Cat In The Dark. Cat To The Dogs. Cat Spitting Mad. Cat On The Money

Joe looked at her and said nothing. Was there a crime here, or were they painting more into this than was there?

She said,“Pearl Ann was snooping for some reason. And Bernine-even for Bernine-really did come onto him pretty fast.”

The cats looked intently at each other, the two incidents, together, as compelling to them as a wounded bird fluttering before their noses.

11 [????????: pic_12.jpg]

WALKING ALONGDolores Street carrying a bowl of potato salad and a six-pack of beer, Charlie glanced up as Wilma nudged her, nodding ahead to where a black Mercedes convertible had slowed to turn the corner. From the driver’s seat, Winthrop Jergen raised his hand in greeting. Sitting close beside him, Bernine gave them a tight little smile, cold and patronizing. The tall redhead was elegantly dressed in a sleek black, bare-shouldered frock, her russet hair coiled high and caught with a band of black.

“She doesn’t waste any time,” Charlie said. “Lunch yesterday and now dinner. Wonder where they’re going.”

“Somewhere expensive, if I know Bernine.” Wilma shifted the bag of French bread to her other hand and reached up to steady Dulcie, who was riding on her shoulder. “Mavity’s remarks on Sunday, about Jergen’s financial acumen, were like gunfire to the troops.”

“It’s amazing she didn’t already know him, considering he’s a well-to-do bachelor.”

“A rare oversight. I’ve known Bernine half my life, and she seldom misses such a plum.” Glancing around at Dulcie, Wilma winked. Dulcie narrowed her eyes in answer. But as the convertible turned the corner and disappeared, she turned her attention to the shop windows, dismissing Bernine’s little games, enjoying the elevated view from Wilma’s shoulder. Her high perch was a liberating change from being level with the bottoms of doorways-from breathing the smell of hot rubber tires and dog pee and having to stand on her hind paws to see a store display. One had, at twelve inches from the sidewalk, a somewhat limited perspective.

Charlie, pausing at a dress shop, stared covetously in at a creamy velvet cocktail suit, where the sleek, darkhaired mannequin posed against a background of city lights.“Wish I could wear that stuff-and could look like that.”

“Of course you can wear it, and of course you can look like that, or better. That ivory velvet would be smashing with your red hair.”

“Right. And where would I wear it? For four hundred dollars, I’d rather have a Bosch drill, some new sawhorses, and a heavier sander.” Charlie laughed and moved on, looking around her with pleasure at the small village. Over the rooftops, the eastern hills were burnished by early-evening light, the windows of the scattered hillside houses reflecting gold and catching images of the sinking sun. Close around them along the narrow streets, the sprawling oaks, the tubs of flowers, the little benches, and the used-brick facades and jutting bay windows caught the light, so brilliant with color and yet so cozy that she felt her heart skip.

“This village-how lucky we are. The first time I ever saw it, I knew that I’d come home.”

Wilma nodded.“Some people are born for fast highways, for tall buildings, but you and I, we’re happier with the small places, the people-friendly places, with the little, interesting details-and with having everything we need right within walking distance.

“I like sensing the land under me, too. The way the old cypress trees cling to the great rims of rock and the rock ridges drop away into the sea like the spine of some ancient, half-emerged animal.

In the city,” Wilma said, “I can’t sense the earth. I couldn’t wait, when I retired, to move back home.

“I like knowing that these old trees were here before there was a village, when this coastal land was all wild-range cattle and grizzly bear country.” Wilma put her hand on Dulcie as they crossed the southbound lane of Ocean, toward the wide, grassy stretch of the tree-shaded median.

“I bet you had enough of big city crime, too.”

Wilma nodded.“In Molena Point, I don’t have to watch my backside.”

Charlie laughed.“People-friendly,” she agreed.

And cat-friendly,Dulcie thought. Compared to San Francisco’s mean alleys, which Joe had described in frightening detail-the bad-tempered, roving dogs, the speeding cars, the drunks reaching out from doorways to snatch a little cat and hurt it-compared to these, Molena Point reallywascat heaven, just as Clyde told Joe.

Clyde said Joe was lucky to have landed here. And despite Joe’s smart-mouthed replies, Joe Grey knew he was lucky-he just would never admit it.

Beyond Ocean, as they approached Clyde’s white Cape Cod cottage, Dulcie could smell the smokey-meaty scent from Clyde’s barbeque and could hear Clyde’s CD playing a soft jazz trumpet. Pete Fountain, she thought, purring as she leaped down from Wilma’s shoulder and in through Joe’s cat door.

In Clyde’s weedy backyard, a thick London broil sizzled on the grill. Clyde and Max Harper sat comfortably in folding chairs sipping beer. Harper, lean and leathery, looked even thinner out of uniform, dressed in soft jeans and Western shirt. Above the two men, in the maple tree, Joe Grey sprawled along a branch, watching sleepy-eyed as Dulcie threaded out the back door between Wilma’s and Charlie’s ankles. The little tabby headed across the yard, slowed by the inspection of the household cats sniffing and rubbing against her and by Rube’s wet licks across her face. The old Labrador loved Dulcie, and she was always patient with him; she never scratched him for his blundering clumsiness and sloppy greetings. Trotting quickly across the grass, escaping the menagerie, she swarmed up the tree to settle on the branch beside Joe, her weight dropping them a bit lower among the leaf cover.

Below them the picnic table was set for four and loaded with jars of condiments, paper napkins, plastic plates, bowls of chips and dip, and now Wilma’s covered bowl of potato salad. Wilma laid the foil-wrapped garlic bread at the back of the grill and put her beer in the Styrofoam cooler, tossing one to Charlie and opening one for herself. As she sat down, Clyde handed her a sheaf of papers.

Looking them over, she smiled.“What did you do, Max, threaten your men with desk duty if they didn’t sign a petition? Looks like you got signatures from the jail regulars, too.”

“Of course,” Harper said. “Drug dealers, pimps, they’re all there.”

She looked up at Clyde.“Two of these petitions are yours. You’ve been intimidating your automotive customers.”

Clyde tossed a roll of paper towels on the table.“They don’t sign the petition, they don’t get their car-though most of them were pleased to sign it.” He tipped up his beer, took a long swallow. “All this damn fuss. If the village wants a library cat, what’s the harm? This Brackett woman is a piece of work.”

“Next thing,” Harper said, “she’ll be complaining because my men circulated petitions on their own time.”

“She’ll try to get an ordinance against that, too,” Charlie said.

“She’d have a hard time,” Harper said. “Those petitions aren’t for financial or political gain, they’re for a cat. A poor, simple cat.”

Dulcie cut her eyes at Joe.A poor, simple cat?But she had to smile. For someone so wary of certain felines, Max Harper had responded to the library cat battle like a real gentleman-though if he knew the petitions were to help one of his telephone informants, he might go into shock.

Clyde adjusted the height of the grill to keep the meat from burning. The aroma of the London broil made the cats lick their whiskers.

Harper looked at Charlie.“So your landlord tossed you out.”

“I’m back freeloading on Wilma.”

“And you’ve joined Sicily Aronson’s group,” he said. “I stopped in the gallery to have a look.” He nodded his approval. “Your animals are very fine.” Charlie’s cheeks reddened. Harper glanced up at Dulcie and Joe as if inspecting them for a likeness. “You make those cats look?”

He paused, frowning, seemed to revise what he’d started to say. “It’s fine work, Charlie. And the Aronson is a good gallery-Sicily’s people sell very well. I think your work will be very much in demand.”

Charlie smiled.“That would be nice-it would be great to fatten up my bank account, stop feeling shaky about money.”

“It’ll come,” Harper said. “And Charlie’s Fix-It, Clean-It appears to be doing well-except,” he said, glancing at Clyde, “you need to be careful about questionable clients.”

“If you hit it big,” Clyde said, “if you sell a lot of drawings, you could put some money with Jergen, go for the high earnings. A bank doesn’t pay much interest.”

“I don’t like the uncertainty,” Charlie told him. “Call me chicken, but I’d rather depend on a small and steady interest.”

Clyde tested the meat, slicing into one end, a tiny cut that ran bloody. In the tree above, the cats watched, mesmerized.

Harper passed Charlie a beer.“Have you found a new apartment?”

“Haven’t had time to look. Or maybe I haven’t had the incentive,” Charlie said. “I get pretty comfortable with Wilma.”

“There are a couple of cottages empty down near Mavity’s place. We cleared one last week-busted the tenant for grass.”

“Just what I want. Handy to my friendly neighborhood drug dealer.”

“In fact, it’s pretty clean down there. We manage to keep them at bay.”

Molena Point depended for much of its income on tourism, and Harper did his best to keep the village straight, to stay on top of any drug activity. But even Molena Point had occasional problems. Several months ago, Joe remembered, there’d been an influx of PCP and crack. Harper had made three cases and got three convictions. In this town, the dealers went to jail. Harper had said that some of the drugs coming into the village were designer stuff, experimental pills.

Clyde said,“I could turn one of the new apartments into two studios. You could rent one of those.”

“Your permit doesn’t allow for more than five residences,” Charlie said.

“Or you could move in here, with me.”

Charlie blushed.“If I move in with you, Clyde Damen, I’ll sleep in the laundry with the cats and Rube.”

At the sound of his name, Rube lifted his head, staring bleerily at Charlie. The old dog’s cataracts made his eyes dull and milky. His black muzzle was salted with white hairs. When Charlie reached to pet him, Rube leaned his head against her leg. The three household cats wound around Clyde’s ankles as he removed the steak from the grill. But when the foursome was seated, it was Charlie who took up a knife and cut off bits of her steak for the animals.

The CDs played softly a string of Preservation Hall jazz numbers, the beer was ice cold, the steak pink and tender, the conversation comfortable, and as evening drew down, the fog gathered, fuzzing the outdoor lights and enclosing the backyard until it seemed untouched by the outside world. It was not until the four had finished dinner, the animals had had their fill, and Charlie was pouring coffee, that Harper mentioned the burglaries.

There had been a third breakin, at Waverly’s Leather Goods. “They got over four thousand in small bills. Didn’t take anything else, just the cash.” Waverly’s was the most exclusive leather shop in the village. “We have one partial print-we’re hoping it’s his. The guy’s real careful.

“The print doesn’t match any of the employees, but it will take a few days to get a make. He may have taken off his gloves for a minute while he was working on the safe.”

“Are you still going on the theory the burglar’s getting hold of the store keys?” Wilma asked.

Harper shrugged.“We’re checking the locksmiths. Or he could simply be skilled with locks.” He started to say something more, then hesitated, seemed to change his mind.

In the tree above him, the cats stared up at the sky, following the antics of the diving bats that wheeled among the treetops, but taking in Harper’s every word.

Wilma, glancing up at them, exchanged a look with Clyde and turned away torn between a scowl and a laugh. The cats aggravated them both-but they were so wonderful and amazing that Wilma wished, sometimes, that she could follow them unseen and miss nothing.

It was not until the company had left, around midnight, that Clyde vented his own reaction. As Joe settled down, pawing at the bed covers, Clyde pulled off his shirt and emptied his pockets onto the dresser.“So what gives?”

“What gives about what?”

“You’re very closemouthed about these burglaries.” He turned to look at Joe. “Why the silence? There is no crime in Molena that you and Dulcie don’t get involved with.”

Joe looked up at him dully.

“Come on, Joe.”

Joe yawned.

“What?Suddenly I’m the enemy? You think I can’t be trusted?”

“We’re not interested in these petty thefts.”

“Of course you’re interested. And isn’t it nice, once in a while, to share your thoughts, to have some human feedback?”

“We’re not investigating anything. Three amateurish little burglaries-Harper can handle that stuff.”

“You have, in the past, not only confided in me, but picked up some rather useful information, thanks to yours truly.”

Joe only looked at him.

“Clues you would surely have missed if Max and I didn’t play poker, if you didn’t scrounge around on the poker table, eavesdropping. But now you’re too good to talk to me?”

Joe yawned again.“I am eternally grateful for your help on previous occasions. But at the moment I am not in need of information. We’re not interested.” Turning over on the pillow, with his back to Clyde, he began to work on his claws, pulling off the old sheaths.

He and Dulcie already knew who the perp was. As soon as they checked out Mavity’s brother, Greeley, and found where he’d stashed the money, they’d tip Harper. And that would wrap it up. If the prints on the stolen bills matched the print from the leather shop, Harper would have Greeley cold.

Biting at his claws to release the sharp new lances and listening to Clyde noisily brushing his teeth in the bathroom, he quickly laid his plan.

Dulcie wasn’t going to like the drill.

But she’d asked for it. If she wanted to play cute with the black tomcat, wanted to cut her eyes at Azrael, then she could make herself useful.

12 [????????: pic_13.jpg]

MAVITY FLOWERS’S cottage stood on pilings across a narrow road from the bay and marsh, crowded among similar dwellings, their walls cardboard-thin, their roofs flat and low, their stilted supports stained with mud from years of soaking during the highest tides. Mavity’s VW Bug was parked on the cracked cement drive that skirted close to the house. Beyond the car, at the back, the open carport was crowded with pasteboard boxes, an old table, a wooden sawhorse, two worn tires, and a broken grocery cart. Joe, approaching the yard from across the road through the tall marsh grass, skirted pools of black mud that smelled fishy and sour; then as he crossed the narrow road, Azrael’s scent came strong to him, clinging to the scruffy lawn.

Following the tomcat’s aroma up onto Mavity’s porch, he sniffed at the house wall, below an open window. Above him, the window screen had been removed and the window propped open, and black cat hairs clung to the sill. Mavity might complain about the tomcat, but she treated him cordially enough. From within the cottage, the smell of fried eggs and coffee wrapped around Joe, and he could hear silverware clatter against a plate.

“Eat up, Greeley, or I’ll be late.”

“Eating as fast as I can,” a man replied. “You hadn’t ought to rush a man in the morning.”

“If you’re coming with me, you’ll get a move on.”

Below the window, Joe Grey smiled. He’d hit pay dirt. That raspy, hoarse croak was unmistakable; he could hear again the wizened old man arguing with Azrael over their takeout fish and chips. Greeley was their man. No doubt about it. Mavity’s own brother was their light-fingered, cat-consorting thief.

Luck,Joe thought.Or the great cat god’s smiling.And, sitting down beneath the window, he prepared to wait.

Once Mavity left for work, taking Greeley with her, he’d have only Dora and Ralph to worry about-if, indeed, they were out of bed yet. Mavity said the portly couple liked to sleep late, and if the great cat god hung around, he might not even have to dodge the Sleuders; maybe they’d sleep through his search.

As for Azrael, at the moment that tomcat was otherwise occupied.

But to make sure, Joe dropped from the porch to the yard and prowled among the pilings, sniffing for Dulcie’s scent.

Yes, he found where she had marked a path, her provocative female aroma leading away toward the village, a trail that no tomcat would ignore. He imagined her, even now, trotting across the rooftops close beside Azrael, her tail waving, her green eyes cutting shyly at the torn, distracting him just as they’d planned.

He sat down beside a blackened piling, trying to calm his frayed nerves, wondering if this idea had been so smart.

But Dulcie wouldn’t betray him. And as far as her safety, his lady could whip a room full of German shepherds with one paw tied behind. He imagined her dodging Azrael’s unwanted advances, subtly leading him on a wild chase far from Mavity’s cottage, handling the situation with such guile that she would not need to smack the foreign beast.

“Get your jacket, Greeley, or I’ll be late.” Inside, a chair scraped and dishes were being stacked, then water ran in the sink. He caught the sharp smell of dish soap, imagined Mavity standing just a few feet from him washing up the breakfast plates. Then the water was turned off. Soon the door opened, and from beneath the deck he watched their hurrying feet descend the steps, Mavity’s white jogging shoes and Greeley’s dark loafers.

He got a look at him as they headed for her VW. This was their man, all right.

Greeley wasn’t much taller than Mavity. He wore the wrinkled leather jacket with the cuffs turned up and the collar pushing at his shaggy gray hair. Joe could see him again rifling Mrs. Medder’s cash register.

The car doors slammed and Mavity backed out, turning up Shoreline toward the village. Joe did not enter the house at once but listened for Dora and Ralph. When, after some minutes, he had heard nothing but the sea wind hushing through the marsh grass behind him, he leaped to the sill and slipped in through the open window.

Pausing above the sink, his nose was filled with the smell of greasy eggs and soapsuds. The kitchen was open to the small living room, with barely space between for the tiny breakfast table pushed against the back of the couch. A faded, overstuffed chair faced the couch, along with a small desk and a narrow cot covered with a plaid blanket. A TV jammed between the desk and a bookcase completed the decor. The ceiling was low, the walls pale tan. To his right, from the darkened bedroom, he heard slow, even breathing.

There was only the one bedroom, and through the open door he studied the piled suitcases, the closed blinds, the two big mounds sprawled beneath the blankets. When neither Dora nor Ralph stirred, he padded along the kitchen counter and across the breakfast table to the back of the couch.

At one end of the couch was a stack of folded sheets and blankets and a bed pillow. Dropping down to the rug, he inspected first beneath the furniture and found, under the cot, a battered leather suitcase.

The clasp was devilishly hard to open. Digging at it with stubborn claws, at last he sprang it.

He found within only socks, underwear, a shaving kit, and a pair of wrinkled pajamas. The shaving kit, which was unzipped, had an inner pocket. Pawing this open, thinking Greeley might have stashed some of the money there, he narrowly missed cutting his pad on Greeley’s used razor blades. Why would anyone save old razor blades?

Nosing into the suitcase under the false bottom, which was meant to keep the bag rigid, he found nothing but a small notebook containing some foreign addresses and Greeley’s plane ticket. Sliding the ticket from its envelope, he saw that Greeley had not yet made his return reservation. Pushing everything back in order, he turned away. Listening to the lonely wind buffet the cottage, he headed for the bedroom.

Long before Joe entered Mavity’s cottage, across the village on the dark rooftops where the sea wind scudded and danced, Dulcie slunk along a roofs edge watching the street below. Around her, the dark trees hushed and rattled, and the moon’s fitful light jumped and fled; above her, telephone lines swung in an erratic dance,and in an open dormer window white curtains whipped like frantic ghosts. By the strike of the courthouse clock she had been on the rooftops since three, and it was now nearly six. She had not seen Azrael. She was beginning to worry that he had not left Mavity’s cottage or had returned to it, surprising Joe in his search.

Had she not marked her trail clearly enough, on her way from the marsh? Or had she marked it too clearly? Rubbing her whiskers on every surface and leaving little damp messages, had she made Azrael suspicious? She prayed that he hadn’t guessed their plan, that he was lying in wait for Joe. She longed to turn back to Mavity’s, but she might only lead him there. She could do nothing but keep on searching, casually marking her trail across the rooftops.

Then suddenly, in the shadows of the alley, was that the tomcat? Quickly she dropped down to an oak branch and crossed the six-foot chasm to the roof of the Swiss Cafe.

Stretching out along the rain gutter, she watched the dark montage of shadows that she thought had moved.

Now all was still. No sign of Azrael.

At last she slipped to the corner where she could see the street. She waited there, watching, until the glow of the street lamps began to fade and the sky grew to the color of pewter beneath dark, scudding clouds. The courthouse clock struck six-thirty. Maybe the tomcathadreturned to Mavity’s and at this moment he and Joe were locked in terrible battle.

A lone car hushed along Ocean as an early riser headed for work. A shopkeeper set a box of trash at the curb then began to water his curbside garden of ferns and geraniums. Dulcie was about to turn away, to seek Azrael along other streets when from beneath a parked truck the black torn swaggered out, nose to the gusting wind. Pausing just below her, he licked his paw and washed his whiskers. He seemed restless, kept glancing away in the direction of the marsh. Was he aware of her? Did some sixth sense nudge him? When he started away, Dulcie followed quickly along the roof’s edge.

But then he paused at the Red Skillet Cafe, stood peering into the patio, sniffing deeply the scents from last night’s grilled salmon and halibut. As Dulcie hunched on the rooftop, he padded through the wrought-iron gate to wind among the tables. Immediately a mockingbird, snatching up crumbs, attacked him-and exploded in a storm of feathers, with a naked backside. The black torn smiled, licked his whiskers, and prowled among the tables, gulping bits of charred fish like some half-starved stray-but still he seemed edgy and unsettled, glancing away again and again in the direction of Mavity’s cottage.

Quickly Dulcie, her heart pounding half with fear, half with excitement, dropped to the pavement and hurried after him.

Beyond the iron gate, Azrael was turned away. But his ears flicked. His tail lashed. His body stiffened as he sensed a presence behind him. As she slipped in through the bars, he whirled to face her.

She paused, her paw softly lifted.

His gaze narrowed to a sly caress.

They stared at each other in silence. Azrael flattened his whiskers, offered subtle body talk meant to set the stage for mating.

Dulcie gave him a slow smile. This wasn’t going to be easy, to delay him yet avoid the snuggling games. She felt like a lady cop playing street hustler.

“Where is your friend, my dear? Your little gray friend? Does he know you’re out alone?”

She wound among the chair legs, her tail high, her stroll sultry, her heart pounding so hard she could hear it. Azrael trotted close to her, his amber eyes deep and golden; when he bowed his neck, towering over her, she felt small suddenly, and frail.

Dora and Ralph Sleuder slept deeply, their even breathing unchanged as Joe prowled the dim bedroom. Pawing through a suitcase that lay open on the floor, he dug into its pockets and searched under the clothes, taking considerable trouble to push everything back in the same jumble as he’d found it.

He was nosing into a big duffle bag when the bedsprings creaked and Ralph stirred and sneezed. Fleeing to the kitchen, Joe leaped on the table and shot to the top of the refrigerator. Crouching behind a metal canister and a bag of potato chips, he watched Ralph swing to the floor and pad away toward the bathroom, nattily attired in striped green boxer shorts that dropped beneath his bare belly.

Making himself comfortable behind the chips, he was careful not to brush its crinkly cellophane or against the package of cookies. Amazing what a person could cram atop a refrigerator. Clyde favored beer, and an assortment of cat and dog kibble-all the essentials readily at hand.

The bedsprings squeaked again, and Dora rose, her ample curves voluminous in a pink-and-green flowered nightie. Not bothering to wash or comb her hair, she padded into the kitchen, looked out the window, and glanced into the living room.

Returning to the bedroom, she began to open the drawers in the tall dresser, carefully examining the contents of each, her movements quick and watchful.

From the bathroom, the toilet flushed, and Ralph returned to start on the other dresser, pawing through Mavity’s personal belongings.

“Nothing,” Dora said at last, closing the bottom drawer. “She must have a lot of time on her hands, to keep her drawers so neated up.”

Ralph slammed a drawer closed.“Maybe in the living room.”

“Start on the desk. I’ll look in the bookcase. Daddy’ll have dropped her at work by now, so she won’t come charging back forgetting her lunch or whatever. That gave me the cold sweats yesterday when she did that.”

“What about your daddy? How soon will he be back?”

“Depends. If he decided to drive over to Monterey-haircuts are cheaper over there-he’ll be a while.”

Watching Dora go through the bookcase, pulling romance novels from the shelves to look behind then shoving them back, watching Ralph finger through the contents of Mavity’s desk, Joe grew so interested that he backed into the cookies. The brittle crunch brought both Dora and Ralph swinging around to stare toward the kitchen. He remained frozen behind the canister, as still as one of those plaster amusement park cats-a gray plaster cat with white markings.

“Heat,” Ralph said, seeing no one in the kitchen. “Thought it was that stinking Azrael coming through the window, but it was just heat-them chip bags pop in the heat. Makes ‘em rancid, too.”

Joe watched, puzzled, as the two pudgy people resumed their investigation. If they were looking for Greeley’s stolen money, why had they searched Mavity’s bedroom? Why not go directly to Greeley’s suitcase, as he himself had done?

But maybe they’d already searched there. Or did they think that Mavity had hidden the money? Did they think she was Greeley’s accomplice?

Not Mavity. He couldn’t think that.

The smell of chips was so strong he could taste them. What did they put in that stuff? Looking out, he watched Ralph remove papers from the desk drawers and shuffle through them, scanning Mavity’s letters and bills, and he grew certain Ralph wasn’t looking for the money. But what, then?

The desk had seven drawers. Digging into the bottom drawer, Ralph raised up, fanning a stack of white paper.“Got it! I got it!”

Dora hurried in, her short, flowered nightie flapping around her meaty white legs, and snatched the papers from him. Leaning against the desk, she rifled through-then waved the papers and laughed, hugged Ralph and did a little dance around him, wriggling provocatively.

“Take a good look,” she said, handing them back, “while I get set up.” And she vanished into the bedroom. Joe heard a click, as if a suitcase had opened. She returned carrying a small copier machine. Glancing out the window toward the drive, she set it on the kitchen table and began to search for an outlet.

“Hurry up. Unplug the toaster. A haircut doesn’t take forever. Your dad?”

“I am hurrying. Give me the statements.” Jerking out the toaster cord, she jammed in the plug, flipped the switch, and stood shuffling through the sheaf of papers until a green light came on.

Slipping to the edge of the refrigerator, Joe could just see a letterhead above Mavity’s name and address. WINTHROP JERGEN, FINANCIAL ADVISOR.

Dora made two copies of each page and separated them into two piles. When she was halfway through, Ralph stopped her.“You better call him. I’ll finish.”

“You call him.”

“No. You’re the one started this. You do it.”

Sighing, she fished a slip of paper from her pocket, picked up the phone from the desk and carried it to the coffee table dragging the cord, sat down on the couch where she could be comfortable.“I hope he’s there.”

“He said he’d wait for the call.”

“Why is it so hard to get him on the phone?”

“Just call, Dora. Before your daddy gets back.”

While Ralph ran copies, she punched in seven clicks. No area code, so it was a local call. Waiting for her party to pick up, she glanced directly toward the refrigerator. Joe held his breath, didn’t twitch a whisker.

Abruptly she returned her attention to the phone. She didn’t say hello, she offered no cordial introduction, just started talking.

“We have them.”

A pause.

“I can’t. Dad has the car. He took Mavity to work. He’s getting a haircut-I told you he’d get one today. He’ll be back any minute.”

Silence.

“All right. But hurry.”

She hung up.“He’s on his way.” She headed for the bedroom and in a few minutes returned dressed in tight jeans and a T-shirt that told the world she liked hot cars and champagne, carrying a large leather briefcase. Ralph finished up the copies, straightened the two stacks, and put the originals back in the bottom desk drawer. Dora carried one stack into the bedroom, then unplugged the copier and slipped it into the briefcase, tucking the other set of pages on top.

When Ralph padded into the kitchen to make coffee, Joe froze again. The couple sat at the table, not five feet from him, sipping coffee and waiting.

“Where can he be?” Dora grumbled. “What’s taking so long?”

After twenty minutes by the kitchen clock, she fetched a plate of cake from the cupboard and cut two thick slices.

Ten minutes more, and another ten. They had poured the last of the coffee and Joe felt ready to pitch a fit-it was an interminable wait for both the Sleuders and their silent audience. At last a car came down the street.

“That has to be him. Where has he been?” Dora patted her hair and straightened her shirt. “What in the world took him so long?”

But the car went on by. Joe heard it stop a block away, heard the car door slam. In a minute, footsteps came up the street, turning to the house.

“That’s him,” Ralph said. A shadow loomed beyond the louvered glass: a thin man. Dora pulled the door open.

“Had car trouble,” the man said, stepping inside. “Left it up the block. It’s running rough as a paint shaker.”

Joe, watching him, was rigid with amazement.

He was of medium height and slight of build, his light brown hair tied in a ponytail that flopped over the hood of his blue windbreaker.

This was the man who lingered around the apartments. The silent watcher. Joe caught a whiff of motor grease as he moved past Dora to the table.

“Let’s have a look.”

Dora opened the briefcase and handed him the copies.

“Shuffle them out, Dora. My hands are greasy from the car.”

She spread the statements across the kitchen table; he stood scanning them as she sorted through, then looked up at her, smiling.

“This is what we want. Exactly. You’ve done a good job here.” He winked at her. “You two are quite something.”

The man watched as Dora put the papers in a neat pile again and slid them back into the briefcase on top the copier, carefully closing the lid.

Removing a white handkerchief from his pocket, he wrapped it around the handle.“No need to get grease on the leather. I’m just filthy.” He smiled again, holding the briefcase away from his pantleg, and moved toward the door. “Wish me luck, folks, that I can nurse the old car into the village.”

“I could phone for a tow truck,” Dora offered.

“I’ll take it slow. I think it’s the carburetor, but I should be able to make it to the garage all right.” He stared down at his dirty hands, let Dora open the door for him.

The man’s name was never spoken. When he had gone, Joe endured what seemed eternal confinement between the chips and cookies while Dora fixed breakfast and the two folks ate a never-ending meal of fried sausage, fried eggs, instant grits, toast, and coffee. At first the smells made him hungry, but afterprolonged exposure, he wanted to throw up. He woke from a fitful doze as Dora began to do the dishes, running hot water into the sink, plunging her hands into the suds.

When she had put the dishes in the drain, she hurried to the bedroom and returned wearing a yellow-and-purple mumu and flipflops and carrying a blanket and a beach umbrella. Ralph padded out dressed in skin-tight black exercise shorts and a red tank top straining across his considerable girth. Joe watched them toddle down the steps and plow through the muddy, sandy marsh to a streak of sand at the edge of the water, watched them spread their towels on the fish-scented shore. As Ralph put up the beach umbrella, Joe leaped down from the refrigerator and resumed his own search, swiftly prowling, poking with a nervous paw.

He found no other suitcase smelling of Greeley. He dug into the bags belonging to Dora and Ralph, then looked for the money beneath the beds and up under the bedsprings and under the couch cushions, all the while listening for footsteps on the porch or the sound of a car-or the soft thump of paws hitting the windowsill.

He tossed the bathroom, too, then pawed open the kitchen cabinets. He fought open the refrigerator but found no wrapped package that might contain money. Standing on the kitchen counter, he was just able to open the freezer, a favored place for householders to hide their valuables according to Max Harper. Leaning into the cold, he sniffed several paper-wrapped packages, but the smell of each matched its handwritten label: pork chops, shrimp, green beans. He nearly froze his ears off. Being practically inside the freezer, trying to listen for intruders, feeling as nervous as a mouse in a tin bucket, he backed out gratefully into the warm kitchen.

When he could think of nowhere else to look-couldn’t figure a way to take the top off the toilet tank or remove the light fixtures-he gave up, sprang out the open window, and trotted up the hill behind the cottage. Fleeing the scene through the woods, he hit the wide gardens above, galloping between those substantial homes wondering where Greeley had hidden the money and what Dora and Ralph were up to. Telling himself that Dora Sleuder wouldn’t rip off her own aunt Mavity.

13 [????????: pic_14.jpg]

WINTHROP JERGENliked to tell his clients that he was a sentimental nonconformist, that he would endure almost any inconvenience so he could enjoy the magnificent view from his out-of-the-way office-apartment.

In fact, the view meant nothing. That wondrous vista down the Molena Point hills wasn’t even visible when he sat at his desk, only the tops of a few ragged trees and empty sky. He had to stand up or move to the couch before the glare of sun-glazed rooftops stabbed at his vision. And this morning the so-called view was a mass of wind-churned trees and ugly whitecaps. That was the trouble with being close to the water, these violent winds whipping inland. Now, standing at his desk looking down to the dead-end street below, observing the weeds and the three battered service trucks parked behind Charlie Getz’s rusting van, he wondered why he tolerated this disreputable display.

According to the provisions of his lease, he could have refused to let Damen undertake the remodeling, but he thought it better to endure a few months’ annoyance in order to acquire a more respectable environ. And it was always possible that Damen would overextend himself, sink more money into the project than he could manage, and would be in need of cash, perhaps a personal loan.

Glancing at his watch, he left his desk and in the bathroom removed his sport coat, tucked a clean bath towel over his white shirt and tie, ran hot water into a washcloth and steamed his face, bringing up a ruddy color and relaxing the tightness that prevailed after he’d been at work for several hours. He brushed his teeth, used the blow-dryer to touch up his hair, removed the towel, and washed his hands. He was to pick up Bernine at twelve-thirty. He’d had trouble getting a reservation on a Saturday, but Bernine had raved about the Windborne. The restaurantwas indeed charming, a rustic, secluded aerie clinging to the seacliffs south of the village. Bernine said she liked the ambiance. The moneyed ambiance, he thought, amused. As long as Bernine wasn’t buying. If he kept this up, lunch or dinner every day, she could prove to be expensive.

He wasn’t sure whether Bernine Sage would become a client or a lover, or both. It didn’t matter. One way or another, she would be useful. She was blatantly obvious in coming onto him, but she was a good-looker, kept herself groomed and dressed in a style that commanded attention. A nice showpiece. Andshe seemed to know her way around, knew a lot of worthwhile, influential people.

As long as they understood each other, the relationship could be mutually entertaining. With Bernine on his arm he got plenty of appraising looks. She attracted interest, and interest, in a certain strata, meant money.

Straightening his tie and slipping back into his sport coat, he returned to the computer screen to finish up a last group of entries. He checked his figures, then closed and secured the file with a code and punched in the screen saver, a slowly wheeling montage of various foreign currencies. Putting his backup disks safely in the file cabinet, he locked it and locked the desk, left no disk or hard copy accessible. And without the code, no one could access his hard drive.

Surely no one around here had reason to snoop, or very likely had the knowledge to override his code. But he made it a point to follow set routines. He was successful in large part because he did not deviate from carefully chosen and rigorously observed procedures.

Two incidents of the morning did bother him, however. Small mistakes he must have made, though he abhorred carelessness.

He had found a number error in the Benson file. And he had found, in a hard copy file for the Dawson account, two spreadsheets out of order. Such small inefficiencies could lead to far more serious errors. He did not allow such carelessness in others, and he certainly couldn’t sanction it in himself.

Locking the apartment, heading down the stairs jingling his keys, he paused at the bottom of the steps glancing to his right into the weedy patio at the stacks of lumber, the sawhorses, and crated plumbing fixtures. He hoped this project wouldn’t last forever. Turning left from the stairwell, he stepped out onto the driveway and to the bank of garages. Activating his pocket remote, he opened his single garage door, backed the Mercedes out, and headed down the hills.

Molena Point’s shops and cottages were appallingly picturesque. In his opinion, a regular Disney World, though he would not say that to anyone. As for the crowds of tourists, those people might as well be in Fantasyland, they were so busy spending money on foolish whims. No thought to solid investment. No, the tourists weren’t for him. It was Molena Point’s established residents who made up the predictable cadre of his clients.

Parking in the short-term green zone in front of the Molena Point Library, he had intended to wait for Bernine in the car, but on impulse he swung out and moved through the deep garden, along the stone walk, and in through the dark, heavily carved doors of the sprawling Mediterranean building.

The central reading room was brightly lighted, its white walls and spaciousness offsetting the dark tables and bookcases. Through an office door he could see Bernine, dressed in a short pink suit, standing near a desk beside the head librarian-Freda something-a frowsy scarecrow of a woman who seemed to be scolding a third party standing nearly out of sight beyond the door. Interested, he wandered in that direction, pausing beside the book stacks.

He could see a bit of the third woman, with her back to him. Red sweatshirt, long gray hair caught back with a silver clip, faded jeans. That would be the Getz woman, the person Bernine was staying with.

Plucking a book from the shelf, something about Scottish bed-and-breakfasts, he stood slowly turning the pages, listening for any stray information that might be useful.

They were arguing about a cat.A cat-that cat that had caused all the fuss in the newspaper, the animal they called the library cat. Freda was giving the tall, gray-haired woman a real dressing-down. And she had considerable skill at it, too; she handled her authority with style, splendidly high-handed and thorough.

And certainly Bernine, standing at full attention, was being very politic; her few comments, when Freda spoke to her, were as smooth as butter. How insane, all this fuss over some cat. You couldn’t walk the street without someone wanting you to sign a petition.

He turned away as this Wilma person came out. She was actually carrying the cat, holding the animal across her shoulder like a baby. She crossed the reading room rigid with anger and disappeared through an office door.

From behind the closed door he heard her talking to someone, softly arguing. Curious, he moved closer. The other voice was so soft he could not make out the words, but both women were angry. He had a strong desire to see the other speaker, such a sudden, intense curiosity that he was tempted to push open the door.

Shutting the door behind her, Wilma set Dulcie on the desk.“That woman! How did we ever get saddled with her?”

“I’d like to slash her,” Dulcie hissed, her green eyes blazing. “Eviscerate her like a dead toad.”

Glancing at the door, Wilma lowered her voice.“She frightens me. We don’t know what she might do.” She reached to stroke Dulcie. “Won’t you agree to leave the library for a while?”

Dulcie’s eyes widened.

“She could be capable of anything. I don’t want you hurt.”

Dulcie glared, her ears flat.“I can take care of myself.”

“I know that. I know you can be all teeth and claws. But Freda is bigger, and she has the advantage of any number of large, heavy weapons. She could block your cat door and corner you, trap you in one of the offices. She might even turn on the gas. This petition movement has her in a rage. She’s livid that the town and her own staff are trying to override her.”

“You think she’d turn on the gas and risk blowing the place up? Don’t be silly. And so she blocks my cat door. You know I can open any door in this library-the back door, the front door, the door to the side street. I can turn the knobs and, with a little time, I can turn every one of these dead bolts.”

Wilma stroked her diffidently.“I know how skilled you are. And I know your hearing and eyesight are far superior, that there’s no way she could slip up on you. But you refuse to admit that, simply because of size, a human might have some advantage. She’s cruel, Dulcie. And she’s angry!”

Dulcie turned away and began to wash, every lick across her tabby fur telegraphing her disdain.

Wilma walked around the desk and sat down facing her.“Please, won’t you stay in my office during the day? Near your cat door? And stay away at night until the petitions go to the city council?”

Dulcie leaped off the desk, lashing her tail, and without another word pushed out her cat door. She’d had a difficult morning already, before Freda started in, and now Wilma. Tired and cross beyond toleration from leading Azrael around the village while trying to avoid his intimacies, she had come into the library needing a long nap, and there was Freda making another fuss. And now Wilma roiling at her. She felt as irritable as a bee trapped against the window; she wanted only to be left alone.

Azrael had pretended to enjoy her company as she gave him the grand tour, showed him the best places to hunt wharf rats, demurely led him along the shore and into the warehouses; as she showed him the meanest dogs to avoid and where the best restaurant garbage was judiciously hidden out of sight of wandering tourists-not that any village cat frequented such places. Why should they, when they could enjoy George Jolly’s offerings? But the entire morning she didn’t dare let her guard down. He had only one thing on his mind-hewouldkeep nuzzling her. She had swayed on a tightrope between seeking to distract Azrael while Joe searched Mavity’s cottage-and fighting her own distressing fascination. She didn’t want to find Azrael charming; she didn’t want to be drawn to him.

Well hewasa good storyteller. Lying in the sun on Molena Point’s fishy-smelling pier, he had told her wonderful tales of the jungle, had shown her the jungle’s mysterious, leafy world awash in emerald light, the rain approaching like a silver curtain to drench the giant leaves and vines then move on again, a silver waterfall receding, glinting with the sun’s fire.

He had shown her the steaming city sidewalks crowded with dirty children begging for food and stealing anything their fingers touched, had shown her black buzzards bigger than any street cat hunched above her on the rooftops, diving heavily to snatch garbage from the sidewalks; had shown her tangles of fishing boats tied to the wharves, then buckets of silver cod dumped flopping on the pier. His stories were so vivid that she could smell the stench of the open market where fly-covered sides of beef hung rotting in the tropical sun-and the tomcat’s soft-spoken Spanish phrases enticed her, caressed her, though she did not understand their meaning.

She had ignored the darkness surrounding Azrael, the cloying heaviness beneath his sweet Spanish phrases-until he repeated his ugly predictions of murder.

“The people in this village, that woman Bernine Sage, and this investment person, and your Wilma Getz and her niece and that auto mechanic, all of them are drawing close to death. As unable to pull away as leaves blown to the edge of a dark pool.” And Azrael had smiled as if greatly enjoying the prospect of human death. Rising, he had peered down into the shadowed world of mud and pilings below them, where Molena Point’s small colony of stray cats eked out a meager living.

Suddenly, lashing his tail, he had leaped off the pier and shouldered into the shadows below, snarling and belligerent, routing the cowering strays, tormenting and bullying those thin cats, had sent them slinking away into dark niches to crouch terrified between the damp boulders.

Shocked, she had stormed after him and driven him back with steely claws. To hell with guile and sweet smiles.

But at her attack, his amber eyes had widened with amazement.“What’s the matter? They’re only common cats. They’re not like us. Come on, Dulcie, have a little fun-they’re only stupid beasts.”

“You think they’re stupid because they can’t speak? You think they’re without feelings? Without their own sensibilities and their own unique ways?”

He had only looked at her.

“Common cats have knowledge,” she had said softly. She was hot with anger, but she daren’t enrage him-not until Joe had finished with Mavity’s cottage. “Can’t you see,” she had mewed gently, “that they have feelings, too?” All the while, she wanted to tear the stuffings out of him, he wassoarrogant-this cat couldn’t see a whisker-length beyond his ego-driven nose.

Disdainfully he had flicked his tail at her silly notions and stalked away. And she, chagrined, had swallowed her pride and galloped after him, sidling against his shoulder.

He’d glanced down at her, leering smugly again, turning on the charm, rubbing his whiskers against hers. She had held her tongue with great effort and spun away from the wharf, laughing softly and leading him a wild chase through the village. The cat was so incredibly boorish. Who needed a torn that viewed other cats so brutally, who viewed a female not as an interesting companion or hunting partner, but as a faceless object meant only to mount, only for male gratification?

And when at long last she heard the tower clock strike ten, and knew that Joe would have left Mavity’s, she gave Azrael the slip. Making a tangled way among and through the shops, through enough varied scents-spices, perfumes, shoe polish-to hide her trail, she had slipped into the library guessing that, even if Azrael tracked her, he wouldn’t follow her into that sanctuary of strict rules where he’d likely be thrown out on his lashing black tail.

Alone at last, she’d had a little wash and settled into the shelves of medieval history for a quiet nap. But it wasn’t two hours later that she woke to Wilma and Freda arguing.

Alarmed, she had leaped down and trotted into Freda’s office to rub against Wilma’s ankles-whether out of support for Wilma or out of curiosity, she wasn’t sure. And Wilma had picked her up and cuddled her, as together they took the blast of Freda Brackett’s temper.

Jergen watched his lunch date emerge from the head librarian’s office looking like a million dollars in the pale pink suit, its tight skirt at midthigh, the low-cut jacket setting off a touch of cleavage and Bernine’s golden tan. Her red hair, piled high and curly, was woven with a flowered silk scarf in shades of red and pink. The minute she saw him, she turned on the dazzle, gave him a bright and knowing smile.

“Ready for champagne?” he said, offering his arm. “Our reservations are for one.” Escorting her out, their passage was followed by the envious stares of several women behind the checkout counter. They made, Jergen was fully aware, an unusually handsome couple, well turned-out and enviable.

Crossing the garden, he stopped to pick a red carnation for Bernine. He was handing her into the car when, glancing across the street, he saw a portly couple entering an antique shop. He forgot Bernine and froze, stood staring-felt as if his blood had drained away.

But, no. Surely he was mistaken. That could not have been the Sleuders. Not Dora and Ralph Sleuder.

How would those two get here to Molena Point, and why would they come here? No, he had only imagined the resemblance. Taking himself in hand, he settled Bernine within the Mercedes, went around and slipped behind the wheel. The Sleuders wouldn’t be here, three thousand miles from Georgia. If those two hicks took a vacation anywhere, it would be to Disney World or to Macon, Georgia, to look at the restored southern mansions.

But, pulling out into the slow traffic, he continued to watch the antique shop. Now he could only catch a glimpse of the couple. Behind him, the traffic began to honk. Damn tourists. Moving on to the corner, he made a U-turn and came back on the other side, driving slowly. He was glad he had put the top up, so he was less visible. Passing the shop, he caught a clear look at the woman.

My God. ItwasDora Sleuder. Or her exact double. And then Ralph moved into view-the heavy chin, the receeding hairline and protruding belly.

This could not be happening.

What earthly event could have brought those people here? Brought those two bucolic hicks across the country?No oneknewhewas here. He had taken every precaution to cover his trail. He drove on by, trying to pull himself together, very aware of Bernine watching him, every line of her body rigid with, curiosity.

Someone once said that wherever you traveled, even halfway around the world, in any group of a hundred people you had a 50 percent chance of meeting someone you knew, simply by coincidence, by the law of averages.

Surely this was coincidence. What else could it be?

But the worst scenario was that the Sleudershadcome here to find him.

So? What could they do if they did find him?

Circling the block, he tried to puzzle out who could have sent them to Molena Point. Who, among his acquaintances, might be linked to them?

So far as he knew, only one of his clients had any ties to the east coast, and that was Mavity Flowers, whose niece came from one of the southern states. Mavity hadn’t mentioned the niece’s name and he hadn’t any reason to ask.

What a nasty coincidence if Dora turned out to be Mavity’s niece.

But no, that was too far-fetched. That sort of concurrence didn’t happen, would be quite impossible.

However, the fact remained that those two dull people were here. He had to wonder if, despite their simple rural set of mind, they had somehow tracked him.

Whatever the scenario-happenstance or deliberate snooping-the reality was that if he remained in this small, close town where everyone knew everyone’s business, the Sleuders would find him.

He began to sweat, considering what action to take.

Beside him, Bernine was growing restless. Smiling, he laid his hand over hers.“The couch in that antique shop, that dark wicker couch. It’s exactly what I’ve been looking for. I want to go back after lunch. If it’s as nice as it looks, it will fit my apartment perfectly-just the contrast I want to the modern leather.”

Bernine looked skeptical.

“Imagine it done up in some kind of silk, perhaps a Chinese print. You know about that kind of thing; you have wonderful taste. Would you have time, after lunch, to take a look?”

He could see she wasn’t buying it but that she appreciated the lie.

“I’d love to. Maybe we can find the right fabric in one of the local shops.”

He liked the speculative way she watched him, trying to read his real purpose, almost licking her lips over the intrigue. Strangely, her interest calmed him. Perhaps, he thought, Bernine could be useful, if he needed help with the Sleuders.

But as the Mercedes turned off Ocean, picking up speed heading down the coast, neither Jergen or Bernine had seen a woman watching them from an upstairs window as they slowly circled the block.

14 [????????: pic_15.jpg]

FROM THE FRESHLY washed windows of her new apartment, Charlie, taking a break from cleaning, watched Bernine Sage and Winthrop Jergen leave the library across Ocean looking very handsome, Bernine in a short-skirted pink suit, Jergen wearing a tweed sport coat and pale slacks. The couple, in less than a week, had become an item. And that was all right with her.

She had come to the window for the hundredth time, she thought, amused at herself, to admire her brand-new view of the village rooftops and of Ocean’s tree-shaded median and the library’s bright gardens. Now, watching Jergen lean to open the passenger door for Bernine, she saw him suddenly go rigid, straightening up and seeming to forget Bernine as he stared across the median at something on the street below her.

Craning to look down, she could see nothing unusual, just window-shoppers, two shopkeepers hurrying by, probably on their way to lunch, and a meter maid marking tires. Directly below her, lying on a bench in the sun, a huge black cat was stretched out, ignoring the people who surged around him, in a most uncatlike manner. Most cats didn’t want to sleep anywhere near strangers, but this one seemed to think he owned the sidewalk. Winthrop Jergen was still staring but then he seemed to shake himself. He turned, handing Bernine into the car.

Pulling away from the curb, he crept along slowly, still looking, until irate drivers behind him began to honk. He speeded up only a little, and when he reached the corner where Ocean Avenue stopped at the beach, he made a U-turn and came back up the northbound lane, pausing just below her window and tying up traffic again before the bleating horns drove him on. The cat, on its bench, stared irritably at the noise. Charlie left the window to resume her cleaning, to finish scrubbing the kitchen alcove. A new home was never hers until she had dug out the crevice dirt and scoured and burnished every surface.

She finished cleaning just after one and headed for Wilma’s to pick up her clothes and tools and meager furniture, thankful that Bernine wouldn’t be there watching her pack, making sarcastic comments. She’d had enough of that this morning. When Clyde picked her up for an early trip to the plumbing supply houses, he had come in for coffee and of course Bernine was up, looking fetching in a tangerine silk dressing gown.

“A breakfast date,” Bernine had purred smugly. “Now, isn’t that romantic.” She had looked them over as if she’d discovered two children playing doctor in the closet. “And where are you two off to, so early?”

“Plumbing supply,” Clyde had said gruffly, gulping his coffee. “Come on, Charlie, they open in thirty minutes.” Turning his back on Bernine, he had gone on out to the truck. Charlie had followed him, smiling.

They had had a lovely morning prowling through plumbing showrooms looking at showers, basins, at elegant brass faucets and towel racks. Not everyone’s idea of fun, but the excursion had suited them both. She had been back in Molena Point in time to pick up the key from her new landlord and get her studio ready to move into.

Now, parking in Wilma’s drive, she let herself into the kitchen, went down the hall to the guest room and began to fold her clothes into a duffle bag. As she was hiking her stuff out to the van, Wilma pulled up the drive beside her.

“Short day,” Wilma said, at her questioning look. “I took off at noon.” She looked angry, as if she’d not had a pleasant morning. Little tabby Dulcie sat hunched on the seat beside her, sulkily washing her paws. Wilma looked at Charlie’s tools and bags piled on the drive, looked at Charlie, and her disappointment was clear.

“I found an apartment,” Charlie said softly.

“Is it nice?” Wilma smiled, doing her best to be pleased. “Where is it?”

“Just across from the library-I can run in anytime, and you can run over for lunch or for dinner.” Charlie reached to touch her aunt’s shoulder. “I love being with you. How could I not, the way you spoil me? It’s just-I feel a burden, coming back again after being here so long.”

Wilma grinned.“It’s just that you like your privacy-and detest being stuck with Bernine.”

Charlie shrugged.“That, too. But?”

“Ever since you were a little girl,” Wilma said, “you’ve valued your own space. I’m going to make a chicken sandwich. You have time for lunch?”

“Sure, I do.”

Charlie finished loading up and went into the kitchen where Wilma was slicing white meat off a roast chicken. She sat down, stroking Dulcie who lay curled up on a kitchen chair. Wilma said,“I hadn’t much choice, about Bernine.”

“I know that. You have enough problem with her at the library. No need to antagonize her any more-until the petitions are in. She’s a troublemaker.” She got up to pour herself a glass of milk. “But maybe she’ll be in a nicer mood for a while, now that she’s dating Winthrop Jergen. I sawthem coming out of the library at noon, like they were having lunch.”

“Who knows how that will turn out?” Wilma said. She set the sandwiches on the table. “Tell me about your apartment.”

“It’s one big room-fresh white paint, a wonderful view of the village, and there’s a garage off the alley, for storage. The stairs go down to a little foyer between the antique shop and the camera store; you can go from there to the street or back to the alley. There’s a deli down at the corner, but not as good as Jolly’s, and? But you know every shop on that street.”

Wilma nodded.“You’ll enjoy living there.”

“You and Dulcie are invited to dinner as soon as I get settled.” She finished her sandwich quickly, petted Dulcie again, and headed back to her new apartment to unload her boxes and tools. Seemed like she’d spent half her life lately carting her stuff around. After hiking her duffels and folding bed up the stairs, she put fresh sheets on the bed, slapped new shelf paper in the cupboards, and unpacked her few kitchen supplies. By three o’clock she had stored her tools in the garage and was headed back for the job to check on the plumber, see if he’d finished roughing in the changes to the ground-floor bathrooms.

Parking before the building, coming in through the patio, she glanced up at Winthrop Jergen’s windows and was surprised that they were open-this wasn’t his regular cleaning day, and he never opened the windows, only the girls did. Then she saw Pearl Ann through the bathroom window, working at something, and remembered that he’d wanted some repairs done. She hoped Pearl Ann would close up when she left or they’d all hear about it. Heading across the patio into the back apartment, she saw that Pearl Ann had finished mudding the Sheetrock in those rooms, and had cleaned her tools and left them dry and shining on the work table, had left the container of mud well sealed. Pearl Ann was always careful with her equipment.

Many women didn’t like to mess with Sheetrock, partly because the drywall panels were hellishly heavy for a woman to handle. But Pearl Ann was good at the work, and she used a specially made wedge to lift the panels without straining so she could nail them in place. And her taping and mudding was as good as anyfull-time professional. She used the big float, giving it long, bold sweeps; she said she had learned from her dad.

Charlie was in the kitchen of the back apartment, which they used as an office and storeroom, when she saw the two cats come trotting into the patio from the hills below. It always amazed her how far and how quickly cats could travel. Less than two hours ago, she’d been feeding Dulcie bits of her chicken sandwich in Wilma’s sunny kitchen.

But these two roamed all over the hills; according to Clyde and Wilma, they were excellent hunters. She could imagine Joe Grey killing most anything, but it was hard to think of soft little Dulcie with blood and gore on her claws. Now, watching Dulcie roll on the sun-warmed bricks, she could almost feel in her own body the cat’s deep relaxion and well-being.

But soon Dulcie rose again, looking around eagerly-as if all set to rout a colony of mice. She looked secretive, too. As if, Charlie thought, she was about to embark on some urgent clandestine mission.

Ihave too much imagination.

Maybe I never grew up-still carting around my childhood fancies.

But the two cats did bother her. So often they appeared bound somewhere with intense purpose-bound on a specific errand, not just wandering. Cats not aware only of the moment but focused on some future and urgent matter.

These, Charlie Getz, are not sensible thoughts you’re having. You ought to be making a building supply list.

Yet even as she watched, the cats rose and trotted purposefully away across the patio in a most responsible and businesslike manner.

Maybe they knew it was nearly quitting time. Maybe they were waiting for Clyde; he usually showed up about now. A dog would go to the door at the time his master was due home, so why not a cat? A dog would show up at the bus stop to escort his kid home from school. Certainly cats were at least as smart as dogs-she’d read some startling things about the abilities of cats. She watched the cats cross the patio, looking up at Winthrop Jergen’s windows as if watching the flashes of Pearl Ann’s polishing cloth. Sweeping across the glass, it must look, to them, like some trapped and frantic bird.

But suddenly they glanced back and saw her looking out. They turned away abruptly to sniff at the edge of a flower bed. Turned away so deliberately that she felt as if she’d been snubbed. Had been summarily dismissed.

Amused by her own imaginings, she opened the kitchen door and told the cats,“Clyde’s not here yet.”

They looked around at her, their eyes wide and startled.

“He’s bringing some kitchen cabinets. If you’re looking for a ride home, just wait around, guys.”

The cats gave her a piercing look then closed their eyes, in unison, and turned away-as if the sound of her voice annoyed them. And when, half an hour later, Clyde arrived with the cabinets, Joe and Dulcie had disappeared.

“They’ll come home when they’re ready,” he said.

“Don’t you worry about them? Don’t you wonder where they go?”

“Sure I worry. They’re cats. People worry about their cats. Every time some village cat doesn’t show up for supper, you can hear his owner shouting all over Molena Point.”

He looked at her helplessly.“So what am I supposed to do? Follow Joe around? I can’t lock him in the house, Charlie. Do that, and I might as well put him in a cage.”

He seemed very intense about this. Well, she thought, Clyde loved his cat.

They unloaded the kitchen cabinets and set them in the front apartment; this was the only apartment to get new cupboards, thanks to the last tenant who had painted the old ones bright red. The new units were pale oak and prefinished. When Clyde was ready to head home, the cats were nowhere to be found, though he shouted for Joe several times. If the tomcat was around, he would usually come trotting to Clyde’s summons, as responsive as any dog. Clyde called him again, waited, then swung into his truck.

She stared at him.

“They’ll come home when they feel like it.” He searched her face for understanding. “I can’t keep him confined, treat him like an overcontrolled lap dog. What good would Joe’s life be, if I told him what to do all the time?”

She watched him turn the truck around at the dead end and pull away toward the village, his words resonating strangely.What good would Joe’s life be, if I told him what to do all the time?

A puzzling turn of phrase. For some reason, the question, thus stated, left her filled with both unease and excitement.

Tossing some tools in through the side door of the van, she went back inside to get a ladder. Slipping it in on top of the tools, she pulled the door closed. She wanted to hang some drawings tonight and put up bookshelves. As she locked up the building, she called the cats, checking each apartment so not to shut them in.

She didn’t find them. No sign of the little beasts. She didn’t know why she worried about them. As Clyde said, they were off hunting somewhere.

But when she slid into her van, there they were on the front passenger seat, sitting side by side, watching her as expectantly as a taxi fare waiting for the driver, urging him to get a move on.

15 [????????: pic_16.jpg]

JOLLY’S ALLEY was no longer a pretty retreat for either tourist or village cat. Beneath the darkening sky where the first stars shone, the cozy brick lane with its little shops looked like a garbage dump. The light of its two wrought-iron lamps shone down upon a mess of greasy paper wrappers, broken eggshells, sandwich crusts, and chewed chicken bones. Wadded paper napkins and broken Styrofoam cups spilled from the two overturned refuse cans, and the smears of cold spaghetti and slaw and potato salad were stuck liberally with tufts of torn-out cat fur-a dozen colors of fur, telling the tale of ahuge battle.

Joe and Dulcie, pausing at the alley’s entrance, surveyed the mess with amazement, then outrage. Dulcie’s ears went back and her tail lashed. Joe crouched as if to spring on whatever feline culprit remained.

But no culprit was visible, the battling cats had fled. Only the tufts of fur told the story, and their pawprints deep in the potato salad-and the stink of fear that lingered, as sharp as the smell of gunpowder after a frontline skirmish.

And, stronger even than the fear-stink, was the odor of the perpetrator-the belligerent reek of the black tomcat.

Sniffing Azrael’s scent, Joe and Dulcie padded across the greasy bricks, peering into the shadows beneath the jasmine vine, searching for him.

Suddenly above them a shadow exploded between the rooftops and dropped down within the jasmine vine, dark and swift.

The black torn sauntered out of the foliage, his bullish shoulders swaggering, his amber eyes burning. Looking around at the devastation, he smiled and licked his whiskers.

Joe’s growl was deep. “I suppose you waited until all the cats congregated for an evening’s snack, then attacked them. Did you trap the smallest ones behind the garbage cans, so you could bloody them?”

Azrael widened his amber eyes.“And what business is it of yours, little cat? What are you, keeper of the village kitties?” Crouching, he circled Joe, his teeth bared, his eyes blazing.

Joe leaped, biting into Azrael’s shoulder, raking his hind claws hard down Azrael’s belly. Azrael clawed him in the neck. They spun, a tangle of slashing and screaming, then Azrael had Joe by the throat, forcing him down. Joe twisted free and bit him in the flank as Dulcie lunged into the fray. Together they pinned the tomcat. Under their violent double assault, he went limp. When they drew back, he fled to a safer position.

Now suddenly he was all smiles, waving his tail, curving and winding around a lamppost, the change swift and decisive. Chirruping and purring, he fixed his gaze on Dulcie.

“If I had guessed, my dear, that you would be here this evening, we could have feasted together-after I routed that rabble, of course. Or perhaps,” he said softly, “you would have enjoyed that little skirmish-a little playful challenge to get your blood up. Hold!” he said as Joe moved to attack. “I have news. Information that will interest you.”

But Joe leaped tearing at Azrael’s ear and shoulder, and again the two were a screaming whirlwind-until the deli door crashed open and George Jolly ran out swinging a bucket. A cascade of dishwater hit them. Azrael bolted under a bench. Joe backed away, shocked, licking greasy dishwater from his whiskers.

“Look at this mess! At the mess you cats made.“Jolly fixed his gaze on Joe. “What kind of behavior is this? I go away for half an hour and you trash my alley! And on a Sunday, too-with the village full of visitors. You! I’d thought better of you, gray tomcat. Why would you do this?”

He looked hard at Dulcie.“Tomcats! Stupid fighting tomcats. All this over a lady?Shame. For shame.“He shook his head sadly. “I feed you no more, you tomcats. I feed no one. You disappoint me. You’re nothing but common street rowdies!”

Turning his back, he went inside. But he was out again at once, carrying a broom and dustpan. Irritably he righted the garbage cans and began to sweep, filling the dustpan over and over, dumping garbage back into the metal barrels. Azrael had disappeared, and as Jolly unwound a hose, Joe and Dulcie fled to the end of the alley.

Bouncing a hard spray across the bricks, Jolly washed up every smear, hosing the last crumbs into the drainage grid. Giving Joe a disgusted look, he disappeared inside. As he shut the door, Azrael dropped down from the roof. Ignoring Joe, he sidled up to Dulcie, looking incredibly smug.

“Such a charming companion you were the other morning, my dear Dulcie-diverting me so cleverly, while your crude friend, here, tossed Mavity’s cottage.”

He eyed Joe narrowly.“What were you looking for, gray cat, prowling Mavity’s home while Dulcie performed her little ruse?”

Joe washed his paws, sleeking the white fur, and spread his claws to lick them dry.

“If you so enjoy snooping,” Azrael told him, “if youlikepoking into human business-which I find incredibly boring-you might be interested in last night’s telephone conversation. Though I would prefer to share my information privately, with the lady,” Azrael said, purring.

Dulcie looked at him coldly.“Share it with both of us. One does not hunt another’s turf without shedding blood. What was this conversation? Why would we be interested?”

“An invitation to dinner,” Azrael told her. “Someone in the village has invited Dora and Ralph out to dinner-without Mavity or Greeley.”

“Humans go out to dinner frequently,” Dulcie said, yawning.

“They are keeping this dinner a secret. They’ve told no one. The reservation is at a very fancy restaurant, much too elegant for those two Georgia hicks.”

Dulcie yawned in his face.“Who made such an invitation?”

“They got a phone call, so I only heard one side. Heard Dora sayWinthrop.Couldn’t tell if she was talkingtoWinthrop Jergen or about him. You know Jergen-Mavity’s financial guru.”

“We know him,” Joe said, turning from Azrael to wash his hind paw.

Azrael sat tall, puffing himself up, lashing his thick black tail.“Why would a big-time financial advisor take those two rednecks to dinner? And why wouldn’t they tell Mavity and Greeley? Not a word,” Azrael said, narrowing his amber eyes.

“Maybe the Sleuders want to invest,” Dulcie suggested. “Surely Mavity bragged about Jergen-about how much money he’s earned for her.”

“Then why not invite her along? But what a laugh-shehasn’t any business investing, she’s nothing but a scrub woman. A bad-tempered, mean-spirited scrub woman, the way she treats visitors.”

Dulcie looked hard at him.“The way she treats dirty-mannered tomcats? At least her money is her own. She didn’t steal it, like her brother.”

“If she’d learned from Greeley she wouldn’t be mopping floors-not that I care what happens to that one.”

“Where is this dinner?” Dulcie said. “What restaurant?”

“Pander’s. Real fancy, people all dressed up, BMWs and stretch limos, street lined with Lincolns and New Yorkers. You should have seen Dora swoon. The minute she hung up the phone she rushed into the bedroom, fussing about dresses, pulling clothes out of her suitcase, holding them up and looking in the mirror.”

Azrael smiled.“But when Mavity got home, Dora was suddenly real busy doing up the dishes, cleaning up the kitchen. No hint of the big invitation.”

“Why didn’tyoutell Greeley?” Dulcie asked.

“Waiting to see what happens,” Azrael said cooly. “To see where this little adventure leads.” He licked his paw, smug and self-assured. “Sometimes it pays to hold back a little something from Greeley.”

He rose, lashing his tail.“Greeley’s blind when it comes to Dora. He’d never believe that Dora lied to him. When it comes to Dora, he wouldn’t believe even me.” And for a moment, the black torn looked almost pitiful.

“Greeley didn’t believe that Dora nearly killed me with that damned frying pan,” he hissed. “The minute he leaves the house she starts throwing stuff-but he says I’m lying.”

“When is this fancy dinner?” Joe said. “And why are you telling us?”

Azrael’s face became a sleek black mask. “I told you-that night on the rooftops, I told you. I sense death.” He looked at Joe almost helplessly. “This dinner? Visions of death. I do not want it to touch Greeley.”

The black torn shook himself.“If I spy on Dora and Ralph, if they see me prowling the restaurant, Dora’ll pitch a fit, have the whole place down on me.” He looked at Joe a long time. “She’d pay no attention to you-you’d be just a neighborhood cat lurking. You can slip under the tables. Try the terrace first. She seemed impressed that they might sit on the upstairs terrace, with a view down on the village.” Azrael gave a toothy laugh. “What’s the big deal about rooftops?” He fixed Joe with another level look. “You can find out what Dora and Ralph are up to-find out if it will harm Greeley.”

“Why would his own daughter do something to hurt him?” Dulcie asked.

“Maybe she wouldn’t mean to harm him. Maybe she wouldn’t understand the implications.”

“You’re making too much?“Joe began.

“I sense death around Greeley,” the cat yowled. “I see death.”

“Even if you do, why should we get involved?” Joe asked coldly. “What’s in it for us?”

The black torn gave Joe a deep and knowing look.“You will do it. You dance to curiosity as some cats dance to catnip. You two are riven with inquisitiveness.

“And with righteousness,” Azrael continued smugly. “If you think the law will be broken, that there’s a crime, that a human will be harmed, you little cats will do it.”

Joe crouched to rake him again, but the torn ignored him, twitching a long black whisker.

“You nosed into every possession Dora and Ralph have. You left your scent on every smallest bit of clothing. If you thirst for knowledge and justice, if you stalk after lawbreakers, how could younotrun surveillance-as your Captain Harper would say-on this intriguing little meeting?”

They watched him intently, Joe angrily, Dulcie with increasing interest.

“Tonight,” Azrael said softly, narrowing his flame-golden eyes. “Seven-thirty. They’re to take a cab.” And he slipped away, vanishing among the shadows.

Dulcie looked after him with speculation.

Joe said,“What’s he trying to pull? There’s no crime, nothing has happened. What a lot of?”

She kept looking where Azrael had vanished, and an eager, hotly curious expression gleamed like fire in her wide green eyes.

“He’s setting us up, Dulcie.”

“Why would he set us up? I don’t think so. Did you see his eyes when he talked about Greeley? That wasthat was a plea for help.”

“Come on, Dulcie. A plea for help from the likes of him? That cat cares about no one.”

“He cares about Greeley.” She gave Joe a deep green look. “He loves Greeley. I’m going over there to Pander’s.”

“Come on, Dulcie. You let him sucker you right in.”

“Intowhat?What could he do? What harm can come of it?”

“Dulcie?”

“Do as you please,” she hissed. “I want to know what this is about.” And she trotted away, switching her tail, heading for Pander’s.

Joe galloped after her, leaned down and licked her ear.“Totally stubborn,” he said, laughing.

She paused, widened her eyes at him, purring.

“Hardheaded.” He licked her whiskers. “And totally fascinating.”

She gave him a green-eyed dazzle and a whisker kiss.

“So what the hell?” Joe purred. “So we slip into Pander’s, maybe cadge a scrap of fillet. So what could happen?”

16 [????????: pic_17.jpg]

CROUCHING close together beneath a red convertible, the cats licked their whiskers at the delicious smells from Pander’s, the aroma of roast lamb and wine-basted venison and, Dulcie thought, scallops simmered in a light sherry. But the elegant scents were the only hints of Pander’s delights, for the building itself was not inviting. From the street it looked as stark as a slum-district police precinct.

The brick face of the plain, two-story structure rose directly from the sidewalk with no architectural grace, not even a window through which to glimpse the restaurant’s elegantly clad diners. The closed door was painfully austere, with no potted tree or flower or vine beside it, in the usual Molena Point style, to break the severity. Only the expensive cars parked at the curb and the delicious aromas wafting out hinted at the pleasures of Pander’s as the cats waited for Dora and Ralph Sleuder to appear.

Despite the gourmet allure, Joe would just as soon be home catching a nap as spying in that rarified environ, dodging the sharp eyes and hard shoes of unsympathetic waiters.

“What if we can’t get in?” Dulcie said softly, studying the blank, closed facade.

“Should have phoned for a reservation. We’d like two cushions laid on a corner table, my good man. We’ll have the venison-you can dispense with the silverware.”

She just looked at him.

“We’ll go over the roof,” he said more gently. “Drop down onto the terrace.” The second-floor dining terrace, at the back, boasted no outer access, only the stairs from within the main dining room.

“But, Joe, the minute we look over the edge of the roof and the terrace lights hit us, we’re like ducks in a shooting gallery.”

“Who’s going to look up at the roof? They’ll all be busy with their menus and drinks and impressing each other.” He looked hard at her. “I still say it’s a setup. I don’t trust anything that lying alley cat tells us.”

“He looked really worried. I think he truly wanted our help. Maybe his prediction of murder isn’t all imagination, maybe Greeley is in danger, and we can find out why.”

Joe shrugged.“Maybe Jergen found out that Greeley’s stealing. Maybe he’s going to hit Dora for blackmail-she forks over or he turns in her father.”

“That sounds flimsy. How would he even know Greeley? For that matter, how does he know Dora and Ralph?” Her green eyes narrowed. “Why this dinner so soon after Dora and Ralph copied Mavity’s financial statements?”

“As to that, what about Pearl Ann snooping into Jergen’s computer? Is there some connection? And,” he said, “need I point out again that there’s been no crime committed? That this is all simply conjecture?”

She gave him that don’t-be-stupid look, her eyes round and dark. “When people start prying into other people’s business, copying their personal papers, accessing their computer files, either a crime’s been committed or one’s about to be.Someone’sup to no good. We just don’t know who.” And she settled closer to Joe beneath the convertible to await Jergen’s little dinner party.

The Sleuders had not yet made an appearance when Pander’s door opened, a middle-aged couple came out, and the cats glimpsed, within, a tuxedoed maitre d’ of such rigid stance that one had to assume, should he discover a trespassing cat, he would snatch it up by its tail and call the dogcatcher. They had been waiting for some time when they realizedthey were not the only observers lingering near Pander’s closed door.

Across the street a man stood in the shadowed recess between two buildings, a thin, stooped man, pale and very still, watching Pander’s: the Sleuders’ mysterious friend and courier. The man who loitered, in the evenings, outside Clyde’s apartment building.

“He gives me the shivers,” Dulcie whispered. The cats watched him for a moment then slipped away beneath the line of cars and around the corner to the back alley.

They hoped to find the kitchen door propped open, a common practice among Molena Point restaurants during the summer to release the accumulated heat of the day and to let out the warm breath of the cookstove.

But the rear door was securely shut, the entire building sealed tighter than Max Harper’s jail.

“Spotlights or not,” Joe said, “let’s hit the roof.” And he took off for the end of the building, swarming up a bougainvillea vine through clusters of brick red flowers. With Dulcie close behind him, they padded across Pander’s low, tarred roof toward the blinding light that flowed up from the terrace. Soft voices rose, too, and laughter, accompanied by the tinkling of crystal.

Crouching at the edge, their paws in the roof gutter and their eyes slitted against the glare, they peered down onto two rows of snowy-clothed tables and the heads of sleekly coiffed women in low-cut gowns and neatly tailored gentlemen; the tables were set with fine china and heavy silver, and the enticing aromas engulfed the cats in a cloud of gourmet nirvana. Only with effort did they resist the urge to drop onto the nearest table and grab a few bites, then run like hell.

But they hadn’t come here to play, to create chaos in Pander’s elegant retreat, as amusing as that might be.

Along the terrace wall, dark-leafed, potted trees stood judiciously placed to offer the diners a hint of privacy between their tables. The cats did not see Dora and Ralph. But a serving cart stood directly below them, and in a flash of tabby and gray they dropped down onto it then onto the terrace, slipping beneath the cart, finding their privacy in the shadows between its wheels.

From this shelter, their view down the veranda was a forest of table and chair legs, slim ankles, pant cuffs, and gleaming oxfords. A waiter passed, inches from their noses, his hard black shoes creaking on the tiles. To their right, a pair of glass doors opened to the interior dining room. They knew from their housemates’ descriptions that Pander’s had four dining rooms, all richly appointed with fine antique furniture and crystal chandeliers, and the tables set with porcelain and sterling and rock crystal. Both Wilma and Clyde favored Pander’s for special occasions, for a birthday or for the anniversary of Wilma’s retirement. The staff was quiet and well-trained, none of themy-name-is-George-and-I’ll-be-your-waiterroutine, and none of the overbearing showmanship of some expensive but tasteless restaurants that catered to the nouveau riche, waiters with bold opinions and flashy smiles. Pander’s existed for the comfort and pleasure of its guests, not to put on a floor show.

When Wilma did dine at Pander’s, she would bring home to Dulcie some small and delectable morsel saved from her plate, wrapped by her waiter in gold foil and tucked into a little gold carton printed with Panders’ logo. Once she had brought a small portion of beef Wellington, another time a little serving of pheasant stuffed with quail. She had served these to Dulcie on the good china, too, making of the occasion a delightful party. Pander’s was one of the human institutions about which Dulcie liked to weave daydreams, harmless little fantasies in which she was a human person dressed in silk and diamonds and perhapsa faux-leopard scarf, little imaginary dramas that delighted her and hurt no one.

But now she began to worry.“What if they didn’t get a terrace table? If they’re not here when the courthouse clock chimes eight, we’ll have to try the dining rooms, slip along under the dessert cart when they wheel it in that direction.”

“I’m not going through that routine again. Creeping around on our bellies between squeaking wheels. I had enough of that in the nursing home.”

“At least you didn’t have to worry about your tail getting under the wheels.” She cut him an amused glance. “A docked tail does have its upside.

“And,” she said, “your short tail makes you look incredibly handsome-even more macho. The drunk who stepped on your tail and broke it-he didn’t know he was doing you such a big favor.”

The terrace was filling up, several parties had entered; only two tables remained empty, and no sign of the Sleuders. The cats were crouched to make a dash for the inner door when they saw Dora and Ralph coming through.

“There they?” She stopped, staring.

Joe did a double take.

The Sleuders’ host was not Winthrop Jergen.

Dora and Ralph’s dinner companion, gently ushering them in behind the maitre d’, was Bernine Sage, her red hair wound high with bands of gold, her orange-and-pink flowered suit summery and cool-making Dora and Ralph look so shabby that Dulcie felt embarrassed for them.

Dora had chosen a black dress, possibly to make herself appear thinner, but the black was rusty and faded, as if she had owned the dress for a very long time, and her black stockings were of the extra-support, elasticized variety. Ralph was dressed in a gray pinstripe suit with amazingly wide lapels, a shirt that should have been put through a tub of bleach, and a broad necktie with black-and-white dominoes printed across it. His socks were pale blue.

As the three were seated, the cats flashed across open space and beneath the table nearest to their cart. Slipping behind a potted tree to the next table, winding between silk-clad ankles and satin pumps and polished Bailey loafers, they were careful to avoid physical contact with the clientele, not to brush against someone’s ankle and elicit startled screams and have waiters on them as thick as summer fleas.

Moving warily, their progress alternating between swift blurs and slinky paw-work, they gained the end of the terrace and slipped under the Sleuders’ table, crouching beside Bernine’s pink high heels and nude stockings, Dulcie tucking her tail under so not to tickle those slim ankles.

Dora’s black shoes were a size too small. Her skin pooched over and her thick stockings wrinkled. Ralph was wearing, over his baby blue socks, black penny loafers with dimes in the slots. The threesome was seated so that the Sleuders could enjoy the view out over the village rooftops. Bernine’s vantage commanded the terrace tables and their occupants; she could watch the room while seeming to give the preferred seating to her guests. Their conversation was hesitant, almost shy. Above the cats, a menu rattled. Dora shifted in her chair, rearranging her feet so Joe had to back away. She asked Bernine about Molena Point’s weather in the winter, and Ralph inquired about the offshore fishing. The cats were starting to doze when a waiter came to take the drink orders. Dora ordered something called a white moose, Ralph liked his Jack Daniel’s straight with no chaser, and Bernine favored a Perrier.

When the waiter had gone, Bernine said,“How is Mavity feeling-is she all right? She’s working so hard. I worry about her. House cleaning is terribly heavy work for a woman of her years.”

Dora’s voice bristled. “Mavity has always worked hard.”

“I know Charlie is short-handed,” Bernine confided, “but Mavity isn’t so young anymore.”

“Hard work is the way she and Daddy grew up; they thrive on it. Both of them worked in the family grocery since they were in grammar school. It was right there on Valley Road when this part of Molena Point was mostly little farms,” Dora told her. “Mavity and Daddy wouldn’t know what to do without hard work. Daddy was the same on the farm, always working.”

“Well, I suppose she does want the work just now, since she’s investing every penny. She’s so excited about increasing her savings.”

There was a pause as their drinks arrived, the waiter’s hard black shoes moving around the table, the sound of ice tinkling, the sharp scent of alcohol tickling the cats’ noses. “But I do wonder,” Bernine said, “about these investments of hers. Mavity is thrilled with the money, but this Winthrop Jergen?” Another long pause. Dora began to wiggle her left toe. Ralph’s feet became very still. Bernine said tentatively, “I wonder sometimes if Mr. Jergen is-quite to be trusted.”

No one responded. Under the table, Ralph tapped his foot softly. Dora shifted position, pressed one foot tightly against the other.

Bernine said,“The kind of money Mavity’s making seems-well, nearly too good to be true.

“Though I don’t see how Mr. Jergen could cheat her,” she hastened. “After all, she must get a regular monthly statement. And she told me herself, she drew two hundred dollars from her profits just last week to do a few things to the house, buy some new dishes.”

Dora made a strange little sound.“Oh, the dishes are lovely. Real Franciscan pottery, just like Mama had. Well, she didn’t have to do that, just because we were coming. Didn’t have to do anything for us.”

“She wanted to,” Bernine said. “And I guess she can afford it, all right. I’d love to invest with Mr. Jergen, but I-I don’t know. Investments make me so nervous.”

“Investing with that Je?” Ralph began. Under the table, Dora kicked him.

“Still,” Bernine went on smoothly, “if Mavity can make that kind of money? Well, maybe Iwouldlike to try.”

Ralph cleared his throat.“I-I wouldn’t do that.” Dora kicked him again, barely missing Joe, and the cats backed away against the terrace wall. There was another pause, as if Bernine might have looked at Ralph with surprise.

“Do-do you have any-special reluctance?” she asked. “I know so very little about investments.”

Dulcie cut her eyes at Joe, amused. This was hugely entertaining. Whatever Bernine was playing at, she must seem, to Dora and Ralph, the height of sophistication-it must be a heady experience for Ralph to find Bernine Sage asking his advice.

Ralph leaned closer to Bernine’s chair. “I would be careful about investing with Jergen.” And Dora’s heel pressed hard against his ankle.

“Oh?” Bernine said softly. “You’re not telling me there’s something wrong?”

The waiter approached and they heard the tinkle of fresh drinks. There was a long interval concerned with ordering, with crab mornay, with a salad of baby lettuces, cuts of rare fillet, and a broiled lobster-a discussion that left the cats sniffing around under the table for any leftovers from previous diners.

“I can’t believe?” Bernine began when the waiter had gone, “I can’t dream that Mavity’s Mr. Jergen? Are you saying that Mr. Jergen??” She paused delicately, her hand beneath the table seeming to accidentally brush Ralph’s hand. The cats watched, fascinated, as Ralph tentatively stroked Bernine’s fingers. Dulcie could picture Bernine giving him a steamy gaze from beneath her mascara-heavy lashes.

Ralph cleared his throat and shifted his hand guiltily as if he thought Dora might have noticed his preoccupation.“I would not invest with Mr. Jergen,” he said bluntly.

“Ralph?” Dora said.

“We-Dora and I-we are very worried about Mavity.”

“But she’s made such wonderful money,” Bernine said. “She told me her profits have been?”

Dora sighed, pressing one toe against the other as if to relieve her tension.“I don’t think we should be talking about this, Ralph. After all, we?”

“Dora, be reasonable. Do you want this poor girl to? Do you want the same thing to happen to Bernine?”

Bernine leaned forward, tucking her sandaled toe behind her ankle in a little spurt of elation. As if she had whispered to herself,Bingo! Gotcha.

“All right,” Dora said reluctantly. “If you want to do this, Ralph, all right. But we have been far too trusting in the past, and I?”

“Dora, this is different. Can’t you see this is different?”

Dora sighed.

Ralph leaned close to Bernine, clutching her hand earnestly beneath the table, as if in a spasm of heart-to-heart communication.“Winthrop Jergen-it’s hard to tell you this, my dear. But Winthrop Jergen is a-professional confidence artist.”

Bernine caught her breath.

“We have the proof,” Ralph said. “All the court proceedings are available, back in Georgia.”

“You mean he’s-been to jail?”

“Jergen wasn’t convicted,” Ralph told her, “but he’s guilty as sin.”

“We only hope,” Dora said, “that we can convince Mavity of this. That she will accept the truth. We haven’t told her yet. We wanted?”

This time it was Ralph’s turn to kick, his black loafer thumping Dora’s ankle.

“We only hope that she can pull out of this in time,” Ralph said. “Before Jergen gets away with her money. She doesn’t?”

The waiter returned with their salads. In the island of silence as he served, the cats curled down more comfortably against the wall. When he had gone Ralph leaned, again, toward Bernine.

“Winthrop Jergen, my dear, robbed us of nearly all our life savings.”

“Oh. Oh, don’t tell me that. Oh, how terrible for you. I can’t believe this.” Bernine’s toe wiggled with excitement.

“We’ve gotten none of our money back,” Ralph told her. “All gone. Police couldn’t find a trace, not a bank account, nothing.”

Dora uncrossed her ankles, setting her feet solidly.“Jergen arranged his little scheme so his partner went to prison. Jergen got off freewent totally free.”

“But where did this all happen? And when?” Bernine asked, puzzled.

“In Georgia, and not many months ago,” Dora told her. “Not long before Christmas-it was a terrible Christmas for us. Terrible.”

“But what brought him here? How did you know he was here? Did Mavity??”

“Mavity told us about her wonderful investments,” Ralph said. “She hoped we might be able to make back some of our losses.”

“And,” Dora said, “when she described Jergen, we began to suspect that this might be Warren Cumming-that’s his real name.”

“Seemed impossible it could be the same man,” Ralph said. “But when we checked Cumming’s phone in Georgia, it had been disconnected. And when we went to his office, it was empty; he’d moved out. Mavity’s description of Jergen sounded so much like Cumming that we decided to find out. So when we told?”

Dora kicked again. Poor Ralph was going to have a black-and-blue ankle.

“When we told our Georgia friends we were coming out here,” Ralph mumbled, “they wished us luck. You have to understand how angry we were, that Jergen got off free.”

“Scot-free,” Dora said. “Looks like he came right on out here, took a new name, started right up again, cheating people-cheating my own aunt.”

“But?” Bernine began.

“I suppose he got a new driver’s license,” Dora said. “Got all those fake cards like you read about, social security, who knows what else?”

Ralph shifted his feet.“All we can do, now, is try to convince poor Mavity of the truth. She thinks that man hung the moon. But with some proof?”

“Now,” Dora said loudly, pressing her knee against his, “now all we can do is help Mavity cope with this. That’s all we can ever do.”

As their entrees were served, the conversation deteriorated to a replay of everyone’s concerns for Mavity, punctuated by the sounds of cutlery on china and occasional smacking from Ralph. The cats had nearly dozed off again when the main course was concluded and their waiter took the plates and brought coffee and the dessert cart. Bernine declined dessert. Dora chose a pecan and caramel torte with whipped cream. Ralph selected a double cream puff with chocolate sauce. Dulcie was partial to the small custard tart on the bottom shelf. Lifting it gently from its pleated white doily, she and Joe indulged. Above them, the conversation turned to Molena Point’s tourist attractions, then back to Mavity, to how shocked Bernine was and how worried they all were for Mavity’s well-being. When again the dessert cart passed their table, the cats went away beneath it, licking cream from their whiskers.

As the waiter parked the cart at the end of the terrace and turned away, the cats sprang to its top shelf skillfully missing cakes and pies and tortes. Leaping to the roof, they dislodged one small piece of cherry pie, sent it skidding across the terrace. They heard it hit and didn’t look back, sped racing across the roof and didn’t stop until they reached the end of the block.

Pausing beside a warm heat vent, they had a leisurely and calming wash to settle their nerves.“What’s that hussy up to?” Joe said, licking his paws.

“Don’t forget, she worked for years as a secretary for the San Francisco probation office. That’s where Wilma first knew her.”

“So?”

“She must know a lot of probation officers and law enforcement people. And those guys, when they retire, sometimes start private investigative services. Wilma knows several P.O.s who?”

“You think she’sinvestigatingDora and Ralph? Or investigating Jergen? Come on, Dulcie. Can you picture Bernine doing anything to help the law?”

“She would for money-she’d do anything for money.”

“And what about the watcher?” He peered over the roof to see if the man was still there, but he had gone-or had moved to a new vantage. “He appears to have masterminded the copying of Mavity’s financial statements,” Joe said.“Hecould be some kind of cop-that’s more believable than Bernine helping the law.”

He began to pace the roof, across the warm, tarry surface.“And what about Pearl Ann, snooping on Jergen?” He looked at Dulcie intently. “Who’s the cop, here? And who’s the rip-off artist?”

As they discussed the puzzle, thirty feet below them the sidewalk was busy with tourists, the after-dinner crowd heading home, lingering at the shop windows, and late diners coming from art exhibits or leaving the local theater, heading for various village restaurants. They saw, scattered among the crowd, two women and an elderly man carrying library cat petitions, stopping each tourist to show newspaper clippings with Dulcie’s picture.

“Who’s checking those signatures,” Joe said, amused. “These people aren’t village residents.”

“They use the library, though,” she said defensively. “Lots of visitors do. Wilma makes out temporary cards all the time.”

Directly below them a couple in jeans stood arguing about whether to drive on to San Francisco or stay in Molena Point, and up at the corner three college-age girls flirted with their male escort, each angling prettily for his attention. Ordinarily the cats enjoyed watching tourists, they liked hanging over the roof making fun of people, but tonight their attention returned quickly to Bernine and the Sleuders, worrying at the tangle as intently as they would worry at an illusive mouse.

But, as it turned out, they had little time to circle the quarry before Azrael’s prediction came true. Before there was, indeed, a murder. An event that sucked in Joe and Dulcie like flies into a spider web.

17 [????????: pic_18.jpg]

I SEE DEATHaround you? death before the moon is full,Azrael had told them-almost as if the black torn could himself bring death with his dark magic, as if this beast were indeed the Death Angel. Whatever the truth, two days after Azrael beguiled Joe and Dulcie into spying at Pander’s restaurant, death reached out just as he predicted.

It was barely eight A.M., Tuesday morning, as they entered the empty library, slipping in through Dulcie’s cat door, their bellies full of fat mice, meaning to curl up on the children’s window seat for a little nap before opening time. The cushioned retreat, where the children listened to stories, was at this hour Dulcie’s private domain.

According to Freda Brackett, Dulcie had turned the long window seat and the inviting tangle of brightly flowered pillows into a nest of cat hair, fleas, and ringworm, but the children thought differently. They loved finding Dulcie among the cushions to snuggle as they listened to the librarian’s stories; they all fought to hold her and sit close to her.

But now this early morning there were as yet no children and the wide bay window was theirs, the only sounds the occasionalwhishof passing cars away across the garden and the distant purling of the sea; crossing the reading room, the cats could feel, through the floor and carpet, the sea’s constant muffled heartbeat.

Dulcie thought it so odd that Wilma couldn’t feel the surf beating unless she was right there at the shore. How sad, what humans missed. Nor had Wilma, just last week, felt the preearthquake tremors that sent Dulcie under the bed at two in the morning, yowling until Wilma took shelter in the closet, the two of them waiting for the earthquake to hit, for heavy objects to start falling.

The ensuing quake had been nothing, amusingly small, no more damage done than a few drinking glasses broken and a crack in the bathroom wall-by California standards, hardly worth getting out of bed for-though Dulcie had not been able to determine its severity by its preshock tremors.

Now, leaping to the window seat, kneading the pillows, the cats yawned and stretched, ready for a nap-and stopped.

They went rigid, hissing, backing away from the glass.

A smell assailed them, unnatural and alarming.

Not the sweet aroma of little children and candy wrappers and the librarians’ subtle perfume.

A stink of death seeped in around the glass-nor was it the scent of a dead animal, not the smell of freshly killed rabbit or squirrel. No. The smell they tasted, flehming and growling, was the stink of human death.

Crouched and tense, they approached the glass, stood pressed against the window looking down into the depths of the tangled garden.

Beyond the window, the building’s two wings jutted out to form a partially walled disarray of blooms that reached up thick as a jungle beneath the children’s window. Spider lilies, tapping at the glass, were tall and thick, their delicate blossoms curled like reaching hands. Beyond the lilies, flowering bushes glowed, and tangles of blue iris. On the east wall, a mass of climbing yellow nasturtiums shone yellow as sunshine, and above the jungle of blooms the oak trees twisted their sturdy, dark limbs and jade foliage against the morning sky.

Beyond the garden stood Ocean Avenue’s double row of eucalyptus trees and then, across the divided street, the crowded, two-story shops. But it was the flower bed beneath the bay window and what lay crushing the blooms, that held the cats’ attention, that made every hair rise, that drew Joe’s lips back in a keening snarl and made Dulcie catch her breath with a shocked mewl.

Below the jutting window a man knelt. As the cats watched, he reached to touch the two bodies that lay sprawled together unmoving, their fleshy, blue-veined, half-naked limbs shockingly white.

Greeley Urzey knelt stroking Dora’s limp hand, reaching to touch her bare, white leg, her naked limbs heavy and comatose. Both Ralph’s and Dora’s clothes were half-torn off-not as if they had been attacked, rather as if they had flung off their garments in a wild and frenzied dance, an insane gavotte. And across the garden, an erratic path twisted, raw with crushed foliage and flowers, a maddened trail plunging in from Ocean Avenue.

One of Ralph’s penny loafers lay yards away from him among a bed of daisies, its dime gleaming in the morning light. The cats could see, across the street, what might be a sweater dropped on the curb.

They drew back as Greeley clasped together his shaking hands and rose, his whole being seeming to tremble, the expression on his face frightened and confused.

He stood staring uncertainly around the garden, then wandered away up the path, his gait slow and hesitant. As he stumbled along Ocean, the black cat dropped down out of an oak tree and fell into step beside him.

At the same instant, Joe and Dulcie leaped from the window seat and scorched across the library and out Dulcie’s cat door. They reached the front garden just as Greeley and Azrael turned the corner, disappearing into a tunnel of dark, low-growing cypress trees.

The two cats grimaced at the death smell, softened by the scent of crushed lilies. Joe placed an exploring paw on Ralph’s arm.

Dulcie nosed at Dora’s hand-and drew back from the icy flesh. She looked at Joe, stricken.

“Greeley didn’t do this. Greeley didn’t do this terrible thing, not to his own daughter.”

“Maybe he just found them. They’ve been dead for hours, Dulcie. If he killed them, why would he come back?”

“But if he just found them, why wouldn’t he head for the police station? He went in the opposite direction.”

“Maybe he was too upset. Maybe he’ll call the cops from somewhere. Maybe go home to Mavity, call from there.”

“Oh, Joe, these poor, silly people. What did they do, that they would die in such-distress?” She pressed close to him, thinking of the stolen computer printouts, then of Ralph and Dora’s feet beneath the table at Pander’s, Ralph’s penny loafers beside Bernine’s silk-clad ankles, thinking of Dora kicking Ralph when his remarks didn’t suit her.

“Whatever they did, they were just simple folk. Who would kill them?” She stared at the tangle of pale, twisted limbs, shocked by their raw whiteness. The Sleuders were such very bulgy people, their limbs lumpy and misshapen. It must be terrible not to have a nice coat of sleek, concealing fur to cover your fat places and your rawness. She watched Joe sniff at Ralph’s nose and mouth-he made a flehming face, raising his lip and flattening his ears.

He smelled Dora’s face, too, scowling. “Drugs? Were they into drugs?”

“Don’t be silly. Dora and Ralph Sleuder?”

“What else would smell so foreign?”

She sniffed at the dead couple’s faces and backed away sneezing at the strange, pungent odor. “We’d better call the dispatcher.”

As they started toward her cat door, he stopped suddenly, pressing her back.“Dulcie, wait.”

She paused, one paw lifted.“What? It’s nearly opening time; the staff will be coming to work. What’s the matter?”

“Isn’t children’s story hour this morning?”

“Oh! Oh, my! Come on!” She dodged past him. “They’ll be crowding in any minute, running to the window.” And she took off round the side of the building.

Twice a week story hour began at eight-fifteen. The kids came flocking in, breaking away from their parents, laughing and pummelling each other and heading straight for the window seat, leaping into the cushions in a frenzy of enthusiasm, pressing their noses to the glass to look out. Children were always drawn to windows-as surely as kittens were drawn to dangling string. Entering any room, children flocked to the glass as if, like Alice, they expected to find beyond the pane any number of exotic new worlds.

This morning, beyond this glass, they’d find an exotic world, all right-a scene never meant for a child’s viewing. But now, as she leaped for her cat door to call the precinct, Joe barged into her again, blocking her way.

“What?” she hissed, shouldering him aside.

“Listen, Dulcie. What would happen if we don’t call the cops?”

She stared at him, shocked.“The children would be? We can’t let them see those bodies. They’d?”

“They’d start screaming,” Joe suggested. “Screaming, giggling, making jokes to hide their fear and confusion. Their parents?” He licked a whisker and smiled wickedly. “Their parents would see the dead bodies and pitch a fit-that the library would let the children see this.”

He began to purr.“Those parents would put Freda right on the hot seat.”

She looked at him, her eyes widening. She didn’t breathe. What he was suggesting was terrible.

“How embarrassing for Freda,” Joe said softly.

“No!” she said, shouldering past him. “I won’t do that. It would be dreadful for the children.”

“Those kids are tougher than you think. All they’ll need is plenty of hugging and a chance to talk it out with their mom or dad-any good parent could put a positive spin on the experience. Turn a shocking situation into something positive-as long as the kids are hugged and loved.”

“No!” she said, pressing past him.

But again he blocked her, licking his whiskers.“It would be the parents who are stressed. And they’d dump it all on Freda-complaints to the mayor, to the city council, letters to the editor, follow-up editorials. Enough fuss,” Joe said, his yellow eyes burning, “to get Freda fired.”

There was a long silence. Joe’s eyes gleamed with the devil’s own light.

“No, Joe. We can’t! Not frighten the children like that-not to spite Freda, not to spite anyone.” Hotly she slashed at him and bolted through her cat door into Wilma’s office where she could call the station.

But she was too late.

As she leaped for Wilma’s office she heard two librarians talking, heard Freda call out as she came in through the back door, and the next moment she heard children running up the walk past the hidden, flower-shrouded bodies, heard them racing across the reading room straight for their window seat.

18 [????????: pic_19.jpg]

THE LIBRARYand garden were crawling with cops. From the roof, Joe Grey watched three medics kneel among the lilies beside the bodies of Dora and Ralph Sleuder. Unable to observe all the action from inside, he had streaked up the back of the building to the roof, leaving Dulcie inside on the book stacks doing interior surveillance. The police action upon entering the garden had been swift and precise as each man swung to his appointed job.

But now the medics, unable to help the deceased, rose again and moved away, nodding to the police photographer. He, pushing back his shoulder-length black hair, knelt among the flowers to shoot close-ups first of the victims’ faces, then of their raw white limbs, recording from every possible camera position; loading new film, at last he turned from the bodies to photograph the surround, the window above the corpses, the white stucco wall, and the garden itself, calling an assistant to part the lilies so he could shoot the earth beneath. Across the garden, Freda Brackett’s angry accusations rose sharply.

She stood before the library’s open front door, toe to toe with Max Harper, her words burning like flames. Harper listened to her harangue without speaking, his thin face frozen into complicated lines of distaste that made Joe laugh. Didn’t Freda see the deep anger in the police captain’s eyes-and the spark of cold amusement?

“What kind of police forceisthis, Captain Harper, to let such a shocking crime occur practically inside the library! This is beyond excuse. You have no idea the damage this will cause the children. What kind of police would subject children to this nightmare? Any well-run police force would have prevented this shocking event. You?”

Joe ceased to listen to her-as he suspected Harper had, too. The aftermath of the Sleuders’ deaths was turning out pretty much as he’d thought-and as Dulcie had feared. The children, on arriving for story hour and discovering the bodies, had crowded against the window, pushing each other out of the way, shocked at first, then quickly out of control. Staring down through the glass, smearing it with their noses and with sticky fingers, they screamed then laughed, working themselves into a furor of shrill giggles that did not abate until their parents dragged them away. Not even the ululation of sirens careening through the village had quieted them, nor had the arrival of the ambulance and four police cars skidding to the curb; they only shouted louder, fought harder to see every detail.

Out beyond the garden, two officers were clearing the street and putting up cordons at the ends of the block. At both corners, pedestrians had gathered, idle onlookers drawn to tragedy, some out of empathy but most with prurient curiosity. Of all those who crowded to look, Joe was the only observer enjoying a rooftop vantage. Lying with his chin propped on his paws and his paws resting on the roof gutter, his alert gray ears caught every whisper.

He watched the evidence officer lift lint and debris from the bodies and the surround and mark the evidence bags as to content and location. Watched him go over the victims’ clothes with the department’s tiny vacuum cleaner and wondered if any lint had fallen from Greeley’s clothes when he knelt over Dora-or, for that matter, if the lab would find black cat hairs-or traces of their own fur where he and Dulcie had sniffed at the victims’ faces.

Well, so Harper found cat hairs. So what was he going to do? There’d been cat hairs at other murder scenes. He watched the fingerprint specialist dust the deceased’s clothing and skin and the window and the slick green lily leaves, carefully lifting prints. Watched the forensic pathologist arrive-a white-haired man stepping out of an ancient gray Cadillac-to examine the bodies, place bags over the victim’s hands, and wrap Dora and Ralph for transport to the morgue. As the courthouse clock chimed ten-thirty, the forensics team moved inside the library, and so did Joe Grey, heading for the book stack where Dulcie sat twitching her tail, highly amused asshe listened to a little group of irate mothers.

Lieutenant Brennan, heavy in his tight uniform, stood talking with the five women and their excited preschoolers, the little ones wiggling and shouting. Three-year-old James Truesdel wanted to know why those people were asleep in the garden, and Nancy Phillips, with five-year-old superiority, told him they were not asleep, they were dead.Shewanted to know:“How did they get dead, with their clothes off?” And five-year-old Albert Leddy, trying to drag his mother back toward the window seat from which he had been extricated, pitched such a tantrum, kicking his mother in the shins, that if he’d been a kitten Dulcie would have whacked him hard and nipped his nervy little ears.

But she had to smile, too, because from the temper of the parents, the pro-library cat group had snatched the day just as Joe had predicted, had grabbed opportunity by the tail. As Freda Brackett left Captain Harper and came back inside, nine parents converged on her, and James Truesdel’s mother began to question her in a manner that indicated there would soon be a hotly phrased letter in theGazette.

Behind Freda, Bernine Sage manned the three constantly ringing phone lines-word traveled fast in the village-giving dry, uninformative answers. It was hard to tell whether Bernine was an island of efficiency or of total indifference. Dulcie glanced up to the door as a young man bolted in, having talked his way past the police guard.

Danny McCoy was disheveled and breathing hard, his red hair tousled; having obviously rushed over from theGazetteoffices, he exchanged a look of complicity with Mrs. Leddy.

Danny, too, was a mover and shaker on Dulcie’s behalf. He had done several columns supporting the library cat and had made a big deal that library cats were a growing trend across the country. He had done a really nice article on the Library Cat Society, interviewing its president and several of its members and quoting from the society’squarterly newsletters about the popularity of individual library cats in Minden, Nevada, Eastham, Massachusetts, and, closer to home, El Centro. Now, deftly trapping Freda between the checkout desk and a book cart, he began with the standard questions: Who had found the bodies? What time where theydiscovered? Then he moved on to the question of why the children had been allowed to see the murder victims, why they had not been supervised, to avoid such ugly experience.

“We didn’t know the bodies werethere,“Freda snapped. “One does not come to work expecting to find dead bodies outside the children’s room. The police are supposed to patrol that street. Why didn’ttheysee the bodies? This Captain Harper was extremely lax to allow such an occurrence. Thisis not New York City. This is a small, quiet town. What else do the police have to do, but keep the streets and public buildings safe?”

“But, Ms. Brackett, why were the children allowed to view the corpses?”

“I told you. We didn’t know they were there! Can’t you understand me? It was thechildrenwho discovered the tragedy.Wedon’t go into the children’s room first thing in the morning. We are far too busy preparing to open the library, preparing the checkout machine, clearing the bookdrop, starting up the computers?”

“No one looked out the window before the children arrived?”

“Of course not. Why would we? Don’t you listen? We had no reason to look out. The children’s librarian was at her desk getting ready for story hour. This work takes a good deal of preliminary attention. My staff does not have time to dawdle, gawking out windows, Mr. McCoy.”

“So you let the children run in there, without any supervision, and view a shocking and frightening death scene.”

Dulcie smiled with appreciation. Danny was being totally unfair. Taunting Freda and shaping his own biased agenda. The article he was preparing to write would be scathing-he was going to cream Freda.

Purring and rolling over, she watched Joe slip in the front door and across the reading room behind the feet of several officers. He made one leap to a reading table, another to the top of the book stack, landed beside her with a soft thud, purring.

“Where’s Mavity?” she whispered. “Did someone go to find her, to tell her about Dora and Ralph? Did they go to look for Greeley?”

“Harper sent an officer to find Mavity. I don’t know about Greeley.” And he settled down to watch Danny torment Freda, the young reporter playing her as skillfully as any cat baiting an angry rat.

“Exactly what degree of damage, Ms. Brackett, might this event have done to the children? Is it possible, would you say, that some of the children will need psychiatric help? Perhaps trauma counseling? Is the library insured for that kind of?”

“The city sees to our insurance, Mr. McCoy. I don’t have time for this foolishness. If the children glimpsed a murder scene, that is no different from what they see on television.”

Mrs. Truesdel moved closer to join them.“That is not what you told Captain Harper, Ms. Brackett. You said the children would probably need therapy. And as far as television,” Mrs. Truesdel said, “I don’t let my five-year-old watch violent TV. Nor do my friends. Wetryto protect our small children from undue violence. Certainly we don’t expect them to witness two shocking deaths during story hour.”

“This experience,” Danny said, “will give them far worse nightmares then any TV show.” He moved closer to Freda. “Certainly this ugly look at death has been far more harmful to the children than, say, finding a little cat in the library.”

“Dead bodies, Mr. McCoy, seen through a window, cannot bite the children or communicate to them some life-threatening disease.”

“I don’t follow you. The library cat is healthy. What disease do you think she?”

“Rabies, Mr. McCoy. Lyme disease. Cat scratch fever-all of which can kill, if not treated. In the past year, in this county alone, there have been fifteen cases of rabies. And the statistics on Lyme disease?”

“But Dulcie has had her rabies shots. She has excellent veterinary care-she’s not a diseased stray off the streets. And to my knowledge there have been no cases of Lyme disease in this coastal area.”

“A cat’s bite or scratch,” Freda snapped, “is notoriously filthy.”

“Has she ever bitten or scratched a child?”

“There is always the chance she will. Cats are half-wild creatures; they are never really domesticated.”

Atop the book stack, Dulcie’s eyes blazed. If ever she did yearn to bite and scratch, this was the moment. If ever she abandoned her domesticated ways, now was the time.

Beside her, Joe was nearly choking with laughter, his ears and whiskers twitching, his mouth open in a wide grin.

Soon Danny, having taken enough quotes from Freda for a scathing article, smiled sweetly at her, turned away, and approached three other mothers and their children. He was deep into conversation with them, writing down their comments, when another squad car pulled to the curb and an officer hurried up the path looking for Captain Harper, who stood just inside the door talking to the photographer.

“We didn’t find Mavity Flowers,” he told Harper. “She wasn’t at home or at work up at Damen’s apartments. And we haven’t found Greeley Urzey.”

Joe and Dulcie looked at each other. Dulcie whispered,“Has Greeley skipped?Didhe do it?”

“No way, Dulcie. He?“Joe paused, scowling. “Here comes Clyde. He doesn’t look too happy.”

Hurrying up the walk, stepping over the yellow ribbon barrier and past the police guard, Clyde, like Danny, was disheveled and red-faced. Rushing in, nodding to Harper, he spotted Joe atop the book stack.

Sprinting across the room, he snatched Joe by the scruff of the neck and swung him down onto his shoulder, giving Joe a glare that would turn a Doberman to stone.

“Claws in,” he hissed. “Put your clawsin.And stay right there. Not a move. Not a snarl out of you.”

Joe was shocked and hurt. What had he done? And he could say nothing. In public, he had no chance to defend himself.

Clyde looked up at Dulcie more gently.“Would you two like some breakfast?” He reached up for her. She gave him an innocent green gaze and slipped down willingly into his arms, soft and innocent, her claws hidden, her little cat smile so beatific Joe thought he’d throw up; he turned away from her, disgusted.

“It’s time you two were out of here,” Clyde said softly, meaning:Stay away from this! Leave it alone! Forget it.Carrying them out, Joe on his shoulder and Dulcie in his arms, he hurried around the block to his car and plunked them down in the ragged front seat. He was driving his latest acquisition, a battered ‘32 Ford that sounded like a spavined lawnmower. Starting the engine with a deafening clatter, he headed for Wilma’s house.

When Clyde had sold his antique red Packard touring car to help pay for the apartment building, he’d started driving an old Mercedes he’d fixed up. The car was all right except for its color. Joe had refused to ride in the baby pink Mercedes. Clyde himself had taken all the ribbing he could stand, then sold the Mercedes and finished up the last details on the yellow ‘29 Chevy convertible in which he had escorted Charlie to the gallery opening. But then he’d picked up this Ford; he always had to have some old clunker to refurbish. Eventually he would turn it into a beauty, but meantime a ride in the heap was like being transported in a bucket of rattling tin cans. Driving to Wilma’s, Clyde didn’t speak to them. They crouched together hunched and cross as he parked at Wilma’s curb.

She was on her hands and knees in the garden, transplanting gazanias, thinning out the low yellow flowers. As Clyde killed the rattling engine, the cats leaped out.

Wilma sat back on her heels, looking them over, her eyes widening with suspicion.“What?” she said. “What have they done now?”

Dulcie stared at her, hurt.

Joe didn’t wait to hear Clyde’s biased accusations. He shot past Wilma through the garden and around the house and up the hill at the back. To hell with humans.

Soon Dulcie came trotting along, looking chastened, and they took off up the hills to hunt-to let the atmosphere cool down.

19 [????????: pic_20.jpg]

CHARLIE WASon a ladder painting the downstairs front bedroom when she saw Max Harper’s police unit pull up out in front. As he came across the patio, something about his drawn look and the resigned set of his shoulders brought her down the ladder. Wiping her hands, she stepped to the open door.

Lieutenant Brennan had been up earlier looking for Mavity, but he wouldn’t tell her why. She’d told him to try Mavity’s cottage, that very likely Mavity had slept in, that she did that sometimes, that when she woke up she’d phone the apartments frantic and apologetic. But now, watching Harper, a chill held Charlie. His solemn expression made her stomach lurch.

She hadn’t gotten to work herself until ten, had made a run around the coast to Hudson’s Building Supply to pick up an order of some special tile and paint, some varnish, five gallons of mud, and some finishing nails. She’d had a cup of coffee with the owner, John Hudson, had helped him load her order then headed back. When she got to work, Mavity’s VW wasn’t parked in front, nor had Pearl Ann seen her.

Harper stopped in the open doorway.

“Clyde’s not here,” she said, motioning him on in, searching the captain’s solemn brown eyes.

“Clyde’s at the library,” he said. “Or he was. He left just before I did. I’m looking for Mavity.”

“Didn’t Brennan find her? He was here.”

Harper turned from her, wandered the big room, studying the sanded Sheetrock and the half-painted ceiling. The units were being done so piecemeal that sometimes it even confused her, one room finished and painted while the next room was hardly started; but with their crew, it seemed to be working. Max turned to look at her, his back to the windows.

“What is it?” she said softly.

“Mavity’s niece and her husband. They were found dead this morning.”

“Dora and Ralph?” She stood a moment trying to take that in. Dora and Ralph Sleuder? “Was-was there an accident? A car accident?”

“We found them in the garden outside the library.”

“The library garden? I don’t understand. How could? Why would??”

“The call came in around eight forty-five this morning.”

She tried to collect herself.“What happened? An accident in the garden? But I didn’t see anything-well, but I left around seven.” She knew she wasn’t making sense.

“You were in the garden?”

“No. Across the street.”

“Oh, yes, you moved into that apartment above Joan’s Antiques.”

She nodded.“I drank my coffee looking out.”

“And you saw nothing unusual?”

“The garden was-I saw no one there. I thought I saw something move inside the window, but it was just those pillows against the glass. Dora and Ralph can’t be dead.”

“You thought you saw something moving?”

“I think it was just the pillows-or it could have been the cat, she sleeps in the window sometimes.”

“And you didn’t see anyone in the garden? Or on the street?”

“I didn’t notice anyone. But I was only at the window long enough to drink my coffee.”

“And you saw nothing different about the garden?”

“No.” She thought a minute. “Yes. There was some kind of shadow in the lilies. As if something had crushed them. They’re so thick and tall, it’s hard to be sure. But there seemed to be a dark place, as if maybe a dog had slept there and broken the flowers.”

Harper was quiet, watching her.“Did you know the Sleuders well?”

“No. I met them the day after they arrived, they came up to see the apartments-rubbernecking, I guess. Mavity didn’t seem too happy about it.”

“Have you any idea if they were into drugs-anything Mavity might have said?”

Charlie stared at him.“Drugs? Those two country people? My God, I wouldn’t think so. Are you saying-what? They died of an overdose?”

“We don’t know yet. Lab’s working on it.”

“Could they have taken-could it be some medication? I can’t imagine drugs. Oh, poor Mavity. Have you told her? No, you came to find her. Have you been to the house?”

“I sent Brennan earlier. No one was home.”

She snatched up her purse and keys.“We have to find her. She could be?” She looked at him imploringly. “I want to find Mavity.”

In the squad car, as Max spun a U-turn and headed down the hill, he described for her the murder scene outside the children’s room. It sickened her to think of Dora and Ralph lying there in the garden dead, half-naked as if they might have been on some wild and terrifying high.

“PCP could do that,” Harper said. “Or crack, or one of the designer drugs.” His words made her see Mavity lying dead, too; she couldn’t shake her concern.

They found Mavity’s VW parked in front of her cottage. Mavity was inside, perfectly safe, just finishing breakfast. Charlie grabbed her and hugged her. The little woman stepped back from Charlie, puzzled.

“I just called the apartments,” she told Charlie. “I know I’m late. I’m sorry, I meant to call earlier but? I went for a walk down the marsh,” she said lamely. “The time got away from me.” She frowned at Charlie and at Harper. “What? What is it?”

Harper glanced toward the sitting room. Mavity motioned them in, past the kitchen. He sat on the couch taking Mavity’s hand and easing her down beside him. Her short white hair was rumpled from the sea wind. Her face had gone deadly solemn.

“Mavity, did Dora and Ralph come home last night?”

“No. That’s why I went to the beach. I was looking for them.”

She twisted the hem of her white uniform jacket and folded it into a knot.“I thought maybe they got up early, didn’t eat breakfast, or went out to eat, and that they were sitting out on the beach. But I?” She looked at him intently. “They’ve never stayed away overnight. And Greeley’s gone, too. But Greeley does that. Out at all hours, that’s no surprise.”

“Were Dora and Ralph home for dinner last night?”

She smoothed her jacket hem and clasped her hands together.“No. Two nights running, they’ve gone out alone in the evening. Didn’t tell me where, didn’t tell Greeley.”

“Sunday night was the first time?”

“Sunday, yes. They left before I got home from work, and they came home around nine-thirty. They were all dressed up. They went right to bed, wouldn’t say where they’d been. What is this about? Where are they?”

Charlie sat down beside her, glancing across her to Max.

“Mavity,” Max said gently, “there’s been an accident.”

She watched him, said nothing.

“Dora and Ralph were found this morning. They were found together. They’re dead, Mavity. I’m so sorry.”

“They can’t be dead. I saw them just last night, all dressed up. They were fine last night.” She reached for Charlie’s hand. “There must be some mistake. I saw them just last night.”

Charlie took both Mavity’s hands in hers, held them tightly.

Mavity looked at them nakedly.“A car accident? Was it the taxi? Was there an accident with the taxi?”

“No,” Harper said. “Where did they go to dinner? Why didn’t you and Greeley go?”

“We weren’t asked-neither time. They wouldn’t say where they were going.” She was squeezing Charlie’s hand so hard that Charlie’s fingers popped.“Was there an accident?”

Charlie glanced helplessly at Harper.

Max said,“No. It was not a car accident. You’re sure they didn’t come home last night?”

“I don’t think so. But Dora always makes the bed, so they might have been here. But Greeley-Greeley wasn’t home. He does that. Goes walking at night. Walking all night with that cat. Says it calms his nerves.”

“When you got up this morning,” Harper said, “no one was here? No beds had been slept in?”

“The beds were made up. No one was here, no dirty dishes in the sink. Neat as a pin.” She began to shiver.

Charlie lifted a folded blanket from the end of the couch and wrapped it around the little woman.

“Were they upset about anything?” Harper asked her.

Mavity just looked at him.

Charlie squeezed her shoulder.“Mavity?”

“Nothing really. Just-Greeley and Dora had a fight. Greeley left angry, really mad-but Greeley has a short temper. He doesn’t stay mad. He gets right over it.”

“What was the fight about?” Harper said patiently.

She shook her head.“No one would say. Wouldn’t tell me. That really hurt. All the secrecy. Secrets about where they were going. Secrets about why they fought.

“I can’t imagine what they couldn’t tell me. I would have driven them if they’d wanted. But no, they didn’t want me to bother; they had to have a cab. Was it the cab?” she repeated. “Did it have a wreck?”

“No,” Charlie said, “they weren’t in a wreck. They may have gotten sick suddenly.”

“Sick?” She looked at them, puzzled. “Sick from the food? From their dinner?”

“We’re not sure what happened,” Harper said. “There will be an autopsy. Were-were they into drugs, do you know?”

“Drugs?“Her eyes blazed with shock.“Dora and Ralph? Of course not.I can’t imagine such a thing.” She hugged herself, seemed unable to get warm despite the blanket. “How can I tell this to Greeley?Drugs?Oh, you’re mistaken.”

“The autopsy will tell us,” Harper said.

“I don’t know how to tell Greeley that Dora? She’s his only child. She-he didn’t see her often, but she’s-she was all he had.” Mavity shook her head. “Greeley will think it’s his fault.”

“Why?” Harper said.

“Because they fought, because he left the house angry.”

“And you have no idea what they fought about?”

“It was going on when I got home. I guess they didn’t hear the car. Greeley was shouting at Dora, that she was making trouble for nothing, that they had no right-then they heard me on the porch and that was the end of it, when I came in. Greeley stomped out with that cat following him, and thenDora and Ralph left all dressed up again, wouldn’t say anything more.”

Charlie rose, stepped into the kitchen, rinsed out the coffeepot, and refilled it. Mavity said,“It was only a family tiff. Maybe Dora and Ralph, going out alone, made Greeley mad. Who would they go with? They don’t know anyone in Molena Point.”

“And Greeley was out all night,” Harper said.

“I would have heard him come in. He sleeps on the couch right here, and me on the cot. And he always leaves his bed unmade, leaves a mess for me to straighten, sheets half on the floor.”

“Are his clothes still here? His luggage?”

“He only has the one bag.” She rose and peered in between the recliner chair and the television. “It’s here.” She picked up the bag, looked in. “Full of clothes.” She went to check the bathroom.

“Shaving kit’s there on the sink.”

Harper said,“Does he always travel so light?”

She nodded.“He never packs much in the way of clothes, says he can buy what he needs. He would have checked the one bag, though, because he carried that cat on board. Right in the cabin, in its cage-one of those carrier things.” She opened the washing machine, which stood in a corner of the kitchen, and peered in.

“Left a shirt to be washed, some socks, and a pair of shorts.” She looked across at Harper. “Greeley wouldn’t go away for good-back to Panama-and not tell me.” She pressed her fist to her lips. “Captain Harper, where is Greeley? Greeley has to be all right-Greeley’s all I have now.”

“We don’t know where he is,” Harper said. “I’m sure he’ll turn up. My officers are looking for him.”

They drank their coffee in silence. Max did not light a cigarette but Charlie could tell he wanted one. He asked Mavity if he could search Dora and Ralph’s belongings.

“Yes. But what for? Well, it don’t matter. They can’t complain now,” she said, her voice shaking.

“Maybe I’ll find something to tell us where they went last night, maybe some scrap of paper with an address, something to help us understand what happened.”

“Their bags are in the bedroom-their clothes are in the closet and scattered all over.”

Harper rose.“I’d like both of you to come in while I search.”

They made a little procession, carrying their coffee cups into the small bedroom. Harper’s lean figure moved neatly among the clutter. Charlie stood in the bedroom doorway sipping her coffee, watching Max search for drugs as well as for evidence of the Sleuders’ dinner destination. She didn’t like having to witness this. The necessity for a search, coupled with Mavity’s own distress, made her feel frightened and sick.

She watched him examine each item of clothing, going through pockets, sorting carefully through the contents of each of the Sleuders’ five bags and examining the bags themselves, the pockets and the lining. It was in the last bag, a big duffle, that he withdrew a thick packet of legal-size papers divided into two stacks, each held by a metal clip.

“Mavity, I’d like to keep these as evidence. I’ll give you a receipt for them.”

“Sure you can keep them. What are they?”

Harper looked at her, surprised.“Didn’t you know that Dora had your financial statements?” He handed one of the packets to her.

She stared at the papers, at her name and address beneath Winthrop Jergen’s letterhead. “These aremystatements, from Mr. Jergen.” She looked at Harper, puzzled. “Dora took my statements? Why would she do that? These are none of her business. Dora wouldn’t?”

She hurried to the front room. They watched her open the bottom desk drawer, removing a similar stack of legal-size papers.

“But my statements are here.”

She looked hard at Harper. Carefully she examined the two stacks.

“She copied them. See where I made some little notes? On the copies, you can barely see the pencil marks.”

She sat down on the couch, looking very small.“Why would Dora do that? What could she want with my statements?”

Harper handed her the other set of legal-size papers that he had taken from the Sleuders’ duffle bag. These statements had a different letterhead, under the name Cumming, and were dated the previous year, detailing the Sleuders’ own stock earnings.

She looked at them, looked up at him.“I don’t understand. Dora and Ralph had some investment problems last year, about the time these are dated.”

“What kind of problems?”

“They were cheated of a lot of money. The men were caught, and one of them went to prison.”

“Is that the name of the firm that cheated them?”

“It could be. Yes, I think it is.”

“You said only one of the members was convicted?”

“Yes. Dora was very upset because the other man, Warren Cumming, went free.”

“Did Greeley know about the swindle?”

“Oh, yes. He wrote me all about it-he was furious. And of course Dora called me several times. She’d get so angry, with the trial and all.” She looked again at the Sleuders’ statements.

“Look here, at Dora’s little squiggly marks beside some of these stocks. I have some of the same stock. Coca-Cola, Home Depot. Maybe,” she said, “maybe Dora was comparing how much she and Ralph made on that stock-before they were swindled-with how much I’ve made. It doesn’t really make sense, but Dora’s-was funny that way. And she was so bitter about their loss. Well, anyone would be bitter!”

Harper put his arm around her.“Later today, when you feel up to it, would you come down to the station and give me a formal statement?”

“Yes, if I have to.” She was very pale. “I’ll look for Greeley first, and then I’ll come. I-I’ll need to make arrangements-funeral arrangements.”

“Not yet,” Harper said. “I’ll let you know when you can do that. You don’t have any idea where Greeley might have gone? Where he might have stayed last night?”

“No. He’s a night owl. But he can’t go very far without a car-he’s too cheap to take a cab.”

She moved away from Harper, looking up at him.“Thank you, Captain Harper. Soon as I get myself together I’ll drive around the village, see if I can find him. I don’t know how I’m going to tell him about Dora.”

Charlie stayed with Mavity for a while after Harper left, making her a cup of tea and fetching her an aspirin from the medicine cabinet. When Mavity felt better, she drove Charlie up to work, then went to look for Greeley.

Charlie, getting back to work, kept puzzling over Dora and Ralph. They had seemed such simple folk, plain and uncomplicated, not the kind to deceive Mavity, and surely not the kind to be into drugs. That strange twist, if it was true, put a whole new light on Dora and Ralph Sleuder.

Pulling on her painting shirt and climbing back on the ladder, she was unable to stop worrying over the Sleuders, unable to stop wondering what Harper would uncover when he looked into their background-wondering how much Mavity might not have known about her dead niece.

20 [????????: pic_21.jpg]

YOU’D THINK he’d have the courtesy to call me,” Mavity complained, “but not Greeley. Always been that way. Walk out, gone a couple of days, and then home again and never a word.” She’d pulled herself from the shocked, quiet state she’d been in that morning and was herself again, cross and abrasive, and Charlie was glad to hear the little woman grousing. They were in the back apartment, in the kitchen-office. It was three-thirty in the afternoon and Mavity, after searching futilely for Greeley, had just gotten to work.

“Ever since we were in high school, he’s gone off like that. Drove Mama crazy. She called the police once, reported him missing, and when Greeley found out, he pitched a fit. Left home for three weeks, no one knew where.” Mavity shook her head. “Mama never did that again-she just let him ramble.” The little woman was wound tight, her voice brittle with worry. She had shown up dragging her cleaning things. “I need to do something. I can’t bear to stay home by myself. I left him a note, to call me up here.”

“If you feel like it, you can go up and help Pearl Ann. Mr. Jergen wanted some extras, and it had to be today. Some repairs-he wants the work done while he’s out. Pearl Ann has a dental appointment so she can’t stay too long, then she’s catching the Greyhound to San Francisco.”

“San Francisco? Pearl Ann never goes anywhere. I’ve never known her to do anything but tramp the cliffs. Hiking, she calls it. Why in the world is she going to San Francisco?”

Charlie laughed.“This will be her first trip to the city, and she seems thrilled. It’ll be good for her. She wants to see the Golden Gate, Coit Tower, all the tourist stuff. I’ve never seen her so talkative. She even showed me the silk pants and blazer she bought for the trip.

“She’ll have time to do Jergen’s extras, if you help her. He wants the refrigerator cleaned, said the ice tasted bad. Pearl Ann missed it last week. And he wanted some repairs in the bathroom, said a towel rack had pulled out of the wall and the shower is leaking. It needs caulking-these old tile showers. I told him Pearl Ann had to leave early to catch her bus, but what does he care? You sure you feel up to working?”

“I’ll feel better keeping busy. There’s nothing I can do about Greeley, only wait. The police are looking for him,” Mavity said darkly. Finishing her coffee, she headed toward the stairs carrying her cleaning equipment, and Charlie left to take care of the Blackburn house, do the weekly cleaning and half a dozen small repairs. This was her regular work, the kind of miscellaneous little jobs for which she had started Charlie’s Fix-It, Clean-It and for which she was building a good reputation in Molena Point. What her customers valued most was being able to make one phone call, have the house cleaned and the yard work and repairs tended to all at once. One call, one stop. Her customers didn’t know that every repair was a challenge, that she carried an entire library of helpful volumes in the van, detailed instructions to refer to if she ran into trouble. Only three times, so far, had she been forced to call in a subcontractor.

She was urging the old Chevy up the hill when she saw two cats racing through the tall grass and recognized Joe Grey’s tailless gallop and his flashy white markings. Beside him, Dulcie blended into the grassy shadows like a dark little tiger. It still amazed her that they traveled so far. The freedom of their racing flight made her itch for paper and charcoal, and when they vanished into a tangle of Scotch broom, she slowed the van, watching for them to reappear.

They came out of the bushes suddenly and sat down near the street, regarding her van as she moved slowly by. They looked almost as if theyknewthe vehicle, as if they were quite aware that she was at the wheel and wondered what she was gawking at.

She stopped the van and let it idle, to see what they would do.

They glanced at each other, a strange little look between them, then they rose again and trotted away. Turning their backs, they disappeared into the meadow grass as if dismissing her.

Driving on, she couldn’t rid herself of the notion that Joe and Dulcie had cut her dead. Had not wanted her snooping, had all but told her to mind her own business. Even after she began the Blackburns’ repairs she kept seeing the two cats turning to look at her, seeing their impatient, irritated expressions.

The Blackburn house was a small, handsome Tudor with gray stone walls, brick detailing, and a shake roof. Letting herself in, she did a light weekly cleaning, fixed the sticking latch on the back gate, and put new washers in a dripping faucet. Mrs. Blackburn had left her check on the hall table with a plate of chocolate chip cookies and a note.

Charlie, Becky made a ton of these for school, and I snagged a few. There’s milk in the refrigerator.

She sat at the Blackburns’ kitchen table enjoying the cookies and milk, then put her plate and glass in the dishwasher and headed back for the apartments.

She arrived just after six. Mavity had left, her VW Bug was gone. She checked the work Pearl Ann had finished, her patches on the back wall of the building so cleverly stippled that, once the wall was painted, no one would ever guess there had been need for repairs. As she headed out again through the patio, she heard a little clicking noise.

Glancing above her, she saw that Winthrop Jergen’s windows were open, the louvered metal shade blowing gently against the molding.

She wondered if Pearl Ann had missed her appointment and was still there, because Jergen never opened the windows. Strange that both Pearl Ann and Mavity would forget to shut them, considering the angry exchanges they’d had with Jergen. Though she could hardly blame Mavity for forgetting, with the events of the morning.

Heading up the stairs, she knocked twice and when Jergen didn’t answer she let herself in. He didn’t much like her having a key, but as long as she contracted to clean for him, both she and Mavity had keys. She thought, when she pushed the door open, that he must be there after all, and she called out to him, because beyond the entry she could see the glow of his computer screen.

He didn’t answer. But she could see a spreadsheet on the screen, long columns of numbers. Her attention focused on the room itself, on the overturned lamp hanging off the desk by its cord, on the toppled swivel chair lying amidst scattered in-boxes and file folders. On Winthrop Jergen lying beside the chair, his blood staining the papers and seeping into the Kirman rug.

Charlie remained absolutely still. Looking. Trying to take in what she was seeing.

He lay twisted on his side, his white shirt and pale blue suit blood-soaked. His throat was ripped open in a wide wound like a ragged hank of bleeding meat.

A cleaning cloth lay beside him in a pool of blood, the kind of plaid mesh cloth that she bought in quantity. Though he couldn’t possibly be alive, she knelt and touched his wrist. There was, of course, no pulse. No one could live with that terrible wound, with their throat ripped away. She felt nauseated, could feel the cookies and milk want to come up.

Stepping carefully around Jergen’s body, trying not to be sick, trying to stay out of the blood, she moved to the desk, fished an identical cleaning cloth from her pocket, and used it to pick up the phone.

But then she quietly laid it down again and grabbed up a heavy postal scale and turned to face the room, appalled at her own stupidity. If the killer was still in the apartment, she had to get out.

What was she was going to do, fend him off with a postal scale?

But she had no other weapon.

Warily she moved into the bedroom, checking the closet, then the bath. Finding those spaces empty, she approached the kitchen, knowing she should run, get out-knowing this was crazy, that this could not be happening. It was bright afternoon in a village as respectable and civilized as a cup of afternoon tea. Through Jergen’s front windows, the low sun gleamed gently, sending sparkles across the calm sea and across the village rooftops; this was Molena Point, tame and quiet, not New York or L.A. with their news of bloody daytime murders.

Finding the kitchen empty, she returned to Jergen’s desk, and using the cleaning rag to pick up the phone, she called 911.

But even as she dialed, she wondered if she’d locked the front door behind her. And, waiting for the dispatcher, she laid down the receiver and fled to the door and locked it.

She returned to the desk to hear the dispatcher shouting,“Hello? Hello?”

Standing over Jergen’s body, holding the phone in the dustrag, she began to shiver. The metallic smell of blood and the smell of other bodily releases sickened her. She gave the address and stood staring down at Jergen’s bloody face and bloody, torn throat, unable to hang up or to look away.

The only dead people she had encountered in her twenty-eight years were those from whom all signs of violence or distress had been gently wiped away, bodies thoughtfully groomed and arranged in the clean satin lining of expensive caskets-an elderly neighbor when she was twelve, her mother’s cousin Marie two years later. Her father, when she was eighteen, and her mother when she was in art school. All the deceased were dressed in their Sunday best, their hands calmly folded over their demure chests, her mother’s gold wedding band gleaming on her pale finger.

In the room’s silence, the faint hum of the computer was like a thin voice whispering to her. Moving past the end of the desk and the two low file cabinets, she saw, for the first time, what appeared to be the murder weapon; though for a long moment she looked at it uncomprehending.

On the rug beside the file cabinets lay the metal divider from an ice cube tray. Blood covered its protruding aluminum handle and had run down into the little squares turning them as red as if someone had ejected a double line of red ice cubes-blood ice cubes. There should be a little wooden stick in each like the frozen orange-juice suckers that mothers made to keep their kids from eating junk.

Sirens screamed, coming up the hill. She backed away from the bloody kitchen utensil and moved unsteadily to the wide window beyond the couch. Standing at the glass, she watched the emergency vehicle careen into the lane, followed by two squad cars, watched two medics jump out loaded with an oxygen tank and black bags-as if her report of death had been faulty, as if the caller might have misjudged the condition of the victim. As if Winthrop Jergen still had a chance at life. Behind the medics, Max Harper swung out of his police unit, and two more uniformed officers from the other squad car double-timed through the patio as she hurried to unlock the door.

21 [????????: pic_22.jpg]

HIGH UP THE HILLS,a narrow hunting trail led beneath a tangle of toyon bushes, a track no wider than a cat’s shoulders, and along the path in a spill of sunshine, Joe and Dulcie crouched feasting on a fat mouse, the last of five sweet morsels they had caught within the hour skittering among the roots and leaves. Above the cats, the toyon’s hollylike berries were hard and green, having just emerged from their summer blossoms; the afternoon was warm and still, the only sound was the twittering of some sparrows pottering among the upper leaves.

Suddenly sirens screamed, blasting up from the village.

Rearing tall so they could see down the hills, the cats watched an ambulance careen up the winding streets followed by two police units, and skid into the dead-end street below Clyde’s apartments-and they took off down the hills, Joe with visions of Clyde falling off the roof, Dulcie’s sudden fear involving the power saws. Bolting down the slopes, charging through bushes and tall grass and across the last street, they scorched past the hot rubber stink of the ambulance andsquad cars and into the patio.

Men’s voices from above them, from Winthrop Jergen’s open windows. The police radio. Max Harper’s quick commands-and the faint but unmistakable smell of human blood. Racing under the stairs and up the inner wall, they slipped beneath Jergen’s sink and pushed the cabinet door open.

The smell of blood, of death.

Slinking across the linoleum, they crouched at the edge of the living room. The instant the uniforms’ backs were turned, they bolted under the cherry credenza, peering out at Winthrop Jergen’s sprawled body. The smell of his shaving lotion mixed strangely with the stench of death.

The lamps were all lit, every light burning except the lamp that hung over the edge of the desk. The toppled swivel chair and scattered papers and files were all soaked with Jergen’s blood. As the medics rose and moved away, the cats got a good look at Jergen, his throat ripped as brutally as if a leopard or tiger had been at him-but this was not a hunting kill, this was the result of human malice.

As the photographer got to work, the flashing strobe lights nearly blinded the cats, forcing them to squeeze their eyes shut. The after-flashes, the blazing white reverse-images of Jergen’s body, were as eerie as if his light-propelled spirit kept flashing back, trying to rejoin his corpse.

Beyond the windows, clouds had begun to gather, dimming the late afternoon. The tangle of officers’ feet moving carefully across the Kirman rug, skirting around the body, Charlie sitting quietly on the couch out of the way, and the familiar forensics routines filled the cats’ vision and minds as the photographer shot his last roll and Officer Kathleen Ray began to collect evidence, her darkhair swinging around her shoulders. The first item she bagged, lifting it carefully from the floor beyond the file cabinets, held the cats’ complete attention.

A device from the freezer, the thing that held the ice cubes, but covered with blood, dripping blood, its handle sticking up like a bloody knife, making them see too vividly a human hand jabbing and jabbing that blunt instrument into Jergen’s soft flesh.

The cats’ own bloodthirst was normal; it was the way God had made them. They were hunters, they killed for food and to train their young-well maybe sometimes for sport. But this violent act by some unknown human had nothing to do with hunting-for a human to brutally maim one of their own kind out of rageor sadism or greed was, to Joe and Dulcie, a shocking degradation of the human condition. To imagine that vicious abandon in a human deeply distressed Dulcie; she did not like thinking about humans in that way.

Pushing closer to Joe, she watched Officer Ray’s familiar procedures, the tweezers, the tedious routine of picking up each fleck of evidence, the bagging and labeling, and slowly the thoroughness of her actions began to ease Dulcie. She imagined the intricacies of the laboratory studies that would follow, the carefully established methods, and a sense of rightness filled her.

Then the fingerprinting began, the black powder, the lifting tape, the fingerprint cards, all carefully thought out and calming, techniques that were the result of a wonderful human intelligence.

Humans might be sense-challenged, without a cat’s balance and keen hearing and superior sense of touch, to say nothing of the cat’s night vision, but the human’s inventiveness and mental skills made up for those failures-people might be capable of brutality, in a shocking short circuit of the human spirit, but the best of mankind were still wonderful to observe.

And,she thought,what are we-what are Joe and I, that we can understand the achievements of humankind?

By the time the forensics team had finished, night had closed around the apartment, the black windows reflecting the blaze of lights within, turning the room stark and grim. The coroner arrived, completed his examination and bagged the body, and slid it onto a stretcher. As the paramedics carried it out, Officer Ray collected the last bits of evidence from where the corpse had lain. No one had touched the computer, except to lift fingerprints from the keyboard and monitor. The screen still glowed pale green, etching into the delicate glass the image of a financial spreadsheet.

Max Harper had sent Officer Wendell over to Mavity’s cottage to take her down to the station, and patrol units were looking for Pearl Ann. Harper sat with Charlie on the couch, questioning her. “Did youseeMavity and Pearl Ann come up here to clean?”

“Pearl Ann was up here. I could see her through Jergen’s bathroom window, probably repairing the towel rack. Mavity was headed for the stairs when I left, carrying her cleaning things. But, no, I didn’t see Mavity enter the apartment.”

“What time was that?”

“Around three-fifteen, I think. I got to the Blackburns’ about three-thirty. I usually take Mavity with me; she cleans while I do the repairs. But today-Jergen had asked for some extras, so I sent her up to help Pearl Ann.”

“What sort of extras?”

“Clean the refrigerator, fix the towel rack that had pulled out of the bathroom wall, and repair a leak in the shower. He said he had a late afternoon appointment up the coast, wanted the work done while he was out. Mavity was going to do the refrigerator while Pearl Ann took care of the repairs.”

“And did you see his car, before you left for the Blackburns’?”

“I wouldn’t have; he keeps it in the garage. I thought he was gone. I?”

“What?”

“I think he must have been gone. Or-or already dead. Pearl Ann had the windows open, and he would never have allowed that.”

“You didn’t see his car when you came back from the Blackburn place?”

“No. Isn’t it in the garage?”

“There’s a black Mercedes convertible parked down the street. We passed it, coming up. I’ve sent Brennan to check the registration and to check the garage.”

Officer Ray came out of the master suite to say that the towel rod had been reset and that there was fresh caulking around the bottom of the shower and between some of the tile. Soon Lieutenant Brennan returned. The garage was empty. He had run the plates on the black Mercedes parked down the street. It belonged to Jergen. Harper returned his attention to Charlie.

“What time did you get back from the Blackburns’? Were the two women still here?”

“Around six-thirty. They were both gone. I came up to close the windows, and he-I found him.”

“You realize I have to consider you a suspect, Charlie, along with Mavity and Pearl Ann.”

“That’s your job,” she said quietly.

“Was anyone else in the building when you left? Clyde or any other workers?”

“No, just Mavity and Pearl Ann. Clyde hadn’t planned to come up. He had a busy schedule at the shop.”

“Do you have an address for Pearl Ann?”

“It’s that old brick office building down on Valley, across from the mission.”

“The Davidson Building?”

“Yes. She rents a room above those pokey little offices. But she’ll be on her way to San Francisco by now; she planned to spend the weekend.”

“How long have you known about her weekend plans?”

“For weeks. She was really excited-she grew up somewhere on the east coast and she’s never seen San Francisco.”

“How long has she been in Molena Point? How long has she lived at the Davidson Building?”

“Four months, more or less-to both questions. Said she moved in there the day after she arrived.”

“She picked a great place to settle.”

“She’s very frugal with money. I think she doesn’t have much.”

“How long has she worked for you?”

“The whole four months.”

“Married?”

“No, she’s single. And she’s a good worker.”

“What kind of car?”

“She doesn’t have a car-she walks to work.”

“What brought her to the west coast? Where does she come from?”

“Arkansas maybe, or Tennessee, I’m not sure. She told me she wanted to get as far away from her overbearing family as she could.”

“How old is she?”

“Twenty-seven.”

Harper made some notes.“Did you and Mavity talk about the sheaf of statements we found in Dora Sleuder’s luggage? Did she give you any idea why Dora might have them?”

“We didn’t talk, no.” She looked at him questioningly.

“Did Mavity keep a gun?”

“No. She’s afraid of guns.” She looked at Harper, frowning. “But that-that terrible wound? Mavity couldn’t? A gun couldn’t cause that?”

“So far as you know, she did not have a gun?”

“Well, she might. She told me once that her husband kept a gun, that after he died she was afraid to touch it. She asked Greeley to lock it away for her in a strongbox at the back of her closet. She said her husband had always kept a strongbox, a little cash laid by at home in case of some emergency.”

Beneath the credenza, the cats tried to follow Harper’s line of thought. Was he guessing that Jergen’s throat could have been tornaftera bullet entered and killed him, perhaps to confuse the police?

The cats remained hidden until Harper had sealed Jergen’s apartment and Brennan had secured the stairs with crime scene tape. When everyone had gone, Dulcie leaped to the desk.

Though the officers hadn’t touched the computer, Captain Harper had called the FBI in San Francisco, arranging for a computer specialist to examine the files. The file on the screen said BARNER TAX-FREE INCOME FUND and was in Winthrop Jergen’s name.

“How much will the Bureau agent find,” Dulcie said, “if he doesn’t have Jergen’s code? And, more important, if he doesn’t have Pearl Ann’s code?” She sat down beside the phone. Lifting a paw, she knocked the receiver off.

“Hold it,” Joe said. “Harper’s still down there. The police units are still out front-they must be searching the building.”

“I’ll call him when he gets back to the station.” She lifted the receiver by its cord, biting gently, and used her paw to maneuver it back into the cradle. Turning, she sniffed at the computer. “The keyboard smells of Pearl Ann’s perfume.”

“Could be an old scent-she cleans around the desk.”

“Cheap perfume doesn’t last very long.” She took another sniff and then leaped down, avoiding the bloodstained rug. Leaving the scene, the cats were soon following Max Harper through the lower apartments, padding along in the shadows beyond where lights had been switched on and well behind the photographer as he made bright strobe shots of the various footprints that had been left in the Sheetrock dust.

Too bad the department would have to labor to identify each set of prints, procuring shoes from everyone involved. Enough fuss to make a cat laugh, when Joe or Dulcie could have done the job in a second.

No amount of sweeping could eradicate the fine white Sheetrock dust that impregnated the plywood subfloor, and the cats, living close to the earth, knew intimately each set of prints left there: Charlie’s and Clyde’s jogging shoes, Pearl Ann’s tennis shoes, the boot marks of the two hired carpenters, the prints of various subcontractors. Their quick identification could have been a great help to the police.How unfair it is,Dulcie thought,that canine officers can gather evidence that would stand up in court, but a cat can’t.

A drug dog’s sniffing out of evidence was accepted even if he didn’t find the drug-he need only indicate to his handler that the drug had been there, and that was legitimate testimony. But similar intelligence, given by a feline volunteer, would be laughed at.

Just one more instance,Dulcie thought,of prejudice in the workplace.

Silently they watched the officers bag the workmen’s trash, the drink cans and candy wrappers and wadded-up lunch sacks, and scraps of wallboard and lumber. They bagged, as well, Mavity’s insulated lunch carrier and thermos, and Pearl Ann’s duffle bag containing her dirty work clothes.

Pearl Ann would have changed clothes for her trip, leaving her duffle to take home on Monday. But Mavity’s oversight was strange; Mavity never forgot that lunch bag.

Officer Wendell returned to tell Harper that Mavity was not at home, that there was no sign of her car and no answer when he pounded, and that her door was locked.

“I looked through the windows. The house was very neat, the bed made, three cups and saucers in the sink. I took a turn through the village but didn’t see her VW.”

Watching from behind a stack of crated plumbing fixtures, Dulcie licked her paw nervously.“WasJergen stealing from Mavity? Could she have found out and been so angry that she killed him? Oh, I don’t like to think that.”

“Whoever thrust that ice tray divider into Jergen’s throat, Dulcie, had to be bigger and stronger than Mavity.”

“I don’t know. She’s pretty wiry.”

“She might have shot him first.”

“I don’t think she shot him. I don’t believe she would hurt anyone. And where was Pearl Ann? Had she already left when his killer entered the apartment?” She dropped her ears, frightened. “Was Mavity there alone? Did she see the killer?”

“Come on, they’re leaving. Let’s check the bathroom.”

But the bathroom where Pearl Ann usually showered and changed was spotless. The shower was completely dry, not a drop of water.

Usually when Pearl Ann cleaned up, she left the shower floor wet, with Sheetrock dust or paint or plaster on the bathroom floor where she’d pulled off her work clothes.

“Maybe,” Dulcie said, “she didn’t want to pick up any dirt on her clean new clothes. Maybe she mopped up with paper towels, before she got dressed.”

“But why would she dry the shower, too? And there are no paper towels in the bathroom trash basket.” Nor did they remember the police taking any trash from the bathroom.

“And there’s something else,” Dulcie said. “Can’t you smell it?”

“I do now,” Joe said, sniffing at the shower and grimacing. Over the scent of soap and of Pearl Ann’s jasmine perfume came a sharp, male odor. A man had used the shower, and recently. Even a careful wiping-up hadn’t destroyed that aroma.

“So Pearl Ann had a man in the shower,” Joe said. “So maybe she didn’t go up to the city alone. Is that a crime?”

“Did you ever see her with a date? You’ve never seen anyone come by here to pick her up.”

“She still could be seeing someone, or maybe living with someone-maybe wants to keep it quiet.”

“Could one of the subcontractors have been here and used the shower?”

“There was no sub scheduled for today,” Joe said. “Have you ever seen one of the subs use the shower?”

She switched her tail impatiently.“We have to call Harper-tell him there was a man in the shower and give him the codes for the computer. This could be the key to the whole puzzle.”

“Before we make any calls and upset Harper, let’s have a look at the Davidson Building-check out Pearl Ann’s room.”

“Don’t you think Harper went over there to search? There’ll be cops all over the place.”

“He won’t search without someone at home,” Joe said. “You know how he is. Even if he gets a warrant, he won’t go in until Pearl Ann gets back. Says it protects the evidence, saves a lot of fuss in court.” His yellow eyes burned with challenge, his expression keen and predatory. “Come on, Dulcie, let’s go toss Pearl Ann’s place-we’ll never have a better chance.”

22 [????????: pic_23.jpg]

AS A BLUE-CLAD morgue attendant rolled the gurney bearing Winthrop Jergen’s corpse into the cooler to await the coroner’s knife, as Captain Max Harper sat at his desk in the Molena Point Police Station filling out his report on Jergen’s death, and as Joe and Dulcie padded along the top of the fence behind the Davidson Building where Pearl Ann Jamison rented a room, along the lighted village streets Mavity’s worried friends searched for her. Charlie, driving slowly past the crowded shops and cottages, stopped frequently to shine her flashlight among bushes and around porches, thinking she might find Mavity wandering confused and frightened. She kept picturing Mavity standing in the shadows of Jergen’s hall watching some faceless assailant stab and stab him-then running, terrified.

She was aware of Wilma searching high above her up the dark hills; she caught frequent glimpses of Wilma’s car lights winding back and forth along the narrow streets and the beam of her flashlight sweeping the houses and the open meadows.

But next time she glanced up, Wilma’s lights had stopped-they were stationary, seemed to be somewhere above the apartment building.

Had she found Mavity?

But then the light swept slowly across the houses and grassy verges as if Wilma was walking the area, searching it again, though they had looked above the apartments earlier, thinking that Mavity might have run up there to escape Jergen’s killer.

Wilma, leaving her car, moved among a tangle of gardens and slipped up driveways to shine her beam in through garage windows; she peered into cars parked on drives or in streets to see if they were empty, hoping no one saw her from some darkened house. She didn’t need anyone calling the station, reporting a prowler. She couldn’t stop thinking that Mavity, having witnessed Jergen’s murder and able to identify the killer, had hidden up here.

Yet Mavity could have been struck down by the killer and dragged away, dumped anywhere-the far foothills, the bay?

Or had Mavity, driven by hurt and rage because Jergen cheated her, hefted that ridiculous weapon and flung herself at him with enough force to drive the blunt instrument into his soft flesh?

Before she left home, Wilma had examined an ice tray divider from her refrigerator, hefting it, trying to imagine killing with it.

She had put it down again and turned away sickened, appalled at her own lack of faith in her friend.

Earlier this evening as she walked the streets looking for Mavity, she had met Sue Marble closing up her Latin American Boutique, turning out the lights, dimming the window spots that shone across the display of native art. Sue hadn’t seen Mavity for over a week. Wilma didn’t stress the urgency of her search, didn’t mention the murder.

Sue was full of friendly energy, her complexion rosy, her bobbed white hair gleaming.“I have something for you.” She had unlocked her shop again and hurried inside, returning with two signed petitions in support of the library cat, her apple face alight with the accomplishment of having gotten fifty more signatures.

“Don’t you tell Freda I did this. I’m supposed to be Freda’s friend. She’d pitch a fit if she knew I was getting signatures. But I just can’t agree with her about your little library cat. The way she’s acting almost makes me want to drop her-except she’s the only friend I have who likes to play Scrabble. I don’t know why she’s so down on cats.

“That black cat that visits me, he’s such a handsome fellow. Comes right on in the shop, so regal.” She laughed. “I’m a sucker for a friendly kitty. I thought at first he was a stray, but he was too sleek and well-fed. And then his master came in, that nice Greeley Urzey, and?”

“When was this?” Wilma asked.

“Oh, a couple of weeks ago.” Sue colored slightly. “Greeley comes from Panama, so we had a nice visit. Would you believe we know some of the same people?” She pulled the door to, locking it. “I told him I’ll be off on another buying trip, as soon as I can find an apartment and get moved.”

“I didn’t know you?”

“I can’t stand the noise another minute, Wilma-that trumpet player next door practicing all the time and now a friend has moved in with him, andheplays thedrums.Can you imagine the noise? The police can’t be there every minute. And I can’t bear the thought of swearing out a warrant-the ideaof starting that kind of battle is just too much-I would really rather move. Dear me, is it urgent that you find Mavity? Is anything wrong? I could help you look.”

“Nothing at all, of course not. Did you know that Clyde’s apartments will be ready soon? He might be willing to hurry one up for you.”

“Oh, yes, the girl who draws the wonderful cats-she’s doing them up, isn’t she? Charlie Getz? Well, of course, she’s your niece. I remember seeing her van up there. Are the apartments nice?”

“Lovely big rooms,” Wilma said, “and a wonderful view down over the village.” She didn’t mention that Winthrop Jergen’s apartment might be for let soon. Sue would hear that on her own.

Tucking the petitions into her pocket, she thanked Sue and went on her way searching for Mavity.

The brick walls of the Davidson Building were black with grime, its closed windows caked with years of accumulated dirt. The plain, two-story building was constructed in the shape of a long U; a garbage-strewn alley separated its two parallel wings, closed at one end by the building itself, and at the other end by a board fence, atop which cats now crouched looking up at the impenetrable two floors rising above them.

No window was lighted on either floor to indicate human presence save, at the upper level, halfway down, one window reflecting a weak, greasy glow barely visible behind the dirty pane.

Padding along the top of the fence, the cats studied the metal fire escape that hung above them, folded against the bricks. They could see, just above it, a row of narrow, jutting bricks running the length of the building at the base of the upper windows, apparently a halfhearted attempt at architectural detail-otherwise, the structure was as plain as a prison. Nor was the little ledge much of a walkway, maybe wide enough for a broad-shouldered mouse.

They had already circled the building from the sidewalk. The front door was solidly locked, and there was no other way in. They had swung from the door’s latch, pressing and pawing, but nothing gave. Now there was nothing left to try but the fire escape.

Crouching, Joe sprang high, grabbing the metal with his claws, fighting to gain purchase on the rusty steel. Dulcie followed him, and together they twisted and raked at the bars until they had pulled themselves up into the center of the folded tangle then onto the brick ledge above.

Precariously balancing, they pawed at the first window, but it was stuck or locked or nailed shut.

Padding around the corner on the thin ledge, they clung close to the long wall, leaning into the bricks, stopping at each dirty pane of glass. All the windows were stuck, and they couldn’t see much through the grime. Most of the rooms looked empty. They made out the dim lines of an overstuffed chair, and in another room, when they had pawed dirt from the pane, a lone, unmade bed, its graying sheets wadded in a bundle on a stained mattress. The window halfway down the building where the thin light burned was caked with dirt as thick as garden soil. Dulcie pawed at it irritably.

“Lick the window.”

“I’m not licking it. You lick it.” She pressed her face against the glass. “And what’s to see? A bunch of dusty boxes stacked up.” She didn’t like schlepping along the precarious ledge past blind windows where, behind the dirty film, anything could be observing them. She didn’t likelooking down at the dark alley, either, with its jagged cans and broken glass. Contrary to popular human opinion, a cat certainly could fall from high places-or could be pushed. She had the feeling they were being watched, that something was tracking their progress.

Slipping past the light they gained the corner and padded along the short, connecting wall. They had started up the other side when, across the way, the lighted window slid open.

Against the dull glow, a man stood silhouetted. His voice was grainy, thin.

“Come in, you two. Come on in here, if that’s what you want.” He shoved the window higher, and the light picked out his gnarled hands and wrinkled leather jacket. “Come on in-or go away and quit snooping.” Reaching down, he fetched a cardboard box from somewhere beside his feet and fixed it under the raised window.

So this was where the old man was hiding. Had he been here ever since they saw him leaning over Dora and Ralph’s bodies? They remained still, not sure whether to run from him, along the narrow ledge, or to go back and step inside.

“Come on, you cats. Get a move on.” He leaned farther, peering across at them. “I know what you are. Do you think I wouldn’t know?”

Joe glanced back at Dulcie, where she crouched behind him.

“Who you looking for?” Greeley said. “There ain’t nobody here but me-and my friend.” Slyly he glanced around to the shadowed crates behind him.

“Who you looking for?” he repeated. “Or are you just out for an evening’s stroll, in this delightful portion of the village?”

“We weren’t looking for you,” Joe said coldly. Dulcie stared at him, shocked, and wanted to slap a paw over his mouth.

But why not speak? Obviously Azrael had told Greeley all about them-thank-you very much. And now from the shadows behind Greeley, a voice mumbled, and Greeley laughed harshly.

“Who you looking for, then, if not me?” Greeley said rudely.

There was another comment from behind him, and his eyes widened.“You cats looking for Pearl Ann? Is that it? You come looking for Pearl Ann Jamison?”

They hunched lower, crouching single file on the narrow ledge.

“You two don’t want to mess with Pearl Ann. You don’t know half about her. What you want with her?”

Joe glanced behind him at Dulcie. She would have to turn around and go first if they were to return the way they had come and approach Greeley.

She flattened her ears, shook her head. She didn’t want to do that.

“Go on, Dulcie. Move it. We can’t stay here all night.”

She crouched, frozen.

He flipped around on the ledge, seeming to hang in midair, then crouched on the ledge facing her, waiting for her to turn back.

She hunched, staring at him, their noses inches apart, her green eyes huge and uncertain. He had seldom seen her afraid-fear was not her nature. Irritated, he tensed to spring over her along the thin protrusion.

She glared at him but at last she switched ends, flipping around precariously on the thin bricks, holding her breath as her three paws struck empty air then hit the bricks again, and she started back reluctantly toward Greeley. At every step she wanted to beat it out of there.

“Go on,” Joe growled. “Hurry up.”

She padded a trifle faster.

“Move it, Dulcie. What can he do to us?”

She could think of a number of things.

“Goon.Show a little spine.”

That moved her. She gritted her teeth and headed fast for Greeley, racing along the bricks, her tail low, her ears plastered tight to her head.

As she reached the window the old man stepped aside, and she warily slipped beneath the raised glass, dropping to the floor and backing away from Greeley. Beside her Joe hit the floor with a heavy thud. Immediately Greeley slammed the window. They heard the lock slide home.

23 [????????: pic_24.jpg]

THE SMALL, crowded room was shut tight, the window bolted, the door securely closed. Around the cats towered cardboard cartons labeled Scotch, rum, bourbon, and vodka, either the supplies for a huge private party or perhaps the extra stock of a nearby liquor store. The room stunk of booze as if Greeley had been happily sampling the various brands. The only light was from a battery-operated lamp of the kind kept for emergency power outages. Anyone who had been through a California earthquake or considered such matters maintained a stock of battery-powered lamps, a radio, bottled water, and emergency food and medical supplies. The cats saw none of these other essentials, only enough booze to weather any quake, and the squat lamp, its light reflecting from the eyes of the black tomcat where he crouched atop the tallest stack of boxes glaring down at them: an ebony statue, the greatel primo gato.

In the far corner an old, stained mattress lay nested between the cardboard cases, fitted out with a limp pillow ticked in gray stripes, and a wrinkled army blanket laced with moth holes. On a box beside the bed stood four cans of beans, with a can opener, a dirty paper plate, an open bag of chips, and a pair of dirty socks.

The opposite corner of the room served as a depository for trash and empty cans.

Greeley’s shirt and pants were wrinkled and stained, and he smelled not only of rum but desperately in need of a bath.

“What you want, you cats? You didn’t come to this dump sightseeing. Why you looking for Pearl Ann?”

But then the old man’s face crumpled. “You didn’t come to make condolences, either.” He stared hard at them. “You saw her, didn’t you. You saw her dead-Isaw you looking!” He sat down on the mattress, eased a bottle of rum from under the blanket and upended it, taking a long pull. He was so pitiful that Dulcie wanted to pat his face with a soft paw.

“Ought to have swish ‘n’ swash,” he said and took another swig. “But you need a coconut for that.” He giggled at a joke the two cats didn’t understand; they watched him, unblinking.

“What, for Christ’s sake?” he shouted at them. “What you staring at?” He leaped up suddenly, lunging at them. Dulcie flipped away but Joe crouched snarling, ready to strike.

Greeley paused, uncertain.

“Pearl Ann Jamison,” Joe hissed. “Where does she live? Which room?”

Greeley’s laugh blasted the air, drowning them in the stink of rum. “I knew it. What you looking forherfor?”

He sat unsteadily on a carton.“She rented the last empty room. AllI could get was this storeroom.”

He smirked at them, pleased.“Rental office let me have it cheap, when I tole ‘em I was teetotal.” And he belched and scratched his belly.

“So what do you want with her?” he said roughly. “You tell me what’s your business with this Pearl Ann, maybe I’ll show you which room.”

For a moment, no one spoke; the three cats and the old man stared at each other, caught in a vacuum of silence. Then Greeley dug three paper cups from an open carton and set them in a row on the floor.

Pouring several inches of rum into each, he pushed two toward Joe and Dulcie.“Drink up, folks,” he said, cheerfully lifting the bottle.

The biting smell of rum burned the cats’ noses, made them back away. The old man stood up abruptly, catching himself against the cartons, and on tiptoe he reached to slide the third cup across the cartons to Azrael. Azrael turned his head and slitted his eyes against the fumes.

Greeley drained the bottle. And his face crumpled, tears streaking down.

“They were into something,” he said softly. “Dora and Ralph. Playing cop maybe. Or maybe blackmail.” He hiccuped and leaned against the cartons, scowling at the floor. He was silent for so long they thought he’d gone to sleep.

But suddenly he snatched up the battery light.“Well, come on!” He glared down at them, his red eyes watery. “I got a key to Pearl Ann’s place, if that’s what you’re after.”

His boozy laugh cracked.“Shedon’t know I got it. Azrael fetched it. No trick at all for him to slip in through the transom. She thought she lost her key,” he said, smirking. “She got another from the rent office. And what do they care?” He unbolted the door and led them down a narrow, dark hall that smelled of mice and human urine.

Padding warily after him along the dirty linoleum, Joe and Dulcie heard a loud thump behind them as Azrael hit the floor. They turned to see the black torn swagger out, taking up the rear like a guard walking behind two prisoners.

Pearl Ann’s room was at the far end of the gloomy hall. Twisting a skeleton key in the lock, Greeley shoved the door open; when the cats hesitated, he laughed.

“Scared, huh? Scared I’ll lock you in?” He slapped his knee, giggling, then crossed the room. Pounding on the window frame, he managed to loosen it. Lifting the bottom half, he propped it open with a dented metal wastebasket. “There, that suit you better?”

They padded into the close, sour-smelling room. In one corner stood an iron bed neatly made up with a worn chenille spread faded to the color of a grimy floor mop. The scarred dresser was of the waterfall era that had been popular in the forties, an incredibly ugly piece but one that had enjoyed a recent revival. Joe leaped to its top, onto a film of dust.

It appeared that Pearl Ann had not lived here alone. Before the mirror were two rows of toiletries, one for a man, one for a woman: hair spray and jasmine cologne on one side, can of shaving cream and bottle of shaving lotion on the other.

Two pairs of men’s shoes stood in the open closet next to Pearl Ann’s jogging shoes, all as neatly aligned as the shoes of soldiers placed for inspection. Above these hung a man’s trousers and jeans and polo shirts and, in her half of the closet, four pastel jumpsuits of the kind that Pearl Ann favored for work, a skirt, and two blouses. In the tiny bathroom, which had no counter space but only a basin, the thin scent of shaving cream and aftershave was mixed with Pearl Ann’s perfume. The man’s odor was strongest around the bed. As the two cats inspected the room, Greeley stood leaning against the door frame with a strange little smile on his face, as if he were secretly amused. Azrael had remained in the hall, separating himself from their investigation with a barrier of disdain.

They had not told the black torn the results of their surveillance at Pander’s restaurant, or who Dora and Ralph’s host had been; they had not sought him out, to tell him, and Azrael had not come to them. Maybe, Joe thought, Azrael had gone to Pander’s after all, had watchedthemwatching Dora and Ralph. He didn’t like to think that he had been so unaware, so blind to the dark tom’s presence.

Now, searching for he knew not what, pawing open the drawers of the waterfall dresser, Joe found only a man’s Jockey briefs and socks. No lady’s panties or stockings or nighties-as if Pearl Ann didn’t have much, as if she’d taken what little she owned with her to San Francisco.

In the doorway, Greeley looked increasingly smug, harboring his amusing little secret. Joe, losing patience, leaped onto the dresser and fixed him with a hard stare.

“You can keep your own council if you choose, Greeley. Or you can trade it.”

“What could a cat trade? What would a cat have that would interest old Greeley?”

Joe turned his back and began to wash.

“Well, what?” Greeley shouted.

“This is about your sister,” he told Greeley.

“What about my sister?”

Joe looked back at him, remote and ungiving.

“What about her!” Greeley snapped.

“She’s gone,” Joe said. “She disappeared. You tell me about Pearl Ann-tell me what you’re grinning about-and I’ll tell you about Mavity.”

“Gone where? What do you mean, gone?”

“The cops are looking for her.”

“You’re lying. Why would the cops? I don’t believe you. Mavity wouldn’t be into anything the cops care about. She’s as straight as a fencepost. You cats are such liars.”

“What do you know about Pearl Ann?”

“You, first. Can’t trust a cat to keep a fair trade.”

“She might be wanted for murder,” Joe said shortly. “Or she might have been murdered. Murdered, while you wallowed here frying your brain in rum.”

“You stupid cat-you think I believe what a cat says?”

“She vanished from Winthrop Jergen’s apartment this afternoon.” Joe looked at Greeley with distaste. “Jergen was found with his throat torn open. And Mavity has disappeared.”

Greeley had turned very pale.“She wouldn’t kill anyone. No matter what he did, she wouldn’t kill him.”

Joe stared at him.

Greeley looked back a long time, his glance flicking to Azrael, to Dulcie, to the window.

“Fair trade,” Joe said. “Your turn.”

Greeley picked up a straight chair from beside the dresser and set it beneath the overhead light.

“Pearl Ann Jamison,” he said. “What a sweet little lady.” Standing on the chair, he tipped the plastic light cover askew, reached inside, and drew out a thick envelope. Climbing down, he nearly toppled the chair, caught himself against the bed. Glancing out the door at Azrael, almost as if asking permission and receiving only a haughty look from the black cat, he tossed the packet on the chenille spread.

“My partner saw her hide this. He loves looking in windows. He’s a regular voyeur.” Withdrawing the contents of the envelope, he spread it across the chenille. Joe looked down from the dresser as Dulcie leaped up onto the bed. They studied with interest an airline ticket, a fistful of credit cards, and three driver’s licenses.

The airline ticket was partially used, the stub indicating that the holder had traveled from Georgia to L.A., then L.A. to Molena Point. The date of arrival was about the time Pearl Ann had applied for a job with Charlie. The return portion didn’t show any reservation. The ticket had been issued in the name of a Troy Hoke.

There was a Georgia driver’s license and a Visa and social security cards for Troy Hoke, a second set for a Terrill John, a third set for William Skeel. The pictures were all of the same man: a thin, familiar face, long brown hair tied back in a ponytail. There was no ticket, and no license or charge card or ID for Pearl Ann; presumably she had her cards with. her. Greeley leaned against the dresser, giggling.