing together. It had sounded as if each was conning the other, as if either one could be the killer. Now, the only conclusion was that whoever was the killer had at last confided in the other, that they had fled together, partners to the end.

Unless he was reading this all wrong. Unless, despite Ray’s hatred of cops, both were in fact innocent.

Could Lindsey be following them knowing full well they were innocent? Following them becauseshe needed a scapegoat and was somehow setting them up?

He heard the parking machine whir as Lindsey punched the button for her ticket, heard the gate rise again. She’d turned the air-conditioning down, and already it was getting hot on the floor. He wondered if, at the last minute, hecould leap out before she slammed the door. Or if he’d lose his nerve, break his solemn commitment to silence, even forget that all he need do was meow, and find himself shouting in fear for her to let him out, to save him? If, in panic, he’d spill his and Dulcie’s and Kit’s secret to save his own scrawny neck?

They moved through the gate at a crawl. As they crept beneath the concrete roof, the interior of the car darkened to a murky half-light. She stopped several times, apparently as cars paused ahead of her, then she swerved abruptly into a parking space, pulling in beside a tall SUV that blocked his view on the right. He poised to leap as she got out. But she was too quick, she flipped the master lock, slammed the door nearly in his face, and slipped along beside the car, looking across the lot. Watching Ray and Ryder?

Locked in the car, should he make his presence known? Mewl and yowl like an ordinary cat and paw at the window? One more second and she’d be gone, it would be too late.

Cautiously rearing up, he saw Ray and Ryder crossing the street, heading for the terminal. When Lindsey moved as if to follow them, Joe remained silent, his paws sweating-then itwas too late, she was gone between the parked cars.

He tried the back door handle and the lock. He couldn’t budge either, nor the lock on the other back door. Had she activated some kind of safety lock, some child-proof mechanism? When he rose to look out, she was nearly to the terminal. He paused before jumping into the front seat.

Alone, he began to feel very small. The parking cavern spread over him vast and grim into its own horizons, as if there was nothing else in all the world. Could she mean to follow them onto a plane, find out where they were going, and then scramble to buy a ticket? The car was growing uncomfortably warm.

Maybe she meant only to see what flight they boarded, then use a phone in the airport to call the station?

If one of themwas the killer, wouldn’t they try for an international flight, skip the country, go where they’d be hard to locate? Not likely that Lindsey would have a passport with her. Would Ray and Ryder board using assumed names, carrying false IDs? Who knew what other crimes those two might have committed that would require a fake ID as a tool of the trade. Leaping to the front seat to try those locks, he heard footsteps.

She was coming back. He ducked down fast, didn’t dare jump over into the backseat again, she was too close and he was in plain sight. He crouched on the seat waiting for her to open the door, determined to fly through.

Nothing happened. Her footsteps stopped.

When he rose to sneak a fast look, she was standing in front of the car shielded by a pillar, looking across the vast sea of cars toward the terminal. He could see Ray and Ryder in front of an entry, they seemed to be arguing. Lindsey watched for a moment, but when they turned away, moving inside through the swinging door, she took off running.

31

PAWING AT the driver’s-door handle of the Mercedes, Joe was surprised that it pulled down easily. No safety lock here. But he’d set off the alarm! Its whoop deafened him.

Shouldering the door open fast, he was out of there. He remembered only then that if a car was locked from outside, then opened from the inside, this would inevitably happen. Leaping to the top of the car trying to ignore its shrill scream, and watching for security, he stared frantically across the rows of parked vehicles for Lindsey.

He saw where Ray had parked the Honda. Looked like he’d been in such a hurry he’d left the windows down. Even rearing up, Joe couldn’t see much on the street beyond. Leaping to the top of a tall RV, wondering how long that siren would keep pulsating, he looked over the tops of the other parked cars, past the gray concrete expanse to the terminal.

There she was, running through the crowd of hurrying passengers. She seemed to be headed for a cop car parked a block away in front of the Delta entrance. As she dodged behind a bus, he saw Ray Gibbs.

Gibbs had spotted her. He spun around, ran straight for her. She didn’t see him. The alarm of the Mercedes was still blaring. Another second and Ray would grab her. Joe, speeding over the roofs of parked cars, heading for the unlocked Honda, prayed for luck, prayed they’d been in such a hurry they’d left belongings behind. Had maybe left…Leaping up clawing at the partly open glass, he hung there for an instant then bellied over into the seat praying to find…

A jacket lay crumpled on the seat, half a dozen empty paper cups and wadded paper bags were on the floor, and, beside the jacket, Ryder’s open purse. Then theywere coming back, he thought frantically.

Rooting in the purse, he found what he wanted. Stuffed down among lipstick, nail polish, wadded tissues, and a packet of broken crackers nestled Ryder’s cell phone, either abandoned or forgotten. Pawing open the phone, he was studying it, hoping he could figure this one out, when he heard a scream.

He never knew later how he got up onto the Honda’s roof so fast, clawing himself up over the edge and then rearing high…Surprised himself that he had the cell phone clutched in his teeth, probably soaking it with cat spit. They were closer, just outside the parking area. Ray had Lindsey, pulling her arm behind her. She elbowed him and kicked at him. People were staring, but no one ran to help. Pedestrians moved back, scattered. Had the cop seen? Joe stared at the unit a block away. It looked empty.

“What the hell do you want?” Ray was shouting. “Why did you follow us?” Joe forgot about the phone as Lindsey fought, hitting useless blows, twisting around trying to strike at his face; Ray ducked, grabbing both her arms. Lindsey kneed him hard. As he doubled over, Joe turned frantically to the phone. Where was the security vehicle that should have come to the Mercedes’s siren blast?Dial 911, Joe thought frantically,dial it now-there it is, the Send button.

But then he stopped.

Ryder’s cell phone would be on the Molena Point prefix. If he dialed 911, he’d get Molena Point PD. What he wanted, fast, was San Jose PD or the local sheriff or a nearby CHP unit-and he didn’t know the prefix for those. Ray shouted again and hit Lindsey hard, sending her reeling. At the same moment, the Mercedes’s alarm went quiet. Lindsey spun around and came at Ray, enraged. “You killed him!” she screamed. “You shot Carson!”

Dropping down again through the Honda’s window, Joe laid on the horn, blasting away in a wild and uneven rhythm that should get someone’s attention.

When he stopped for a minute, he heard Lindsey shout, “Who was with him when you killed him? Who was she?” This was not the soft-spoken Lindsey Wolf Joe knew, this woman was wired. “Was that Nina with him? You killed Nina, too!” she shouted, and hit him hard in the face.

Joe gave the horn another long, ear-splitting blast then three short ones. Three more, in the signal forNeed help. Then he grabbed the cell phone in his mouth, crawled out the open window, dropped to the concrete, and slid under the car. And he took off running beneath the parked cars, listening for footsteps or for some engine starting up, for a car ready to back out. He tried his best not to drool on the phone. Who knew what cat spit would do to that delicate tangle of microchips and electronic mysteries? He was looking for a place to hide, to try to get through to the local cops, when Lindsey screamed in pain. Her voice was closer, and he could hear scraping footsteps as if Ray was dragging her.

Joe leaped to the hood of a pickup in time to see Ray hit her again, so hard she reeled against a car and fell. It was then he saw Ryder, slipping up behind Ray. Joe stiffened as she jammed a pistol in his ribs. He could just see the small automatic in the palm of her hand. “Back off, Ray! Leave her! We’re getting out of here!”

Ray spun around and in one swift move slammed Ryder’s arm away and grabbed the gun. A shot rang out, echoing beneath the concrete roof. A second shot came as Joe dove for cover behind some crates in the bed of the pickup, wondering if wooden crates would stop a stray bullet.

There was a long silence. He slipped up to look.

He couldn’t see anyone. Not Ray, not Lindsey, not Ryder. Leaping to the top of the pickup, he saw a car pulling out of a parking place and another, a black Audi, pulling in hurriedly, as if the driver might be late for a flight.

Apparently the new arrival hadn’t heard the shots or had thought they were backfires. As the portly, dark-suited man stepped out of the Audi, Ray appeared behind him, spun him around with a hard punch to the side of the neck. The guy went down in a heap. Ray snatched his keys, fished in the guy’s pockets as if looking for a parking ticket, then jumped in the car and burned rubber as he backed out and took off. Over the stink of exhaust, Joe caught a whiff of blood.

Rearing up, he saw Lindsey rise slowly, clutching her side, pulling Ryder up with her. Ryder leaned against her as they stumbled toward Lindsey’s Mercedes. Joe lost sight of them as he frantically punched in 911, for Molena Point PD. He thought he should have done that in the first place-but on the first ring, the black Audi came wheeling back, screeching into the same parking spot.

Ray leaped out, gun in hand.

At the same moment, a figure jumped out of the Mercedes and took off running, doubled over. Joe couldn’t see if it was Lindsey or Ryder. Brown hair, a glimpse of jeans-both had brown hair, both were wearing jeans. The phone made three rings, then Officer Hendricks picked up.

“Get Garza on your radio,” Joe told Hendricks, wanting to shout but keeping his voice low. “Ray Gibbs. At San Jose airport. He just shot either Ryder Wolf or her sister. Short-term parking.”

Looking up, he saw Ray standing at the open door of Lindsey’s car, looking in. Saw Gibbs fire another shot into the front seat, and then take off running after the escaping figure. As he disappeared among the cars, a police car pulled in, moving slowly, the lone officer scanning the area as he cruised behind the parked cars in the direction of the shots.

Joe could hear Hendricks talking, presumably on the radio, as he’d instructed. The cop car had turned into the lane that would put him behind Lindsey’s Mercedes, which stood with its door open. The smell of blood was strong. Stepping out, gun drawn, the officer approached the driver’s side, where he could see in. “Hands on top of your head. Get out slowly.”

Inside, no one moved.

“Get outnow!”

A dozen cars away the black Audi slid quietly out of its parking place and headed at a sedate pace for the exit. With the light glancing against its closed windows, Joe couldn’t see if Ray was alone or if he had Lindsey or Ryder.

“He’s in a stolen black Audi,” Joe said softly. “He’s leaving, he-”

He could see the cop on his radio calling for assistance-he looked up in Joe’s direction, as if he’d heard the tomcat’s whisper. Silently Joe laid down the phone in the bed of the pickup, pawed it behind the crates, leaped over the side of the truck bed, and hit the ground running.

32

DALLAS’S BLAZER had just passed the Soquel exit on Highway 1. From this juncture they had three choices: Stay on 1 up the coast, take 9 toward Saratoga, or take 17 toward 280 and San Jose. They hadn’t seen a sign of the navy blue Honda, nor had they had any response to their “Be on the lookout.” Moving into the right lane, Dallas pulled off the highway and into a gas station. He was reaching for the radio when Harper came on.

“Where are you?”

“Just pulled over at Soquel. Not a sign of him, don’t know which-”

“Cut over to San Jose. His car’s at the airport, short-term parking. Wait a minute,” Max said. “He just pulled out in a black Audi, no plate number.”

Dallas swerved out of the gas station and hit the road again. “Who do you have up there? Why didn’t they get the plate? Are they on his tail?”

“No one,” Max said stiffly. “No law enforcement.”

“What do you mean,no one? Who called in?” Dallas stared at the microphone in his hand, then back at the road.

“Mike’s with you?” Max said.

“Affirmative,” Dallas said, scowling.

“Lindsey’s car is there. San Jose is at the scene. There’s a woman in the front seat, wounded.”

Mike grabbed the radio from Dallas. Max was saying, “A second woman ran, no sign of her.”

“Is it Lindsey?” Mike shouted. “How bad is she? What happened?”

“No ID yet. We don’t know who, or how bad. Medics are on the way.”

“Step on it,” Mike yelled at Dallas.

Dallas had already switched on the red light, heading fast for the 17 turnoff that would take them inland to San Jose; as he peeled up the ramp onto the freeway, Mike shouted, “Are they sure it’s Lindsey’s car? Can’t the informant ID her?”

“Informant didn’t stay on the line,” Max said. “We’re talking to uniforms at the scene. Car’s registered to Lindsey Wolf but no ID on the woman, no purse.”

“Description?”

“Brown hair. Hazel eyes. About five seven. Wearing jeans. A Levi’s jacket on the seat under her. Informant said there were two women, thought both might have been shot.”

Dallas hit the siren and gave it the gas. “Watch for the Audi coming this way.”

Mike leaned forward nervously, watching traffic. “There must be a million black Audis.” But he did the best he could, as fast as they were moving. “Why would he come back this way? Why not head north, on the 101? If he hurt Lindsey…,” he said with cold threat.

“Settle down, you don’t know that’s Lindsey. You can’t do her any good if you’re all worked up. Settle down and watch for the Audi.” ***

IN THE FALSE twilight of the parking complex, police and sheriff’s cars were crowded around an EMT van, blocking Lindsey’s tan Mercedes and four parking lanes. San Jose officers stood redirecting traffic as a pair of medics slid a stretcher bearing a blanket-covered figure into the emergency vehicle, and climbed in behind it. Beyond the tangle of law enforcement, down on the concrete at the level of tires and hubcaps, Joe Grey crouched beneath an old brown Jeep. He hadn’t been able to glimpse the figure in the Mercedes. Couldn’t see whether it was Ryder or Lindsey. And now all he could see were cops’ legs, the place was wall-to-wall cops.

But there had been only one person in the Mercedes, he knew that much. As the medics had put her on the stretcher, he’d gotten a glimpse of slim, Levi’s-clad legs, dull-colored jogging shoes such as Lindsey had worn-but so had Ryder. He’d been mildly surprised that she wasn’t dressed fancy when he first saw her leaving the condo. And now, with uniforms all around him, he could hardly leap atop a car and peer into the medics’ van trying to see more.

Sure as hell, an unattended animal in this setting would encourage some overzealous rookie to call the pound. And later, what joking comment would these guys, talking with MPPD, make about a weird gray tomcat sitting atop a car, watching the crime scene. And wouldn’t that tear it, after his anonymous phone call.

Plus, Joe thought,I talked with Hendricks on the phone, and Hendricks knows the snitch’s voice. Hearing jokes about a nosy gray tomcat, would Hendricks get curious enough to put two and two together? Put the gray tomcat and the voice together, thinking outside the box? No matter how far out that scenario seemed, it might get others in the department thinking, and watching him too closely, even if, at first, only in a joking way.

The EMT van started its engine, ready to head for the hospital, and Joe still didn’t know who was in there. He was moving forward beneath the parked cars, hoping to hear someone mention a name, when the van driver killed his engine. Something was happening.

Joe could see the van rocking, as if, inside, the medics were moving fast. He crept closer, his paws sweating.

He felt certain that after his call, Mike and probably Dallas were on their way. He felt sick for Mike, racing to get here, imagining the worst-as Joe, right now, was trying not to do.

He knew how he’d feel if he thought Dulcie had been shot, he’d race to the scene wanting to eviscerate whoever had attacked his lady. Right now, Mike would be feeling the same.

Whatever was going on in the medics’ van seemed to take forever; the van continued to rock, while outside, officers continued to protect the area, turning cars and pedestrians away from the scene. Creeping ever closer, he was only a few feet from the van when the back doors opened and a young, sandy-haired medic stepped down, stood talking with the San Jose sergeant who seemed to be in charge; the sergeant was a tall stringbeany, bald-headed guy. His few brief words chilled Joe.

“Go on out and help work traffic,” the medic said. “I’ll call for the medical examiner.”

Whoever was in the van was with them no longer. Either Lindsey or Ryder had died as the medics fought to save her. Joe had to have a closer look, he had to know.

He was now only two cars away. Crouching against a front tire, he could see inside the van, see the body on the stretcher, covered by a length of sheet, the face also covered. His heart felt as heavy as lead. Despite the danger of being seen, he slipped out from under the car on its far side, leaped to its hood, and crouched in the shadows of a pillar from where he could see in through the van’s open door.

A hank of wavy brown hair hung from beneath the sheet, over the side of the stretcher. He was trying to remember the exact shade of each woman’s hair, trying to determine which sister lay there, when the whoop of a siren and the screech of tires sent him dropping under the car again, out of sight.

From beneath the greasy underpinnings of the older car, he looked out across the concrete that was reddened now by reflections of a whirling light. He had crept out far enough to see that the light was spinning atop Dallas’s tan Blazer when the vehicle screeched to a halt and Mike bailed out, running for the ambulance.

33

IN THE NIGHT-DARK woods, Charlie headed back toward home carrying Sage in her arms, Kit riding on her shoulder. Her flashlight was nearly dead, just the weakest wash of fading beam as she tried to pick out hindering branches blocking her path. She felt sick that she’d had to shoot the two coyotes. Coyotes were in no way evil, they were only hunting as they’d been born to do, they were only what God had made them. Not evil in the way a human could be evil.

But she’d had no choice. She was just thankful that Sage and Kit were safe.

“More to the right!” Kit said. “You’re drifting off again, Charlie.” Nothing was the same at night. All that was familiar by day was, in the blackness, a jagged world of hungry branches grabbing and poking at her.

“The barn’s just there,” Kit hissed. “Five more minutes, straight ahead. Can’t you feel it? Can’t you sense it there?”

Charlie couldn’t. “But of course you can’t,” Kit said, placing a soft paw against Charlie’s cheek, making her feel grossly inadequate. But then in Charlie’s arms Sage looked up at her, and though she couldn’t see his face clearly, the trusting feel of him, so relaxed against her, the trust of this wild and shy little feral touched her and made her feel needed.

She was stepping carefully through a tangle of vines when her cell phone played its short tune. Hastily she answered, not liking that electronic sound here in the silent woods; her crackling, clumsy progress through dry leaves and twigs and fallen branches was quite enough intrusion in this wild place-and quite enough to stir other predators.

“Where are you?” Max said. “The house is dark, the door unlocked. Are you all right? I’m at the barn. You haven’t fed. The horses and dogs are still out. What is it, what’s wrong?”

“I’m in the woods. I’m fine, I’m almost home. Sage ran off, but I found him. He seemed disoriented this afternoon, maybe his medication. When he ran out, Kit followed him, the way cats will.” She had no idea whether an ordinary cat would do that, but what could she say? “I ran after her. It wasn’t quite dark. I have a flashlight. I found them both, but there were…I could hear coyotes…”

Was he buying her rambling explanation? He said, “I’ll saddle Bucky. I’ll whistle to find you. Keep your light on.”

“I…The battery’s about dead.”

Max said nothing. He hated it when she forgot to keep the batteries fresh. Cops, she thought. So damned careful about their equipment. But she was glad he was-and she wished she had been.

In a very short time she heard his whistle and the far sound of a horse approaching, stepping on twigs, the rustling sound as Bucky pushed through the dense foliage. He was there so quickly that she knew Max had hardly brushed Bucky’s back, had just thrown the saddle on, jerked up the cinch, and headed out.

She’d have to tell him that she’d killed the coyotes. She wasn’t looking forward to that. He must have still been on the highway when she fired, or he would have heard the shots. They’d have to send wildlife management to collect the bodies and test for rabies, and Max would question her to see if she or the cats had been bitten. She answered his whistle, and in a moment Bucky came looming out of the night between two stands of pine, nearly in her face, his pale shoulders catching her fading light, his nose pushing at her. She’d never been so glad to see anyone, she wanted to hug both Bucky and Max at once.

Leaning down from the saddle, Max took Sage gently from her.

“Watch his leg,” she said. “He may have torn the splint loose.”

Max got Sage settled in his arms, and took his foot out of the stirrup so she could swing up behind him. Kit clung to her shoulder, trying not to draw blood. The tortoiseshell was so careful that Charlie hardly felt a claw.

Quietly she settled behind Max on the saddle skirt, leaning against his warmth.

“Why did the cat run?” Max said, looking down at Sage. “Well, you couldn’t leave him out here all trussed up. Damn cat. How did you find them in these tangles?”

“I could hear coyotes, that’s what drew me. The cats were on a branch and two coyotes were leaping up at them.”

“Lucky the coyotes didn’t climb. They will, you know. Then what happened?”

She laid her head against his back. “I killed them.”

And Max said nothing more as good Bucky made his way home through the night-black woods. ***

AS MIKE AND Dallas careened into the San Jose airport, their siren screaming and red light spinning, Dallas glanced at Mike with concern. His brother-in-law, not the type to come apart, was pale and sweating.

During his professional life, Mike Flannery had handled easily the most out-of-control parolees and the most temperamental judges, soothing both with the greatest diplomacy, but now he was a basket case, the detective had never seen him this way, not since the death of his wife, Dallas’s sister. Pulling into the airport, navigating between drivers too preoccupied with finding their terminal to pull out of the way, between pedestrians too busy hauling luggage and racing for connections, he said, “You’re not helping Lindsey. Get it together, take it easy!”

“What the hell was Lindsey doing, chasing them!”

Dallas slowed for a woman pushing a baby stroller. “Say Gibbs did kill the woman at the ruins. How would Lindsey know that? And how did Gibbs know we found the body? For that matter, why put his car in short-term if he meant to catch a flight and skip?”

Stopping to snatch a ticket to open the gate, Dallas maneuvered through the covered parking area toward the flashing lights, approaching the cordoned-off crime scene. “Why the hell haven’t they cleared a larger area, cleared the whole parking garage?” But most of the area would already be contaminated by the movement of officers and their vehicles. Dallas moved on through, pulling up behind the medics’ van. The Blazer hadn’t come to a stop when Mike jumped out and ran.

Two officers behind the van grabbed him. He shoved them away, his rage surging, jerked open the van doors and leaped inside, his mind a cold blank, not wanting to think what he would find.

The body was covered with a sheet. The face covered, a hank of brown hair hanging down. A sheet pulled over her face as if…as if…Kneeling beside the stretcher, he reached over, ignoring the medic’s hand on his shoulder. When the medic held him back, he straightened up and spun around swinging.

The medic grabbed his arm. Tall, skinny, no more than a kid, he didn’t back off, but looked at him steadily. All he said was “Can you identify her?” Then Dallas was there beside him, too, gripping his shoulder. Mike shrugged him off, wanting to be alone with her, not wanting anyone near them. The two men backed off. He reached out to her, reached to lift the sheet, steeling himself. Needing to touch her, to hold her. Not wanting to see her like this. Wanting to turn away, not really knowing what he wanted.

He folded the sheet back. Didn’t want to look, and was drawn to look, to touch her face…

He went limp. Felt Dallas supporting him.

Ryder. It wasRyder. Ryder Wolf lay there, not Lindsey. Ryder, blood congealing on her face, blood gluing her shirt to her chest. He stared at her, shocked with relief.

She’d apparently taken a glancing shot to her cheek and jaw, the flesh and bone were torn, clotted with drying blood. There was a second, close shot to her chest. Her blouse was torn open where the medics had staunched the wound with gauze. He looked at her for a long time. Thanking God that this was Ryder. Wondering if he’d burn in hell for his joy and gratitude at someone’s death. But Lindsey was safe, Lindsey was alive.

Wasn’t she? Where was she?

Stepping down out of the van, he realized Dallas was still holding his arm. He looked around, past the cops and security people, past the tangle of vehicles, scanning the covered parking.

“Where is she? Where’s her car?”

Dallas pointed. The tan Mercedes, circled by yellow crime scene tape. A man was coming toward him carrying a black satchel, a stoop-shouldered man wearing a mussed suit, his tie loose over the open collar of a rumpled white shirt, a man who held out his hand to Dallas.

He watched and listened to Dallas greet Emmett Brassen, the San Jose medical examiner. None of their conversation seemed to make sense, they could have been speaking in Swahili. Brassen complained about the contamination of the crime scene, then headed for the Mercedes. Mike, behind him, approached Lindsey’s car, where cops and a plainclothes detective were working, and now he was afraid again.

But if Lindsey were hurt, they’d have her in the medics’ van. Was she in the car, at an angle where he couldn’t see? Approaching the Mercedes, his stomach twisted.

He stopped where he could see in through the car’s open door. No one in the driver’s seat. It was covered with blood. Bloody Levi’s jacket bunched up on the passenger seat, a plain Levi’s jacket like the one Lindsey had worn this morning. He could not see a purse. Had she carried a purse this morning? He looked into the backseat, saw that it was empty. Moving away, he scanned the rows of parked civilian cars, looking for her, cold with the feeling that he’d see her lying on the concrete. Three officers were walking the scene, not collecting trace evidence but looking for Lindsey, looking in and under cars. Mike was both annoyed by their interference and annoyed by his illogical reaction, and thankful for their help.

He had no notion that someone else had already scanned the scene, far more efficiently, crouched on the concrete where he could see nearly the whole floor of the parking complex except behind the cement pillars. ***

SEEING NO BODY, Joe had returned to the shadows beneath the Mercedes, where he at last picked up Lindsey’s scent trail, carefully sorting it out from Ryder’s and Ray’s scents and from the aromas of the many officers. Ducking behind wheels and pillars, he had tracked Lindsey until he lost her at the curb, where her trail vanished abruptly. He sniffed the curb and sidewalk for a long time, trying to find her again among the scents of hundreds of pedestrians, and sidestepping those caring folk who were sure he had escaped from his cat carrier and should be bound for the hold of some unknown flight, who wanted to pick him up and take him to security.

Had he simply lost her scent? Had she made it to another level of the parking complex, or maybe inside the terminal? Or had she gotten into a car at the curb? Had Ray Gibbs doubled back after shooting Ryder, found Lindsey trying to get away, and forced her in at gunpoint? And had taken her where in the stolen Audi?

From behind a pillar, Joe watched Mike and Dallas and the other officers searching for Lindsey, watched Dallas place a number of calls and talk with various officers and airport personnel, trying to get a line on what might have happened to her. The two men joined a search of the airport, which, in Joe’s opinion, was like trying to catch a fly in a whirlwind. He could see them inside talking with airline and airport employees. They were gone a long time, the tomcat was growing hungry and sleepy again, feeling lost again, when they returned, Mike looking pale and despondent. They were talking with the SJPD sergeant once more when Mike’s cell phone rang.

“Flannery.” Mike listened, looked up only to signal Dallas. As Dallas joined him, Mike found a slip of paper in his pocket and hastily jotted something.

“We’re on our way,” he said. “Be careful, stay out of sight. Get out of there, now. Out the back, there has to be a back entrance. Stay out of his way until the law gets there.”

Clicking off, Mike stood grinning at Dallas, looking so relieved that Joe’s own heart pumped harder. “She’s in the city, at the wharf. Gibbs just checked into the Argonaut, or seems to have. Unless he made her and has given her the slip. She called the PD. You better call them.”

“How did she…?”

“She followed him in a cab,” Mike said. “The fare took most of her cash. She’s convinced he didn’t see her. Said there were several yellow cabs on the freeway, and her driver kept well back.

“Said that when Gibbs drove around to Fisherman’s Wharf, her driver followed on the next street. Said Gibbs was driving really carefully, taking his time. Saw him go in the hotel. She’s across the street in a restaurant, thinks he took a room at the front, saw a curtain pulled back and said it looked like Gibbs at the window.”

Dallas accessed his phone list, hit the number for SFPD, and made sure there were officers on the way. Then he called San Francisco’s detective division and got a detective he knew. As he laid out the scenario, setting in place some backup to the street patrol, Joe Grey moved fast for Dallas’s Blazer. He wasn’t going to be left behind on this one. Not in this godforsaken airport, forty miles from home.

34

AS DALLAS AND Mike ran for the Blazer, Joe raced to its far side and leaped at the door handle, pawing awkwardly, trying to flip it up and open. Blazer handles were not made for cat paws. Had Dallas locked the vehicle? In his frantic assault, would he set off the alarm? He’d had enough of that. As he flew at the latch, the two men came pounding-and just as he’d feared, the horn blasted suddenly in a heart-stopping cacophony that sent him flying for cover under the adjacent cars.

Dallas halted and circled the car, ready to move on a foolish burglar. Finding no one, he shoved his key in the door, swung in, and started the engine, silencing the din. As Mike opened the passenger door, Joe slipped behind him, crouching to bolt inside.

Mike was too fast, slamming the door as the tomcat leaped clear. Better left behind than crushed like an insect. Slinking away defeated, under the line of concealing vehicles, he watched the Blazer back out and move away through the parking lot, heading for San Francisco.

He was alone. In the vast, unfriendly airport. Alone in a strange city. Crouched on the cold, hard concrete trying to think what to do. ***

MOST OF THE San Jose officers had left. Two forensics officers were working the scene, photographing Lindsey’s car inside and out, lifting prints. They had already walked a large grid through the parking area, and despite the contamination of other officers, had looked for anything dropped, had photographed visible footprints, and, around the car, had used a spray chemical to pick up unseen shoe marks. Now, working the inside of the Mercedes, Joe watched them vacuum, then use a sticky roller to pick up trace evidence. Slipping away behind the officers, Joe steered clear of the few law enforcement cars that were still heading out. None of them was from MPPD, they were all strangers. Taking shelter in the shadows beneath a red Honda Civic, he tried not to panic.

Clyde didn’t know where he was. Nor did Dulcie. And Kit was too involved with mooning and sulking over Sage to think of much else. He was alone. Stuck in an unfamiliar and unfriendly airport. He didn’t know whether he was more scared or more angry.

How do I get out of this one? How the hell do I get home? He was almost tempted to slip into one of the remaining patrol units, hitch a ride to San Jose PD.

Oh, right. Just his luck to link up with a cop who, finding a presumably stray cat crouched in the back of his unit, would take him straight to the pound.

He listened to the casual exchanges between the two forensics officers. He licked his sweating paws. He tried to ignore the chill in his belly that was fast turning into panic. This was the way an abandoned pet would feel when it was coldly dropped on some unfamiliar street miles from home. Torn away from home and hearth, from its humans and its blanket and food bowl. Set adrift, expected to survive among strangers in a heartless world. And he was filled with the same panic he’d known as a homeless, starving kitten in San Francisco alleys.

Except, now he was far more familiar with the cruelties a cat could encounter in the human world.

But only for a few moments did the tomcat indulge himself in his dramatic bout of self-pity before he remembered the old, horse-scented pickup truck with Ryder’s cell phone hidden behind the crates.

He took off running under the rows of parked cars, almost forgetting to listen and look for moving vehicles, praying the pickup with the cell phone was still there, that some disembarking passenger hadn’t thrown his bag in the back and taken off for a far-flung farm.

He smelled the truck before he saw it. The sweet scent of horses that made him nostalgic for the Harper ranch. The truck was still there, and the driver wasn’t, and he leaped into the metal bed scrabbling for the phone. Half expecting it to be gone, half expecting that Ray had somehow found and retrieved it. He hadn’t seen him do that, Ray hadn’t had time; but for a moment Joe let his imagination run wild, he envisioned Ray finding another phone hidden in the Audi, imagined Ray slipping back to cruise the parking lot, windows down, calling Ryder’s phone and following the familiar ring tone to its source in the pickup.

But of course nothing like that had happened. The phone was where he’d left it. He pawed it free of the crates and dialed Clyde’s cell number.

He listened to it ringing. Tried not to think about what would happen later if the cops investigated Ryder’s phone bills, checked out the numbers called on this date and wanted to know why Ryder had called Clyde.

One ring. Two…If it got to the fifth ring, it would go on message. Did Clyde have the phone off? Joe waited, growing cross.Turn your phone on! Turn it on, Clyde!

Or was Clyde looking at the incoming number and, not recognizing it, wondering with his usual annoyance if this was some unwelcome sales pitch?

Three rings, four. Desolation drowned Joe. Maybe he should ride home to the farm with the driver of the pickup. Better that than the city pound, than a cage, dry cat kibble, and forced adoption or the gas chamber.

“Damen,” Clyde said gruffly, just before the fifth ring.

“I’m in San Jose,” Joe said. “I need a little help here. No money for a cab, or a bus ticket,” he said, hoping to get a laugh out of Clyde.

No laugh. Only a long silence. A heavy, demoralizing silence.

“Clyde? I’m at the San Jose airport. I need a ride. Do you think-”

“We’re on our way,” Clyde said before Joe could grovel and beg. “We just passed Gilroy.”

“How did you…? What’re you doing in Gilroy?”

“Hold on,” Clyde said none too sweetly. There was some muttering, then Ryan came on. “Joe, are you all right? Where are you, exactly? Where at the airport? How do we find you?”

“How did you…?”

“Dulcie figured it out. How will we find you?”

He gave her directions from the A tunnel entry. “I am, at the moment, in the bed of a 1999 Honda pickup. Green, with three wooden crates tied in the back, and smelling of horses. If the pickup’s gone, I’ll be…” Rearing up, he looked around short-term parking for a likely retreat. “I’ll be near the shuttle stop, under a bench. Did this number show on your screen?”

“It did,” she said. “We’ll call you when we get there. It’s nearly supper time. We brought you a little something. Wait, Clyde wants to talk.”

Another silence while she handed the phone back. Joe heard her whisper, “Be nice. The poor cat’s scared, all alone in that place. I’d be scared silly.” And Joe thought,My God, I love this woman.

Clyde came on. “I wish, Joe, when these things happen, you would use a little judgment. That you would at least call me. What did you do, stow away in Lindsey’s car?”

“Ryder Wolf is dead,” Joe told him. “Gibbs shot her. Dallas and Mike are on their way to San Francisco to meet Lindsey-she followed Ray. Hopefully SFPD will find him first.”

There was another long silence that made Joe wish he hadn’t tried to sort it out on the phone. “Sometimes…,” Clyde began, then, “Where did you find a phone?”

“It’s Ryder’s phone.”

Clyde sighed and didn’t ask any more questions. “If we can’t find you, we’ll call that number. That’s a big airport. Stay put if you can. Hold on.” There was another pause as Ryan took the phone.

“Fast-food burger okay? With fries?”

“Sounds like heaven,” Joe said, licking his whiskers. If Clyde had ever shown good sense, it was when he asked Ryan Flannery to be his wife. He hung up thinking fondly of a hot, greasy hamburger and greasy fries.

Pushing the phone back among the crates, he curled down on the hard metal floor of the pickup, yawned, and closed his eyes. He’d be sure to wake if the driver appeared. Cats are light sleepers, a cat hears every slightest sound, senses every movement. And, curling his front paws under him, Joe Grey dropped into sleep.

35

GULLS SWOOPED LOW over Fisherman’s Wharf, winging beneath the low clouds. Circling and screaming they dropped down among the rich smells of raw and frying fish to land on a restaurant roof; there they strutted, stomping softly like little thumping drumbeats, directly above Lindsey Wolf’s head where she sat inside at a window table.

Having angled her chair behind a potted palm, she was out of sight from the hotel across the street. Distracted for a moment by the pitter-pat above her, she abandoned her surveillance, looking up-she looked back just in time to see Ray Gibbs pull aside the second-floor curtain, as he had done twice before.

Standing in plain view, he peered down at the narrow, crowded street, watching the wandering tourists, then looked across at the restaurant windows. She was sure he couldn’t see her behind the palm and crammed among other diners. The interior of the restaurant, despite its big windows, was shadowy in contrast to the bright street.

He had the TV on, she could see its light flickering behind him through the thin curtain. She wondered, shivering, if the shooting was on the news yet, if that was what he was watching.

If she’d hesitated when he shot Ryder, she’d be dead, too. She was certain Ryder was dead, she couldn’t have lived, the way she was shot. She grieved for Ryder, guilt had ridden with her as she hailed a cab, following Ray. Praying for Ryder, and riven with hate for Gibbs, she wanted to see him burn. Burn for Ryder, and for Carson, and for Nina Gibbs.

Why had he comehere after he shot Ryder? Why not catch his flight, for which they must have had last-minute reservations? Or head up the coast among the small fishing and lumbering towns of northern California and southern Oregon, with all the open land and woods where he could disappear?

But maybe he thought, among the city’s crowds of tourists, he wouldn’t be noticed. The sidewalk below was jammed with gaudily dressed pedestrians moving back and forth across the narrow street, pushing around the fenders and bumpers of slow-moving cars, hungering to spend their money on little treats, or on useless wares to cart home as unique gifts for family and friends who would soon throw them away.

Gibbs moved again, letting the curtain fall back into place, and disappeared from view.Had he seen her, was that why he was staring across at the restaurant? She watched the street, praying to see Dallas’s Blazer, praying they’d hurry. She was terrified Gibbs would come down, come across to the restaurant. Every time he left the window she drew farther back behind the palm, wanting to run.

When the waitress came to refill her glass of iced tea, she ordered a dessert that she didn’t want, buying time. She couldn’t sit there forever not ordering anything, the restaurant was too full. She had picked up her fork, was toying with the meringue when Gibbs stepped out the front door of the Argonaut. He stood a moment looking around, then headed across the street toward her, toward the door of the restaurant. ***

JOE GREY WOKE to the step of high-heeled cowboy boots, a distinctive sound one couldn’t mistake. The next instant, the pickup bed shook as the cab door was flung open. He caught a whiff of male sweat, glimpsed the guy before he ducked back between the boxes-a squarely built man dressed in a faded western shirt and worn, western straw hat. There was a thud as he tossed something into the narrow space behind the driver’s seat, maybe a suitcase or a duffel. Joe, snatching the phone in his teeth, leaped over the metal side of the truck bed just as the guy started the engine. Sailing to the roof of the next car, he leaped again to the top of a white Honda van, where he flattened himself against its roof, hiding the cell phone under him. The guy hadn’t seen him, was busy backing out, looking over his shoulder, maneuvering the big pickup out of the tight space.

When the cowboy had gone, Joe rose up, hoping his weight hadn’t punched any buttons on the phone that would send it into some incomprehensible mode that he couldn’t figure out.

Should he call Clyde back, tell him he’d had to move? Or wait to see what happened? He hoped this van would stay in place for a while. It hadn’t been there when he’d hopped into the truck. Hoped the driver wasn’t just picking up a passenger. He must have been deep in sleep when it pulled into the parking space, he hadn’t even heard a door slam.

He decided to stay where he was despite the fact that on the white van he was as visible as a dead rat on clean sheets. He was up high enough to see cars pulling in and out, to see the yellow roadster or Ryan’s red pickup. He hadn’t thought to ask what they were driving. He watched a beefy woman with three cranky, arguing kids approaching, heading straight for him, and he hunkered down again, praying the van wasn’t theirs, trying to make both the phone and himself invisible.

And wouldn’t you know it. Here they came, straight for him, the woman jingling her keys, the kids whining and arguing.

Maybe they were too busy arguing to notice him. He daren’t move, they were feet from him. Frozen in place, he watched the flabby woman in her tight black pants and red T-shirt unlock the driver’s door then slide the back door open. Crouched low, he was slowly backing away from that side when the tallest kid, a straggly girl of about ten, spotted him.

“There’s a cat on top of the car! Ma, look! A cat!”

Hadn’t she ever seen a cat before? What was it about innocent animals that made kids want to shout?

“Look, it’s rearing up!” she screamed, running around the side of the van and jumping up, reaching. The kid was a good jumper, he hadn’t thought she could reach that high. Her hand grazed him, and before he could stop himself, he’d slashed her a good one. She dropped to the concrete, screaming, “It scratched me! Maaaaa, the cat scratched me!”

He’d hardly touched her. Hardly drew blood. Well, only just a drop or two, glistening on her dirty little fingers. He wished he hadn’t done it, that hadn’t been a smart move.

But it was too late now, and the woman was furious. As she lunged up, reaching to grab him, he abandoned the cell phone, leaped to the roof of the next car. He couldn’t drag the phone with him and let her see it, that would tear it. As he sailed away from one car to the next, the woman ran between cars chasing him, screaming, “Catch it! Catch that cat! It attacked my baby.” Thudding and leaping across car tops, he glimpsed the flash of a red vehicle pulling in through the far gate.

Let it be them! He paused, rearing up, hissing at the woman to make her back off. Praying that was Ryan’s red truck.Let that be Ryan and Clyde. Please God-and get this woman off me!

36

HAVING PRESSED her last twenty into the waitress’s hand, Lindsey slipped out through the restaurant’s kitchen. Behind her, the plump, motherly server told Gibbs there’d been no woman in there matching that description. She said a man had been sitting at the recently vacated window table, that she hadn’t seen the woman he described. That maybe she’d gone into one of the other restaurants along the row. Pausing in the hot, steamy kitchen, Lindsey heard enough to know he was arguing, that he didn’t believe her. She spotted the back door and fled among a half dozen busy cooks who turned to scowl at her, never breaking their rhythm of frying and slicing and dishing up. The place smelled of steaming crab and hot fries. And she was out the door, on the side street where she slipped into a group of tourists.

She moved away with them, and ducked into a curio shop, was mingling with the dawdling customers, looking out, when she saw him leave the restaurant.

He headed in her direction. Stepping behind a big, bald man in a pink T-shirt, she looked for another way out of the shop and saw none. She waited until the clerk at the cash register turned away, and slipped past her into a dark little storeroom.

The small, dim space smelled of cheap scented candles. It was crowded with cartons stacked on the floor. The shelves behind these were piled with Tshirts, cheap pottery, pi?atas, folded Japanese kites, and Mexican baskets. There was no back door, there was only the one way out of the closetlike space. She turned at a scuffing sound.

Gibbs stood blocking the door. She backed away. He grabbed her, spun her around, and shoved the gun in her stomach.

He wouldn’t shoot her here, she thought, encumbered by the crowd in the shop, he’d never escape.

But then she thought about news stories in which the shooter had killed in a crowd, and run, knocking people aside, and had gotten away, with no armed officer to stop him. Gibbs shoved her so hard she twisted, lost her balance, and fell. He jerked her up, gripped her against him as he faced the door, his gun drawn.

Two uniformed officers filled the doorway.

Lindsey didn’t wait, she elbowed him as hard as she could in the groin, and ducked down behind a stack of cartons. He turned the gun on her. There was a shot, and another. Gibbs staggered, dropped the gun, fell nearly on top of her. She was grabbed from behind and pulled away.

“For God’s sake, Lindsey.” Mike held her close as an officer retrieved Gibbs’s gun. Gibbs twisted, trying to get up. The other cop sent him sprawling again, and the two officers, snapping cuffs on him, jerked him up and duck-walked him out through the now deserted shop. She could see more uniforms outside herding the tourists away. Leaning against Mike, needing his warmth, she saw Dallas come in from the street.

“You okay?” Dallas asked her.

“I am now,” she said shakily.

“You did good,” Mike said, tenderly touching her face.

“Ryder’s dead,” she said woodenly.

Mike held her away, looked deep into her eyes, looked at the blood smeared across her tank top, Ryder’s blood. She looked down at herself where she’d held her sister for an instant before Ryder went limp-before she turned and fled, to follow Gibbs, wanting to kill him.

What Ryder’s life had been, and then her senseless death, only added to Lindsey’s rage, to fury at herself that she’d done so little to change Ryder’s life. Hiding her face against Mike’s shoulder, she let him lead her out of the shop. She felt weak and hopeless, wanted only to be quiet, to be alone, just the two of them, Mike holding her close. Out on the street she stood within Mike’s arms, oblivious to the cops and the staring tourists, stood in a world where there was no one else, where there was no cruelty, no murder, where there was only safety and love. ***

AS LINDSEY CLUNG within Mike’s embrace, some miles away the gray tomcat felt equally safe in the secure embrace of Mike’s daughter. The feel of Ryan’s shoulder against which he lay, the clean smell of her hair against his nose-and the fact that he was full of a burger and fries-filled Joe Grey with a deep sense of well-being. The team of Flannery and Damen was all right, the tomcat liked this new sense of belonging within a real family.

Where his relationship with Clyde had rocked along on good-natured male confrontation and wisecracking, Ryan added an amused tenderness that Joe hadn’t known was missing, she added the gentle understanding that Clyde, too often, didn’t like to exhibit.

Though back there in short-term parking, Clydehad stood up for him. Had laughed at the angry mother when she threatened to sue him, threatened to call the dogcatcher and have the cat quarantined-as if Joe had flayed that kid alive.

It was Ryan who’d retrieved the phone. Having double-parked her pickup behind the woman’s white van, she’d glimpsed the phone on its roof and, hiding a grin, had put it in her pocket while Clyde fetched the first aid kit. And before Clyde fished out the bandages, she’d fetched her camera and taken pictures of Joe’s minute claw marks in the kid’s hand, and then of the pudgy mother doctoring the scratch and bandaging it. She made sure to photograph all aspects of both arms and hands, and of the child’s face, to prove there were no other wounds.

“The cat didn’t bite you?” Clyde asked the child as her mother bandaged the hand.

“I saw that cat-” the mother started to say, but the kid screamed, “It didn’tbite me! It scratched me! Can’t you see it scratched me!”

Taping the wound, the woman clutched her own cell phone, ready to call 911 and animal control. Until Clyde pointed out that if she did that, the authorities would take the cat away, and he, Clyde, wouldn’t be able to give her the five hundred dollars he had intended, to cover her inconvenience. He told her Joe had had his rabies shots. He gave her their vet’s name and address and, of course, his own address. When the woman stopped shouting, to accept the money and to sign a release that Clyde hastily wrote out on a scrap of paper, Ryan turned her attention to Joe, taking him in her arms.

“Does this mean a lawsuit?” Joe had asked her when they were alone, slipping into the passenger side of the truck.

“I doubt it. But between Dad, Max, and Dallas, we’ll come up with an unbeatable lawyer if we need to. Personally,” she said, grinning, “I think she’ll drop it. Maybe try to hit us up for more money later.” She looked deep into Joe’s eyes. “Clyde and I aren’t worried. Neither should you be.”

Clyde slid into the driver’s seat, cutting her a look, but said nothing. Heading home, Ryan kept telling Joe over and over, “It’s all right.” Holding him close, looking down into his worried face. “It’s all right, Joe. You didn’t hurt the little brat. We have pictures. Don’t sweat it.”

Joe had listened, hiding a smile, as Clyde explained to the woman the many steps she would have to go through if she sued him, the forms she would have to fill out, the time she would have to spend with an attorney, and in court, and the probable cost of an attorney. This, and the whining of her restless kids who were hungry and had to pee and wanted to go home, had at last induced her to accept the money, load up her unruly family, and leave the three of them in peace.

One thing for sure, Joe thought, purring against Ryan. He never wanted to see the San Jose airport again. Not in all his nine lives. For a while there, he’d thought if he didn’t starve in that oversize concrete crypt or get run over by some hurrying driver racing to catch a plane, hewould be picked up by animal control, imprisoned behind bars for maybe the rest of a very short life.

Now, Ryan’s concern went a long way toward dispelling that icy fear of abandonment. And as the three of them hit the freeway, heading home, he snuggled down in her lap, smugly comfortable, filled once more with macho confidence.

37

MUCH EARLIER that evening, Dulcie had stood on the roof of Clyde’s house watching the red pickup pull out of the drive, watching Clyde and Ryan head for San Jose.They didn’t want me! Clyde and Ryan didn’t want me. She had been left behind. She was hurt, she was worried about Joe, and she was mad as hell.Where else should I be when Joe’s in danger?

“Please, Dulcie,” Ryan had said, “Rock’s so upset and nervous. When I’m upset, he gets like this. I’ll have to shut him in the house so he won’t try to climb out of the patio and follow us, but…Please stay with him until he calms down. A Weimaraner can tear a whole house to pieces when he’s frantic. Please, stay for a while. Later, when he settles down, if you go somewhere, please come back and check on him. Or call Charlie.”

She knew they were trying to keepher out of trouble, that they didn’t know what kind of danger they were heading into. But when Ryan asked like that, what else could she do? And Rockwas upset, he was a basket case, pacing and panting and pawing at the doors.

Who would guess that a big strong dog like Rock could get so undone, could be so sensitive to Ryan’s distress? Pacing nervously from room to room, he reared up to peer out the windows and to paw at them until Dulcie backed him away, hissing at him.

“Sit, Rock!” the tabby told him. “Sit, now!”

Rock sat, with that puzzled look he got when any of the three cats gave him a command. Dulcie kept talking and talking to him, to calm him. She’d seen him upset before, when Ryan was stressed over a job, but never this bad. The Weimaraner’s sensitivity to human feelings showed his intelligence, but it made him a challenge to live with. Rock would never be a phlegmatic house dog who easily rolled with the punches.

But talking to him helped. He was always attentive when she or Joe or Kit spoke to him, he had never gotten over his amazement at the wonderful talking cats. At last she got him to lie down on the rug, and she stretched out close to him.

“They’ll be back soon, Rock. It’s all right, everything’s all right.”

He turned to nose at her; he was still shivering. Could he be upset not only because Ryan and Clyde were distressed, but because of some elusive canine sensitivity that told him Joe was in trouble? No human really knew the extent of an animal’s perceptions.She could tell animal researchers a number of stories they’d find hard to believe.

Rock was still for a while, but then he rose nervously again, heading for the kitchen. He pushed and pawed at the locked doggy door, then looked at Dulcie angrily, as if she was the one who had locked it. She tried to get him to eat some kibble, but he turned his face away. At last he headed back to the living room, gave a sigh of deep resignation, climbed into Joe’s ragged easy chair, and curled up tight, his nose hidden in his flank.

Dulcie didn’t know whether to laugh at his dramatics or lick the big dog’s face. Leaping into the chair beside him, she curled up in a little circle against his side, and began to purr to him; but worry about Joe ate at them both.

When at last Rock slept, snoring, worn out from his concern, she slipped down carefully, silently, and left him.Just for half an hour, she thought.Just for a little while.

Padding up the stairs, she sailed from the desktop to a rafter and quietly pushed out through Joe’s cat door. And she headed over the rooftops, galloping across the village toward the Gibbs condo, her mind on a possible laptop and printer, on the source of that second anonymous note left at the back door of the station.

Landing on the roof of the complex, she dropped down to Gibbs’s terrace, and peered in. Why waste the perfect time to toss the place, with Gibbs an hour’s drive away, hopefully detained by the law.

Nothing moved in there. No lights. The TV dark and silent. She could hear no sound. She had the place to herself, and she had plenty of time for a thorough search. Sliding the screen back, she wondered if they’d been in too much of a hurry to secure the door.

No such luck. The glass slider was locked tight.

There were three windows facing the condo’s terrace. Leaping up, clinging to the sills with stubborn claws, she found all three screens locked, and she could see that the locks on the windows were engaged. Going over the roof to the front door, near the stairs, she found that locked, too.

The kitchen had one window, which was on the outside wall, two stories above the street and with no roof access. A thorny bougainvillea vine clung to that two-story wall, but it was a five-foot leap from this landing onto the vine. If she missed, it would be a straight drop, two stories to the sidewalk.

She crouched, made the leap. Was scrambling through the bougainvillea toward the kitchen window, hoping they hadn’t bothered to lock this one, when a squad car pulled to the curb two floors below.

Peering down through the leaves and red blossoms, she watched Juana Davis step out, tucking a folded paper into her uniform pocket.Could that be a warrant? Dulcie thought with excitement.She’s been to the judge already? Well, Davis wasted no time. Maybe Ray and Ryder’s hasty departure, plus the body at the ruins, had given her enough to request a search warrant.

Clawing her way back through the bougainvillea, away from the window, Dulcie managed to leap back to the landing, where she crouched behind a small potted tree, waiting for Juana, waiting to slip inside behind her.

Coming up the stairs, Juana used a key with a large white tag that, Dulcie supposed, she’d gotten from the landlord. As she pushed the door open, Dulcie made a fast dash…She got only as far as Juana’s heels when Juana turned, closed the door in her face, and stood looking down at her. Dulcie didn’t know if she’d made some tiny sound, or if Juana had felt a change in the air current behind her stockinged legs. The tabby stood frozen, staring up at her. Did Davis have to be so perceptive?

Juana looked at her for a long time, her dark brown eyes as unreadable as if she were studying the face of a shackled felon. Dulcie tried to look innocent. She tried her sweet cat smile, and knew she looked nervous and guilty.

But guilty of what? Juana didn’t know why she was here. As good a detective as Juana Davis was, she didn’t have a clue on this one. Boldly Dulcie rubbed against her ankles, purring as hard as she could manage.

“Dulcie, what are you doing here?”

Dulcie preened and purred.

“You were on the roofs, and you saw me?” Juana said quietly, the way she would talk to any animal. “Well, the roofs are a good place for cats. No cars, no dogs, nothing to bother you-but I don’t want you following me inside. If you got lost among the furniture, and got locked in…” She looked deep into Dulcie’s eyes. “I wish you could understand. You mustn’t go into strange houses, you could starve to death before anyone knew you were there. You go on, now. Go chase a mouse.” Turning, she slipped inside and closed the door.

So much for that, Dulcie thought, scrambling up the potted tree to the roof. She felt like a rookie who wanted to go on a case and instead was sent to direct traffic.

But if there was a computer in there, or any kind of evidence, Juana would find it. And instead of her planned break-and-enter, she headed back to Clyde’s house to babysit a hundred-pound Weimaraner-and to worry about Joe. To wait nervously for a call from Clyde and Ryan to find out if they’d found him and if he was all right.

38

THE EVENING WAS pushing on toward nine when Charlie got home from Dr. Firetti’s, the wind cold at her back as she hurried from her Blazer into the tiled mudroom that led to both the living room and the kitchen. Something smelled good, and when she stepped through into the big family kitchen, Max was fixing a tray for their late supper. She could see through into the living room where he had set up the folding table before a welcoming fire.

Max had wanted to go down to Firetti’s with her, but she’d begged him to stay home, to heat up something from the freezer and maybe make a salad-she couldn’t talk to the doctor openly in front of him, and certainly the cats couldn’t. She was just thankful that John Firetti was there for them, day and night. There was a clinic up the coast for after-hours emergencies, but Dr. Firetti took care of emergencies for a few of his long-standing clients, as had his father before him, getting out of bed at any hour, and he seemed content with the arrangement.

She and the two cats had told him every detail of their encounter with the coyotes. He’d asked how close they’d been to the animals, had asked the same questions Max asked. When Firetti was satisfied that no one had been bitten, he’d examined and X-rayed Sage’s leg, put on a new splint, and rebandaged him. But he’d wanted to keep him overnight. Kit was unwilling to leave Sage, though they had spent most of the week battling and then making up. Maybe the tortoiseshell wanted to stay because theyhad battled, because she felt guilty that she’d made Sage so unhappy he’d run away and nearly been killed.

Dr. Firetti had fixed a warm bed for the two in his office and tossed a blanket and pillow on the couch for himself. Charlie left with hugs for both cats, hoping they’d sort out their differences; she left Kit snuggled as close to Sage as she could get without hurting his wounds, and before she turned away Kit had looked up at her with such confusion, with worry and hurt for Sage and yet with a clear uncertainty in her wide yellow eyes. Uncertainty about the state of her own heart? Torn between her fear for Sage, and her own needs? Charlie had felt tears start and had turned away quickly, leaving the clinic, worrying about where Kit’s hotheaded young spirit would lead her.

Now, at home, Charlie washed her hands at the kitchen sink then followed Max into the living room, where she curled up in a big chair before the fire as he carried in their supper tray. She told herself that everything would be all right, that Kit would sort out her feelings, and as Max pulled his own chair near hers, she sipped her hot tea and reached hungrily for her grilled sandwich.

“Before we got married,” she said, grinning at him, “you told me you couldn’t cook.”

“And you told me you didn’t know how to fix a fence or shoot straight.”

“This is the best supper I’ve ever had,” she said, taking another huge bite.

“It’s only a grilled-cheese sandwich.”

“It’s your famous grilled cream cheese and salami on rye, and it’s delicious. Is there more?” she said, devouring her salad, too, and gulping the sweet, steaming tea.

“All you want, in the kitchen. Did you clean those scratches on your face? You’re sure they’re only from branches? The coyotes didn’t get near you?”

“Not within yards, Max. Will you stop worrying?”

He took her hand. “Just glad you’re safe-don’t want you frothing at the mouth and biting people.” He brought her another sandwich from the kitchen, and fresh, hot tea, then threw another log on the fire and settled down again to fill her in on the events of the evening. She had, while in Dr. Firetti’s office, taken a call on her cell from Ryan.

“Joe’s fine,” Ryan had begun in a preamble to who-knew-what, then gave her such a brief sketch of where they were and why that Charlie had wanted to stop her, make her tell it slowly. “We’re headed home now. Joe’s asleep on my lap. He had a hamburger and then we stopped for dinner, smuggled him into a little steakhouse,” she had said, amused. “I can’t believe how much this cat eats.”

Ryan had had the speaker on, Charlie heard Clyde laugh.

Joe must have awakened; he had growled, “You’d be hungry, too, if you barely escaped being hauled off to the pound.” And the tomcat’s yowling harangue had assured her that he was just fine.

Now she waited for Max to give her the details of what had gone down at the airport and in the city. But by the time he’d finished with San Jose and the race to San Francisco, and was recounting how the San Francisco uniforms had decked Ray Gibbs, she was nodding and jerking awake.

“Bedtime,” Max said, picking up her empty cup and plate. She rose, yawning hugely. “And Ryder Wolf is dead,” she said quietly. She would have thought she’d feel no emotion for Ryder. She was surprised by how sad that death left her.

“What will happen now?” she said as they turned out the lights and headed down the hall.

“The usual,” Max said. “SFPD will go over the stolen Audi, Santa Clara County sheriff’s office will examine Lindsey’s Mercedes and take evidence. Ditto with Gibbs’s car. The sheriff will send a unit over to the city to transport Gibbs back to the Santa Clara County lockup.”

“To be arraigned for murder,” she said, crawling into bed. “What will happen to Lindsey? Is she under suspicion for Chappell’s death?”

“Don’t know yet,” he said, slipping in beside her. “We’ve yet to identify the woman in the grave. Maybe that’s Nina, maybe not. And we have to establish cause of death. Gibbs could be arraigned on that count, too.” He looked over at her-and smiled. She was sound asleep.

Strange, Max thought, watching her. Although this case had endangered Mike and Dallas, it hadn’t worried her nearly as much as had tonight’s events involving the feral cat. The stress of forging back through that black tangle of woods to rescue the two cats-how many people would do that? The stress of having to shoot the coyotes. Her worry and fear for the cats always touched him. And she claimed she wasn’t tenderhearted. Smiling down at his unpredictable redheaded wife, Max turned out the lamp and was soon asleep himself as the rising moon sent a first glimmer through the high windows. ***

BUT LATER, AS moonlight washed broadly through the windows of the Harper house, touching Charlie’s face, she woke again to relive the scene in Dr. Firetti’s examining room. As the doctor went to fetch some food for the cats, she had stepped out into the hall, leaving Sage and Kit alone, tucked up in the big basket he had fixed for them. But there, she had paused.

Behind her, she could hear them talking and she turned to listen; she was dismayed as Sage begged Kit to come back to the clowder, to join the clowder once more, to stay with him and be a pair.

She didn’t want Kit to return to the wild, didn’t want her to leave her life in the village, none of Kit’s friends wanted that. Yet they all, cats and humans, wanted her to be happy. The question was, what did Kit want? Kit, herself, didn’t seem to know. She made up to Sage one minute, snuggling and purring, and the next minute was fighting with him. Tonight she’d told him, “No, Sage. I won’t come back.”

“But we’ve always been best friends,” he’d said. “You don’t really want to stay here among humans, you can’t really want to live as a captive, locked up in houses with humans.”

“Idon’t live as a captive,” Kit had hissed. “I come and go as I please, I do as I please. I’m notlocked up! I belong here!”

“But what about us. If you love me…”

“We will always be loving friends,” she’d said softly. “I…I don’t know how I feel…Stone Eye is gone,” she’d said, “but if another tyrant comes along, will you be obedient to him, too? So he’ll protect you?”

Sage had said nothing. Only silence.

“Does being safe mean more to you than our freedom?” she’d snapped. There was a thump on the floor as she’d leaped out of the basket and come racing through the door-but Charlie had moved faster, catching her up and holding her close, Kit’s heart pounding against her, a fast little trip-hammer.

“You can’t run away, Kit. Just listen to him. Listen to his side, you owe him that.”

Kit had turned her face away-but then in a moment she looked up at Charlie, and shame showed in her wide yellow eyes. As Charlie carried her back into the examining room, Sage had tried to rise, stumbling against the side of the basket, crouching as if to leap out. Charlie hurried to stop him, setting Kit down in the basket beside him, where the two hissed at each other. But then Sage had looked ashamedly down at his paws.

“I’m sorry,” the pale cat had mumbled. “No one can force you to leave here, no one can force you to love me.”

“I’m sorry,” Kit had said contritely. “I guess…Maybe, sometimes, one doesn’t have a choice in how one feels.”

“I guess maybe sometimes,” Sage had said, “one takes the easy way.” He looked at Kit a long time, then lay down again. Tentatively Kit curled down beside him. Sage purred a little, and nuzzled Kit’s whiskers-and Charlie turned and left them, slipping out of the room.

Two stubborn little individuals, she’d thought, feeling tears start.So at cross purposes. She’d hurt deeply for them, had headed home filled with concern for Sage and for the fiery young tortoiseshell.

39

NOW, AS CHARLIE dropped into a tired sleep again snuggled against Max, down in the village, at Molena Point PD, Lindsey Wolf finished giving Detective Garza her formal statement, clarifying every detail she could recall from the moment she’d first parked across from Gibbs’s condo and then followed his car. From those terrible moments in the airport when she saw her sister murdered, to the moment when, in the gift shop at Fisherman’s Wharf, Gibbs himself was shot and taken into custody.

In Dallas’s office, against the faint sound of the dispatcher’s voice from up the hall and the voices of various officers moving in and out through the building, she told Dallas everything she could remember. The long ride in the cab watching Gibbs’s car moving in and out of traffic. Thinking her driver would have a cell phone, and he hadn’t. Not wanting to relay her message through his dispatcher, not sure what the dispatcher would tell her superior and other drivers. Following Gibbs to the hotel, paying her cab fare, and slipping into the restaurant to use their phone, having to explain that it was an emergency. By the time they finished the interview, she felt wrung out.

“Come on,” Dallas said. “Mike’s waiting. You’ll feel better with a drink and some dinner.” And they headed for Mike’s apartment, leaving the center of the village, its streets and shops bright and awash with moonlight, and heading up among the darker streets where the moon was hidden above pine and oak and cypress trees.

“Have you thought about what you’ll do now?” Dallas said. “After all that’s happened, will you find it too painful to stay here in the village?”

Lindsey looked at him for a long time. “You think I’ll run away from ugliness again.”

He glanced at her. “I don’t know.”

“That’s not very flattering.”

“I’m a cop. I don’t specialize in flattery.”

She smiled. “You don’t use flattery in your work?”

He laughed, then was silent. Ahead, at the top of the hill, the over-the-garage duplex was dark on one side, but Mike’s lights were bright and welcoming. She looked at Dallas as he pulled up the drive. “I don’t think I’ll run, this time.”

From the living room above, Mike watched them pull in. He’d been standing at the windows nursing a drink, looking down across the moonlit village to the sea beyond.

He had stopped to pick up salad things and steaks, had put the potatoes in the oven to bake, washed and put together the salad. Turning to check the oven, he considered his new digs with satisfaction, the big, airy studio with its high, white-stained rafters, its tall windows looking down over the village. Ryan’s roomy desk before the windows, offering a comfortable place to work-near the kitchen and coffeepot, he thought, amused.

At the back of the long room was a simple daybed, soft with throw pillows in the daytime, and two canvas camp chairs. With the dressing room and bath, he had the perfect bachelor pad.

Perfect, for now.

It would be pretty crowded for a couple.

But that was way down the line. He didn’t know if Lindsey was ready for a real commitment. How tied was she, still, to what she’d had? What she’d thought she had with Chappell?

Turning as if to speak to Rock, he realized the big dog wasn’t with him, that Rock was back with his mistress.I don’t suppose, he thought, watching the Blazer pull in and stepping into the kitchen to mix Lindsey’s drink,don’t suppose I’d ever find another dog like Rock.

He thought about this morning, which seemed days ago, about Rock’s exhibition of unerring tracking, and wondered what the real story was. Maybe Ryan would tell him, sometime. And maybe she wouldn’t. And for a moment, again, he missed the youngster she had been, a handful of fire and stubbornness, as hardheaded as a young mule. Then he smiled. Was she so different now?

He put aside his fatherly sentiment as Lindsey and Dallas came up the stairs. Opening the door for them, he felt a stab of warmth at the sight of Lindsey-and, again, a sharp jolt of relief that she was safe. That she wasn’t dead in that car, in place of her sister. ***

IT WAS NEARLY six the next morning when the Greenlaws woke and Lucinda reached down the bed feeling around her feet for Kit-then remembered that Kit was at the clinic with Sage, that Charlie had called from the clinic last night to tell her about the coyotes. Rising and pulling on her robe, thinking of Kit nearly killed by coyotes, Lucinda said a prayer of thanks that their beloved tortoiseshell was safe. And she prayed for Sage, too. What had possessed him to run off like that, into the wild, still encumbered by that awkward cast?

Love, she thought. Love and hurt and anger. She didn’t want to think past that point, couldn’t bear to think that Kit might love him in return, love him enough to leave them, to leave her home.

And how selfish was that!

Starting the coffee, pouring a cup before it finished brewing, she sat down at the dining table with the faded, handwritten letters taken from Olivia Pamillon’s diary.

Though she and Pedric had read them at once, when Wilma brought them up last night, she wanted another look. The letters were addressed to only three people: two cousins, Annette Pamillon and Jeannine Pamillon Brink. And Jeannine’s husband, Tom. That was the couple who had brought back the first speaking cats, secretly intending to breed and sell them. The messages were oblique in their wording. These seemed to be first drafts, with words crossed out or changed to make them less decipherable to the uninitiated. Surely Olivia had penned new copies from these, mailed them, and kept the originals; but why had she kept them? The replies were equally obscure.

Two implied that Olivia would take legal action to destroy Jeannine’s title to her shares of the estate if she and Tom didn’t abandon their commercialization of the cats and swear themselves to secrecy. A threat couched in obscurity but clear to someone who knew the truth.

But even Olivia’s comments about the cats themselves, to Annette, whom she must have trusted, were oblique, phrases such as,I love watching the wild animals around the estate. So many come to visit me, and seem to grow bolder each day. And then there would be some innocuous and unrelated comment regarding clothes, or a recipe, and then-as if this was the pattern they’d worked out-the urgent part of the message:John’s houseguests are incredibly nosy, asking questions that are none of their affair. Or,I have asked Jeannine several times if I might stop by when I’m in the village. Every time they are busy, or are going out of town. My own cousin. And then a few weeks later, again to Annette,I think it’s time we visited Jeannine together, a kind of surprise. What do you think?

Lucinda laid the sheets aside. Strange that Olivia had kept these-maybe, as she’d gotten older, she’d held on to them and to the Bewick book as a link with her fading past. Lucinda hoped those who had known about the cats were all dead; she grew increasingly uneasy wondering who else might know, wondering how far the secret might have spread. To paraphrase one of her favorite authors-as secretswill do.

40

IN THE ALLEYWAY of the Harper stable, Kit and Sage sat side by side on a bale of hay watching Charlie saddle the buckskin gelding. It was two weeks since Sage had run away into the woods, more than three since Willow had first taken him to Charlie. His cast had been removed, and he sat up straight and alert. Dr. Firetti had told him he could go home, but must take it easy. He said Sage had healed quickly despite the trauma of his second accident. Almost, Charlie thought, smiling, as if his need to be away from closed rooms and humans had driven him to a fast recovery.

Though now, despite his eagerness for the open hills and freedom, the young tom looked up suspiciously at Bucky, understandably wary of making this journey on horseback. He had insisted he could go on his own, but Firetti disagreed.

Charlie was taking Bucky because he was reliable and steady. Her own sorrel mare was moodier, and liked to shy at the swift, small shadows they might encounter. Redwing was sure to snort and sidestep if the clowder cats came slipping around them through the woods.

Cinching up her western saddle, which she preferred when the cats rode with her, she looked over at Sage. “How will we find them, Sage? The clowder could be anywhere.”

“They have favorite places,” Sage said. “You can call out and if they see me, I think they’ll come-Willow will come.”

Charlie doubted that would have been true while Stone Eye was alive. She led Bucky forward to make him let out the air he always hoarded, tightened the cinch again, and tied her jacket across the saddle, snugged up against the horn to make a little pillow. Picking up Kit, she settled her there, then eased Sage down beside her.

Swinging up, she headed Bucky out behind the barn and into the woods. The last time she’d entered these woods, it had been black night. She thought of the coyotes, and shivered.

But this morning was bright and crisp, and the only movement ahead was shadows shifting from the blowing trees. Beneath Bucky’s hooves, the earth smelled loamy and rich. Heading through the dense stands of oaks and pines, Charlie had no idea, when they found the clowder, what Kit would do. No idea whether the tortoiseshell would stay with Sage and become his mate, as he wanted, or would return to Lucinda and Pedric. Kit had told Charlie nothing. But if Kit remained in the wild, racing off with the clowder to vanish among the hills, she would break Lucinda’s and Pedric’s hearts.

Kit hadn’t said goodbye to the Greenlaws. When Charlie asked her why, she wouldn’t talk about it.

As they emerged from the woods onto the open hills that rose vast and green above them, Sage’s small body went rigid with anticipation. Charlie held him securely as Bucky made his way up through the tall grass toward the high woods.

Within an hour they were on the little trail that led along the edge of the cliff between the pine woods and the sea. Far below, the sea crashed against the rocks, foaming and pounding, stirring the smell of iodine. Then, when at last they turned away from the sea into the woods, the smell of new spring grass came sharply again, crushed under Bucky’s hooves. Nothing stirred among the woods; no bright eyes watching them, no shadow of a cat, not even a tail-flicking squirrel. She urged Bucky in deep among the trees, then pulled him up, letting him snatch at mouthfuls of grass though Max wouldn’t have allowed him to do that. Around them the woods were silent. Snuggled before her in the saddle, the cats looked and looked, but they saw none of the clowder. Kit, leaping down into the carpet of leaves, began to search for scent. Sage crouched to follow, but Charlie held him back.

“You don’t want to jump so far on that newly healed leg.” She looked down at the pale-colored tom. “You’ll be taking care of yourself now. You’d better do what the doctor said, Sage. If you give that leg time to heal fully, it will grow strong again. Otherwise, you’ll cripple yourself. You don’t want to live all your life lame, unable to run or hunt properly.”

Sage scowled deeply at her. He’d had enough of being bossed by humans. But then, he’d had enough, too, of being crippled by the cast, and he remained obediently still.

They watched Kit circle where the clowder had often sheltered at night when she had run with them, the dense stand of blackberry brambles offering a safe haven from predators. Working in ever widening circles, Kit stopped suddenly and reared up, looking around her.

“They were here,” she said. “Call them, Charlie. Call Willow.”

Softly Charlie called. And warily she watched the woods, hoping some unseen hiker wouldn’t emerge and wonder what she was doing. Again she called, and again.

“Louder,” Kit told her. “Call louder.”

She called, watching the dappled sun and shadows beneath the blowing pines. Every shape seemed to change and move in the shifting light, yet nothing really moved at all.

She called three times, then three times more. Bucky pulled at the reins, reaching to snatch at the sparse grass. Her voice, out of place in the silence, seemed to her a rude invasion of the wild woods. She was answered only by silence, and by the distant crash of water breaking against the cliff. Below her, Kit stood up on her hind legs again, like a little rabbit, watching the woods and listening. But when Kit looked up at her, Charlie couldn’t read the expression in the tortoiseshell’s yellow eyes. Agitated. Unsettled. A look that could mean anything.

When after a quarter of an hour there had been no response, no faint and distant mewl, no stealthy shadow approaching through the blowing-tree shadows, Charlie said, “I don’t think they hear us. Can you track them away from the bramble?”

In her lap, Sage fidgeted, wanting down, wanting to search, too, but still she held him. If they had to hurry away from some danger, Kit could leap to the saddle or could vanish as swiftly as a bird. But Sage’s weaker leg would slow him, nor should he make a flying leap.

Kit, after a long search nosing into zigzags among the brambles, leaped to the top of an outcropping of granite boulders, a hill of tumbled stones that rose against an oak. There she reared up tall, staring into the treetops. Loudly she mewled, and mewled again. A strange, wild cry that made Charlie shiver; then Sage’s voice joined her, their cries eerie in the empty woods.

And suddenly the woods weren’t empty. Cats appeared all around them slipping out from among the far trees and from beyond the boulders and descending from the highest branches, down the rough trunks. They paused and stood looking, their ears forward, their tails twitching; none approached too close. Only Willow came to them, trotting up to Bucky.

Quietly Charlie dismounted, holding Sage against her. She knelt before the bleached calico lady, and put Sage down.

Willow licked the young tom’s face, then turned to look at the clowder cats. And now all the cats came around them and rubbed against Sage and licked his ears and made over him. But all the while, ready to bolt, they watched Charlie and the big buckskin.

Then Willow’s mate appeared, the white tom Cotton, racing out of the far woods, his friend Coyote beside him. The white tom and the dark tabby tom strode forward boldly to inspect Sage. ***

IT TOOK A while to tell Sage’s story. Charlie, sitting on the grass among the cats, told the story alone; Sage and Kit had wandered away. Willow and the two toms sat close to her, listening, the shy clowder cats gathered behind them in a ragged half circle. Like children, Charlie thought, children gathered at story hour, their faces filled with wonder at Sage’s ordeal, with amazement as Charlie described the hospital and how Sage had been helped by humans. And, like children, most of the cats believed her but a few did not. These five, their expressions skeptical, turned to look away toward the rock hill where Sage and Kit sat together.

Charlie could see that the two were arguing. She couldn’t hear their voices-but with the sudden dropping of ears and lashing of tails, she could clearly read Sage’s beseeching, and Kit’s short, willful temper, and it was hard to keep her mind on the story. Then Sage reared up as if his patience was at an end, and smacked Kit hard in the face-a businesslike blow that made Charlie catch her breath.

All the cats were watching. Cotton growled, and Willow’s surprised intake of breath was followed by her whispered, “Oh, my.” And this was the moment of decision. Would Kit stay with him, now that he’d shown some tomcat macho? Was that what she’d been waiting for?

41

THE JOURNEY HOME was silent. Kit rode in Charlie’s arms, her face hidden against Charlie’s shoulder. She said nothing, she didn’t look up at Charlie. She huddled deep in her own thoughts. Above them the sun pushed higher into the clear sky; the chill day grew warm despite the sea wind blowing up the cliff. Charlie didn’t know all that had occurred between the two, she knew only that Kit was going home again, and that for Lucinda and Pedric and for all Kit’s friends, that was the best news. But she grieved for Kit, and wished Kit would share with her what she was feeling. ***

RIDING CUDDLED AGAINST Charlie, leaving Sage behind, Kit was both sad and relieved. And was uncertain, too, wondering if her decision had been the right one and yet knowing, deep down, that it was right.

Lucinda had once told her that a person should not let pity shape their decisions, that pity seldom fostered clear thinking. Now, Kit clung to Lucinda’s words, assuring herself she’d done what she must do.

She had, sitting with Sage atop the hill of boulders, looking down at Charlie with the clowder gathered around her, and then looking away deep into the woods and then out to the bright, wild sea, tried to think clearly. The trouble with clear thinking was that her feelings kept getting in the way.

She had looked at Sage and then looked away toward the village whose life was so far removed from the ways of the wild. She had looked back at Sage, looked deep into his eyes as he sat waiting for her decision, his patience at an end since he felt well and strong again. His sudden demanding attitude had pleased her, for Sage’s sake. But then…

She’d thought about when they were small, how happy they had been in each other’s company, just the two of them-except that Sage could never understand her dreams and yearnings. She had tried to tell him what she imagined and longed for, but he never seemed to care. But they’d been only kittens, and despite their bitter disagreements they had loved each other.

But now they were grown cats. What they believed had become more deeply a part of them and would shape them all their lives. And she thought that neither of them intended to change, certainly Sage didn’t mean to examine what might be right or wrong or what had gone awry.

She thought about when the clowder had gone to hunt rabbits on Hellhag Hill, when she first saw Lucinda and Pedric picnicking there. Sage and the rest of the clowder had crept away to escape the two humans, fearing and hating them, but she had hidden in the grass listening to the tales Pedric told and she’d been fascinated that humans were as hungry for those stories as she.

Later, Sage had been cross that she’d strayed so near to humans-and he’d said that humans had no right to any of those tales.

And then this morning, sitting with Sage on the mountain of boulders listening ashe planned their life together, ashe toldher how it would be, she knew they were not the same. She knew that she could not do this, that she could not do as he wanted.

She had looked at Sage, whom she had known and loved forever, and wished she could be different. Or that he could. And she knew that wouldn’t happen. Sitting close to Sage on the sun-warmed rocks, she had wept for them both.

Maybe her heart was like a bird fleeing among the clouds. And Sage’s heart was like the steady robin, at one with the earth and the sheltering woods. She didn’t know which was best. She felt ashamed of hurting him, but it was better to hurt him now than to hurt him more later.

Swallowing back her tears, she had told him goodbye…

And he had whacked her!

Surprised, she’d raised her paw to hit him back, but then she laughed. His blow freed her. She’d laughed and, despite his rumbling growl, she’d nuzzled him goodbye and she turned and ran, ran back to Charlie, ran away from him feeling free at last, so free, even if she was weeping. ***

THE CATS AND humans were gathered at the Damen house for potluck, an impromptu party that Ryan and Clyde said was to celebrate the sale of Charlie’s new book, but in truth was in celebration of Kit’s return home from the hills. For those humans who knew Kit’s story, emotions were high. Max and Dallas, puzzled by the undercurrent of excitement, could only attribute it to the sale of Charlie’s book. And Mike and Lindsey were too wrapped up in each other to notice anything out of the ordinary. Only Clyde was skeptical of Kit’s resolve.

“I hope she doesn’t change her mind, doesn’t go through this again.” He and Ryan were alone in the kitchen, setting out silverware and napkins.

Ryan set down a stack of plates, turning to look at him. “That’s very cheerful. I didn’t know I married Scrooge.”

Joe sauntered in, leaped to the counter staring at Clyde. “What do you know about how Kit feels? Don’t be such a sour face.”

Ryan grinned, and winked at Joe. They heard the front door open as guests arrived, and they moved to the living room, where Kit was snuggling down before the fire beside Rock, looking as domestic as if she had never, ever considered running wild. Only the white cat moved away from the growing crowd. Snowball, though she had taken to joining the family since Ryan moved in, headed quickly for the laundry, wanting her own quiet space.

Drinks and beer were passed, and appetizers. Everyone toasted Charlie for signing her second book contract, then the conversation turned once again to the past few weeks, to the fate of Ray Gibbs, whose trial for the murder of Ryder Wolf was scheduled to begin in six weeks.

The night after Gibbs had been taken into custody in San Francisco, Dr. Emerson had called Dallas at the station to say he’d found Nina’s dental records, that he’d called John Bern, and they had a match. So thatwas Nina in the Pamillon grave; they did not know yet whether that had been Nina in the tree house with Carson, they were waiting for a match on the DNA.

Lindsey said, “I know the lab’s backed up, but what about the two bullets Dr. Bern found in Nina’s grave? Do they have anything on that?”

“They do,” Dallas said. “Those were.45 slugs.” The bullets that had killed Ryder were.32 slugs and the rifling matched the revolver taken off Gibbs in San Francisco.

“But,” Dallas told her, “OBI found the gun that killed Carson. Found it this morning, in the woods two miles from the tree house-they spent two weeks tramping the woods with metal detectors. This morning they dug up a.45 Colt with two smudged prints beneath the cylinder.” He smiled. “Where Gibbs was careless wiping down the gun.”

“Gibbs’s prints,” Lindsey said sadly, but not surprised.

“Ballistics matched it to the slugs in Chappell,” Dallas said. “This will give their DA enough to indict Gibbs for Chappell’s murder. With luck, he’ll do time for that, as well as for Ryder’s death.

“But as for the slugs in Nina’s grave, they were so badly corroded it’s not likely they’ll ever get a match.”

Lindsey sipped her drink. “I’ll always believe that Gibbs killed Nina. I don’t want to think that Ryder did that-I don’t like to think Gibbs will never answer for that. But at least,” she said, “if he’s convicted for Carson’s murder and for Ryder’s, then he won’t go free. I saw him shoot Ryder.”

She frowned at Dallas. “I know I’m only one witness. I wish whoever else saw him shoot her, the man who called you from San Jose, would come forward. Why won’t he? He was a witness, too! He was responsible enough to call you, so why won’t he help us now? What’s he afraid of suddenly? Ray’s behind bars, Ray can’t hurt him. But now he doesn’t want to be involved anymore? Doesn’t want to make sure the killer goes to prison?”

Across the room, the witness licked a white paw. He wanted very much to see Gibbs go to prison, but there was nothing he could do. He wished there were some way hecould testify. Clyde and Ryan, and Charlie and Wilma, and the Greenlaws were all preoccupied, they daren’t look at him.

Once again Mike toasted Lindsey for her quick, though foolhardy, action in following Ray Gibbs and cornering him. But no one toasted Joe Grey. No one rose to celebrate the tomcat’s part in Gibbs’s capture.

Those, however, who knew the truth gave Joe sly looks; Charlie winked at him and Ryan gave him a “thumbs-up” that no one else saw and that made the tomcat smile.

And as everyone toasted the newlyweds for the hundredth time, Kit watched Clyde and Ryan with interest.

What was it that made these two, in all the world, so happy and so right for each other? Why were they so perfect together?

And when she looked at Charlie and Max, she was aware of the same inner closeness.

She looked at her own dear Lucinda and Pedric, and then at Joe and Dulcie, and she knew that in all these couples, the same likeness of spirit had drawn them together and held them together, close and secure in their partnership.

But what, exactly,was that bond? Love, yes, but whatwas love? Where did it come from and what made it last? She didn’t know what to call that mysterious oneness of spirit-she only knew she had not had that with Sage. She loved Sage, but not in the same way as this.

She thought about how Sage had suddenly turned so macho when he was well again and was back on his own ground, and she smiled, hoping that one of those pretty young queens in the clowder was the right one for him, that they would find, together, that same mysterious oneness. ***

MUCH LATER, when the party had ended and everyone had gone, when Clyde had put out the fire and Ryan turned out the lights, Joe and Rock and Snowball followed the couple up the stairs; soon they were all tucked up in the king-size bed, Ryan and Clyde sipping a nightcap as a fire burned on the hearth, its reflections dancing along the beams above them.

“Here’s to Joe Grey,” Ryan said, stroking the tomcat. “Gibbs is behind bars, where he belongs-you and Lindsey sure nailed him.”

“And here’s to Dulcie,” Joe said. “If she hadn’t alerted you two, I’d be locked in some stinking cage about now-or smashed flat on the concrete, decorated with tire marks.”

Ryan shivered, then laughed. “You’re a disgusting tomcat.” She picked him up and hugged him, deeply embarrassing him because she was wearing only a thin, low-cut nightie. His embarrassment made her laugh harder. She put him down, watched him curl up between Rock and Snowball. Clyde, finishing his drink, turned out the light and, for this one night, despite their newlywed status, he and Ryan settled down to sleep among the warm, bed-hogging menagerie.

Dozing off, Joe thought,Sleep well, Dulcie. Sleep well, Kit, and was glad to have the tortoiseshell settled in once more, hopefully content, again, with her adopted family. ***

BUT AT THE Greenlaw house Kit wasn’t sleeping snuggled down with her humans. She sat wide awake in her tree house, alone in the moonlight, far too energized to sleep. She thought about joy. She thought about all the wonders in the world she hadn’t yet seen and smelled and tasted and clawed and leaped over.

Lucinda said that joy was the deep-down power one was born with-that some folks nurtured joy and let it grow, and some folks crippled it. She thought about Sage and prayed for his happiness. And she thought that somewhere out there in the world was the right tomcat for her. Waiting for her?

She thought about that for a long time, wondering. Then suddenly, filled right up to her ears with exciting thoughts, she raced out of her tree house along the oak branch, did a wild flip onto the windowsill nearly missing it, leaped inside onto the dining room table and off again to the rug, raced three times through the house as fast as a cat can run and landed on the bed, waking Lucinda and Pedric and making them laugh and hug her. And there she curled up between her two housemates. She slept at once, dreaming of so many wonders yet to see that in sleep her dark paws kicked and raced, her fluffy tail twitched, and she let out a little mewl of delight that made Lucinda and Pedric smile-made Lucinda think, as she so often did,Joy is her nature, and that will never change.That will always be so.

15. CAT STRIKING BACK

1

THE SETTING MOON laid its path across the sea, brightening the white sand and the little village, picking out the angles of its crowded roofs and glancing off the windows of the shops and cottages; moon glow caressed the shaggy pines and cypress trees and pooled dark shadows beneath them along the narrow streets. The only sound, at this predawn hour, was the hush of waves breaking on the shore. But inland, all was silent. Where the hills rose round and empty, the moon’s path washed in bright curves. Between the moonlit hills, the narrow valleys were cast in blackness so dense that the tomcat had to make his way by sound and by whisker feel, by familiar smells, by the degree of the slope and the feel of the earth beneath his paws, rocky or soft or bristling with dry grass or smooth where sand had blown across the narrow game trail, each encounter marking more clearly his exact location in relation to home. The tomcat traveled alone, encumbered by his heavy burden.

Padding down toward the first scattered houses, he walked clumsily, not his usual bold gait but spraddle legged and awkward, stepping wide around the half dozen mice that dangled against his chest, their tails gripped tight in his sharp teeth.

He was a big cat, muscled and sleek coated, as silver-gray as burnished pewter. A narrow white strip ran down his nose, and his belly and paws were white, too-one paw spattered, now, with mouse blood. His tail was docked to a short, jaunty length, the product of a kittenhood disaster. His yellow eyes gleamed with the look of a fighter, but his eyes were alight, too, with a smile; he turned once to look back up the hills behind him, watching his tabby lady Dulcie and their younger, tortoiseshell friend Kit move away, trotting higher up across the open land. He had only just parted from his two companions, the lady cats not satisfied only with hunting, but hurrying off to follow their overly curious noses-typical females, he thought tenderly.

Take care, Joe Grey thought, watching the two cats moving swiftly away up the moon-washed hills. They looked very small and alone, careening close to the scattered boulders where they could find hurried shelter. He could hear, as could they, the yipping of coyotes far away, up the higher slopes. Though this yipping of adults and the answering yaps of their cubs meant, surely, that the group of larger predators was all together, preoccupied with their offspring and not wandering far afield to sniff out unsuspecting felines.

But still Joe thought again,Watch your backs, you two. And nervously he turned away, dragging his clutch of mice, hurrying down past the wooden frame that was the beginning of a new house, then past a remodel where the front garden was piled with raw earth waiting for the construction crew. He could smell, over the musty miasma of dangling mice, the fresh scent of raccoons on the trail, and of possums and coastal deer, wild creatures who had made their way down from the hills in darkness to hunt or graze or to slip in among the houses to quench their thirst at a fishpond or a leaky garden hose. As he descended, the houses began to crowd closer together. Far below him the setting moon began to dip into the sea; soon the last thin slice of gold lay reflected and then perversely drowned itself, moving on to light other lands.

Lands he had never seen, and had never longed to see. Life, for Joe Grey, was right here and right now, he didn’t long to travel. His perpetual balancing act between the normal life of an ordinary feline and his more stressful role within the human world itself was all the excitement one tomcat could handle.

Now, with the moon vanished, darkness gripped the yards and houses around him and all but hid the rooftops below, as if a black cloth had been dropped down over the sleeping village. Only a few scattered lights shone, disconnected and eerie, perhaps from the bedroom of an insomniac or the kitchen of an early riser. Farther down along the main street glowed the softly lit storefronts of the village’s upscale shops and restaurants. Though Molena Point was a small and close-knit little community, it was also a tourist town whose business folk offered high-end couture and accessories, valuable antiques and fine jew elry. None of which interested Joe Grey, in itself. But all of which attractedthe more sophisticated and enthusiastic thief, who in turn did interest the tomcat.

A tail jerked in his mouth as one of the mice began to struggle. He clenched his teeth harder, but he didn’t want to further injure the little beasts. They were a gift, a gift of love and caring, and they should remain lively to be of ultimate use. One stunned mouse came wide awake, wriggling wildly as it tried to flip up, tried to see and understand where it was and how to escape, to understand why it hung upside down, and Joe felt a shock of pity for the small creature.

It had been difficult enough for him and Dulcie and Kit to trap the mice alive between their paws without hurting them, to patiently collect the half dozen mice unharmed, and the three cats had suffered considerably at the little beasts’ extended terror. One of the disadvantages of possessing human intelligence was that they had to answer to a deeper empathy for other animals than would an ordinary feline. They cared about their prey, they cared that the creatures they caught were hurt and terrified. Ordinarily they killed their catch quickly, ended the victims’ distress as fast as possible, sending the little animals on to their maker with a minimum of pain. But not this morning. This gift must arrive lively and full of fight.

Hurrying along a sidewalk where flowering bushes overhung the concrete, he crossed a narrow residential street, the macadam warm beneath his paws, a pleasant holdover from yesterday’s bright sun and the mild night that had followed. Cutting through the overgrown yard of a house that, with the declining real estate market, had stood empty for far too long, he glanced up at its stark black windows. No curtain, not even a crooked shade broke the reflection of receding night. Joe wondered at such human foolishness, to let a valuable property stand empty month after month. Even a run-down, derelict house, in this village, could command an easy million.

Yet he knew that the sale of this neglected home was delayed not only by the economy but by a marital dispute, a battle over dividing up the spoils. No one but humans could so royally complicate life. A pair of cats would fight it out tooth and claw, winner take all, loser to slink away defeated, and that would be the end of it. But not humans. Human lives were far more complicated-nuanced, some folks called it. Joe Grey called it indecisive.

The neglected property with its overgrown garden did, however, provide fine hunting for the neighborhood cats. More than a dozen cats lived on the few blocks of this short street, and for that reason, Joe and Dulcie and Kit seldom hunted here, leaving the local game, the mice and moles and gophers, to the feline residents. Though they did have one human friend in this neighborhood, a bright, kind woman to whom they felt drawn, and who was always happy to see them. It was to her home that he was delivering the captive mice.

Pushing through a forest of stickery holly bushes into the overgrown side yard, trying to keep his dangling charges from catching on the protruding thorns, he was just approaching the empty swimming pool when a smell stopped him, a smell that made his fur bristle.

When the divorcing couple vacated the house, the pool had been drained. Why they hadn’t covered it, why the city hadn’t made them cover it, the tomcat didn’t know. The concrete and tile chasm was cracked and stained. Silt and debris had collected in its bottom into a sour-smelling mire. But now, another kind of stink drew him up short, a scent far stronger than the rancid mudor the sweet, musty smell of the mice he carried.

The stink of death, of blood and human death.

As many murders as the tomcat had witnessed in his busy life, he knew that smell intimately, but he still found human death unsettling, not at all like the death of the simpler animals who were his normal prey.

Sniffing again, he told himself this might be animal blood, but he knew it wasn’t. He stood looking around him, listening. He’d like to drop the mice so he could get a clearer scent message. But he’d hauled them this far, partly at Dulcie’s insistence, had nearly put his neck out of joint, and he wasn’t dropping them now-it would take the little beasts only a secondto realize their opportunity, come fully alive, flick away from his reach, and run like hell, scattering in every direction. In Joe’s opinion, the intended recipients were far more needful of his gift than were the dull little rodents of their time on earth-let them scamper on into mouse heaven where they could live in mousy glee with no more cats to chomp on them. As he approached the abandoned pool, the grass growing up through the cracks in the coping tickled his paws. Standing at the edge, he looked over.

In the first weak light of dawn, the mud and slime on the bottom still held the blackness of night; the view was murky even to a cat’s sharp vision. He could see that one area had been disturbed, the mud and moss so churned up that surely something much larger than himself had squirmed around, or had been moved around, and then had been dragged across the pool to its far side; the drag marks were accompanied by a line of shoeprints embossed sharply in the mud. A man’s shoes, and the indentations had been there long enough to have filled with seeping, muddy water. The double trail led to the tile steps which, if the pool had been full, would be underwater. The tile was covered with slime that would be slippery, but the wide track led upward and over the coping to the tile apron. Moving around to stand above the steps, he studied the disturbed surfaces.

From this angle, he could see dark spatters of what looked like blood. Letting the mice rest for a moment on the tile while still firmly gripping their tails in his teeth, he took a good whiff.

Yes, blood. Human blood, nearly dry now despite the damp surround. He could tell, by other scents, that it was a woman who had died here.

The footprints and the slithery smear headed across the patio to the concrete drive and straight up toward the street. He followed, taking care to leave no paw prints on the pale cement. Halfway up, the trail stopped. From that point on, the drive was unmarked. Someone had dragged the body from the bottom of the pool to this juncture. And then, what? Studying the concrete, he found several small marks where the tire of a car had picked up mud and deposited it. Sniffing along the concrete, dragging his mice, he caught the faint scent of the man, too, though it was so mixed with the smell of human blood and of sour mud, that he wasn’t sure he would be able to identify it if he should smell it again later. There were no other tire marks, no other footprints. The tomcat, standing alone on the empty drive dangling his mice, studied the surrounding yards and looked up and down the street.

It was such a peaceful Sunday morning, the sky just beginning to lighten above a tangle of pale clouds and above darker and more serious clouds that smelled of showers. The sea wind was clean and fresh, blowing from the south. There was no other sound, even the birds were quiet, no doves crooning, no scream of a nervy crow. There was no sound of a door closing somewhere, no distant car starting up.

But suddenly he did hear a car turning off from the next block. He bristled as it made its way down the street, moving slowly as if scanning the neighborhood-he relaxed as the driver began tossing out Sunday papers,thunk, thunk, one by one, into the neighbors’ yards. The tomcat dodged away as a paper sailed to the gutter in front of him.

Other than the paper man, he could not see another human soul on the empty street; he stood looking around him, filled with a sudden chill. A woman had died here and been hauled off. And Joe Grey wondered, not for the first time, why he had been the one to happen on the scene. Was there something in his nature that drew him to such events? Some hidden sense that pointed his inner compass toward human violence and suffering, some weird feline perception, some impossible or poorly understood magnetism?

But the tomcat huffed at that idea. That was Dulcie’s kind of thought, that was the fanciful conjecture of fe males. Joe was a down-to-earth tomcat. What happened, happened. There was nothing mysterious about it.

And yet even Joe’s human housemate, who did not believe in things occult any more than Joe did, would accuse him of being drawn to murders, of being attracted to human death as surely as a nail is attracted to a magnet. He could just hear Clyde scolding, over the dinner table or at breakfast.

“Why is it, Joe, that you are always the one to find the body? Or to stumble on a burglary?” That wasn’t true, and Clyde knew it. Sometimes the case was well under way before he got involved. But still Clyde would grouse at him: “Why is it youhave to have your paws in police business? Why are you always there, right in the middle of a case?”

It did no good to point out that Dulcie and Kit were just as involved in the details of human crime, in what went on at Molena Point Police Department. In Clyde’s view, the cats’ preoccupation was all Joe’s fault, and he could already hear Clyde ’s comments about this discovery. But whatever his housemate might imagine, the fact was that a woman was dead, apparently only Joe had happened on the evidence, and the tomcat was burning with questions.

Dangling his mice, he padded on up the drive to the street, studying the concrete, seeking further tire marks.

He found no more, only the few small hints down the drive behind him, hardly visible. And when it rained, he thought uneasily, those would be washed away. The smell of rain was strong, the clouds and wind shifting in an unsettling manner.

Pausing at the curb, he studied the parked cars. All were cars he recognized, all belonged in this neighborhood, all were fogged with the night’s damp breath as if they had been sitting here for many hours.

Even so, he made the rounds along the one block, sniffing tires and walking close to engines to see if he felt any warmth. There were only five cars parked on the street, and four in driveways, all of them familiar, all tires and hoods cold, and not a whiff of lingering exhaust. As he returned to the empty house and made his way back to the swimming pool, the sun was rising, the tops of the hills to the east catching its glow, the dawn beginning to brighten around him.

Along the steps that descended into the empty pool, the blood was drying, as were the muddy shoe prints, as if several hours had passed. Whatever had occurred had taken place, he’d guess, maybe late yesterday afternoon. Any earlier and the hot sun would have dried all the marks to a powdery consistency that would easily flake. Very much later and the prints would still be wet. Studying the scene, he was startled when the rising light of morning dimmed suddenly, as if someone had appeared from nowhere, stepping up behind him.

But it was only cloud shadows, the mass of darker clouds moving in below the white ones, gray and dense and smelling more heavily of rain, serious clouds descending over the village-only some twelve hours later than the weatherman had predicted. That guru of scientific data had said it would rain last night.

With the primitive methods humans used, such pre dictions couldn’t be easy. Joe and Dulcie and Kit had known it wouldn’t rain until morning, they’d known they had the night to hunt. Though the month of Junewas temperamental, scorching one minute, dark with rain or fog the next.

But now, for sure, the rain was coming, and if it got here before the law did, the cops would find little left of blood, of drag marks or of footprints, the evidence would all be washed away. That mustn’t happen. The cops needed to see this, he needed to get them here before the rain hit.

Before hastily departing the scene, he took one last look for additional evidence, circling the house, investigating beneath the overgrown bushes-and making doubly sure that he, himself, had left no paw prints. His jaws were aching with the weight of the mice. Prowling, he found nothing more of significance until, beneath the yellow flowers of a euryops bush beside the drive, he spotted a pair of dark glasses. They smelled of suntan oil. He studied them, but left the silver-rimmed shades untouched, lying among the dead leaves, and hurried away from the scene. Pushing through between several overgrown mock orange bushes, he scorched up an oak tree to the neighbors’ roof and headed across the peaks to deliver his gift, and then to alert the law, though with some small misgivings.

If that was a murder scene, he’d be glad he made the call. If it wasn’t, if the seeming evidence led to some other scenario that he had not imagined, he would be deeply embarrassed. In all the time he’d been secretly passing tips to Molena Point PD, he had never once given the cops a false lead, to do so would tarnish theperfect record of the department’s most reliable snitch.

But no fear, he’d smelled human death. And though he didn’t rejoice in knowing that some innocent human had died, he knew, in every perceptive cell of his silver-gray tomcat body, that the evidence would prove him right.

2

HURRYING OVER THE rooftops the two blocks to the Chapman house, Joe was careful to carry his gift of mice high enough so he wouldn’t trip on them; at his every leap, his mousy burden dragged him down, thudding against his chest and against the roof shingles. Below him along the street, folks had begun to awaken. He glimpsed a man out walking in the cool early dawn. Two women in jogging clothes strolled along gossiping and exchanging giggles. As he jumped clumsily from tree to tree and over a narrow alleyway, above him the sky darkened even more, and he broke into a gallop, praying the rain would hold off until the cops had a look at the bloody swimming pool.

He had no question that as soon as he called the department, a squad car would head up there, that a uniform or maybe one of the detectives would take a look at the pool, and get a blood sample. Once forensics had established that that was human blood, which shouldn’t take long, Detective Garza or Davis would cordon off the scene and get to work. He wondered if any missing-person’s report had come in that could be tied to the dead body. He thought the dark glasses lying beneath the bushes were a woman’s, but with the smell of suntan oil on them, he couldn’t be sure.

Leaping from an oak limb down onto the Chapmans’ roof, Joe backed down a bottlebrush tree and into the heavily layered miasma of crowded bushes, flowers, and small trees that was Theresa Chapman’s garden-a tangle that might be criticized by the neighbors as an unkempt mess but which, to the neighborhood felines, was a jungle of delight in which to hide for a nap or for amusement, to hunt small rodents, and just to play.

Sheltered among the overgrown flowers and shrubs, Joe headed for the laundry-room window. Leaping to the sill, he clawed open the glass slider, releasing onto the morning air the sharp scent of female cat, the stink of used sandbox, and then the sweet smell of kittens. Apparently the latch was broken. The window was secured by a lock that allowed the pane to open four inches, just enough for Mango to come and go; when Theresa was home, she left the slider open. Quickly Joe slid on through.

The Chapman house was a remodel that had once, early in the last century, been a poky little summer cabin. Now, with the living room and kitchen enlarged and the addition of deep bay windows throughout the sunny rooms, and new sliding glass doors onto the back deck, the house was a charmer. Even Joe, with a tomcat’s disdain for architectural niceties, found the home appealing. The interior was, in fact, so commanding in its bold lines that the tangles of homey clutter in which the Chapmans liked to live did not detract from its imposing presence. Cluttered house, cluttered garden, but handsome and sturdy home. The mix seemed to suit exactly Theresa Chapman’s two-sided temperament.

She was a thin young woman with a perpetually delighted smile, as if all the world had been made new for her. Dark brown hair, brown eyes, prominent cheeks that she tried to erase by constant dieting, but which in truth only added to her charm. Her friends and neighbors said she should leave the dieting alone, but Theresa wouldn’t listen. Thin as a rail, still she dieted, seemed almost to starve herself, striving to thin those round, smooth, and appealing cheeks.

Theresa was a loving friend to every animal she met; she cried easily over lost or hurt animals, and she was giving and loving with her human friends. Only when she took offense at real or imagined wrongdoings did her emotions flare with sudden hurt and rage. Yet Joe and Dulcie and Kit, who overheard a lot of village gossip, some by accident and more on purpose, had never heard anyone say a bad word about her.

Dropping down onto the counter that held the laundry sink, Joe leaped to the floor and diffidently approached the big cardboard box in the corner where the kittens were nestled with their mama.

Theresa had left the yellow tabby shut in the house with her nursing babies for the duration of the Chapmans’ three-week vacation, wanting to keep the little family safe. She had left ample food and water, which the housekeeping service would replace regularly. Of course she hadn’t counted on anyone else, on any strangers, gaining ac cess. But last night, surely after Theresa and her husband had left, Joe and Dulcie found the female locked out of the house, separated from her bawling kits, and with no way to get back inside. They had come upon her yowling and clawing at the back door, frantic to get in, and they couldn’t imagine that the Chapmans had accidentally let her out as they were loading up to leave. Carl Chapman might do that, but not Theresa, not with her responsible and loving care of every cat she knew. They were certain Theresa would have checked on Mango the last thing before leaving. Had Mango slipped out past her at the last minute? That didn’t seem likely, not as careful as Theresa was. Or had someone from Charlie Harper’s cleaning service come in right after they left and accidentally let her out?

But why would they come in to clean so late in the day? And Charlie’s employees would never be so careless-nor, of course, would Charlie.

“Those kittens can’t last very long without milk,” Dulcie had said worriedly. “We have to get her back inside.” She had looked frantically at Joe, her green eyes wide, all her maternal instincts on full alert. “Did someone go in there after they left, maybe planning to rob the house?”

Softly she’d padded up the back steps, approaching the yellow cat, who had backed against the door snarling defensively, guarding her children. The cries of the kittens was heartbreaking, and one of them was clawing determinedly at the door, his mewls loud and demanding.

Rearing up, Joe had peered between the door and the molding. The dead bolt gleamed back at him, solidly engaged.

Leaving the frantic female, they had circled the house looking for a way in. If they could gain access, they could open the door from inside-no trick at all for clever paws.

They had tried all the windows, leaping up, balancing on the sills and clawing at the sliders, but all were solidly locked. They clawed at the knobs of the front and back doors, and at the garage pedestrian door, with no luck, the dead bolts holding them tight. It was when they leaped to the back deck to try the glass sliders there that they’d found the deep, fresh pry marks along the slider’s edges, as if the door had been jimmied.

If it had been pried open, it was locked again when they tried it. Even with both of them clawing and straining, they couldn’t force it open. Had someone come in this way, burglarized the house, and then carefully locked the door as he left?

Or had a thief locked it behind him when he entered, the cats had wondered, and was still in there?

Maybe he had gone into the laundry, frightening Mango so that she fled to another room as she tried to lead him away from her kittens. Maybe then, confused, she’d fled out the open slider. Moving on around the house to the far side, they had found the laundry window unlatched, but closed. The scent of the mama cat was strong around it, and when Joe leaped to the sill, he was able to slide it open four inches. There it stopped, against the auxiliary lock.

Dulcie leaped up beside him, nosing at the yellow cat hairs caught in the window frame and molding.“An entrance that would be too high for the kittens to reach.” They kept their voices low, always wary of being overheard. “But,” Dulcie said, “if Theresa left it open for Mango, who closed it?”

“Theresa wouldn’t leave it open while they’re gone,” Joe whispered. “She wouldn’t invite raccoons or possums inside, to get at the kittens. No,” he’d said with certainty, “Theresa left it closed, with Mango and the kits safe inside. Someone else was here, someone let her out. Or drove her out.”

Frowning, Dulcie had peered down into the laundry room.“We have to tell Charlie-once we’ve let Mango in.”

Charlie’s Fix-it, Clean-it service took care of all the houses on this street when the owners were on vacation. One of their specialties was their responsible care of their clients’ pets-and the cats trusted Charlie; she was their close and reliable friend.

Squeezing in through the window’s four-inch opening, Joe dropped down onto the counter beside the laundry sink, Dulcie directly behind him-before they could open the back door and let Mango in, there was a thud behind them, then a thud on the floor as the yellow female dove past them, streaking to the cardboard box. Her frantic kittens squalled even louder at the cry and smell of their mother. A fifth kitten was still at the back door, yowling and clawing. When he saw his mama, he fled to her, scrambled into the box, and began frantically nursing before she even laid down.

Hastily the female settled in among her little ones, all the time scowling at Joe and Dulcie, her ears back, her slitted eyes never leaving them. To a queen with kittens, the presence of a tomcat wasn’t comforting; many tomcats would kill those little babies. All five kittens piled onto her, greedily sucking and pushing as if surely they were starving.

A big bowl of kibble stood at the end of the laundry counter, and there was a large bowl of water in the sink, high off the floor where the kittens couldn’t climb in and drown. Theresa had left the tap dripping into the bowl, and the sink drain open to avoid an overflow. It was Theresa who would have done this, no one thought Carl Chapman cared that much about Theresa’s cats. Joe didn’t think he cared about much of anything, even including thedelightful Theresa.

“She made it as safe and comfortable for them as she could,” Dulcie said softly. “She even unplugged the washer and dryer so the kittens wouldn’t chew on live cords.She wouldn’t leave the window open,Theresa would never leave the mama outside.”

“And why,” Joe had muttered warily, “would she leave the door open from the laundry room to the rest of the house? Leave the kittens to roam where the electric cordsare still plugged in?” Standing on his hind paws, he had peered from the laundry room through the kitchen to the living room. “I can see two lamps plugged in. No, someone’s been in here. And maybe still is?”

Dropping from the counter to the linoleum, the cats headed through the kitchen to inspect the rest of the house. Behind them, the female growled, but she didn’t follow. They had searched the three-bedroom house from one end to the other but could see nothing obviously missing. The plasma televisions were in place, the nearly new DVD and CD players. There was a plasma computer monitor in the little home office, a checkbook on the desk, items that surely any thief would take. It was hard to know, in the comfortable clutter of the Chapman home, whether anything else might be unaccounted for. When at last they returned to the laundry room, they managed to pull the kitchen door closed with their paws beneath the crack. Again the yellow cat hissed andyowled and this time she left her box, stalking them, stiff legged and threatening. To avoid a confrontation, Joe leaped to the counter and directly out the open window. Dulcie had followed and, balancing on the sill, they’d slid the glass closed behind them, leaving the mama cat safely confined.It would be a long three weeks for her before Theresa would be home to love and comfort her.

“Charlie will give her plenty of attention,” Dulcie had said, dropping down into Theresa’s tangled garden. “She’ll find out what happened, she’ll know if anything’s missing.”

That had been last night. When Joe got home, pushing in through his cat door, when he told Clyde and Ryan where he and Dulcie had been and what they’d found, Ryan had risen at once to call Charlie, but Clyde stopped her, his hand gently on her arm. They’d been sitting in the living room reading after supper, Clyde in an ancient pair of jeans and a faded T-shirt, his dark hair rumpled. “What’s she going to tell Max? Who’s she going tosay was in her clients’ empty house this time of night, to find a breakin?”

While Charlie knew that the cats could speak and were quite capable of using the phone, Max certainly didn’t. If Charlie suddenly went charging out at night to check on a burglary, he’d start asking awkward questions, and one didn’t brush off Max Harper’s probing.

“Maybe he isn’t home,” Ryan said hopefully. “Maybe he’s still at the station.”

The hours of a police chief could be long, and Max was no exception.“She’ll think of something,” Ryan said confidently, gave Clyde a green-eyed grin, and punched the single button for the Harpers’ number.

The upshot was that Max was indeed working late. Charlie had left the two big dogs guarding the ranch house and barn, and had come down the hills to have a look. She’d called back afterward, once she left the Chapman house. She said she’d found nothing more amiss besides the pry marks on the sliding door, that the mama and kittens were fine, and that she’d check again in the morning. Of course she hadn’t reported the problem. That was the one glitch inCharlie and Max Harper’s marriage, that Charlie was forced to keep information from him. This upset her considerably, but it would distress her a lot more if Max learned the truth. If he were forced to believe the vital role that three unnatural felines played in the workings of Molena Point PD -and Joe was mighty glad Charlie was fully committed to keeping their secret.

3

NOW AS JOE carried his gift across the rooftops, the sun had slipped away again and the smell of rain filled the morning. Leaping to the sill of the Chapmans’ laundry-room window, clinging with sharp claws to the ledge, Joe slid the glass back with one armored paw. Moving inside, he clawed the window closed again behind him, dropped to the counter and then to the floor, the mice swinging. When he looked up at the female in the box, among her kittens,expecting her to be charmed by his mousy present, she laid back her ears and glared and hissed at him.

Before approaching, to drop the mice at her feet, he turned to the closed door that led to the kitchen. Pawing at the throw rug that lay before it, he pushed it into the crack, hoping to keep the mice from escaping into the rest of the house.

There was little he could do about the washer and dryer. Nothing was as frustrating as having a mouse escape beneath a washing machine, where you could see its beady little eyes peering out but it was safe from your reaching paw.

He scanned the room, and with a stroke of genius he leaped to the counter, knocked the plastic dishpan off, pushed it across the room with his shoulder, depositing his little gifts in the deep receptacle. The whole time, the yellow cat growled and hissed. Pausing beyond the reach of her claws, he stood for a moment staring down into the dishpan where the mice crouched, confused and dazed. He hoped the little beasts would remain sufficiently stunned not to jump out before Mango could snatch them up.

He expected her to eat most of them-Dulcie said she needed more than kibble when she was nursing kits. But he hoped she’d save a couple, to start training the kittens. Dulcie had laughed at that, had said those kits were too young to train, that to give them a mouse would be like buying a tricycle for a human baby. But Joe wasn’t so sure. That one tom kitten, who had clawed so boldly at the back door, seemed plenty aggressive despite his tender age.

Joe thought about his own kittenhood. He could hardly remember his mama, she had died or run off shortly after he was weaned, long before she was able to teach him much of anything. Certainly she hadn’t taught him to hunt. He’d had to figure that out for himself, had to teach himself how to catch a mouse in San Francisco’s mean alleys, how to avoid the bigger stray cats, how to avoid the city’s wharf rats that would kill and eat a kitten-had had to figure out, alone, how to stay safe and keep from starving.

With these matters sharply in mind, he felt strongly that kittens should be introduced early to the basic skills of life. The hunting and survival skills, mastered when one was young, would never be forgotten. Without those talents, life was twice as hard and one might never grow into a strong and self-sufficient adult-might never grow up at all.

Watching the yellow female, Joe backed away from the dishpan hoping she would approach. She twitched her nose at the mousy scent but didn’t move, she was too wary of a tomcat near her kittens. Only when he turned away, to press against the door that led to the kitchen, did she step out of the box and approach the dishpan to peer in-as the mice scurried around the dishpan scrabbling at the slick plastic walls, her ears came up and her eyes widened. Staying between Joe and the kittens, she reached a paw in with keen interest. Smiling, Joe left her to them. Pushing open the door to the kitchen, he slid through fast and shut it behind him, leaving the bunched rug in place and leaving mama to her feast. Hopefully, inviting a first session of training for the little tomcat.

Now, with access to the rest of the house, what he wanted was a phone so he could reach the dispatcher before the rains began, washing clean the swimming pool. The kitchen was done all in white, white cabinets, a white tile floor, a small oak breakfast table with white pads on the chairs, and a deep bay window above the sink. When he reared up to scan the tops of the counters, he spotted the wall phone hanging just to the right of the window-hanging in plain sight of anyone walking up the drive.

Warily he leaped up and looked out, making sure he didn’t have an audience. Knocking the receiver off, he eased its fall with a quick paw and punched in 911. He was crouched low, his nose to the speaker, when the window brightened above him and he looked up to see the clouds blowing more swiftly, revealing a widening hole of blue sky-maybe the rain would hold off. Sniffing the air, he was unable to make out much in the closed room. He flinched, startled, when the dispatcher picked up.

“Police,” the rookie said crisply, the young man obviously prepared for any manner of disastrous emergency call.

“Detective Garza or Davis,” Joe said, wishing his favorite dispatcher had been on duty. “There’s been a murder,” he said quickly. “Evidence of a murder.” Mabel Farthy would have put him straight through without wasting time with needless questions.

But the sensible rookie did the same, he switched Joe straight to Davis. Joe could tell by the hollow sound that he’d left the line open so he could jot down names and locations-though he would be aware of this address if the Chapmans’ phone didn’t block caller ID.

Detective Davis came on the line. As Joe relayed his message to her, he pictured the middle-aged, squarely built woman sitting at her desk, severe in her dark uniform, her dark Latin eyes unreadable, photographs of her two sons in police uniforms tucked away on the bookshelves behind her among stacks of notebooks and files. He told Davis about the drag marks and the footprints in the pool and up the drive, about the splatters of blood, and the dark glasses lying in the tall grass, silver-framed glasses that he thought were a woman’s.

Davis didn’t ask his name, she didn’t ask who he was or where he was now. Juana Davis knew his voice, and she knew her questions wouldn’t be answered. Like Detective Garza and the chief and most of the other officers, she had moved on beyond questioning the identity of this particular snitch.

She said,“Did you see anyone on the street or in the neighborhood?”

“No one,” he said. “And no strange cars, only those that belong in the neighborhood. All of them cold, cold engines, cold tires.”

“Anything unusual about the empty house? Anyone at the windows?”

“Nothing that I saw,” Joe said. “The footprints end halfway up the drive. If the rain gets here before you do, it’ll all be washed away.” Wanting her to hurry, he reared up and pressed the disconnect button. As he clumsily took the cord of the phone in his teeth and lifted and pushed it back into place, he hoped Davis was already heading for her squad car. Beyond the window, dark and light sky alternated as a high, fast wind played hopscotch with the water-filled clouds, scudding them to hide the lifting sun and then allowing brightness to bathe the village in a skirmish of shadow and light.

Dropping down to the floor, he slipped back into the laundry room, shutting the door behind him. Mango was still in the dishpan. The little yellow tom kitten had left his nest and was standing up with his paws on the edge of the pan, trying to look in, his blue eyes bright and one small paw lifted.

Springing to the laundry-room window, Joe slid it open, hurried through, and closed it again behind him; he headed across the rooftops toward the empty house, his pace faster now that he was relieved of the heavy mice-and though he endured another stab of pity for the poor little beasts, he enjoyed far more the bold and predatory wildness so evident in that tiny kitten.

Now as he raced over the rooftops, the air smelled heavier with rain and the sky grew darker again above him.Come on, Davis. Be there. Hurry up, before it starts to pour. He glimpsed a man two blocks over, looked like the same energetic runner he’d seen before, walking now but still moving swiftly, swinging his arms. The gossiping women were not in sight. Probably they’d finished their walk and were cozied up at home, in one kitchen or the other, enjoying coffee and fattening sweet rolls, effectively undoing whatever weight-loss program they might be pursuing.

He expected Juana to be there already, but when he came down a pine tree and onto the roof of the house next door, there was no cop car, nor was Juana’s Honda in sight. He smelled water below him, and felt its cool breath though it wasn’t raining yet. When he looked down at the side yard, he froze.

The lower half of the driveway was glistening wet, while the upper half was dry-as if rain had already come pelting down, but only in that one place. From the center of the drive, back to the pool, the concrete was soaking wet, the bushes still dripping. The coping around the pool glistened with water, as did the portion of the pool’s tiled walls that he could see from that angle. Backing swiftly down the pine tree, he raced to the pool to look over.

The muddy concrete bottom was all changed. The drag marks and footprints were gone. A skin of fresh wa ter lay over the mud, still settling into new indentations where the mud had been reconfigured into long, fan-shaped trenches, the sort that would be made by the force of a hose sluicing across it. Swinging around, Joe looked for a hose.

There, just beyond the edge of the pool, beside the house. A hose wound on a caddy, its nozzle still dripping, the neat rubber coil shining wet, with grass stems sticking to it where it had been dragged across the lawn. He studied the rest of the yard.

Nothing else looked different except, near the street, where the driveway was dry, the tall grass at the edge was matted down in a narrow path where someone had not wanted to leave footprints on the concrete.

Trotting up for a look, Joe found blades of grass still springing back into place; and now he could smell the vague scent of a man mixed with the smells of mud, bruised grass, and another sharp, medicinal smell that, try as he might, he couldn’t place. He was still sniffing, trying to sort out that one elusive smell, when he heard a car coming. Jerking to alert, he headed fast up the pine and onto the neighbors’ roof again, where he crouched low on the rough, curling shingles.

Davis’s blue Honda parked across the street but the detective didn’t get out, she sat behind the wheel studying the parked cars, scanning the neighborhood and the neatly kept houses and observing the empty house, watching its curtainless windows. How many times had Joe watched Juana Davis work a scene, always careful, always patient, never missing a detail. How many times had he and Dulcie and Kit worried that she’d find cat hairs at the scene?

But there were never cat hairs in the detective’s carefully detailed reports.Thanks to the great cat god, Joe thought. Or maybe thanks to some benign quirk in Juana Davis’s own subconscious that, as far as Joe was concerned, didn’t bear close examination.

When at last the detective swung out of the car, she carried a small satchel, a black leather bag that Joe knew contained basic crime scene equipment. And, the tomcat thought, smiling, wasn’t that a vote of confidence for the department’s unknown snitch.

JUANA CROSSED THE empty street, still studying the Parker house and its blank windows. She saw no movement there. Scanning the overgrown bushes, the tall grass, and the piles of leaves that had blown onto the porch and heaped against the front door, she thought what a pity it was to let this place go to ruin. The neighboring houses were well kept, the front gardens neat, some of them really beautiful. Divorce or not, the Parkers were foolish to let their investment go to hell. This house was worth enough to greatly ease the life of both members of the dissolving marriage, particularly to ease the life of Emily Parker. Juana knew, from gossip and from information picked up by the officer who patroled this neighborhood, that the Parkers had had several violent arguments, and that Emily wasn’t in an enviable position. As much as Juana disliked the idea of prenup agreements, which surely indicated a lack of trust and true love, this was one time that the woman would have benefited. Maybe, she thought, prenups indicated not only a lack of trust, but of judgment. Or a lack of faith in one’s judgment. Ever since the word “judgmental” had become politically incorrect, clear and logical thinking seemed to have gone out the window with it.

The Parker house had been empty for nearly a year. James had left Emily without warning after placing the house in someone else’s name and, without Emily’s knowledge, filing for bankruptcy. What he meant to do with the valuable property depended largely, Juana thought, on the outcome of the divorce proceedings, and she hoped Emily Parker had a good lawyer.

Walking up along the side of the drive, watching for footprints, she carried just the small evidence bag that held some basic equipment and a couple of cameras. Anything else she’d need was in the trunk of her car. Halfway down the drive, she stopped, puzzled.

Though the cement drive beneath her feet was quite dry, that in front of her glistened with water, her first thought was that it had rained just in this one spot, as it did in the tropics-but Molena Point wasn’t the tropics. She studied the tracks near her where the dry grass had been matted down and was wet. Looked at the grassy hose farther on, wound neatly on its reel, and it, too, was wet.

She photographed the area, then made her way carefully along the edge of the drive, watching the concrete for footprints and scanning the ground under the bushes. She circled the house looking for any sign of a breakin, but halfway back to the pool, she paused.

She took another photograph, then pulled on a latex glove and picked up the pair of silver-rimmed dark glasses lying in the tall grass. Dropping them into a paper evidence bag, she put that in her pocket. Then, pulling cotton booties over her regulation shoes, she approached the pool along the far side, where the apron was still dry save for a first few scattered raindrops.

The bottom of the pool had been hosed, and not long ago. Water was still settling in the long ripples of mud, like those a concentrated stream of water would leave in its wake. There were no drag marks such as the snitch had described, no footprints leading across to the steps. Standing at the edge of the coping, she suddenly felt watched, felt as if the perp was still nearby or that someone was, concealed in the yard or perhaps in the empty house. The feeling unnerved her. She didn’t often experience this sharp and sudden unease-when she did, she had reason. What had she seen and not consciously registered to prompt that instinct?

Looking around her, she assessed the area even more carefully. If she could believe what the snitch had told her, then someone had been here just moments earlier, between the time he observed the scene and when she arrived, someone who had watched the snitch leave and then had immediately washed away the evidence.

She wouldn’t want to think the snitch was lying. She knew his voice, and over the years she’d learned to trust him, as had the rest of the department. How many times had he helped them, and never once given them cause to doubt his word. Whoever the guy was, he and the woman who sometimes called, their tips, and sometimes the delivery of evidence, had always resulted in information that led to arrest, to indictment, and, most often, to a con viction. The department’s snitches were would-be cops, she thought, smiling. And more power to them, they were good at what they did.

She considered the house, wishing she had a search warrant in hand, then moved on and, in a workmanlike manner, searched around the pool for blood, kneeling to take samples then photographing the area despite the lack of any remaining shoe prints or drag marks. On the pool’s bottom a bird’s feather floated, along with bits of dry grass, as the fresh water eased into the sour mud. She shot a long video of the settling water, then went through a roll of still shots of the pool bottom, the walls, and the surround. Then she moved around the pool to where the paving was dry except for the gathering raindrops. Looking along the pool’s stained sides she considered individual chips and flecks of dirt in the old, cracked tile. Kneeling, she lifted some samples of a stain that had been missed by the hose, placing them on glass slides. Four looked and smelled like blood. She paused in her work long enough to call in, to ask the dispatcher if she’d come up with any missing-person’s reports from the surrounding area. But as she worked, she couldn’t shake the sense of being watched.

She had no idea that the snitch sat on the roof above her, ready to melt away out of sight if she turned to look up.

THE GRAY TOMCAT smiled with satisfaction each time Juana scraped up a bit of what he knew was human blood. She worked fast but carefully until the rain started. When it began coming down in earnest, she pulled off her boo ties and packed up her slides and equipment. Joe watched her circle the house again before she headed for her car, and only then did the tomcat decide to abandon the scene himself and head home. He wasn’t partial to a drenching rain, and he felt hollow with hunger. This was Sunday morning, and Ryan, in her new mode as a blushing bride-which probably wouldn’t last too long-would very likely be cooking up a fine breakfast.

But then, hurrying over the roofs, shaking raindrops off his ears, he felt the rain stop again as suddenly as it had started. He watched the last clouds part above him and begin to move away, allowing shafts of sun to stream through onto the wet shingles. Just a harmless summer rain, a passing shower-but that harmless little rain, together with a judicious hosing down, had sure screwed up the crime scene. Joe wondered where that would leave the department, wondered what Juana would make of what little evidence she’d been able to retrieve. Would she decide that, without a body, she didn’t have enough to run with? That her morning’s work had been for nothing? She had, after all, only his anonymous description of the original scene.

And where was the perp hiding, that he could return and hose down the place and vanish again so quickly?Was he in the empty house? Was thebody in there? Earlier, circling the house, he had found no hint of fresh scent. He wondered if Juana would take the little remaining evidence seriously enough to come back with a search warrant. Wondered if she had enough evidence so the judge would be willing to issue a warrant. His head filled with questions, but with his stomach alarmingly empty, the tomcat headed for home-no cat can think productively on an empty belly.

One thing for sure, he thought as he raced over the rooftops, he was keeping this morning’s events to himself. Though Ryan would listen with interest, he didn’t need Clyde ’s acerbic remarks. He didn’t need to be told that he was only imagining a murder and that if he had any sense, he’d learn to stay out of police business. Though Clyde’s harassment was half joking, thoughJoe knew Clyde respected the results of his past investigations, he didn’t feel, this morning, like being hassled by his teasing housemate.

4

HAVING PARTED FROM Joe Grey before dawn, the two lady cats had followed the elusive scent of the band of feral cats that they’d detected during their hunt, had followed their trail and then followed the faint sound of the cats’ voices softly laughing and talking, these cats who were like themselves.

This was the clowder in which Kit had grown up, the band whose leaders had so tormented her. The band she had left the moment she was big enough and brave enough to go out on her own-and the moment she discovered a pair of true friends among some very special humans. Oh, that had been a change in her life, to come to live with humans she soon learned to love, to live in a warm house with wonderful food, and music, and with all the joys of the human world.

Kit did love her life, and surely she loved her housemates. But still, sometimes, she missed the clowder. Sometimes, despite all her domestic pleasures, she felt strongly drawn back to that wild life. When, this morning, high up in the hills near the ruins of the old Pamillon mansion, she and Dulcie saw five wild, speaking cats slip up over a nearby crest and pause to look down at them, Kit had felt a thrill clear down to her paws. Watching those members of her old clowder, she’d reared up, staring at them-and staring straight at the tomcat who had once been her love, and from whom she had parted.

It had been only a few months ago that Sage, badly wounded, had been brought into the village where Kit’s human friends cared for him-and where he asked Kit to be his mate. She had refused him, had realized that she loved him more like a brother. But now, watching Sage, whom she had so painfully rejected, she considered intently the small, buff-colored female who crouched beside him.

Was this Sage’s new love? This scrawny, bleached-out, nondescript young cat as thin as a sick rabbit? Kit stood tall on her hind paws, looking. Did she even remember this waif of a young cat from among the clowder? For a moment, despite the fact that shehad jilted Sage, Kit was riven with jealousy.

But then she thought, startled, had she seen that scrawny cat in the village? Had she seen that little cat among humans? Oh, but that wasn’t likely. The clowder cats never went there unless in a terrible emergency. And then it was only brave Willow who would come seeking human help. Certainly that scrawny, nervous young cat would never come down into the human world.

As she watched, the pale cat reared up, too, and opened her pink mouth, staring down at them, intently interested in Kit and Dulcie, her thin little face filled with excitement-until Sage nuzzled her and pushed her away.

But even as Sage bossed the little buff-colored cat and demanded her attention, she ignored him and continued to stare-and Kit could see clearly the younger cat’s wild yearning. She seemed to know at once that cat’s dreams.

She’s like me! Kit thought with surprise.Not just that she can speak, we’re all alike in that. She feels the same hungers that I do, she wants to understand the whole world the way I always did, she wants to know everything. She isn’t content in the clowder, she wants to see and smell and taste everything in the world, she wants to know more than she’ll ever learn running with the clowder, she wants to know human ways…

The words of an old English tale filled Kit’s mind. “…A pretty little dear her was, but her wanted to know too much…” And Kit’s heart had gone out to the young cat.She’s like me when I was her age, she wants to know what it’s like to live among humans and hear music and ride in cars and have more wonderful adventures than a clowder cat can ever know. And Kit yearned for the young cat as she would yearn for the ghost of her own younger self.

Beside her, tabby Dulcie watched the silent exchange, saw Kit’s jealousy but then, far stronger, Kit’s fascination with the buff-colored cat. Dulcie had been a grown cat when she and Joe found Kit up on Hellhag Hill. Kit had been just as thin and scrawny and half starved as this little waif-and as full of dreams. Kit was grown now, but that spirit still burned in her, that often irrepressible kindling of curiosity and joy, so much joy that sometimes Dulcie thought the little cat would explode.

As Kit and the pale cat silently regarded each other, Sage’s look made Dulcie uneasy. Clearly he didn’t want Kit’s flighty and irresponsible ways to infect his sweet new lady, he didn’t want his chosen mate to be a dreamer. He wanted her to be an obedient wife, he wanted a family, he wanted a steady female cat who could give him kittens, a stolid,matronly cat, a cat he could understand and who would understand him. How sad, Dulcie thought, that he had chosen this cat who seemed not like that at all, who seemed so like Kit. Another dreamer, another impetuous rebel he might never be able to make happy? Sage had tried to change Kit, and had failed. Did he think, now, that he could force this little scruff to his wishes?

Dulcie didn’t think so.

As the buff-colored cat reared up to look at Kit, as the two stood staring at each other across the blowing grass, Sage fluffed himself up to twice his size and lashed his tail, his ears back, his eyes narrow, and growled fiercely at his lady.

Kit looked startled, then turned away so as not to make matters worse, and headed down the hill, her glance at Dulcie hurt, and very sad.

The pale cat remained where she was, looking after Kit longingly. But at last, at Sage’s prodding, the bony little waif turned away and obediently followed the bleached calico tomcat back up the hill toward the fallen walls and crumbling mansion of the old and ruined estate.

Dulcie, hurrying home beside Kit, down the hills through the rising dawn, had no idea where this meeting of the two young females would lead, but she knew a friendship had been formed-and, she thought uneasily, knowing Kit, she wouldn’t be surprised to see this meet ing turn to trouble. Tosome kind of trouble, as the tortoiseshell’s enthusiasms so often led.

They were halfway down the hills, were just passing a newly framed house, skirting its skeleton of raw timbers, stepping carefully to avoid dropped nails, when Kit said,“I’ve seen her before. When Lucinda and Pedric and I walk up here, sometimes I see a pale little shadow slipping away among the broken walls. Once, for a second, she stood atop a wall looking down at me, but then she turned and ran.” Ever since the weather had turned warmer, and the tourists were returning to crowd the shore on nice mornings and late afternoons, Kit’s two housemates had abandoned walking the beaches and sea cliffs and taken to tramping the hills. Tall, slim, eighty-something Lucinda Greenlaw had always been a walker. She had, during a long and abusive first marriage, escaped from her pain at the hands of a philandering husband by indulging in solitary rambles over the Molena Point hills. Now she was wed again, this time happily, and Lucinda and Pedric were both enjoying the world anew, including their long and pleasant rambles accompanied by their tortoiseshell companion.

But Joe and Dulcie, too, sometimes glimpsed the clowder cats as they hunted, saw them like swift shadows flicking away among the hills or into the ruins. Because of the dry weather, the clowder had moved back within the walls of the old estate, wanting the water that ran in springs there and wanting to be safe in its shelter from the coyotes that had drawn closer to the village to quench their thirst-ever since the weather turned hot, Dulcie and Wilma, her human housemate, tucked up in bed at night, could hear coyotes on the hills, ever closer to the village, yipping and yodeling.

Some people called their noise singing. Dulcie and Wilma, knowing how dangerous the beasts were, called those cries bloodcurdling. When the yipping was near, neither of them slept well. The three cats, until just this past week, had kept their hunting to the daylight hours. When sporadic rains had begun, leaving puddles for the wild creatures among the far woods, and the coyotes had moved away once more, the cats began their night hunting again, though they stayed near the scattered houses or near boulders where they could race for shelter.

Now, descending the hills, suddenly Kit broke into a run, wildly circling Dulcie then skidding to a stop inches from the older cat’s nose, Kit’s yellow eyes blazing with laughter. “Free,” she mewled. “I’m free!”

Dulcie puzzled over this, as she so often did over Kit’s behavior. Had Sage, taking a new cat for his mate, cut the last painful thread that bound Kit to him? Did she no longer feel responsible for having hurt him, having spoiled his life as she had once thought?

But then, just as suddenly, Kit sat down in the tall grass, looking so sad that Dulcie thought she might weep.

“She’s not the one,” Kit said, looking forlornly at Dulcie. “She feels as trapped as I did. She wants…Didn’t you see? She wants…Before she settles down to raising tangles of kittens, she wants to see what the rest of the world is like. Oh, I feel so bad for her. Didn’t you see…?”

“No,” Dulcie said crossly. “I didn’t see anything! Leave it, Kit! Leave it alone. It isn’t any of your business.”

“But-”

Dulcie faced Kit, her ears back, her teeth bared. This would never do. Kit’s concern screamed of trouble. “Leave it alone, Kit. You will not entice her away. They’re happy, Sage is happy.”

“She’s not happy, she-”

Dulcie raised an armored paw to slap Kit.“You will not ruin Sage’s life again! Why would you do that?”

“Because…,” Kit said miserably, “because…” She glared at Dulcie, and turned and trotted away, tears running down her tortoiseshell nose. Dulcie shouldered her to a stop, her teeth gently in the nape of Kit’s neck. For a long moment they stood looking at each other, Kit so upset that if Dulcie let go, she thought Kit would fly at her with all claws bared.

But at last Kit backed away.“She won’t be happy,” she said grimly, “thinking about all the wonders she’s never seen. And so, Sage won’t be happy.”

Dulcie said nothing. She moved away, heading on down the hill. They were quiet for a long time, padding toward the village, Kit’s sadness like a weight that pressed on Dulcie, too. But then suddenly, Kit came to life again.

“I know what to do,” she said, leaping away. “I know exactly!” And she raced like a mad thing through the gardens of the first scattered houses, skidding to a stop beneath a porch, looking back at Dulcie.

Padding under the porch beside her, Dulcie said not a word. She didn’t want to hear Kit’s harebrained idea, she didn’t want to contemplate what kind of trouble this would stir to life.

Seeing Dulcie’s look, Kit didn’t offer an explanation. She licked her fur and her dusty paws, and they went on at last, in a tense silence. The rising morning smelled of rain, the clouds overhead throwing changing shadows across the crowded cottages and shops.

Coming down into the village, the two cats took to the rooftops. Below them, early cars were on the street as locals and tourists set out to attend church and then Sunday brunch or, despite the threat of rain, to play golf or to hike along the coastal cliffs. Soon they parted, both cats, having hunted all night and feasted on rodents, heading for their own homes and housemates, longing, now, for“people” food, for a little something to settle a cat’s digestion. Dulcie’s Wilma had promised a rich quiche, and Kit looked forward to Pedric’s paper-thin Swedish pancakes with Lucinda’s mango syrup, which was, in Kit’s opinion, the best breakfast that a cat ever licked from her whiskers; and for the moment, the plight of the pale little feral was set aside, at least in Dulcie’s mind. Whatever Kit was thinking, she kept to herself.

5

JOE ARRIVED HOME, over the rooftops, to the welcome smell of pancakes and sausages, the heady scent rising up to him as he leaped from the neighbors’ shingles to his own. Landing on the wet, slippery shakes, he could hear Clyde ’s and Ryan’s voices from the back patio. The rain had been short and light, only a few showers and then one serious effort, and even that didn’t last long. Now the sky was clearing, the June sun brightening andwarming his damp fur. Pausing beside the second-floor skeleton of the new construction that would be Ryan’s office, he crossed to the edge of the roof to look over.

Below, in the big, walled patio, the two lovebirds were kissing and Joe backed away, unsure how much of this newlywed mush he could take. Ryan had put the big umbrella up over the patio table to keep their breakfast dry, a nicety that Clyde wouldn’t have bothered with. Ryan Flannery was, Joe thought smugly, the best thing that had happened to Clyde since Joe himself had come on the scene to brighten his life.

Looking over the edge, his paws soaking from the wet shingles, he watched Clyde move back inside the house, presumably to flip the sausages that he could hear sizzling in the pan. He could see, beneath the umbrella, a corner of the patio table carefully set with clean place mats, fresh napkins, and a centerpiece of flowers. Clyde’s bride might say she wasn’t domestic, that she was more used to a hammer and saw than a mixing spoon, but she had a nice touch around the house. In the four months they’d been married, life had taken a real change from his and Clyde ’s rough bachelor ways. No more breakfasts with their two plates slapped down carelessly on sections of the morning paper. Now the household reeked of domesticity, sometimes as cloying as a rerun from the fifties, but, more often, just as comforting.

Leaping from the roof down onto the high garden wall and again to the top of the cold barbecue grill, he dropped to the paving beside Ryan’s big silver Weimaraner. The sleek, handsome dog lay stretched out on the rain-damp bricks, soaking up the brightening sun. Lying down beside Rock, Joe rolled over, presenting his own belly to the warm glow. Rock huffed at him in greeting, and with an inquisitive nose began to smell Joe’s fourextended paws, sniffing the mouse smells, the rat and rabbit smells, maybe a hint of kitten smell, and the heady scents of the wild hills. The big dog gave Joe a look that said, Why can’t I run free like you? Sighing, he rolled over and drifted into a light sleep-with one ear cocked for the firstsound of plates being set on the table. Joe watched Ryan as she crossed the patio to finish planting a flat of begonias, gently tucking the little, delicate nursery flowers into the rich earth of a raised container, an occupation that, again, seemed out of character for the dark-haired, green-eyed beauty. He was far more used to seeing her running a heavy Skilsaw or dipping her trowel into a bucket of plaster, wearing jeans and muddy boots instead of a flowered housecoat.

Rock woke the minute Clyde began dishing up. Casting Joe a look of urgency, he trotted across the bricks to stand expectantly beside the redwood table, his chin on its corner, his eyes never leaving the kitchen window. They watched Clyde push through the screen door backward, letting it slam. Turning, he descended the steps bearing a huge tray laden with plates piled with pancakes, eggs, sausages, and all the fixings. As Clyde laid out their breakfast, Ryan moved to the barbecue sink to wash the dark earth from her hands. As she and Clyde took their places at the table, Joe leaped to the end of Ryan’s bench where, now, he and Rock stood shoulder to shoulder sniffing the good smells and drooling with equal greed-he watched Ryan turn away, hiding a grin.

IT AMUSED RYAN greatly that Joe Grey and Rock looked like mismatched twins, their sleek gray coats exactly the same color, their eyes the same pale yellow. And, a source of gentle humor, Joe Grey’s tail was docked to the same jaunty length as Rock’s, both tails sticking straight up when the animals were happy.

In Rock’s case, the short tail was the correct style for a Weimaraner. Joe’s shortened appendage, however, had been the result of a kittenhood accident when a drunk had stepped on his tail and broken it. Clyde had found the sick and feverish kitten in a San Francisco gutter, had rushed him to the vet where the infected part of the tail was amputated, and then had taken Joe home to nurse him back to health with antibiotics, love, and plenty of rare filet. The two hadn’t been parted since.

But what tickled Ryan the most about the similarity between the two was that dog and cat were so very alike in spirit. Rock’s wild, defiant, adventuresome view of the world had enchanted her from the moment she first encountered the valuable but abandoned stray. And then when she’d met Joe, his attitude, even before she discovered that the cat could speak to her, had been just as bold and brash. The big difference,of course, was that only the tomcat had use of the English language.

When she’d first suspected Joe’s ability to speak, when she’d finally convinced herself that this impossibility had to be true, and then when they’d had their first conversation, that had been a time of spine-tingling amazement, an experience from which she was sure she would never quite recover. And surely she’d never be the same after her first conversation with Joe and Dulcie and Kit all together, an impossible communication between their two species that had left her with permanent goose bumps.

But, while Rock didn’t speak, while her good dog knew only command words and hand signals, knew the names of the humans he loved, and the names of everyday items that she and Clyde had taught him or that he had absorbed on his own, the Weimaraner was so clever and such a quick study that he didn’t need to talk to her. Body language was enough; they understood each other very well. The trouble with Rock was, he was often too clever. He knew how to climb a six-foot chain-link fence as skillfully as any cat. And with only one afternoon’s training, he had learned to track a scent trail on command. For most dogs, reliable and unfaltering tracking skills took many months of training.

The fact that Joe Grey himself had taught Rock, that Rock had not learned from her own slow teaching but under the skilled tutelage of the gray tomcat, had impressed her considerably. She didn’t know whether she was more proud of Rock for his quick mastering of the valuable tracking skills, or of Joe for the clever patience with which he’d tutored the big Weimaraner.

Serving the animals’ plates, she set them on the bench, side by side. Dog and cat exchanged a glance of understanding that neither would steal from the other, and dived into their breakfasts. The issue of gourmet rights had been settled some time back, Joe laying down the rules with teeth and claws, and Rock with agentle but insistent growl. Rock didn’t seem to mind that his breakfast was mostly kibble, with sausage and egg crumbled in for flavor, while Joe was treated to exactly the same fare as the humans.

On the other side of Ryan, the white cat hopped up silently, her gentle eyes on Ryan as she lifted one soft paw. Crowded onto the bench, against Ryan’s leg, she looked up trustingly, knowing that her own small bite of the human’s breakfast was forthcoming. It saddened Ryan that the other two Damen cats, who had been far up in years, had succumbed to separate illnesses not a month apart, shortly after she and Clyde were married-saddened her,and stirred her, that the two lifelong friends had gone within weeks of each other. As if somehow deciding, with their mysterious feline connection, that their closeness in life would not be broken by death, that they would move on into the next world together.

She glanced across the patio to the high back wall, its white-plaster surface still shaded from the rising sun. In the shadow at its base marched the little row of graves: two markers for the cats, two markers for their two departed canine friends, each marble plaque attesting to an urn of ashes buried beneath. Scrappy. Fluffy. Barney. Rube.

Barney, the golden retriever, had died before Ryan and Clyde met. Rube, the black Lab, had died just this last year. Ryan had suffered with Clyde over Rube’s illness, had tried to comfort Clyde and Joe when the vet put Rube to sleep. Afterward, she had tried to comfort the little white cat. She had held Snowball for hours, talking to her, trying to soothe her over the loss of her doggy companion. With Rube gone, Ryan herself seemed to take Rube’splace in nurturing Snowball; the white cat came to her far more often even than she sought out Clyde or Joe for tenderness and reassurance.

As they all tucked into breakfast, there was near silence at the picnic table. Only the scrape of a fork on a plate, Rock’s eager slurping, the occasional car passing out front on the street and, from half a mile away, the rhythmic pounding of the sea against the cliffs and sandy shore. When the animals had licked their plates clean, Clyde looked across the table at Joe.

“I have an announcement.”

Joe looked back warily, his claws involuntarily stiffening at the implication of some portentous, and probably unwelcome, decision. Whatever was coming, he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear it.

Ryan, watching the two of them, was both uneasy and amused by the tomcat’s possibly well-founded suspicions. She was still wondering herself if Clyde ’s decision had been a wise one. This particular resolution would be life changing for Clyde. Another big adjustment even after bringing a wife into the household-and that meant one more upset in the tomcat’s life. Ordinary cats didn’t like change. In that respect, she thought that speaking cats weren’t so different.

The moment she’d moved into the house, when they returned from their honeymoon, the household had morphed from a casual bachelor pad to the more complicated involvements presented by an added resident, particularly a female partner. Now, if she and Clyde pursued this new endeavor, their newly established routines would change yet again, and that would change Joe’s routine.

How would that affect the tomcat? Would further disruption of Joe’s comfortable home life complicate his other, secret life? That mustn’t happen, she thought, watching the gray tomcat. Joe Grey’s undercover investigations were far too unique and valuable to let this new venture get in his way.

6

JOE WATCHED CLYDE warily, waiting for the bomb to drop. Whatever Clyde meant to tell him, obviously Ryan already knew; her green eyes hid a smile but also a hint of worry. Certainly any statement coming from Clyde and begun in this serious vein portended nothing good, such serious pronouncements could easily end in disaster. One case in point would be Clyde’s purchase of a derelict apartment building, which he’d intended to remodel for rental income. A project that had ended in a tangle of embezzlement, identity theft, and murder, to say nothing of the complications resulting from Clyde ’s inept carpentry skills.

Another example would be the time Clyde decided that Joe should visit the old folks’ home on a regular basis in order to cheer up the needy elderly. That seemingly charitable endeavor had not only put Joe and Dulcie in considerable danger, but had resulted in the discovery of a large number of anonymous dead, buried and forgotten in a garden of hidden graves.

So what was this new insanity? Joe looked at Ryan. She said nothing, just sat quietly waiting for Clyde to drop this one on him.

“What?” Joe said coldly.

Beside Joe, Rock eyed the last bite of Joe’s breakfast. Joe glared a friendly warning at the silver Weimaraner and lifted a daggered paw, for which he received a doggy laugh and doggy breath in his face.

“What announcement?” he repeated.

“I’m selling the cars,” Clyde said.

“You’re what?”

To some, such a comment might seem of minor importance. People sold cars every day and bought new ones, the world was based on obsolescence. But this statement coming from Clyde was a shocker. He might as well have said he was giving away all his worldly possessions and joining a nudist colony. At last count Clyde had owned eighteen antique and classic automobiles, collectors’ items all, and he loved those cars like his own children. In restoring them, he labored over every detail, as a sculptor labors over every inch of clay in preparing his bronze castings.

“You’re going to do what?” Joe repeated quietly.

Clyde took another bite of pancake and sausage, another sip of coffee.“Sell the cars. Except the roadster,” he said, referring to the vintage yellow convertible that sat, pristine and shining and completely restored, in their attached garage.

“I’m going to sell the cars,” Clyde repeated slowly, as if Joe was, regrettably, growing deaf.

“You’re selling the cars.” Joe looked at Ryan. Her green eyes, turned to him, were wide and innocent.

This transaction would include cars both domestic and foreign, ranging in age from eighty years to more recent and overblown fishtail models, and in value from a few thousand into the high six figures, each car either already painstakingly restored, lavished with love, from its wheels and pistons to its new leather upholstery-with love and skill and plenty of cash-or cars in the process of being restored, to a few wrecks still patiently awaiting their turn at Clyde’s skilled automotive rejuvenation, rather as an aging actress awaits her appointment to go under the knife of a highly paid plastic surgeon.

Ever since Joe had first met Clyde, when Clyde hauled him out of that San Francisco gutter, Clyde’s one huge passion in life, besides charming women, and his dogs and cats, had been old cars and the rebuilding thereof. When they lived in San Francisco, he had collected cars, renting an old garage over in Marin County where he’d worked on them, on weekends and his days off, taking Joe with him. That was where Joe learned to hunt, stalking mice along the bare stud walls and loose building paper of that decrepit old garage.

When they’d moved down the coast to Molena Point, Clyde had sold his two beautifully restored convertibles, but when he opened his upscale automotive repair shop, he began to collect old models again, ferreting them out by newspaper ad and word of mouth, driving halfway across the state to haul them home on a flatbed trailer. The garages at the back of the space he rented from the foreign-car agency had been largely reserved for his own growing collection of wrecks destined to become collectors’ items. In short, a nice share of their income had been generated by those restorations, besides which, they had had Clyde ’s complete involvement. Joe didn’t think his housemate could exist without those old cars.

“You mean you’re selling all the restored cars and getting a new batch to work on,” the tomcat said reasonably.

“No. Selling them all. Finished. Not buying any more cars,” Clyde said.

“This is some kind of midlife crisis?” Joe said. “A man doesn’t have a midlife crisis while he’s still on his honeymoon, just four months after the wedding.” He looked suspiciously at Ryan. Was she responsible for this sea change? “Are you two having problems?” He prayed that wasn’t so.

Ryan laughed.“Midlife crises happen to disenchanted, bored men with no positive philosophy, no positive take on life-no burning reason for living their lives.”

In Joe’s opinion, Ryan Flannery Damen was the world’s best reason for living. Anyway, nothing about that description fit Clyde. The tomcat had never observed any of the bored, flat, jaundiced, arrogant, or dully disinterested symptoms associated with the emotional demise of a human creature. In some ways, Clyde Damen was still twelve years old, enthusiastic about life to the point of sorely trying a cat’s patience.

“You need the money?” Joe asked, though he could hardly believe that. Clyde had a comfortable savings account, and Ryan was even better off. She had a nice inheritance from her first husband, and her construction firm did very well indeed. Joe turned to look at her. Did she not approve of the cars? Had she talked Clyde into selling them? Joe couldn’t believe she’d be so selfish and unfeeling. He studied her, then eyed his housemate again, waiting.

Ryan started to grin, her green eyes dancing.

Clyde said,“We’re going to buy a couple of houses. Go into-”

“We’re not moving!” Joe yowled, going cold right down to his claws. The thought of changing houses, of losing his happy home as he knew it, hadn’t entered his mind. Talk about life changes. It was bad enough for a human family to move their children around, haul them across the country to anew house, painful enough for the children to have to survive in a new school. To a cat, moving seemed far worse. Territory meant everything, its smells and hiding places and hunting grounds were a large and vital portion of a cat’s life. To be removed from home and domain, deposited without introduction onto foreign soil could, without understanding treatment, disorient and nearly destroy a little cat.

“We’re leaving our home?” Joe said, unable to control his dismay. He loved his home, he loved the new upstairs that Ryan had built, he loved his own private cat tower, on top of the second-floor roof, that Ryan had built just for him. The thought of moving to another house made his breakfast want to come up, mice and all.

“We’re not moving,” Ryan said hastily, reaching to take him in her arms. “We’re not going anywhere, we’re buying a house as an investment.” She smiled as Joe relaxed, leaning his head on her shoulder. “If this works out,” she said, “we’re going into business remodeling houses.” She lifted his chin, smiling down at him. “Houses instead of cars. That make sense to you?”

“Into business?” he said dumbly. “You’re selling your construction firm?”

“I’m not selling, and we’re not moving. I wouldn’t give up the company! This is just a side venture,” she said, her green eyes searching Joe’s. “We thought it would be fun, working at our own pace-just a few remodeling projects that can pick up the slack for my crews between jobs or when things get slow.”

“When is the construction business ever slow?” In Molena Point, people waited months, years, for a contractor. “You mean because of the economic downturn?”

“Exactly,” Ryan said. “We’re hedging our bets. Does this sound okay? You approve of this?”

Joe grinned. Even with that small hint of joking sarcasm, how many humans would ask their cat about family financial matters?

“There is something troubling about it,” Joe said, glancing at Clyde then back at Ryan. “ Clyde ’s a wizard with cars, he can turn any old heap into new. But youdo know he can’t drive a nail? That it’s an all-day project to change a leaky washer in the kitchen sink?”

Ryan ignored that. Maybe she thought she could teach Clyde.“We’re going up to look at the Parker house today, it’s just up above the senior ladies’ place. We-”

Joe stiffened at mention of the Parker house.“You can’t renovate that place, you can’t look at that house, it’s a crime scene.”

They stared at him.

“There’s blood in the pool, and-”

Clyde slammed down his fork.“Don’t start, Joe! The Parker house is not a crime scene. Where did you get that? We talked to the Realtor early this morning, she said we could look at it. Where do you get this stuff!”

Joe said,“Someone died there. Detective Davis -”

“Leave Juana Davis out of this! What the hell did you tell Davis? You think every-”

Ryan stopped Clyde with a hand on his arm.“What, Joe? What are you saying?”

“ Davis ran the scene this morning,” he said, licking a smear of syrup from his shoulder.

“Tell us,” she said, again hushing Clyde.

Scowling at Clyde, Joe gave them a blow-by-blow of the morning’s events, from the time he entered the overgrown yard of the Parker house, dragging his mice, until, crouching on the roof in the first hesitant drops of rain, he had watched Juana Davis carefully remove and bag small samples of what looked and smelled like human blood.

When he’d finished, Ryan was quiet. Clyde was scowling, shaking his head, as if the tomcat had conjured blood and drag marks from thin air, as if Joe had made up this nutty, twisted scenario to bedevil him and, worse, to torment the officers at Molena Point PD.

Ryan reached across the table, taking Clyde’s hand and squeezing it hard. She looked at Joe with an admiration that warmed the tomcat clear to the tips of his claws. “You want to come with us?” she said. “Maybe Davis will let us in if she’s already worked the house. If I hide you in my tote bag and ifwe put on shoe protectors, maybe we can have a look.” And as Joe’s beautiful housemate rose to pick up their breakfast dishes, he gave her a smile that warmedher, in turn, clear down to her pretty toes.

7

WELL,HE HADN’T killed her, the woman killed herself, falling like that. She could be so damned clumsy, flinging herself away from him, stumbling or hitting something and then blaming him. Every damn time blaming him, and now she’d sure as hell done it, she’d really put him on the spot. He hadn’t slept all night, playing it over, seeing her lying there in the mud at the bottom of the empty swimming pool, going down there and realizing she was dead, and then later having to haul her out of there, drag her the whole length of the pool through the stinking mud and up the steps and nearly falling. Wondering what the hell he was going to do with her, trying to figure how he was going to get rid of the body. Why the hell did she have to be so clumsy, why did she have to do that!

It’d happened so fast, he still couldn’t believe she’d just swung away from him and fallen. Still couldn’t believe she was dead. She’d been a pain in the ass, but they’d had a good thing going, too. And then after it happened, after trying to revive her and finally knowing she was dead, the way the damned woman had timed it, he’d had to wait hours before it was dark enough to get her out of there. Couldn’t bring her up out of the empty pool in the daylight and haul her to the car, he’d had to wait at home worrying that someone would come along and find her.

Right at first, when he realized she was dead, he’d thought of calling the medics or the cops, but what would he say?They’d say he killed her, that he’d pushed her. They’d look at that big bruise on the side of her head and they’d think the worst. No, you get cops nosing around, who knew what else they’d find? You bring the cops into it, everything would hit the fan.

She’d start to stiffen up soon, he didn’t know how long that would take. Would she be harder to move then? And all the time he waited he was thinking,Why the hell did she do that? Why the hell did she have to go and screw things up?

He often worked Saturday but had come home early, around five, his last day before vacation. Had been all ready to head out and she knew she was supposed to be waiting, she knew it was important to leave before dark.She’d told him that! Had made him promise to be home early, before the neighbors all went in to supper, that the neighbors had to see them pull away.She was the one who said it was important for the neighbors to see them putting their suitcases in the car and heading out-and then she’d gone off like that.

She’d left her suitcase by the front door, beside his, had left her purse, too, but no sign of her. With her purse right there, he knew where she’d gone. And didn’t that put him in a rage. He’d stood there for a minute swearing, calling her everything he could think of, then he’d left the house, going out through the back, hoping the neighbors wouldn’t see him. Had shut the door real quiet, had slipped through the backyards to the next street, had walked the two blocks and turned back onto his own street, to the empty Parker house. If someone had seen him, if it came up later, he’dsay it was a last-minute errand while she was getting dressed to leave.

They’d told everyone they planned to leave early, drive a few hours, pick up a burger, pull in somewhere around midnight. Their story was, drive up the coast then over to Reno for a few days to see her sister, then fly out of Reno for Miami and the Bahamas. So why the hell did she take the chance of going out at the last minute and screwing things up?

Well, she always did as she pleased, whatever spur-of-the-moment notion took her. It had been real hot the last few days, hot for the central coast in June. She liked that, liked lying naked in the hot sun. She couldn’t sunbathe naked in their own yard, the neighbors in three houses could see right down on her. She’d tried a few times to do that, and he’d really given her hell. Why the hell did she place such value on an all-over suntan? He’d told her a hundred times not to take her clothes off in public. Now look what she’d done, look where it had gotten her.

Approaching the Parker house, he knew she’d be back by the empty pool, hidden by the overgrown bushes where she thought no one would see her. Walking up the cracked driveway he’d smelled the coconut stink of her suntan oil long before he saw her-but as he passed the empty house he jerked to a stop: an explosion from the bushes and a white cat burst out from right under his feet, stared at him, and bolted away. Some neighborhood cat scaring him nearly to death. He’d stood, chilled, his hands shaking, trying to collect himself. He never could abide cats-and he couldn’t let her see how upset he was, she had no notion how sick cats made him. The look in its eyes before it ran, the way it glared at him, wouldn’t leave him.

He’d moved on at last, had found her back there, lying there naked as a jaybird, lying on that blue beach towel, her clothes folded up in the tote bag she carried, a bottle of suntan lotion and a bottle of water beside her. She’d looked up guiltily, and then yawned. Said she fell asleep, hadn’tmeant to be gone so long. When he lit into her, she sassed him back. Said her tan was fading, and didn’t he like her to have an all-over tan? Didn’t he like her to look nice?

“Nice for who?” he’d said, thinking about the neighborhood couples they hung out with, the guys he played golf with-the guys he sometimes wondered about.

“Nice for you,” she’d said sharply. “Who else would I want to look nice for, baby?” And she’d reached up to him.

“Get up and get dressed, I’m not rolling around in the dirt with you.” But then he’d laughed. “I’ll give you a roll later, in some fancy hotel with a good bottle of Scotch and maybe a mirror on the ceiling.” That made her laugh. But when he’d pointed out that the sun was going to set soon, that it sure as hell couldn’t tan her much, she’d snapped at him again, seemed like she was always snapping at him.

“I told you I fell asleep. The cool evening air’s good for my skin.” Half the time, the woman made no sense. Except for the one thing she was good at. Then her head was clear, then she was all business.

“Get dressed,” he’d told her. “Get up now and get dressed.”

“It isn’t even close to dark yet.” Instead of pulling on her clothes, she’d just lain there looking up at him, and didn’t that make him mad. He’d jerked her up, madder every minute. “Get dressed and get home! I’m ready to leavenow!”

That’s when she’d started mouthing off at him. “I’m not your slave. This whole thing was my idea, my planning. I’ll get dressed when I’m ready. As for the neighbors, I’ll make sure they see us.” When she started getting shrill-that made him nervous because someone might hear her-that was when he smacked her, just a light back of his hand to shut her up, and the dumb broad had swung around and slapped at him. He’d hit her lightly to knock some sense into her, a little whack usually settled her right down. But when he whacked her, that was when she lost her balance or maybe slipped-all of a sudden she was gone, falling backward into the pool, trying to catch herself but there was nothing to grab, and he couldn’t grab her, it all happened in a split second. He’d heard her hit the concrete with a hardthunk, and then she didn’t move. He kept telling her to get up. She didn’t move, just lay there facedown, sprawled naked in the mud, her long hair hiding her face.

Swearing, he went around the pool and down the mud-slick steps, nearly falling, crossed the stinking mud, slipping twice, knelt down, and shook her. Her body was limp, and that was when he started getting scared. He tried to turn her over. When he lifted her head, blood started running out from beneath her hair.

Sickened, he’d pushed her hair away to look. There was blood all over, underneath her hair, her hair soaked with it, a pool of blood that curdled into the sour mud and mixed with the mud on her face. A hell of a lot of blood, some of it running out of her ear. Behind her ear, the base of her head was alreadyswelling and turning black and blue.

But then, even as he knelt there, the blood had stopped running. He kept telling her to get up, he couldn’t believe she was dead. He’d thought of trying that breathing thing but it was too late. He looked up to the top of the pool, terrified someone would be standing there, but there was no one. He had to get her out of there before someone saw her, before some neighbor who might have heard them did come nosing around. He couldn’t move her until dark-it was the middle of June, it wouldn’t be dark until late.

Now, at five thirty, folks would be getting home from tennis or golf or shopping, and the two neighborhood families with kids home from some outing, and kids racing out in the street playing catch or riding their bikes, people going out to stand in their yards talking and gossiping. Andthey were supposed to make a big show of heading out on vacation.

Well, she’d sure as hell screwed it up, and what the hell washe supposed to do now? He felt trapped, and his fear began to build. Standing in the empty pool looking down at her, bloodied and dead, he’d wondered if anyone had seen her going down the street earlier, seen her heading for the Parker place, or seen him slip down there later? Anyone seeing them would wonder why they weren’t leaving. She’d told everyone when they’d take off. Had bragged to everyone about the fancy vacation, the fancy Miami and Bahamas hotels where they’d be staying. She knew all the details, flight time, connecting flight, room prices, she’d made it all sound so great. She might be inept and maddening in some ways, but she handled those kinds of details like the pro she was.

He kept coming back to what he was going to do, now that their careful plans were shot to hell. His nerves were shattered, thanks to her. He wasn’t sure he could pull this job off alone.

Leaving her lying in the mud, he’d walked home as nonchalantly as he could, as if he was out for a stroll before he got in the car for a long trip. Up ahead three women had stood in a yard talking, but then they’d gone inside. He could hear kids yelling in a backyard, and that had made him sweat, afraid they’d come racing out to the street and see him, and that one of them would remember, later. The yards of the houses on his left were wooded, dropping steeply down to the street below. The street he was on, his own street, ran on up the hill for half a mile, where it ended at a narrow, precipitous drive along the sideof the hill, a view of the roofs below. Walking casually past his neighbors’ houses, he couldn’t stop seeing her dead.

He’d managed to avoid meeting anyone. Slipping into his own house, he’d tried to figure out how to handle this. He’d never thought too much about how to get rid of a body, how hard that would be. One minute he was glad she was dead, with her bitchy ways, the next minute he was scared as hell, angry that she’d done that to him. In the empty house, he’d stood looking at her purse and suitcase, feeling a stab of loss, and for the first time since it happened, he found it hard to breathe.

It always took a while to catch up with him. He went into the bathroom, got the prescription asthma spray he used.She said his inability to breathe was more in his head than in his respiratory system. That was another thing that maddened him, her know-it-all attitude. He’dtold her he had a mild case of asthma and that it was easily controlled. When they were first married she’d tried to baby him over it, but he’d shrugged that off. She never knew the real cause; he’d tried to hide the severity of those attacks from her.

Usually he could ease the breathing, but he couldn’t stop the tightness in his chest that made him feel like he was being crushed, as if he was sealed inside a wall. In the bathroom, inhaling the spray, that dark memory from his childhood filled him.

He’d had the vision for so many years that sometimes he was no longer sure if that horror had really happened. Not sure if he’dseen that victim when he was a child, or even ifhe’d been the victim, himself. Or if the vision had come only from Poe’s dark tale that he’d read over and over, the story of the man sealed in a cellar wall. Only, this time when he couldn’t breathe and that scene hit him, it washer he saw, it washer sealed, dead, inside the cellar wall.

He’d sat shakily at the kitchen table until the breathing came easier, then he’d gotten up, poured a glass of milk, and found some crackers. And soon, with some food in him, he started wondering if hecould move her now, if he dared get the car out before dark and go back, if he dared take a chance. The notion ate at him until he headed for the garage, unloaded the car’s toolbox and blanket from the trunk to make room, and stuffed them in the backseat. He found the shovel and put that in, too.

He’d checked the street several times, looking out the living room windows. At last he had backed the car out, shut the garage door, and headed down the street-just as three kids careened around the corner on their skateboards.

Losing his nerve, he’d turned around and headed back home. The neighbors, glimpsing the car, might not know for sure he was alone, with the tinted side windows, would maybe think they’d forgotten something. Damn neighbors minded way too much of other people’s business-but he needed them. If he went ahead with the plan, he sure as hell needed them.

He had put the car back in the garage, had spent hours pacing the house waiting for it to get dark, sweating and trying to breathe slowly and deeply. At dusk he’d wanted to try again, but when he looked out the front window, two couples were walking their dogs. Puffy little mutts that looked more like wind-up toys than something alive, and their owners strutting along after them like they were some kind of big deal. That was another thing about pets, they were not only dirty and of no practical use, they wasted a person’s time, to say nothing of wasting money. And right now those dogs, bringing the neighbors out on the street, were sure as hell hindering him in what he had to do. She’d never known how he felt about useless animals, he was way too good at making people believe what he wanted them to believe.

He’d left the house lights off. In the dark he’d poured himself a small bourbon, knowing he daren’t drink much, that he had to keep his head clear. He’d kept looking out the window, but had ended up having to wait until full dark before the street was empty. This time, going into the garage, he’d disconnected the motor for the garage door by pulling the cord, had pushed the door up manually so it was quieter. Had gotten in the car and backed out hoping no one saw, had closed the door again by hand and headed down to the Parker house.

Turning into the cracked drive, he’d pulled down to where it turned to enter the garage, where the overgrown bushes should hide the car. Getting out, he’d walked back up the drive and stood among the dark bushes looking up and down the street.

He could see no one on the street or in the yards. Studying the lighted windows, he could see no shadow standing behind the curtains or shades as if looking out. He could smell roast beef cooking, and fish frying. Taking the flashlight from the glove compartment, he’d walked between the bushes and through the long grass on down to the pool. Insane to let a house go like this, with the prices of real estate in this town.

It was dark as hell in the back, and he was afraid of a misstep, of falling into the empty pool himself. Wouldn’t that be ironic, if he, too, died down there. He had a flash of her making him fall, reaching up from the pool and dragging him down, and that constricted his breathing, so he had to slow until he got his breath. All his life he’d had to deal with constricted breathing. All his life he’d known that wasn’t fair.

He didn’t want to shine the light until he was down inside the pool, and twice he slipped going down the slimy steps. He was down inside the concrete hole at last. Crossing the muddy tile, he shielded the light in his cupped hand, wondering how much would reflect up out of the pool.

She was there lying in the dark, as he’d left her, but the shock of seeing her sprawled, of his light playing over the blood and bruise, made his stomach twist.

At last, kneeling, he got his arms under her, to lift her. Her arms were stiff, her head and neck stiff. Her torso was limp, difficult to handle, stiff arms and legs sticking out. Sickened, he lifted her as best he could, carried and dragged her across the pool and up the steps, slipping and silently cursing-and leaving a drag trail of mud and blood along with the track of his tennis shoes, a mess he would have to clean up once he got her out of there.

She was even harder to handle loading in the trunk. He got her in at last, got the dark wool lap blanket out of the backseat and pulled it over her, covering her face. He didn’t want to look at her face; he still had a sense of her watching him. The blood had mostly dried, but some of it was sticky. He shut the lid as quietly as he could. Getting in the car, making sure he’d slid the shovel onto the floor of the backseat, he headed up toward the hills.

He drove for a long time, back and forth among the dark and empty hills, trying to find a place to bury her. His headlights picked out very little beyond the road. He tried to scan the night-black hills by memory, tried to identify the few dim lights of the scattered houses as he looked for a stretch of empty land where freshly dug earth wouldn’t be noticed. And as the car nosed along the dark roads, fear rode with him, chill and black.

8

HE STOPPED SEVERAL times to look out at an empty field, but in every case one house or another was too close. He wanted a place where he wouldn’t have to carry her for miles across rough fields in the dark, but isolated enough so no one would hear him digging. The night was so still. Even from inside a house someone might hear the sound of the shovel, or a dog would hear and start barking. Though the night was cool, some hardy soul might be sitting on his front porch, his ears tuned to every small bucolic sound. To such a listener, the clink of a shovel would echo like thunder. And he’d have to do it all in the dark. If he used the flashlight, he’d sure as hell be seen. She’d really screwed things up, had really made it hardfor him.

He’d headed home after midnight, discouraged with her still in the trunk. He was exhausted and his nerves were shot. He’d put the car in the garage, put on clean tennis shoes, and in the dark neighborhood he’d headed on foot back to the Parker house. Hoping somehow, even in the dark, to clean up the tracks he’d left. He carried the flashlight in his pocket, but when he got there he was afraid someone would see a light moving around the yard or reflecting up from the pool. Consequently, he couldn’t see what to clean up; if he tried, he’d only make a mess of it. He’d have to come back in the morning, the minute it started to get light.

Before leaving the Parkers’ yard he removed the tennis shoes so as not to leave a muddy trail, dropped them in the plastic bag he’d stuffed in his pocket. He walked home in his stocking feet, bruising his heel on a pebble, thinking about the people on his block, about their routines on Sunday mornings.

Two couples slept in, late. Two men he knew casually would probably play an early round of golf. But what did their wives do? He’d never thought to ask, never paid attention. Did those women garden on Sunday mornings? Leave the house to go to church? Or sit idly drinking coffee, looking out the windows?She’d know what they did, that was part of her job, to know about the neighbors. And now she could tell him nothing.

Walking home, he saw no one. He heard two cats yowling somewhere down the street, sending chills up his spine. Everyone on the damned block seemed to have cats. If he’d known that when they bought the place, he might have thought better of moving where it wasn’t easy to conceal his disgust-but he had no choice, he needed to be liked and to be accepted, that was part of their program.

At home, he cleaned up the tennis shoes in the kitchen sink, left them drying by the back door. He sat in the kitchen for over an hour drinking cold coffee from the morning and wishing he still smoked, to calm his nerves. He thought about going over to the all-night grocery east of the village and getting a pack, take the other car, but he didn’t feel like going anywhere. Around three in the morning he went into the bedroom, lay down on the bed, and pulled the spread up over himself-but then he could smell her sweet scent, and he ended up moving into the guest room, jerking the comforter up over his legs.

He woke, startled, 5:45 by the red numbers on the clock. It was light out. Rising quickly, he splashed water on his face, pulled on the same jeans he’d worn the night before, found some dry shoes, and an old pair of gloves. Walking back to the Parker house, he eyed each quiet, sleeping home he passed. The sun would soon be up, and his neighbors would be waking.

He didn’t think, until he was walking up the drive, that the water might have been cut off, considering that the house had been empty for nearly six months. Hurrying back to the reeled hose at the edge of the bushes near the pool, he tried the faucet and breathed easier. The water was on and had good pressure. Unreeling the hose, dragging its length to the far end of the pool, he looked down to where she’d died.

Even in the early light, the drag marks were sharp and clear, broken by the line of his footprints. Ducking down to the height of the bushes so as not to be noticed from next door or from the street, he crouched at the edge of the coping, hosing down the pool, sluicing the sides and bottom with a strong, condensed stream, sending the mud into new configurations until he was sure he’d destroyed every drag mark and footprint.

When he was satisfied with the looks of the pool and steps, he hosed the drive up to where he’d loaded her body, where the muddy trail stopped. As he worked, he kept seeing her body stuffed into the trunk of the car. The morning brightened but then dimmed again as a spread of clouds began to creep across the rising sun. He didn’t hose clear to the street. The next-door neighbors’ drapes were still closed but he worried that someone would come out later to get the paper, would glance over and see the driveway wet. He stopped well back, where the water might not be noticed.

If those clouds did mean rain, that would solve the problem just fine, it wouldn’t take much to wet the rest of the drive. This time of year the weather was erratic, so maybe, for once, luck was with him. Winding the hose back on the reel, his hands were cold in the soaked gloves. The wet tennis shoes had turned his feet cold, too. He had brought some rags, with which he wiped the shoes down, pressing the threadbare towels against the wet canvas to soak up water, to keep from leaving footprints on the way home. Departing the Parker house, on the back street, he decided maybe a real walk would help his breathing and clear his head-give him time to decide on a story if some neighbor saw that they were still here. He did maybe a mile along the side streets, a swinging walk that let him breathe easier and that set his heart beating with more strength.

Circling back at last to his own street, he knew he had to eat, though he didn’t feel like it. He went in the house through the side door, tied the wet shoes and gloves and wet jeans in a plastic bag and got dry ones. He was frying a couple of eggs when, glancing out the kitchen window, he saw a car pass, heading slowly downhill toward the Parker place, and he did a doubletake.

He thought he knew the driver. A square-faced woman with dark, short hair, wearing a dark jacket. She slowed as a kid on a bike passed her, then moved on, but he got a good enough look to be sure.

Molena Point PD had only a few women, and this one was a detective. What the hell would she be doing here, and at this time in the morning? He flipped his scorched eggs onto the plate, feeling cold. This had to be a coincidence, she was just passing. But, turning off the burner, he went out the back and headed for the Parker house.

A block before he reached it he crossed to the opposite side of the street, and three doors above the Parker place, at a neat white Cape Cod, he moved deep into shelter behind a toyon tree covered with red berries. Behind him, the Cape Cod’s windows were shuttered, and there was no sound from within.

Had some busy neighbor seen him in the Parkers’ yard, and called the police? The detective parked across the street, just beyond where he was concealed. She got out, stood looking up and down the street at each house, at each yard. She was squarely built, probably in her fifties, her dark uniform severe. Black stockings, regulation black shoes. She crossed to the Parker yard, again stood looking. When she headed on back, toward the swimming pool, his stomach lurched. When she stopped, staring down at the wet drive-wet only half the way-he felt sick.

She stood looking down at his wet tracks, then moved away to examine the neatly wound, wet hose. He watched her take a camera from the bag she carried and photograph the wet drive. What the hellwas this, what had brought her here? He looked around at the neighbors’ houses, but no one had appeared, no one stepped out on a porch as if to come and speak to her.

When she moved down the drive to the pool, he could hardly breathe. He had to shift position in order to see her where she’d paused on the coping, then he backed away, sweating-that was when he saw a cat on the roof of the next house. A big gray cat stood at the edge of the shingles, staring down as if it, too, was watching the woman. The appearance of another cat, after the one that ran across his path, generated awave of fear almost like a premonition.

When the detective turned, as if to head back to her car, he didn’t wait. He slid away out of sight between the two houses, kept moving between houses down to the lower street where he hurried back toward home.

Entering his street two blocks above the Parker place, he heard a power mower start, and he saw the guy up at the corner, at the blue house, beginning to mow his lawn. Pretty damn early to be mowing the lawn on Sunday. When he looked back down the hill to the Parker place, the cop’s car was still there. From this angle he couldn’t see the detective, didn’t know what she was doing, but the cat was still there on the roof. He knew it was silly and childish but he didn’t like the sight of that cat peering down at the place where all his troubles had begun. It was not agood sign to see a cat there.

He’d finally gotten used toher succession of cats, so he didn’t act so shaky around them. She’d had several dogs but he never paid them any attention. It was when he was near the cats that he had to be careful and act natural.

When he was a boy, he hadn’t played much with other kids, he’d been a loner, a reader. He read everything, but he liked science fiction best. He thought about his mother’s old black cat that he’d hated, the way it would stare and stare at him while he wanted to be left alone to read, and the two things were related in his mind: Poe’s story “The Black Cat” and his mother’s cat. The more her cat watched him, the more he read Poe, read it over and over, sickly drawn to the story; and the more the fictional cat and the live cat ran together in his mind.

His mother never knew what happened to that cat. She said it got old, that it must have gotten sick and gone away to die. She said animals did that. Lucky for him that she’d come up with her own explanation about why it had vanished.

He’d thought she’d get no more cats, but then she came home with that pale kitten, that she’d loved and tended like a baby. Loved it more than she’d ever loved him. It was after he got rid of the kitten that his fear and disgust of cats began to get out of hand. It was then that his breathinggot bad.

And then years later, when he got married, when they’d been married only a few months,she came home with a cat. She’d had a dog then, and he’d never imagined she’d get a cat, too. When she came in carrying it, he thought she was going to shove the soft, furry thing right at him. When he backed away from the cat crouched in her cuddling hands, its yellow eyes had blazed like fire, straight up into his eyes.

How could she love such a thing?

She’d looked at him, shocked. He’d said she startled him, coming in with a cat. He’d said he was allergic to them, that he’d never told her. She’d looked so dismayed that he said he’d always been allergic, but only if he got close, only if he petted them, that otherwise they didn’t bother him at all.

She’d kept the cat away from him, and he’d never let on how he hated it. He was good at that, that was what made them such a good team: He could be whatever the situation called for-on the outside.

Later he was glad he’d accepted the cat, the animal seemed to settle her down, to keep her from her nervous times. She’d had a succession of cats, and all these years he’d tolerated them, had grown skilled at acting natural around them, had never let her see how he detested them. But the cats always knew, her cats wouldn’t go near him.

Now when he looked down the street again, the cat on the roof had disappeared. He went on around his house to the back, slipped in through the side door, and locked it. He threw the cold cooked eggs in the sink, ran the garbage disposal, put the dirty skillet in the dishwasher so as not to leave anything for the housekeeping people to wonder about. Snatching up her purse and bag from the front entry, he went through the house to the garage, shoved them in the backseat of the car. At the last minute he went back to the kitchen, got the bag of wet shoes and clothes, dropped it on the floor of the backseat.

He had to reconnect the automatic door opener so the housekeeping service wouldn’t wonder about that either. That Harper woman ran a hands-on business, she was in and out of all the houses her people maintained, the nosy bitch. It would be just like her to try to open up the garage for some reason, maybe to vacuum out the cobwebs, and he sure didn’t want the police chief’s wife to start asking questions.

Hitting the remote, he winced as the door rumbled up then rumbled down again behind him. By now, some neighbor was sure to be up. What if they heard the door, and remembered it later? Well, it couldn’t be helped, he thought nervously.

He meant to head up into the hills again where, in full daylight, it would be easier to find a place to bury her. But then, changing his mind, he went on up his street to the dead end, pulled off into the woods, and walked back down the lower road to see if the detective was still there, nosing around. He’d rest easier when she left, when he was sure she’d found nothing, then he’d head for the hills, find the right place. Lay low until it got dark and he could bury her. Then he could get on with their plan.

9

IT WAS NEARLY noon when Charlie Harper locked her small SUV and let herself in the front door of the Chapman house. Pausing on the threshold, the tall redhead brushed a scattering of straw from her faded jeans, a remnant from some last-minute stable chores at home. She stood for a moment looking around the big, square living room, trying to see, in daylight, anything strange that she might have missed last night, among the Chapmans’ usual clutter. The bright room was inviting, with its creamy crown molding and cheerful, flowered couch and chairs arranged around the pale stone fireplace. Deep bay windows flanked the front door, and at the back, long glass sliders faced the deck-complete with pry marks, now, on the outside molding. Of all the houses that Charlie’s Fix-it, Clean-it cared for, the homes on this street seemed to her particularly welcoming. Maybe, she thought, amused, that was because they all had resident cats to greet a friend or visitor.

She didn’t do the cleaning for her company any longer, but she still saw to her clients’ special needs and she always enjoyed caring for their pets while they were gone on business or vacation. Shrugging off her jacket, she wanted to head straight through to the laundry to make sure that Mango was inside and that she and her kittens were all right. Instead she stood listening, alert for the tiniest sound from the kitchen or from the rooms down the hall. The fact that Mango had gotten out continued to worry her. She knew that her crew hadn’t been in the house since the Chapmans left last night, and even if they had, they were all totally reliable. Most of her fifteen crew members weren’t just employees, they were her friends whom she trusted to be responsible.

The silence in the house was complete, not as if someone waited unseen, but with a sense of emptiness that convinced her she was alone. But still, as she turned from the entry to walk through the bright rooms, she carried a small canister of pepper spray concealed in her palm.

She saw nothing out of place. Theresa’s clutter looked pretty much as it had last night, rumpled bedspread dragging on the floor at one corner and the pillows scattered across it, clothes piled on a chair, spilling to the floor. She checked the guest room, which looked a little better, checked the window locks, found them all secure.

But the cat had gotten out somehow. Mango herself hadn’t closed the laundry window behind her as she made her escape, sweet Mango was just an ordinary cat, not like Joe and Dulcie and Kit, who could have managed such a feat.

She had inspected the house carefully last night after the phone call that brought her down the hills to the village. Before entering she’d put on gloves in case something did come up missing and she’d need to call the department, though she didn’t want to do that. She’d examined the scars on the glass door sliding mechanism, examined the closed laundry-room window, noted the crumbs and glass rings on the kitchen table. There was always plenty at the Chapmans’ for her girls to clean up, she’d thought, smiling. After she’d been through the house last night, she’d called her crew, had told them not to clean there until she notified them.

In case therehad been a breakin, with items missing that she didn’t realize among the clutter, her reputation, but more important, Max’s reputation and that of Molena Point PD, were at stake. If one of her residential charges was burglarized, the few anticop types among the citizens of Molena Point would be thrilled, would be busy at once using the newspaperand word of mouth to smear the department, to put the law in as bad a light as their creative zeal could invent.

She wouldn’t let that happen, she thought stubbornly. But she’d be glad when she sold the business and put an end to the worry-she’d built her cleaning and repair business from nothing and she was proud of what she’d made, but not proud enough to keep on with it at Max’s expense.

She’d started with just enough money to buy an ancient RV, some used tools, and the bare essentials of cleaning equipment. Now, three years later, the service was so busy that often, when she couldn’t get additional, reliable employees, she had to turn away prospective new customers. After a couple of failed jobs earlier in her life, the experience of building the business had made her feel strong and independent for the first time, had assured her that, even after the false starts, she was capable of constructing a solid venue with which to support herself. So it wasn’t easy, now, to put her successful baby on the market.

But the stress was getting to her. She always felt on guard, she was always aware of something possibly going awry that could put Max and the department in a bad light-and, too, now that she was finally doing the kind of artwork she’d always longed to do, and had discovered the joy of writing and illustrating her own books, as well, she hungered for more unbroken time.

She had just signed a new book contract, she needed time for that work, and Charlie’s Fix-it, Clean-it had morphed from a milestone of personal triumph to what she had begun to think of as a millstone weighing her down.

Never happy, she thought wryly.But we dochange, that’s what life’s about, to grow and learn. That’s what we’re here for.

Moving through the kitchen to the laundry, she breathed easier when she saw Mango snuggled down in the box with her kittens. Kneeling to pet the little family, she puzzled again over why anyone would jimmy the glass door and apparently break in and yet, as far as she could see, would take nothing.

She looked around the laundry half expecting to have to clean up mouse blood or whatever might remain after Joe Grey had brought his promised gift to Mango. Scraping up mouse guts wasn’t a job she relished, but she didn’t see a sign of any leftovers. She didn’t remember the dishpan being on the floor by the cat box. She picked it up and set it back on the counter, then fetched a flashlight from the laundry shelf and, kneeling again, sent a beam of light under the washer and dryer, hoping not to see a small dead body where an injured mouse had escaped. She’d at least prefer little beady eyes peering out.

Happily, the space beneath the machines was empty. If indeed Joe had brought a gift, Mango had cleaned it up nicely. She’d brought Mango an apricot this morning, which Theresa had told her the funny little cat loved. Theresa doted on her cats.

Charlie was fond of Theresa. Despite her tendency to make up harmless stories, to change facts on the spur of the moment-Charlie didn’t like to call it lying-she was a gentle, sweet-tempered young woman most of the time. Unless something sent her into one of her upsets, which could put her almost out of control. In some ways, dark-haired Theresa Chapman had plenty of self-confidence; she did as she pleased and didn’t let Carl run her. Yet in other ways, at other times, she showed no confidence at all; she would back off submissively from Carl and allow him to bully her.

Mango, as she left her box to eat the apricot, glanced uneasily at the closed kitchen door. Charlie watched her, petting the kittens and listening again to the house. She knew it was empty-but Mango would be nervous if someone had gotten in last night; she wouldn’t know they weren’t still there. Charlie was just glad that she and her kits were all right, that no one had harmed them. Two of the kits were yellow, two brown tabby, and one a deep rust as red as Charlie’s own hair. Leaning over, she laid a lock of her long hair down across the kitten, whohappily snatched at it. The reds matched perfectly, and she thought that would amuse Theresa.

Last night when she’d examined the pry marks on the outside molding, she’d tried to call the Chapmans, thinking that maybe Theresa had locked herself out at some point, and had had to get in that way, that that would explain the damage.

There’d been no answer, and she’d tried again this morning. The trouble with vacationers, they left their cell phones in their hotel rooms, didn’t want to be bothered. They figured they’d return their messages later, and then forgot or didn’t want the interruption from their carefree days. Maybe they’d gotten her messages and thought the scratched door wasn’t serious enough to bother about, as long as the cats were all right. In her message, she had assured them of that. She had no other number to try, no name of any hotel. Theresa said she wasn’t sure, herself, which little towns they would be staying in, that they meant to head up the coast for a few days, that after that Carl had grand plans. All pretty vague, Charlie thought, smiling. Theresa had confided in her that the two had had their troubles, so maybe an unstructured vacation was intended to be low key and healing.

Because Charlie had found Mango safe inside again, thanks to Joe and Dulcie, she hadn’t included that near disaster in her messages to the Chapmans; that would make Theresa frantic. She didn’t like keeping things from her clients but in this case she’d thought it best. Of the four families who were presently on vacation, all four owned cats, but Theresa was by far the most obsessive about her pets’ welfare.

When Charlie had first inspected the damaged door, she’d been concerned about Theresa’s collection of lovely miniature paintings, but they all seemed accounted for. They were all in place this morning, the miniatures, mostly landscapes with a few figure studies, hung close together in multiple rows, covering two dining room walls, light from the big bay window washing over their jewel-like colors. There were no spaces where paintings were missing, and she’d found no change in spacing, where they might have been rearranged. Certainly the most valuable ones were there, the two dozen best-known artists whose work was distinctive. The paintings were dear to Theresa, she would immerse herself in them, as one would get lost in a piece of music, and Charlie understood that.

Charlie tried not to have favorites among her clients, but was that really possible? Theresa was a favorite of the whole neighborhood because of her sunny disposition and, in part, because she was so vulnerable. A slim, tanned, willowy young woman in her midthirties, Theresa had no notion of how beautiful she was. Her dark brown hair, brown eyes, her long face with her rosy, prominent cheeks made a striking combination-though Theresa wouldn’t hear of it. She said her “chubby” cheeks made her look like a chipmunk, and no one could tell her any different. She was not only lovely, but bright and cheerful-except that with any small disaster, particularly one that involved an animal, she would weep. Theresa’s tears came easily, asdid her sense of betrayal, and her resulting temper. If Theresa thought a friend had crossed her, her bitterness was cold and complete.

The four families, because of their schedules, were vacationing at about the same time of year. Eleen Longley of course went on vacation the minute school was out, the minute her students vanished from her life for a few serene months. She and Earl usually took a two-or three-week driving trip. He, being an architect, could pretty much plan his trips around hers. Eleen was a small, dark-haired young woman, bright and lively, with a natural charm that drew people to her-more lively and determined perhaps than Earl could easily handle. Charlie had seen her stubborn moods, and some would call her hardheaded. But Charlie liked her; she’d seen the gentle side of Eleen, with her cats and with the neighbors’ small children.

The Watermans’ vacation trip was usually on their anniversary. That was the one cruise a year where blond, willowy Rita Waterman didn’t work as a tour guide. This year, though, they hadn’t booked a cruise. The last time Charlie had seen Rita, they were thinking of spending their first week in San Francisco, and were debating whether to book a last-minute flight to Greece or to the Antilles. Wherever they were, Charlie could reach them by cell phone if the need arose. She imagined Rita on the white beaches of some exotic island, showing off her tan, swimming in the warm Caribbean waters or that of the Greek islands. For a moment, she let herself imagine living that glamorous life, she and Max being waited on by stewards bearing exotic drinks and delicious tidbits-even if for only a few weeks. To see Max have a rest would be worth a lot. And the chance to see new parts of the world attracted her, the beautiful blue waters, a chance to touch a bit of the past among Greece ’s crumbling ruins.

But the downside of a cruise, the busy social milieu, too many people and too much meaningless conversation, didn’t appeal to her, and would drive Max crazy. If she were offered the trade, she’d turn that down in a New York minute and stick to their own quiet joys, with their friends, with the horses and their other animals, in their small village.

But that glamorous life suited Rita Waterman very well; she seemed truly to enjoy the busy life. Rita was a jewelry buff; she dressed in simple, well-cut clothes that showed off various pieces of her striking collection of antique costume jewelry that came from all over the world. With her statuesque beauty and cool manners, Rita seemed always reined in, always in charge of herself. But underneath, Charlie knew, she was as vulnerable as anyone else. Charlie, when she’d first started cleaning their house and had still done much of the physical work, overheard some of their arguments, some real explosions of temper and tears from Rita.

She was certain those digressions didn’t occur in public. Rita’s husband, Ben, had some medical problems, which he seemed to manage well. Maybe that was why he didn’t join her on her tours. He stayed home, “batching” and, apparently reluctantly, feeding whatever cats Rita had at the moment. The couple was a ripe source of neighborhood gossip, as their friends wondered about Rita’s glamorous journeys alone, far from home and husband. Though certainly when she was home they had a busy social life, season tickets to concerts and plays, and they were involved in various charity functions, as well as casual dinners with their neighbors.

Charlie was amused by her own sudden interest in her clients’ personal lives. A year ago, she couldn’t have cared less. Only since she’d developed an interest in writing fiction had other people’s lives begun to fascinate her. With one illustrated “book for all ages” in the stores and another in the works, she’d suddenly found the intricacies of other people’s lives piquing her curiosity to the point where she was considering an adult novel. Turning gossip to gold, she thought, amused.

Though most of the gossip on this street was about Ed Becker, who was the handsomest man among the four couples, strikingly tall and lean with well-styled black hair and laughing brown eyes. It was hard not to like Ed, he was so boyishly charming and made such an effort to get you to like him. Max said he was a charming sociopath, and usually Max was right. But this time? She wondered idly if the stories about Ed were true. And if they were, did Frances suspect his deceptions? Or was she as innocent as she appeared?

What a waste, if Ed was a womanizer, when he had such an appealing wife. And if Frances knew about his affairs, why did she stay with him? She was just as attractive as Ed, though far quieter, seeming almost shy. They made a striking couple, Francis nearly as tall as Ed, slim and tanned, with long, dark hair and brown eyes. She was an accountant, so they took their vacation when she’d finished tax season and filed her extensions. Strange, Charlie thought, that if Ed had been intimate with any of the other three women, the four couples were still friends, having dinner together, going on outings that they all seemed to enjoy with one another.

Charlie’s crews had been scheduled to come in today to clean the Chapmans’ refrigerator, to empty the dishwasher, change the linens, do the laundry and the regular cleaning and attend to the list of small repairs that Theresa had given them. Mavity had started working in the other three houses a day or two ago, once the other couples had left. And that, too, was strange.

Little wizened Mavity Flowers, who had worked for Charlie since she began the service, had told her that in all three houses, a number of small items seemed to be missing, an extra camera, a laptop, a tape recorder. Things they thought the householders had probably taken with them. Mavity hadn’t found any indication of a breakin, and everything else was in order: Frances Becker’s lovely antiques all in place, the Longleys’ first editions and paperweight collection on their shelves behind locked doors, and Rita Waterman’s jewelry cabinet securely locked.

Giving Mango a last ear rub, Charlie left the laundry room, closing the kitchen door behind her. Letting herself out the front door, she hurried up the street. The neighborhood was quiet. A couple of Sunday papers still lay in the front yards. She could smell bacon frying, as if for a late Sunday breakfast. The pine and cypress trees among the houses on the downhill side cast short, sharp shadows among the scattered rhododendron bushes. The sun was warm on her back, the rain vanished.

The moment she let herself into the Waterman house, the three Waterman cats came in from outside through their cat door, to rub against her ankles as if feeling ignored or neglected.

“You already lonely?” She knelt and spent some time petting and talking to them, then she went through the house. Entering Rita’s closet, knowing where Rita kept her jewelry cabinet key, she pulled on the cotton gloves to retrieve it, wanting to make sure that, though it was locked, the pieces were safe inside.

The key wasn’t where it should be. She fished around until she found it where Rita had apparently moved it, and she opened the wall case.

All was in place, the ornate pendants and chokers with their faux jewels as rich and brilliant as any collection of multimillion-dollar pieces. It was interesting to Charlie that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, paste gems were often used in the most intricate gold and silver settings. That once the technique for making faux gems was developed, a whole new market was created for beautiful but affordable jewelry. Now, the settings themselves were collectors’ items though they were of more modest value than if they had contained real gems. These were the pieces that Rita collected, and among them were some that Charlie had specially admired, particularly one coral hair clip and an emerald pendant. She was tempted to try them on, but she didn’t take that liberty. If she wanted to spend royalty money on such a piece, fine, but she wasn’t messing with Rita’s treasures. Locking the cabinet, she replaced the key where she’d found it.

She found nothing amiss in the other rooms, or in the other two houses. The Longley book cabinets were locked, and at the Beckers’, Frances ’s antique furniture was all in place. She was thinking hungrily of lunch as she let herself out of the Becker house and locked the door. She was heading for her car when Clyde ’s yellow roadster came up the street and pulled to the curb beside her. The top was down, Clyde and Ryanin the front seat, Joe Grey in the back. She did a double take at all three: Clyde looked angry and distraught, Ryan was trying to hide her amusement, and in the backseat, Joe Grey looked wide eyed and innocent-a sure sign of trouble.

10

STEPPING CLOSER TO the open roadster, Charlie was afraid to ask what was wrong. Clyde’s frown was of the helpless variety, which told her that whatever it was, Joe Grey was the cause. She studied Joe. In the backseat, the tomcat sat with his white paws together, his silver coat catching the sunlight, his yellow eyes as guileless as those of a kitten.

She looked at Ryan, whose eyes, complemented by her green sweatshirt, seemed greener than ever. Ryan shrugged, her expression both amazed and amused as she watched some unspoken conflict between Clyde and the tomcat.

Charlie could understand how she felt, this was all new to Ryan. She hadn’t known for very long about Joe’s unusual talents. Only shortly before Christmas had she learned that the tomcat could speak to her; that revelation had unfolded on a memorable Christmas morning that neither Ryan nor Clyde nor Joe Grey would forget. Clyde ’s subsequent marriage proposal had added to the general giddiness of their Yule celebration, and even now, after four months in the Damen household, Ryan still hadn’t settled in completely to this strange new lifestyle that was so often dominated by the smart-mouthed tomcat.

Charlie searched the couple’s faces. “What’s wrong, what’s happened?”

Both were silent.

When she looked again at Joe Grey, the tomcat yawned.

“You haven’t been by the Parker house?” Clyde said.

“No, I came up the lower street.”

“Max didn’t say anything about it this morning before he left? But maybe he didn’t know.” Clyde turned to stare pointedly at Joe. “This time, we have a disappearing body. We have a supposed murder, but there’s no corpse.”

They all three looked at Joe. The tomcat said nothing, his yellow eyes wide and innocent.

Ryan said,“ Davis worked the scene this morning, she and Dallas are still there, stringing crime tape. We’d wanted to take a look at the house, I’d hoped it might be for sale, it’s been empty so long. I thought maybe, depending on what they found, they’d let us take a peek-but you know those two. They weren’t letting us in with it cordoned off.”

“Then youare looking for a fixer-upper,” Charlie said. She daren’t look at Joe, the tomcat shared fully her amusement at Clyde ’s pitiful carpentry skills. She knew that Ryan was convinced Clyde could convert his magic touch with cars into an equally impressive skill with houses. Ryan had said they’d make a great team, but Charlie wondered if that was just the dream of a new bride.

“We’ve looked at five open houses already today,” Ryan said, “and we have a late appointment with Helen Thurwell to show us some others. Right now, we’re on our way up to look at the Baldwin Ranch. It’s been vacant nearly a year, and itis listed. And I want to swing by the remodel, see how the men are coming on the drain.”

“They’re working on Sunday?”

Ryan nodded.“It’s like a circus on the weekend. The neighbors keep coming around asking what we’re doing. Digging a bomb shelter? Putting a swimming pool in the garage? We lock the garage at night to keep kids and animals from getting down in there.”

The four-bedroom house Ryan was renovating was charming, but the client, who had owned it less than a year, had discovered during last winter’s rains that the finished downstairs rooms had, in fact, turned into a swimming pool, the house having major water problems left undisclosed in the “as is” sales contract.

Checking the drainage system, Ryan had found heavy leaks under the garage and into the basement, generated by a hidden spring uphill from the house, a flow that she didn’t think even the usual French drains could fully handle. She’d decided to put in a bold new drainage system under the garage. As they couldn’t get a backhoe under the roof, her men were digging by hand, working on Sunday by special permission of the building department.

Ryan said,“Did you check on the kittens? Who let the mama out?”

“Not a clue,” Charlie said. “Joe and Dulcie…” She paused, watching the tomcat. “What? What is it?”

In the backseat, Joe Grey had reared up, his paws on the open window sill as he stared down the hill into the neighbors’ wooded yards. Glancing quickly at Charlie, he shook his head almost imperceptibly, his voice silenced, the look in his yellow eyes wary. They all looked where Joe was looking but saw nothing unusual.

Dropping down onto the seat again, the tomcat spoke softly.“Someone was standing halfway down the hill under that big cypress tree, looking up at us. He’s gone now but I’ll just have a look…” Before Clyde could reach over and grab him he’d leaped out, was across the yard and up the nearest pine. Scrambling toward the top, he appeared and disappeared among the dark branches, then vanished into the highest, thickest foliage.

JOE PEERED DOWN from the top of the tree, clinging to a frail and precarious branch, his paws sticky with pine sap, the prickly limbs tickling his ears. Scanning the yards below, he could see no one now standing among the bushes, and not the faintest movement of shadows. Off beyond the village, a stretch of sea danced with reflections of light like tiny signal fires.

The lower street was empty, too, and when he looked back along their own street, scanning the two blocks to the Parker house, he could see no car there; Detectives Davis and Garza must have left. He felt gratified that Davis had put enough credence in his anonymous call to not only work the scene herself but to bring Dallas Garza back for an even more thorough look. Along the sidewalk and around the ragged bushes ran a line of bright yellow crime scene tape. It circled the house and pool in an enticing invitation to nosy neighbors and small children. Just below him, all three were scanning the lower yards. Ryan had taken a pair of binoculars from the glove compartment. Joe thought she’d search with those, but instead she looked straight up the pine tree, fixing her sights on him.

TO RYAN, EVEN with the binoculars the gray tomcat was just a shadow among the concealing branches. Only the white smears of his belly and nose and paws were clear, where he hung over a branch peering down to the lower street. When she turned the glasses downward to look where he was looking, she still could see no one. She glanced at Charlie, but Charlie shrugged and shook her head. Beside her, Clyde started the car. She reached over, turned off the engine.“You weren’t going to wait for him?”

Clyde sighed, and settled down to wait for the tomcat, watching the wooded yards below. Nothing stirred below, no movement but the shiver of breeze through the trees and bushes. No car was visible on either street. High above them the tomcat shifted position. What had he seen?Had there been someone watching, or only a passing neighbor?

“He saw something he didn’t like,” Charlie said. “I’ve never known him to be wrong.”

“You don’t live with him twenty-four seven,” Clyde told her.

“He isn’t stuck up there?” Ryan said. “You sure he can get down?”

Clyde laughed.“Wouldn’t that be a trip, if Joe panicked, forgot how to back down a tree and started yowling like a scared kitten. If we don’t get a move on, we’ll miss our appointment. Helen Thurwell doesn’t-”

“Wait,” Ryan said. “Listen.”

A car had started on the lower street, a quiet engine. In a moment they saw a flash of white go by. Clyde reached to turn the key, but Ryan was quicker.“You won’t get far, tailing a guy in a bright yellow car!” She was out of the car before he could stop her, running downhill, racing away, cutting through the woods as the white car was slowed by the sharp curves. As Charlie ran for her Blazer, Clyde started the roadster’s smooth-purring engine and moved uphill to the next cross street where he could turn back onto the lower road. Charlie watched him, then peered up at Joe Grey, some forty feet above. She didn’t intend to leave him. It was Joe who’d spotted the eavesdropper; it was Joe who’d uncovered what could be a murder scene. It would be cruel to leave him behind-to say nothing of the tongue-lashing they’d receive later. “Come on,” she hissed, digging her keys from her pocket. “Hurry up!”

11

A SLAB OF BARK flipped off the tree as Joe backed down. He nearly lost his grip and went slithering down as clumsy as a drunken squirrel. He hit the ground running, leaped into Charlie’s SUV through the open driver’s door, jumped across her, and landed on the seat. He looked up at her smugly, as if he’d planned that acrobatic descent. She hid a grin, gunned the engine, and took off.

From the top of the tree he had watched Ryan running down the lower road, chasing the white car, had glimpsed flashes of white among the foliage as it slipped away to disappear beyond the pines. Ryan was making good time. Straining to see, he’d glimpsed the car turning left at Ocean, up toward Highway 1. By then, he could no longer see Ryan but he could hear the faint echo of her racing footsteps. A startled crow screamed, a harsh and affronted cry as she passed beneath him. Behind her, Clyde ’s yellow roadster flashed into view, racing to catch up with her and stay on the guy’s tail.

Now, Charlie made the same U-turn, heading down the hill.“Did you see him turn? Did you see which way?”

“Left, toward the freeway,” Joe said. “I hope it was the same white car.” He looked over at her, frowning. “What good is this? A red SUV and a bright yellow roadster. About as subtle a tail as a dozen black-and-whites with their sirens blasting.” He tried to recall what he’d seen of the man, to bring back the hastily glimpsed details of that dark-clad figure standing in the bushes halfway down the hill. He’d seen him for only an instant before the guy turned suddenly and moved away, to vanish like a shadow among the lower houses. A thin man in a dark green windbreaker and darkjeans. And a hat? Yes, a brown slouch hat pulled low over his face, hiding it from Joe’s high vantage point among the branches.

He’d appeared again for an instant, just above the lower street, slipping fast through a side yard. He hadn’t seen the man’s face, and from that height, he’d caught no scent of him. If that guy was the killer, he wouldn’t know him from Adam, he’d recognize only the clothes. So what kind of undercover cat was he?

He thought the car was a four-door. It was fairly new, he had the impression of smooth, expensive curves. He’d gotten only a glimpse before the trees hid it. A few flashes of white and an occasional flash of red taillights as it braked at the curves and then as it turned, and it was gone.

Could the guy have followed Clyde’s roadster up the hill from the Parker house? But why? Unless he was the killer and had been down there spying on the two detectives? Who but the killer of the vanished body would have reason to be watching Dallas and Juana?

And how had he been clever enough to spy on a pair of cops and not be seen? If those two had seen him down there, they’d have collared him, questioned him, gotten his name, run his driver’s license if he had one. And why would he follow Clyde and Ryan after they’d stopped to talk with the detectives?

Joe recast the conversation at the Parker house, as he’d crouched in the backseat of the roadster trying to look sleepy and clueless. Davis had mentioned the samples she’d sent to the lab to see if they were human blood. The two detectives and Ryan and Clyde had talked about the neighborhood, about who lived on that street. Dallas said there was only one guy he knew of with an arrest sheet, and that was for a white-collar crime, a sleazy embezzlement.

Any of that might be of interest to the killer. But what, exactly, had made him slip up the hill to stand among the bushes where, in the silent neighborhood, he must have heard every word they said. Joe tried to remember if, at the Parker house before Dallas and Juana came over to the car,he had spoken. Could the guy have heardhim talking? The thought made the skin along his back twitch and his fur bristle.

He couldn’t remember saying a word. And later, up the hill, when Charlie, Clyde, and Ryan had talked about house hunting, about looking at an empty ranch and about checking Ryan’s current remodel to see if the drain had been dug, Joe was sure he hadn’t spoken.

Except… Clyde had said,You haven’t been by the Parker house? And he had turned to stare at Joe.This time, we have a disappearing body. We have a supposed murder. But there’s no corpse. And his look at Joe had been so pointed and angry that Charlie had looked into the backseat, too, fixing an intent gaze on one gray tomcat.

Well, hell, Joe thought. To the eavesdropper that would be no more than idle conversation. What could possibly lead him to imagine that they were talking to a cat, or that the cat understood them?

Still, the incident made him nervous, made him wish his human friends would be more careful. His paws on the dashboard, he looked ahead as Charlie caught up with the roadster at the intersection of Ocean where Clyde had stopped for a tangle of slow-moving pedestrians.

As Charlie pulled over behind him, Ryan caught up with the Blazer, and stood talking through the passenger window.“I lost him, way back. I think it was a Lexus. There was mud smeared on the plate.” She glanced up toward the highway. “He turned left into half a dozen cars, four of them white, all heading up the hill. A UPS truck pulled in behind them, blocking my view, but three white cars turned left onto the freeway.”

“You want to try to follow him?” Charlie asked. “With no more of a description than-”

“Green windbreaker,” Joe interrupted. “Dark jeans. Brown slouch hat. I couldn’t see his face.”

“We’ll take the north route,” Ryan said and headed for the roadster.

Charlie followed them uphill toward the freeway, armed with enough information that, with luck and a prayer, they might be able to spot the guy. They turned left and she turned right, heading south.

MOVING SLOWLY IN the heavy noon traffic, Charlie and Joe couldn’t pass on the two-lane highway, the lane in the other direction being wall-to-wall cars. Couldn’t catch up with the three white cars they could glimpse far ahead of them down the steep hill. At the turnoff to the little shopping plaza, two of the cars made the left and one kept moving south. Charlie glanced at Joe.

“Go for the plaza,” Joe said, watching both cars turn into the shopping area. He lifted a paw nervously, willing the truck ahead of the Blazer to turn before the light changed to red again.

They didn’t make it, the truck turned as the signal went red. By the time Charlie pulled into the parking lot, both white cars had vanished. She paused, scanning the rows of vehicles.

“Put your windows down,” Joe said as he slipped up onto the dash.

She hit the buttons to lower the windows, and began to drive slowly up and down the rows. Crouched on the dash, Joe examined each white car they passed, sniffing the air for fresh exhaust. There were white cars in every row. He sniffed each and peered inside, studying the few drivers who were getting in or out, or who sat listening to music or talk radio, waiting for some more energetic partner to return loaded with parcels and grocery bags. A white-haired woman dozed in a white Buick. A long-haired blonde in a Ford coupe glanced around at them, and turned out to be a man. Watching for a guy in a green windbreaker, Joe thought about Ryan and Clyde heading north on the four-lane, wondering if they’d have better luck.

They covered the parking lot at a tedious crawl, then Charlie pulled into an empty slot in front of the drugstore. Cuddling Joe under her arm like a little lapdog, she headed inside to walk the aisles.

They saw no man even close to Joe’s description, and their search didn’t last long once people noticed him. “Oh, look at the kitty!” “Mama, that woman has a cat!” “You take your cat shopping with you? How cute.” Soon Joe’s claws were out, ready to bloody the next reaching hand that tried to stroke him. He could feel Charlie shaking with laughter as they returned to the parking lot.

“Let’s walk it once,” Joe said. “Behind the cars.” She did that, and Joe sniffed at each trunk seeking the scent of swimming-pool mud or the stink of a dead body. He smelled dust; dirty clothes, as from someone’s laundry on the way to the Laundromat; and bananas and various other food items from recently stashed grocery bags. But no residue of a ripening body.

“Wild-goose chase,” Charlie said as she stepped back into the Blazer and dropped Joe on the seat. As she started the engine, a stout woman in the next car looked in and smiled, as if pleased to see someone talking to her cat. She pulled away, still smiling.

Joe said,“Why would he follow Clyde and Ryan from the Parker house? What was so interesting?”

“Maybe he drove up there to watch me while I checked the empty houses.”

Joe raised his ears.“You think that was your prowler? The guy who let Mango out? Then he had nothing to do with the murder at the Parker house.”

“The cleaning crew found a few little things missing in the vacationers’ houses. Or maybe they were only out of place. Not enough to be a burglary, but enough to make me wonder.”

“Dulcie and Kit and I could have a look. There was a strange smell around the Parker house-besides the body. Almost like catnip, or catmint. If he’s been in those houses…”

“Did you smell that in the Chapman house?”

He frowned.“No. But the smell of kittens and cat box, and cat food, can cover a lot of smells. That, and Theresa Chapman’s lemon room freshener. Who knows what we’d find in the other houses.”

She glanced over at him, wishing she hadn’t brought it up, hadn’t put the idea in his head. She wanted to tell him to be careful, but he hated that, hated to be coddled. “You want to call Ryan and Clyde, see if they had any luck on the freeway?”

Joe punched in Clyde’s number. The phone rang once, then went directly to voice mail.

“Doesn’t have it on,” he growled. Clyde made him crazy when he did that. He tried Ryan’s cell.

“Flannery,” she said on the first ring.

“We’re headed back,” Joe said. “Nothing.”

“Ditto,” Ryan said. “I called Dallas, gave him a description, told him the guy was watching us and maybe watching him and Juana. Anything else you remember, anything you want to add?”

“Nothing,” Joe said, wishing he’d seen the guy’s face.

“We’re going on up to look at that vacant ranch,” Ryan said, “then check the remodel, then meet Helen Thurwell to look at the other houses. She wasn’t happy that we had to reschedule. You want to join us?” she said brightly. He could just see her smart-assed grin, knowing how he hated looking at houses.

“I’ll pass on this one,” he said. All those smells of strange humans and strange animals, of sour clothes and toxic cleaning solutions. Someone else’s empty house wasn’this territory. If it had no connection to a crime scene, he wasn’t interested in exploring.

“See you at home,” she said, laughing at him. “Lupe’s Playa for dinner, if we get back early?”

Joe licked his whiskers at the thought of a Mexican supper. As she rang off, he imagined the yellow roadster turning off the freeway, going through an underpass or over a bridge and taking an on-ramp south again, heading up in the hills above the village to resume their maniacal new obsession of house hunting.

What good was it, he thought, if Clyde stopped collecting old cars and grew equally involved with old decrepit houses? Both pursuits were, in Joe’s opinion, the human’s mindless and futile attempt to revive and save the known world.

As Charlie turned down Ocean toward the village, he started thinking again about Juana and Dallas, wondering why they hadn’t made that guy when he’d been spying on them.

“What?” Charlie said, looking over at him as she slowed at a stop sign.

“How could they miss him? Down at the Parker place? And if they did see him, why didn’t they arrest him or at least question him?” The more he thought about that, the more irritated he became. It was the first time he’d ever felt anger at a cop, certainly at either of those two.

“You don’t have much faith in our detectives,” she said, pulling away from the stop sign. “Maybe they didn’t see him, with all the overgrown bushes and tall fences. Even the best officer might miss someone completely hidden, Joe. Maybe he slipped inside a house. Maybe…” She was silenta moment, turning onto her aunt Wilma’s street, then she reached to stroke his back. “Don’t be cranky. That guy might have been just some nosy neighbor, we might have gotten all excited for nothing.” She pulled to the curb in front of Wilma’s cottage. “If that guy was the housebreaker-or was your killer-dispatch has his description. Maybe one of the units will pick him up.”

Wilma Getz’s stone cottage stood beneath spreading oaks, with not a bit of lawn in front. A deep, richly flowered garden spread away to the house. The roof was dark slate, slippery to the paws when wet with rain, warm as a stovetop beneath the summer sun. In the window of Wilma’s living room, they could see Dulcie looking out, lashing her striped tail, and Joe brightened at the sight of his tabby lady. Her paw was lifted, her green eyes intent on him. Charlie watched them, and smiled. In spite of the human scum one encountered, one could always find honesty and truth among the animals-and find wonder. The world was an exciting place when you knew its secrets, when you could share in a feline miracle as real and amazing as a little speaking cat lifting her paw in greeting.

Stroking Joe and picking him up, Charlie got out of the Blazer and headed inside. In her arms, Joe wriggled with impatience, then leaped down, racing ahead to the cat door.

12

HE SAT IN his car above the deserted ranch feeling shaky. Why had those people followed him? What did they know? What had they seen? But maybe they didn’t know anything. How could they? Maybe they just hadn’t liked him standing down there in the bushes watching them. Though it would take someone really paranoid to get mad about such a little thing, get mad enough to follow him. He might have just been down there pruning bushes or gardening. That washis neighborhood, what he did there was none oftheir business.

They couldn’t have seen him earlier when they stopped to talk to those two detectives, he’d been too well hidden in the dense bushes between the houses, and with the corner of the house hiding him. But the house had blocked the cops’ voices, too, so he hadn’t heard much of what they’d said.

The cops had been doingsomething back by the pool, but hell, they couldn’t know anything.

Unless someone had seen him, early this morning? He daren’t think that someone saw him last night as he loaded her into the trunk. Maybe some neighborthought they saw something, a shadow moving around, maybe glimpsed his car pulling in or out of the drive, but they couldn’t haveseen anything, really. It was too dark.

Sure as hell, some crazy suspicion wouldn’t be enough to bring the cops. If someonehad seen him and recognized him-everyone knew him in this neighborhood-the cops would have come straight to his house. Maybe someone saw a shadow or heard some little sound last night, maybe thought it was some homeless guy fooling around at the empty house, trying to get in. And this morning they’d woken up thinking about it and decided to call the law. Maybe that’s what this was about, maybe he was worrying for nothing.

Except for the hose, he thought nervously. Except for the water halfway up the drive. That had drawn that detectives’ attention.

But what could they make of that? It was just a hosed-down driveway.

No, whatever they might imagine, he’d done too good a job of cleaning up for them to find anything to worry him; he was just having an attack of nerves. Most likely the cops were out on some crank call, just looking around. Small, quiet village like this, maybe they had nothing better to do and he didn’t need to fret.

But those people in the yellow roadster. Lucky he’d overheard them talking about looking at houses, heard where they were heading. They might help him out, big time, and never be aware of it.

Could you believe that damn womanchased him, on foot? Running down the road like a crazy? And then their car tailing him right onto the freeway? That kind of nosiness put him in a rage. He didn’t deserve that kind of treatment.

But what did it matter? He’d heard enough, and he was still laughing because he’d been able to follow them so slickly. On the freeway he’d slipped away from the yellow roadster into a tangle of trucks, had cut over two lanes between trucks, cut back into the right lane again, and gone down the next off-ramp. And had swung around onto the rise above the freeway where he’d waited until he saw them pass below, moving fast in the middle lane. That roadster was the only yellow car on the road, top down, with the dark-haired woman. What a laugh, trying to tail him in that. When he saw them, he’d swung back down tothe on-ramp and pulled onto the freeway behind them as they headed back south.

He’d followed them off the freeway, staying behind a delivery van. Had stuck with them as their car wound back among the Molena Point hills, sure that if he followed them long enough they’d lead him to exactly what he was looking for. Maybe the empty ranch they’d talked about, isolated and unoccupied. A barn, a hay barn, outbuildings…What more could he want? He could dig the grave in privacy, completely unobserved.

Following them along the narrow roads, he’d stayed well back, and then had taken a higher road that ran parallel, where he could look down on them. He’d watched with growing interest as they reached the empty ranch and pulled in. Not a soul in sight, no vehicle or farm animal, not even a stray chicken. He’d slowed, pulled the car behind some trees, thinking that once he was rid of the body, he’d take care of the original job the way they’d planned it. Maybe do it that very night. Change vehicles, follow the same routine just the way she would, and he’d be out of there and on his way.

Below him, the couple sat in their car looking down the steep hills as if assessing the nearby properties and small acreages. He could have waited and found this place himself from the way they’d described it, but that would have taken time. He’d have to go into the village, get a copy of the local paper, check the real estate section. That could take hours, and then he’d have to drive these hills for hours more, scanning the roads looking for the rural address of the deserted property. He didn’t have the patience, he wanted to get it over with, and he was beginning to feel pushed. The sense of her back there under the blanket was like she was still alive, lying there watching him. And then the picture changed abruptly. Suddenly he saw nother back there, he saw the cat crouched in her place, the pale cat watching him, the cat his mother’d brought home when he was a boy, the pale cat, its eyes ablaze with rage.

She’d brought home a half-grown kitten, all snuggled down in its blanket in a cardboard box, a kitten she said would be his. He hadn’t feared cats then, when he was small, and he’d liked the kitten fine. It was soon tagging around after him and begging at the table, and it liked to sleep on his schoolbooks. It would come up on his bed, too, to sleep with him at night, snuggling up to him, purring.

But then it started sleeping with its face in his face, pressing its nose against his nose. Snuggling up to his face and to his warm breath. He hadn’t liked that, he’d push it away but it would come right back-come back at him real fast, pressing against his face and nose, its body shaking with purrs. That had frightened him, that frenzied purring. He’d knock it off, knock it to the floor, but it would be right back again. If he shut it out of the room, it would claw at the door and yowl. His mother said to be nice to it, it was only a kitten and it loved him.

It might have loved him, but even after he shoved it off the bed over and over, it came back pressing against his nose, its body rocking with frantic purrs, demented, insane kind of purrs. He had no idea what was wrong with it and he didn’t care, he just wanted to be rid of it. He didn’t think or care that maybe it had been taken from its mother too soon or maybe was only trying to get warm. He just wanted it gone. He began to avoid it during the day. It was always there watching him but, because he’d knocked it away so many times, it wouldn’t come near, would just back away, watching him. And still, no matter how angry he got and how he shoved it, every night it came onto his bed and pressed its nose to his nose, so he couldn’t sleep. It was impossible to keep it out. His mother wouldn’t put it outside the house at night. She said he was being silly, that the poor little cat loved him, and that it was dangerous to leave a cat out at night.

He grew more and more desperate and angry until, one cold night when the young cat was pressing hard at him, breathing from his face, he’d grabbed it off him, held it out away from him so it wouldn’t scratch, and flung it as hard as he could at the bedroom wall.

It hit the wall hard and fell and lay still. He’d gotten out of bed and knelt there, immediately sorry for what he’d done. Its eyes were open, staring at him. He’d tried to feel it breathing but he couldn’t. He couldn’t feel its heart beating. It was still as stone. He’d crawled back in bed and lain there, cold and shivering.

When he woke in the morning the cat was still there, lying in the same position and growing stiff. He’d shoved it under the bed behind some boxes, and crept away to school. That afternoon when he came home, he told his mother he’d found it like that, that it must have died in the night, maybe died from some kind of seizure.

Long after his mother had buried the cat, he kept seeing it; he would see its eyes watching him. It was about that time that he began to read Edgar Allan Poe, and he became obsessed with“The Black Cat.” It was that story, combined with what he’d done, that shaped for all time his sick disgust of the creatures.

After he married, he’d hidden his dark obsession from her for all their seventeen years. She liked cats, she brought cats home, and he, with hard resolve, had managed to tolerate them. Because he loved her. Because he wanted her to stay with him. Because he thought secretly that if he forced her to choose, if she knew the truth, she would turn away from him. That she would choose the cats.

In every other way, they were well suited. When they planned their jobs, they turned out to always be successful. When they celebrated afterward, she was bright and happy and loving, and life was perfect. Because of her cleverness and attention to detail, they always got away smoothly. In this, they were the perfect couple. It was only her preoccupation with the cats that unsettled him. Even her penchant for sunbathing was nothing, at first, was only an annoyance.

Who would imagine that was how it would end? With her stupid need to take off her clothes in public, to sunbathe in the raw.

Down the hill below him, the couple got out of the roadster and went off among the buildings. He was well hidden up here, he’d parked high above the place under a bushy eucalyptus tree where he’d never be seen. Taking a pair of binoculars from the glove compartment, he sat studying the empty barn and outbuildings, the empty corrals. The day was warming up. He thought sickly that the body would be ripening, and he felt a cold sweat start, across his chest and forehead.

He tried to take himself in hand, tried to breathe deeply, but he had to use the inhaler. When his breathing eased, he concentrated on the empty barn, thought about burying her in there, deep under the dirt floor. This old place could stand empty for years, the way the real estate market had fallen off. Might be decades before she was found, and maybe never. He wanted to get on with this, get it over with. The recurrent fear in his chest and belly made him hunch over the steering wheel. He told himself that her death wasn’t his fault, that maybe it wasn’t all her fault, that maybe itwas an accident. Only an accident. And yet something within him knew that it was more than an accident that had made her fall.

What would have happened if he’d called the cops right away?Told them it was an accident? But when he imagined telling that to a cop, fear shook him. What cop would believe that, would believe she’d accidentally fallen, that he hadn’t shoved her?

Anyway, it was too late now, he’d run away, and he’d moved the body.

Down the hill, the couple appeared from the outbuildings and walked around the outside of the empty house looking up at the windows, then standing still as if studying the structure. They knelt down to inspect the foundation, and the dark-haired woman dug into it with a screwdriver, then lay a level up against the sides of the house almost like she knew what she was doing. She was a good-looking broad, maybe thirty-something, dark brown bouncy hair, nice shape in those tight jeans.

He thought about the women he’d had whileshe was alive and she’d never guessed, never had a clue. She’d been good friends with some of them, and no hint of her knowing. And what harm? The others were simply challenges, the value in the taking and then moving on.

He saw that the couple had a key to the house. The front door creaked as the man pulled it open, and they disappeared inside. He sat studying the barn, wanting to look inside and see if there was a good place to dig. Thinking about moving the body, putting it down in the earth, her corpse seemed to loom larger as if she was pressing up at the lid wanting out, reaching out to him.Had he meant to push her?Had something inside him meant all along to kill her? Again her eyes seemed to be the cat’s eyes, the eyes of that long-ago kitten watching him.

Below him the couple stood at the living room window, looking out and talking. They couldn’t see him, way up at the top of the hill the eucalyptus branches hung nearly to the ground and his car was pulled in behind some discarded machine parts, too, and a tumble of slatted wooden crates that looked like they’d been rotting there for years. Soon they left the window, disappeared fromhis view.

They were gone maybe twenty minutes. Not knowing where they were, he began to grow edgy. He felt not only watched uncannily from the trunk but watched from the house. He wanted to get away from there, he didn’t like the sense of being observed.

But if he pulled out now and drove off, they’d be sure to see him. And even driving away, he couldn’t escapeher presence.

They came out at last, locked the front door, walked around the outbuildings again, and then went back in the barn. A laugh behind him made him jump, scared him nearly to death. He swung around in the seat, looking.

At the crest of the hill he saw two boys on bikes, heard the crunch of gravel and more laughter. Shrinking lower in the seat, he turned the key, wanting to start up and peel out. But he stopped himself from doing that. It was just two kids pedaling along a narrow dirt path that ran beyond the eucalyptus tree and on up the hill. There was more crunching of gravel, a guffaw of laughter as one lightly shoved the other. He waited, hunched low, until they’d gone.

When he looked down again at the ranch yard, the couple was headed for their car. He watched them swing in and drive on up the hill, past him. Neither looked in his direction. He sat for only a minute deciding whether to follow them or wait to look the place over. They took off across the hills, the woman’s dark, gleaming hair blowing enticingly in the wind. He started the engine and slowly followed them. Staying maybe a quarter mile behind the yellow car, he wished his own car wasn’t white and so easy to see. They made a sharp turn, and another, and he lost them among a stand of pines.

But then there they were again, a moving yellow spot beyond the trees. It slowed and became a car again, and as he rounded the next curve, they were pulling up in front of a driveway that was blocked by two pickups and a tall pile of dirt. He pulled over behind the first trees he came to, a stand of shaggy cypress with dense, low branches.

Was all that dirt from the drain the couple had been talking about? They’d joked about digging an indoor swimming pool, but no drain was ever that big. Still, that was a hell of a dirt pile. Maybe luck was with him. Maybe, whatever kind of drain this was, it would be better, even, than the barn, would be exactly what he wanted.

13

WILMA GETZ’S FLOWERING front garden was in fact Dulcie’s garden, where the tabby liked to hunt gophers and moles, and she would challenge with tooth and claw any neighborhood cat who coveted her tangled territory. The tabby might exhibit all the subtle intelligence of the rare, speaking cat, but she was a primitive little fighter when it came to her hunting ground. The feline passion for independence, just like the human passion for liberty, she believed included a right to one’s own place, inviolate against all intruders.

The one-story stone house she considered hers and Wilma’s together, it was just the right size for Dulcie and her silver-haired housemate. When Wilma retired from her job as a U.S. probation officer, she had moved from San Francisco directly to her dream home in Molena Point. That was before she ever met Dulcie; she had been well settled when she brought the small tabby kitten home to live with her. The slim, energetic woman hadn’t known, then, what kind of cat this was with whom she would share her life. She didn’t discover until Dulcie was grown the extent of the young cat’s talents. That first conversation between woman and cat had been a milestone that cat lovers everywhere would envy but few would ever experience.

Charlie and Joe Grey arrived at Wilma’s house, coming straight from tailing the man in the white car. They watched Dulcie leave the living room window, and then saw Wilma at the kitchen window, waving to them. They hurried across the garden, surrounded by the rich scent of apricots cooking, Joe racing ahead to disappear through Dulcie’s cat door.

Because of the steep hill that rose close behind the house, both the front and back doors faced the street, one at either end of the cottage. Charlie and Joe preferred the back door, which led through the laundry room and into Wilma’s blue-and-white kitchen.

Wilma stood at the kitchen counter crimping a pie crust, her long gray hair tied back crookedly with a silver clasp, her pale blue T-shirt protected by a faded apron. Dulcie had already leaped to her chair at the kitchen table, waiting for them, her tail switching, her eyes alight to see Joe. As the tomcat jumped up to join her, Wilma set a saucer of milk before them and half a dozen cookies, and stood looking at Joe.“You found a body this morning? You found where a body was?”

Joe looked up at her questioningly.

“Ryan called. They were to look at some houses, and she told me. I gather Clyde wasn’t enchanted.” The older woman turned away to finish crimping the crust, then set the pie in the oven. She poured two cups of coffee and sat down at the table across from Charlie.

“Makes me shiver,” she said. “A body in that empty swimming pool. I’m surprised the city hadn’t made the Parkers cover that hole so a child wouldn’t fall in.”

“This was no child,” Joe said. “From the scent, I’d say a grown woman. Her blood was barely dry.”

Dulcie shifted impatiently.“Tell us from the beginning.”

Joe, and then Charlie, filled them in from the time Joe had first approached the empty pool in the predawn dusk until he and Charlie, and Ryan and Clyde, tried to follow the eavesdropper.

“If Kit and I had known what you were going to find this morning,” Dulcie said, “we’d have come back with you from the hills.”

“I didn’t plan to find it. You didn’t have to go off chasing the wild clowder. What gets into Kit?”

“She saw a little cream-colored cat,” Dulcie said. “It was so strange, Kit felt an instant rapport with her, an instant friendship. She seems totally possessed by the little waif.”

“Kitgets possessed,” Joe said. “Some wild idea takes hold of her and she can think of nothing else.”

Charlie and Wilma exchanged a look. There was no turning Kit aside when she got her claws into a new passion.

Dulcie said,“She got as excited as if she’d discovered a long-lost sister. And the young cat seemed just as fascinated.”

Wilma said,“Maybe no one will ever understand Kit-and isn’t that half her charm?” She looked at Joe. “This meeting between Kit and the little waif happened at the same time you came on the murder scene?”

“It did,” the tomcat said. “So?” He scowled up at Wilma, his white-tipped paws kneading irritably at the chair cushion. “You’re not saying there’s some connection!” Wilma was no more given to flighty imaginings than was he.

Charlie watched her aunt.“What are you saying?”

Wilma looked back at them blankly.“I don’t know. The thought just popped into my mind.” She shook her head, frowning. “I don’t know what I meant. It just flashed into my thoughts that, somewhere down the line, you’ll find there’s some kind of connection between the two events.”

Dulcie looked at Wilma uneasily, and nudged the subject back to Kit and the cream-colored waif.“Since the weather warmed, Kit and Lucinda and Pedric have been walking in the hills, and they’ve glimpsed this cat more than once. Every time she sees them she stands up on her hind legs, staring yearningly at them.” Dulcie laughed. “Until Sage hazes her away, forces her to turn back up the hills to the clowder, away from Kit.” Dulcie licked milk from her whiskers. “Looks like Sage has chosen another female who’s just as wild and willful as Kit. Why can’t he find a nice, docile, matronly young cat who will be content to do as he says, and who will be happy to give him lots ofkittens? Poor Sage. Where will it end? He’s so…He’s so…”

“He and Kit weren’t well suited,” Charlie said. She didn’t say that Sage was a wuss, that he wasn’t the macho tomcat whoshould be destined to love and cherish Kit. But then she looked embarrassed. Who was she to criticize, even in her thoughts, anything about these rare creatures? Finishing her coffee, she rose and picked up her car keys.“I need to stop by the station. I’ve put off telling Max that my clients may have had a breakin. Now, with what may be a murder just two blocks away, I’ll have to tell him.” Leaning down to give her aunt a hug, she headed for the back door. “You cats want to come?”

“To the PD with you?” Joe said. “We stroll into the station escorted by the chief’s wife? Oh, right.”

“I’d let you off down the street,” Charlie said, laughing. “But I guess, with the noon traffic, you’d make better time over the roofs.”

“I guess we would,” Joe said, “and create a lot less interest.” But the tomcat was eager to sneak a look at Juana Davis’s report, and as Charlie headed for her Blazer, he and Dulcie lapped up the last of their milk, shared the remaining cookie, galloped out Dulcie’s cat door and across the garden, headed for the rooftops.

The detectives wouldn’t have much, yet, on the scene at the Parker house, not until they got some kind of match on any prints they’d been able to lift. But all the same, Joe wanted to see what was happening. Without some kind of official departmental input, he felt at sea about the case, felt left out of the loop. It was this contact with the officers of MPPD and his snooping access to the department’s investigative tools and information sources that served the cats as essential backup for whatever information they were able to discover. Without that supporting data and interdepartmental communication, a cat could work his paws off for nothing. Side by side, Joe and Dulcie leaped to the roof of Molena Point PD, their ever hopeful thoughts fixed on Detectives Dallas Garza and Juana Davis who might, with luck, already have information available for their covert attention.

14

POLICE DISPATCHER MABEL Farthy had brought fried chicken for her lunch, with extra servings in case any of the cats wandered in. The plump, blond, middle-aged officer loved to spoil the three freeloaders; she’d be happy to bring fried chicken for the whole department except that, the way these guys ate, she’d have to file for bankruptcy before the end of the week. She was sorting the mail when Joe and Dulcie appeared beyond the glass door. She looked up, smiling. Before she could step out from behind her counter to let them in, Officer Brennan came up the sidewalk and the cats slipped in behind him, crowding so close on his heels that they surely left cat hairs clinging to the dark trousers of his uniform.

Leaping to the counter, they peered over, sniffing at the shelf beneath where they knew she kept her lunch. The chicken smelled heavenly. When she reached for the bag, Brennan paused, giving her a woeful look. She grinned and shook her head and the portly officer moved on. The cats watched him turn into the conference room where there was always a box of doughnuts beside the coffeemaker, maybe fresh, maybe dried out, but sweet and filling. As Mabel unwrapped their own bite-size treats of fried chicken, down the hall Detective Juana Davis stepped out of her office carrying a CD and headed for Dallas Garza’s office.

“Take a look at these,” they heard her say as she entered. “We sure did have company this morning.”

The cats looked at each other, wolfed down their chicken, made a show of stretching and yawning, then dropped off the counter and trotted lazily down the hall as if wanting a noonday nap. It wasn’t easy to want to hurry like hell, yet move as slowly as a basset hound on downers. Envisioning Dallas inserting the disc into his computer, they slipped into his office and out of sight beneath his credenza. They couldn’t see the computer screen from where they crouched-it stood on the detective’s desk with its back to them-but at least they could listen.

“I’ll be damned,” Dallas said sharply, staring at the screen.

Juana had pulled up a straight chair next to Dallas’s desk. “Turn that one back,” she said, frowning at the screen. “There, zoom it up. There, the jawline and ear, just beside that bush. Print it out. Can you make it lighter?” As the cats listened to the soft whir of the printer, Juana said, “There, by the window, behind the camellia bush. Print that one, too.”

Again the whisper of the printer, and the cats watched it spit out another sheet. When they had seven sheets and Juana was shuffling through them, Joe Grey strolled out from beneath the credenza. Staring sweetly up at her, he leaped to the desk beside her. She was so used to the cats in and out of the offices that she hardly looked at him; she stroked him absently as she fanned out the photos.

“Try enlarging this one,” she said.

Another click of computer keys and the printer whirred again.

“Is that a shadow?” Dallas said, picking up the picture. “Or is he wearing some kind of cap?” In all the shots, even the enlargement, the figure was only barely visible, a shadow among shadows within the tangled bushes.

“Looks like a cap,” Juana said. “Hemust have seen me pointing the camera his way when I shot the suntan oil bottle. Did he think he was completely hidden? Or that he’d be out of focus?” She smiled. “But what could he do? He couldn’t move, he was trapped there.”

And Joe Grey thought,Like a rabbit frozen in place trying to blend in with its surroundings, trying not to be noticed.

Dallas ran off one more enlargement and took the sheet from the printer. It was as murky as the rest.“Are we looking at the killer?” he said. “Provided there is a body. Why the hell can’t we have a nice simple murder, with a body on the scene?”

“Plus the murder weapon, prints, excellent witnesses, the works?” Juana said, laughing. “And what fun would that be?” Laying the pictures down, she rose. “I’ll get the film over to George, see what he can get with some high-tech enhancement.”

“I’ll get the blood off to the lab,” Dallas said. “And the prints we lifted. I don’t-”

They both looked up when Charlie appeared in the doorway. Joe had been so interested he hadn’t heard her voice up at the front, though she and Mabel usually talked for a while. She stood in the doorway, wisps of her red hair bright as flames in the overhead lights.

“I just stopped in to see Max for a minute. And to-” She glanced at the pictures. “Are those from the Parker house? May I see?”

“Come sit,” Dallas said. “Have a look.”

She sat down on the couch. Dallas handed her the pictures and said,“Someone was watching us while we ran the scene this morning-what appears to be a crime scene.”

Charlie was quiet for a minute, tilting the pictures this way and that for a clearer view, then she looked up at the detectives.“This could be the same man.”

They waited. Joe dropped off the desk and slipped up on the couch beside her. She glanced down at him and their eyes met for a moment, then she looked up again at the two detectives.

“When Ryan and Clyde left you this morning, they stopped up the hill where I was checking my clients’ houses. We were on the street, talking, when Clyde saw a man down the hill standing hidden among the trees as if he was watching us.”

She looked again at the pictures.“He was wearing a dark hat, a slouchy kind of hat. Jeans. A dark green windbreaker.” Her hand, petting Joe, felt reassuring. They were in this together and that thought pleased the tomcat.

“None of us got a look at his face,” she said, “with the hat pulled down. He ran down the hill and disappeared, and in a minute a white car took off. Maybe he was interested in my vacationing houses, too. A glass slider looks like someone tried to jimmy it. I didn’t report it, nothing seemsto be missing.”

She looked embarrassed.“I guess it wasn’t a very smart way to tail someone, Clyde in a yellow car, me in a red SUV. When we lost him at Ocean, we split up. They went north, I went south as far as the shops, looked all over the parking lot, then gave up.”

“And you didn’t call about the attempted breakin,” Dallas said, frowning.

“It was so…I had nothing to report. Even the guy down the hill, watching. Might have been only a neighbor. If he was watching you, wouldn’t heknow he’d show up in the pictures you were shooting?”

“He might have thought I didn’t have a very wide field,” Juana said. “I was shooting small details, a pair of dark glasses, close-ups.”

“And what was he going to do?” Dallas said. “If he’d moved and we’d seen him, we’d have brought him in for questioning. Maybe we’ll have better luck when the video is developed.”

“Could this be our snitch?” Juana said. “I took the call, and it was the snitch’s voice, I’m sure. Washe hanging around to see if we’d run the scene even, when there was no body?”

“That doesn’t tell us how he happened on the scene in the first place,” Dallas said. “The odds of him stumbling on that particular pool…How many people spend their time prowling around vacant houses and looking in empty swimming pools?”

Juana said,“Unless they saw the murder in progress, or saw the body before it was moved. But why the snitch’s continued secrecy? What’s that about? And how has he known any of the information he’s given us over the years? I’m beginning to think he’s some kind of psychic. If I believed in such things.”

“Sometimes,” Charlie said, “it seems there’s no other way to explain what he comes up with.” Her hand had tightened only slightly on the gray tomcat. He pressed nervously against her, eased by her steady touch. Sometimes that kind of conversation, hearing the detectives talk about their unknown informant and make guesses about the snitch’s identity while looking straight at Joe himself, tended to make a cat nervous.

“I’d say he was a member of the department,” Juana said, rising and heading for the door. “Except, not even someone in the department would know this kind of stuff. For any one person to have gathered all the information we’ve received over the years from this guy-and from the woman-that just isn’t possible.” Brushing a gray cat hair from the skirt of her dark uniform, the detective left them to return to her own office. Dallas sat looking after her, then looked across at Charlie.

Charlie said,“I sure don’t know the answer. I guess you and Max are right. If you like the help of the snitches, then run with it and don’t ask questions.”

Across the room beneath the credenza where Dulcie crouched hidden, the tabby’s green eyes looked out at Joe and Charlie, wildly amused. Beside her, Kit was silently laughing.

Charlie said,“Were you able to lift any prints?”

Dallas nodded.“Fingerprints. Blood. Shoe prints. And with spray, we got some tire marks.”

Charlie rose to leave. Joe, feeling uncomfortable suddenly, dropped off the couch and followed her. Dulcie followed Joe, the two cats trailing Charlie as far as the dispatcher’s cubicle, where they made a detour up onto the counter to see if Mabel had any more fried chicken.

15

FROM THE STREET above, he watched the yellow roadster nose in between two pickups near the dirt pile. As the couple got out, he pulled his car farther off the street, in among the stand of cypress trees, whose five dark trunks thrust up out of the earth like a huge hand, like the mangrove trees in Florida, where they’d lived for a couple of years. With his car better hidden, he sat taking in the scene below. Did he know the man in the roadster? Why did he look familiar? It was a small village, but he’d lived here only two years. He thought maybe he’d seen him around that upscale car agency, going in and out of the automotive repair shop. Maybe giving the mechanics orders? He liked to buy his beer at the liquor store across the street. Standing in the cool interior, he’d glance over there at the foreign cars in the agency window, thinking what kind he’d buy when they’d made a big enough haul. If this guy was the head mechanic or the owner, then the last name was probably Damen, as on the sign out front. Squarely built, dark, short hair, not particularly good looking. He wondered what the woman saw in him.

The house below him was a one-story stucco with a red tile roof, the typical pseudo Mediterranean of the area. At the far end, a blue tarp had been secured over the roof as if there was a leak there. Weird that they were working on Sunday. How could they hire people on Sunday? Didn’t the unions control when men could work?

The garage door was open but from this angle he could see inside for only a few feet. He could hear someone digging in there, and as the couple approached, a strongly built, redheaded man emerged. Red hair, red beard. Plaid shirt and muddy jeans, muddy boots and a shovel in his hand. Behind him the sound of digging continued. Outside the garage beside the tallheap of earth was a pile of broken concrete. Slipping out of the car, he hunkered down beside it, looking. But even at the lower angle he could see in only another two feet.

The cement floor was tracked with mud, as was the drive: spills of dirt, muddy boot prints, and the kind of single, muddy tire track a wheelbarrow would make as they hauled out the dirt to pile in the yard. He wanted to see this drain. He wanted to hear what they might say about it. He wasn’t any expert on construction, but he couldn’t imagine why they’d dig a drain in a cement-floored garage. From the amount of earth that had come out of it, the thing had to be huge.

Well, they weren’t only digging in the garage, part of the dirt must have come from a raw ditch alongside the wall of the house. They’d replaced some windows, too; there was a stack of old windows out front, leaning against a tree. How long did these people plan to stay here on a Sunday afternoon? He wondered if, when they did leave, they’d lock the garage doors. He grew so nervous with the frustration of waiting that he had to use the inhaler again. He hated the bother of carrying it around.She said he was lucky to have it. When at last his breathing came easier, and when they were all inside the garage and the digging was louder, as if maybe more than one man was working, he slipped down the hill, staying under the cover of the descending cypress trees, and crouched just above the garage to listen. But then, hunkered among the prickly foliage, he had to wait until the digging eased enough so he could hear.

They were talking about the roof. Soon the three came out again, forcing him to melt back deeper into the stickery shadows. They stood turned away from him, looking up at the tile roof.

The redheaded man must be the foreman. He said the new tiles would be delivered by the end of the week. That made the woman frown.“First of the week is supposed to be clear, between rains. Can’t they get them here Tuesday? I’ll give them a call Monday morning.” The way she talked, you’d think she was the boss on the job. Well, you wouldn’t catchhim working for a woman.

But when she said,“If the gravel and cement are on schedule, we can pour before lunch. This’ll be finished easily, Monday afternoon,” a nervous excitement filled him. They were going to dump gravel in the hole and then pour cement, and he had to have a look in there, had to see what could be her grave.

He wondered how they could get a gravel truck in under that low roof. Maybe they’d have to dump it on the driveway and wheelbarrow it in? Seemed like that would take all day. He hoped not. If thiswas the place he wanted, then he wanted to see it done quickly, before they discovered anything amiss. He wanted to be finished with it so he could head on up the coast.

Head up the coast alone, he thought with a sudden jolt. His hands began to sweat, and he wiped them on his jeans, tried to concentrate on the business at hand.

The man and woman got back in the roadster and headed away, down the hills. Inside the garage the others kept working, and he settled in among the cypress trees for a long wait, listening to the digging and thinking about her, thinking about the jobs they’d pulled-feeling shaky again.

It was maybe an hour later when two Latino men appeared from the garage and got into the smaller pickup. The redheaded man came out, swung into the bigger pickup and activated the garage door to close it. As the two trucks took off down the hill, he realized that fog was rolling in, it hung low and dense over the village already hiding the rooftops and the sea beyond.

He waited awhile after they’d gone, then returned to the car. He fetched a few small tools from the glove compartment, leaving the shovel on the floor of the backseat, and went down to have a look. Moving around the side of the garage to try the pedestrian door, he crossed the line of fresh dirt where they’d dug along that side. Maybe they’d buried a pipe there. Pausing, he looked up the hill that rose just a few feet from the side of the garage. Maybe they’d laid a pipe to carry away the runoff, as if a deluge of water came down here during heavy rains. Was that the reason for the drain in the garage, to carryaway the runoff from the hill? Curious, he walked around to the back of the house where the hill dropped steeply away.

He was surprised to find another whole floor down there. A daylight basement visible only as you went around the side. It had large windows facing the drop, a smaller window on the side where he stood. When he pressed his face to the glass he saw that the room was finished inside, a big room, plastered and painted white.

But along the bottom of the walls ran a brown stain maybe two feet high where muddy water had come in. And the carpet had been taken up, too, he could see the tack holes in the water-stained, warped plywood. This lower floor had flooded bad, so thatwas what the drain was about. He wondered what would happen if the drain didn’t work, if the house flooded again after all this added cost and labor. Wondered who would pay for that. Well, he guessed the woman contractor would, if that’s what she was. If it didn’t flood, he guessed she’d make a nice piece of cash off this one.

He wondered what would happen to the body if the drain flooded. But with rock and cement holding it down, what could happen? And, he thought hopefully, maybe the contractor knew what she was doing after all.

Returning to the side door of the garage, he fished out his lock picks and got to work. It took him maybe ten minutes, finessing the tumblers, to slide back the bolt and slip inside, locking the door behind him. He stood looking at the drain.

Damned hole was big enough to bury an army. It spanned the width of the double garage just inside the rear wall, running some twenty feet. It was maybe three feet wide and deeper than a man was tall. If thiswas a drain, there’d been a hell of a flood here. Why would anyone waste their time on a house that flooded like that?

But with prices what they were on the California coast, maybe this made sense. The dirt at the bottom of the pit was roughly raked, and a series of four-inch-wide plastic pipes had been laid the full length, disappearing into the earth at either end. He imagined them running underground, connecting to drainpipes that would stick out of the lower hill to dump the runoff. The whole thing seemed like a huge project, more than the heaviest rain could ever require.

There was a window in the opposite wall, over the connections for a washer and dryer. He could as well have come in through there; the window might have been easier to jimmy. But it was not as private, being visible from the street. He saw that he needn’t have brought the shovel. They had left all their tools, shovels, rakes. Two electric saws sat on the littered worktable along with empty drink cans, packs of gum, and a wadded-up lunch bag. Down in the pit, an extension ladder had been left in place. Already set up for him, he thought, smiling.

This was exactly what he’d been looking for; he could have spent the rest of the night searching the empty hills and found nothing anywhere nearly as good. These people had dug her grave for him, and now, once he’d finished his part of the project, once the gravel was in and the concrete poured, the body would never be found. She’d have not only a grave but a gigantic and tamper-proof crypt, which, he assured himself, not even a flood would disturb.

Moving to the garage window, he looked out at the empty street and on down the hills where the fog was growing thicker, climbing up past him now into the valleys above. He liked the fog, had always felt safe moving silently through the heavy mist. By nightfall the whole area would be socked in, muffling the sounds of his digging. No cars appeared on the narrow roads, no movement except far down the hill, where an elderly couple was walking along with canes. Most likely they’d soon turn back toward the village or move on to one of the far houses, wherever they came from. With the fog closing in, as evening fell it would be cold, too. The couple sat down on a low stone wall and a small dog jumped up beside them. Strange-looking dog. He watched it uneasily-it moved like a cat. But of course cats didn’t go for walks. Turning away from the window, he fetched a pair of coveralls a workman had left hanging on a nail in the wall, folded them inside out to avoid the mud, and, using them as a pillow, he sat down on the cold cement floor opposite the window. Making himself as comfortable as he could, with his back to the wall, he settled in to wait for full dark, congratulating himself that soon she’d be tucked away where no one,no one, would find her.

His story that she’d left him while they were on vacation, that they’d had a fight and she’d just taken off, who’d know the difference? They had no children, no close relatives, no one who’d have reason to disbelieve him or to start checking, to follow up on what he told them. By the time anyone noticed a smell in the garage or along the downstairs wall, if anyone ever did, he’d be long gone where no one would find him. Looking across at the fog-shrouded window, he took comfort from the weight of the mist against the glass. It made him feel hidden where nothing could find him, nothing could slip upon him.

16

LUCINDA AND PEDRIC Greenlaw paused in their steep climb to sit down on the stone wall where they so often rested. They had ascended at a lively pace, employing their carved walking sticks to help them up the rocky ground. At eighty-something, though the couple was lean and spry, a little help from a good stout cane didn’t hurt. Below them the fog had rolled in fast over the village rooftops; above them it blew in dense scarves toward the upper hills and fingered into the narrow valleys. They sat enjoying the misty evening, unaware of anything strange or threatening among the few scattered hillside houses-thoughneither hiker was unprepared for surprises. Pedric had grown up well aware of human nature. And Lucinda, though her life had been more sheltered, had learned quickly, when the couple had been kidnapped last year, how to take care of herself.

As for their companion, the tortoiseshell cat didn’t worry much about life’s dangers, Kit met trouble with her sharp claws and her strong teeth or, if she must, by escaping into the treetops. In between, she enjoyed every moment. Coming up the path she had raced ahead lashing her fluffy tail, enjoying the world with every ounce of her wild little soul. Now, leaping to the wall beside Lucinda, she stood watching fog transform the hills and valleys-but she was looking for someone, too. Looking intently up among the hills though she said nothing to her companions. She watched and watched, and suddenly she saw her-a speck so small, so pale within the mist that at first Kit thought it was only a stone.

The two humans, watching where she looked, frowned in puzzlement.“What?” Lucinda said softly. The old woman stared for some minutes before she made out a pale little cat poised high among the fog-shrouded boulders. “Oh!” she said, seeing Kit’s excitement. “Who is that?”

Kit glanced at her housemate but didn’t answer, she didn’t know quite how to explain. Coming up the hills she had sensed the buff-colored cat somewhere up there above them, or maybe she’d only wished the little waif would be there. Now she’d appeared from out of nowhere, just as Kit had hoped.

Kit didn’t know what drew her to the pale cat. She knew the young feline was Sage’s mate or soon would be, but this had nothing to do with Sage. In this small cat Kit saw her younger self looking back at her, in a wild and curious mirror image, and Kit wanted to talk with her. She wanted, perhaps foolishly, to be friends. This cat was feral, they lived in two different worlds, and Kit knew it would be best to leave the matter alone. But she wouldn’t, she was too curious.

TANSY HAD BEEN on the hills since before dawn, at first hunting with Sage-that was when she’d seen the three cats hunting lower down in the hills and had seen the tortoiseshell one. She knew about Kit from the other clowder cats, knew how Kit had escaped the clowder and run away from the leader Stone Eye. Stone Eye was dead now and the clowder was free again, but Kit hadn’t returned.

It was the other cats’ talk about Kit and how she lived among humans that helped Tansy remember that she, herself, had not always been with the clowder, that once she had lived with humans. She had been very small when, as a kitten, she’d been thrown away by humans.

Before that terrible time, she’d known a good life chasing dust mice under the furniture; digging her claws into the bright, thick rugs; and swinging on the curtains though she got scolded for that. Little as she was, she had slipped away sometimes into the neighbors’ gardens, and even ventured blocks away where the shops began and looked at all the wonders in the bright windows. And once, when the woman wasn’t watching her, she had climbed right up a stickery vine to the roof where she could look down on all the world. When she lived with humans she had slept on a soft blanket and awakened to good smells in the warm house, and at suppertime the woman always gave her some of what they ate, even when the man complained-but then the man and woman had a fight over her; the man called her dirty and said she made him sneeze. He yelled at the woman, and the woman cried, and even though Tansy was just a little kitten, the man grabbed her and held her too tight to get free, and he shut her in a box. When the woman tried to stop him, he hit her so hard she fell.

Closing the box tight, he’d put it in his car. She remembered the engine roaring and the car moving sickeningly, and though she clawed and screamed, she couldn’t fight hard enough to break free. He drove a long way up into the hills, until she could smell fresh grass and eucalyptus trees, and there he’d stopped and put the box out on the ground and then driven away, leaving her alone there shut inside the box. She mewled and cried, but he didn’t come back and no one answered her; she’d heard no sound but the roar of the car growing fainter until it was gone.

It took her a very long time to tear through the cardboard. When at last she could stick her nose out, panting, she gulped fresh air. She was very thirsty. It took longer, then, to make the hole big enough so she could crawl through, but at last she was out. She had huddled against the box, weak and frightened.

She had hidden among some boulders until dawn, then had wandered uncertainly. She wasn’t sure how long she was alone, but several nights came and went. She caught and ate some beetles, and drank muddy water from a ditch. And then one morning, just as the sun was coming to warm her, a pale calico female found her, and that good cat had washed her and warmed her and had hunted mice to feed her.

She had gone with Willow to live in the clowder, and that was where she began to talk. She had never dared speak among humans, though she had understood them. In the clowder there was no one to think her strange and different-everyone talked. Clowder life had helped her to forget the cardboard box and the human who had betrayed her; clowder life made her forget for a little while the rich world of humans that was so full of excitement and color and music and soft beds and delicious things to eat.

But then as she grew older, the wonder of that life began to fill her dreams. She would wake thinking about bright store windows and high rooftops, and she began to long for that world. It was not many months until she found the courage to leave the clowder and make her way down the hills and into the village again. The time was early spring. She had gone where there were tall gardens to play in, in the yards of humans. She had let a human discover her, she had made up to the woman shamelessly, rolling over and purring.

She had lived with that human and then with another, lived among humans in half a dozen houses; but each time she found a home, someone would move or go away for many days and forget to feed her. Then another couple“took her in,” as they called it. The woman was nice, but then the man had moved away, and then the woman left, too. Left her there alone and, heartbroken, she had crept away from that house and left the village and returned to the dull but safe life of the clowder, to a world without fickle humans.

But she knew humans weren’t all alike, and soon she again missed that life. She missed the places of humans, she missed the excitement and color and always something new to intrigue her. Sage didn’t like her to miss those things. He’d told her to forget the human world, just as he’d told the tortoiseshell cat to forget it. Sage called the human world wicked, he wanted her to forget her dreams, he said a cat had no business with dreams. This morning when he saw her watching Kit, he’d said she must stay away from those village cats. He said she must obey him, and they’d argued and fought. She said she wasn’t his slave, and at last he’d stalked away scowling, his ears back, turning to look at her coldly. That was when she’d fled from him, had raced down the hills to an abandoned barn she knew of. She’d stayed there prowling the empty barn and lashing her tail, wishing the tortoiseshell would find her.

But the barn and the hills had remained empty. She’d stayed there all day. She’d had a nice nap and then caught four fat mice. She was royally feasting on mouse when a yellow car came bumping down the narrow road that wound through the hills, and a dark-haired man and a beautiful, dark-haired woman got out to wander through the barn and outbuildings. She’d hidden from them, but she’d seen another man following them; he stopped his car high above them, beneath thick trees, and sat looking. He was a mean-faced man; he watched the couple the way a coyote watches a little cat.

When the couple left at last in the yellow car, she was sure they didn’t know he was there in the trees above them, or that again he followed them.

She’d sat for a long time in the old barn, licking up the last of the mice and feeling uneasy, wondering what that was all about. And then when she’d scrambled up onto the roof of the barn, she’d seen the yellow car parked farther down the hills. She didn’t see the white car, but she looked atthe big pile of dirt in that yard and the blue blanket over the roof and she was so interested and curious that she’d trotted down to have a look.

The time was late afternoon. She knew it would be dark when she got home and Sage would be angry, and she didn’t care. She’d sat concealed in the tall grass thinking that maybe she wouldn’t go home at all. There was a narrow canyon between the hill she was on and the place where the house stood, and another hill rose to its right, dense with heavy, dark trees. The man and woman had gotten out of the yellow car and were talking to a redheaded man. She was watching them when she glanced up the hill and saw the white car hidden there among the trees. The mean-faced man had gotten out and stood watching them in a way that made her fur crawl.

It was much later when the yellow car went away. She stayed where she was, waiting and watching as that man came down the hill and walked around the house and looked in, then went in the garage. He was in there for a long time, it was becoming dusk and the fog was settling in over the hills and still he hadn’t come out. As she looked down the hill again, past the house, she saw a tall, thin couple coming up the road-and there was Kit, racing ahead of them.

She watched as the couple sat down on the stone wall and the tortoiseshell leaped up beside them. Kit stood very still, looking up the hills, looking straight at her. Tansy reared up, too, so Kit would see her. What would it hurt to go down there? What harm to sniff noses, and talk a little? What harm would that do? She and Kit looked through the fog at each other, and looked and looked, and suddenly they were running, Kit streaking up the hill and Tansy pelting down, both cats running so fast their hind paws crossed beneath their front paws like racing rabbits.

They met nearly head-on, skidding to a stop in the wet grass of the steep hill. At first, neither spoke. Kit’s yellow eyes were wide, and she was laughing; they both were laughing, and Tansy knew she’d found a friend.

17

“I AM TANSY. YOU are Sage’s friend,” the scruffy cat said smartly. “Oh, my. You would have been his mate but you wouldn’t have him. You jilted him!”

“Where did you learn that word?” Kit said, amused. “Jilt” was not a word she’d ever heard among the clowder. The stranger was the color of bleached straw, her inch-long coat standing out every which way and tangled with seeds and streaks of mud from the ditches.

“I learned that from humans, when I was a kitten, and later when I ran away from the clowder and came back to live in the village.”

“You ran away from the clowder?” Kit knew no other speaking feral besides herself who had abandoned the rule of the clowder and gone to live among humans.

“I wanted music,” said the scruffy cat. “I wanted humans to talk to me-though I never talked back. I wanted to curl up before a nice warm fire. I miss that life, I want catnip mice and kind hands, soft blankets and magical stories…”

Kit laughed at her but she knew too well that longing, and she could feel a purr bubbling up.

“I was a kitten in the village until a man put me in a box and dumped me in the hills and left me there to die. I nearly starved. Even after I clawed my way out, I was too little to hunt much. But then Willow found me and she washed me and caught mice for me, and I went to live with the clowder. But when winter was over and I got bigger and spring came, I longed for human places, I…” Tansy looked at Kit helplessly, as if she didn’t know how to describe her dreams.

Kit raised a paw, and looked away toward the village.“Come on,” she said softly. And she turned and trotted away.

The scrawny cat followed and was soon trotting beside her. As they passed the stone wall, the old couple remained very still so as not to frighten her. The last Lucinda and Pedric saw of them, the scrawny little cat was sharply silhouetted against Kit’s dark, black-and-brown elegance. Lucinda and Pedric looked at each other, and smiled, and the Greenlaws understood perfectly Kit’s flick of the ear and lashing of her tail, her silent,See you later! Don’t wait up!

But then Lucinda frowned, trying not to worry. Living with tattercoat Kit, worry was a given, they never knew what trouble she’d have her paws into. The elderly couple remained sitting on the wall, watching the two cats disappear down the hill to vanish at last among the cottage gardens as they headed into the village. What adventures the two would find, and what dangers, they didn’t want to consider. They tried to just fill up on the wonder of the moment and not let themselves think any further.

IN THE VILLAGE, Kit led the young cat along her own secret routes through narrow alleyways flanked with little shops, and then up a trellis to the rooftops. They trotted across jagged, shingled peaks and down into the dark crevices among a forest of chimneys. They stood with their paws in the roof gutters looking down at the tourists, then raced across leaning oak branches above a narrow street. They spent nearly an hour peering in through penthouse windows at couples eating supper, at ladies undressing, at children already sleeping in their beds. Tansy couldn’t get enough of the exotic world of humans that she had so missed.

As night drew down, they raced up the tiled steps of the courthouse tower to perch high above the world on its narrow balcony. If anyone were to look up and see the two little shapes crouched there, they’d wonder what kind of birds those were that had come to roost for the night. Below them, fog shrouded the cottage rooftops, so the shop lights were blurred into smeared colors along the busy streets. Through the mist, villagers and tourists headed for the little restaurants, and from the restaurants a miasma of smells was rising up: boiled shrimp, charbroiled steaks, and intriguing pasta sauces that made them lick their whiskers and that brought them down from the tower, racing down the long stairs to make their rounds of the restaurant patios. Winding among table legs and people’s feet,they paused frequently to fawn on the diners as only a cat can, smiling prettily up into the faces of strangers until they were treated to buttered lobster, rare steak, or roast chicken; and now Kit watched Tansy with increasing amusement. This waif, shy and frightened one minute, was bold as brassthe next, employing spry and teasing ways until she got exactly what she wanted-Tansy was not at all as frightened and helpless as she seemed. The flip side of her nature showed Kit a skilled little freeloader. And as they left the center of the village, full of delicious treats, Tansy took the lead, scrambling to the roofs again and heading jauntily to where the village cottages climbed up into the hills.

“What?” Kit said. “Where are you going?”

“My neighborhood,” Tansy said. “I want to go there to my own street, where I lived. I want to roll in the gardens and smell the flowers. I want…That was my home once, and I want to go there.” And the small ragged cat raced away across the shingles. Kit followed, silent with amazement. They had nearly reached Tansy’s old neighborhood when Joe Grey and Dulcie appeared on a high peak and came streaking toward them. Kit stopped to wait for them. Tansy stopped, too, but she dropped into a wary crouch.

EARLIER THAT EVENING, Joe had left Dulcie on the rooftops, planning to meet again when night fell, planning on an evening of break-and-enter in the vacationers’ empty houses. Parting from his tabby lady, Joe had stood for a moment watching her trot home to her warm supper and to reassure Wilma that she was all right, that she was safe and well. One of the curses of being a speaking cat was the burden of truly understanding how their human housemates worried about them, and the resultant desire to ease their friends’ stress. This was a big responsibility for a cat, and one that Joe, in particular, found burdensome. He liked being an active part of the human world, but he also liked his freedom.

Turning for home, thinking that Clyde and Ryan were still house hunting, he expected to find an empty house where he’d have to raid the refrigerator for his own cold meal. There’d be kibble down for Snowball, he thought with disdain. He’d have to be in the last throes of starvation before he filled up on what he considered the equivalent of discarded sawdust.

But when he hit his home roof, he caught the heady aroma of browned pot roast. And when he glanced over the edge to the driveway, there stood the yellow roadster clicking away as its motor cooled. Okay, so they were home from the great house hunt. But how had they had time to cook supper when they’d been gone all day?

Then he remembered the packages of homemade pot roast that Ryan had put in the freezer. Two weeks ago, she had an amazing bout of domesticity. She’d tied on an apron and, with the same efficient dispatch as when she was building a house, she had filled their freezer with enough home-cooked pot roast, spaghetti sauce, tamale pie, lamb stew, and more of Joe’s favorites, to last at least until Christmas. The big freezer, a wedding present from Ryan’s dad, stood in the laundry room beside the bunk bed where the family pets used to sleep. Clyde ’s two dogs were gone now, as well as the two elderly cats. Only Snowball was still with them, and now Rock, of course. Both slept on a soft comforter on the couch in Clyde ’s study, leaving the laundry-room bunk as a handy place to store empty boxes and unsorted laundry.

Padding across the roof and in through the window of his rooftop tower, Joe pushed into the house through his cat door and onto a rafter, and with a long leap, he hit the desk below. He could hear their voices in some deep discussion, and hear the scrape of forks on their plates. Dropping to the floor he raced down the stairs breathing in the meaty aroma of pot roast, hoping they’d left him some. Only as he approached the kitchen did he slow. Were they arguing? Listening, he paused in the doorway.

But no, you couldn’t call it arguing. Just a heated discussion about the faults and merits of one of the houses they’d looked at-sounded like a decrepit heap that wasn’t worth firewood but that Clyde was convinced they could turn into a mansion. Lucky thing Ryan knew what she was doing, that she wouldn’t waste their money on a wreck.

Or would she? Hoping Clyde’s wild enthusiasm hadn’t warped Ryan’s common sense, Joe padded in trying not to drool from the good smell of supper.

The Damen kitchen was large and bright with its handsome new tile work and new lighting, yet satisfyingly cozy with cushioned dining chairs and, in the far corner, crowded bookcases flanking a pair of flowered easy chairs. Long before Ryan and Clyde were married or even dating seriously, Ryan had done an extensive remodel. Besides adding the new upstairs, she had torn out the wall be tween the kitchen and the seldom-used dining room, had replastered the walls of the opened-up room and painted them a soft peach, installed Mexican-tile floors and new tile counters with hand-decorated borders. As Joe entered, Rock was snoozing in one of the easy chairs, probably worn out after a long day at the beach with Ryan’s dad.

The Weimaraner looked on enviously as Joe leaped onto his usual chair at the table. Rock wasn’t allowed to beg at the dinner table, only outside at the picnic table. It was hard for the big dog to bear, that Joe could do what he couldn’t. But then, for Rock, the whole concept of a speaking cat was hard to get used to. Life was not as simple as the young Weimaraner had, as a puppy, first imagined it to be. A speaking cat who gave him orders and was quick with the claws if he didn’t obey, and yet was a pal to cuddle up with at night, and who had taught him to track a killer, had turned out to be a special kind of friend. Rock tolerated Joe’s household privileges with a rare patience and good humor.

Ryan reached across the table, setting a plate before Joe. The big, round table was so heaped with real estate fliers and newspaper ads, and with Ryan’s scattered sketches and her notebook filled with figures, that there was barely room for the couple’s dinner plates and for the steaming casserole of pot roast and vegetables.

“What’s with the fast service?” the tomcat said.

“We heard you hit the roof,” Ryan told him.

“And charge down the stairs like a herd of buffalo,” Clyde added.

Before tucking into his supper, Joe studied the scattered papers. In his opinion, this new venture into real es tate did not bode well for the Damen household, but what did he know? He watched Clyde dig the plate of French bread out from under some fliers and pass it to Ryan, then Joe licked up his supper. He was not only starved, he was eager to meet Dulcie, half his mind on the Chapman house and the other empty houses of their neighbors.

But the minute he’d licked his plate clean, Ryan leaned over to refill it, and how could he resist? How he’d survived without this woman was hard to remember. She’d even left out the onion from her pot roast recipe, for fear that, as with ordinary cats, the onion would make him anemic. She’d told him she used, instead, red bell pepper, a combination of herbs, and a touch of bourbon.

“Delicious,” Joe said, eating with single-minded dispatch. When again he looked up, they were both staring at him. “What?” he said with his mouth full.

“You’re in a hell of a hurry,” Clyde said.

“Just hungry,” Joe said, and bent his head fastidiously to finish his second helping. Trying to look relaxed, he took his time licking gravy from his whiskers and, to humor them, he stepped up on the table and pawed the fliers apart so he could see them better.

There was the vacant ranch they’d talked about, its fences and outbuildings sprawled raggedly across the side of the hill, below a heavy stand of cypress trees. He couldn’t imagine they’d want to remodel that whole complex. There were seven other houses, three in the heart of the village and four tucked among the hills. All of them needed paint, a complete yard makeover, new roofs, and undoubtedly expensive interior repairs: new wiring, new plumbing, who knew what else to keep them marketable. He hoped none of them had drainage problems like the job Ryan was working on at present. At least that wasn’t her house, itbelonged to a client who wanted it saved despite the cost.

Studying their prospective purchases, one of which looked like a real teardown, Joe didn’t know whether to laugh or to succumb to serious concern. A teardown, in Molena Point, could go for half a million or more. Half a mil to rip down a house and replace it with a dwelling that might hopefully sell well up in the seven figures. But with Ryan at the helm, what looked like a teardownmight, in fact, turn into a real gem-and people were making money saving those old houses.

When Joe first learned he could speak, and was trying to understand the human world, the concept of work for money had meant nothing to him. But as he began to think more like a human, he’d easily absorbed the rudiments. Folks worked at what they liked to do, received promissory dollars for the quality of their skilled or creative efforts, and traded those for whatever goods they chose. To a cat, the concept had been a revelation.

Why, a cat could hunt mice all day, stack them up like cordwood, and trade them for caviar-if one could find a market for the mice. That was the rub, considering that the human appetite didn’t really run to dead mice. He glanced out the kitchen window at the night and knew it was time to meet Dulcie.

Clyde caught his look.“You’re going out to poke around the Parker house, aren’t you? What do you think you’re going to find after Dallas and Juana worked the area?”

It wasn’t the Parker house he was headed for, but he didn’t tell Clyde that. “You’re so incredibly nosy.”

“You think that guy will come back?” Clyde said. “If the guy watching us was the killer-if there ever was a killer-after we followed him, why would he come back? He’ll be long gone.”

Joe just looked at him.

Ryan watched them with amusement. She’d learned early on to stay out of these discussions. When Clyde glanced away, she winked at Joe. Joe twitched a whisker at her, and rubbed his face against her arm by way of thanking her for dinner. Then, dropping to the floor, he headed up the stairs to his tower and out to hit the roofs.

18

WHEN JOE SLIPPED out of his tower to the rooftops, his belly full of supper and his mind on the empty houses, the fog had blown away; the sky was clear, the moon bright as he leaped across the shingles to the neighbor’s roof and raced on into the night. He had gone three blocks galloping across the peaks through paths of moonlight when he spotted Dulcie. She stood on a little balcony, rearing up, her tabby coat silhouetted against the white wall of a penthouse. They raced to meet; skidding close together theyexchanged a whisker kiss and then galloped away toward the block of Charlie’s vacationing clients. Who knew what scent they’d pick up, what details a human might miss?

Hurrying across the village, the streets below them were busy with cars and pedestrians, with couples coming from the restaurants or window shopping. The traffic thinned as they moved onto the residential roofs; soon the streets below were quiet and nearly empty, only a few pedestrians hurrying along. A silent runner passed beneath them as they approached the targeted homes. They were two roofs from the Waterman house when they saw Kit, poised high on a shingled peak. She was not alone.

“What’s this?” Joe said. “She’s picked up a stray?” A small, ragged, half-grown cat stood beside her.

“That’s the cat from the clowder,” Dulcie said. “The little cat that Kit was so taken with this morning. She’s hardly more than a kitten, what’s she doing here? Oh, my. Has Kit lured her away from the clowder?”

As Joe and Dulcie approached, the little female crouched warily. Kit looked down at her small charge in a patient and proprietary way.“Tansy,” Kit said by way of introduction. “She lived in the village once.”

“I lived in that house over there,” Tansy said shyly, pointing her ears at the Waterman house.

“Did you?” Joe said with interest. “That’s where we’re going. Do you know how to get in?”

“There’s a dog door. But-”

“Are you friends with the dog?”

“Oh, the beagle’s dead now,” Tansy said. “He was old and friendly. He was a little afraid of me,” she added, twitching her whiskers.

Dropping into a pepper tree beside the Watermans’, Joe crouched on a branch, looking back at Tansy. “Come on, then,” he told her. She followed as the four cats moved quickly, trying to remain out of sight among the foliage. To any casual observer this would look strange indeed, cats do not travel in packs, this was not normal feline behavior.

The house was one story with pale stucco walls, the curved tile roof still warm beneath their paws, holding the heat of the day. Below them, the solid wood fence that enclosed the backyard was far higher than necessary to contain the small beagle that had lived with the Watermans.

Dulcie said,“I’m surprised Ben Waterman went with Rita; Charlie said he hardly ever does, that he’d rather stay home, putter around, and play a little golf. But I guess a tour guide is pretty busy, maybe that’s why she makes her trips alone.”

“It’s their anniversary,” Joe said. “Clyde worked on their car a few weeks ago; they told him they were either driving up to San Francisco or flying to Greece or the Antilles, they hadn’t made up their minds.”

“I wonder what it’s like,” Dulcie said.

“What what’s like?” Joe said absently.

“ Greece. There are lots of cats, feral cats. I wonder…Are there cats like us? Are our relatives there? Have speaking cats survived there from ancient times?”

“Come on,” Joe said impatiently. Glancing toward the neighbors’ windows, they dropped down onto the six-foot fence and then into the backyard. Half hidden between two mock orange bushes was a dog door into the garage. They slipped inside one by one, Tansy headed through a second doggy door into the family kitchen.

The kitchen corner where the dog bed had been still smelled faintly of the sweet-leather scent of an old dog. There was no sound from deeper within the house. They stood sniffing, seeking any other scent that might seem out of place, and, rearing up, they looked around the bright room for any sign of disturbance.

The kitchen seemed perfectly in order, the cupboards all neatly shut, their mullioned glass doors showing china and crystalware carefully arranged on the shelves within. On the tile counters they could see a stainless steel toaster, convection oven, microwave, food processor, blender, and an expensive coffeemaker with its own grinder. None of those had been stolen, and what else of value would a kitchen contain?“When does she use all those?” Joe said. “She’s gone half the time.”

“Maybe he cooks,” said Dulcie. “Wilma says when she’s home they’re very social, they’re always involved in some local event and they entertain a lot.” Turning away, she followed Tansy into the Watermans’ living room, a big, square room with a thick white carpet and a high ceiling set with three skylights. The furnishings were white and soft and deep, set against cocoa-colored walls: white velvet chairs, white leather couch, a perfect setting for the beautiful Rita Waterman. Over the fireplace there was an oversize mirror in an ornate silver frame, the glass reflecting the roomin reverse like Alice ’s mirror into Wonderland. Two matching mirrors hung at the other end of the room, on either side of the arch that led into the entry hall.

“Does she have mirrors to to make the room look bigger? Or to reflect herself?” Dulcie wondered. She imagined the tall, slim blonde reflected over and over in endless and perfect images. The room did not look lived in. There was not a book or a magazine in sight, not a pillow out of place, nothing personal left lying around; but when they sniffed the furniture they smelled cat, and could see cat hairs clinging to it. There were three cat baskets, all on low stools, all lined with white plush, all dusted with multicolored cat hairs smelling of the Waterman cats.

“There are cat beds in every room,” Tansy said with longing. “I didn’t live here long. The other cats chased me away, so I went to another house. I was only little then, and her cats didn’t like me much.”

Kit licked Tansy’s ear, amusing Joe and Dulcie. Kit had found a small and needy friend, a little creature who seemed needy and quite lost.

“But I came back sometimes,” Tansy said, “when the other cats were out hunting. They had a housekeeper. Betty. She took care of the cats, but then she retired, whatever that means, and went to live with her daughter. Rita’s husband, Ben, he didn’t let on, but he didn’t like animals much. If Rita ever went away or died, he’d have sent them all to the pound.”

The cats couldn’t imagine slim, blond, beautiful Rita Waterman dead, she seemed indestructible. She was a strong woman who did as she pleased, who made of her life what she pleased.

Mavity Flowers, one of Charlie’s cleaning ladies and Charlie and Wilma’s good friend, said that Rita had had a fling with the neighbor two doors down, with handsome Ed Becker. Such behavior shocked Dulcie, though she knew that was unrealistic. She always wanted to think better of humans. In the world of speaking cats, pairing was a serious commitment. Cats did not wander astray; if a cat was tempted, the cat community judged him harshly and sometimes drove him out, to live away from the clowder. A clowder of speaking cats wasn’t like a band of ordinary ferals. Speaking cats even hunted cooperatively-they lived by a different set of rules, by a code as intricate and ancient as their own history.

As they padded through the dining room and study, Joe tried to catch any scent that might seem not to belong-hard to do in a strange house. He had a look at the front door, and at a side door that opened to the patio from the small study. Those and the glass sliders to the patio were all locked, and he found no marks of a breakin.

“When Rita was home,” Tansy said, “I used to watch her dress or pack her suitcases. I liked to watch her put on her jewelry, all her beautiful jewelry.”

“If someone broke in,” Joe said, “and they knew about the jewelry, maybe that’s where they’d start. I wonder if Charlie looked to see if it was there.”

Tansy’s eyes widened and she spun away, galloping down the hall. They followed her toward the master bedroom, passing three other bedrooms. All three were large, elegantly furnished in white and cream and pastel tones. Designed, Dulcie thought, as a complimentary background for Rita’s blond beauty. The rooms did not seem disturbed, all were neat and did not look lived in. She paused, looking into one at the small stone fireplace, the satin bedspread. Why, suddenly, did she feel afraid? Why were her paws sweating as if something was wrong? She prowled the room, looking, but there was nothing tobother her. Shaking her whiskers, annoyed at herself, she hurried to join the others, trotting down the hall along the thick white carpet.

The master suite was furnished all in white, the windows draped in a sheer white gauze; it was not a man’s kind of chamber. Tansy led them across the thick carpet to two large dressing rooms with a compartmented bath between them. “There,” she said, slipping into the room that smelled of perfume and was hung with garment bags full of pale suits and dresses.

Built into the end wall was a pair of white, intricately carved cupboard doors with brass hinges, brass handles, and a brass lock.“Her jewelry’s there.”

When Joe leaped up to paw at the handles, Tansy watched him patiently. He tried, and tried again, but the doors were indeed securely locked.

“On the shelf,” Tansy said at last, having let him struggle, amused by his useless tomcat hustle. Leaping onto the dressing table and then to the shelf above the hanging clothes, she reached her paw behind a stack of plastic storage boxes.

She felt around. She clawed deeper. Deeper still, and then pawed the boxes aside.

“It’s gone,” she said with dismay, looking down at them. She began to move boxes with her furry shoulder, pushing them aside. She was moving the last box when something slithered toward the edge. Her quick paw grabbed it. “Here!” she said, and from her paw dangled a gold chain with a brass key attached.

But then she looked down helplessly at Joe. She knew what the key was for, she’d seen Rita open the cupboard. But she didn’t know how to get that tiny key into the lock.

Leaping up beside her, Joe took the key carefully between his teeth. Crawling belly down on the shelf, he shoved himself out until half of him was hanging over space-but even by bracing one paw against the cupboard door, he couldn’t reach the lock. He leaned farther, nearly overbalanced. Dulcie jumped up beside him, took the end of Joe’s short tail in her mouth and leaned back. Kit joined them, gripping the skin above his flank. He tried again. Holding his breath and carefully aligning the key, he slipped it into the keyhole.

But when he tried to turn it, he overbalanced and fell, pulling Dulcie and Kit with him. They landed in a tangle. Tansy turned away, not daring to laugh.

They tried again, the three females all hanging on to Joe as he stretched out over space. At last he got the key into the lock again, and this time he kept his balance while he turned it. Backing away across the shelf, he pulled the door open. As it swung wide, Kit caught her breath and Dulcie let out a startled“Meow!”

Jewels blazed out at them, a rich array of stones of every color, set in ornately carved works of gold and silver that the cats thought should grace a museum. The broaches and bracelets were arranged on narrow shelves, the pendants and necklaces hanging behind them. Rings and earrings were stored in clear little boxes. Dulcie looked and looked. If ever a cat felt a surge of kleptomania, she felt it now. It had been a long time since she’d had such a strong urge to “borrow” some lovely human treasure.

In the village library, where she liked to prowl at night, she had pored over books of antique collections like this from all around the world and from many centuries. Some of the pieces were set with real jewels and some with paste replicas, but even with those, the settings themselves were of great value. Even in photographs, they were so beautiful that she longed to touch them. The same desire gripped her now, that had so excited her when, as a younger cat, she had stolen beautiful cashmere carves and luxurious satin teddies from Wilma’s neighbors. She wanted to reach her paw in and lift out each lovely piece with her curved claws. She wanted to feel each rich necklace around her own furry neck, she wanted to look in the mirror and see that Etruscan pendant gleaming emerald bright against her dark stripes.

“Coral and turquoise,” Dulcie said softly. “Lapis lazuli. Topaz. Such beautiful jewelry to set off Rita’s own beauty. Even with jeans she wears a silk or cashmere top and lovely jewelry.”

“She calls it antique costume jewelry,” Tansy said. “She brings it back from all over the world. I’ve heard her name the places-placesI’ve never heard of or imagined!”

“If someone was in here,” Joe said, “maybe casing these houses, did they find this cupboard? Didthey move the key? Or did Rita? And why would a burglar open it but take nothing? If someone was casing these places and planning a burglary for later, what are they waiting for?” Joe thought about the scars on the Chapmans’ patio door, about Mango shut away from her kittens, and about the man watching from the hill below and then running. And the cats left the Waterman house, puzzled, wondering if they were on the right track at all, wondering if they were way off base, as they moved on to investigate the other two empty homes.

19

HE STOOD ON the hill beside the car hidden by the heavy cypress branches, looking down along the lower roads. There were no car lights, and only a few scattered houselights shone, muted behind closed curtains. People were settling in for the evening, and that old couple with their canes and their weird dog were gone. It had taken them long enough, nothing better to do than sit on a stone wall watching the fog roll in. He’d lost sight of them for a while, and when he looked again they’d vanished. He meant to wait another hour, until there was less likelihood of cars, before he started digging. He didn’t want someone taking a late-evening walk and hearing the sound of the shovel or seeing the reflection of hisflashlight through the garage window.

Getting in the car, silently closing the door, he sat looking down at the quiet, bucolic neighborhood. Those houses down there, none of them were very impressive, just little wood-framed places, ordinary and small. A strange neighborhood to be putting a lot of work and money into a remodel, particularly with the economy in trouble. Why spend time on the nondescript place, why take the risk?

He didn’t let himself think that he was taking an even greater risk-and that he had a lot more to lose than did that contractor.

He had laid the flashlight and tools on the backseat, everything was ready. He wished he could play the radio but he didn’t want to chance it.She’d have turned on the oldies station, she didn’t like to sit quietly when they were together.

Yet she’d lie for hours soaking up the sun, silent and alone and completely happy. He hated that, hated that she’dliked being alone.

When he started getting restless, he did turn the radio on, real low, but then nervously turned it off again. Below him, the lights in one house went out, as if the occupants had gone to bed. Or were they leaving, going out? But no car lights came on and moved away. He was about to gather up his tools and get on with the unpleasant work ahead when, far down the hill, lights appeared from around a bend, heading up toward him.

He watched the car getting closer, watched it turn onto the street below and head up the hill, straight for the remodel, making him wish he’d pulled his car even deeper under the trees. As it passed the last lighted house he saw its black-and-white pattern. Black car, white door with MOLENA POINT POLICE stenciled on it. It paused before the remodel, generating in him a jolt of panic.

He could see only the driver, couldn’t tell if he was alone. He sat with the motor running, shining the beam of his flashlight over the house and yard. It paused at the dirt pile. He prayed the guy wouldn’t walk the property, that he wouldn’t try the pedestrian door into the garage, which he’d left unlocked. The thought of a cop going in there made cold sweat prick his neck and shoulders. Was this a routine patrol, or had someone seen him walking around the place and called 911?

The cop’s light played over and around the dirt pile for a few minutes but then swung back across the front door and front windows and the garage window. There, again it paused. He expected the guy to get out, maybe walk around the place. If he checked the doors, found the garage door unlocked, would hego inside? There was nothing to see in there. Yet. Would he maybe call the contractor, that the door was unlocked, meet her up here so she could check it out herself?

But the cop didn’t get out, he just sat there behind the wheel, looking. As if this was only a routine check after all, and he’d be gone in a minute. He could hear the guy talking on the radio but couldn’t make out what he said, his voice was low and the distance too great. Was it something about this house or something else entirely? Maybe only a routine call. It seemed forever before the cop moved on, heading up the hill toward him. As the squad car approached the cypress trees, he slid down in the seat, thinking about the shovel on the floor and the tools lying in plain sight on the backseat.

He watched the reflection of moving headlights, lis tened to the crunch of tires on the rough street as the unit passed within a few feet of his hidden car. He didn’t breathe, couldn’t breathe. His blood felt like ice.

But the guy didn’t stop, didn’t see his car. He remained crouched out of sight, listening to it move on up the hill. Did he hear it stop, up there? Yes, when he rose warily to look, it had paused at a lighted house high on the hill above.

Again he waited, again the cop remained in his car, just sitting there, shining his light around. Didn’t he have anything better to do? What, was he checking out a report of someone prowling around up here? Why didn’t he get out and walk the properties, then? Was it because he was alone, without backup? Was he afraid to walk these hills alone?

After what seemed like forever, the unit moved on, to disappear over the crest of the hill. He waited, listening. After some time, when he didn’t hear it coming back, he eased up, trying to get his breath, sucking on the damned inhaler and then rubbing his legs and arms to warm himself. Shortness of breath always made him cold. Doctor gave him some pills for a really bad attack, but he didn’t take them; they made him feel worse than the constricted breathing. He’d dumped them out long ago, and now he wished he had them.

When the law didn’t return, he pulled his cap lower, pulled the collar of his dark windbreaker over his face so he’d blend in with the night, and eased out of the car. He headed down the hill staying among the trees, staying in the shadows and trying not to trip on the rough ground.

Moving along the dark side of the garage where the pedestrian door etched a darker rectangle, he told himself it would soon be over and no one would ever find her. In the morning they’d fill in the trench with gravel and pour new cement to replace that part of the garage floor and be none the wiser about what lay under their careful work. By the time the cement was dry, he’d be long gone.

Once he’d laid her to rest, as the obituaries so delicately put it, and before he left the area, he’d have plenty of time to take care of the rest of his business, and by morning, he’d be two hundred miles north.

Letting himself into the garage, he locked the door behind him. There was enough moonlight coming through the window so that he didn’t have to flip on the flashlight. He pulled on the gloves he’d brought and took up one of the shovels that leaned against the wall. He was about to head down the ladder when he thought of the coveralls that he’d sat on earlier.

The foreman was bigger than he was, so it was easy to pull the muddy garment up over his pants. He tried on the boots that stood in the corner. The fit was a bit loose, but they’d save having to clean up his own shoes, which he left on the worktable. More important, they’d leave the correct, waffle-patterned footprints in the bottom of the ditch, because who knew what someone might notice before they dumped in the gravel?

Tossing the shovel down into the pit, he descended the ladder. The damp ground had already been loosened with the shovel or a pick and was soft under his feet, the waffled prints showing clearly. He chose the corner that felt soft est, and began to dig, congratulating himself on changing into the boots but annoyed that it had been a last-minute thought, that he hadn’t planned better. He began to wonder what else he might have missed.

He could think of nothing left undone, he thought he had everything in hand, but still, as he worked, the worry nagged at him. This procedure, tonight, hadn’t been planned the way their regular jobs were.She hadn’t planned it, he thought with sick amusement. Working on his own, he was shaky about his attention to detail-she’d seen to the details. Now, without her direction, he had to be doubly careful.

The digging wasn’t hard until he hit a layer of soft rock. That slowed him as he stomped the shovel into it-and the scraping sound was louder than he liked. A glint under the shovel caught his eye for a minute, but it was only a silver gum wrapper. It vanished when he tossed the next shovelful on the pile. He had to drive the blade through maybe five inches of rock, which made his breath ragged. Had to stop twice, to breathe and use the inhaler. Digging, he went over his next steps.

Once he brought her down and buried her, he’d swing by the rented garage on the other side of the village, change cars as she had planned, then get on with the night’s work. He felt strange, doing the job without her. Strange, and sick, but excited. Almost like a kid doing something new on his own.

He’d been digging for half an hour, was making good headway despite the fragmented rock and the weight of the damp earth. He wasn’t used to this kind of heavy work. He’d had to move the drainpipes out of the way, memorizing their position so when he’d finished, he could put them back in the same formation. He was taking a rest when he heard a faint brushing sound, a soft, stealthy noise that turned him cold.

Glancing at the closed door, he ducked down into the darkest corner of the pit, pulling the shovel beneath him so it wouldn’t gleam, hiding the pale oval of his face and hoping his dark clothes would blend into the pit’s shadows. Had that cop come back?

What else could it be? Not the contractor, not at this hour. He prayed seriously that it was just some animal, a raccoon or stray dog.She’d say it was insane to pray. She’d call such determined prayer arrogant and would laugh at him, say he’d already damned his own soul, so what difference would it make? Crouched in the dark corner in the earthen pit he listened again for the soft brushing, trying to envision what might have made the sound.

When it came again he realized it was not from the door at all but from the direction of the window, a brushing and then a scratching noise.Had that cop come back and was looking in the window? But no flashlight beam shone in, reflecting through the garage.

The sound continued for so long that he lost patience and warily slipped up the ladder to look, keeping his collar pulled up and his hat low, climbing only until he could just see over the lip of the ditch, could just see the moonlit window.

He froze, his hands turning cold on the ladder rungs.

No human stood beyond the glass. A cat was there, staring in at him, a pale cat crouched and ghostly on the windowsill, pressed against the glass and looking in-straight at him. A white cat smeared with dirt or some kind of smudged markings. Its eyes caught a red gleam from the reflection of moonlight off the glass. Its intent gaze was relentlessly fixed on him, it didn’t blink or look away. Swallowing, he backed down the ladder, tripped and nearly lost his footing, his clumsiness causing a metallic clatter that made his heart pound.

When he climbed and looked again at the window, expecting the cat to have been startled and run off, it was still there watching him.

Well, hell, it was only a cat, only a stupid beast. It didn’t know what he was doing. And it was, after all, beyond the glass where it couldn’t come near him, couldn’t rub up against him as cats so often did, as if they knew he hated them and took pleasure in his fear.

Disgusted, he turned back to his digging, kicking the shovel deeper into the earth and loose rock, his breath coming in gasps, and all the time he dug, he could feel the cat watching, feel the icy chill of its stare.

He kept working, booting his shovel again and again into the earth, heaping up the removed dirt at one end of the long excavation. When he stopped to breathe and to measure the depth of the grave with the shovel handle, and then stepped up the ladder to look, the cat was still there. What did it want, why would it watch him? Turning his back on it and measuring again, he determined that maybe six more inches would allow him to cover her solidly. He’d have to make sure the last layer of dirt over her didn’t have any rock in it, because the rock all came from deeper in the earth; someone might notice that and investigate. He was tiring, but he kept on stubbornly until at last the hole was deep enough. Setting the shovel aside, leaning it against the pit wall, he started up the ladder. When he looked again at the window, the cat was gone.

20

FRANCES AND ED Becker’s house was a two-story, cream-colored stucco with dark brown window trim and a black slate roof that was always slippery in wet weather. The cats didn’t need daylight to know that the lawn was neatly mowed, the bushes trimmed to perfect spheres that they, personally, thought ugly and unnatural-how could one hide or take shelter under a bush trimmed like a bowling ball? Tansy led them straight through the cat door into the garage where dishes of kibble and a bowl of water were laid out beside two cat beds. The Beckers had two orange-and-white cats, and though neither was present, their scent was heavy and fresh. There was no cat door from the garage into the house.

“They don’t want mouse trophies under the furniture,” Tansy said. “ Frances can’t stand the thought of mouse guts on her imported rugs.” She looked up at the pedestrian door that led into the house. “We can try this, sometimes she leaves it unlocked because the garage is locked.”

Leaping up, Joe swung from the knob and pawed at the dead bolt, but at last he dropped down again, shaking his bruised paw.

“Come on then,” Tansy said, “there’s another way.” She led them outside and around the house to the front. In the daytime, the front door would be seen from the street, but at night the soft yard lights left it in shadow. There was no one about nor could they see anyone standing at a nearby lighted window.

The front door was flanked by two tall, narrow panels of glass, each covered by a decorative wrought-iron panel. The pale cat, leaping up and clinging to the iron curlicues, reached a deft paw through and pressed at the sliding window until she had pushed it open.

“They used to leave it open for me.She did. He wouldn’t bother.”

Slipping inside, the cats paused in a large entry hall, their paws sinking into a thick oriental rug. A tall, lush schefflera plant in a blue pot filled one corner. A narrow teak table stood against the opposite wall beside a rosewood bookcase holding small, carved boxes. A large, intricate basket stood on the floor before it, in an artful arrangement. The dining room was to their left past the schefflera plant, a formal room with deep blue walls and a pale, carved dining set. Beyond it they could glimpse the kitchen. The living room was straight ahead, blue walls, a high, raftered ceiling, and a bank of tall windows. To their right, past an open stairway that led to the second floor, was a hall and, Tansy said, two more bedrooms. Between these was the door of a locked closet; they could see the dead bolt running through the slit between the door and molding. But Frances had left the key in the lock.

“For the cleaning crew,” Tansy said. “She always did that, she wants it dusted. A huge closet, stacked with sealed boxes and long packages wrapped in brown paper. I used to play and hide in there-until once I got locked in. I was so scared. I cried for hours before Frances found me and let meout.” She padded into the living room, onto another deep Persian rug.

“Handmade,” Dulcie said, flipping up one corner with careful claws and examining the weave. “No machine made these.”

“How do you know such things?” Tansy said.

Dulcie showed her the uneven weave.“From library books,” she said. “Late at night when the library’s closed and no one’s there. And my housemate, Wilma, knows about antiques.” She admired the sofa and easy chairs, upholstered in tiny, intricate patterns with a primitive flavor. She examined the small carved tables. “Old and handmade,” she said, sniffing them. “And expensive.”

To Joe, the furnishings seemed nice enough but it was just a handsome room, large and comfortable. Beside him, Kit seemed nervous, peering out the windows, scanning the trees and bushes that flanked the dim patio. Tansy prowled among the furniture, sniffing longingly the scents she remembered. They prowled all the rooms looking for anything that seemed disturbed, for any space conspicuously empty, or for small indentations in a rug where some piece of furniture had been removed, looking for anything that Charlie might have missed. A photograph of Ed and Frances Becker stood on the dining room buffet, Ed tall and darkly handsome and smiling, Frances nearly as tall, a slim, gentle-looking woman with brown hair wound in a French twist. Frances was an accountant, and Ed worked for the California Department of Children’s Services.

“He doesn’t seem the type to be a children’s caseworker,” Dulcie said disapprovingly. “Not with those movie-star looks and that too charming smile-and his eye for other women.”

“Are all humans like that?” Tansy said.

“Like what?” said Joe, turning to look at her.

“Catting around,” said Tansy smartly. “Ed Becker and Theresa Chapman,” she said knowingly. “And Ed Becker and Rita Waterman, too, with her fancy jewelry. Do all humans do that?”

“Where did you get that expression?” said Joe sharply.

“I guess from humans,” Tansy said contritely.

Joe twitched a whisker and turned away to the hall. They had found nothing in the living room that seemed missing or out of place. He stood considering the door to the linen closet. Leaping up, he swung on the knob until he had turned it, and turned the key, and with a violent kick of his hind paws he swung the door open, revealing a deep space with shelves on three sides, all crowded with brown-paper packages and sealed boxes.

“What is all that?” Dulcie said.

“ Frances calls them accessories,” Tansy told her. “Rugs and vases and little tables. She loves to change the house all around, move all the furniture, lay out new rugs while she sends the others to the cleaners. Three times when I was here, she rearranged the whole place, even every vase, every book.He wouldn’t help her, he left the house until she was done.”

“But how did she…,” Dulcie began, then went silent, listening to a faraway sound from the hills, to the distant yodel of coyotes.

“You won’t go home tonight,” Kit told Tansy.

The scruffy little cat shrugged.“They’re far away, and the moon’s bright.”

Joe and Dulcie and Kit looked at the little mite, all thinking the same. If ever there was coyote bait, she was it. How could this small waif expect to escape a pack of hungry predators?

“They have pups,” Tansy said. “Can’t you hear them? The parents won’t wander when the pups are learning to hunt, they stand guard, I’ve watched them. Besides,” she said, “I won’t be alone, Sage will be waiting for me.” And she smiled that cocky smirk that seemed so out of place in the shy little cat.

“He’ll be mad, he was mad when I left him there by that house where they’re digging, where all the dirt is piled. But even so, he’ll wait for me,” she said with assurance.

Kit looked at her jealously. Did Tansy know Sage better than she did, even though she and Sage had grown up together? Pulling the closet door closed behind them, she followed Joe as he impatiently headed up the stairs to prowl the four upstairs bedrooms.

The cats found nothing on that floor that seemed out of order. They were thinking this was all a wild-goose chase when Joe caught that elusive scent again, that puzzling whiff that smelled like catmint.

He’d thought he smelled it in the Chapman house, but it was so faint he couldn’t be sure. And again in the Waterman house he wasn’t sure, with the lingering smell of the old dog and the scent of Rita’s perfume. They galloped back down the stairs and, having found nothing amiss, they left the Beckers’ house, slipping out into the night through the wrought-iron grid beside the front door. Sliding the glass closed, they headed for the Longley house.

“We can never get inthere,” Tansy said.“I tried enough times, I even tried the attic.”

“But the Longleys have cats,” Dulcie said.

“Three,” said Tansy. “They’re kept inside when she’s gone. When she’s home, she opens a window, or sometimes the back slider for them.Then I could get in. But I was never sure when I could get out again.”

Eleen Longley taught at the local college. She was an attractive, lively woman, slim and with long, mousy, fine-textured hair that seemed to catch in every breeze. Earl was an architect; Ryan said his work was all right if he’d stick to the engineering aspects, if he didn’t try to design anything new and interesting. When Clyde suggested that her remark was sarcastic, she said, no, that was fact, that many architects weren’t talented at both creative design and engineering, and that was too bad.

“There has to be some way in,” Kit said stubbornly.

Tansy said,“If we can get in, we’ll know right away if something’s missing, I know where the treasures are. They have drawings by famous architects and books locked up in a big glass case and a whole cabinet of little glass domes with pictures inside. Pictures of humansdoing things,” she said, turning her face away with embarrassment. “She calls it porn…porn…”

“Pornography?” Dulcie said. “A schoolteacher collects pornographic paperweights? Oh, my.”

“They talk about how much they’re worth. They talk a lot about money and what things are worth-when they’re not fighting. They fight a lot, and then the cats hide.”

“Come on,” Kit said, “I’ve seen a window at the back, once I watched a mockingbird pecking at the glass.” She took off around the side of the house, plunged into a bougainvillea vine, and clawed her way up between its swinging tendrils and sharp spikes. High up, she crawled out again ontoa second-floor balcony that was not more than a foot wide. In the thin, shifting moonlight as clouds blew over, she was hardly visible among the balcony’s changing shadows. The others swarmed up behind her, under the decorative rail and onto the narrow ledge. Above them was a small bathroom window, maybe four feet wide but only a foot high, that made the cats smile. Joe and Dulcie and Kit had shimmied in through more than one small, high window, always feeling smug at discovering an entrance inaccessible to humans, which was innocently left unlocked.

21

THE GRAVE WITHIN the pit was finally deep enough. The earth he’d removed stood piled at one end. He climbed out, changed shoes at the edge of the pit, and, just to be safe, he put the boots and shovel against the wall where he’d found them. He’d be back soon, but what if someone came while he was gone to get the car? Moving out through the side door, heleft it unlocked. Imagining that cat prowling around, he made sure it was tightly shut.

It was harder climbing back up the hill, he was worn out from digging and the climb took more out of him. The hill was darker, now, too, the moon hidden behind blowing clouds. Were those rain clouds? He didn’t like the thought of maybe a heavy rain, of water flooding down the hill into the hole he’d dug. Of water filling her grave before it rose high enough to run out through the drainpipes at either end of the pit. Earlier, he hadn’t thought of that.

Scrambling up through the woods, he tripped in the tall, tangled grass. He wondered if, trampling the grass, he was leaving a trail. But why would anyone look for a trail? Why would anyone be interested? In the morning when they entered the garage, they’d see nothing to alarm them. The pit would be just as they’d left it.

Reaching the car, he thought he could already smell the beginning of putrefaction, and that made him sick. But maybe that was his imagination, maybe that was his fear and guilt returning to taunt him.

He waited for some time, watching the area, before he pulled the car down, backed it into the drive close to the garage and opened the trunk. He didn’t want to touch her. When he reached to pull her out, the blanket slid off. Her body was stiff but her arms and legs were limp, and she was hard to move. He tucked the blanket around her as best he could, then lifted her. He didn’t like this, the changes in her body frightened him. With distaste he carried her around the side of the garage and in through the pedestrian door. Again he locked it behind him.

She was so heavy. She was a slim person, but now her weight seemed nearly unmanageable. He pulled the blanket back around her where it wanted to slide off. Carrying her over his shoulder, he knelt beside the top of the ladder and stepped down. It was hard to balance her and balance himself and swing down onto the first rung. He didn’t want to shove her over into the pit, didn’t want to hear the body fall. Clinging to the side of the ladder with one hand, with her awkwardly over his shoulder, he was able to carry her down. He tripped on the third rung and nearly fell.

Clumsily he knelt and lowered her into the grave. He left her lying there while he returned to the driveway to move the car.

Getting in, careful to close the door silently, he drove back up the hill to the crest and pulled off the street again, in among the cypress trees. The wind had risen, blowing the clouds away; the hillside and yard below were lighter now, easing his descent but making him more visible. Moving down the hill he tripped on a fallen branch and fell, hurting his knee and hand. Why had he taken off the gloves, stuffed them uselessly in his pocket? Was he bleeding? If the skin of his hand was torn, where he’d carried her, would some infection get into the wound despite the blanket that he’d draped over her? Would bacteria already be growing in her, to get on him and infect him? He was sweating, his shirt sticking to him. He was all nerves, tense and jumpy, afraid someone would come along before he could bury her, before he could shift the dirt back over her, before he could get away. There, by the driveway, did something move?

But no, it was only shadows from the blowing clouds moving across the torn-up yard. Reaching the narrow strip of raw earth along the side of the garage, he moved inside quickly, watching to see that nothing fled in with him, past his feet. Again he locked the door and then changed into the boots. When he looked toward the window, it was empty, there was nothing there to bother him.

But now he wished he could see the cat, could make sure it was there and hadn’t slipped inside with him. Or was it outside, sniffing at the door and listening to the small sounds as he descended the ladder? At the bottom, as he picked up the shovel, he glanced again at the window and the cat was back, crouched on the sill staring in at him as it had before, intent and still.

But it was only a cat, a dumb beast. Forget it, pay no attention to it. His hands on the shovel were so sweaty he couldn’t hold it right. Trying to move the loose earth to hide her, he spilled more dirt over his feet and into the muddy boots than down onto her body. The weight of dirt had slid the blanket off her. He didn’t like to look at her face and bare chest and belly, livid where collected blood had darkened. When he looked up again he was staring directly into the cat’s eyes.

The beast’s cold scrutiny seemed to elevate his distress at seeing her for the last time, at seeing her slowly disappear beneath his shovelfuls of dirt, seeing her slowly hidden by the weight of the earth, and trapped there. Thinking of her sealed in that small hole that would soon be closed forever, it was all he could do to not abandon the grave and run.

He kept on mechanically shoveling dirt until the grave was filled, and then he carefully arranged the black drainpipes to run the length of the pit, just as he’d found them. Climbing up the ladder, he changed shoes, set the boots at the edge of the pit while he took off the coveralls and hung them up, then set the shovel as he’d found it. Leaving the garage he paused to painstakingly lock the door behind him with the lock picks. He didn’t see the cat in the moonlit yard. Quickly he climbed the hill to his car and locked himself in. Foolish, this terror, but he couldn’t help it. He began to wonder if the cat could have slipped into the car behind him when he opened the door. The back of his neck crawled as he peered into the backseat and then got out and looked under the seats.

When at last he was convinced that it hadn’t followed him up the hill, he got back in the driver’s seat. He was alone, the trunk was empty, even the blanket was buried where it wouldn’t be found. He was about to start the engine and head out, take the car up to the rented garage and get the RV, when he realized he’d left the boots standing at the lip of the pit, that he hadn’t put them back where he’d found them, that he’d taken them off, put on his shoes, and, in too much of a hurry, had left them there.

Planning. Careful planning. She’d been so meticulous about planning. Shoving the flashlight in his pocket he headed back down the hill, his chest tight, his mouth dry.

He picked the lock again, his hands shaking, let himself in, slipped his shoes off at the threshold, moved inside in his stocking feet. Shielding the flashlight with his hand, he shone it on the lip of the pit, picking out the boots, then looked around for anything else he’d left out of place. He was reaching for the boots to put them back by the wall when his beam swung up, catching the white shape at the window. He held the light there in a rictus of fear. The cat’s pale fur bristled, its tail was huge, its eyes blazing in the light. Dropping the boots, he snatched up a hammer from the table and in a frenzy of hate threw it hard at the beast. The window shattered with an explosion like gunfire, glass showering as bright as embers and the cat disappeared into the night.

He lowered his light, stood numb and shaken, and couldn’t breathe.

At last, steadying himself, he replaced the boots against the wall, and again looked around for anything else he’d left amiss. When he was sure that everything was in place he fled, silently shutting the door, pausing to go through the tedious process of locking it while looking and listen ing for the cat and praying he’d killed it. When the door was locked, he climbed the hill, started the engine, and hauled out of there, heading for the rented garage.

DOWN BESIDE THE garage, Sage crawled away from the broken glass and the fallen hammer and moved deep among the bushes, easing himself down on the cool ground. He wanted to lie quietly, he hurt bad and he was bleeding. He had never trusted humans and now he hated them.

He’d been hunting, minding his own business and waiting hopefully for Tansy after she’d gone off with those village cats. He was angry with her because she’d defied him but still he’d waited-and now he wished she were there, now he needed her.

He’d been curious when he saw the man leave the parked car, moving so stealthily, and slip down the hill and into the garage. Leaping onto the lumber pile beside the window he’d looked in, had watched him digging, making the pit deeper and then in a little while had watched him carry a dead womanin there and that had frightened him, a naked dead woman with a blanket wrapped around her. He’d watched him bury her, and he knew two things: This secret burial would be very wrong in the law of the clowder. They did not bury their dead secretly, there was always a ceremony. And he knew from thevillage cats that such behavior was equally against the law of the human world.

Uneasily, he had watched the man bury her, and when the man looked up, his face filling with fear, that had pleased Sage. He had watched him as he nervously filled the grave with dirt, had seen him leave and return. It was then, when the man shone the light on him, that he had bristled up, half angry and half amused by the human’s fear, had made himself big and wild, and that was when the man’s face contorted with rage and he grabbed the hammer and threw it.

He hadn’t been quick enough, the glass shattered and the hammer struck him, and now he lay beneath the bushes hurting very bad and wishing Tansy was with him. Wishing he had someone to care that he was hurt, and to help him.

22

ON THE HIGH narrow balcony of the Longley house, Kit was trying to claw open the bathroom window when lights flashed along the street below and paused, hitting the edge of the roof as a car pulled into the driveway. The intrusion so startled Kit that she aborted her leap to the window, dropping back to the balcony. Crouching, she jumped higher, hit the roof snatching at the gutter, pulling herself onto the shingles. Joe, Dulcie, and Tansy followed, their hind paws clawing at empty air as they scrabbled up beside her and they trotted to the edge to peer over.

A dark brown recreation vehicle stood below, a compact RV with two camp chairs tied on top. They heard the electric garage door open. The RV pulled in, and the door rolled down again. The cats, directly above, could not see into the cab.

“Is that the Longleys?” Dulcie said. “They justleft for their vacation. What, did they rent an RV? Has something happened to bring them back?”

“Maybe they gave some friend the key,” Joe said doubtfully.

“They would have told Charlie,” Dulcie said. “And she would have told us, she knew we were coming here.” She cut a look at Joe. “Shall we go in anyway?”

“Are you out of your mind?”

“We could just crack the bathroom window open and listen, find out if itis the Longleys. If they come upstairs, we’ll hear them talking and we-”

Joe shrugged, and turned, and slipped back across the roof walking softly as he headed for the trellis. They dare not gallop, even a crow hopping on the shingles would be heard from within, in a series of little drumbeats. They were about to drop down to the balcony and try the high window when another pair of lights came up the street, and a second car paused in front of the house. They heard a police radio, and the reflection of a spotlight glanced up through the trees as its bright beam swept the yard.

Slipping back across the roof, the cats looked down on a black-and-white. It stood at the curb, portly Officer Brennan sitting behind the wheel, shining his torch along the house, across the doors and windows. Did he know there was someone here who might not belong? Brennan got out and dutifully circled the house, shining his light up and down so it glanced along the edges of the roof. Then he eased himself back into his car, looking bored. As if he had found nothing out of order, as if this was only a routine check. That angered Dulcie, that he’d found nothing amiss. “He’s just going to leave?” she said angrily, her tail lashing, her ears flat.

“How would he know?” Joe said. “Even Brennan can’t see through walls.”

Starting his engine, Brennan headed down the street, pulling up at the Waterman house. The cats watched him go through the same routine there. He was simply doing a vacation check, possibly at Charlie’s request. When he headed for the Chapmans’, they returned to the balcony and its high window.

“Are we going in, or what?” Dulcie said impatiently. “We can’t learn anything out here.”

“In,” Tansy said boldly. “I know places to hide.”

“So they see us? We’re only cats,” Kit said, forgetting times past when such a discovery of unexplained feline entry had led to disaster-when one such incident had frazzled her little cat nerves so badly that she remained jumpy for weeks, flinching at every shadow.

Dulcie looked at Joe. When Joe shrugged, and nodded, the tabby leaped to the little window, her claws in the sill, her hind legs braced against the house. It was an awkward angle, but more swiftly than her companions expected she dug her claws into the window frame, gave one hard jerk, and was surprised to see the glass slide open beneath her paws.

They crowded onto the sill, dropped to the tile counter, and slipped softly down onto the bathroom rug. The bathroom door was cracked open. Crouched in the chill little room, they could hear from downstairs hard footsteps cross the wooden floor, heard someone walking back and forth, back and forth, as if slowly pacing. Then came the scraping of metal against metal, then several littlethunks, then a click, as if a door had been opened.

“Stay here,” Joe said. “Wait here.” And he was out of the bathroom and down the hall before Dulcie could stop him.

The three lady cats followed, to see him disappear down the curved stairs. Pausing on the top step, they tried to see where he’d gone. Dulcie’s and Kit’s dark coats were nearly invisible on the dark runner, but pale little Tansy shone as bright as the moonlight that was shining in through the high windows. The curved stairway led down to a wide entry, where a cream-colored Chinese rug shone against the dark parquet floor. Arches opened into two adjoining rooms, flanking a carved settee that stood against the wall. Joe appeared beneath the settee, and paused in the entrance to the living room where moonlight brightened a wall of bookshelves and glass-fronted cupboards. A man stood there, his back to them, opening the glass door of a cupboard, a tall man dressed in jeans and a dark windbreaker.

As he began removing the books within, Joe slipped up behind him and vanished beneath a spindly leather love seat that was stacked with empty cardboard boxes. The door on the other side of the fireplace stood open as well. These shelves were empty, and on a chair nearby, a carton marked VODKA was neatly filled with small, round, glass objects nestled among folds of bubble wrap.

They watched him fill three small grocery boxes with books and stack them one on top of the other. Picking up the cardboard tower, he headed away through the second arch. They heard his retreating footsteps but heard no door open, heard him step from the hardwood onto a nearly soundless surface. Then there was a little scraping sound such as hard shoes might make on concrete. He was in the garage? Even from the top of the stairs they could detect a cold-cement smell creeping up. Joe had vanished, the shadows beneath the love seat were empty.

They heard a car door open, then a sliding sound, as if the man was shoving his boxes into the RV. Dulcie looked helplessly for Joe. The living room had grown darker as clouds floated across the moon. Kit said,“So many books. Can theyall be worth stealing?”

“And those little glass balls,” Tansy said, “with tiny little people in them, naked and doing private things. What did you call them? Who would pay money for those?” Again she dropped her ears. If a cat could blush, Tansy’s pale little face would be pink with embarrassment.

They were about to creep down the stairs when they heard the man returning fast, nearly running. Tansy crouched. Kit hissed, her ears back. There was abang, the man shouted in triumph, and Joe came racing in through the arch, the man behind him-he grabbed a heavy ashtray and threw it as Joe dove into the alcove beneath the stairs.

“Go!” Dulcie hissed at Kit and Tansy. “Get out, both of you!” She slapped at them, driving them up the stairs toward the bathroom, and she flew down to join Joe. But Kit didn’t leave; she came galloping down alone and pushed close behind Dulcie. Together they bolted beneath the stairs beside Joe.

Joe wasn’t there. The dusty space was empty. Dulcie pressed into the darkest empty corner to make sure, then crouched close to Kit, peering out into the living room.

The tall windows had darkened, the moon nearly hidden, the man only a dark, prowling shadow, looking for Joe, kicking into the blackness beneath the furniture.

Why? Why was he so angry? They were only cats.

Terrified for Joe, Dulcie glanced in the direction of the garage. Where else would the tomcat go but to follow the stolen boxes? Perhaps, she thought, chilled, he meant to slip into the RV and ride with the thief to his destination?“Come on,” she whispered, slipping from under the stairs. The two cats, flashing behind the man’s feet, silently fled for the garage.

The door stood just ajar, the chill air smelling of concrete. They slipped through, dove beneath a workbench, and crouched against the wall, looking out, looking for Joe, and watching the door nervously. The garage was softly lighted by an electric torch that stood on top the workbench, its glow spilling down around them but leaving them in shadow. Both the big overhead door and the pedestrian door to the yard were tightly shut. There were no windows. The walls were smoothly finished and painted white. The usual garage clutter must be hidden within the row of white storage cabinets that lined the far wall. On the other side of the brown RV stood a tan BMW hatchback, most likely the Longleys’ second car.

Kit said,“Do you think Tansy got away safe? That she’ll get home all right, all alone in the night?”

“Maybe she’ll stay close until we come out,” Dulcie said, more to ease Kit than because she believed it. Beside her, Kit reared up to look at the lower workbench shelf that ran just above their heads. An assortment of tools was arranged neatly at one end: two hammers, four wrenches, and a dozen screwdrivers of various sizes. All were dusty. The rest of the shelf was taken over by a row of clear plastic containers filled with different size nails. Kit studied the contents of each, from tiny little brads to huge spikes. Focusing on a particular mess of black nails with extra-wide heads, the tortoiseshell smiled. And as Dulcie slipped out to investigate the pedestrian door that should lead out to the side yard, Kit busied herself trying, with stubborn claws, to loosen the lid.

“Door’s bolted at the top,” Dulcie said softly from across the garage. Kit didn’t answer, she was too busy. Why was anything plastic so hard to manage? She heard Dulcie jumping against the far wall, trying to reach the bolt of the side door, and listened to the tabby’s little grunt each time she fell back. When the plastic lid popped up, Kit whacked it to the floor, carefully put a paw in, and began clawing out nails.

The nails were heavy, and they wanted to stick in her pads. The points hurt even more when, with a little pile of nails on the shelf before her, she put her nose against them and pawed them into her mouth. Damn things stung her tender mouth like bees. Dropping down to the cement floor, she managed not to swallow any.

When Dulcie returned, defeated by the high bolt-Joe was the master at slipping hard-to-manage bolts-she did a double take at Kit’s protruding cheeks. She watched in silence as Kit circled beneath the RV, spitting out a few nails beneath each tire. Seeing what the tortoiseshell was up to, Dulcie smiled and slipped under to help her.

They pawed at each nail until they made it stand upright just beneath the tire. They had nearly finished when they heard footsteps approaching, loud on the hardwood floor. They dove back beneath the workbench as he came down the two concrete steps carrying another stack of boxes; they stared out at his feet as he set the boxes on the bench. They watched him return to the door, heard him lock it. This was the last load, then? Now they couldn’t get back inside to find Joe, and Dulcie began to fidget, watching the man nervously.

They still couldn’t see his face, unless they came out where he could see them, where they’d be center stage beneath the torchlight. He was putting the boxes in through the RV’s side door when they heard a car out front and the voice of a police radio. Had Brennan come back? The man froze. He glanced at the electric torch but daren’t extinguish it now in case it shone out beneath the overhead door. He didn’t move as the brighter light of the cop’s torch skated along the thin crack-but then the crack darkened again. There was a long silence, as if the officer outside was waiting and watching. Had the soft light within the garage alerted him? Or was this, again, only routine? Or was this Brennan’s supper break? The cats imagined him sitting in his unit eating a giant burger and sipping from a Styrofoam cup of coffee.

But then at last the unit backed out of the drive and moved on, its purring engine growing softer as it headed up the street. At once, the thief moved to the big garage door and stood with his ear against it, listening. He waited there for some time, but there was only silence from the street. Finally he loaded the last box and silently closed the door of the RV. Slipping into the driver’s seat, he activated the electric door with a remote that, at some point, he must have stolen. As he backed out, Dulcie and Kit, feeling the cold night air on their noses, longed for the freedom of the open night. The breeze was like a whisper urging them to run-but Dulcie thought of Joe and shedidn’t move, she thought only of getting back in the house. Maybe he was hurt, injured by the heavy ashtray the man had thrown. The door started down.

“We can get back in quicker from outside,” Kit said. The door was halfway down. “Run!” Kit said. “Run now!”

Dulcie came to life. They fled beneath the closing door, jumping high over the red light that marked the electric eye. The door slammed behind them as they dove into the bushes.

Kit said,“We never saw his face.” In the shadowy living room they’d seen only his back. From beneath the workbench they’d seen his wrinkled brown running shoes, his dark jeans, and a glimpse of his green windbreaker.

“What did he smell of?” Dulcie said. She’d memorized his smell as he stood close above them, his personal male scent overlaid with something she should know but couldn’t identify. Something akin to catnip, only different. When they were certain the RV was gone, they fled around the house tothe back. Dulcie bolted up the trellis and in through the bathroom window, frantic to find Joe, but Kit stopped on the balcony behind her, mewling softly to summon Tansy. She listened, then mewled again. She looked down at the yard, studying the dark and crowded bushes. “Tansy?”

There was no answer and no pale movement among the shadows. She looked away toward the hills, worried that the scruffy little cat had gone on through the night alone. Praying that if Tansy was headed home, she would be wary and cautious and safe.

23

WHEN DULCIE HAD hissed at Tansy to run, Tansy obeyed as fast as her thin little legs would carry her. The sight of that man chasing Joe jarred to life every terrified kittenhood memory of such cruel men and sent her streaking away up the stairs and into the bathroom, leaping out the window and scrambling backward down the trellis, catching hanks of fur on the thorns. At the bottom she stood shivering, looking out into the night and watching the darkest shadows. She waited a long time for Kit to follow her, and all the while Dulcie’s words rang in her head,Go! Get out, both of you! And the stink of that man’s anger clung to her. As she listened for the other cats to emerge from the house, her heart pounded with fear for them. But she was too afraid to go back. There was only silence from the house behind her. When after a very long time Kit didn’t come, when no one came, she fled for the far hills and home, running blindly up through the dark village-until she realized she was lost, was crossing unfamiliar streets through neighborhoods that she had never seen. She was lost and her sense of direction seemed to have abandoned her.

She stood on an empty sidewalk on an unknown street among houses she was sure she had never seen. She listened. She sniffed the scents of this strange place, trying to smell something familiar, trying to find her direction.

At last her pounding heart eased. At last, reclaiming her good cat sense and determination, she scrambled up the nearest pine tree to the nearest roof where she could see better.

Well, of course! There were the hills, black humps like the backs of huge animals, their familiar curves caught in faintest moonlight against the night sky. There were the hills and there was home, and she ran leaping from roof to roof until the houses stood too far apart, then she scrambled down to the gardens. And away she went, racing through weedy grass and up into the open hills, racing for the ruin’s jagged and protective walls that rose like a palace against the blowing clouds.

Fleeing for home, she wondered why she had ever gone among humans? This always happened, this violence from humans. Her mouth and nose still reeked of the smell of that man, the smell of human rage. On she raced, her senses sharply alert for predators. She was passing the house with dirt piled in its yard when she smelled something other than a predator. She smelled death.

Human death?

She froze in place, looking all around. Why would there be a dead person here? She was frowning, studying the house when she saw something pale stir on the hill above, a small, feeble movement. She crouched warily, looking. She reared up, stretching tall, scenting the air, and it was then that she smelled him. She ran straight up the hill to him, streaked up through the grass and crouched beside him, her paws going cold.“Sage? Oh, Sage.”

He didn’t move or speak, he lay unnaturally hunched. But he was alive, his eyes looked into hers, filled with pain. When she snuggled carefully beside him, touching him with her nose, he pressed against her shivering, his body rigid and tight.

“What?” she said softly. “What happened?” She looked around into the night, but she saw nothing, now, that could have attacked him. She could smell no coyote or other animal, and certainly no human-except for the stench of a dead person that came from the house below.

Above them a raft of clouds blew past, again freeing the fickle moon, and down the hill, the house and the pale drive and the walks brightened. The dirt pile lit up along its side and the tiled roof became a tangle of curved shadows. The smell of death sickened her, and then the wind came straight at her and she smelled that man, too. The man she had run from. How could he be there when he was down in the village in that house?

“A human hurt you…did this to you?”

“He’s gone,” Sage said. “A long time ago.”

“What did he do…what happened?”

“He threw a hard tool at me, a hammer. Threw it through the window where I was watching him. It came through straight at me, broke the glass, I wasn’t quick enough.”

“Why did he?” She licked his face. “What did you do to make him so mad? To make him hurt you?”

Sage rose stiffly and started down the hill, limping badly.

“Stay still, you’ll hurt yourself more.”

Ignoring her, he headed for the house, every line of his body showing pain and anger. She followed him until, approaching the garage, the smell of death hit her so hard she turned away, gagging.

“Come where the window is,” he said impatiently. “Mind the glass. Come where we can see in.” Crawling painfully up onto the stack of lumber, trying to avoid the jagged shards, he put his paws on the sill, looking in between knives of glass. She hopped up beside him.

“See that ditch?”

She looked at the deep fissure.“Why is there a ditch there?” She looked at the dirty concrete floor where earth had been hauled out, at the muddy footprints.

“There’s a dead woman down there. That man went down in the ditch and dug the hole deeper, then he brought her in his car and carried her down the ladder and covered her up with dirt.” Sage turned to look at her, the pupils of his eyes huge and dark-with fear, with anger. “That’s not how humans bury their dead. Even I know that. This was sneaky, stealthy. When he saw me watching, he went white and grabbed the hammer and threw it.”

Tansy looked back at him, surprised not so much by what the man had done-humans would do anything-but because, maybe for the first time in his life, Sage was paying attention to something outside the clowder; he was enraged by something that was not a part oftheir world. From Sage’s standpoint, the hiding of a dead human would have nothing to do with a cat’s proper business-until the man had hurt him. She guessed that made it his business.

She said,“I saw him earlier, in the village. He was stealing from a house, we watched him. He threw something at Joe Grey and chased him.”

Sage’s eyes widened. “Did he hurt Joe?”

“I don’t know,” she said, looking down in shame. “I ran…I should have gone back. But I must go back,” she said. “I have to see if they’re all right, I have to tell them that he came here and that he buried someone. Why would he bury a woman? Unless…Did he kill her? That is a crimein the human world, humans will want to find him and punish him. We-”

But now Sage turned reluctant.“This has nothing to do with us. This is not a matter for cats.”

“Then why did you show me?”

“Because he hurt me. I’m going home where it’s safe.”

She sat looking at him.“You spent weeks among humans when you were hurt before. Humans cared for you, they pampered you, gave you nice things to eat, made soft beds for you-humans saved your life, Sage!”

“Come on, Tansy.” He eased down from the sill and off the lumber pile with a grunt of pain. “We need to go. This is human business.” Expecting her to follow, he limped away, heading up the hill.

Tansy did follow. She dare not let him travel home alone when he was nearly helpless-yet she was ashamed to let him stop her from what she must do. If they didn’t tell the village cats what Sage had seen, maybe no human would ever know that a dead woman lay there hidden in that ditch. Somewhere, a woman was missing. And no one would ever learn where she had gone.

24

EARLIER IN THE Longley house, when Dulcie and Kit dove into the recess beneath the stairs, Joe Grey had slid around the corner and into the shadows of a hall, stopping, dead ended, at a closet door. Frantically he had pawed it open as the man searched the living room. Slipping inside and beneath a tangle of coats, he pulled the door closed with a hasty paw, thanking the great cat god that the hinges were silent. He didn’t dare let it latch, even the smallest click would crack like a rifle shot. This wasn’t smart, shutting himself in such a trap. If the guy jerked the door open, he’d have to be quick to get out, to save his furry neck. The closet stunk of damp wool, and of dog urine on the tip of an umbrellathat was propped in the corner.

As the man’s heavy footsteps approached, he leaped up between a trench coat and a black peacoat, digging his claws into the thick wool. Hanging there with the claws of all four feet busily engaged, he hoped the damn rod wouldn’t give way.

The footsteps paused just outside. The door opened and the man knelt, looking in beneath the coats. He picked up the umbrella and poked it into the dark corners. Then he gave a cross“Hmph,” shut the door, and went back down the hall.

Dropping carefully to the floor, Joe pressed against the door. He listened for some time to the guy searching for him. Finally he must have given up, because Joe heard him return to filling his boxes with books. He imagined Dulcie and Kit watching from beneath the stairs-he’d heard Dulcie hiss at Tansy to run, had heard the smaller cat’s racing footfalls on the floor above.

He waited, it seemed, for a very long time before he heard the guy walk heavily away toward the garage, as if loaded down with another stack of boxes. When he’d gone, Joe leaped at the knob, grabbed it between his paws and swung until he could kick the door open. Peering out, he whispered for Dulcie.

There was no answer. He waited, listening. There was no sound. When the man didn’t return, he was about to slip out and look for her and Kit when he heard the garage door rise and the RV pull out-and a chill hit him.

Had they followed the guy and slipped into the RV intent on shadowing him, on finding out where he was taking the stolen property?

That would be like them. Both females were as nosy as a bloodhound on the scent. Frightened for them, he raced up the stairs and out the bathroom window, hoping to see which way the RV headed, thinking to call the station and report the burglar, get a be-on-the-lookout started. He could think of nothing else to do.

Racing across the roof to the edge, he saw the dark vehicle moving slowly away, up the street. He fled across the shingles after it, with a giant leap to the next roof, and the next, praying that Dulcie and Kit weren’t inside being hauled away to who knew where. He was scorching down a pine tree, where the roofs were too far apart, when the RV slowed and pulled into the Beckers’ drive. As he fled through the bushes for the Beckers’ yard, he heard their garage door open.

The RV disappeared inside, and the door rolled down again. This guy must sweat every time the sound of an electric door broke the night’s silence, as he hastened to conceal his intrusion. How did he have openers for these houses? How, for that matter, had he known these particular houses were empty? Joe approached the Becker house beneath a low-growing pepper tree. Within seconds he was clinging to the wrought-iron grille besidethe Beckers’ front door. Though his big paws weren’t as clever as Tansy’s, with persistence and with tomcat muscle he soon slipped the window open and bellied inside.

Leaving the window open for a quick departure, he listened for sounds from the garage. A sudden scurrying behind him made him spin around.

Dulcie came sliding through the window and into the dark entry hall, uttering a little mewl of relief at finding him there. Kit exploded through behind her. Both cats were panting.

“Might as well try to catch a racehorse,” Dulcie said, “as to track you. You must have flown across the roofs. What…?” She went quiet at the sound, from the direction of the garage, of a knob turning.

They heard the inner door creak open. Footsteps approached fast, as if he was certain the house was empty-and as if he was familiar with the layout. There was no handy place to hide from him, and the cats fled in three directions. Joe spun toward the stairs and up out of sight. Kit leaped onto the rosewood bookcase, where she froze between two decoratively carved boxes, her mottled coat blending with both. Dulcie slipped into the African basket, her dark stripes melting into its patterns. The burglar had traversed the short distance to the entry hall, where he paused within touching distance of Dulcie and Kit, noticing neither camouflaged cat.

From the shadowed stairs, Joe peered down into the living room, thanking the great god who had effectively crippled human night vision. He had sensibly tucked his head down to hide his white paws and chest, hoping, if he was seen, that he’d resemble one of those life-size cats that people brought home from the gift shops of airports-wouldn’t that be a shocker if this guy picked him up expecting a stuffed replica and got a fistful of fighting tomcat.

Again the burglar was well prepared, with a stack of empty boxes. Moving on through the foyer, he began to strip the living room of all the small pieces, intricately patterned handmade pillows, small carved chests. For nearly an hour the cats posed, unmoving, rigid in their grandstand seats as the busy burglar packed up rugs and accessories, carved side tables, and the paintings from the walls. He even had newspapers to pack up the expensive-looking porcelain and protect the delicate tables, and he seemed to know exactly what he wanted. Dulcie imagined a computer inside his head ticking off dollar signs, toting up the value of each separate piece. When he seemed about to finish in the living room, Joe left his perch on the stairs and the cats crawled uncomfortably beneath the lowest shelf of the teak table. A tight squeeze but a better hiding place, putting them at eye level with his shoes as he made trip after trip carrying his treasures to the garage. This guy had planned with care, from acquiring the garage door openers to inventorying the contents of the designated houses. There seemed to be no hesitation, no misstep. The question was, how did he know these houses so well?

They could hear him out in the garage loading the boxes into his RV, which must be getting pretty full. Returning, he went through the rest of the rooms, upstairs and down, carrying away the nicest treasures. Last of all, he opened the hall closet and started loading up the packages and sealed boxes.

The deep closet, crowded with Frances’s wrapped treasures, proved her to indeed be an avid collector. Dulcie guessed she had to be a topflight accountant to afford the luxuries with which the house was furnished. By the time the burglar had made only two trips carrying taped boxes and brown-paper packages, Joe had worked out his plan and was tensed to spring into action. As the man headed away on his third trip, Joe slipped down the stairs to have a look at the closet door.

The doorknobs on both sides were simple round ones. The lock was installed above the knobs. There was no corresponding bolt inside, not your usual safety arrangement. If you were inside, and someone locked the door, you’d be trapped. And that made the tomcat smile.

Rearing up beside the open door, he could just reach the key. The door was heavy, most likely a solid core, and hardly moved under his weight. With a quick paw, claws gripped around the key, and twisting his whole body, he was just able to turn it-the dead bolt slid noiselessly out. When he turned the key again with another hard, shoulder-wrenching twist, it slid back. He heard the guy returning and dove back into the shadows beneath the table, pushing in between Dulcie and Kit; and the minute the man left with another load, the tomcat laid out his plan.“I’ll be the bait,” he told them.

“No,” said Kit, “you’re stronger.I’ll lure him inside. You and Dulcie shove the door and turn the lock, I can dive out faster!”

“No!” Dulcie and Joe said together-but they heard him coming back and it looked like this would be the last load, the closet was nearly stripped of packages. “No!” Dulcie hissed again as Kit dove into the closet, concealing herself behind the remaining boxes like the good hunter she was, waiting for her victim.

25

KIT WAITED DEEP in the closet, crouched and still. As the burglar stepped in and reached to take the last boxes she leaped at him, exploding in his face with a bloodcurdling yowl that made him stumble backward and fall, crashing into the shelves, thrusting out his hands to ward her off-she looked twice her size, fur standing out, bushy tail lashing. When she screamed again, he scrabbled at the shelves as if to climb away from her. She advanced on him, forcing him back as Joe and Dulcie crouched to leap at the door. Their timing had to be fast and exact, Kit racing out and the door slamming closed.Run now! Dulcie thought, wanting to scream at her.Run out now! Her muscles quivered, primed to leap the moment Kit bolted through.

But now, instead of trying to escape from Kit, he grabbed a long package and began to beat at her. She dodged and he missed. As he swung again, Joe and Dulcie sprang at him, forgetting the door. He yelled, knocked the cats off with hard blows and bolted past them out the door, hitting Joe as he slammed it in their faces.

They heard the key turn, the dead bolt sliding home.

Joe staggered up and jumped at the door, clawing uselessly at the knob. He fell back to the floor, staring up where the inner knob of the lockshould be. They were locked in, they were trapped. They pushed close together, fear gripping them, and Kit began to pant.

At first they heard no sound from without, but then, pressing against the door, they could hear him breathing-as if he was standing just outside. Already the air felt close and hot, already the walls were pressing in. They thought about cats trapped in the holds of airplanes, about kittens falling into some hidey-hole where they couldn’t get out, about cats locked in abandoned houses. They stared at the heavy door, wanting to claw through it and knowing cat claws couldn’t penetrate an inch of solid wood.

The fact that they’d meant to imprison the burglar as they were now confined, made them feel all the more helpless, made their plight all the more horrifying. Theirs had been an honorable plan. They hadn’t meant to leave him here to die, they’d intended that he be rescued.

But what did he intend? Was he smiling, hoping no one found them until it was too late?

HE STOOD STARING at the locked closet door, feeling smug that he’d trapped them but shaken by their attack. He leaned against the wall, fishing in his pocket for the inhaler, and found he’d left it in the RV. Where had those cats come from? It couldn’t be the same three as in the Longley house, but they looked the same. And how would they get into either house? Cats didn’t go through locked doors, he thought, shivering.

Earlier, as he’d hurried to load up the books and paperweights, could they have smelled his stress and fear? Could that have made them follow him? He’d always believed that the smell of fear would make a cat come after a person. He was still so sick from their attack that even after he returned to the RV, when he couldn’t find the inhaler, he could only sit miserably behind the wheel gulping air, trying to get his breath. When at last he could breathe again he searched under the seats then moved into the back, searched frantically among the boxes and packages that he’d loaded, searched every inch of the floor that he could reach. He wanted to go back in the house, to look in all the rooms, but there wasn’t time.

He remembered when he’d watched that couple from above the empty ranch, he’d had the inhaler then, he remembered using it, the comforting feel of knowing it would help him. And he’d had it when he buried her, had used it then. Before he hauled her down the ladder he’d taken it out of his pocket, didn’t want it falling out as he bent and dug and heaved dirt. He remembered laying it on the worktable. He couldn’t remember his hand on it again, couldn’t remember putting it back in his pocket.

It wasn’t only that it was a prescription inhaler, that he couldn’t stop in a drugstore and pick one off the counter. It was that his fingerprints would be on it. He looked again through the glove compartment and the console, but it wasn’t there. He’d have to go back to the remodel, go in the garage again where he’d buried her, see if it was on the worktable. Yes, he was sure of it, when he grabbed and threw the hammer, he’d been so upset he’d forgotten it.

These last two houses would take only minutes and he’d be done and could go get the inhaler. In these houses, all he wanted was the small stuff, and in both cases the collections were all in one place. The jewelry wouldn’t take any time to gather up, and Theresa’s miniature paintings would fit in a couple of boxes. He didn’t want to leave those, there were some name painters in there who would bring a good price. Get the stuff quick and he’d be done. Swing by and get the inhaler, then hit the road.

Starting the engine, he activated the garage door and backed out, shutting the door behind him. With the successful completion of the major part of his plan, withher put safely to rest, and when the sound of those cats clawing the door could no longer reach him, his confidence returned. Couple of hours from now he’d be up the road, tucked comfortably into a motel under another name, a drink in his hand and his stash safely locked in the RV, ready, in the morning, to trade for cash and a new start.

He had no notion, thinking about his plans, that when he returned to the empty house he would again be watched. If he’d known, he might not have gone back, he might have left the inhaler and prayed that no one would pay attention to it, that it would be tossed out with the rest of the trash.

26

“I’M GETTING REALLY paranoid when Joe isn’t in for the night,” Ryan said.

“Shank of the evening,” Clyde said as he turned out the living room lights and they headed upstairs accompanied by Rock and Snowball. “You have to learn to live with it.”

“You don’t worry?”

“I worry all the time. I put it on the back burner, like a dull toothache.”

“That is really very encouraging,” she said, moving up the stairs beside him.

In the master bedroom Clyde lit a fire and pushed the sliding doors open between the two rooms so they could enjoy the cheerful blaze from the study. His desk was littered with the car ads he’d placed in various newspapers and magazines, with the “car collectors” columns from various newspapers, and with faxes and notations of phone calls to answer.

Ryan had set up a folding table next to the couch to serve as a temporary work space. This was stacked with real estate fliers and notes on the dozen pieces of property they were considering. The two of them were so jammed into the small study that neither one could move their chair without disturbing the other. Sitting down to sort through their prospective purchases, she looked up at the newly installed door that led into the new construction, eager to be finished and move into her spacious new studio. The big space was dried in, the roof on, but there was the tile floor still to lay and the rest of the interior to finish; she could hardly wait, she wanted her work space, wanted to get on with the bids on two new jobs plus whatever project she and Clyde decided on. As she considered the real estate material, Rock came to nose at her hand, restless and needy.

The big dog had paced the house since supper, and it was obvious he was looking for Joe, returning again and again to the downstairs cat door to sniff hopefully for any new scent. Now he looked pointedly at Ryan then directed his gaze to the rafters above, to the high and unreachable cat door that led out into Joe’s tower.

“Why’s he fussing?” Clyde said. “Joe’s out at night a lot, Rock never paces like this. Or does he only want a run?”

“He’s been with Dad and Lindsey all day, walking. They must have done ten miles, up in the forest.”

“I thought Lindsey didn’t like hiking in the rough outdoors.”

“She likes to hike with Dad,” Ryan said, smiling complacently. She was very much in favor of her widowed father’s romance. “What she doesn’t like is overnight camping-all the bugs and cooking on the bare ground and no shower.”

“But with an RV-”

“An RV isn’t camping. I mean real camping, that’s what Dad likes, but that isn’t for Lindsey.” She shrugged. “He doesn’t care, they do everything else together.”

Lindsey Wolf had only recently come back into Mike Flannery’s life after a long absence. He’d been working a cold case for the department, the ten-year-old murder of Lindsey’s fianc?. That case soon involved a second murder-it was the cats who’d discovered the body. Without their nosiness, Ryan thought, and without their stubborn efforts to bring that hidden grave to the attention of the law, that victim might never have been found, might have moldered among the Pamillon ruins until the world ended.

But with Joe’s involvement in the case, nudging the law to follow his lead, the gray tomcat had been stranded alone in a strange area fifty miles from home. A plight that, by the time they’d found and rescued him, had driven Ryan to tears though she seldom cried.

Now, as she and Clyde worked, silent and preoccupied, Rock at last gave up pacing, climbed up on the leather couch, and flopped down with a huge sigh. He left just enough room for Snowball, curled up at the far end on the afghan. The white cat woke long enough to lick the big dog’s nose, then went back to sleep. But as Clyde worked at getting the best prices for his collectors’ cars, and Ryan estimated the cost of a major remodel for her favorite of the houses they were considering, both remained tuned to the roof, listening for the sound of soft feet trotting across the shingles and for the flap of Joe’s cat door.

There remained only silence, Joe did not appear on the rafter above their heads yawning and demanding a late snack. It was an hour later that the phone rang, startling them both. Clyde glanced at the caller ID and picked up. Turning on the speaker, he imagined Wilma sitting up in bed with a book in her lap, her white hair loose around her shoulders, a cup of cocoa by her side, a fire burning in the cast-iron wood-burning stove.

Her voice was crisp with tension.“Is Joe home? Have you seen Dulcie or Kit? Lucinda just called, they haven’t seen Kit since their walk up in the hills late this afternoon.”

“Well, that isn’t-”

“Pedric’s worried, too, and he seldom worries. Lucinda said they were somewhere below Ryan’s remodel when Kit met up with a new cat, one of the ferals. She said the two went racing off toward the village. She’d thought that when it got dark, Kit might bring the little thing home, not let her go back alone to the hills, but…Clyde, a clowder cat has never come to the village like that, except when there’s trouble, when there’s some urgent need.

“The Greenlaws haven’t seen either cat since, and I haven’t seen Dulcie or Joe since Charlie came by, around noon. Have they gone up among the ferals in the middle of the night? I can hear coyotes and they sound pretty close.”

“I expect they’re all right,” Clyde said reassuringly, trying not to telegraph his concern. “Ryan’s here, the speaker’s on. Have you called Charlie?”

“I was about to. It’s so foolish to worry, but…”

Ryan moved closer to the phone, leaning into the speaker.“It gets no better, does it? Over time, you don’t worry less?”

“I still worry,” Wilma said reluctantly.

“Call Charlie,” Ryan said. “Then call us back.”

“Yes,” Wilma said, and hung up.

They waited, Clyde uneasily shuffling papers. Rock had left the couch and resumed pacing, with that quizzical Weimaraner frown on his face that made Ryan even more uneasy. Why were they all so tense? The cats were gone many nights, hunting. Joe would come in, in the small hours, and hop on the bed, nosing at her, his cold muzzle smelling of raw mouse-she was getting used to that. Now, watching her good dog worry and wondering what he sensed, she felt like pacing, too. When Rock looked at her again, the worry on his face even sharper, she went into the bedroom, turned off the gas logs, and stepped into the closet to change her slippers for jogging shoes. She had pulled on a sweater and was getting Clyde’s coat when the phone rang.

Clyde switched on the speaker. Charlie said,“I’m in the car. This afternoon, before we chased that guy, Joe and Dulcie were really focused on the vacation houses, asking a lot of questions. I think…I have keys. You want to meet me there?”

“Yes,” Clyde said. “We’re on our way.”

Ryan tucked the afghan around Snowball and turned off the desk lamp. Clyde turned on the stairway lights and they hurried down. Grabbing Rock’s leash that hung by the front door, they headed for the roadster, which was handier on the narrow streets; with the top down they could better watch the yards and rooftops. Ryan wondered if they were being foolish, were overreacting. On the seat behind her, Rock paced from one side of the car to the other, staring into the night and up at the rooftops, sniffing the wind with such intensity that he made her even more nervous.

27

THE NIGHT WAS still, and the sky was clear, now, above the Harper ranch, the stars glinting where, an hour earlier, rain clouds had threatened. The silence was broken only by the rhythm of the sea away beyond the pastures and below the cliffs, and by the distant singing of coyotes in the hills to the north. In the barn the horses dozed. In the house only one lamp burned, near the flickering hearth fire. Max Harper sat in his favorite chair watching the flames, an open book on the table beside him, the two big dogs sprawled on the hearthrug. Charlie’s chair was empty but still warm, her half-empty cup of tea forgotten beside the mystery novel she’d been reading. Before she’d rushed away, setting the phone down beside her book, the world had been perfect, just the two of them in their own corner of the universe, a rare evening when Max had gotten home early for a leisurely dinner and a night, he’d hoped, without interruption.

Frowning, he picked up his book again and poured the rest of his beer into the glass, his movements spare and deliberate. He stretched his lean frame, easing his feet nearer the fire, careful not to disturb the two fawn-colored half Danes. He was a tall man, lean, with the leathery look of a horseman, his face pleasantly lined from the sun. He’d be coming up on retirement soon-unless the city council extended his time past their usual retirement age for law enforcement. He’d been chief of Molena Point PD for over fifteen years, good years, all of them. Sometimes he looked forward to retirement, sometimes he didn’t like the empty feeling it gave him; it even scared him a little, though he’d never tell Charlie that.

He didn’t look forward to what went with retirement, to getting old. As long as he could do the ranch work, was healthy and could do the things he liked, age didn’t matter, it was the going downhill that could scare a guy. He didn’t like to see it in the men he knew, and he wasn’t going to like itin himself.

He wished Charlie hadn’t had to go out. She’d hurried away frowning and so tense, jingling her car keys, her jacket over her shoulder. He hadn’t liked her urgent need to hurry down to the village for what he thought was no sensible reason. The phone call from her aunt still puzzled him.

Answering the phone, Charlie had moved away with it so as not to be talking in his ear.“They haven’t?” she said. “None of them? But they often…” A pause, then, “They are? They did?” She’d glanced across at him. “It’s possible. The way they…Yes, I have keys. I’ll go right down…”

Another pause.“Yes, please do. No. I’ll bet you’re in bed, reading. No, stay there, there’s no need. It’s cold out. Yes, that’ll be fine. Tell them I’ll see them there.”

Hanging up, she’d said only that Wilma thought her cat and maybe Clyde ’s and the Greenlaws’ cats were locked in one of the empty houses. She didn’t say how Wilma would know that, and it didn’t make sense to go racing down there. Those cats could be anywhere, they wandered all over the village, no one could keep track of them. And why did she have to race down there in the middle of the night? If a cat got shut in somewhere, it would be fine until morning.

She’d said vaguely that someone in the neighborhood had heard a cat crying in one of the empty houses, as if it was shut in. But that could be any cat, most of the families in that neighborhood had cats. Why the hell would it be Clyde ’s or Wilma’s cat?

Well, hell, he thought more reasonably, Charlie’s concern hadn’t been so much for the missing cats as for her aunt Wilma, who was inclined to worry over that tabby cat. It was nearly midnight. If Wilma was still awake, then most likely she was worrying. And when Wilma worried, Charlie worried. That, plus her concern for her clients’ emptyhouses, was hard on Charlie though she’d never admit it. He’d be glad when she sold her business, he hoped that would take the pressure off. There was always something, a broken waterline, the resultant damage to attend to, a leaky roof…Now that her books had found a growing market, Charlie’s Fix-it, Clean-it was becoming more headache than pleasure, its many disruptions offering more stress than she needed.

Well, he guessed he was being cranky for no reason, out of sorts because a couple of cats had dragged her away on the one evening in weeks that he’d been able to come home early. But he had to smile, too, at her going down there to roust out a couple of cats. He’d grown to like those cats, and he sure wished them no harm. He’d gotten used to having them around the station, particularly Joe Grey, taking over like he owned the place, bumming Mabel’s lunch, sleeping on his desk. If that cat wanted to nap on a court order, you had to remove him bodily-independent as hell, and mule stubborn.

Looking into the fire, watching the big dogs twitch in their sleep, he thought again about retirement, about being home with Charlie, riding together, cooking together, working on the place. And while Charlie was writing, maybe he’d take a stab at writing his own book. He’d thought about it some. Something related to law enforcement, maybe a few suggestions for civilians on how to keep themselves safe in an increasingly dangerous world.

Or maybe they’d buy a few more horses, get some classes going for the local kids, get them away from TV and video games and too much computer time-help themdo things rather than sitting around letting the spectator media numb their minds. Get them outdoors and make them responsible for a horse, help them see how strong they could be and how satisfying it was to become proactive in shaping their own lives.

The ringing phone brought him back. Glancing at the caller ID, he picked up.

“We’ve had a breakin,” Charlie said. “I called the station, told Officer Baker I’d call you. Davis is on her way. You don’t need to come, I just wanted to-”

“I’m on my way,” Max said. “I don’t need to tell you-”

“Not to touch anything,” she said impatiently. “They didn’t ransack the house, but Theresa’s miniature paintings are missing, and I’m worried about the other houses, Frances Becker’s beautiful antiques and Rita Waterman’s jewelry.”

“You’re still in the Chapmans’? Get out, Charlie. Get out now. And stay out. Keep your phone on, don’t hang up.”

“I’m already out, I just-”

The phone went dead. Scowling, he rang the station, told the dispatcher to get two more cars over there. Quickly he turned off the fire and raced for the door, snatching up his jacket and hardware, was out the door and swinging into his pickup, heading down the hills.

28

ENTERING THE CHAPMAN house, Charlie had gone into the laundry room first to check on the mama cat. Before she’d switched on the light, a low hiss greeted her. She’d paused, then thrown the switch for the single light over the washer.

Mango stood just outside her blanket-lined box, boldly facing Charlie, her tail lashing, her ears flat, shielding her kittens with a growl so businesslike that Charlie hadn’t approached her.

“Someone was here,” she said softly. “Someone scared you, Mango.” Nothing but intrusion by a stranger would have frightened Mango so. She peered around Mango to see if the kittens were all right. They seemed to be, two of them nosing at their mother, the other two curled up, yawning.

The laundry window was closed, as it should be. The room was as she had last seen it, nothing seemed different. Mango continued to face her, too upset to settle in again with her kittens. Leaving her alone to calm down, Charlie moved into the kitchen, her hand concealing her pepper spray.

Nothing seemed disturbed there, the small electrical appliances and the kitchen TV were all in place. But as she’d entered the dining room, she’d stopped cold and backed against the wall, scanning the living room and the hall beyond, then looking around with dismay.

The walls were no longer bright with the jewel-like rows of miniature paintings that she’d so enjoyed. All three walls were bare except for rows of small picture hooks marching across like dark insects poised in some miniscule military maneuver.

Warily she’d moved on through the house knowing she should leave, should go back outside and call the department. Removing her shoes and switching on lights as she entered the silent rooms, she’d slowly scanned each area, walking in the center, away from the cupboards and cabinets that a thief would haveexamined and where he might have left minute debris from his shoes.

She’d found nothing else disturbed beyond the missing paintings. No closet door had been left open, no drawers with their contents spilling out. The sliding glass door with its pry marks was securely locked; she used a tissue around her fingers to make sure. At last, certain that no one was there, she’d called out to Joe Grey and Dulcie, at first using only, “Kitty, kitty,” in the silly, high voice that she sometimes used to tease Joe, and that he hated. She’d called Joe’s name, and Dulcie’s, but there was only silence.

What if the cats were hurt, unable to answer her? Moving carefully from closet to closet, using a tissue to turn the knobs, she searched for them knowing Max would be furious that she’d prowled the house like this, playing cop.

When she was certain the cats weren’t there, and having found nothing more out of order besides the missing paintings, she’d hurried on to the Waterman house, stopping to fetch gloves from her Blazer. She was at the Watermans’ door when Clyde and Ryan pulled up.

“Chapmans were robbed,” she told them. “Looks like they took only Theresa’s paintings, but it makes me worry about the cats. I want to look in the other three houses before we call the department.”

“Not a good idea,” Ryan said. “Call the department now, Charlie.”

Charlie looked at her and knew she was right. She called the dispatcher, then she called Max. The phone went dead while they were talking, but that wasn’t unusual in this hilly area. She sat in the car with Ryan and Clyde, and Rock, waiting impatiently and worrying about the cats, worrying that the thief might have hurt them. It was a given that if those cats spotted the burglar, they’d followed him into the houses. Though they were only cats and shouldn’t draw his attention, those three had a way of attracting trouble.

When Detective Davis arrived, Charlie gave her the keys to the four houses, and they waited while Davis and four other officers cleared each house. Charlie wanted to go in with Davis, but only when all four houses had been cleared did Juana take her through, so Charlie could tell her what might be missing. Juana had found no sign of a breakin. When two more units arrived, Juana sent two officers to canvas the neighborhood.

In the Waterman house, Charlie found nothing out of order until, wearing gloves, she retrieved the hidden key for Rita’s jewelry cabinet. When Davis opened the carved door, they stared in at empty shelves.

“Rita’s beautiful jewelry. Her baroque and Byzantine pieces, the lovely cloisonn?.” She turned to look at Juana. “That seventeenth-century faux emerald necklace I so liked.” She stood very still, touching nothing, her anger sharp and hot.

The house wasn’t torn apart as if someone had seen Rita wearing such jewelry and was looking for it. This thief knew not only where to look, but must have known the location of the key. Leaving the master bedroom, they went through the rest of the house again but Charlie could find nothing else disturbed, everything seemed to be in place. Certainly the electronic equipment was all there, televisions, the music system, and the computers. As they walked through, Charlie innocently called the cats, saying, “Kitty, kitty,” so they’d know she wasn’t alone.

No one mewed, she heard no clawing at a door, no faint cry of a cat in distress. She had a sick feeling that the burglar might have discovered the cats following him as he made his thieving rounds, that maybe Joe had followed too closely on his heels and the burglar had turned on him. Had an edgy thief, finding the big cat stalking him through the dark rooms, been startled into cornering Joe and hurting him? And what about Dulcie and Kit? Had the three cats been together, all three witnesses to the thefts? All three victims?

She watched Juana, wearing cotton gloves, open each closet. They found just the usual household contents, some cupboards cluttered, some neatly arranged. At last they left the Watermans’, moving on to the Becker house, where Juana had found much of the furniture missing, indentations on the carpet where little tables had stood, empty picture hooks on the walls, bare places on the hardwood describing the absence of Frances’s small imported rugs.

The house was cold, too, from a draft through the open window just beside the front door.“He didn’t get in this way,” Juana said. “He may have forced the window and reached through, not knowing it was a double bolt with no key in the lock.”

No, Charlie thought.No burglar could have entered. But a cat could.

“You want to record what’s missing?” Juana asked. Charlie nodded, Juana produced a small tape recorder, and Charlie followed her through the rooms inventorying as best she could remember every missing rug, carved table, painting, and piece of porcelain. They had circled the living room, the dining room, and the kitchen, had returned to the front hall and were headed for the main-level bedrooms when a yowl brought them up short. Charlie spun around. Davis reached to open the closet door, which shook with thuds. Joe yowled again, louder, and Dulcie and Kit mewled frantically.

Juana pulled the door open and the cats were all over Charlie. Joe Grey hit her shoulder, clinging with demanding claws. Dulcie and Kit climbed up her jacket, mewling and lashing their tails with indignation that they’d been locked in. But even as Charlie hugged and cuddled them, Kit leaped free again, streaked out through the open window and the wrought-iron grille and disappeared into the night. Dulcie tensed to race after her, but Joe laid his ears back. His look said,Let her go.

Dulcie scowled at him as if thinking Kit could use some help, and before he could stop her she, too, was gone. Joe and Charlie stared at each other, the tomcat’s yellow eyes burning with annoyance. Davis looked on in silence. Neither Charlie nor Joe dared wonder what she was thinking. After a moment, she said, “What about the closet?” The shelves were nearly bare.

“It was full,” Charlie said. “He cleaned it out. Everything was wrapped, I can’t itemize those pieces. I think they’d be similar to what we listed.”

Carrying Joe, Charlie returned to her Blazer. Ryan and Clyde were parked behind it, Rock asleep in the backseat. As Charlie approached the convertible, Rock woke and lunged up to nose with delight at the tomcat, slobbering in his face, making Joe grimace.

One squad car had left, and Davis was still in the Becker house. Watching carefully to make sure they were alone, they sat in the roadster listening to Joe’s whispered and condensed version of the night’s adventure.

“He could have killed you,” Clyde said. “Could have killed all three of you.”

“Four,” Joe said, reminding them of Tansy’s part in the action.

“And the burglar?” Charlie asked. “Did you get a better look at him?”

“Not a good look,” Joe said. “But I’d know that smell, the same as around the swimming pool.” He tried to describe the scent, which seemed to him a cross between catmint and maybe mouthwash. “How did he get openers to all four garages and the door keys? And what made you come looking inthe middle of the night?”

“So strange,” Ryan said. “All at once we got worried about you three. Rock was pacing and fussing, and then Wilma called. We all felt that something was amiss.” She frowned, her green eyes puzzled.

Joe Grey shrugged. He didn’t think it strange that a few perceptive humans could sense when their friends were in danger, he was surprised it didn’t happen more often. He was about to express his opinion when, seeing two officers approaching, he curled up in Ryan’s lap and closed his eyes.

29

KIT RAN UP through the hills shying at every sound, dodging every changing shadow as the moon came and went, the land pale one moment and inky the next-and empty. Nothing moved. She could see nothing crouched, waiting. Wherewas Tansy? Had she headed home by herself, so small and alone? She could almost hear the smaller cat crying out to her. She didn’t understand their strange connection, she only knew it was like the bond between sisters.

She couldn’t remember her own sisters, she didn’t know if she’d everhad sisters or brothers. What would that be like, to grow up in a real family, with siblings to play with and squabble with, all of them connected by a bond that was like no other?

Racing through a black valley, her heart pounding, she bolted up the side of a hill as the moon showed itself. She could hear the coyotes, off to the south near the Harper ranch. When she reached the crest, almost winded, there was Tansy high above her, poised atop the next hill, the pale little cat rearing up to look. Another cat lay beside her, just as pale, but very still.

Sage. It was Sage. He didn’t rise or move. Flying up the hill to them, Kit was cold with fear. Oh, what was wrong? Sage was like her own brother. Once, she’d thought he would be more than a friend, that he would be her mate. Now he lay unmoving, his head resting against Tansy’s paws.

She slowed and padded silently up to them; she couldn’t stop shivering. Sage moved a little, then, and opened his eyes to look up at her.

Tansy mewed,“That man…He threw a hammer at Sage, he hurt him bad.”

Kit crouched next to Tansy, her nose to Sage’s nose, feeling his quick, shallow breathing.

“I found him just above that house where they’re digging, I wanted to go for help but he’s so…He insisted on going home but then he hurt more and was weaker, and I don’t know what to do.”

Kit touched Sage’s shoulder gently with a careful paw. When she stroked his side he jerked away, catching his breath. She didn’t touch him again. She thought of Dr. Firetti and the animal hospital but Sage hated that place, even though John Firetti had saved his life. And the hospital stood so far across the hills, clear at the other side of the village, too far for Sage ever to walk there. How could this have happened, after all the pain he’d already suffered, the broken and crushed bones, his long recovery in a cast, his long time among humans as he tried not to fear the human world? How could this be fair?

But life wasn’t fair, and that made her all the more angry. “I’m going for help. The road is just down there, Lucinda and Pedric can drive that far, and we-”

“No,” Sage said. “I don’t want humans, I don’t want a doctor, I don’t want to be inside a building.” He tried to scramble up, then lay back. “I can walk, I just need to rest awhile.”

Kit imagined broken ribs, bones puncturing vital organs if he moved, internal bleeding, all the terrifying things she had learned about in the human world and wished she hadn’t. She was reaching to touch his back leg, to see if the old, healed injury had been damaged, when a rustle in the grass made her spin around.

Dulcie stood there. She looked at Tansy, looked at Sage’s still form, and then crouched over Sage as Kit had done. When she felt him as Kit had, he flattened his ears and gritted his teeth but didn’t flinch. “Can you get up?” she asked softly.

“In a little while.” He lay quietly looking at them as Tansy snuggled beside him, her face next to his, shivering against his stillness. Around them the hills were silent, even the yipping of the coyotes had ceased. Above them the moon went in and out of the clouds, throwing running shadows across the frightened cats, and Kit licked tears from her nose.

But at last Sage stirred, and rose, leaning against Tansy.“I want to go home. I want the clowder, I want my own cave.” Limping, he started away up the hills. Slowly the three females walked with him, supporting him as they made their way toward the fallen mansion that was home, his and Tansy’s home.

ON THE STREET of the robberies, lights burned in all four houses and in the neighbors’ houses, where people stood in their yards in little knots asking questions of one another and watching as officers secured the four yards with crime tape. Police cars crowded the street, their radios cutting through officers’ voices. Two detectives and three officers worked the houses, searching, photographing, lifting prints, vacuuming for trace evidence. One burglary might not have commanded this degree of attention. Four, with a possible link to murder, was another matter. The Becker house, where Charlie had released Joe and Dulcie and Kit from the closet, seemed to have fared the worst, stripped of all the smaller furnishings.

Juana had emerged from the Longley house when she took a call from the dispatcher. Glancing up at Charlie, in the roadster, she gave her the thumbs-up then stepped over to the car and punched in a single digit on her cell phone, turning on the speaker.

Max was saying,“I’m on my way, just turned off Ocean.”

“You’ll like this,” Juana told him. “Prints from all four burglaries match those from the swimming pool.”

Max chuckled.“Very nice. Charlie’s okay?”

“She’s right here.” She handed Charlie the phone.

“Fine,” Charlie said. “I’m fine.” Down the block, lights turned onto the street, moving toward them, and in a moment Max’s pickup double-parked beside a police unit. As Charlie hurried to the driver’s window, and Davis returned to the Longley house to finish lifting prints, behind Clyde’s and Ryan’s backs, Joe Grey slipped out of the roadster and through the shadows, and into the house behind Juana.

WHAT HE’D LIKE to do was stroll casually up to Davis and say,I told you so! I told you there was a body at the bottom of the swimming pool! And I had a pretty good idea, all along, that our burglar was the same guy!

But of course Davishad listened to him, as the detective always did. She might complain about the anonymity of the phantom snitch, but she paid attention. And now, with the matching prints, with burglary and apparent murder linked together, both detectives would be working different aspects of the case. Following Juana into the master bedroom, he slipped under the dresser to watch her lift prints in the adjoining bath, handling with gloves the cosmetic bottles, the toothpaste tube, though these were items the burglar probably hadn’t handled. The bath was done in shades of cream-colored marble; countertop, floor, shower, and the walls were painted a pale cream. Slipping up behind Juana, Joe used his nose to work the scene in his own way, sniffing for the elusive medicinal scent that so resembled catmint. If the smellwas of a medicine, and if he could find one bathroom among the four houses where it was stronger, that might be the best lead yet. It was the combination of crimes that was the teaser.

Did this guy kill the woman because she knew he was planning the burglaries? Maybe she confronted him and threatened to call the law? Or had it been an accident, had she found out and confronted him, he’d lost his temper, hit her, and she fell? And then he was too scared to call for help, didn’t want to tangle with the cops? Maybe he had a record, maybe he was on parole. So he’d hauled her out of there, hosed down the pool, loaded up the body, and…and what?

Where was the body now? He had to stash it somewhere before he proceeded with his burglaries. Or was the corpse tucked away in his RV all the time, while he loaded the stolen goods in with it?

He watched Juana leave the room, then he trotted into the bathroom to sort more carefully through the scents. If the scent he was looking for was medicine, maybe he should check all the bathrooms. Here he smelled lemon soap, mint toothpaste, spicy shaving lotion-he thought he caught the catmint scent but, mixed with everything else, he couldn’t be sure. He checked the other two bathrooms, then headed for the Watermans’, intent on covering all the bathrooms in the four houses if he could avoid the two detectives and the officers, who wouldn’t take kindly to a tomcat walking through the evidence.

IT WAS AN hour later when, having accomplished his task but gained nothing, Joe saw Clyde coming up the street, peering among the bushes looking for him. The time was well after midnight, pushing dawn, and Clyde was yawning. Joe, scrambling up a pepper tree, didn’t intend to go home. Vanishing into the roof’s shadows, he raced away over the neighbors’ roofs toward the hills. Kit’s hasty retreat, and then Dulcie taking off so fast, had left him increasingly uneasy as he prowled the four houses. Kit was so charmed by that half-grown kitten-if Kit hadgone after her, Dulcie would have followed; and a sharp nervousness filled his belly, a shaky unease that sent him flying toward the dark hills.

30

JOE WAS HIGH up the hills making his way through a tangle of fallen oaks when the wind shifted and he smelled the stink of coyote. Slowing to a trot, he scanned the slopes around him. He didn’t see the beast, and he caught no glimpse of Dulcie or Kit. The rolling mass of open land remained empty, and he went on warily through the dark, tangled grass.

When he smelled the coyote again it was way too close, somewhere in the black valley just below him. Ducking into a maze of boulders he backed into a hollow between them just as the beast lunged. He backed deeper, pressing down among the granite rocks. The coyote pushed its nose in and began to dig, reckless and fierce. Joe raked him twice. The beast ignored him and kept digging. When Joe struck for its eyes and bit its black nose, it yowled and backed away. He was poised to charge out at it when the coyote spun around and ran.

Slipping out to look, Joe watched it race away with a cluster of cats clinging to its back, raking into its thick coat. Joe stood up on a boulder, laughing, as the beast went tearing off into the night with its unwelcome passengers. Then Dulcie was there beside him, frantically nosing at him.

“Are you all right?”

“I am now,” he said. They heard the coyote scream, heard dry bushes breaking, saw the beast vanish over the high crest.

Moments later a dozen cats emerged from the night, crowding around them. These were the clowder leaders: white-coated Cotton, tabby Coyote with his tufted ears, and pale Willow of the faded calico coat and green eyes.

“Come on,” Willow said. “That was a yearling pup, three of them are off hunting on their own and it isn’t safe.We were hunting wood rats for…” She paused uneasily. “To take back to the clowder when we saw him stalking you.”

“Hunting wood rats for who?” Joe said. Only a sick or injured cat didn’t hunt on his own. “What’s wrong? Where’s Kit?”

“She’s fine,” Dulcie said.

“Tansy, then?” he asked, thinking guiltily of that scrawny little mite who had led them through the empty houses and then run away so frightened.

“Sage is hurt,” Dulcie said. “I think he found the missing body, I think he found the killer.” She turned, and she and Joe followed the clowder cats up the hills toward the Pamillon mansion, Joe filled with questions that she insisted must wait.

As long as they could remember, the mansion and its acreage had stood abandoned, home for raccoons, deer, the occasional bobcat, but more recently for the wild clowder. Soon they were crowding in through the fallen front wall of the two-story house, where the parlor, and the nursery above, stood open to the world like a vast stage ready for a theatrical production.

To the wild clowder, this shelter was a palace. The slate roof was sound, the rooms dry enough, and not only did the big house offer protection, but its acreage with all its cellars and outbuildings provided uncounted places for a cat to hide from danger and to hunt the smaller beasts that sustained them.

The parlor’s flowered wallpaper was peeling off in long strips, the tables and beds and upholstered furniture sagged with rot, their stuffing pulled out by generations of long-deceased mice and rats. Dulcie led Joe across the cluttered room to the back where, behind a moldering couch, Tansy crouched besideSage. The young tom lay on a cushion that was little more than cotton stuffing but that looked warm and soft; he was very still, his eyes closed, his breathing quick and shallow. Kit sat nearby, her ears down, her tortoiseshell face grim with worry.

Joe sat down beside Sage, and the clowder cats crowded around, resuming a vigil they had left when they went to hunt. Four cats carried dead wood rats, which they laid beside the couch where their scent might tease Sage’s appetite. Outside the broken wall the night darkened as the clouds shifted, and the wind blew cold off the far sea, intruding into the abandoned room, unwelcome and bold.

Joe could smell Sage’s distress and fear. “What happened?Where did you see the body? What-?”

“Let him rest awhile,” Willow said. “The wind was knocked out of him, maybe some ribs broken. He hurts here and here,” she said, lifting a careful paw but not touching Sage. She looked up when an orange tomcat slipped in beside them dangling a wood rat from his jaws. When he held it right in Sage’s face, Sage’s eyes opened and brightened, and he struggled to sit up, wincing as he reached out with a gripping paw and pulled the wood rat to him. He was soon gulping down the welcome meal, his enthusiasm strengthening with each morsel.

When he’d finished he rose and stretched, and clearly he felt stronger. He clawed at the sofa and then limped around the barrier and stood looking across the ruined parlor through the wide vista of broken wall, to the hills below. Far away, the moon hung low above the sea, half hidden by low clouds.

“The pain’s not so bad now,” Sage said. “My side doesn’t hurt so much.” He looked at Joe Grey, in awe of the older cat, thinking about the time, in the animal hospital, when Joe and Dulcie had let a doctor take their own blood so that he could live.

Joe came to stand beside him.“What happened tonight?” he repeated.

Lying down again for a little rest, Sage told Joe about the pit inside the garage and how the man had buried a woman there, how the man saw him looking and went pale and snatched up the hammer and threw it, how the glass had shattered and he was knocked off the lumber pile. As Sage spun the tale, the clowder cats all crowded around, their minds filled with what, to them, was indeed a threatening but fascinating scene. The speaking cats might fear humans, but the strangeness of the human world never ceased to stir their wonder. There was a link between the two worlds that would forever fascinate them.

“That man left the same smell,” Tansy said. “The same as the man who robbed those houses.”

Joe Grey looked at her with interest, then trotted to the edge of the broken floor and stood looking down toward the remodel tucked among the lower hills.“Ryan will dump gravel in the morning, they’ll fill in the pit and then pour the concrete.” He looked around at Dulcie. “We can’t let them do that.” And without another word he trotted out through the broken wall and headed away toward the village. As Dulcie and Kit galloped to join him, behind them, Sage rose.

“You’re too weak,” Willow said.

“I’ll go just a little way,” said Sage. “I want to see…” He turned to look at her. “I’m stronger, I want to go just a short way…” Willow looked at him, puzzled, but she said no more. She and Tansy followed him, unwilling to let him go alone. Soon the whole clowder was moving down the hills, surrounding Sage to shelter him, but filled with curiosity, too, wanting to see this strange grave, this cruel and lonely disposal of a human person.

IT WAS VERY late when Clyde and Ryan headed upstairs, Clyde still complaining because Joe had raced away into the night. Ryan dropped Snowball gently on the bed and set her cup of cocoa on the nightstand. Crossing to the fireplace, she knelt to light the gas logs. There was a little pop, and bright flames licked up, silhouetting her slim form through her translucent gown. She rose, turning, her dark hair tumbling across her cheek. She picked up her cell phone from the dresser, and before putting it in the charger she checked her messages.

She looked up at Clyde, frowning.“Gravel won’t be there until ten. They’re usually more reliable. Scotty said he called the concrete company and delayed that delivery so they wouldn’t sit waiting. Damn. I’d hoped we’d be finished by noon.”

“Call Charlie. Maybe, before you go to work, you can help with her phone calls.”

An hour ago, when they’d parted from Charlie, leaving the robbery scene, she’d been trying to reach the four families, to find out what instructions they would have for her once the police had released the scenes. And to find out if anyone else had had keys to any of their doors. She’d had no luck reaching any of the four couples. She’d headed home so irritated, and concerned, that Ryan wondered if she’d be up all night dialing cell phones that had been turned off. What worried Charlie the most was the possibility that one of the few employees who’d left her, or one of the two she’d fired, might havecopied her keys on the sly.

But maybe by the time Davis finished canvassing the nearby houses, they’d have some leads. That was a close neighborhood, maybe someone had seen a stranger or a strange car. Everyone for blocks around had to know those four couples were on vacation, and they were inclined to watch out for one another. Ryan dialed Charlie’s cell, got a busy signal, and left a message: “My delivery’s delayed for tomorrow morning. If you haven’t reached your clients, call me. I’ll make some calls for you before I head up to the job.”

Clyde sat down on the edge of the bed, watching Rock and Snowball, the small cat curled up tight against the Weimaraner, happily purring.“Such a sweet and innocent little cat,” Clyde said, reaching to gently stroke Snowball.“You don’t go chasing off in the middle of the night after burglars.” He wished Joe would learn to stay in at night-and how unrealistic was that?

Ryan finished her cocoa, set her cup on the dresser, and went to brush her teeth. Getting into bed, she slipped her feet carefully around the sleeping animals.“At least everything was insured-except maybe Theresa’s paintings. Insurance on pieces of art is ridiculously high.” She looked at him bleakly. “I don’t know if I can sleep, worrying about Joe. I’ve worried before, but not like this. You’d think, after they got themselves locked in that closet, they’d be ready to call it a night.”

“Not those three.” He switched off the lamp and stretched out.

“Did he tell you what, exactly, they were doing? Tell you how they got locked in? Were they tailing the burglar? Why did they let him get so near that he shut them in? And what good to run surveillance,” she said crossly, “if they go off in the night and don’ttell anyone what they found?”

Clyde sighed, and shook his head.“We just have to live with it.” He drew her close. “Do we have a choice?”

31

HE WAS SWEATING as he headed for the highway. He couldn’t stop seeing that cat watching him through the window. What had made it stare in at him so intently and then stare straight down at her grave, almost as if itknew what he was doing? He thought about that big gray cat watching him, too, while he was packing up the last of the books. He couldn’t figure how it had gotten in there. Why had it and those other two followed him to the next house? Evil devils, all of them. Evil.

Well, he’d taken care of them. With any luck, they wouldn’t be found in that closet for weeks-found dead from thirst and starvation. He smiled, thinking of them locked in and slowly dying, and a chill of pleasure filled him, a sharp and satisfied lust.

But then he couldn’t get his breath. He had to find the inhaler. He felt all his pockets again, felt around on the car seat.Had he left it on the table by her grave, where he was headed? If he’d left it in one of those houses…Oh, God. When those cleaning people found the paintings gone, found the furniture and rugs cleaned out, the books and paperweights, there’d be cops all over those rooms. He couldn’t let them find the inhaler with his prints on it. Couldn’t…

He had to get hold of himself. He searched his pockets yet again, squirming up in the seat as he drove. Found his handkerchief that she’d always ironed and folded just so. His pocketknife, the gloves he’d used. The four sets of keys, which he would dispose of somewhere along the highway, toss them off the cliff into the Pacific. But no inhaler.

But even if they found it, found anything of his, what would it matter? He was a neighbor, a friend, he was in and out of those houses all the time. The cops could find his fingerprints-which they wouldn’t because of the gloves-and it wouldn’t make any difference. And yet, heading for the remodel, he knew he’d feel easier not to have left it in one of the houses. Before he searched the remodel, he knew he had to go back to the houses he’d robbed, even if he had to leave the RV sitting right there all loaded up…Oh Christ…

But he’d feel better when it was done, when he’d found it. Winding along the hillside roads, back onto the residential streets, half of him knew he was being paranoid-the neighborhood was quiet and dark, everyone was asleep, there was nothing to worry about. This wouldn’t take long, and he’d feeleasier, maybe itwas there somewhere. Swinging into a U-turn he headed along the hillside street above his street, where he could look down there before he approached. Or maybe he could park up there, walk down the hill, find the inhaler, and then hit the highway, and not have to go back near her grave.

Head for the city, make contact with the fence, collect his money, and then across the Golden Gate and on up the coast, just another tourist in his beat-up old RV. Drive slow and easy up through the little lumber towns, on into Oregon and then inland to eastern Washington for a while before he headed home-returning alone and devastated from their vacation, where she’d left him. Had taken her bags and walked out on him, cleaned out their bank account, and caught a plane to the East Coast.

He’d take care of the electronic deposits on her laptop, transfer the funds to her household account. He didn’t know yet how he’d manage withdrawals from that account, he’d figure that out later. He’d tell people she had a lover, that he’d been so shocked and hurt, heartbroken. And then to find they’d been robbed, that would nearly destroy him.

Calling the cops about the robbery, he’d wonder aloud if she had come back and cleaned out her treasures, stashed them somewhere before she caught her plane. He wouldn’t be certain this was a burglary until he learned that the other houses had been robbed. Then he and his neighbors would share their misery.

Winding along the hill’s steep crest on the dark and narrow street a block above his, he was rehearsing the poignant scene with his neighbors when a tire blew. The RV lurched, the steering wheel jerked in his hands, and the suddenly unwieldy vehicle headed for the drop. There was no guardrail. It was all he could do to pull the RV over onto the opposite side, against the rising hill.

He got out, shaken, looked along the dark, empty street where it was too steep for houses. The three houses high up on the cliff were dark. He walked over to the edge, looked down the steep drop to his own street, below…Quickly, he stepped back.

The street was filled with lights. Car lights, lights on in all the houses. More cars approaching, cop cars. He could hear men’s voices and the distant mutter of police radios. What the hell was this?

Had someone seen the RV enter or leave one of the garages and, unable to mind their own business, called the cops? The garage door openers had beenher idea. Over the past year, using one excuse or another to be in each garage alone for a few minutes, borrowing tools or a dab of paint, he’d used the electronic duplicator she’d purchased through a special catalog to program duplicate garage door openers. It had worked like a charm.

Two more police cars arrived, pulling up in front of the brightly lit houses. He could see half a dozen uniforms searching the yards, their flashlight beams cutting into the shadows of trees and bushes. Their predatory search panicked him. Helplessly watching, wanting only to get away, he turned nervously to attend to the flat tire.

He didn’t want to use the flashlight, not with all those cops down there, one of them was sure to look up the hill, and they’d be on him like a bunch of damned commandos. He hadn’t changed a tire in years. He found the spare under the floor in the back, just inside the door, but it took him a while to figure out how to release it. She’d tripped up there, not to have gone over the manual with him. In all the five years they’d had the RV, parked in that rented garage or off on short trips, the tires had never even gone soft on them, and they’d sure never had a flat.

When he released the spare and bounced it, it was soft, too. It took him awhile to find the hand pump. He was almost convinced there wasn’t one, until at last he found it down in the well where the tire had been housed, jammed way to hell down under the bracket for the jack and other tire tools.

He got the tire pumped up, his heart pounding, his breath short. After two tries, he got the jack set, lying under the RV so he’d be sure to get it right under the axle. He’d started to jack up the vehicle when he remembered he hadn’t set the brake, or loosened the lugs before taking the weight off. He had to ease the wheel down again, set the brake, then start over, and that angered him.

When he removed the nuts, he nearly lost them before he thought to put them in his pocket. He hadn’t changed a tire since he was in his teens. The one time more recently that her car had had a flat, he’d called AAA, had let the emergency road crew do it. Tires didn’t go flat now like they had years ago.

He was sweating and nervous when he finished, anxious to get away. When he looked over the edge, the cops were still all over the place. He thought he saw the chief of police, Harper. And the woman who ran the cleaning service, that was his wife. Regular family affair. He could see that woman detective, too. For an instant he felt a belly-wrenching fear that somehow they knew he was up there watching them. But that was stupid. He was tired, that was all. Worn out from changing the tire, breathing hard. He needed that inhaler. Turning away, he checked the lug nuts again, but they were tight. He’d screwed them on hastily in the dark, wanting to rest. It had taken the last of his breath to get them all good and tight.

Shoving the wheel he’d removed into the back of the RV and laying the tools beside it, he carefully eased the door closed so it made hardly a click. His hands shaking, he got in, started the engine, and headed slowly up the dark street using only his parking lights. Squinting through the windshield at the sheer drop, he saw again in uncomfortable memory that pale cat staring in the window at him, watching him bury her, watching him lay her down in the grave and clumsily scoop earth over her, shovel by slow shovelful. He couldn’t stop thinking that the cat knew he had killed her.

When he was around the first bend, he switched on the headlights. Driving slowly across the hills, his thoughts were filled with the inhaler that he seemed to see clearly now, sitting on that contractor’s worktable among the hammers and screwdrivers. Driving the dark and winding residential road toward the freeway, he turned right at the top of the hill, crossed over the freeway, and headed for the empty remodel.

This time, he parked right in front of the place, right beside the dirt pile. He’d be there only a minute. The houses below were all dark, not one light; he’d just pick the lock, get the inhaler, and he’d be out again and gone.

Letting himself in, he searched the table, then the dirty floor under the table. The inhaler wasn’t there. He stood at the edge of the pit shining the flashlight’s beam back and forth across the raw earth, but he picked out only the black drainpipe and the boot prints. He turned to search the rest of the garage, along the wall where he’d sat on the floor, everywhere he’d been; once in a while he glanced up at the broken window, thinking about that cat, hoping he’d killed it.

The window remained empty, the cold air scudding in. He didn’t find the inhaler. The cat didn’t appear again. At last, trying to figure out where he could have left it, he locked up again and headed for the RV, taking a moment to circle the yard to see if he might somehow have dropped it there. Cupping his hand around the flashlight, directing only a thin beam onto the ground, he approached the broken window. Across the lumber and on the earth around it, shards of broken glass blazed up at him, scattered among deep paw prints. For an instant, he lifted his beam to the window.

As his light hit the sharp teeth of glass, the pale cat exploded out of the blackness straight into his face, its eyes ablaze, its pale fur standing out like licks of white flame. It landed in his face, raking and biting him. He stumbled backward and fell, and a second cat was on him, cats all over him in a tangle clawing him, so many cats their weight held him down. They screamed and raked him and the pale cat was right in his face. The dark cat with a white stripe down its nose was at him, too, so fierce he was terrified they’d blind him. Blood ran into his eyes. Wild with terror, he drove them off enough to stagger up and run, cats clinging to his back and shoulders and throat. As he knocked them away, he could swear he heard a voice say, “Leave him, let him go.” He spun around to see who was there, saw no one in the blackness. He’d dropped the flashlight, its beam shining uselessly along the ground picking out shards of glass. The cats had drawn back but they crouched on the lumber pile as if to leap again. He ran and stumbled and nearly fell again as he made for the RV. Flinging open the door, he bolted in, slammed and locked it, leaned against it, shaking.

Someone was out there, someone had spoken, but he’d seen no one. Fearing a witness, he started the engine and took off with a squeal of tires, heading for the highway.

32

THE TRUCK HAD backed up to the garage of the remodel, ready to dump its gravel. Joe, Dulcie, and Kit, watching from the tall grass on the hill above, shifted from paw to paw, and every few minutes Joe Grey reared up, scanning the road below. Still there was no sign of Ryan.

The pickup belonging to the two Latino laborers was parked beside Scotty’s pickup, the two men sat in the cab smoking cigarettes, waiting to haul gravel and spread it evenly across the pit. Only Ryan could stop the work, she was the only person the cats could tell, her uncle Scott didn’t know the cats’ secret. Though Joe thought that with his heritage, with that mysterious turn of mind the Scots-Irish seemed to have, the truth might not come as such a shock. But they didn’t need anyone else to know, too many people already shared their secret.

Watching for Ryan, fidgeting nervously, Joe knew he should have gone home, should have woken her before dawn and told her to stop the deliveries, told her what the gravel and cement would be burying.

None of the three cats had been home. After they attacked the killer, they and the feral band had spent the few remaining hours until dawn licking bruises and hurt places on their bodies, licking blood from their cut paws and carefully pulling out small shards of glass with their teeth. Glass that they’d dropped into a little hole and covered over, as they would cover anything vile. As the first light of dawn grayed the sky, most of the ferals had headed home smiling with pleasure at their night’s adventure; Sage’s retribution had been sweet. Only Sage and Tansy had remained with the village cats, Sage wanting to see what would happen next. He and Tansy rested higher up the hill, well hidden among the weeds and grass.

One thing for sure, Joe thought, glancing up at them,that man won’t mess with a cat again. If he didn’t fear cats before, he fears us now.

Down in the yard, Scotty stood in front of the garage talking on his cell phone. With the wind blowing and the big truck’s engine running, the cats couldn’t hear much. It seemed to be a one-sided conversation, as if he was leaving a message, most likely that they were going ahead with the work. It would cost a bundle to keep the gravel truck waiting, and would cost probably far more to delay the cement truck. Inthe few months Clyde and Ryan had been married, Joe had learned quite a lot about the construction business. These delivery folks charged by the hour, and they charged a lot. Wherewas Ryan? She’d known the deliveries would be early, she’d said she hoped to be finished by noon.

Joe watched Scotty close his phone, scratch his red beard as if perplexed, and then turn to speak to the driver, a skinny man, and stooped. He had rounded shoulders that made his khaki shirt hang in folds across his chest, and big, protruding ears beneath a striped cap. They watched him step to the cab, and in a moment the truck bed began to tilt up from the front. As it lifted to its maximum height, the gravel slid out with a grating thunder into a pile before the open garage. At once the two Latino laborers began to shovel it into the wheelbarrows to be hauled into the garage and dumped into the pit, further covering the buried victim. The tomcat watched the road impatiently.

Ryan was never late to a job. Soon Joe was not only impatient but getting worried about her, thinking about wrecks and illness, fussing as nervously as his housemates fussed when he didn’t show up at bedtime.

“We could stand in the pit, stand over the grave,” Kit said. “They wouldn’t pour gravel onus.”

Joe snorted.“And Scotty wouldn’t pick us up and throw us out of the garage? And you don’t think that little protest would make him wonder?”

Dulcie glanced back up the hill, watching the tall grass ripple where Tansy and Sage crouched. She was interested to see that Sage, after last night’s fine vindication, still wanted to hang around and see that the body was found. She wondered if he really cared, or if he was, after all, simply too hurt to go home. That worried her, but the good thing was that Ryan would be here soon. If hewas badly hurt, she could get him to the vet despite his reluctance.

They could hear the older laborer, Fernando, in the garage, dumping his wheelbarrow load into the pit. He was the shorter of the two, with grizzled gray hair. The two worked one at either side of the gravel pile, so they didn’t get in each other’s way. A mist of gravel dust filled the air around them like thin smoke.

“They’ll have to dig it all out again,” Dulcie said.

“Let’s hope Ryan’s willing,” Joe said. “Sage is the only one who saw him bury the body.”

“She won’t refuse! Ryan knows Sage wouldn’t lie.”

Moving the load of gravel seemed to take forever. Long before the two laborers scraped the last bits of rock from the driveway, the driver had handed Scotty an invoice, gotten back in the cab, and rumbled off down the hill. Still there was no sign of Ryan, and half the deed was done, the body in the pit entombed beneath a thick blanket of crushed rock.

The cats had been waiting for over an hour when Dulcie said,“Looks like they’ll have to dig out a lot more than gravel. Here comes the cement.” They watched the cement truck struggle up the hill, its big, round belly rotating as it churned, mixing its load. Kit said, “I left my paw prints in the neighbors’ fresh cement once. Then I ran.” She smiled. “My prints are still there, maybe they’ll be there forever.” She looked at Joe, her eyes widening.“Can Ryan dig that up again, after it gets hard?”

“With a jackhammer,” Joe said.

The cement truck turned its nose into the street and backed up to the garage. The driver got out, Scotty checked over the order, and they set the chute in place. The cats watched the thick, muddy-looking cement begin to slide down the chute, eased along by the men’s shovels. Soon Scotty disappeared inside the garage; the cats listened to the gritty, wet stroke of shovels, imagining the red-bearded foreman and his helpers distributing the wet concrete like cake batter that would harden into manmade stone.

When the pour was finished, the driver hosed down his chutes and stored them. He carried an invoice in to Scotty, got in his truck, and pulled away. Within the garage, the sound of scraping had changed to a slick slushing. Joe envisioned Scotty floating out the cement with a wide, flat tool on a long handle, working it to a smooth finish. He had seen Ryan do this when she poured Clyde’s back patio. “Come on,” he said, and he headed down the hill into another stand of tall grass where they could see into the garage, but could still see the road.

Inside the garage, the cement was a dark lake, lying even with the old floor. The cats had hardly gotten settled when Ryan’s red truck appeared far down the road, coming around a curve, hurrying up to the job.

Manuel, the younger Latino laborer, carried the float and the shovels out to the yard and began to hose them down. The moment Ryan’s pickup pulled in and parked, before Joe or Dulcie could stop Kit, she was gone, scorching straight to Ryan, leaping up on her as she stepped out of the truck. As Ryan gathered Kit in her arms, Joe crouched to follow, but Dulcie’s gentle claws pulled him back. “Let her go.” The tabby sat down beside him. “Let her do it, she won’t give us away to the men.”

“She’s so…”

“Enthusiastic,” Dulcie said, smiling.

Ryan stood holding Kit, laughing-but then her expression changed to puzzlement. She cuddled Kit across her shoulder, close to her ear, and wandered away from the garage toward the far end of the house where they wouldn’t be heard. The cats watched Kit look all around and then whisper in her ear. Ryan was very still-then she spun around, carrying Kit, and headed for the garage.

Moving inside, she stood looking down at the smoothly finished cement. She stroked Kit, looking at the tortoiseshell then looking back at the concrete, then glancing out to where Scotty was hosing off his boots.

STANDING AT THE edge of the finished floor, Ryan thought about digging it up again, about doing it right now, before it hardened. She could just hear Scotty, whose Scots-Irish temper matched his red hair. What the hell could she tell him? What possible excuse could she give him?

She didn’t imagine Kit was lying, any more than she would think Joe Grey or Dulcie would lie to her. If they said Sage had seen a body buried there, and ifthey believed Sage, then she had to believe them. This was one moment when her still limited experience with speaking cats strained every fiber of her good sense, one of the moments when she felt she’d fallen into Alice ’s Wonderland. And yet she hadn’t imagined Kit’s frantic revelation, certainly she didn’t imagine the imperious, yellow-eyed gaze Kit had turned on her, demanding and expectant.

But what about Sage? What if Sagehad lied, for some unimaginable reason? Sage was wild, his band was feral, he might have very different scruples from the village cats. What if they spent the rest of the day shoveling out the heavy, wet cement, and then hauling out heavy gravel, then moving the drainpipes and digging down into the earth, and found nothing?

She was still debating what to do when Scotty came into the garage behind her.“Nice work,” she said unnecessarily, indicating the cement. “I thought they weren’t coming until ten.”

“They had a last minute cancellation, so they just came on.” He reached to stroke Kit. “What’s Greenlaw’s cat doing up here?”

“Lucinda and Pedric walk up in this neighborhood. I guess she saw the activity and got curious, she’s a nosy little thing.”

Kit narrowed her eyes at Ryan, and her claws tightened a little against Ryan’s shoulder. Ryan grinned, and stroked her, and looked back at the wet cement wishing she had X-ray vision, wishing she could see through the dirt and gravel and concrete, see what was down there.

“What?” Scotty said. “What’s wrong?”

“The job looks great,” she repeated. She laid a hand on his arm. “This morning before they dumped the gravel, did you look into the pit?”

“I made sure nothing had fallen in, if that’s what you mean. Saw that no lizard or mouse had gotten trapped down there, made sure the drainpipe connections were tight.”

“And the pit looked the same as last night?”

“The same,” he said shortly, frowning at her.

“Footprints?”

“My boot prints,” he said, scratching his beard, perplexed.

She scanned the worktable, then looked above the washer and dryer hookup to the broken window.“When did that happen?”

Scotty did a double take.“What the hell? How could I miss that? Whendid that happen?” He stepped to the window to look more closely at the jagged shards of glass, as sharp as skinning knives, sticking out from the wooden frame.

She said,“You were busy pouring and finishing, your mind was on the job.”

“That’s no excuse.” Scotty turned to look around the garage.

“Were the footprints in the pit all yours?”

Scotty was silent, visualizing the bottom of the pit.“They were mine.”

She waited, stroking Kit, feeling Kit’s anxious little heart beating hard against the hollow of her shoulder.

Scotty said,“What’s this about? Who the hell was nosing around here?”

She said,“I had a call this morning that someone broke in last night. That they dragged something heavy into the garage through the side door.”

“The door was locked when I got here, I had to unlock it. A call from who?”

“I don’t know, he wouldn’t tell me. Said he watched a man haul a heavy bundle in, that he looked in through the window, watched him wrestle it down the ladder into the pit. A long, thin bundle wrapped in a blanket. Said he’d unloaded it from the back of a car, that he dumped it in the pit, then pulled the car up the hill, in among those cypress trees. That in a little while he walked back down, went in the garage, put on the boots that were in the cor ner and the overalls-your boots and overalls-picked up a shovel, went down the ladder into the pit where he’d left the bundle, and started digging. Caller said he couldn’t see down into the pit.”

“Why didn’t this guy stop him?”

“Maybe he was scared. I don’t know. A stranger digging in the middle of the night…He said that after about twenty minutes the guy came up out of the pit without the bundle, leaned the shovel against the wall, took off the boots, was taking off the muddy coveralls when he glanced up at the window and saw the caller. Said the guy went white, scared to death, grabbed a hammer and threw it, shattering the glass.”

The two were silent, looking at each other. Scotty scratched his red beard, and then put his arm around his niece.“You’ve come up with some good ones, my girl. This one takes the frosting.” He headed out of the garage and around to the side to look for the hammer. Ryan followed him, still carrying Kit.

At the side of the garage they stood looking at the broken window, at the teeth of jagged glass. On the lumber pile and on the ground, smaller shards of glass glittered in the morning sun. A ray of sunlight caught Scotty’s missing hammer.

When he reached to pick it up, Ryan grabbed his arm, pulling him back.“Fingerprints,” she said.

He was silent, looking at her.“Who the hell called you?”

“I don’t know who. But, with the broken window, and the hammer right here, I don’t think we can ignore it.” She hoped Scotty wouldn’t notice the smudged paw prints all among the glass, or that he would think they’d been there before the window was broken. “I think,” she said, “we need to get that cement out before it sets up. And then we need to call Dallas.”

Scotty glanced out at Fernando and Manuel and shook his head.“You want to tell them? Or shall I?”

33

SITTING AT THE big, round table in the ranch kitchen, still in her old plaid robe and with her first cup of coffee, Charlie tried again to reach her absent clients. She didn’t understand why no one was answering their messages. She didn’t care if she woke them, but even that seemed impossible. Did they all turn their phones off at night?

Most likely they did, she thought crossly, at least when they were on vacation. As she listened to yet another recording, looking out across the window seat to the ranch yard, she watched the sky lighten into a clear dawn. She could hear Redwing in the barn pawing at her door, wanting her hay and wanting to be turned out. It wasn’t quite feeding time, but the mare had seen Max leave earlier and had decided she’d been forgotten. Charlie hung up the phone after getting another “not available” no point in leaving another message. She had risen to refill her coffee cup when her phone rang. Turning hastily back to the table, spilling her coffee, she saw that the number on the screen was Ryan’s. She picked up, grabbed a towel, stood with the phone to her ear, mopping up coffee.

“I got Carl Chapman,” Ryan said. “He’d just turned his phone on. When I filled him in, he didn’t sound eager to tell Theresa about the paintings, said she was still asleep. He gave me the number for their insurance agent, asked if you’d call him. He’s hoping you can take the adjuster in the house for a look, give him a tentative list of what’s missing. He asked me to check on several other items in the house, he gave me a list. You have a pencil?”

Dutifully Charlie copied down the list, thinking that this whole thing was more of a pain than she wanted, that she’d be glad when she’d sold the business. At the moment she had only one serious prospect: a woman who, at one time she’d not have trusted to take over the service she’d so lovingly built, a woman she’d thought was dishonest until she’d learned that she was working undercover on the sideof the law.

“I’ll keep trying the Beckers,” Ryan said. “Any luck with the others?”

“Not yet. I tried until well after midnight. Knowing Frances Becker, I expect when you get her, with half her antiques missing, she’ll head right home.”

She’d hardly hung up when the phone rang again. She picked up to Earl Longley’s dry voice. “Eleen’s out shopping,” he said. He sounded even more irritable than usual. He spent considerable time cross-examining her about just how many books were missing, and which ones. He didn’t seem nearly as upset over Eleen’s paperweight collection, which, Charlie thought privately, was understandable. The loss of a closet full of pornographic paperweights really didn’t stir her.

She must be on a roll, because the next call was from Ben Waterman. They were in Greece, had flown in that morning. It was cocktail hour, Ben said Rita was just getting out of the pool. When Charlie told him about the breakin, and described the events of the previous night, he startled her with his anger.

“What the hell were you doing? Don’t you lock up your keys? Who had a set, how many of your people? I hate to tell Rita, she’s going to be mad as hell.”

“Ben, I don’t blame you. But let’s concentrate on finding this guy, on getting the jewelry back if we can. Does Rita have some kind of inventory?”

“She has a full inventory,” he said coldly. “She has a photograph of each piece, with written descriptions and appraisals. You know the gems were all paste? But the settings were antique, some very old, and they didn’t come cheap.”

“Are the photographs and inventory in the house where we can find them? If the department can get copies to identify-”

“Why would they be in the house? So they could be stolen, too? Or burned up? It’s all in the safe-deposit box.”

“Does anyone else have access?”

“Of course not.”

“And your insurance agents. Do they-”

“I’ll call our agents and give them your number. I’m not sure what Rita gave them.” He hung up. Charlie sat holding the phone, swallowing back her anger. Did he have to be so cross? Now, if the department arrested a suspect and the jewelry was on him, they’d have to wait nearly two weeks for a positive identification. She was fixing herself some breakfast when Ryan called back to say she’d gotten Ed Becker.

“Guess I woke him. He was pretty cranky. He said, ‘How many people did Mrs. Harper tell we’d be out of town?’ I told him that wasn’t very realistic, that everyone in the neighborhood knew they were gone. He accused your crew of loose tongues and carelessness with the keys, of possibly copying the keys. Complained because you hadn’t come by in the evenings to turn on the lights, which, I pointed out, you hadn’t arranged to do. I suggested several things they could have done, like automatic light controls. He said Frances wouldn’t do that, that she was afraid one would short outand cause a fire.”

“Well, that’s all four couples notified,” Charlie said noncommittally, “and only half of them critical. I’ll be so glad when I sell the business. Thanks for helping, and thanks for the moral support.”

“Gotta go,” Ryan said. “I need to check on two jobs in the village and be up at the remodel when the gravel and cement arrive, around ten. Clyde says-”

Her phone went dead. Charlie hung up and waited, supposing Ryan was out of range. She waited quite a while, but Ryan didn’t call back. When she dialed her she got an “out of service” message, so maybe she’d forgotten to charge her phone. That wouldn’t be the first time-though it was about the only inattention to detail that Charlie had ever noticed in her efficient friend.

Putting Max’s dishes in the dishwasher, she warmed up a slice of cold bacon and her scrambled eggs, and made some toast, preoccupied with the robberies. The whole scenario was strange, she couldn’t shake the thought that she was missing something, was overlooking some crucial element that should be perfectly obvious.

Setting her breakfast on the table, wanting to hurry and go feed the horses, she realized that part of her unease was the phone calls themselves. Neither she nor Ryan had talked with any of the four wives, they had spoken only with their husbands.

In all four instances, there were good explanations: Rita in the pool; Theresa asleep, and probably Frances Becker, too; and Eleen shopping, maybe for more paperweights. She was reaching in the drawer for a fork when she stopped. Stood looking down into the drawer, at the new rubberized fabric with which she’d recently lined it, but seeing Theresa Chapman’s kitchen drawers.

Leaving her breakfast to get cold, she picked up the phone to call Max.

The dispatcher said he was out, so she talked with Detective Garza.“ Dallas, Theresa Chapman had keys for maybe half a dozen neighbors, all those with pets. She sometimes took care of the animals if someone was delayed at work; and she would sometimes let a workman in. She kept them in the kitchen silverware drawer, underneath the wooden divider and the liner.”

“We’ll have a look,” Dallas said. “How many others, besides the neighbors themselves, knew that?”

“I don’t know. She told me she was very careful, didn’t let anyone see where she kept them. She let the workmen think she had a key just for the day. The keys weren’t marked, the names weren’t on them. They were all different colors.”

Hanging up, she warmed her plate in the microwave again, and returned to the table, opening the morning paper. She was just finishing breakfast when Dallas called back.

“Keys were here. I’ve printed them and will take them with me.” He laughed. “You want me to feed the cat? She’s playing up to me shamelessly. Those kittens are pretty cute.”

“Yes, feed her,” Charlie said, amused. “Cat food’s on the washer.” She guessed Joe and Dulcie and Kit were not only good at sleuthing, they were skilled, as well, at expanding the horizons of a dedicated dog person. Dallas had had pointers all his life, mostly German shorthairs. He was a bird hunter, a gun-dog man, and until recently he’d had no use at all for cats. She hung up, smiling at the change in him, wondering if he’d like to make a home for one of Mango’s little kittens.

RYAN AND SCOTTY stood looking at the broken window, at the hammer gleaming up at them among the fall of shattered glass. Scotty made no comment about the paw prints; she hoped he thought they belonged to some prowling neighborhood cat.“Someone was here,” she said. “Someone broke into the garage and threw your hammer out through the window.” She looked at him helplessly. “Just like the caller told me.”

Scotty shrugged and scratched his beard.“We won’t know for sure until we’ve dug out the concrete. You’re willing to take his word for it, whoever it was?”

“I don’t see that we have a choice. The departmentdoes have a report on a missing body. The lab has identified human blood, human hair, and human skin in the drag marks. And now someone says there’s a body buried here? You think we have a choice?”

“Come on, then. The cement’s setting up.”

As she turned away to the garage, Kit squirmed in her arms and jumped down. Ryan watched her trot away and leap into the bed of her pickup. The labor and expense of digging out the concrete and of a new pour lay totally on the word of one small cat who, by sensible standards, could not exist at all.

Well, hell, she thought, moving into the garage and taking up her shovel. She watched Scotty fetch a wheelbarrow and give Manuel and Fernando their orders. Manuel looked as if Scotty had gone mad, but obediently he fetched a heavy pick. Small Fernando of the scarred face didn’t move, stood frowning at Scotty.

Scott Flannery was a big man, broad shouldered, a bit wild looking with his thick red beard. But he was a quiet man, and patient-until his temper kicked in. Now when he grabbed a second pick, Manuel backed away.

Scotty tested the hardening concrete with the pick, and then lit into it, swinging so hard he sent damp, crumbling debris flying. He handed the pick to Manuel.

“Dig now! Dig here, dig now, or you’ll have no job to come back to and no pay.” He repeated his orders in fractured Spanish.

Soon the two men were digging out the setting ce ment. With Scotty and Ryan working beside them, it didn’t take long to clear away the carefully poured floor and rake the debris into a heap to be hauled away. Ryan couldn’t stop thinking how embarrassed she’d be if, after they moved the gravel and dug down into the earth, they found nothing. No grave, no body. It hurt her to see the men’s faces as their careful work was destroyed, as the nice smooth cement job was trashed into rubble.

She thought life might have been simpler if they’d quit work after the pour, paid the men, and sent them home for the rest of the day, and then she and Scotty had done the digging alone. She hoped to hell the missing corpse was down there so she wouldn’t come up a liar. She was dismayed that she could never tell Scotty the real source of herinformation, that she had to lie to her uncle. Scotty had helped Dallas and her dad raise her and her sisters after their mother died, they were family and they seldom kept secrets from one another.

Through her goggles she watched patches of dark gravel appear, mixed with cement. Soon, Fernando and Manuel started heaving the gravel out, piling it against the garage wall where, later, it could be shoveled back into the pit-after the body had been disinterred.

If there was a body. And if there was…She thought about Dallas or Davis and the coroner working the scene; about the long wait of perhaps weeks or months until the case was resolved and they could close up the pit again, and pour fresh cement. She thought about her clients who were waiting anxiously to move in, who expected the workto be finished promptly-now, she was going to have to pay a steep penalty. Not envisioning this kind of delay, she’d deviated from her usual contract and allowed a time restriction to be written in, docking her a hundred dollars a day for every day over the agreed-upon finish date.

Earth began to show beneath the gravel. As Fernando reached to move a black drainpipe aside, Scotty reached to stop him, and Ryan fished her phone from her pocket. Time to call the department, they didn’t want to disturb anything more until they had Max or a detective on the scene.

The two men climbed up the ladder. Glancing at each other and at Ryan with renewed skepticism, they stood waiting at the edge of the pit to see what would happen next. Despite their boss’s crazy female notions, they were too curious to walk away. No one noticed that beyond the open garage, in the bed of Ryan’s pickup, the three cats sat in a row, half hidden beneath the tarp, also waiting for the victim to be revealed. No one could have said whether the four humans, or the three cats, were the more curious and impatient.

34

DISPATCHER MABEL FARTHY clicked on the phone, answering Ryan’s call. Ryan pictured the hefty blonde speaking through her headset, sitting in the open cubicle formed by the reception counter, her cluttered desk, filing cabinets, and shelves crowded with radios and the fax and copy machines. “I’m up at the Cowen remodel,” Ryan told her. “On Blakely.Max and Dallas know where. We had a phone tip this morning, guy said we have a body buried up here, down in a drainage ditch-into which we’d just finished pouring fresh cement,” she said wryly. “We’ve dug that out, dug out the gravel. We’re down to raw earth and don’t want to go any further.”

Mabel didn’t ask questions. “The chief’s out. Hold on, I’ll buzz Detective Garza. You okay? You sound pale.”

“I’m fine,” Ryan said, smiling at Mabel’s turn of phrase. In a minute, Dallas came on. She said, “You know the ditch we dug inside the Cowen garage?”

“Yes, the second Panama Canal?”

“I got a phone call this morning that there’s a body buried there.”

“What kind of call? Who was it? What time? You get the name of the caller?”

“He wouldn’t give it. It was…I was on my way up to the job, it was about ten. He gave me the message, said, ‘The detectives and the chief know me,’ and he hung up.”

Dallas was silent for a long time, undoubtedly thinking about the department’s anonymous snitch, the voice from out of nowhere, to which they had all learned to listen.

“ Dallas, I believe him. You…You’re cutting out,” she said, not wanting to be interrogated.

“I’m on my way,” he said shortly, with considerable irritation. “Don’t do anything. Wait for me.” When he’d hung up she stood outside looking around the property, wondering how much their careless coming and going this morning, so many people back and forth, had destroyed of the tire tracks and footprints. When she glanced up the hill, where the grass was swaying, she was startled to see Tansy and Sage slipping away over the crest as if headed home. Her phone rang and it was Dallas. “We’re just turning onto Cohen.” In a moment she heard cars approaching up the narrow road,crunching bits of gravel beneath their tires. Dallas ’s tan Blazer appeared, and Max’s truck behind it. As they parked, she glanced at the bed of her pickup where the tarp was rippling in a quick, scurrying movement. For an instant, Joe Grey peered out, then vanished, and the tarp went still.

JOE WATCHED DALLAS swing out of his tan Blazer. His small SUV was a few years older than Charlie Harper’s red model, and showed far more wear. The dark-haired Latino detective wore jeans, a white shirt open at the collar, and a leather jacket. Max Harper, stepping out of his pickup, was dressed in uniform this morning, as if he might have been in court. The two men headed into the open garage, stepping as carefully as they could between piles of wet cement and cement-covered gravel. As they stood looking down into the pit, talking with Ryan and Scotty, the two Latino laborers moved away.

Max said,“When did you get this phone call? Was it on your cell? Where were you?”

“On my cell. I was coming up the hill. Scotty and his men had just finished working the cement. You think I didn’t want to strangle the guy? You know what concrete costs? You know how long it takes to finish it? And look at the mess we have to clean up.”

Max said,“I’m surprised you tore it out. You queried this guy? What exactly did he say?”

“I asked him how he could know this. Told him I wasn’t digging up that cement, that I’d have to have proof to do such a crazy thing. He said he saw the guy bury the body, that the only proof he could offer was the body itself. If we wanted to be sure, we’d have to dig.”

“And you took his word for it,” Max said. “Where did he say he was? Did you ask him to come in, give a statement?” That was a futile question. The cats knew it, and Max knew it, he knew their unknown snitch wouldn’t do that.

She said,“The guy hung up, Max! I thought it could be a crank call. But then I thought about your snitch, I know he doesn’t wait on the phone to answer questions. I had two choices. Let it go, let the concrete cure, and forget I ever got that call. Or dig it up and call you.”

In the pickup, Joe Grey smiled.

“Are you going to hang around while we dig? Or are you going to laugh at me and leave?”

Max tried not to grin as Ryan’s temper rose. He exchanged a look with Dallas, who spoke with Fernando in Spanish, which none of the three cats understood except for the occasional familiar word, including Manuel’s interjected, half-joking “loco” as he glanced across at Ryan.

That made Dallas laugh.“Maybe not loco at all,” he said in English. “We’ll have to wait and see.”

Max flipped open his phone and in a moment was speaking with the coroner. That cooled Ryan down, the fact that he wanted John Bern on the scene before they uncovered a corpse.

In Ryan’s pickup the cats settled in to wait, curled up for a little nap beneath the warm canvas. They were all three fast asleep when a car woke them, pulling up to park. Looking out from under the tarp, they watched John Bern step out of his white van.

Bern was young, slim, prematurely bald, his fine-boned face was unlined by the depressing nature of his job, as if the mysteries he set himself to unravel, in the cause of death and the identification of a body, far outweighed the grimmer aspects of the profession. Wiping his glasses, he entered the garage and stood talking with Ryan and Max and Dallas, looking at the lumps of gravel and the messy pile of slowly hardening cement.

“You did all this on the word of a guy you don’t know and who wouldn’t identify himself?”

“I believed him,” Ryan said shortly. “We’ve blown a whole morning and a bundle of money on this. He’d better be telling the truth.” She was losing patience and losing confidence. She wanted to get on with the dig, either to be vindicated or to stoically endure her embarrassment.

Bern climbed down the ladder into the pit, and Dallas followed. Max stood looking on, a little amused, a little put off. The cats couldn’t see to the bottom, could see into the garage only as far as the lip of the pit, where Ryan stood watching. They could hear the soft scrape of slow, careful digging, could see Fernando and Manuel just inside the door, idly shuffling their feet, waiting to witness Ryan’s embarrassment when allthis digging turned up nothing-or perhaps to experience a macabre thrill if a corpse was uncovered. Soon the sounds of digging grew more tentative, there was a long, muffled discussion, then the cats could hear only soft scratching, such as their own careful paws might make. Dallas ’s exclamationwas sharp.

Ryan stepped closer. Fernando and Manuel moved forward to look but then Manuel backed away, his face pale. Fernando stood looking, and then nodded at Ryan and gave her a shy smile

She grinned back but looked at the two men with concern.“You guys okay?”

“Okay,” Fernando said. Both men were looking at her now as if she possessed some magical power, as if she were some kind of witch to have known that there was a body buried there.

She said,“You’ll have to wait for the detective to take your statements, then you can go on home, take the rest of the day off with pay.”

That seemed to revive Fernando. Manuel gave her a lopsided, gentle smile. Down in the pit, Garza said something the cats couldn’t make out. Joe Grey wondered how many bodies Dallas Garza had helped to disinter over his twenty-five years in law enforcement. He wondered if it ever got any easier to deal with a victim of violence, to look on a battered or mutilated body and think about the cruelty that existed in one’s own species. The tomcat burned to slip out of the truck and move closer where he could see if he knew the woman, but Dulcie’s armored paw on his shoulder drew him back. She was always so afraid people would wonder why they were watching. He didn’t want to admit she was right.

It was some time before John Bern and Dallas finished bagging evidence. Joe, having at last lost patience, had left the pickup despite Dulcie’s protests and slipped into the garage behind the pile of cement. He had to smile when Dulcie and Kit followed him, crouching beside him where they, too, could see down into the pit but not be seen.

They could see Dallas’s back where he knelt beside Bern, but couldn’t see much of the woman, only a glimpse of her arm and one bare, tanned leg. They jerked to attention when Bern said, “These look like cat hairs.”

The cats lived in fear of cat hairs being found at a scene, hairs that could give them away, and would certainly generate questions. But why were they flinching now? They hadn’t beennear this victim, they hadn’tbeen in the pit. There was no way…

“Hairs stuck to her skin,” Bern said. “She’s oily, smells like suntan oil. She’s tan all over, not a pale mark on her. Was she in the habit of sunbathing naked?”

“I don’t know,” Dallas said dryly. “I never had the pleasure.”

Bern lifted a cat hair with forceps, to view it though his magnifying glass.“Yellow. Sure looks like cat hair. Maybe it came off her clothes, or…I wonder if those same hairs are stuck to the killer’s clothes?”

The cats crouched, frozen. A yellow cat? There were no yellow cats in that neighborhood except Theresa’s cat. Oh, this wasn’t Theresa. They felt as if they’d been kicked in the belly.

Max said,“Charlie has clients a couple of blocks from the empty swimming pool where we’re working that missing body. I think one of them has a yellow cat. I’ll get Charlie over to the morgue, see if we might get lucky and she can ID her.”

Frightened for Theresa, already grieving for her, the cats slipped out of the garage and across the drive to the shelter of Ryan’s truck. Crawling up beneath the tarp, they pushed close together, Joe and Kit pressing their heads against Dulcie.

“Oh, it isn’t Theresa,” Kit mewled. “No one…It mustn’t…Itcan’t be Theresa.”

“Not Theresa,” Dulcie said. “They’re wrong, it can’t be.” She pressed hard against Joe, her ears down, her eyes closed, and the three cats clung together, mourning Theresa as they had seldom, in all their lives, grieved for a human person.

35

WHEN HE WOKE in the motel, it was broad daylight. Christ! Looking blearily at his watch, he saw it was nearly noon. What had made him sleep so long? His mouth tasted bad and his face felt worse. Gingerly, he touched his cheek, his whole face was covered with deep claw wounds, and probably some of them still had glass in them. He’d picked out a dozen bloody slivers last night that he’d gotten when he lay facedown below the window, trying to protect himself from their dirty claws. He was still bleeding, there was blood all over the pillows and sheets. His stubble itched bad already, and he wouldn’t be able to shave. Arazor would take half his face off, what was left of it.

He hadn’t crawled into the musty-smelling bed until after three by the time he’d changed the tire and then gone back to find the inhaler. Never had found it and that was when it hit the fan, that was when everything went wrong.

After those cats attacked him, after he got away and locked himself in the RV, he’d tried to clean up. Found a towel in the back and, half blind with blood and pain, had tried to wash and doctor the filthy wounds, squeezed on some salve he’d found in the kitchenette, thatshe’d put there in case of some emergency. She hadn’t guessed what kind of emergency. Bleeding all over himself, he’d headed for the highway, wanted only to be out of there, to be as far away from that cursed house and the cursed village as he could get. But then he’d driven only as far as Santa Cruz when he knew he had to sleep. Caught himself twice jerking awake, knew he had to find a motel where he could pull the RV out of sight and get some rest.

He’d driven around the fusty little town for some time before he found a motel that would suit his purpose. He’d had to ring for ten minutes before the manager came stumbling out in an old bathrobe, none too pleased even if the place was nearly empty, only five cars parked in front. It was after three o’clock when he’d finally checked in and fallen into bed. Hadn’t slept well, kept waking, his face hurting, and feeling those cats all over him. Would jerk up in a rictus of terror then, sweating, then fall into sleep again.

His muscles ached. He was stiff from digging, from hauling her up out of the pool and heaving her in the car, then later moving her into the RV and then into that garage and down the ladder. He wasn’t a laborer, he worked out some to keep in shape, but not that kind of abuse. He’d already been sore when the tire blew. Changing that had nearly finished him. And then to be attacked-that monster exploding in his face and then a whole pack of them erupting in a horror, like his worst nightmares. Where had they come from? And why?

Getting out of bed, he found a coffeepot in the small bathroom. Pot so stained and dirty that if he didn’t die from an infection of cat bites he’d likely die from the accumulation of bacteria that it had collected over who knew how many years as the hotel maids wiped it out with their dirty scrub rags.

He couldn’t have picked a skuzzier motel. It was in an old, run-down district, a two-story, dilapidated stucco building that must have been constructed early in the last century, surrounded by a neighborhood of small wooden houses with peeling paint, ragged lawns, and junk cars in the yards and narrow driveways. But it had what he wanted. Before he checked in he’d driven around behind the building where he found a narrow alley that would serve him well. Returning to the front and checking in, he’d asked for a room at the back, told the clerk it’d be quieter back there, away from the street. Hecould pretty well choose his own room, empty as they were. Taking his duffle up, he’d opened the window, draped a towel over the sill to mark which room. Then he’d moved the RV around into the alley, parked it among the garbage cans just below, pulled it up against the building so no one could open the side door. Had hoped, if anyone tried to open the locked driver’s door, he’d hear them. Carrying his coffee, he opened the window and looked down.

RV looked all right, he could see in through the side windows that it was still full of the boxes, just as he’d left it. Turning, he surveyed the fusty room with its faded brown wallpaper and ragged curtains. Some send-off for a trip that they’d meant to be fancy. A tripshe’d meant to be an upscale vacation, spending the money they’d pocket from their neighbors’ treasures. They’d set it up so well. And she had to go and ruin it.

Ever since they’d moved into that neighborhood they’d been friendly with the neighbors, had made it a point to be. Three other couples they’d gotten along with well, they’d made a good group. He sat down on the bed, drinking his coffee.

He wondered if, when his face had healed and things cooled down, hecould return home, keep on in the same vein with the neighbors and no one the wiser. Act grateful for his friends’ condolences about her leaving him, exchange sympathy with them about their mutual burglaries, keep right on enjoying their company. They’d had some fun parties, the eight of them. Potlucks, card games, cookouts. He wondered if he could get away with that as smoothly as they’d pulled off other jobs, in other cities.She’d say that what someone didn’t know would never hurt them.

He missed her. Why the hell did she have to be so clumsy? He thought again that he could have called the paramedics. But that wouldn’t have saved her, she was dead seconds after her head hit the tile coping. He could have called the cops, told them she fell, but who would have believed him? Believed he didn’t push her, that he hadn’t murdered her even if ithad been her fault?

He had to quit thinking about it. It was over, she was gone. Buried where no one would ever think to look. He had to get on with it now, and he could sure use the money, would need it if he decided not to go back. He didn’t know how that would play out, that would depend on what the cops found, on what he read in the papers-if it was all reported. If the damn cops didn’t hold something back, trying to trap him.

Biggest problem was, he’d laid no groundwork in the neighborhood for her leaving him, he hadn’t planned on this. He hadn’t dropped hints that they might be having problems, and she would have no reason to say that. He’d made no big withdrawal from her account for the cops to discover, as if she planned to leave him. No secret plane reservations on her Visa. He’d have to say it was a spur-of-the-moment blowup, that they’d had their little tiffs but he’d never dreamed she’d get mad enough to leave, to just walk out on him. Have to say they’d kept their differences to themselves, that they’d had a far worse argument than usual. By the time he got up to Washington State he’d have worked out the details to make it look reasonable. He’d have to do this tedious stuff on his own, now, working out all the picky details.

Last night after changing the tire, after pulling away in the dark, leaving his lights off until he was clear of the cops below, he’d felt physically ill at their presence down there. Heading toward the highway he’d felt ice cold, and his stomach had been churning. Who the hell had called the cops? What had someone seen? Had they seenhim? Seen theRV? Right now, was every CHP on the highway watching for an old brown RV that wouldn’t be hard to spot?

Rising, he went into the tiny bathroom where he showered, trying to keep the hot water off his face. It stung like hell, and he didn’t want it bleeding any worse. He wasn’t hungry but he thought he’d better eat. Maybe some break fast would make him feel better. He badly wanted to see a newspaper, see if the burglaries were in it. Molena Point wasn’t that far away.

Before checking out, he tried the TV but by the time he turned it on there was no more news, it was all daytime programs, as murky as the oily dregs in the coffeepot. He finally found a local channel with some news. He watched that for nearly an hour but there was no mention of Molena Point. His stomach awash with coffee, he knew he had to eat.

Leaving the room, he walked past the elevator to where a window was open at the front of the building, stood looking out through the greasy curtains, up and down the street. He could see nothing like a restaurant, not even some kind of hole-in-the-wall grocery that would have packaged snacks and newspapers. Maybe better to hit the road, find somewhere to eat on his way to the city. Approaching San Francisco, there’d be plenty of restaurants.

Returning to the room, grabbing the small duffle that he’d brought in with him last night, he walked down the one flight, stopped at the desk to pay his bill. The clerk was young and pudgy; she avoided looking at his face. When he told her he might be back that night, she wanted him to make a reservation, and that made him laugh. As if they were expecting a big crowd, were booked solid with upscale tourists or some medical convention. The quality of this place, they couldn’t count on a convention of second-rate hookers. Paying his bill in cash, which the clerk didn’t question, he went around to get the RV.

No, nothing had been disturbed. When he slipped in, locked the driver’s door, and went to look in the back, the boxes and furniture and rolled rugs were just as he’d left them. Starting the engine and moving out to the street, he stayed in the scuzzy neighborhood, driving the narrow streets looking for someplace for breakfast. Once he’d eaten he meant to return to Highway 1, stay on the coast, away from cops and traffic. As soon as he’d taken care of business in the city, dumped the RV and bought a car, he could move north on any route he chose, he wouldn’t be recognized then. Meanwhile, the day was clear and bright, the sea reflected the sun cheerfully, and he might as well enjoy the ride. After a week or two, he’d decide whether to go back and say she’d left him, or to keep moving.

36

THE THREE CATS watched from Ryan’s truck as Dallas and John Bern emerged from the pit with the wrapped body on a stretcher and lifted her into Bern ’s van. She was fully covered by the body bag, and the cats were relieved not to have to look on her face in death. They wanted to keep their own picture of Theresa, her eyes laughing down at them, her hands gentle and warm as she stroked them, her round cheeks pink with health and life. They didn’t want to remember her sunny face as the waxen face of a corpse.

As the coroner’s van pulled away, Dallas followed in his dusty Blazer, leaving the house encircled by crime tape. Max had already left to return to court and then to pick up Charlie, to head for the morgue. As soon as everyone else was gone, Ryan stepped to the bed of her truck and pulled aside the tarp where the cats were huddled.

“Come on, you three,” she said gently, reaching to stroke sad little Dulcie. She looked into their eyes, so miserable. There was nothing she could say to ease their pain over this woman she’d never met. While Charlie knew the four couples well, she didn’t know them at all. “I’ll take you home,” she said softly, “if that’s where you want to go. Come up front with me, where it’s warmer.”

Joe hesitated, crouching lower.

“Those boxes could shift, Joe. I don’t want you hurt. I can drop you in the village if you’d rather.” She tried to stroke the tomcat, but his miserable glare made her pull her hand back. She picked up Dulcie, who pressed against her. When she took Kit in her arms, Kit pressed her face into Charlie’s shoulder. Carrying the two lady cats, she turned away toward the cab. “I’m not starting the truck, Joe, until you come up front.”

In the cab, she started the engine, turned on the heater, and left the door open for Joe. As Dulcie and Kit crowded against her, she thought of many things she might say to try to ease their pain, except anything she said would sound patronizing and insincere.

At last Joe appeared, slipping up into the cab beside Dulcie.

The cats snuggled together trying not to think of Theresa wrapped in the body bag and headed for the morgue, but able to think of nothing else. No one spoke as they moved down the hills on the narrow, winding road, they were silent all the way to the village. On Ocean, Ryan pulled to the curb, reached over, and opened the passenger door.“This okay?” she asked, trying to hide her worry over them.

“Fine,” Joe said. Dulcie and Kit nosed at her by way of thanks, and the cats leaped out to the sidewalk. She’d started to pull away when a portly man in a brown tank top banged on the truck door, shouting that her cats had escaped. Already the cats were gone, flowing up a bougainvillea vine to the rooftops, heading for MPPD. Behind the fat man, his frumpy wife stood staring up, shouting and pointing.

Ryan rolled down her window.“It’s all right,” she told the meaty tourists. “They do that all the time. They like to ride into town, then go off on their own. They’ll be home for supper.” They stared at her, shaking their heads in disbelief. She smiled and waved, and pulled away.

AT MOLENA POINT PD Detective Juana Davis sat before her computer typing up her field notes from the burglaries and from her interviews with eight of the neighbors. She had slipped off her uniform jacket, revealing a white shirt open at the collar. Beneath her desk she had loosened the laces of her regulation shoes and slipped them off, too. The divergent observations she’d collected were the usual tangle, from which she must try to separate facts from imagination. Civilian witnesses weren’t trained in accuracy. Too often their minds, at the moment in question, were half on other matters. Listening for the kids sleeping in their beds, hearing the TV or a ringing phone, wondering if they’d turned off the stove. Few folks remembered clearly what they’d seen and heard, particularly when they didn’t realize at the time that those moments would later be important.

Leaning back in her chair, she sipped her cold coffee, thinking about the burglar. He knew the neighborhood, knew it well enough to know exactly what he’d wanted to steal and, apparently, where it was in each house. He-or she-hadn’t rooted in the drawers or torn apart the closets, he’d gone right to his objectives. He had copies of all four garage door openers and access to the house keys. Whether keys had been kept hanging in some of the garages, or he’d had duplicates of them all, was yet to be determined.

Every one of her eight interviewees had said that, as far as they knew, none of the four couples kept extra garage door openers in the house, that there was just the usual button inside each garage, and an opener in each car, some of those programmed directly into the cars’ electronic systems. She thought it likely that the guy had one of those programming gadgets available online to your everyday thief. As she set her coffee cup down, a movement in the bookshelf along the far wall startled her.

She looked up, frowning at Joe Grey.“When did you slip in here? I’m no more observant than our witnesses.” That disturbed her, that she hadn’t seen an intruder cross her office, even if it was only a cat, that she’d been so focused she’d noticed nothing. “At least you’re not armed, you little bum,” she said, grinning companionably.

What she hadn’t seen was Dulcie and Kit melt behind the small easy chair that sat at an angle at the end of her desk. By stretching, standing on their hind legs, their claws in the back of the chair for support, the two lady cats could just see Juana’s computer screen, though at an angle that made it hard to read.

The interview she was typing was with a Raymond Atwater, who lived at the south end of the block. Atwater was a widower and lived alone. Sometime between his supper and his bedtime, he saw the lights of a car pulling into the Becker garage. He thought they might have delayed their vacation, and he didn’t question that. He didn’t recall the time. He said he tried not to mind the neighbors’ business. He’d gone on to bed, to read, and hadn’t seen the car leave. He’d been deep in his book when he heard the scream of a cat, said he’d assumed a couple of neighborhood cats were mating.

Well, heheard us yowling in the closet, Joe thought.Would he eventually have come to rescue us? Maybe, maybe not. We could have died within earshot, and some people wouldn’t care. In order to read the report, to avoid a glare on the screen that wiped out the message, the tomcat had to move along the bookcase and crane his neck. He was waiting for Juana to finish up with Atwater and get on to the next witness when the phone rang.

Juana glanced at it, and picked up.“Yes, Chief.” Juana Davis was old fashioned enough that she didn’t much care for a speakerphone, she was never sure who might be out in the hall listening, an arrestee on his way to an interview, a felon being escorted back to lockup.

Behind the chair, Dulcie was content to listen to the one-sided conversation, but Kit wanted to climb up on the desk where she could press her ear against the receiver. Dulcie’s look drew her back.

After a moment, Juana nodded.“I hope you can get an ID.” She paused, then, “I’m just getting to the last interview. A Mrs. Edmond Turner, four houses down from the Chapmans’…Nancy Turner, yes. She said she stopped by the Chapmans’ Saturday around noon to loan Theresa a book she’d wanted to read on vacation. Shesaid Frances Becker was there, that Frances said she was on her way out for a quick walk, that she and her husband were leaving that afternoon. That before they left, she’d wanted to see the kittens. The two women were in the laundry with the kittens, she said Frances was making a real fuss over them. It surprised her, that Frances was down on the floor playing with them like a kid.”

Another pause, then,“Yes, she did. Said both women were wearing shorts and flip-flops, that only young women could dress like that in this weather. She said Frances walks a lot, usually on weekends.

“She said there was a rolled-up blue towel lying on the floor next to Frances, looked like a beach towel. Said the kittens were all over it, playing and clawing it.” Davis had a satisfied smile on her face. “Yesterday at the swimming pool, the threads I bagged? Some of them were blue. Blue threads stuck to the coping, some of them with blood.”

She listened for a few minutes, answered,“Yes,” then, “No. When Mrs. Turner left Theresa’s, Frances was still there.”

The cats could hardly be still. Dulcie and Kit were fidgeting with interest, and Joe Grey watched Juana intently. Had Frances stopped by Theresa’s on her waynot to walk but headed for the abandoned pool? Carrying her beach towel, intending to strip and catch a little sun before leaving? Joe thought about the towels that Clyde had used as cat beds, how they quickly got matted with fur. He imagined Frances beside the empty pool, stripping off her shorts and shirt, lathering on suntan oil and stretching out on the blue towel-where every yellow cat hair would have clung to her oily skin.

Was it Frances Becker who died? And not Theresa?

Across the room, Dulcie’s heart was pounding. Kit could hardly keep from lashing her tail.That was Franceswith cat hairs stuck to her suntan lotion! Theresa isn’t dead? That was Frances Becker who’d died in the pool, not Theresa?

Juana said,“No, she didn’t. Yes, let me read it.” She looked at the screen to quote Nancy Turner. “‘She likes to take long midday walks alone. Sometimes she wears a Walkman, listens to classical music. Frances does a lot of her work at night. I can hear the CDs she plays. She’s very dedicated in her accounting jobs, I see her office light on very late.’

“That’s most of it,” Davis said. “She couldn’t tell me which way Frances went when she left the Chapmans’, she said she’d gone right home, that she didn’t know where Frances usually walked once she left the block.”

Resting his chin on his paws, Joe thought about Frances Becker, so sensible and low-key. Was she the kind of person to sunbathe naked? How much did they not know about her? He thought about her charming husband-her philandering husband-and how much they didn’t know about him, either.

Was Ed Becker capable of murder? If he was a womanizer, Joe thought, then why wouldn’t he be just as capable of stealing? Had Ed Becker planned those thefts, Frances found out and tried to stop him, and he’d killed her?

Joe thought about Ed following her to the abandoned pool, killing her, getting rid of the body, and then moving on as he’d planned, to steal from his neighbors. Proceeding just as glibly as when, behind Frances ’s back, he stole the attentions of his neighbors’ wives.

This scenario made sense. And yet as relieved as he was to hope that Theresa was alive, still a dozen questions rattled in his head and wouldn’t let him rest.

“Yes,” Davis said. “You’re headed there now? If she’s from the neighborhood, Charlie will know her. Yes, I’ll be at the autopsy first thing in the morning.”

As much as the tomcat liked to be in on every aspect of a murder, when he imagined Davis photographing the autopsy, he was willing to bypass this part of the investigation. Dissecting a human body was not the same as eviscerating a mouse.

Well, it shouldn’t take but a few minutes for Charlie to identify the victim, and for Max to call Davis. He watched Dulcie and Kit curl up behind the chair to wait, and he stretched out along the bookshelf, closing his eyes. Praying, as coldhearted as it might seem, that that was Frances Becker up there at the morgue, and not Theresa.

37

LEAVING THE COUNTY morgue beside Max, Charlie slipped into the passenger seat of her Blazer, happy to let him drive. As soon as he turned the key she rolled down her window, turning her face to the wind, hoping to blow away the smell of formaldehyde and death that clung to her. The stink seemed to have seeped into her every pore, and every fiber of her clothes. Were they depositing the smell in her Blazer, too, so it would never again be the same? Would her nice SUV, which had been a gift from Max on her last birthday, forevermore smell like a grave?

How did John Bern stand it? She’d wondered more than once what made a person like Bern embrace that particular profession. He was young, strong and intelligent, and nice looking, his premature baldness seeming only to add to his attractiveness. He’d told her once that it was the challenge, that he was fascinated by the precise procedure, of unraveling the mystery of how someone died. He said that if it was a murder, he got completely caught up in helping to discover the killer.

She looked back at the cream-colored, four-story stucco building, its roof fluted with red tile, thinking about the chill and antiseptic morgue in its basement, about the physically cold, visually cold viewing room with its unadorned walls, chill gray terrazzo floor that could be easily scrubbed, and its hard metal chairs. A room that hadn’t offered much in the way of emotional comfort as Bern rolled out the cold metal gurney bearing Frances ’s covered body.

“We’ve done preliminary testing for drugs,” he’d told them. “My guess is she died from an intracerebral bleed. I don’t want to make a final judgment yet as to whether she was struck, or if this occurred naturally, from a fall. Looks like she fell at least several feet, from the contusion and the specks of grit and cement embedded in the skin.”

They had discussed the autopsy for the following morning, which Detective Davis would attend, and before they’d left, Max had called Mabel to put out an APB on Frances Becker’s white Honda Accord, which was the car missing from the Becker garage. Now, pulling out of the parking lot, Max said, “You okay? You’re pale as hell.”

“Fine,” Charlie lied. “I’m fine.”

“The smell will go away,” he said, wondering if she was going to be sick. “If it was her husband who killed her, then is there no one to notify? She had no family?”

“Not that she ever mentioned.”

“ Davis will go over the house again, maybe she’ll find an address in her files, some relative.”

“One thing about Frances,” she said, “she was a neat-nick, everything in order. It shouldn’t take Davis long to find an address, if therewere any relatives.”

As Max turned onto the freeway, Charlie said,“John Bern says Frances has been dead at least thirty-six hours. When Ryan talked with Ed Becker this morning, he told her that her call woke Frances.”

“What is he going to do, tell her Frances can’t come to the phone right now because she’s dead?” He flicked on his emergency flashers to get a car off their tail, watched the guy pass on their left. The driver wouldn’t take such a liberty if they were in a patrol car. “If Becker turns out to be the burglar as well, then he apparently changed cars, switched to the dark RV. He could have put the jewelry and paintings in Frances ’s Accord, but not the furniture and boxes of books.” He looked over at Charlie. “Switched cars, hid the Accord somewhere, maybe in a storage unit or rented garage.”

Charlie tried to remember if Frances had ever mentioned a locker or a rented garage. But if Ed was stealing, surely she didn’t know about it. Did they own a rental house somewhere, and he’d stashed the car there? That didn’t seem likely when they’d lived in Molena Point only about two years. “Maybe therewas a storage unit, maybe they still have unpacked boxes, maybe part of Frances’s furniture collection. But if Ed was the burglar…” She looked at him, frowning. “He loaded up all that furniture from his own house to throw you off the track?”

Max shrugged.“Again, what else could he do?” They were turning off the freeway toward home when her phone buzzed. It was Ryan.

“We’re just getting back from the morgue,” Charlie told her. “I won’t turn the speaker on, there’s too much traffic noise. The dead woman is Frances Becker. You want to tell… Clyde?” Meaning,Will you tell Joe Grey? She knew the cats would be grieving for Theresa.

Ryan said,“They just walked in, all three of them, grinning like Cheshire cats.” And, more softly, “They were there when Max called the station.”

Charlie hid her smile.

Ryan said,“You want to run down here for supper? Beans and corn bread, and we’ll show you pictures of the house we’ve decided on.”

Charlie covered the phone, looking at Max.“Go down for a quick supper?” In truth, she didn’t feel like eating, she wasn’t sure she’d ever eat again, not sure her mouth would ever stop tasting like something dead.

But maybe a comforting meal of beans and corn bread would stay down. When Max nodded, she said,“We’ll just run by home and take care of the horses, we won’t be long.” Part of her would like to stay home, but she wanted, even more, to reassure the cats that indeed Theresa was just fine. Approaching the village, Max turned up the hills toward the ranch; the minute they turned into their long private road, the two big dogs saw them from the pasture and came barking, racing along inside the fence. The four horses galloped beside them, all of them wanting supper.

While Max fed the livestock, Charlie hurried to brush her teeth and lay out clean clothes. She took a quick shower and washed her hair, pinning it back wet. Max showered and changed, they threw their clothes in the washer and were out again in half an hour, headed for the village in the truck, leaving the Blazer in the stable yard with all the windows rolled down, hoping the sea wind would sweeten that clinging smell.

The village streets at dinnertime were busy with tourists crossing back and forth looking in shop windows or pausing before the small restaurants, reading the posted menus. Turning down the Damens’ street and parking, they caught the comforting scent of Clyde ’s favorite bean recipe. Wilma’s car was parked in the drive beside the Greenlaws’ gray sedan. “What’s this?” Max said. “I thought we were just running down for a quick bite.”

“I don’t know,” she said innocently. Because Dulcie and Kit were here, it would have been only natural for the Damens to invite the cats’ housemates. Rock barked at the door to greet them, and Clyde handed them each a beer. Everyone was gathered around the fire, the three cats sprawled on the mantel, warming themselves safely above the cozy blaze. Charlie paused to stroke them. They smiled up at her, their eyes filled with delight that Theresa was alive. They might feel sad for Frances, but not as sad as if they were grieving over their real friend. In front of Max, Charlie could say nothing, she stood petting them, trapped in one of those maddening moments when she and the cats longed to talk, but could say not a word. Of everyone present, it was only Max-the most keenly attuned to the subtleties of body language and behavior-who didn’t know the truth.

38

EIGHTY MILES NORTH of Molena Point, traveling the narrow two-lane along the edge of the cliff high above the Pacific, there was hardly any traffic. Above him the sky was clear, not a cloud, just the way he liked it-except that the sea was too bright, its flat surface metallic with reflected sun, that shot through the windshield at an angle that he couldn’t block with the visor.

The road was so narrow that when an occasional car did approach him, he had to press the RV precariously close to the rocky cliff that rose jaggedly on his right. His face hurt like hell and he kept thinking about infection. Cats were dirty creatures, and he was sure there was still glass embedded in the wounds, so deep he might never get it out. Every few miles he checked himself in the mirror to see if he was bleeding again. He’d put flesh-colored Band-Aids on only the worst wounds, otherwise his whole face would be covered. He felt better, though, with some breakfast in him.

In the steamy, boxlike restaurant with its dark-stained plywood walls smelling of the fishing wharf, he’d ordered ham, three eggs over easy, potatoes, and three biscuits, washing it all down with a big carafe of coffee. His bandages and bloody scratches had gotten wary looks from the half dozen tourists sitting in the plywood booths. One skinny woman in a purple sweater had looked so shocked that she half rose to leave, then glowered at her husband when he pulled her back into the booth. Two locals at the counter-wizened old men dressed in leathers that stunk of fish, their faces wrinkled and dark from sea and sun, had given him darkly amused stares. Both of them were drinking beer that was colored pink by the red wine they’d poured into it. Four empty wineglasses were lined up precisely beside their beer bottles. The waitress, an overweight redhead with a checkered apron pulled tight over her belly, took one look at him and asked, smartly, if he’d been in a catfight. He’d eaten quickly, didn’t tip her, paid his bill, and left.

Now, moving north up the precarious coastal two-lane, he glanced at his watch. One thirty. Not too bad considering how late he’d slept. He’d be in the city by three, unload the goods with the fence. Be out of there with the money and on the road again with plenty of time to dump the RV, leaving it on some back street where the homeless would strip it to sell for parts. Plenty of time to catch a bus to the nearest out-of-the-way car lot, some small operation where the salesman wouldn’t get fidgety if he paid in cash. Pick up a nondescript vehicle and head on north.

If he was ever questioned about the car that was now in the rented garage outside Molena Point, he’d sayshe took it when she ran off and left him. That he didn’t know why she’d taken it back there. He could get rid of it later, slip back into the village, drive it off to some chop shop.

As he plied the narrow highway north of Half Moon Bay, most of the sparse traffic was moving south, hugging the road above the sheer drop, detained from some fatal misjudgment only by occasional short lengths of guardrail. He kept the windows open, letting the cool, damp air soothe his burning face. The echo of the sea far below crashing against the rocks pleased him, he liked its wildness, he liked the thrill of danger. It was the same as the thrill of their thefts, they skirted the edge but always moved on unharmed. She’d loved that, loved the excitement that theycould get caught but never did. She’d loved selecting their targets beforehand from within an intimate group, she’d loved their duplicity.She was the one who insisted they slip away with only the items she’d chosen and take nothing else. They’d had a good thing going. Live in a neighborhood a few years, get cozy with the neighbors, join the local organizations, go to the concerts and amateur plays, even the school functions when the neighbors’ kids were involved-that was key, getting involved.During that time while they were settling in, listening to their neighbors’ problems and sometimes trying to help, babysitting their kids, they could often pull a few jobs in some previous neighborhood if it was close enough. Pick a time when there was a funeral or a wedding that would involve most of the residents. Then afterward allow enough time to lapse so everyone grew complacent again, thinking the thieves had moved on. They had done this on the East Coast, too, before they’d come out to California. To rip off their adopted neighborhood, that was the thrill, and they’d planned their moves carefully.

And then she’d gotten in one of her moods, had to have one more fling sunbathing, and look what it got her, she’d messed up everything.

Taking his time around the hairpin turns, wary of some approaching driver trying to pass another on the narrow road, he played the radio, pushing the buttons for a new station whenever he got bored, selecting alternately the talk shows, the hourly news, some nutcase discussing alternative medicine, and a station that specialized in UFO sightings. Anything to keep his thoughts moving, not dwell on her. And not dwell on those cursed cats last night. The sea air was calming, but then going around a curve the wind hit his face hard, making the wounds burn like fire, so painful that he felt the cats on him again, clawing and biting. Even with the distraction of the radio, he kept seeing them exploding in his face, their eyes like fire. When he took his hands off the wheel, they were shaking. His stomach, full of breakfast now, was getting queasy again as it had last night. Last night he’d lain awake for hours sweating, seeing that pale cat bursting out at him through the broken window, feeling enraged cats all over him. That kept him awake until he got up, found the sleeping pills they sometimes used, took two, and then at last dozed off. But even then, he slept fitfully, wouldjerk awake, his face burning. Once he woke seeing Poe’s cat plastered inside a wall staring out at him, and then sawthose cats screaming up from her grave letting the whole world know where she was buried.

Trying to pass a slow-moving truck on the two-lane, he pulled his thoughts back to the road, looking ahead as far as he could to negotiate the curve. He couldn’t drive these hairpin curves with his mind obsessing over cats. The road was precarious here, the drop precipitous, straight down maybe a hundred feet. He’d passed the truck without mishap and was headed downhill when the steering wheel jerked in his hand, jerked again, back and forth. Oh, Christ, not here, not another tire! Wheel felt like it was alive, nearly pulling itself from his grip. He steered into the cliff to slow the heavy vehicle, afraid to apply the brakes and make it skid. But when he tried to edge it into the cliff to make it stop, the wheel jerked harder, he hit the clifftoo hard and careened away, andhad to use the brakes. He hit them only gently but the vehicle dropped hard in the left front where he’d had the flat, far more out of control. What was wrong? The way it wobbled back and forth, it felt like the whole wheel was coming off. He had a flash of changing the tire, of putting on the lug nuts wondering which way they should go, which way he’d removed them. Feeling in the dark the sharp corners on one side, the rounded corners on the other. Had he got them wrong, or not tightened them sufficiently? Had he put them on backward, and they’d worked loose? The RV careened toward the edge so hard he could no longer steer. Felt like the wheel was half off, wobbling bad, the RV skiddedstraight for the edge, the steering wheel in his hands useless. He grabbed at the door.

The car was out over space, falling and rolling in midair as he fought the door. When he got it open, it swung and hit him. He managed to kick free and jump, the RV falling beside him. Its heavy bulk bounced against him and then he was under it, trying to swim through the air to get away from the hurtling vehicle. It twisted and came down on him and hit the sea-he hit the water on his back, the RV on top, driving him down, the jolt was like hitting concrete. Explosions of unbearable light shot through his head and then that pale cat exploding in his face; the whole world filled with cats screaming and raking him, and thenher face,her face laughing at him and she had the blazing eyes of a cat. Her face was the screaming face of the cat closing over him…

The weight of the RV drove him deep, forcing water into his mouth and nose and lungs as tons of metal carried him to the bottom and crushed him against the seafloor. He knew no more. Nor would he ever know more, the sea roiled and shook the drowned vehicle, and after a long while the RV eased up again, releasing him as a limp floater.

39

WITH THE HILLSIDE remodel now a crime scene and Ryan’s work halted, and with the completion of two other jobs she’d been juggling and their satisfactory final inspections, Ryan and Scotty turned their attention to finishing Ryan’s studio. She could hardly wait to move into her own bright space. She started work in the mornings before Clyde wasout of bed, was still at it when he shouted up to her that supper was on the table. The house was filled with the pounding of hammers, the whine of the Skilsaw, thethunk of the staple gun, and the intermittent purr of its generator. The whole house, upstairs and down, smelled of sawdust, of drywall and then of plaster, of paint and tile adhesive. With all the fumes and noise, Ryan took Snowball up to Dr. Firetti to board and to have her annual checkup and shots. Ryan’s dad was more than pleased to share his time, his bachelor pad, and his lady friend with Rock. Only Joe Grey remained among the chaos, coming and going at his pleasure, but sleeping in his rooftop tower with the sea breeze blowing through, unassaulted by toxic fumes. Long before Ryan finished the studio, the Chapmans and the Longleys returned from their vacations.

The Chapmans arrived the day after Charlie called them, Theresa rushing straight to the laundry to see to the kittens, hugging and snuggling the babies and Mango. She was distressed by the loss of her miniature paintings, which had not been insured, but that didn’t matter in comparison to her concern over her little cats, she’d wanted only to hold the cats and love them, making sure they were well and safe.

The Longleys returned the next day. Earl Longley was still angry with Charlie and threatened to sue her for negligence, but she didn’t think that would happen. She thought he’d cool down when he’d collected what promised to be a large insurance settlement based on the appraisals that he had kept current of his rare books. The Watermans remained in Greece. Rita talked with their insurance agent and filed their claim by e-mail, then put the matter aside to enjoy their vacation. There were as yet no viable leads to any of the stolen property, no response to the police fliers from any fence or from legitimate dealers. There were no leads to the whereabouts of Ed Becker.

Two weeks after the murder, Ryan finished her studio. That Sunday she and Clyde and Scotty moved her desk, her blueprint cabinet, her drawing board, and her computer from where they’d been crowding the guest room, up the stairs and into her bright new space; then she and Clyde threw a Sunday-night party.

Wilma arrived carrying Dulcie, wearing a new embroidered denim jacket over a red sweater and white jeans, her long silver hair clipped back with a bar of gold and coral. The Greenlaws walked from home, across the village. They arrived with their canes, Kit trotting eagerly beside them, just as Dallas pulled up in his old tan Blazer with Detective Davis. Everyone had a tour of the solarium-like studio with its high ceiling, its three skylights supported between the heavy beams, its glass walls, Mexican-tile floor, and Ryan’s treasured antique fireplace that she and Clyde had brought home from their honeymoon trip. The mantel’s hand-painted tiles featured pictures of cats, and the rearing cat in the center matched exactly the carved cat that graced the old Pamillon mansion where the wild clowder now lived; but that was a story of its own.

Ryan’s dad arrived with Rock on a leash and Lindsey Wolf on his arm. Lindsey wore pale jeans, sandals, and a honey-toned cashmere sweater that complemented her honey-brown hair and hazel eyes. Her infectious smile shone comfortably, and often, on Mike Flannery. When they let Rock loose, the big silver Weimaraner moved quietly among the guests, graciously accepting any and all offerings, working the room as adroitly as were the three cats. Snowball was the only antisocial little soul among the five animals. She was thrilled to be home from the vet and was happy to see her friends, but she soon retired upstairs to the master bedroom, away from the crowd and the noise.

The Chapmans had been invited, and when they arrived the cats wound around Theresa’s ankles purring so extravagantly that both Charlie and Ryan gave them looks that sent them padding away again. But they looked back at their friend lovingly, saying little cat prayers that she was safe. She was wearing a pink T-shirt that set off her pink cheeks, and pale jeans and sandals. Herlong brown hair was tied back haphazardly, and was streaked from the coastal sun. Carl Chapman, always quiet, stood smiling complacently as Juana Davis asked about Mango’s kittens; Joe and Dulcie watched, amused. Had Juana weakened after all this time of living alone without a pet? Did she finally mean to give in to the pleasure of a feline companion? The squarely built detective, in her dark uniform, made Theresa look even slimmer and somehow more ethereal. As they discussed the basics of responsible kitten care, they joined the others gathered around the big kitchen table, taking up plates, dishing up helpings of the casseroles and salads. Max Harper was loading his own plate when his cell phone rang.

Answering it, he stepped into the guest room where he could hear without the din of conversation. His back turned, he didn’t see Joe Grey slip into the room behind him. When the tomcat leaped on the small writing desk and lay down at his elbow, the chief scowled at him, then grinned and stroked Joe as he talked, mildly amused by the tomcat.

The Damen guest room had recently been redone, with plantation shutters, furniture designed in a combination of wicker and golden oak, and bright primitive rugs. Joe, stretching out just inches from the phone, could hear only half of what the caller was saying; soon he sat up straight, closer to the cell phone, nearly pressing his ear against it. If Clyde saw his nosy display, he’d kill him. The caller was Captain Jim Cahill of the CHP.

Joe knew Jim, he was a nice guy, he used to stop in the station when he was dating a woman in Molena Point. Good build, tanned, nearly bald, but with the remaining hair shaved clean, brown eyes, and always an easy smile, even when his thoughts might be less than complimentary. Max had known Jim since their days at San Jose State, before either hired on with their respective departments.

From what Joe could make out, the CHP had just pulled an RV out of the ocean, somewhere along Highway 1. Cahill was saying,“Driver’s dead. His description matches that on your dispatch, the prints belong to an Ed Becker, Sacramento address. He’s about six one, maybe two hundred pounds, black hair. We have a mug shot, I’d say he was a good-looking guy before his face got all scratched up.”

“Damage from the wreck?”

“No, this happened earlier, before the RV went over the side. Band-Aids still half stuck to him. RV was three-fourths underwater, on its side. A fisherman spotted it about four hours ago. We had to get divers, heavy equipment up there to get it up the cliff. No plates on it, and the divers couldn’t find any.”

“Anything inside?”

“It’s loaded, Max. Furniture, small imported rugs, looks like everything you describe. Everything soaked, the cartons of miniature paintings and books soaked through. The antique jewelry is all tangled together, and the seawater could cause corrosion.” He laughed. “The paperweights aren’tdamaged.”

“What were the scratches?” Max said, returning to the detail that puzzled him.

“Don’t know, but he’s a mess. Maybe the coroner can shed some light.”

“And you have the body and the RV where?”

“Vehicle’s impounded at San Mateo PD. Body’s in a mortuary there until we can send it down to your coroner.”

Max jotted down the phone number and address of the mortuary.“I’ll make arrangements and get back to you.” They talked for a few minutes about personal matters. Jim still had bird dogs, five English pointers. His wife had just retired from her job as a hospital nurse and planned to take a few private cases. She wasn’t a hunter, but she liked to fish,and they were planning a trip to Alaska. Thanking Jim and hanging up, Max finished up his notes then sat looking at Joe Grey, who lay innocently stretched out across the blotter. He scratched the tomcat’s ears for a moment, then rose and returned to the party. Joe waited a while, so as not to seem too obvious, and then followed him back to where supper was being served.

IN THE KITCHEN, as Max picked up his loaded plate from the counter where he’d left it, he frowned at Dulcie and Kit. “You haven’t been sampling my dinner?” The two females sat in the bay window not inches from the plate. They looked innocent enough, and he had to admit that the plate didn’t look as if they’d been at it. Only when Joe Grey jumped up on the counter and padded across to sit beside the other two did Max get that uneasy feeling these cats sometimes gave him, a puzzled sense of missing something, that he could never quite figure out. He looked up as Charlie came to stand beside him, putting her arm around his waist.

She looked narrowly at the cats.“They weren’t sampling your supper?”

Max laughed.“Not as far as I can see. Sometimes…” He frowned at Charlie. “Sometimes these three make me uneasy, for no reason.” She just looked at him. “Their stares,” he said, “are more piercing than any judge I ever faced.”

“Piercing?”

“Haven’t you ever noticed? Don’t they look, sometimes, more aware than a cat should be?”

Charlie laughed.“I never noticed that. They’re sweet and smart, but I don’t see anything unusual. What was the phone call?”

“Jim Cahill. The CHP found Becker, dead. He went over the cliff and into the ocean north of Santa Cruz. Driving a brown RV, with the stolen goods in it, maybe the whole lot. Everything’s soaked through.”

“Oh, Theresa’s paintings. Oh, I’m sorry.” She couldn’t feel sorry for Ed Becker. He was a thief and a killer. Was she supposed to grieve for him?

“They had to get heavy equipment up there, to pull it out of the water. I don’t know what happened to the guy before he went over, Cahill said his face was covered with deep scratches, something that happened before the wreck because he was already bandaged.”

Charlie glanced at the cats before she could catch herself. Joe looked away, Dulcie glanced down, and Kit blinked.“They’re looking at your plate,” she said. “Poor things. I’ll get them some supper.” She turned away to the table, certain that the cats had been at the man, or some cats had. She could hardly wait to hear the rest of that story.

Max watched her filling a plate of delicacies for the cats with the attention most people gave to their children. He picked up his own plate and headed into the living room, making for the one empty chair, Joe Grey’s clawed and fur-covered easy chair that was the last anyone wanted to occupy. He was happily enjoying his buffet supper, hoping to keep the cat hairs out, when Charlie appeared, followed by the cats. She set their plate on the mantel, watched them leap up and tuck into their supper. She did have a way with cats, an empathy he admired-but that sometimes made him as uncomfortable as did the cats themselves.

Across the room, the gray Weimaraner watched Charlie and the cats every bit as keenly as did Max-though only with greed. To Rock there was nothing startling about the three cats, he’d learned early on that these were not ordinary cats. Being only a dog and not driven by the complications of human logic, he had no reason not to believe what, to him, was perfectly obvious. These cats were different. He’d learned to live comfortably with their bossing him and expecting him to mind them.

Bringing her own supper, Charlie sat down on the arm of Max’s chair. He was relaying to the little group what Jim Cahill had told him. The Chapmans didn’t want to believe that Ed Becker had been a liar and a thief, that he had turned on people who’d been his close friends, that he could ever have been vicious enough to kill Frances.

Theresa said,“To break in like that, break into our houses where he’d made himself at home and was always welcome. They were friends with everyone on the street…Or we thought they were. They were always there for us, they babysat for people’s children…” She looked sadly at Max. “Hekilled her? Because she found out he planned to steal from us?” A tear slid down her cheek. Quietly Carl put his arm around her.

Max said,“A lot of questions still unanswered. We have, apparently, no one to prosecute, but that doesn’t mean we won’t still dig for answers. For one thing, Becker’s MO could fit a whole string of similar unsolved burglaries, we’ll be working on that.”

On the mantel, the cats looked so satisfied at the resolution of the case and at the death of Ed Becker that Clyde glared at them, and Ryan raised a warning eyebrow. Turning away, they wiped the smug little cat smiles off their faces and leaped down.

But as Joe went to sit behind Clyde’s chair, out of sight, a look of triumph returned to his gray-and-white face. Dulcie, as she leaped to the arm of Wilma’s chair, was purring. Only Kit, as she snuggled on Lucinda’s lap, looked not quite at ease with herself, looked as if she was still filled with questions.

LATER THAT NIGHT, when Dulcie and Wilma were home again by themselves, Wilma told her,“You cats are getting careless, you looked way too interested tonight. When you learned that Becker was dead, all three of you looked much too alert, far too pleased.”

Dulcie said nothing. She watched Wilma turn back the bedcovers and kneel to light a fire in the woodstove. As Wilma tucked herself up under the quilt with her book, Dulcie jumped up on the bed beside her, but still she said nothing.

“Do you want to spoil everything?” Wilma asked, stroking her. “You want to blow this exciting life you’re living? You want to spend the rest of your lives trying to be no more than clueless housecats, not daring to doanything interesting?”

“We don’t want that,” Dulcie said contritely.

Wilma opened her book, and held up the comforter. Quietly Dulcie slipped in under it, and put her head on the pillow beside Wilma’s where she could clearly see the pages of the new mystery they were reading. Why was it that these fictional characters could get away with outrageous behavior? But an innocent little cat, just because she could speak, had to watch herself every waking minute?

IT WAS LATER that night that Kit, at home with Lucinda and Pedric, left her warm nest on the bed between her two companions and trotted off, alone, to her tree house. As the older couple slept, Kit pushed out through the dining room window and onto the oak limb, and padded along the branch among the shadows to curl down in her cozy lair among her cushions, looking out at the starstuck sky.

The tree house had belonged to the children of the previous owners. It was, in fact, one of their main incentives in choosing this particular house. Now it was Kit’s own, a secluded aerie in which to dream and to become a part of the night. She lay listening to the little sounds from the garden, to the rustle of a mouse far below scurrying among the dry leaves, to the shrill voice of a brown bat high above, banking and diving to catch his supper. She thought about Tansy and Sage, up in the hills among the clowder. She thought that last night when they had all attacked that man together, that something had changed in Sage. Afterward, the look in his eyes was different. As if he had learned, suddenly, what it meant to take decisive action and stand up for himself. She thought Tansy had looked at Sage differently, too. Maybe, Kit thought, all would be well with them now. The two seemed stronger now, as if their indignant response to that man’s brutality had strengthened them and brought them closer together.

Smiling, Kit rolled over on her back, looking up from her tree house at the sky. The stars gleamed at her, the cool air rippled her fur, and for that one perfect moment, all was right with the world.

UP IN THE hills among the Pamillon ruins, Tansy knew that life was different. In the shadow of a broken wall, the pale cream female sat close to Sage, watching him devour the rabbit he’d caught. He’d caught two, and he’d given her the first one. Now as he greedily ate his own supper, Tansy smiled and purred. The decisive way he’d hunted, and the way he tore into the rabbit, told her that he was strong again and that the pain was gone-certainly he’d been stronger last night when they attacked the killer, when Sage clung to that man, kicking and ripping his face. Something had awakened in Sage last night. The cold cruelty of that human had stirred alive something new in him, something fine and bold, had awakened a keen and indignant ferocity within the tomcat’s soul. She looked around them at the fallen buildings and crumbled walls of the old estate, at the dense cover of overgrown bushes, at the tumbled trees hiding tunnels deep beneath their fallen trunks. This was a fine world for cats, here were a hundred places to hunt, a hundred more where a cat couldhide from danger. Here, the cruelest predator of all seldom ventured-there were no twisted humans here to bedevil them. This world, abandoned by humans was, Tansy thought, a finer world than she, as a kitten, had ever imagined. Certainly it was a fine world in which to raise a family.

IT WAS TWO weeks later that the crime scene tape was removed from the remodel, allowing Ryan to pour new gravel and cement and finish up the work on that house. Later, while Fernando was shoveling dirt back into the pit, he stopped suddenly, looking down at a small plastic container lying in the freshly turned earth. He called to Ryan, and she picked it up with a tissue, wrapping it carefully. When she gave the inhaler to Dallas, it was duly bagged and booked in as evidence. The department found Ed Becker’s prints on it, though it would probably never be needed in a court of law.

Ryan and Clyde bought an old cottage in a crowded, hilly neighborhood not far from Lucinda and Pedric’s home, an ugly little place that anyone else would call a teardown but which they meant to give new life. And they weren’t done shopping yet, they were looking at a ranch up near the Harpers’ and who knew what else? Gently amused, Joe Grey put aside his misgivings about the project and turned his attention to other matters, leaving the newlyweds to their folly.

Kit didn’t see Tansy or Sage for a long time, though she looked for Tansy whenever she and Pedric and Lucinda went up in the hills to walk. Indeed, she didn’t see the two ferals again until the end of August, when the days were long and the weather had turned dry and hot. As Kit stood high on the hill above her resting housemates, looking up toward the ruins, she could see looking back at her a small pale smudge atop a jagged wall. Now Tansy seemed very far away, and they did not approach any closer. That was another world up there, so very different from Kit’s world, she realized. But still they were friends, they would always be friends, she thought, smiling.

But then suddenly, in what seemed a vision or a dream, Kit saw the tiniest speck leap up onto the wall beside Tansy, and then another, both little smudges as pale as moonlight. Then a third, and the three went frolicking along the wall, chasing one another. Then Sage was there, strutting a little and gamboling with his babies, and Kit laughed out loud. Tansy had made her choice, between an exciting life among humans and that frolicking family. And if still, deep inside Tansy, there burned a touch of longing for the wonders of a larger world, maybe she’d give those dreams to her babies. Maybe they’d grow up yearning, too.

And who knew where that would take them?

As for herself, Kit knew that somewhere in the world there was a tomcat filled with her own kind of dreams. That was the mate she wanted, a cat who was all fire and muscle and challenge, who had soaring dreams and the steady spirit to follow them. A tomcat with fire in his eyes, but with a steady gentleness and a joyful laugh. One day there would be such a cat. She could almost see him, maybe a great golden or red tabby cat with curving stripes, with eyes the color of moonlight and claws as sharp as sabers.

Kit thought about Joe and Dulcie, so happy in their love and in the work they had chosen. She thought about Christmas, soon to come, with all its ceremonies and pleasures. She thought about how wonderful and exciting the world was, and suddenly she was so filled with joy that she raced down the hill straight for Lucinda and Pedric, leaped on the wall beside them and raced along it and down again, running in circles, jumping over bushes and over nothing at all, racing like a wild thing-knowing, down deep in her own cat soul, that somewhere out in the world, that tomcat was waiting, and he was looking for her.

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Мерфи Ширли Руссо Cat Deck The Halls. Cat Playing Cupid. Cat Striking Back