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The quilted evening purse, stuffed with its six compacts, was hellishly heavy. But Joe wasn’t willing to jettison even one bit of possible evidence. Why a woman needed a dozen compacts was beyond him. Well, he never claimed to be an authority on female vicissitudes, cat or human. He could track a rabbit through rocky terrain, could dispatch the biggest wharf rat that ever snarled in a cat’s face, could leap six feet between rooftops. But he couldn’t tell you much about a lady’s love of finery. Gripping the quilted bag firmly between determined teeth, he hurried through the bright morning along the less frequented lanes of the village, avoiding passing cars and pedestrians. Dragging the bag up three trees and across innumerable rooftops, he arrived home at last with aching neck muscles and tired jaws. Crouched on the front porch, he listened to the racket above him, from the attic, hammers pounding, nails being forced from old wood with tooth-jarring screams, human voices sharp with tension.“Hold it. There. Back a little. Whoa-Put your level on it. Up� A little more� There! Nail it!“Above him, the porch roof shook. Sticking his head through his cat door, he looked around the living room.

Empty and safe. The house had that hollow feel mat heralded deserted space. Shoving the satin bag in onto the carpet, he followed it, collapsing beside it.

He didn’t want to drag it over to the station or to Garza’s cottage in the daylight, he’d had enough trouble getting it home without alerting some nosy citizen.Oh look, what’s that cat got? Come here, kitty. Let’s have a look�

Right.

He sat contemplating the several options he could employ as a safe hiding place until dark. He considered his battered easy chair that Dulcie and Clyde and several other insensitive folk said resembled the hide of a molting elephant. He had hidden several valuable items in that well-clawed and fur-coated retreat. The purse need remain there only until dark, until he could carry it unseen across the village and slip it into the police station, or maybe into Garza’s car-if he didn’t rupture a neck muscle, getting it there.

Shoving the little bag between the cushions, he stretched out in front of his chair across an African throw rug, wondering what Clyde had left him for breakfast. And praying that his evidence would nail Marianna Landeau. Praying that Ryan’s ordeal was about to be resolved.

27 [��������: pic_28.jpg]

The pan-broiled steaks were two inches thick, crisp and dark on the outside, deep pink within, so juicy and tender that Ryan almost groaned. She had left the curtains open so they could enjoy the sunset that blazed beneath the dark clouds. Sitting across from her dad at the kitchen table, tasting her first bite of steak, she sighed with a fine, greedy pleasure. “You can do, with a plain black skillet, what most chefs can’t manage even with their fancy grills.”

Mike Flannery grinned. “I’ve heard that line.” She laughed, but she watched him carefully too. He wasn’t even home yet, this was only the last leg of his trip, he had come down here to help her, worried about her, and she was going to dump these ugly rumors on him, lay out all Larn Williams’s lies to cheer him.

But she had to talk about this if she were to resolve her own uncertainty, her own fears. Thinking about Williams’s vicious story, on top of his tampering with her billing, she had grown increasingly frightened of what else he might plan to do, of what his ultimate goal might be.

Was Williams’s mind simply twisted, was he an impossible mental case? Or had he killed Rupert? But why would he draw attention to himself?

Maybe his actions were a carefully planned harassment designed to keep her off-center and perhaps complicate the murder investigation? Designed to throw the police off track and protect someone else?

Her father put down his fork, watching her, his expression half amused at her fidgeting, half a frown of concern. “Whatever’s bothering you, Ryan, spit it out. Before you choke on it.”

“Something someone said. It’s all lies. But� Well, lies that are hard to repeat.”

“If it makes you this edgy, if you’re embarrassed to say it, it has to be about me. What have I done? What did someone say I did?”

She looked at him helplessly.

“It wouldn’t be the first time someone told a lie about law enforcement.”

“He said it was common gossip in the city but I never heard anything like it, in the city or anywhere else.”

He waited patiently, buttering his baked potato.

Hesitantly she began, repeating Williams’s accusations. Flannery listened without comment, without interrupting. When she finished he asked only, “Do you believe him?”

“Of course I don’t believe him. But-what’s he up to? Is there some strange little thread on which he could build such lies? And there’s more.”

She told him about the breakin, about Larn cooking her books and switching the bills. “What’s scary is, this has to fit in with Rupert’s murder. That’s what’s scary.”

“What makes you think that?”

“You and Dallas always say, never believe in coincidence.”

“Have you told Dallas what Williams said, and about the billing?”

“I called him about the bills, the night it happened. But what Williams said� I didn’t tell him that.”

“Why not?”

“Partly because I made a spectacle of myself in the restaurant when he told me those things. I lost my temper, big-time. Strong-armed him and marched him outside. I just� I suppose Dallas has heard that, by now. If Clyde hadn’t come along and stopped me, Iwouldhave pounded him. What a weird bird. He just went limp, didn’t try to fight me, didn’t do anything. As if-”

“As if he likes the ladies to pound him?”

“That’s sick.”

“Can you make any connection between Williams and Rupert? Or, even between Williams and the bombing on Sunday?”

“No, I can’t. It’s such a muddle. Except, it all seems to connect to San Andreas. Williams lives and works there. I just finished the Jakes job there. And Curtis Farger was staying up there before the bombing. He came down from San Andreas inmytruck, hidden in the back with the dog.” She sighed. “Maybe one thing just led to another, but�”

“Go over it step by step, the relationships. Begin with your job in San Andreas.”

“I had remodeled a house for the Jakeses in the city, so it was natural for them to come to me for their vacation addition. They approached me, in fact, before I left Rupert. After I left, I told them I didn’t want to take the job away from the firm, but they said they wanted me, that they didn’t want to deal with Rupert. So I agreed.

“Then when I moved down here to the village, the Jakeses recommended me to the Landeaus because Marianna and Sullivan had bought a teardown here. The Landeaus came down and we talked. She sort of scared me, she was so� austere. One of those gorgeous natural blondes, but without any warmth. Intimidating. We went over the property, I gave them my assessment, and I ended up remodeling the teardown.

“As to Larn Williams, he just showed up when I was working on the Jakeses’ place. Wanted me to bid on a job for one of his real-estate clients.” She looked helplessly at her father. “I can’t see a connection. I didn’t realize then how strange Larn is, I didn’t see that.” She studied her dad’s preoccupied frown. “What?”

Flannery was quiet.

“Do you know something about Larn Williams?”

“Would you have a picture of Mrs. Landeau?”

“No. Why?”

“How old would you say she is?”

“I� Maybe a beautiful forty-some.”

“I had a parolee who would fit that description. Let me do some checking. What do you know about her?”

“That they’d been living in L.A. for some years before they moved to the Bay Area, maybe a year ago.”

“Did she say that she’d lived in San Francisco before?”

“Marianna doesn’t chitchat. But she does know the city. She didn’t ask directions when Hanni and I sent her to various out-of-the-way shops and decorator supply houses.”

“What does Hanni think of her?”

“Cold fish,” Ryan said, grinning.

“I had a woman on my caseload a few years back who would fit her description. She came out on parole after serving a conviction for bank fraud. I hadn’t had her a month when she was into a complicated embezzlement operation. I told her to clean it up or she was going back. When she tried to make trouble, Isenther back. A vindictive sort. Served the balance of her sentence, when she came out I had no reason to keep tabs on her. I heard she’d moved down to L.A. and married into a fair amount of money, not all of it clean.”

He cut some scraps from his steak and put them on a plate for Rock. Ryan watched him spoil the big weimaraner in a way he would never have allowed for his own dogs. “Seems far-fetched,” he said, “but let me see what I can find out.”

“But why would she-”

“Let’s see what I can turn up. If thisisMartie Holland, I’ll tell you the rest of the story.” Watching her expression, he laughed. “No, I wasn’t involved with her.”

“No,” she said. “But Rupert was. Right?”

Flannery nodded.

“Dallas knows her, she’s on me list he’s investigating. I think she’s one of the two supposedly out of the country. The Bahamas, I think he said.” And she felt cold again, icy.

The Garza cottage clung to the side of a steep hill north of the village, its front windows looking down on rooftops and oak trees that now, at night, were a black mass broken by only a few scattered lights from the houses tucked among them. At the back of the cottage, the kitchen windows faced the rising hill, the steep backyard softly lit by ground-level lamps that Joe and Dulcie avoided as they approached the back steps-two neighborhood cats checking out the garbage cans.

No lights were on in the kitchen, but a glow from deeper in the house suggested that Garza sat at his desk, perhaps catching up on paperwork.

Approaching the back door, with quick paws Joe tucked the little purse under the mat. And as Dulcie curled down on the cool earth beneath the bushes to watch the door, Joe nipped down the hill to the lower-level guest rooms-family bedrooms from the time when they all came down for weekends.

Crouched on the windowsill he reached a paw through the burglar bars and through the hole in the screen, product of his own handiwork some months back, when he’d done serious spying on Garza himself. Flipping the latch and sliding the screen open, he jiggled the window until its lock gave.

He was through the bars and inside. Leaping to the small desk, he touched the phone’s speaker button. This was the only phone in the house with two lines. The upstairs fax, and the main line, were on different instruments, the fax tucked away, he hoped, in a cupboard in the desk where Garza wouldn’t see its telltale light blinking. Hitting line two, he pawed in the main phone number that he had long ago memorized. Joe’s talents didn’t extend to writing down phone numbers, he was forced to keep all such urgent information in his head-a living computer that, over time, had become strong and reliable.

Garza answered on the second ring.

Dispensing with polite formalities, Joe kept his message short. “I’ve shoved a little purse under the back doormat; it contains items taken from Marianna Landeau’s closet that I hope will reveal her fingerprints.

“You may find the prints are also those of a Martie Holland. I don’t know who this person is, but perhaps that information will be of interest when the lab has finished with the rug-the one you picked up from the Coldirons. And when you’ve had a look at the mantel in the Landeau cottage.

“You should find four more chips from the mantel on a leaf under a lavender bush just south of the Landeau front door. Those were removed from inside the fireplace before Marianna vacuumed there. She used the hand vac from the kitchen, and I don’t believe she emptied it when she finished.”

He felt as if he was spelling the steps out too clearly, insulting Garza’s intelligence. But if Garza nailed Rupert’s killer, that was all that counted. Police work was a cooperative undertaking, a team effort-even if part of the team was irrevocably undercover. He had hardly hit the speaker button to end the call when he heard Garza cross the room above him, and hit the stairs. And Joe was out of there, out the window sliding it closed, diving into the bushes as Garza switched on the light. Had the phone made a telltale click? Why did Garza suspect the caller was down there?

Checking out both bedrooms, and bam and closets, Garza cut the lights again and turned to the window. Standing just above Joe behind the burglar bars, looking out, he was still for a long time. Below him, crouched in a tangle of prickly holly, patiently Joe waited until at last the detective turned away. Joe heard him mount the stairs.

He waited until he heard the kitchen door open then close again. When he knew that Garza had the little evening purse and the compacts, he beat it up the hill to Dulcie.

Above them the kitchen light was on. Rearing up in the hillside garden, they could see Garza sitting at the table wearing cotton gloves, opening the little purse.

He didn’t touch the compacts, he simply looked. He looked out the window at the rising yard, and sat for a long moment doing nothing. At last, rising, he fetched a folded paper bag from a kitchen drawer, dropped the purse inside, and marked the bag with his pen.

“What now?” Dulcie said. “Can he send the prints to AFIS electronically?” She thought the automated fingerprint identification system that California used should take only an hour or two.

“I think he can. But it will show only a California record. Maybe he’ll send it to WIN too, for the western states. But if she had only a federal rap, it could take weeks.”

The Western Identification Network, which supplied fingerprint identification for the eight western states, was usually prompt, as well. But if an officer got no results there, and had to go through the FBI that covered the entire country, he’d better be prepared for a wait.

“You think Marianna and Martie Holland are the same person?” Dulcie said softly.

“I’m betting on it. I think Larn Williams either works for Marianna, or they’re good friends.”

“You think she planned the bombing? But why? And how does that connect to Rupert? She knew Rupert in San Francisco, but�”

“My guess is, the bombing was all the Fargers’ doing, payback for Gerrard’s prison sentence.” He turned to look at her. “But my gut feeling, Dulcie, is that Marianna killed Rupert. We just don’t know, yet, why she killed him.

“Something tore up that fireplace, after the three niches were painted. If the mason had left it like that, she’d have pitched a fit. I think she installed those three pieces of sculpture to hide the flaw in the concrete that she tried to fix.”

“But the woman is a stickler for perfection. Why didn’t she do a better job?”

“If she was trying to get rid of the body, maybe she didn’t have time. She wanted to be gone, out of there before anyone knew she was at the cottage. Maybe that plaster job was the best she could do, in a hurry to get it dried and painted. Maybe, in the artificial light, she didn’t see the flaw. I didn’t see it until the moonlight slanted at an angle. And remember, she had to sponge his blood out of the rug too. And dump that bottle of wine, trying to cover her tracks.”

“But how did she get the body out of there? She looks strong, but-if she dragged it to her car, then dragged it into Ryan’s garage, there’d have been marks.”

“There were marks-those narrow tire tracks along Ryan’s drive. Dallas photographed them. By now he has to know those weren’t bike tracks. Maybe a wheelbarrow, or more likely a hand truck. Maybe she brought it with her from the city.”

“Grisly. She loads a hand truck into her expensive car, knowing she’ll soon have a body to haul away. If the cops find it, and check out her car too, there should be plenty of traces for the lab.”

“And before that,” Joe said, “there should be replies on Marianna’s fingerprints, and the lab report on the rug. I wonder how long that will take.” He narrowed his eyes. “And what was the dog on about, when he pitched that fit there in the driveway? It sure wasn’t Eby Coldiron who made him so mad.”

28 [��������: pic_29.jpg]

Police dispatcher Mabel Hammond saw the gray tomcat slip into the station on the heels of two officers returning from lunch, strolling in behind them through the security door with all the assurance of the chief himself.

Glancing down over her counter, Mabel grinned at him. “Come on up, Joe Grey. I have fried chicken.” The officers looked around laughing, and went on down the hall.

Mabel was fifty-some and inclined to be overweight. Her curly white hair was dyed blond. Her thick stomach didn’t allow her to lean too far over the dispatcher’s counter that defined her open cubicle on three sides. On the back wall was an array of computer and video monitors, radios, and other state-of-the-art electronic equipment that Mabel commanded. She not only handled emergency calls and dispatched officers, relaying all urgent communications, she juggled incoming faxes and the computers for vehicle wants and warrants and for wanted persons, and indexed officers’ reports.

Joe Grey, never one to refuse fried chicken, landed on the counter among the in-boxes of files and papers, just inches from Mabel’s face, smiling and purring up at her, laying on the charm. Mabel’s hair smelled of perfume or maybe cream rinse; he wasn’t an authority on these matters. Rubbing against her outstretched hand, he made super-nice in deference to the promised snack, and in keeping with his and Dulcie’s commitment to improved public relations.

Ever since Harper had remodeled the station, increasing security and locking all outside doors, Joe and Dulcie’s only sure access was the quick leap inside behind a returning officer. Their previous technique of pawing open the unlocked front door was no longer an option. Everything had changed. The new, efficient reception area was totally empty of desks to hide under. Upon entering, one faced only me dispatcher’s cubicle, the booking counter, the holding cell back in the corner, and in the other direction a long, blank hallway. And the dispatchers didn’t miss so much as a fly coming through the glass doors. Fortunately, those good women were all cat lovers.

Mabel had three cats of her own and, having recently married, shared her home as well with her husband’s two dogs and his parrot. But despite her domestic menagerie, Joe Grey always amused her. The tomcat seemed to Mabel the epitome of cool feline authority. Mabel’s work could get stressful; to have a four-legged visitor smiling and purring, sharing a few free moments, seemed to make her day shorter.

It interested her that the tomcat and his two lady pals liked to prowl the whole department, slipping in and out of the various offices. And, as cats were among the few visitors that could present no breach of security, most of the officers made a fuss over them. No one knew why the cats had grown suddenly so friendly to the department after the renovation, but the little freeloaders did like to share the officers’ lunches.

Reaching to a low shelf, Mabel opened the paper bag containing her own lunch and removed a fried chicken thigh. Tearing the chicken off the bone into bite-sized pieces, she laid these on a folded sheet of typing paper, on the counter.

The tomcat scoffed up the chicken, licked his whiskers, then padded along the counters investigating her cubicle as he often did. Pausing, he peered across the entry to the holding cell, which to a cat must smell to high heaven.Shecould still smell the fingering scent of the last occupant. Oh, not the boy. He’d smelled okay. But after they took the boy out to the regular cells, and brought that old man in,he ‘dstunk up the whole building.

The tomcat, returning to Mabel’s in-boxes, began intently to watch the piles of papers that she’d set aside to index, patting and feinting at the reports as if maybe he’d seen a spider. Hot weather always brought out a few harmless spiders. The deadly ones stayed more in the dark, but did not five long if she spied them. Pawing at the papers, Joe went very still, staring as if he would grab whatever had crawled underneath. He remained for some time fixed on Gramps Farger’s arrest sheet and then on the AFIS fax that had just come in for Detective Garza. It was wonderful, these days, how quick you could get back fingerprint information, to speed up the department’s work. She watched Joe turn away at last, as if losing interest in the spider. What a strange cat, so deliberate in his actions. Now suddenly his attention was totally on the front door where he could see, through the glass door, Detective Garza returning from lunch.

She buzzed the detective through. “Captain Harper’s back, he just came in.”

Garza nodded and headed down the hall; and Joe Grey dropped from the counter and followed, making Mabel smile. Too bad the captain and Charlie had to shorten their honeymoon, though it was nice to have him home. The department had seemed just a bit off-kilter with the captain gone, not quite steady or comfortable.

Following Detective Garza, Joe could hardly keep from turning flips; he was as high as a junkie from the fingerprint report on Marianna Landeau giving her real name as Martie Holland.Martie Holland Martie Holland Martie Holland�Joe thought, grinning. And the sight of Gramps’s arrest sheet had almost made him open his mouth in a wild and unsuitable cheer.

Though even without the arrest sheet he’d know that Gramps had recently occupied the holding cell, by the stink that emanated from that corner. Didn’t the old man ever bathe? Did the shack where Gramps lived have no running water? But it must have, if Gramps was making drugs up there. He guessed the old man was just naturally slovenly. You wouldn’t catch a cat, even a very old cat, stinking that bad. A dog maybe. Never a cat.

The time of arrest was recorded as 7:15 last evening. The place of arrest was that cliffside shack up the mountain above the Pamillon estate. The charges on the arrest sheet were possession of explosives, evading custody, and manufacturing illegal drugs.

Well done, Kit!Joe thought, smiling. The kit had fingered Gramps Farger all by herself. Had practically wrapped him up, helpless as a slaughtered mouse, waiting for Garza to come find him. Phoning Garza, placing her first call, her first hard-won and important tip, she’d been so excited she hadn’t thought how scared she was. She’d given Garza the facts just as skillfully as he or Dulcie would have done. And she’d hit gold. She had helped nab the bomber that Garza might never have found-that old man had ditched the law once, as slick as if the shack in the hills wasn’t his only place to hide.

The tattercoat was growing up, Joe thought with a twinge of sadness. That fanciful youngster capable of such wild and passionate dreams was developing a solid, hardheaded turn of mind. This was all to the good, the kit was learning to take hold of a problem and deal with it. But he was going to miss her scatterbrained enthusiastic plunging into trouble that had so far marked the kit’s approach to life.

Following Garza to Harper’s office, Joe lay down in plain sight in the doorway. Garza had already seen him on the dispatcher’s counter, so why not? Might as well try a little feline indolence, play the four-footed bum.

Harper glanced out at him, and shook his head. “That cat been hanging around?”

Garza laughed. “Off and on. I let him stay, he doesn’t do any harm-keeps the mice away.”

“You get Curtis to talk?”

Garza shook his head. “Tight-mouthed. He’s been an unhappy kid since we brought Gramps in. You can bet he’s scared of the old man. Well, he wasn’t too happy before, either. He blames us and the whole world for his dad being in prison. But he wasn’t like this, we need to move him somewhere. Even separated the way they are, the old man’s been threatening him, hinting as much as he dares, figuring we have a bug on him, back in the jail.”

Which of course they would, Joe thought. It was perfectly legal, once a man was arrested, to bug his cell.

“You think the boy’s scared enough, now, to talk if we get him away from Gramps?”

“He might. I’m sure he could use a friend. I was thinking of bringing Ryan back with the dog, try that again before we send him to some juvenile facility farther away.”

Harper said, “I was thinking of taking him over to drug rehab, give him a tour of the juvenile section, let him see what his daddy’s and grandpappy’s drugs did to those kids.”

“Might work,” Garza said.

Why, Joe wondered, would a boy who tried to kill several hundred people care about the suffering of drug addicts, even if they were kids his own age? Still, though, what could it hurt?

Garza said, “You find Hurlie?”

“He found us. I arrested him on obstruction of justice, sheriff took him in. We tossed his place. Didn’t find any link to the bombing, but I have a nice list of purchases in the area, and three shopkeepers made Hurlie, from his brother’s mug shot. Sheriff says Hurlie works sometimes for the Landeaus. At first, Landeau said he couldn’t place him. Then I pressed a little. Not a friendly welcome.”

Garza nodded.

“I left Charlie in the car with the keys and phone and radio. She was more scared than she let on. Landeau’s guard dogs watched her the whole time, while Landeau jived me along. Sheriff said the feds are spotting marijuana patches up there, that they took out a couple last week, over in the national forest. The sheriff was� maybe holding something back. Telling me what he knew I’d learn anyway.”

Max leaned back in his desk chair absently reaching for a cigarette though it had been more than a year since he quit. “I talked with DEA. They think the Landeaus have been backing small meth labs in several counties, using the take to finance some marijuana operations. Good chance Hurlie could be involved.”

“As could the sheriff?”

Harper grunted. “I hope not. Maybe intimidated-that’s a political appointment, you well know. Important thing is, you have enough on Gramps to go to the grand jury.”

“I have more than that. I might have Rupert Dannizer’s killer.”

“Oh?”

“I ran prints on Marianna Landeau. Her real name came up Martie Holland.”

“That’s one of the women we couldn’t get a line on, supposed to be in the Bahamas. Some years back, Mike had her on parole.”

Dallas nodded. “That’s a long story. Your snitch got her prints to me last night. Don’t know how. Don’t know why,” he said quietly.

Harper listened, saying nothing.

“I came down last night, ran them through AFIS. Had a warrant for her issued on information, and called San Francisco.”

“She was in the city. Well, I sure missed that one.”

“As did Wills and Parker. Well, the woman has a whole new identity. If you’d never seen her� San Francisco picked her up at her Nob Hill address early this morning. All packed, said she was going up to their country place. But she had a ticket for Caracas.”

Harper grinned.

“They took her in, impounded her car. Searched the house, found a hand truck in the garage that, from its dust tracks, had been moved recently. Track marks match those from Ryan’s driveway. I thought I’d send Green and Davis early tomorrow, to pick her up. D.A. has called the grand jury for her, and for Gramps Farger. They’re able to meet day after tomorrow.”

“Very nice.”

“I’ll rest easier when Ryan’s completely in the clear. We’ll all rest easier when this bomb trial is under way.”

Harper nodded. “Ryan doing all right?”

“Keeping her head.”

“When did you talk with Mike Flannery?”

“He’s back, he came straight down here, got in yesterday morning, worried about Ryan. He didn’t know then about Martie Holland’s prints, the snitch hadn’t delivered them yet. Brought them right to my door, last night. Half-a-dozen compacts the guy apparently lifted from the Landeau cottage.” The two officers looked at each other, aDon’t ask, don’t try to figurelook. And out in the hall, Joe Grey turned to scratch a nonexistent flea, then appeared to collapse once again into sleep.

“Mike says he has enough on Martie Holland to establish motive,” Dallas said. “He’ll testify before the grand jury. I remember a good deal about her from when he had her on parole; I was working in north Marin then, never ran into her. Don’t remember seeing a mug shot. But I knew then, through Mike, that she was involved with Rupert. I don’t think Ryan ever knew about that. Mike will be by in a while, to fill you in. Where’s Charlie?”

“Up at the house getting settled. And seeing her cleaning crews. We’ll bring the horses back down tomorrow. You going to let that cat sleep in your door all day?”

“Why not? Well, now look. You woke him.”

Yawning, Joe Grey rose and headed up the hall in the direction of the locked security door. If no officer opened it, he knew that Mabel would come out from behind her counter and oblige. He had a lot to tell Dulcie, and a lot to tell the kit that would please her.

He’d like to have one more look at Marianna-Martie, at that cold piece of work, before she went to prison.

He could watch the trial, of course, if it was held in Molena Point. He and Dulcie had, during past trials, enjoyed a private and uninterrupted view from the window ledge above the courtroom; they wouldn’t miss a thing providing the weather was warm enough so the windows were open.

But he’d like a look at Mariannanow,when they brought the woman in. He didn’t know why, or what he expected to see. Call it a hunch. What he’dliketo see was how Rock responded to Marianna Landeau-Martie Holland.

Itwasonly a hunch, but a hunch so strong it made the fur down Joe’s spine rise and prickle.

29 [��������: pic_30.jpg]

The roof had been raised; its two long slanting surfaces stood upright, forming the new walls of the bedroom suite. The new roof trusses overhead were covered with tar paper and plywood and shingles, weather tight. Where the fresh studs of the end walls were still open the setting sun slanted in, turning the late afternoon light golden with floating dust motes. The forty-foot space was otherwise empty, or nearly so. The carpenters were gone for the day, the two younger men heading home as Ryan and her uncle Scotty descended the stairs to the kitchen, brushing off sawdust. Joe and Dulcie wandered the sun-warmed space alone, relishing its vastness and the challenge of unconquered heights.

Leaping to a sawhorse then atop a ladder they gained the soaring rafters. From that vantage they could see, through the open ends of the vast room and beyond the tops of the dark oaks, the ocean’s breakers blowing with foam. Nearer, just below them, the village rooftops angled cozily, inviting a run across those slanting shingles. On a neighbor’s roof a flock of bickering crows shouted and swore. From the outside stairs, Scotty looked up at the cats, and laughed, taking pleasure at the sight of them. The redheaded, red-bearded giant had told the younger carpenters that cats were just as lucky at the site of new construction as were cats on shipboard.

Close around the cats, the warm air smelled sweetly of fresh-cut lumber-and of hickory-scorched beef from the back patio, where Clyde had the rotisserie turning over glowing charcoal, preparing a welcome home dinner for the newlyweds. But when, from the rafters, the cats spotted Harper’s truck turn onto the narrow street they galloped down the stairs, pushing into the kitchen through Rube’s dog door.

They watched Ryan throw her arms around Charlie then hold her away. “You got back yesterday! You look great! How was the wine country? Did you have lunch at Beaudry’s? Isn’t it beautiful! You’re sunburned.”

Charlie laughed. “Like a patchwork quilt. We saw the Jakeses’ new addition. We love it, Ryan. It’s beautiful. When can you build my studio? Maybe redo the kitchen and enlarge the master bedroom. Or maybe-”

“Anyone home?” Dallas shouted, coming in through the front door with Mike Flannery. Wilma entered just behind them carrying a bakery box under one arm, and the tattercoat kit balanced on her shoulder. She set the box on the kitchen counter, but the kit made no move to jump down or to leap to the top of the refrigerator beside Joe and Dulcie. She clung to Wilma, tucking her face beneath Wilma’s chin and would not look up at the two cats. Wilma looked highly amused, the laugh lines around her eyes crinkled. Her long white hair was escaping in tendrils from its clasp and her lipstick was worn away as if she’d hardly had time to tend to her own concerns.

Full of uneasy questions, Joe and Dulcie followed the party as everyone carried plates and silverware and beer out onto the patio. Charlie and Ryan were still deep in conversation. The cats liked seeing Charlie find a woman friend she truly cared for, she’d always been such a loner. They had observed Wilma and her older contemporaries long enough to see the warmth and strength that could evolve from such a sisterhood, a friendship very different from Charlie’s solid friendship with Clyde-and now of course her most enduring friendship of all, with Max himself.

Well, Joe thought, Charlie had liked Kate Osborne too. They could have been close friends if Kate had stayed in the village. They had in common, for one thing, the privilege of the cats’ own secret. But Kate had abandoned Molena Point for San Francisco and abandoned Clyde, leaving the field wide open to Ryan-humans, one had to admit, could be every bit as fickle as the randiest tomcat.

Yet despite human vicissitudes, Joe found himself deeply purring as he watched Charlie and Max. Mr. and Mrs. Maximilian Franklin Harper, he thought, grinning. A name that very few people had ever heard, Max himself finding his full name far too fancy and formal.

Joe had missed the chief.

Well, I missed needling Harper, he thought, embarrassed by his sentiment.

And hehadmissed Charlie, missed her steady support. Because Charlie knew the cats’ secret, she had been there for them in the same way that Clyde and Wilma were there. She knew what they were up to, and was ready to help if she could. Joe had, in fact, found Charlie, just a few months ago, snooping among the same incriminating books and papers that he himself had found suspicious, evidence that had ultimately helped convict a killer.

He watched Charlie and Ryan and Wilma set the table and lay out, on the edge of a planter box, a place mat and three small cat dishes, causing Max to give Charlie a sour look. Little did Harper know that Charlie was setting the supper table for his three best informants. But Joe’s eyes grew round with surprise when Dallas took the kit from Wilma and held her, gently stroking her, his dark eyes laughing.

“Since when,” Ryan said, “were you so fond of cats?”

“Since I had to arrest this little terror,” Dallas said, settling the kit on his shoulder. “Talk about chutzpa.” He looked into the kit’s yellow eyes. “This one’s a regular little burglar.” He didn’t seem to notice Charlie turn pale, or Clyde stop speaking. The kit closed her eyes, hiding her face against Garza’s shoulder.

“You arrested her where?” Ryan said. “What could a little cat do?”

Garza sipped his beer. “You know how secure a grand jury room is. No one’s allowed in except the prosecuting attorney and witnesses, and the court reporter.

“I was called in this morning to testify, but also to evict the cat from underneath a chair. I had to haul her out by the nape of the neck before I could give testimony. No one knew how she slipped in. The jurors were not amused. Clerk of the court took it as a personal affront that a cat had sneaked past her into that part of the building. I took Kit to the dispatcher, and she called Wilma to come get her.”

Wilma said, “I found her on the dispatcher’s counter lapping up a carton of milk. I don’t know what got into her,” she said innocently. “Why would a cat�? Well, I kept her in the house the rest of the day, shut in the bedroom.”

Clyde had turned away to check the prime rib, hiding a laugh. Joe watched him, scowling. Why were the kit’s adventures so entertaining, when his own serious surveillance and information gathering drew nothing from Clyde but insults? Joe supposed that the kit, because she was responsible for Gramps Farger’s arrest, had wanted to be in on the kill. He watched Clyde remove the roast from the rotisserie to a platter and, with a lethal-looking carving knife, begin to cut off paper-thin slices so juicy and pink that the tomcat began to drool. He watched Dulcie wind around Clyde’s ankles with the three household cats, and the two dogs crowd so close their noses were scant inches from the carving board. It was only when everyone was seated, tying into the delicious meat and two vegetable casseroles and salad, and the animals all had their own plates, that Clyde said, “After the grand jury evicted Kit, what did they find?”

“With the evidence we had,” Dallas said, “they indicted Martie Holland for Dannizer’s murder. And they indicted Gramps Farger. Four charges of manufacturing drugs, two of attempted murder for the bombing, two on inciting a juvenile.”

Behind Dallas, the kit looked incredibly smug.

“Whataboutthe boy?” Ryan asked.

“We’re still holding him,” Dallas said. “He’ll be remanded over to juvenile. There’ll be a hearing. I expect juvenile court will either put him in a foster home and maybe a trade school, or send him to one of the boys’ ranches if they think he’s a good enough risk. I doubt it. I don’t like to think we’ll be seeing that kid back in jail in years to come, but you know the statistics.

“No one knows for sure what was in the kid’s head-whether he was as hot to blow up the church as his grampa says, or whether the old man forced him to climb up on the roof, maybe threatened him.”

Garza frowned. “Some kind of grandfather. He laid as much blame as he could on the boy, said Curtis wanted to set off the bomb.” He looked at Ryan. “If the defense attorney can get the boy to lie, on the stand, to protect Gramps, that could complicate matters. Would you want to talk with him again? See if he’ll open up? He’s scared now, since we arrested Gramps. The old manhasthreatened him. But maybe if we can convince him Gramps will stay locked up, and with the dog to comfort him, maybe he’ll open up, tell us what happened.”

“I could try,” Ryan said doubtfully. “It can’t hurt to try.”

“I took makings for the bomb from that shack where Gramps was living, and from the trash bags he hid at the Pamillon estate, along with the stuff from his underground meth lab. Empty containers of Drano, white gas, alcohol. Propane cylinders, you name it. The old man’s prints all over everything. And the Jag is registered to Curtis’s mother, she’s been driving the old man’s broken-down truck.” He looked at Max. “I’d sure like to thank your snitches.

“I’m guessing the old man waited until we checked that area up there, before the trial and again last month, waited until he thought we’d lost interest, then moved in.”

Max nodded. “Checked every out-of-the-way house and shack in the county.Andthe Pamillon ruins.”

“It’s called egg on our face,” Dallas said, laughing. “Anyway, the grand jury had a full and productive day. Davis will have Holland back here safe and sound, early tomorrow.”

Ryan looked at Clyde. ‘That’s what Larn Williams was talking about when he accused Dad of having affairs with his caseload-a parolee named Martie Holland, alias Marianna Landeau. Only it wasn’t Dad she was involved with. It was Rupert.”

Flannery said, “Martie came out of federal prison ten years ago. Beautiful woman, could have had anything she wanted. But she couldn’t stay out of trouble. She wasn’t out two months, she was into an extortion racket. When I told her to clean up her act or I’d send her back, she came on to me. She thought she could buy the world.

“When she understood thatI wasn’t buying, she decided to target my family. She wasn’t used to not having her way. She settled on Ryan, I guess because Rupert was� accessible. She was soon in bed with him and teaching him how to skim the company books. When I found out, I revoked her, sent her back.

“She came out with no time to serve. Was in L.A. for a while, got married. Became Marianna Landeau. I didn’t keep track of her, didn’t know they’d moved back to the Bay Area or that she’d laid a false trail under her own name to the Bahamas.

“Apparently she got involved with Rupert again, perhaps out of spite. Martie was never what you’d call forgiving. They began skimming the books again, before Ryan left him. We’ve talked with Ryan’s attorneys. If I’d known that Martie was back in the city�”

“The woman I built that house for,” Ryan said angrily, “the woman I created that beautiful cottage for. That was their love nest. Her and Rupert’s love nest. She killed him there, to pin the murder on me. To destroy me.”

“To destroy me,” Flannery said, “by destroying you.”

“She shot Rupert in there,” Ryan said. “A love nest as lethal as the web of a black widow. Luring the male in, to kill him.”

Dallas said, “The lab found blood in the rug that was taken from the cottage, the rug Ryan and Hanni gave to the Coldirons. That too was a tip from one of Harper’s snitches. The lab came through right away. Since the county allotted more funds, they’ve been able to do some hiring. We’re waiting for an answer on the DNA. If it’s Rupert’s, we’ve got a closed case.

“She shot him in front of the fireplace,” Dallas said. “Shot into the niche where the right-hand sculpture is placed. Where the concrete had been patched and repainted, Davis and I dug out two spent bullets. I have no idea how the informants knew about the damaged fireplace. Maybe I don’t want to know. The important thing is, their information dovetailed in nicely with our investigation.”

“We’re not sure yet,” Harper said, “what else the Landeaus were into. The feds will be dealing with that. Could be, we’ll be able to nail them with backing the Fargers’ meth labs, we don’t know yet. As to the bombing, from the evidence we now have, that was strictly a Farger family project.”

“And what about the dog?” Clyde asked. “With all the threads that stretch from San Andreas to Molena Point, everyone’s guilty but the dog.”

Mike Flannery laughed. “He’s the only innocent.”

“Maybe,” Dallas said, “Rock can help convict Gramps, if he and Ryan can get Curtis to talk.” He glanced at his niece. “And maybe Rock’s some kind of compensation, for Ryan having to go through this mess.”

Ryan grinned, and rubbed Rock’s ears, where the big dog leaned against her.

30 [��������: pic_31.jpg]

When Ryanleft the job at noon with Rock, heading for the PD, she had more stowaways than she’d accommodated coming down from San Andreas. Hidden under the tarp in the truck bed the three cats crouched as warm and cozy as three football fans snuggled under blankets in the bleachers awaiting the big game.

Despite the hard bouncing of the truck, Dulcie and the kit purred and dozed; but Joe crouched tense and excited, ready to scorch out the minute Ryan parked, and slip inside the station. If their luck held, if the timing worked, this might be the game of the season.

He had placed one phone call just after breakfast. Using the extension in Clyde’s bedroom to dial Ryan’s cell phone, where she worked in the attic above him, he had suggested that today at noon might be the optimum time to have that talk with Curtis Farger, and he had shared with Ryan his take on the matter.

“Have you wondered why Rock pitched a fit, the day you took him to the Landeau cottage?”

“Yes, I have,” she’d said softly. She didn’t ask how he could know about that. Like Max Harper and Dallas, she kept her answers brief, and she listened.

“Davis and Green will be bringing Marianna in from San Francisco around noon,” Joe said. “Would it be instructive to let Rock have a look at her-kill two birds with one� stone?”

She was silent, as if thinking about that.

“Couldn’t hurt, could it?” Joe said.

She remained quiet. But then when she spoke, there was a lilt of excitement in her voice. “I’ll be there at noon,” she said softly. Then in a faintly seductive voice, “You know a lot about this case. I can keep a secret, if you care to tell me who you are.”

Joe had hit the disconnect, pushed the headset back on its cradle, and left the house by his cat door. Slipping along beneath the neighbors’ bushes, he’d followed a route away from the house that he well knew was invisible from the room above.

And now as he rode into the courthouse parking in Ryan’s truck, he was highly impatient, tense to fly out. Ryan found a parking slot just to the right of the glass doors, one of those spaces markedVisitors Only, Ten Minutes,where the cars nosed up to a wide area of decorative plantings. Stepping out of the cab, commanding Rock to heel, she locked the door behind her. While she stood waiting to be buzzed inside, Joe dropped from atop a toolbox into the bushes. Behind him, the kit and Dulcie would take another route. As Ryan moved inside, Joe slipped in behind her and under the booking counter. Rock rolled his eyes at the tomcat, but didn’t make a wiggle.

The shelves under the counter were stacked with rolls of fax paper and computer paper, cartons of pens and pencils, and all manner of forms, neatly arranged. Slipping in between boxes of printer cartridges and computer disks, he crouched where he could see both the front entry and the holding cell, but could pull back quickly out of sight. Curtis sat in the cell looking glum. He had apparently been brought up where he could speak freely, out of earshot of Gramps. Joe could hear from above the ceiling the faintest rustle of oak leaves as Dulcie and the kit swarmed up like a pair of commandos to the high, barred window mat looked down into the cell.

But where the sun shone in against the cell wall, silhouetting the oak branch, it silhouetted, as well, two pairs of feline ears, sharply pricked. Joe prayed Dulcie would see the reflection, that she and the kit would back off.

Ryan stood outside the cell with Rock waiting for an officer to unlock the door. Rock stared in at the boy, whining. And beyond the glass doors of the front entry, a police unit pulled into the red zone. Talk about timing! Joe could see, behind the unit’s wire barrier, the golden-haired passenger. He watched Detective Juana Davis and Officer Green emerge from the car observing the area around them, then quickly unlock the back door and order Marianna out.

She slid from the car maintaining her grace despite being shackled by handcuffs. Immediately Davis marched her toward the glass doors. The dispatcher hit the admittance button. Joe glanced to the cell’s telltale shadow again, and saw that the two pairs of pricked ears had vanished. The officers and Marianna were hardly inside, with the door locked behind them, when all hell broke loose. A roar of anger greeted Marianna, and a leaping gray streak went for her, held back only by Ryan, crouching with the leash across her legs. The dog fought the leash snarling and barking. Joe glimpsed, in Ryan’s eyes, a terrible hunger to let the dog loose. She held him as he fought her trying to get at Marianna, ignoring her command to sit.

Marianna did not back away.“Hold!” She snapped at him. The dog froze stone still, his lips drawn up over killer teeth.

“Rock, sit!” Marianna commanded.

Rock sat, but he kept snarling, torn between hatred and what he’d been trained to do. So, Joe thought. So they had indeed found Rock’s owner. Ryan stepped to the dog’s side, taking hold of his collar.

But a catch of breath made Joe look past the rigid tableau to the holding cell where Curtis Farger stood at the bars, his face white, his dark eyes burning not with anger but with fear. The boy’s knuckles were white where he clutched the bars.

Marianna-Martie, drawn by that hush of breath, turned. The look between Marianna and Curtis was so filled with hatred that Joe Grey backed deeper among the boxes, shivering as if their mutual rage were daggers flying or lethal gases ready to explode.

The keys, Joe thought. Curtisdidtake those keys for Marianna to copy. Somehow he did it and brought them back again. And now� now her look has warned him, Don’t talk, Curtis. Don’t dare tell them�

At the sound of Rock’s barking, Garza and Harper had appeared in the hall with several officers. The whole station seemed to be gathering, crowding down the hall, all the officers watching the dog, Martie, and Curtis. Only Davis and Green remained focused totally on their prisoner. Rock, though still sitting as he’d been commanded, was tensed to leap, his gaze fixed on Marianna’s throat.

“Down, Rock. Back and down.”

Now, he defied her. He backed one step, but he wouldn’t lie down for her. He stood snarling as, beside him, Ryan turned to look at Curtis.

She said no word, just looked. Curtis looked back, his eyes huge.

“Whose dog is this?”

“Her dog. He’sherdog.” His voice was unsteady.

“Shut up, you little bastard!”

“Hers. She tried to train him like the others, like those rottweilers, but she only made him mad, made him turn on her.” Curtis looked terrified. “She beat him, beat him bad. She shot at him with a shotgun. You feel his skin, the little lumps? Buckshot where she shot him to run him off the place because half the time he wouldn’t mind her. He wouldn’t attack for her so she didn’t want him anymore.”

Marianna swung around, fixing on Detective Garza. “You have no right to allow this dirty little boy to say such things. I still have rights. My lawyers will take you apart, officer. Get that little bastard out of my sight, get him out of here.”

Dallas looked at Curtis. “How do you know who owns him?”

“I� Someone I know works up there. I went with him sometimes. I saw her try to train Rock, her and that real-estate guy. It takes two to train a guard dog. That Williams was the� I don’t know what to call it. He wore the padded suit.”

“The agitator?” Dallas said.

Curtis nodded.

Marianna was very white. “I’ve heard enough of this. If you insist on arresting me-and you will ultimately be very sorry for that, officer, then I insist on being shown to my cell or whatever you call it, and afforded some modicum of privacy-if your little hometown jail can offer such a thing.”

“Larn was good friends with her?” Dallas asked Curtis.

“Isaid…” Marianna began. But Davis gripped her arm in a way that silenced her.

“He was all over her,” the boy said. “Her husband never knew, he was gone half the time. Hu-my friend saw Williams sneaking around.”

Dallas said, “Why didn’t you tell me before, who owned the dog?”

“Afraid you’d take him back toher”

“And what about the sheriff?” Dallas asked Curtis. “Did he know where the dog belonged?”

“He knew. He didn’t want him taken back there and penned up. She’d have killed him. So Sheriff just�” Curtis shrugged. “Sheriff keeps his mouth shut. Maybe he hoped Ryan would take him. Then when you didn’t,” he said, looking at Ryan, “and my gramps told me�” He stopped speaking, and his face reddened. “When I decided to hitch a ride home to Mama, I brought Rock with me. Well, he wanted to come. Couldn’t drive him away if I’d tried. Couldn’t leave him there.”

“And your gramps wanted you to come back,” Ryan said softly.

“No! I told you, I decided to come back to Mama.”

“Then why didn’t you go on down the coast to your mama?”

“I called her to come get me but she wasn’t home, she didn’t answer the phone. I thought to stay with Gramps for the night and call her again.”

“Did you take my keys?” Ryan said. “Did you give them to Marianna?”

“I want my lawyernow!You can’t question that boy like that. I want�” Davis twisted her arm, hard.

Curtis glanced at Marianna and looked away. He nodded. “Yes,” he said softly. “I got them for her.”

“Do you know what she did with them?”

Curtis shook his head. “She said she’d keep her mouth shut about� certain things, if I’d get the keys.”

Ryan, keeping Rock close to her, had moved nearer to Curtis. She stood just beside his door, her back to the gathered officers and to Marianna. Rock stuck his nose through the bars, licking Curtis’s hand. Looking around at Dallas, Ryan nodded. Dallas nodded to Davis, and the detective led Marianna away, down the hall toward the jail. Ryan stayed focused on Curtis. She spoke quietly, as if they were alone.

“Would you testify for me, Curtis? This is a murder charge. I could be facing life in prison. Or worse.” She reached through the bars, to touch his hand. “If Marianna killed my husband, she should be convicted. If she is, she’ll be locked up for a long time where she can’t get at you.”

She looked at him deeply. “Would you tell a jury the truth? That you took my keys for Marianna? Things� might go easier for you, at your grampa’s trial,” she said softly. “No one could promise such a thing, but the judge or jury might look on you more kindly, if you’ve already told the court the truth about Marianna.”

Curtis looked back at her. “Would you keep Rock? For good? For your own dog?”

“I promise I’ll keep him for good. For my own dog.”

“Could I visit him?”

“You could visit him,” she said softly. “Or he could visit you.”

Curtis nodded. “If you’ll promise to keep him, I’ll tell� testify.”

“Please understand, Curtis. I want you only to tell the truth.”

Curtis nodded. “If you’ll keep him, I can do that.”

And Joe Grey heard, from high above him, the faintest mewl echoing through the roof, the kind of murmur Dulcie or the kit made when they got emotional, a plaintive cry too soft for human ears. A tenderhearted mutter that made him frown with male superiority.

Licking his own salty whiskers, the tomcat did not consider that he was emotional.Hewas only wired, only congratulating himself that his timing had worked out for optimum results. Worked out in a manner that seemed to him to cap both cases-testimony to help hang Martie Holland, certainly. But in the process, perhaps a change of heart in Curtis Farger? A greater willingness to tell all he knew about the church bombing as well as about Martie Holland?

Perhaps, Joe Grey thought. He hoped so.

But in the case of young Curtis, the only proof would be time-and what Curtis decided to do with that time.

For a long moment, the uncertainty of a boy’s life, heading either for good or for the sewer, left Joe a bit testy, as if he had a thorn in his paw.

And it was not until later that night that Joe began to look with equanimity upon the unanswered questions regarding Curtis Farger. When, as Clyde and Ryan sat in the expanded attic watching the stars through the newly cut windows, Joe began to unwind and take the longer view.

Dulcie and the kit lay on the rafters looking out at the sea, their paws and tails drooping over. But Joe prowled among the beams looking down on Clyde and Ryan where they sat on the floor leaning against the newly constructed wall, sipping coffee. Rock lay sprawled beside Ryan, deeply asleep, his coat silver in the faint light.

Moving restlessly along the heavy timbers, Joe tried to work off the tangle of thoughts and events that crowded inside his head, as irritating and insistent as buzzing bees. Maybe he needed some down time, needed to slaughter a few wharf rats, some uncomplicated bit of sport to get centered again, now that the human rats were locked up.

But when he glanced across to Dulcie, she too was restless, the tip of her tail twitching, then lashing. Joe, leaping from rafter to rafter, brushed against her and led her along the center beam and up into his small, private tower that rose above the new structure.

The cat-sized retreat was still only framed, its six sides standing open to the night. It would have glass windows that Joe could easily open. Its hexagonal roof was fitted with pie shapes of plywood, and shingles. There would be cushions later, and a shelf to hold a bowl for fresh water.

Sitting close together beneath the little roof, Joe and Dulcie watched the ocean gleaming beyond the dark oaks. They were mesmerized for a long moment by the endless rolling of the white breakers, by the sea’s beating thunder. Nearer to them humped the village rooftops, the cats’ own exclusive world, its angles and crannies and hiding places far removed from human problems and human evils-though Dulcie, as usual, could not divorce herself from human needs.

“Tomorrow,” she said, “I’ll go into the library early.” She gave him a guilty look. “I’ve made myself too scarce.” She was, after all, official library cat, and she had let her chosen work slide. “Tomorrow is story hour. I’ll snuggle on the big window seat with the children, let them pummel and pet me.” She smiled. “Too bad I can’t read to them, Wilma says I have a lovely reading voice.”

“The kids would love it. Probably triple attendance.”

But then she shivered. “I keep thinking about the bombing. And about those drug labs that might have killed as many people as the bomb would have done.”

“It’s over, Dulcie. Everyone’s safe. Those people are locked up.”

“And I was thinking about Marianna-Martie Holland. About her cruelty to Rock, to that sweet silver hound.” Dulcie turned to look at Joe, her green eyes wide and dark. “That woman cares for no living thing. She cares for nothing but her own destructive schemes-as if she’s linked to all cruelty in the world. As if hate and cruelty are one massive force that she’s part of, a force that can shape itself into a million faces.”

Joe Grey licked his whiskers. “But there’s more that’sgoodin life, Dulcie. Clyde and Ryan down there, so right and comfortable with each other. Charlie and Max at home together, safe and happy. The ladies of senior survival tucked away in their new home. Wilma, and our good police and detectives.” Thinking about their human friends, he grew almost mellow. He looked hard at her, the starlight catching a gleam across his pale whiskers and dark eyes. “Whattheyhave, Dulcie, is way more powerful than evil.” And the tomcat looked, not predatory then or teasing as he so often looked, but only wise. “The force of goodness is stronger, Dulcie.”

“Goodness,” she said, “and the little droll things, the humorous turns of life.”

“Such as?”

Dulcie laughed. “Silver tomcat and silver dog like mirror images.”

Joe Grey smiled. He guessed, in this case, comparison to a dog wasn’t an insult. He purred deeply. “Despite bombs and lethal drugs, despite all the evil, there’s far more that’s good. The humorous things,” he said, smiling. “The positive things.”

And it was true. At that particular moment, their own bit of the world was safe and right. They were all together in their small village, the three cats and their friends. Those who would harm them were otherwise occupied, and no matter what disasters might visit among them in future, they were there for each other. Nothing, Joe Grey thought, nothing even in death could separate their closeness, could change the fact that they were family.

9. CAT FEAR NO EVIL

1

During first week of October, when an icy wind blew off the Pacific, rattling the windows of Molena Point’s shops, and the shops, half buried beneath blowing oaks, were bright with expensive gifts and fall colors, residents were startled by three unusual burglaries. Townsfolk stopping in the bakery, enticed by saffron-scented delicacies, sipped their coffee while talking of the thefts. Wrapped in coats and scarves, striding briskly on their errands, they had left their houses carefully locked behind them.

Burglaries are not surprising during the pre-Christmas season when a few no-goods want to shop free of entailing expense. But these crimes did not involve luxury items from local boutiques. No hand-wrought cloisonne chokers or luxurious leather jackets, no sleek silver place settings or designer handbags. The value of the three items stolen was far greater.

A five-hundred-thousand-dollar painting by Richard Diebenkorn disappeared from Marlin Dorriss’s oceanfront home without a trace of illegal entry. A diamond choker worth over a million vanished from Betty and Kip Slater’s small, handsome cottage in the center of the village. And the largest and hardest to conceal, a vintage Packard roadster in prime condition was removed from Clyde Damen’s automotive repair shop, again without any sign of forced entry.

Police, searching for the 1927 Packard that was valued at some ninety thousand dollars, combed the village garages and storage units, assisted by Damen himself. They found no sign of the vehicle. Police departments across the five western states were alerted to the three burglaries. Now, three weeks after the events, there were still no encouraging reports, and police had found little of substance to give detectives a lead. And Molena Point wasn’t the only town hit. Similar thefts had occurred up and down the California coast.

With most of Molena Point’s tourists gone home for the winter, and local residents settling in beside their hearths in anticipation of festive holidays, the disappearance of the valuables made people nervous-though certainly the victims themselves were above reproach. All three were law-abiding citizens well known and respected in the community. Clyde Damen ran the upscale automotive repair shop attached to Beckwhite’s foreign car dealership. He took care of the all villagers’ BMWs and Jaguars and antique cars as if they were his own children.

The owner of the Diebenkorn painting, Marlin Dorriss, was an urbane and wealthy semiretired attorney, active on the boards of several charities and local fund-raisers. Betty Slater and her husband, Kip, who reported the diamond choker missing, ran the local luggage-and-leather shop and were longtime residents who traveled to Europe once a year and gave heavily to local charities.

Both residences and the Damen garage had alarm systems. All three systems had been activated at the time of the thefts, but no alarm had been set off. Considering this, the citizens of Molena Point thought to change the locks on their doors and to count the stocks and savings certificates in their safe deposit boxes in the local banks.

When there was a lull in the thefts for a few days, people grew more nervous still, waiting for the next one, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

But maybe the sophisticated thief had moved on, tending to the similar thefts along the California coast. All California police departments were on the alert. The newspapers had a field day. However, Molena Point police captain Max Harper and chief of detectives Dallas Garza offered little information to the press. They pursued the investigation in silence. The MO of the thief was indeed strange.

In each instance, he left all valuables untouched except the single one he selected. In the case of the diamond choker, he had ignored pearl-and-ruby earrings, a sapphire bracelet, and five other pieces of jewelry that together totaled several million dollars. In the theft of the painting, only the Richard Diebenkorn landscape had disappeared-it was Dorriss’s favorite from among the seven Diebenkorns he owned. And Clyde Damen’s Packard was only one of twelve antique cars in the locked garage, several of them worth more than the Packard.

Clyde had purchased the Packard in rusted and deteriorating condition from a farmer in the hills north of Sacramento, who was later indicted for killing his grandfather. It was now a beautiful car, in finer shape than when it had come from the factory. Just before it disappeared, Clyde had placed several ads in collectors’ magazines preparing to sell this particular treasure. At the time of the theft, the gates to his automotive complex had been locked. The lock and hinges did not appear tampered with, nor had the lock on the door that led to the main shop-Clyde’s private shop-in any way been disturbed. The deep-green Packard with its rosewood dashboard and soft, tan leather upholstery and brass fittings was simply gone. When Clyde opened the shop very early, planning to spend the morning on his own work, the space where the Packard had stood beside a half-finished Bentley was empty. Shockingly and irrefutably empty. A plain, bare patch of concrete.

Before calling the cops Clyde did the sensible thing. He locked the shop again and went out into the village to find his housemate, a large gray tomcat. Finding Joe Grey trotting along the street headed in the direction of the local deli, Clyde had swung out of the car and rudely snatched him up. “Come on, I have a job for you!”

“What’s with you!” Joe hissed. “What the hell!” He had been headed to Jolly’s Deli for a little late snack after an all-night mouse hunt. He was full of mice, but a small canape or two, a bit of Brie, would hit the spot-then home for a nap in his private, clawed-and-fur-covered-armchair.

“I need you bad,” Clyde had said. “Need you now.”

At this amazing announcement, too surprised to argue further, Joe had allowed himself to be hoisted into Clyde’s yellow Chevy coupe and chauffeured around to the handsome Mediterranean complex that housed Beckwhite’s Foreign Car Agency and Clyde’s upscale automotive shop. Joe was a big cat, muscled and lithe. In the morning sun, in the open convertible, his short gray coat gleamed like polished silver. The white triangle down his nose gave him a perpetual frown, however. But his white paws were snowy, marked with only one stain of mouse blood, which he had missed in his hasty wash. Standing on the yellow leather seat of the Chevy, front paws on the dashboard, he watched the village cottages and shops glide by, their plate glass windows warping in the wind. His whiskers and gray ears were pinned back by the blow. His short, docked tail afforded him a singular profile, like that of a miniature hunting dog. He had lost the tail when he was six months old, a necessary amputation after a drunk stepped on it and broke it-Clyde had been his savior, rescuing him from the gutter, taking him to the vet. They’d never been apart since.

Clyde pulled up behind the shop, unlocked the back shop door, and slid it open. “Don’t call the station yet,” Joe said, trotting inside. “Give me time to look around.”

But, prowling the scene, he found not the smallest detail of evidence. Not even the faintest footprint. No scent, no smell the cops could not detect-except one.

Just at the edge of the bare concrete where the Packard had been parked, he caught the smell of tomcat.

Staring up at Clyde and growling, he crouched to sniff under the remaining cars. The scent was far too familiar-though it was hard to be certain, mixed as it was with the smell of oil, gas, and fresh paint. All of which, Joe pointed out to Clyde, were death to cats.

“You won’t be breathing them that long. You’ve only been in here three seconds.”

“Three minutes. It doesn’t take long to damage the liver of a delicate and sensitive feline. You’re buying me breakfast for this favor.”

“You had breakfast. Your belly’s dragging with mice.”

“An appetizer, a mere snack. Are you asking me to work for nothing?”

“Kippers and cream last night, with cold poached salmon and a half pound of Brie.”

“Half anounceof Brie. And it was all leftovers. From your dinner with Ryan. Actually from Ryan’s dinner. She’s the only one who-”

Clyde had turned on him, scowling. “She’s the only one whowhat}Who pays your deli bill when you have your goodies delivered? May I point out to you, Joe, that no one else in Molena Point has deli delivered to their cat door.”

“The deli guy doesn’t know it’s the cat door. I tell them-”

“What youtellthem is mycredit card number.If I weren’t such a sucker and so damned kindhearted-”

“I just tell them to leave it on the porch. Why would they suspect the cat door? What I do with the delivery after they leave can’t concern them.”

“No oneelse in the world, Joe, pays his cat’s deli bill.”

“No one else in the world-except Wilma Getz-lives with a cat of such impeccable culinary-”

“Can it, Joe! Tell me what else you smell. Not merely some wandering neighbor’s cat that probably came in yesterday when the garage doors were open. Can’t you pick up the scent of the thief? Ifyoucan’t track him, no one can,” Clyde said with unexpected flattery.

But in fact Joe could smell nothing more. He wondered if perhaps the thief had worn gas-and-oil covered shoes to hide his own scent. And if he had, why had he?

Maybe he thought the cops would use a tracking dog? But Molena Point PD didn’t have any dogs, tracking or otherwise. Everyone in the village knew that.

Or did the thief hide his scent because he knew about Joe himself? That thought was unsettling. Nervously he watched Clyde call the station.

By the time three squad cars pulled up, Joe was out of sight in the rafters. He stayed there observing from the deepest shadows, watching Detective Garza photographing and fingerprinting, listening to him question Clyde, Garza’s square, tanned face serious, his dark eyes seeing every detail. Officers lifted prints from every available surface. They went over the shop inspecting every car. They examined both the front and back entrances. The thief sure hadn’t taken the car out through a window. Nor did it appear that he had entered that way Best bet was, he knew the combination to the back door’s state-of-the-art numerical lock, or was very good at lock picking. The prints that did not belong to Clyde or to one of his mechanics would be duly checked. Garza would do his best to obtain prints on the prospective buyers who had answered Clyde’s ad for the Packard. Only after the officers had left, a matter of several hours, did Joe pick up the scent of aftershave around the big double doors, a splash of Mennen’s Original that likely was left by one of the cops, a brand so common that half the men in the village might be wearing it. But then he found the scent down the alley as well, along with a faint breath of diesel fumes.

“I think Garza’s right,” Joe said. “I think they loaded the Packard on a truck bed.” Detective Garza had found a partial tire mark farther down the alley, the track of a large truck in a bit of dust out near the street. He had photographed that and had made a plaster cast. Garza did not wear Mennen’s Original.

The upshot was that, except for the scent of tomcat that continued to worry Joe, he found nothing else that the cops missed, and that fact deeply annoyed him.

“You’re starting to think you run the show,” Clyde said. “That the law can’t function without you.”

He only looked at Clyde, he need not point out that he and Dulcie and Kit were the best snitches the department had. That they had helped Molena Point PD solve more than a few burglaries and murders. That the evidence they had supplied had allowed the city attorney to prepare for solid convictions, that many of those no-goods were presently enjoying cafeteria meals, free laundry service, and big-screen TV supplied by the state of California. He need not point out to Clyde that Max Harper and his officers did not make light of the anonymous information that was passed to them by phone. They no longer questioned the identity of the callers, they took what was offered and ran with it-to the dismay of those criminals subsequently prosecuted.

But now, as Joe prowled the rooftops long after midnight, it was not only the theft of Clyde’s Packard roadster and the other high-class burglaries that bothered him. The identity of the illusive tomcat whose scent he had detected in Clyde’s garage continued to prod at him. As did the problem of Dillon Thurwell.

Fourteen-year-old Dillon was deep into some kind of rebellion that, because she was Joe’s good friend and a friend of Joe’s human friends, worried everyone. Cat and human alike were amazed at her sudden change of character, at her angry defiance toward those she had seemed to love-yet no one could blame Dillon’s anger on her age or on crazy hormones; her sudden rage at life was more than that. The unexpected disruption of her seemingly close and solid family had been a shock to the village. Who would have imagined that Dillon’s quiet, businesslike mother, who seemed to manage her home life and her real estate work with such happy efficiency, would suddenly be slipping deep into an affair with one of the village’s most prominent bachelors? Because of this, Dillon had changed overnight from an eager and promising young woman to a surly, smart-mouthed teen running the streets at all hours as she had never done-or been allowed to do. Dillon’s sudden apparent hatred for herself, and for everyone she had cared about, deeply frightened Joe.

Beneath the bright half-moon Joe stalked the roofs fussing and worrying as only a sentient cat can, as only a cat-or a cop-with a compulsion for asking hard questions can chew on a puzzle. As above him the moon and stars glinted sharply in the cold black roof of the sky, the three problems racketed around in his head like fast and illusive ping-pong balls tossed out by some demonic tease: Dillon; the scent of a tomcat that did not belong in the village; and the mysterious burglaries.

Around him the moonlight struck pale the crowded, angled rooftops, and gleamed white below him across the sidewalks and across the faces of cottages and shops, slanting moonlight that threw stark tree shadows along the bleached walls. And the shop windows shone softly, their lights glowing across their bright wares like miniature movie sets. The village at three in the morning was so silent and still that it might lie frozen in some strange and uneasy enchantment. Prowling the roofs, Joe Grey himself was the only sign of life, his gray ears laid back, his yellow eyes narrowed to slits as he paced and worried.

But then, as he stalked from peak to peak among a forest of chimneys, he was suddenly no longer alone. He paused, sniffing.

Beneath his paws the shingles smelled of tomcat, of the worrisome intruder.

Flehming at the stink that was already far too familiar, Joe scanned the night, studying the dark shingled slopes and shadows, hoping he was wrong and knowing he wasn’t. He moved on quickly, prowling block by block, searching, crossing high above the narrow streets along branches of ancient oaks as he scanned the streets below. Pausing beneath second-floor windows, he peered in where the tomcat might have stealthily entered.Thistomcat could jimmy almost any lock, and his intentions were never charitable. Around Joe Grey nothing stirred, no faint sound, no hush of another cat brushing against a window frame. And though the shadows were as dense as velvet, they didn’t move-shadows that could hide the black tom the way the darkest pool hides a swimming snake.

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The cold wind off the sea blew up Joe’s tail and flattened his ears and whiskers where he stood watching the shadows and convincing himself he’d been mistaken, that he hadn’t scented the black tomcat. And suddenly a quick black shape slid into the gloom beside a penthouse. A big, muscled shadow vanishing into an ebony-cleft of night. A beast taller and broader than any village tomcat. Joe remained crouched, his gaze glued to the inky tangle of rooftop vents and air ducts and converging overhangs. It was over a year since the evil black tomcat and his thieving human partner had first appeared in the village, and Joe had hoped he’d seen the last of them.

He waited a long time. Was about to turn away when the animal reappeared, slipping through a wash of starlight, his belly caressing the shingles. He was quite aware of Joe, his ears flat to his broad head, his long thick tail lashing with menace. On the ocean breeze the tomcat’s stink was as predatory as any hunting leopard. A subtle shifting of his weight, and Joe could see his yellow slitted eyes.

A year ago last month, the black tom had appeared in the village with his human partner, old whiskey-sodden Greeley Urzey, the pair having flown up from Panama to Molena Point so Greeley could visit his sister. The old man had taken Azrael’s carrier right on board the PanAm 727, right into the cabin-an action tantamount, in Joe Grey’s opinion, to carrying a loaded assault rifle across international borders.

But then, Greeley himself was no innocent. Ragged old Greeley Urzey, despite his resemblance to a penniless tramp, was highly skilled at his chosen craft. He could gently manipulate the dial of a safe, listen to the tumblers fall, smile that stubbled lopsided smile, and open the iron door right up. And his sleek black tomcat partner was equally skilled at his particular brand of break-and-enter. Wrenching open a second-floor window or skylight, slipping through and dropping down into a jewelry or liquor store, the black cat would fight open the front door’s dead bolt. Andvoila,Greeley was inside with his clever drills and lock picks.

Joe Grey smiled. After only a few of those midnight raids, he and Dulcie had nailed those two like hamstringing a pair of wharf rats, and the thefts had stopped.

But Joe and Dulcie hadn’t alerted the department. That one time, they hadn’t called the cops. They didn’t need news of an amazing talking black tomcat to hit the news media-to hit the fan big time. They had, instead, watched the thieving pair sneak quietly out of the village to return to their home in Central America, had celebrated Azrael and Greeley’s departure praying they would never return.

Now, crouched low, intent on the shadows, Joe watched those burning yellow eyes scan the rooftops and he was filled with questions. Had these two stolen Clyde’s Packard? Were they behind these clever thefts? Such virtuosity, and the sophisticated contacts needed to fence the jewelry, to say nothing of the resources to dispose of such a large item as a Diebenkorn painting or the Packard, did not seem in character for those two. Greeley liked to steal cash and disappear, liked to drink up the profits, then steal again, that was Greeley Urzey’s style.

As he watched, the black tom disappeared as quickly as he had slid into view. Studying the darkness, Joe could taste the beast’s testosterone-heavy stink. He remained still, listening for the nearly inaudible pad of a paw, for the scuff of a careless claw or the shift of a piece of loose gravel.

Tensely waiting, he heard nothing. Only the hush of the breeze among the oak leaves. Moving across the roofs he followed Azrael’s scent, tracking him in a circuitous route up steeply slanted peaks and around platoons of chimneys, drawn on over the rooftops for three blocks, four, in and out of narrow clefts and across twisted limbs high above the empty streets-tracked him until the trail suddenly and insolently turned back to Joe’s own roof. To the bright new cedar shingles of the Cape Cod cottage that Joe shared with his human housemate.

There on the roof Azrael stood boldly facing him, stood barring the entrance to Joe’s private tower that rose above the new shingles, his cat-sized penthouse, his own private rooftop retreat. The tomcat blocked his entry with gleaming teeth and bared claws.

The tower, rising above the new master bedroom, was an architecturally pleasing hexagon four feet across and four feet high. Its six glass sides supported a peaked hexagonal roof. Within, Joe’s aerie opened by a cat door to the master suite below. Joe’s private tower was off limits to all village cats. It was marked by his own scent and defended when necessary, no prisoners taken. Only Joe’s tabby lady, Dulcie, and their pal the tattercoat kit, were welcome here. Watching the black tom blocking his private property, Joe tensed to spring.

The second-floor master suite, which had doubled the size of Clyde’s single-story cottage, included a large bedroom with wood-burning fireplace, a second fireplace in the spacious study, a bath, and dressing room. The contractor had included ample high shelves and beams where a cat could climb. The largest beam gave to a ceiling niche above Clyde’s desk, from which opened Joe’s door to the tower. Contractor Ryan Flannery had tackled the challenge of a cat-friendly structure with amused delight. Over a late dinner, she and Clyde had designed the glass-sided aerie, allowing ample space for deep cushions, a water bowl-and the door out onto the roof where the black cat had now insinuated himself, his acid-yellow eyes challenging Joe, his hissing smile as evil as the name he liked to call himself, the death angel.

Azrael’s voice was as hoarse as scuffed gravel. “So, little kitty. Your Clyde�Damen,is it?� has added onto his house. Isn’t he clever. And this little pimple sticking up here, what is this? A dovecote? Have you been reduced to raising tame pigeons for your hunting, birds too fat to fly away?” Azrael’s sulfur-yellow eyes were as belligerent as those of an underworld gang leader.

Considering the defiant beast, Joe felt much the same as a cop would observing some street scum whose dirty hands were smearing his patrol car.

The fact that Azrael had been born far more skilled and intelligent than ordinary cats, had fostered in this animal not joy and goodness but a keen hunger for evil.

An ordinary cat was not expected to be moral, your everyday household kitty was not supposed to behave with the welfare of others in mind. Certainly many cats were blessed with sensibilities that led them to warn their families of burglars or fire or a leaking gas line. But for a speaking cat of Joe Grey and Azrael’s talents, far more, it seemed to Joe, was expected-if you were dealt a winning hand, you were expected to sweeten the pot. That was Joe’s opinion. If you were given the extra talents, you were committed by the power that made all life to give back in kind. Expected to make the lives around you brighter. To help take down the no-goods, not to join them.

Stepping boldly in through Joe’s cat door and leaving a tuft of black fur on the metal rim, Azrael lifted his tail. Joe leaped, enraged, as the tom sprayed Joe’s favorite cushions with a stink powerful enough to corrode a steel building. Joe hit him, knocking him away as the beast sprayed Joe’s water bowl. They were clawing and raking, the force of Joe’s attack soaking them both. Sinking his teeth into Azrael’s neck, Joe forced him against a window, clawing and ripping at him. Hanks of black and gray fur flew. Locked together, yowling and screaming, the tomcats thundered against the small windows threatening to break glass, a spinning ball of raking claws and torn and shredded cushions. Below, in the master bedroom, Clyde shouted.

Brought up from a deep sleep, Clyde yelled again and leaped out of bed. “What the hell? Joe, where are you?” He stared toward the ceiling of the study that seemed under siege by a small and violent earthquake.“Whatthe hell’s going on!” Racing into the study in his shorts, he climbed atop the desk and peered up through the cat door, where a ruckus like fighting bulls shook the ceiling.

Above him, in the little glass house, whirled a dervish of screams and spinning fur. “Joe! What the hell-” Reaching up inside the tower, he tried to separate the fighters. Grabbing the black tom, he tried to pull him off Joe.

“Get away from him!” Joe yelled. “He’ll take your arm off.”

The cat’s claws raked Clyde. Hot with anger, Clyde jerked the black tom down through the cat door. He wasn’t sure whether he had hold of head or tail until teeth sank into his thumb. Swearing, he snatched the cat’s neck between tightening fingers. He had him now, one hand gripping the cat’s tail, the other hand clutching the beast’s thick black neck. Holding the twisting, screaming tom away from his own tender hide, Clyde stood on the desk nearly naked, his arms oozing blood, his black hair tousled from sleep, his bare feet scattering papers and bills like autumn leaves. In his hands, the flailing black monster clawed the air and swore like a stevedore. Clyde hadn’t heard such creative invective since his rodeoing days; the beast swore in Spanish as well as English, the Spanish expletives sounding far nastier. Gripping the flailing cat was like holding a whirling radiator fan with knives embedded in the blades-a machine Clyde didn’t know how to turn off. He was tempted to keep squeezing until the cat stopped yelling and hopefully stopped breathing. He knew what this cat was, and he didn’t like him any better than Joe did. It would be so easy to collapse that vulnerable feline throat.

He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t kill even this lowlife who, if he were set free, would likely go for Clyde’s own throat.

Maybe if Clyde had been convinced that the tomcat was totally evil, he would have done the deed. In Clyde’s view, Azrael was an irritation, but he didn’t see the cat yet as the pure, deep evil that demanded without question to be eradicated from the known world. That, Joe Grey would later inform him, was a serious flaw in Clyde’s judgment.

Easing his grip on Azrael’s throat but continuing to clutch tightly the nape of the cat’s neck and his tail, holding the screaming, flailing animal away from him to avoid ending up in the emergency ward, Clyde stepped down off the desk.

Standing in the middle of the study, he wondered what to do with the beast. If he tossed the cat across the room, it would spin around and leap at him; he could clearly imagine Azrael tearing at his face and at other tender parts. Above Clyde, Joe Grey crouched peering down through his cat door, his white nose and white paws red with blood, his cheek torn in a long, bleeding gash, his yellow eyes blazing with rage.

But now, as well, alight with deep amusement.

Ignoring Joe’s silent laughter, Clyde found himself wanting to reach up for the gray tomcat, hold him close, and wash the blood from his face-a gesture impossible at the moment, and one that at any time would meet with indignant resistance.

Joe looked down at Clyde. Clyde looked up at Joe Grey. In Clyde’s hands Azrael fought and flipped and twisted so violently that Clyde felt every jolt.

“Help me out, here, Joe. What do I do with the beast?”

Joe stifled a laugh. “The cat carrier? Or the bathtub filled with water? My suggestion would be to squeeze real hard and put an end to him.”

“I can’t do it.”

Joe’s yellow eyes burned with a look that was all wild beast, that saidkill,that contained no hint of civility.

“It would be like lynching a killer without due process.”

“You think the California legal system would givethislowlife due process?”

Clyde shrugged, engendering a moment of miscalculation in which the black tom raked his hind claws down Clyde’s shoulder, bringing new blood spurting, one claw dug deep. Joe stopped smiling and leaped from the tower like a swooping eagle, knocking the tomcat from Clyde’s grip. The two cats hit the floor locked in screaming battle, then Joe flipped the tom twice, forcing him into the cold fireplace.

Crouched over Azrael among the ashes, Joe blocked his retreat with a degree of viciousness Clyde had never before seen in his feline pal. Azrael, driven by Joe’s frenzied attack, backed against the firewall pressing hard into the bricks-as if wishing the wall would give way and let him through into the dark chimney.

Watching the two tomcats, Clyde stood clutching his arm and applying pressure to the wound. The cats communicated now only in silence, their body language primal. Clyde could read Joe’s superiority of the moment as Joe goaded and stalked his quarry. The black tom showed only uncertainty in the twitch of his ears and the drop of his whiskers.

Joe moved from the fireplace just enough so Azrael could step out. His meaningful glance toward the glass doors at the south end of the study was more than clear. As Joe herded the flinching black tom toward the roof deck, Clyde stepped to open the door.

Silently Azrael padded past them onto the deck, as docile as any pet kitty. Silently Joe Grey stood in the doorway beside Clyde watching as Azrael crossed the wide deck over the roof of the carport, leaped into the oak tree, and fled down it to the sidewalk. As Azrael disappeared up the street, Joe Grey turned back inside, never looking to see which route the cat would take. Azrael had left the premises cowed and obedient, and that was all he cared about-for the moment. If, before the black tom was driven from the village, he presented more serious problems, Joe would deal with trouble as trouble arose.

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It took the rest of the waning night for Clyde to clean and doctor Joe’s wounds and tend to his own lacerations. He just hoped the black tomcat didn’t have rabies or some exotic tropical disease. When he was finished with the disinfectants and salves, he sported seven oversize adhesive bandages on his hands and arms and shoulder. Joe Grey’s injuries hardly showed, hidden beneath his short, dense fur. One could see only a few greasy smears where his silver coat parted, plus the bloody bare patch on his nose that was already beginning to scab over.

Joe’s vet would have shaved the torn areas and maybe stitched them. Joe didn’t want to see Dr. Firetti, preferring to appear in public as undamaged as possible. He was not through with Azrael, and he had no desire to be observed around the village looking like the walking wounded. He hoped his nose would heal fast.

Watching Clyde set up a ladder and climb from the upstairs deck to the roof, Joe wondered what had brought Azrael back to the village. He knew for a fact that Greeley was still in Central America, as Wilma had had a letter just last week from his wife, who owned the Latin American shop in the village.

The tomcat had returned to the village just once since he and Greeley sneaked away after robbing the village shops; traveling with them was Greeley’s new wife-to-be. Sue flew often to Latin America on buying trips, so it was no problem for her to leave her shop in the hands of a manager. The couple were married in Panama and settled down in a Panama City apartment; but their conjugal bliss had, apparently, not appealed to Azrael.

Dumping Greeley and Sue, he had taken up with a little blonde he found in a tourist bar, and soon Azrael and Gail Gantry headed back to the States. Ending up in Molena Point, they had pulled some slick burglaries until Gail was arrested for the murder of a human accomplice. Immediately Azrael had slipped away and disappeared, had not been seen in the village again until last night.

Now, licking a scratch on his shoulder, Joe peered up into the tower. Above him, on the roof, Clyde had set down his bucket of hot water and cleaning rags and opened the tower windows. Joe watched him remove the shredded, ruined pillows and drop them in a plastic garbage bag. Joe had liked those pillows. Clyde removed Joe’s water bowl and scrubbed it, then washed the inside of the tower, the walls, the floor, the ceiling and windows. The place would smell like Clorox for a week. Better that than tomcat spray. Clyde left the windows open so the tower could dry and air. Neither Joe nor Clyde had any idea what would prevent Azrael from a second foray, other than the smell of Clorox. Joe wondered if one black ear hanging from the peak of the tower’s hexagonal roof would serve to keep the beast away.

He wished that he had obtained such a trophy.

Clyde finished cleaning the tower as the first blush of morning embraced the rooftops. Coming down the ladder and returning to the master suite, Clyde showered and dressed. Joe, waiting for him, prowled the two big rooms. The suite, with its pale plastered walls and cedar ceiling, with its dark hardwood floors and rich Turkish rugs, was really more than a bachelor needed. Joe wondered, not for the first time, if Clyde would ever, finally, settle down with a wife.

There had been plenty of women, for a night, a week, not pickups but good friends, lovers who, having ceased to be lovers, were still the best of friends. That said something positive about Clyde, something Joe liked. But he did wonder if Clyde would ever take a wife. If, in building this comfortable upper floor, Clyde was preparing for just such a move.

If he was, Clyde hadn’t confided inhim,in his steadfast feline housemate.

Joe had thought for a while that Clyde and Charlie Getz would marry, but then Charlie had fallen head over heels for Clyde’s best friend, police chief Max Harper. An old story, Joe guessed, the guy’s friend gets the girl. The stuff of fiction. But it had worked out all right, all were still best friends, and Charlie and Max’s love was powerful and real.

Maybe he’d marry Ryan Flannery, Joe thought. Maybe Ryan, unknowing-or maybe hoping?-had built this upstairs addition as if destined to live here with Clyde herself?

So far, Joe could only wonder. Clyde had been as close-mouthed as a fox with a squirrel in its teeth. But the two got along very well, had fun together, and had the same sense of humor; they were comfortable together, and that meant a lot. And of course Joe never pried-not to the point where Clyde swore at him and threw things.

They went downstairs together, Joe padding quietly beside Clyde’s jogging shoes, feeling Azrael’s bites and scratches across every inch of his sleek gray body.

In the big remodeled kitchen Clyde started a pot of coffee and gave old Rube and the three household cats their breakfast. All four animals were nervous, the cats skittery and quick to startle, the old black Lab growling and staring up at the ceiling as if afraid whatever riot had occurred might yet come plunging down into the kitchen.

Sucking on his first cup of caffeine, Clyde fetched the morning paper from the front porch, spreading it out on the table so they could both read it-an act so magnanimous that Joe did a double take. “Why so generous? As you’ve said in the past, it’syourpaper,youpay for it.”

Clyde glared at him. “You don’t need to be sarcastic. This morning scared me. He’s a big bruiser, Joe. I hope you can stay away from that cat. Next time, he might not back off so easy.”

Joe shrugged, pacing the plaid oilcloth. What a downer, to find that beast prowling the village just before Christmas.

“What do you want for breakfast?” Clyde said diffidently.

“Any salmon left?”

“You ate it all last night. Settle for a cheese omelet?”

Joe yawned.

“With sour cream and kippers?”

Joe thought about that.

Clyde rose and began to make breakfast. “You look terrible. You’re all frowns and droopy whiskers.”

“You don’t look so great yourself with adhesive tape stuck all over.”

“Maybe the cat is just passing through,” Clyde said. “Anyway, you don’t need to be worrying about some mangy alley cat. You should be feeling like the proverbial fat feline, with the church bomberandRupert Flannery’s killer both set to go to trial.”

Clyde was being so kind and complimentary that Joe found himself waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Though he had to admit, their work on the church bomber and on the murder in Ryan Flannery’s garagehadbeen satisfying. No human cop could have done what they did, could have slipped in through Ryan’s narrow bathroom window to spy on a prowler. Or could have trotted into the scene of the crime on the heels of a prime suspect, listened to his phone conversations, and passed on the information to the detective division. With those cases wrapped up, Joe knew he should be feeling as smug as if his whiskers were smeared with caviar.

But he didn’t feel smug; he felt edgy.

Turning from the stove, Clyde looked deeply at him. “It’s not just that tomcat that’s eating you. It’s those high-powered burglaries.”

Clyde gave him a lopsided grin, shaking his head. “You think Azrael was involved in those thefts? No way, Joe. That wasn’t Azrael. No cat, not even a beast ofhiscaliber, withhisthieving talents, could have pulled off those robberies.”

Joe said nothing. He wasn’t so sure. Joe was thinking about Azrael and what the unscrupulous black tomcat might be up to, wondering what had brought him back to Molena Point, and his stomach was full of nervous flip-flops.

Well, but maybe he was just hungry. Maybe he’d feel better when he’d stoked up some fuel, when his killer genes were appeased with a nice helping of fat and cholesterol.

Turning back to the skillet, Clyde said, “If you’re going to count worries, what about my missing Packard? That car’s worth a bundle; I spent almost a year restoring it. For that matter, if you want to worry, what about Kate? This search for her family is upsetting her big time.”

Kate was another of Clyde’s good friends whom, at one time, Joe had hoped Clyde would marry. Joe himself had a lot in common with Kate; for one thing, she knew his secret, she knew that he could speak, that he was more than an ordinary cat. And Joe, in turn, knew the equally bizarre secret of Kate’s own nature.

Kate had, nearly three years ago, moved from the village up to San Francisco, and there had begun searching for some clue to her parents, whom she had never known. The adoption agency and foster homes had supplied just enough facts to frighten her. Personally, Joe thought she was more than foolish to be prying into a history that was best left alone.

But curiosity was just as much a part of Kate’s nature as it was of Joe’s own feline spirit.

Skillfully Clyde folded the omelet. “Since she started this search for her history she won’t talk to you, she won’t talk to me. She’s so damn stubborn. When she called last night sounding scared, wouldn’t say why she was scared�” He turned to stare at Joe. “She calls, then will hardly talk.”

Clyde dished up the omelet. “You were listening, you know how she sounded. You were all over me, stuffing your ear in the phone.”

“Maybe you should go up there. Two hours to San Francisco�”

“She’ll be down for Charlie’s gallery opening on Sunday. Maybe I can find out then what’s going on.” He set their plates on the table. He had added kippers only to Joe’s part of the omelet.

Crouching on the table, Joe waited for his breakfast to cool; he didn’t like burning his nose. “I still don’t see why Sicily has her openings on Sunday. You’d think that earlier in the weekend�” Cautiously he licked at the edge of his omelet.

Clyde shrugged. “Those parties spill out the door. Since she’s changed to Sunday, the crowd has nearly doubled.”

Joe didn’t reply. He was too busy tucking into breakfast-a good fight made him hungry as a starving cougar. But after several bites he looked up at Clyde. “Kate’s situation is the same as Dillon’s.”

Clyde looked at him. “I don’t see the two situations as even remotely the same. Dillon’s mother has broken up their family. Kate has no family, she� Oh well,” Clyde said, shrugging, “both are family problems.”

Joe twitched an ear. “Both shattered families. Only in different ways.”

Because he’d been an abandoned kitten, Joe had done a lot of thinking about family. Had wondered how life would have been with that kind of security, a mother to take care of him, other kittens to play with�

Maybe his mother had been run over in the San Francisco streets. He always told himself that was what happened, that she hadn’t simply abandoned him. He didn’t remember if he’d had brothers or sisters. Whatever, with no mother to fetch him up past the first couple months of life he’d had nothing to depend on but his wits. Catch a meal or a one-night stand wherever he could con some apartment dweller, then off again searching for something better. Not until he was lying fevered in the gutter nearly dead from a broken and infected tail, and Clyde discovered him, did he see the world as more than the pit of hell.

And not until he was grown and learned suddenly, after a rude shock, that he could speak and could understand human language-not until he began to think like a human and to understand human civility, did he realize what a family was all about.

He was getting so philosophical and sentimental he made himself retch-but the fact remained, he could now understand why Kate wanted to know her heritage, why she wanted her past to be a part of her no matter how bizarre-just as he understood why Dillon was so shattered by the destruction of her family, by her mother all but abandoning her.

That was the trouble with thinking like a human. You started empathizing. Suffering the pain of others. Compromising your autonomy as a cat. You were no longer satisfied to slaughter rats, get your three squares, and party with the ladies. Even his previous promiscuity he now found juvenile and boring. Now his partnership with Dulcie was deep and abiding.

When Kate called last night, Clyde had been sprawled in bed reading the latest thriller. Joe, lounging on the pillow next to him reading over his shoulder, had reluctantly left the aura of the story and pressed his ear to the phone.

“You sound way stressed,” Clyde said. “What’s the matter?”

“Just need to talk, I guess.” Kate’s voice sounded tight and small. “Maybe need a change, maybe I’ll move out of the city for a while, come back to the village.” She had sounded so deeply upset and off center, that Joe went rigid listening.

“Is it your job? Has work gone sour?”

Joe had rolled his eyes. Clyde could be so imperceptive.

“No, the studio’s wonderful.”

“It’s the search for her grandfather,“Joe had whispered, nudging Clyde.

“Is it the search for your family?”

“Maybe. I guess. I don’t want to talk about it. I just want to get away, to be with-with friends.”

“Kate�”

“Well I’m coming down,” she’d said putting more spunk into her voice. “Even if just for a few days. I want to see Charlie’s show-her first one-man exhibit. At the Aronson. I’m coming to the opening; I can’t wait. While� while I’m there, maybe I’ll look at apartments.”

“You can stay here while you look. In the new guest room. Strictly platonic.”

Well, Joe thought, it had always been platonic, their friendship had never gone any further. One thing about Clyde, when Kate was married and living in the village, and she and Jimmie saw a lot of Clyde, it was just friends and nothing more. Clyde would never have gotten involved-but there had always been that spark between them, Joe had seen it even then.

“Thanks for the invitation.” Her voice started to sound weepy again. “I’ve already called Wilma, already arranged to stay with her. But can we have dinner?”

“I’d like that. You�”

“I know you’re dating Hanni’s sister. Could we make it a threesome? Or why not everyone? Ryan, Hanni, their uncle Dallas, Charlie and Max and Wilma�”

Clyde stared at Joe. Joe stared back at him. Now she was gushing. She didn’t sound at all like herself.

“Royally scared,” Joe had said when Clyde hung up. “Maybe she’ll talk to me, maybe I can get a line on what’s bugging her.”

“Maybe you can meddle.”

“Maybe I canhelp.”

“In your case, helpingismeddling. Leave it alone, Joe. She doesn’t want to talk, she just wants company. Kate’s a big girl. If she wants to keep this private, she can handle her own problems.”

“Well, aren’t you out of joint. And she doesn’t seem to be handling them, she’s scared out of her pretty blond head.”

“Just give her some space. Don’t overreact.” Clyde’s nose, in other words, had been royally put out of joint. Joe had tramped across the bed to his own pillow, kneaded it with a vengeance that threatened to send feathers flying, and curled up for sleep with his back to Clyde.

Kate washisfriend, too. Thinking about her problems left him as irritable as a trapped possum.

But now, finishing breakfast in a withdrawn silence, neither Joe Grey nor Clyde imagined that soon the lives that touched them would fall into a deeper tangle. That at Charlie’s gallery opening they would be treated to a glimpse of future events as dark as the leer of the black tomcat.

4 [��������: pic_5.jpg]

The party was in full swing, the champagne flowing, the talk and laughter in the Aronson Gallery rising louder than the three cats found comfortable; despite the din they peered down from the loft far too interested to abandon festivities: three furry people-watchers taking in the glitter, the excitement, the popping of corks, and the women’s elegant gowns.

Of course the guest of honor was most elegant of all. The cats seldom saw Charlie in anything but jeans and workshirts. Her transformation was impressive, her gold lame sheath setting off her tall slim figure and picking up the highlights of her red hair. “Oh, to be an artist,” Dulcie said, “to have your own exhibit, with all the lovely people and champagne and delicious food, and to wear gold lame like a movie star.”

Joe cut her a tolerant look. Dulcie’s dreams ran heavily to silk and cashmere and gold lame.

“And the gallery’s never been more elegant. I’m sure,” she said with a little grin, “that Sicily Aronson built the loft just for us.”

“Right,” Joe said, laughing.

“Well wearethe star models, with our portraits in the window,” she told him. As well as the drawings of the three cats in the window and in the gallery below, many of the works on the loft walls were of them: small, quick sketches of the cats playing and running.

But the real ego trip was the large portraits in the gallery below, hanging shoulder to shoulder with some very handsome horses and dogs. Peering down through the rail watching the crowd, the cats tried to look everywhere at once. The opening was mobbed with Charlie and Max’s friends, art patrons, and animal lovers-and of course there were lots of cops present. The cats could see how pleased Charlie was that the department had turned out for her-well, for Max, she’d be thinking. For their chief. But then, the whole department had been at their wedding, just three months ago, where the head of detectives had given the bride away, and Clyde had been best man.

Clyde and Max Harper had been friends since high school, when during summers and on weekends they followed the rodeos up and down California, riding broncs and bulls. Harper, lean and sun-leathered, still looked very much like an old bronc buster. Clyde had mellowed out smoother, but he was still in good shape. Strange, Joe thought, how things happened. When Charlie arrived in the village just over a year ago, to stay with her aunt Wilma, Clyde had at once started dating her. It wasn’t until much later, and, Joe thought, quite by accident, that Charlie and Max fell in love.

Tonight, none of Harper’s officers was in uniform and the chief himself was dressed in a pale suede sport coat, beige slacks, and a dark silk shirt-a perfect complement to Charlie’s gold lame. He stood across the room talking with two of his men, his tall, slim figure military straight; his tanned, lined face that could look so stern tonight was only proud and caring as he looked across at Charlie and moved in her direction, thrilled she was by her first one-man show; she was so excited her stomach was queasy. As she watched Max work his way through the crowd toward her, she watched Sicily Aronson, too. From the moment the doors had opened this evening, the flamboyant brunette had been everywhere, flitting from group to group, her diaphanous skirts and shawls floating around her, her tall figure set off by the usual collection of dangling jewelry, tonight an impressive mix of silver and topaz and onyx. Sicily had taken care of the party details personally, the invitations, the press releases, the hanging of the work, down to the selection of appetizers and wines.

“You’re gawking,” Max said, coming up behind Charlie. “You’re supposed to look sophisticated and cool.”

“I don’t feel sophisticatedorcool.” She grinned at him and took his hand, moving with him to a far corner where they could have a little space. “How can I not be excited, when everyone we know is here, and so many people I don’t know, have never seen before.”

“Maybe collectors, come to buy out the show.”

Laughing, she studied the long, lean lines of his face, her throat catching at the intimacy of his brown eyes on her.

“I’m glad I married you,” he said softly, “before you got so famous you wouldn’t look at me.”

She made a face at him.

“You will be famous. Of course, with me you’re already famous. Particularly in bed.”

She felt her face color, and she turned her back on him, studying the crush of viewers that was already overflowing onto the sidewalk. Max ran his hand down her arm in a way that made her catch her breath. Turning, she breathed a sigh of pure contentment.

“It’s a fine show,” he said seriously. “You know you have three prospective clients waiting to talk with you. That woman over by the desk, for one. The Doberman woman.”

She nodded. “Anne Roche. I’ll go sit with her in a minute.”

“And would you believe Marlin Dorriss is here? That he’s seriously eyeing three pieces of your work? Thatwouldbe a conquest, to be included in the Dorriss collection. He’s been looking at the gulls in flight.”

She nodded, grinning at him. Early in the evening Dorriss had spent some time looking at the drawings of seagulls winging over the Molena Point rooftops. They were not romantic renderings, but stark, the dark markings of the gulls repeated in the harshly angled shadows of the rooftops.

“That would be very nice,” she said softly, “to hang beside work by Elmer Bischoff and Diebenkorn.” She looked up at Max. “I still find it hard not warm to Dorriss, to his quiet, sincere manner. Find it hard not to like him, despite his unwelcome affair with Dillon’s mother.”

Dillon was Charlie and Max’s special friend; Max had taught her to ride, helping to build confidence and independence in the young teenager who, they had sometimes thought, might be a bit too sheltered.

She was not sheltered now. The sudden breakdown of her family had turned Dillon shockingly bad mannered and rude. Charlie hurt for her, but she grew angry at Dillon, too. An ugly turn in life didn’t give you license to chuck all civility and let rage rule-even when it was your mother who had betrayed you.

But Charlie hadn’t had a very good relationship with her own mother, so maybe she was missing something here. Certainly she hadn’t had anything like Dillon’s fourteen years of warmth and security. Maybe that made the present situation far worse. Until her mother went suddenly astray, Dillon never had to cope with a problem parent.

Surely Helen’s transgression with handsome Marlin Dorriss was understandable-plenty of women were after him. A well-built six-foot-four, he was a man whom women on the street turned to look at, a well-tanned, athletic-looking bachelor with compelling brown eyes, always quietly but expensively dressed, his voice and manner subdued, totally attentive to whomever he was speaking with. Busboy or beautiful model, Dorriss seemed to find each person of deep interest. He had an air of kindness about him as if he truly valued every human soul.

“Hard not to like the man,” Max said, giving Charlie a wry grin and putting his arm around her. Warm in each other’s company, they stood quietly watching the crowd. “Kate Osborne just came in,” he said. “There by the door talking with Dallas. She’ll be pleased that you’re wearing her hairclip.”

Charlie touched the heavy gold barrette that tied back her red hair. Set with emeralds and carved with the heads of two cats, it was a handsome and unusual piece, part of a collection of jewelry that Kate’s unknown parents, or perhaps her mysterious grandfather had left to her. She had stopped by the ranch that afternoon for a few moments to drop off the barrette; they had stood by the pasture fence petting the two Harper dogs and talking. Charlie hadn’t wanted to accept the gift. “I can’t take this, Kate, it has to be worth a fortune. It’s very beautiful.”

“It’s not worth a fortune, it’s only faux emeralds. I had the whole lot appraised the week after that attorney gave them to me. So strange� but I’ll tell you about it when we have more time.” Turning, her short blond bob catching the sunlight, she removed the plastic clip from Charlie’s hair and fastened on the gold-and-emerald confection.

“Oh yes,” Kate said, stepping back. “It’s beautiful on you, it will be smashing with that gold lame.”

“But�”

“Charlie, I’ll never wear this, I’ll never have long hair, long hair makes me crazy. Jewelry is meant to be used, to be worn.” Taking her compact from her purse, she held up the mirror so Charlie could see.

Charlie had been thrilled with the gift. “I still think it looks terribly valuable. Even if the jewels are paste, the gold work is truly fine.”

“If you like primitive,” Kate said. “As we both do. The appraiser-he’s top-notch, was recommended by several of my clients in the city-I don’t think he goes for this kind of work. He did say the pieces were unusual in style. When I pressed him for some date, some idea what the history of the pieces might be, he seemed uncertain. Said they didn’t really belong in any time or category, that he really couldn’t place them as to locale.”

“Strange, if he’s so knowledgeable.”

“Yes.” Kate had looked uneasy, as if she found the lack of any background for the jewelry somehow unsettling. “He assured me the jewels were paste. He said that wasn’t uncommon, and I knew from my art history that was true, that during the 1800s real gold and silver settings were made with great care, but often set with paste jewels.”

Kate gave the two dogs a parting pat. “I gave the other barrette to Wilma, the silver and onyx one for her silver hair.”

“But if there’s some clue to your parents here, if they were connected somehow to the jewelry�”

Again, that uneasy downward glance. “I have ten more pieces to solve the puzzle, if that’s why the jewelry was saved for me, if it does hold some clue.”

“But why else would they keep it all those years, if it isn’t of great monetary value? Do the other pieces have images of cats?”

“I� five do,” she said, frowning. “There’s� an emerald choker with cats.” Kate shook her head, seeming distressed. “If the stones were real, I’m sure it would be worth a fortune.”

So strange, Charlie thought now, that mysterious collection of jewelry waiting for Kate for over thirty years, tucked away in the back of a walk-in safe, in a hundred-year-old law firm. A firm that seemed, Kate had said, on its last legs, fast deteriorating. The jewelry had been put away in a small cardboard box to wait for an orphaned child to grow up, to come of age.

Standing on tiptoe to look over the crowd, Charlie waved to Kate. And a waiter by the door moved in Kate’s direction with a tray of champagne, rudely shouldering aside another server-the same waiter who, half an hour earlier, had watched Charlie herself so intently. What was he looking at? Kate’s choker? Charlie’s own barrette? Surely Sicily hadn’t hired a thief among the caterers.

My imagination,Charlie thought.Everyone’s looking at the jewelry, because it’s so different with its primitive designs.Even from across the room, Kate’s silver and topaz choker was striking against her pearly dress and her silky blond hair. Kate was so beautiful, with the gamin quality of a Meg Ryan or Goldie Hawn, a perky, carefree perfection that Charlie greatly envied.

“What?” Max said. “What are you staring at? Kate? But you are the most beautiful woman in the room.”

“You, Captain Harper, are the biggest con artist in the room.” She smiled and touched his cheek. “I’m so glad Kate came. She drove clear down from the city for tonight-well, other errands, too. But she planned her time specially for tonight.”

“Maybe she plans to buy a drawing or two before her favorites are gone, or maybe to take back for some client-maybe she plans to do a whole interior around a group of your drawings.”

“You’re such a dreamer. I know she loves San Francisco, but I do hope she moves back to the village-that she rents the other side of our duplex.” Charlie had bought the rundown duplex last spring, before they were married, as an investment. Ryan Flannery, her tenant in one apartment, had done considerable repairs in lieu of rent.

“It’syourduplex,” Max said. “You’re grinning. What?”

“I still don’t feel like a landlord.”

“What does a landlord feel like? Does this take special training? You think you’re not mean enough, tough enough?”

She gave him a sly look.

“Tough as boots,” Max said. “You don’t mind having friends as tenants? With Ryan in the other unit�”

“I love having Ryan there. We haven’t disagreed yet. The few improvements� We settle the cost over a cup of coffee. Ryan does the work, I buy the materials. What could be simpler?”

“I married a sensible woman, to say nothing of her beauty.”

The biggest improvement so far to the duplex, after the initial painting and cleaning up, had been the backyard fence for Ryan’s lovely weimaraner, an addition well worth the money. It was a real plus to have a guard dog on the premises. Ryan’s side of the building had already been the scene of a kidnapping, and, just a month ago, the scene of a shocking murder. Such events were not all that common in their small quiet village, but Charlie and Max both hoped the big, well-trained dog would put a stop to any unsettling trend.

The other tenants, in the one-bedroom side, would be leaving in February, four months hence. Charlie wondered if Kate would want to wait that long. She watched Kate and Ryan, and Ryan’s sister Hanni, with their heads together laughing. Golden hair and dark, and Hanni’s premature and startling white hair. The three young women had started in her direction when they were sidetracked by Marlin Dorriss, who seemed to want to escort them all to the buffet table-Charlie guessed Dillon’s mother hadn’t accompanied him; the two did not overtly flaunt their relationship.

It was amazing to Charlie that since moving to the village, she had acquired three close woman friends her own age, trusted friends even besides her aunt Wilma. She had never had girlfriends in school, had always been a loner. She hadn’t known how comfortable and supportive female friends could be-if they were women who didn’t fuss and gossip, who liked to do outdoor things, who liked animals and liked to ride. Women, she thought amused, who preferred an afternoon at the shooting range to shopping. Though Charlie had even begun to enjoy shopping, when she had the spare time.

She could never get over the fact, either, of her sudden success as an animal artist. After giving up a commercial art career at which she had been only mediocre, and moving down to the village to open a cleaning-and-repair service, she had suddenly and without much effort on her part been approached by a gallery that loved her work. Her animal drawings and prints had been warmly accepted in the village and far beyond it, in a way almost too heady to live with. Even Detective Garza, that very discerning gun-dog man, had commissioned her to do his two pointers, and she considered that a true compliment. She watched Garza start through the crowd now, as if to speak to Max; she supposed the detective would take Max away from her.

The square-faced Latino looked very handsome in a pale silk sport coat, dark slacks, white shirt, and dark tie, particularly as she was used to seeing him in an old, worn tweed blazer and jeans. She could see a tiny line of pale skin between his short-trimmed dark hair and his tan.

Easing through the crowd to them, Garza gave her a brief hug and turned his attention to Max. As Max squeezed her hand and moved away with him, Charlie turned toward the curator’s desk where Anne Roche, the Doberman woman, had made herself comfortable in one of the two leather chairs.

Anne was a frail, fine-featured woman, cool to the point of austerity. Everything about her spelled money: her glossy auburn hair sleeked into a perfect shoulder-length bob, her creamy complexion and impeccable grooming. Her easy perfection made Charlie uncomfortably aware of her own freckles and kinky, carrot-red mane. Anne was interested in a portrait of her two champion Dobermans. Anne’s looks might be intimidating, but her love of animals and her shy smile put Charlie immediately at ease. She spent some time telling Charlie how much she loved her work, particularly the quick action pieces.

“And the cats,” Anne said, her brown eyes widening. “Some of your cats look so perceptive they make me shiver. And your foxes and deer and raccoons-so wild and free. Those aren’t zoo animals.”

Charlie laughed. “I watch them from our porch and from the kitchen windows. We live up in the hills above the village, so there’s open land around us. The fox comes almost every night, though we don’t feed him.”

“Well, he’s very fine. I have to say, your work is the best I’ve seen, and I’m quite familiar with the drawings of Pourtleviet, and of Alice Kitchen. Have you thought of producing a book? A coffee-table book?”

Charlie smiled. “I do have a small project in the works, not a coffee-table book, but with cat drawings.”

“I’m glad to hear that. I wish you well with it. When can we get together for some sketches of the dogs? I’d like you to do them on the move, at least for the first work, some of those wonderful quick sketches.”

They were discussing a time convenient to them both and were going over Charlie’s fees when the waiter who had approached Kate so rudely, and who had eyed Charlie’s barrette, started toward the desk with a tray. He was young, maybe thirty, dressed in white jacket, black slacks, and black bow tie. His stark blond hair topped a perfect tan, as if he surfed or played tennis. Maybe a sports bum working as a waiter to support his habit? His handsome, tanned face was closed of any expression, withdrawn and bland. But as he held out his tray of champagne, his look changed to one of surprise.

He crumpled and fell suddenly, dropping the tray, scattering glasses in a spray of champagne, landing hard across Charlie, hurting her leg as she fought to steady him and herself. It happened so fast she couldn’t hold him. His weight twisted them both as he slid from her grip to the floor, pulling her with him; she went down in a tangle of sprayed wine and breaking glass.

He lay white and still beneath her. He had made no sound as he fell, no cry of distress or pain. As Charlie untangled herself and felt for a pulse, Max was beside her pulling her away, his lean, lined cop’s face frightened, his demeanor stern and quick. “Get back, Charlie. Get away from him. Now.”

Charlie struggled up, her gold sheath soaked with wine, and she slid fast behind the desk as Max’s officers herded everyone back. Max knelt beside the tall, liveried man feeling for a pulse, feeling the carotid artery, turning back the man’s eyelids. Around them the din of voices had stopped as suddenly as if a tape had been turned off, the crowded room so still that the running footsteps of the two officers who had moved to secure the front of the building echoed like thunder. Detective Garza’s voice was a shout as he called on the police radio for paramedics. Charlie watched the scene numbly. The client she had been talking with had disappeared into the crowd. As sirens came screaming from a few blocks away, Max performed CPR, and his officers secured the front and back doors. The gallery windows blazed with whirling red lights. Sirens still screamed as two medics pushed through the crowd to crouch over the waiter. As Max rose, the look on his face told her the man was dead.

Anne Roche had been right there. Had she been involved, in some inexplicable manner? She stood now with the rest of the crowd waiting to be questioned.

After a long interval of feverish work with CPR, oxygen, and electric shock, the medics rose. Max nodded. The younger medic spoke into his radio, calling for the coroner. Max reached for Charlie, taking her hand. As she moved away with him, she felt cold, disoriented. Looking up at Max, she had to question the forces that were at work here.

This was the second disaster to occur during a ceremony of special meaning to her and Max. The first had been their wedding, when she and Max, along with most of the Molena Point PD and half the village had narrowly escaped being killed at the hands of a bomber.

Before that, Max had been set up as the prime suspect in a double murder, had been cleverly and almost successfully framed. And now� another calamity at a celebration involving Captain and Mrs. Max Harper.

Was there some pattern at work beyond her understanding?

Some mysterious force that invited such ugly occurrences? But that was rubbish, she didn’t believe in cosmic forces ruling one’s life; and certainly such an idea would anger Max. Free souls ruled their own lives. Both she and Max believed that. Despite what Max called her “artistic temperament,” she prided herself on being totally centered in fact and reality-except of course for the one fact in her life that was beyond reality, the one aspect of her life that was so strange that Max would never believe it. The one amazement that she could never share with him, the secret she could never reveal to the person she loved most in all the world.

Glancing above her to the balcony, she looked into the eyes of the three cats, their noses pressed out through the rail, chins resting on their paws. Joe’s sleek gray coat gleamed like polished pewter, marked with white paws, nose, and chest. Dulcie’s dark tabby stripes shone rich as chocolate. The kit’s fluffy black-and-brown fur was, as usual, every which way, her yellow eyes blazing with curiosity, her long fluffy tail lashing and twitching. The three cats watched Charlie knowingly, three serious feline gazes. And while Joe Grey stared boldly at her, and Dulcie narrowed her green eyes, the kit opened her pink mouth in a way that made Charlie’s heart stop, made her slap her hands over her own mouth in pantomime so the kit wouldn’t forget herself and speak.

But of course the kit didn’t speak. Slyly she looked down at Charlie, amused by her panic. And the cats turned to watch the newly arrived coroner at work, three pairs of eyes burning with conjecture, three wily feline minds where a hundred questions burned, where theories would be forming as to the cause of the waiter’s death.

Before the waiter fell, the three cats had seen no one very near to him except Charlie and her client. The moment he fell, the cats had searched the crowd for any action that might be missed from the floor below, a furtive movement, some sophisticated and silent weapon being hidden in purse or coat pocket. But it was already too late: by the time the man fell they would surely have missed some vital piece of evidence.

It deeply angered Joe that he had been looking directly at the victim and had seen nothing. As soon as the man dropped, Joe had studied him, seeking anything awry that might, the next instant, vanish. Had there been an ice pick in the ribs? A silenced shot? Or did the waiter die from some poison that did not cause last-minute pain or spasms? Apparently neither cops nor coroner had found any such indication. The guy had gone down like a rock,as ifhe’d been shot. But neither police or coroner had found a wound.

The man worked for George Jolly’s deli, which had catered the party; the cats had seen him in there serving behind the counter. They were well acquainted with the deli, and with the charming brick alley that ran behind its back door, where George Jolly set out his daily snacks for the local cats. Jolly’s alley was the most popular feline haunt in the village, although villagers and tourists as well enjoyed its potted trees and flowers, its cozy benches and little out-of-the way shops. Mr. Jolly wasn’t present to help serve tonight. The two other waiters had knelt over their coworker after he fell, until detectives ordered them away.

Joe glanced at the kit, who crouched beside him. The young tortoiseshell was leaning so far out between the rails that Dulcie grabbed a mouthful of black-and-brown fur and hauled her back to safety.

“You want to drop down in the middle of those cops and medics?”

The kit smiled at Dulcie and edged over again, watching everything at once. For a cat who had not so long ago been terrified of humanity, who had sought only to escape mankind, the kit had turned into a brazen little people-watching sleuth. If Kit had a fault, it was her excesses. Too much curiosity, too much passion in wanting to know everything all at once. As the three cats peered over, Max Harper looked up suddenly to the balcony. He looked surprised to see them, then frowned.

Joe turned away to hide a smile. Harper could look so suspicious. What weretheydoing? Just hanging out to watch the party. The whole gallery knew they were up there, they’d been camped on the balcony all evening. Wilma had brought them up a plate loaded with party food, and they had received dozens of admiring looks, to say nothing of typical remarks from the guests:Oh, the cute kitties� they look just like their portraits, aren’t they darling� That tomcat, he looks just as much a brute as in Charlie’s drawings, I wouldn’t want to cross that one�

Joe looked down at Max Harper as dully as he could manage, scratched an imaginary flea, and yawned. With effort he remained a dull blob until at last Harper turned away.

Only when all the guests had been questioned and names and addresses recorded and folks were allowed to leave, only then did the cats abandon the balcony and trot down the spiral stairs. While the police remained to finish their work, Charlie’s little group headed for the door, anticipating late-dinner reservations. Max would be along when he could. He and Detective Garza stood in the center of the gallery with a dozen officers, both quietly giving orders. It would be hours before anyone knew whether this had been a natural death or murder. Until that question was resolved, the department would treat the Aronson Gallery as the scene of a murder.

“If itwasmurder,” Dulcie said softly, “who knows how long the gallery will be locked down? And Charlie’s show has just opened.”

Joe Grey licked his paw. “The coroner should know by morning. Charlie’s already sold seven drawings and four prints. By morning, Garza should have photographed, fingerprinted, done the whole routine. Let’s go, before we miss supper.” They moved quickly to the front door, where the party was shrugging on coats and winding scarves against the late October chill. But as the three cats slipped diffidently around their friends’ ankles, preening and purring like pet kitties, Joe’s thoughts remained with the dead waiter. Allowing Clyde to pick him up, Joe purred and tried to act simple for the benefit of those who did not know his true nature; but as he snuggled against Clyde’s shoulder, his sleek gray head was filled with questions as sharply irritating as the buzz of swarming bees.

5 [��������: pic_6.jpg]

Joe lay across Clyde’s shoulder absorbing the warmth from his housemate’s tweed sport coat, which smelled of aftershave and of dog. Around them along the village streets, the wind hushed coldly, and above their heads the sheltering oaks rattled like live things; a few tourists lingered looking into the bright shop windows, but the shadows between the shops were dense and still, for no moon shone beneath the heavy clouds. Clyde’s tweed shoulder was rough against Joe’s nose. Dressed in his usual party attire, a sport coat over a white cashmere turtleneck and Levi’s, Clyde had had a haircut for the occasion. His dark hair was short and neat, with the obligatory little white line of non-tan-the general effect a clean, military look that Ryan liked. Ryan walked close beside them, Clyde and Ryan holding hands. Joe observed them with interest.

“What,” he had asked Clyde just last week, like some over-protective parent, “are your intentions? You’re dating Ryan, neither one of you seeing anyone else. I know it’s not all platonic, but where’s the wild abandon of passion? A couple of years ago, it was a different woman every week, in bed, cooking your supper, and in bed again. What happened to all the debauchery?”

Clyde had scowled at him, said nothing, and left the room. But Joe thought he knew. Clyde had had a sea change, a complete turnaround in the way he viewed his woman friends.

It had started with Kate, when she left her husband after he tried to kill her. She had been so very frightened, so distraught, had left the house in fear and come to Clyde for shelter and for comfort. Clyde had made up the guest bed and cooked a midnight supper for her, had tried to soothe and calm her, but when Kate exhibited her alarming feline nature, trying to make him understand the extent of her fears, when she took the form of a cat, she had put Clyde off royally.

After her move to San Francisco, there had been months when she’d been out of touch, when she wouldn’t answer his calls or return them. Then Clyde began dating Charlie. That had lasted until Charlie and Max, unplanned and unintentionally, had fallen madly in love. And Joe smiled. They had been so distressed that they had hurt Clyde, so relieved when Ryan came on the scene, moving down from the city, and the two hit it off.

But where this romance was headed, Joe wasn’t sure. Clyde had become far more circumspect in his relationships. No more one-week stands, no more wild partying-and Ryan, recovering from a miserable marriage, seemed just as reluctant to commit.

As they headed across the village to a late supper, strolling past the brightly lit shops, Wilma carried Dulcie wrapped in her red cloak, and Hanni carried the kit. Hanni had covered her jade-green sequined dress with a long cape made from a Guatemalan blanket-tacky on anyone else, smashing on Hanni Coon with her lean model’s figure and tousled white hair. Hanni, definitely a dog person, carried the tattercoat with considerable deference. Consorting with cats was new to her. The kit was so thoroughly enjoying herself looking over Hanni’s shoulder into the shop windows that Joe wanted to tell her not to stare. When passersby greeted them, Joe looked totally blank and mindless, but the kit was incredibly eager, accepting the petting of the locals and smiling at them in a far too intelligent manner. The few tourists they met stopped to stare at the bizarre little group carrying three cats, but then they smiled. Molena Point was famous for odd characters.

Ahead of Hanni and Wilma, Charlie walked with Kate, Charlie wrapped in a long, creamy stole over her wine-damp gold lame. Kate wore a black velvet ankle-length wrap. In the wake of the waiter’s death, the party of six was silent and subdued. Strange, Joe thought. When the waiter fell across Charlie’s lap, Kate had registered not only alarm but fear, a quick shock visible for only a moment before she took herself in hand.

Beside Joe, Ryan moved so close to Clyde that her dark, blowing hair tickled Joe’s nose. She was growing more used to him, more comfortable with Clyde taking his tomcat around the village, carrying a cat in the car just for the ride or allowing Joe into a restaurant. No matter that Ryan took her dog into restaurant patios, that was different. After nearly a year of dating Clyde she hadn’t quite decided what to make of Joe-Joe knew he shouldn’t tease her and set her up, but his jokes gave him such a high. Nothing so bizarre as to reveal the truth, nothing to imply that he understood Ryan’s every word and might have something to say in return.

But dog people were such suckers for the inexplicable behavior of cats, for the unfathomable mysteries of the feline persona. There was, in the minds of most dog addicts, not the faintest understanding of the logic of feline thought. And that made them ridiculously easy marks. The simplest ruse could bring incredulous stares:Inever saw a cat go round a garden smelling the roses, standing up on its hind paws like that. I never saw a cat sit up like a dog to beg, or fetch a ball like a dog.

Well of course ordinary cats did all those things, when they chose to; he had demonstrated for Ryan nothing extraordinary. But in that ailuro-challenged young woman, his little dramas had stirred amazed responses. Dulcie kept telling him to watch himself. “You’re going to blow it, Joe. Blow it big time. Ryan isn’t stupid. How do you think Charlie found out that we can talk, that we’re not ordinary? By watching us when we got careless, that’s how. Just as you’re getting careless with Ryan.”

“Don’t worry so much. I’m never careless, my jokes are totally harmless. And Ryan isn’t Charlie, Charlie’s the one with the imagination. Not everyone would come to the conclusion Charlie did. Ryan’s a cop’s kid, she likes a logical explanation for everything. Facts are facts. She would no more believe a cat could carry on a conversation than Max Harper would believe it. And you have to admit, we’re in Harper’s face all the time.”

“But�”

“There’s no way,” Joe had said, “that either Ryan or Harper would ever buy the truth about us-unless, of course, we sat down and had a little heart-to-heart with them.”

He looked up as they approached the restaurant’s brick patio, and he licked his muzzle, tasting the good smells of steak and lobster. The patio was crowded with diners at small tables beneath its sprawling oaks. The host was all smiles as he escorted them through the patio, through the main dining room, and up the stairs. The eyes of everyone were on them, not only because Charlie was an up-and-coming artist in the community and the wife of the chief of police, not only because of Hanni’s theatrical good looks and her status as a top interior designer, but because how many dinner parties, reserving the upstairs private dining room, included on the guest list three cats?

The smaller upstairs room with its paneling, high-peaked ceiling, and rafters, featured a long skylight along one slanting side, above which heavy clouds drifted, edged with light from the hidden moon. A fire was burning on the brick hearth. Bay windows formed three sides of the intimate dining room, looking down on the village’s bright shops and dark oaks. A long table filled the room, draped with a white cloth and set with heavy silver, flowered china, and a centerpiece of red pyracantha berries. On a window seat in one of the bays, among a tangle of flowered cushions, three linen napkins had been laid open beneath three small flowered plates. There, no silverware was required. As the cats settled into their own places and the human diners took their seats, Max Harper hurried up the stairs, giving Charlie a grin, the two as delighted to be together as if they’d been parted for days.

“Dallas is still at it,” Max said. “We just got the coroner’s prelim.”

“That was fast. What did he say?”

Harper’s thin, lined face was expressionless, a cop’s face that you had to know very well to decipher. He looked irritable, as if some vital question was still begging. Joe watched him so intently that Dulcie nudged him, pretending to nibble a flea. Immediately he stuck his nose in his supper, concentrating on his salmon mousse-the rich, creamy confection was far more delicious than any sweet dessert mousse that so delighted humans. Salmon mousse, in Joe’s opinion, was one of the great inventions of mankind.

“Could have been accidental death,” Harper said. “Could be manslaughter. No way to tell, yet. He died of blunt trauma, a blunt blow to the head.”

“But there wasn’t�” Charlie began. “No one�” She grew quiet, letting Max continue.

“As near as Dr. Bern can tell, so far, the blow occurred three or four days ago. There was slow bleeding within the skull where multiple small capillaries had ruptured. The pressure can build up slowly, over time.” He took a bite of salad. “Pressure pushing down around the spinal cord. Bern thinks that happened over several days. At the last, while he was serving drinks at the party, the increase of blood became rapid.

“When Bern called, he was still looking for the sudden rupture of an artery or vein, which would have been the final event in a long drawn-out trauma.” He spooned more dressing on his salad and took a sip of beer, a frustrated frown touching his face. Harper had quit smoking over a year before, but sometimes Joe saw him itching to reach for a cigarette, his fingers moving nervously, the creases along his cheeks deepening.

“The guy’s ID was faked,” Max said. “He’s been using the social security number of a man who died three years ago. Strangest thing, his prints are not on record in any of the western states. It’ll take us a week or two, maybe more, to get fingerprint information for the rest of the country. Department of Justice is always backed up.”

Charlie said, “He could have been hit in the head anywhere, then? Several days ago?”

Harper nodded. “There’s a rectangular bruise on the side of the head, the shape of a brick. It was already fading, but there were brick particles in the skin. Could have been an accident, maybe he stood up under a low flight of stairs, for instance, and cracked himself on the head. Or it could have happened in a fight, some guy bashed him with a brick. He was using the name Sammy Clarkman. He’s worked for George Jolly for three months, has done several catering jobs during that time.”

Ryan leaned forward, looking at Max. “Lucinda Greenlaw knows him.”

Max gave her his full attention.

“I knew I’d seen him in Jolly’s Deli,” Ryan said. “I’d forgotten, until just now, that last month when the Greenlaws were here, Lucinda and I were in there, and she knew the guy.”

Max listened quietly. The whole table was silent. Beside Joe, the kit was so alert and still that he kept an eye on her-he never knew when the kit would show too clearly her eager enthusiasm.

Lucinda and Pedric, a pair of tall, bone-thin eighty-year-olds, had married just a year before, after Lucinda’s husband Shamas died in an unfortunate manner for which one of his nephews went to prison. On the day of their wedding the Greenlaws had adopted the kit. They knew her special talents, they knew that she, like Joe Grey and Dulcie, was not in any way ordinary. The kit’s command of the English language, her off-the-wall ideas, and her opinion on almost every subject were, in the eyes of the Greenlaws, deserving of admiration and respect.

Setting out to travel at their leisure up and down the California coast, they had planned to have the kit with them, but she was so prone to car sickness that she had turned wan and miserable. For the kit, the pleasure of travel wasn’t worth the distress. The Greenlaws had arranged that she stay for a while with Dulcie and Wilma. Just at the end of September they had returned to the village for a short layover before the holidays, had stored their RV in Wilma Getz’s driveway, and, scooping up the kit in a delirium of pleasure, they had checked into a suite at the Otter Pine Inn, the nicest of several village hotels that catered to pets. The kit had spent a delirious week enjoying herself with her human family. And, to the kit’s great joy, the elderly newlyweds had decided it would soon be time to fold away their maps of the California coast and build their Molena Point house as they had promised the kit they would do. The tortoiseshell had been ecstatic, a whirlwind of anticipation. When she spoke of the house, her round yellow eyes shone like twin moons, her bushy tail lashed and switched. She was a wild thing filled with exploding dreams: Their own home, a real home, her beloved Lucinda and Pedric forevermore near to her.

But now, what was this? What was the connection between the footloose Greenlaws and the dead waiter? Glancing at Dulcie, Joe intently watched those at the table.

“We had ordered a picnic,” Ryan was saying. “We picked it up and spent the day on Hellhag Hill laying out their new house. Seeing how the sunlight falls, how to cut the prevailing winds. That hilltop house could be truly desolate and cold if it isn’t set right on the land.

“When Lucinda and I stopped at Jolly’s to get the picnic basket, that guy-Sammy-was behind the counter. You could tell he was new, didn’t know where things were, like the small plastic containers. I thought maybe he’d just been working in the kitchen, not at the counter, he had to dig around in the cupboard forever to find what he needed.

“Lucinda called him by name,” Ryan said. “He didn’t seem to recognize her until she reminded him that they’d met in Russian River, and then he seemed pleased to see her. She told me later he’d worked at the inn where she and Pedric stayed this past summer.

“I thought,” Ryan said, “that the guy wouldn’t have acknowledged Lucinda at all, if she hadn’t nudged him. That maybe he didn’t want to be recognized.”

Harper looked around the table, waiting to see if anyone else knew the man. No one did, and no one else had seen him at Jolly’s. Kate had been in the village at the same time that Lucinda and Pedric were, but she hadn’t been in Jolly’s. Clyde said, “I ordered takeout last weekend, but Jolly’s son made the delivery.” He glanced inadvertently across the room to Joe Grey, as if wondering if Joe knew Sammy. The tomcat stared, wondering at Clyde’s carelessness. The expression on Clyde’s face, when he realized what he’d done, was embarrassed and shocked. To cover Clyde’s social blunder Joe yawned hugely, pawed at his ear as if it itched, and belched.

That got a laugh. He’d have to talk to Clyde; his housemate was getting careless.

Harper studied Ryan. “Did Lucinda tell you anything about him?”

“She said he’d been interested in a locket she’d bought somewhere north of Russian River. That he’d wanted to know where she got it. She said she’d picked up several pieces of really nice costume jewelry in a little shop up around Coloma. She showed me the gold locket. It was set with topazes, and had a cat’s face in the center. Beautifully made, rich, heavy gold all carved in leaves and flowers.” She looked up at Kate. “It was, in fact, very like your choker. Same style, that heavy baroque look but� well, but different than baroque.”

Kate was very still.

Ryan said, “Could the pieces have come from the same place originally? Old jewelry, some of which found its way to San Francisco? Maybe from the same group, the same jeweler?”

“The appraiser thought my pieces were made in the last century,” Kate said. “He reminded me there were a lot of Italian immigrants along the coast then, and that some were fine jewelers.”

Max turned to Ryan. “Did Lucinda tell you anything else about Sammy? “

“Not that I remember,” Ryan said, pushing back her short, dark hair. Her resemblance to her uncle, Detective Garza, was most striking when she frowned, when she looked thoughtful and serious.

Rising, Harper moved out to the foyer, flipping open his cell phone. The cats could see him standing just at the head of the stairs, punching in a number. Joe counted ten digits. Maybe he was calling Lucinda and Pedric’s cell phone. He tried the number twice, waiting for quite a few rings each time, then spoke briefly, apparently leaving a message, and returned to the table.

“It’s midnight,” Charlie said. “Would they turn off the phone at night?”

Max said, “Maybe they leave the phone in the kitchen at night, and don’t hear it?”

“Maybe they checked into a nice inn somewhere,” Wilma said, “and left the phone in the RV. They stay at an inn or motel every few nights.”

On the window seat, the kit, always jumping to the worst conclusions, moved between Joe and Dulcie, nervously kneading her claws. It took stern stares from both cats to make her settle down again. Above them the sky brightened as the clouds blew past, revealing the thin moon.

“When I mailed the preliminary drawings to them last week,” Ryan said, “they were in Eugene.” She looked at Kate. “Aren’t they coming through San Francisco?”

“They are,” Kate said, “so I can show them the Cat Museum. It was nice they were here in the village the same time I was; Lucinda and I hit it right off. I’d never known her well when I lived in the village. Just to speak to. I had no idea she was so� that we’d have so much in common. We’re some forty years apart, but that doesn’t matter, I feel like I’ve know her forever.”

As you should, Joe Grey thought, exchanging a look with Dulcie. And Wilma glanced across at the cats, knowing exactly what they were thinking: that Kate and Lucinda, because they shared special knowledge, would naturally be friends.

Those who knew the cats’ secret had grown to a number that was sometimes alarming to Joe Grey. Secrecy was the only true protection he and Dulcie and Kit had against the wrong people knowing their true nature. They had learned that the hard way. Certainly, if ever the news media found out about talking cats, the fur would hit the fan big time.

Though as for their true friends, it was deeply satisfying to be surrounded by six staunch supporters, to have human allies who understood them. With Clyde and Wilma, Charlie and Kate, Lucinda and Pedric Greenlaw playing backup, as it were, they were not alone in the world.

As for the three criminal types who knew their secret, the cats tried not to think about that. If fate were truly to smile, not only convicted killer Lee Wark, but Jimmie Osborne, Kate’s ex-husband, would remain behind bars in San Quentin for the rest of their natural lives. And old Greeley Urzey, if indeed he had not accompanied Azrael back to the States, would stay in Central America for the rest ofhisevil days.

Well, Joe thought, he wasn’t going to ruin his supper thinking about those no-goods. The salmon mousse was far too delicious. Licking the creamy confection from his whiskers, he would, like Scarlett, think about his enemies tomorrow. He listened to Ryan, Charlie, and Wilma make plans for an early breakfast and had almost finished his large helping of mousse when a black shadow appeared on the window seat, cast down from the moonlit skylight, a pricked ear and feline profile striking across his plate. Staring up, Joe met the blazing yellow eyes of the black tomcat; the beast’s presence made Joe swallow his supper with a shocked snarl.

Beside him Dulcie hissed, crouching and looking up. And beside her the kit cringed low, staring up through the glass where the black tom poised predatory and still, intently watching them, his eyes blazing with the reflected glow of the restaurant’s soft lights. In the backlight of the moon Joe could not see the beast’s wicked face, only his broadly extended cheeks and flattened ears; surely a cold smile played across that evil countenance. As the three cats stared, rumbling low in their throats, the humans at the table looked up, too; and Charlie caught her breath; Wilma and Clyde half rose as if to chase the beast away, then glanced at each other and sat down again.

Max Harper put his hand on Charlie’s arm. “It’s only a cat, some cat wandering the rooftops.” He looked at her strangely. “What did you think?”

“I� I don’t know. It’s so big, it appeared so suddenly up there.”

The cats knew well that she was thinking the same as they; they could see her flash of shocked dismay that the black tom had returned, before she hid her true feelings and smiled at Max.

“Nerves, I guess,” she said softly. “More stressed over the show than I’d thought.”

Harper nodded. He did not look convinced. Glancing puzzled at Clyde, he hugged Charlie. She relaxed against him, smiling as if she had been flighty and silly.

Above them Azrael hadn’t moved. Joe imagined him highly amused by the stir he was causing-to Joe, and to those who understood Azrael, the presence of the black tom cut through the companionable evening like claws ripping velvet. Beside Joe, Dulcie’s green eyes glinted and her low growl was deep with rage, her angry rumble hiding a keen anxiety. But now that the kit’s first startled fear had passed, she looked from Joe to Dulcie wide eyed, and extended a soft paw to Dulcie, a silent question. Joe watched her uneasily.

The kit had been told about Azrael; but Kit did not like to take others’ word, she wanted to experience every new thing for herself. Joe glanced at Dulcie. The kit would need some talking to.

The delight of the evening, Charlie’s joy in her first one-man show, and the friends’ happy celebration, had, with the waiter’s death, turned chill and worrisome. Now with the dark presence of the half-wild beast who called himself the death angel, Joe Grey felt his skin crawl with an ugly portent of disaster.

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Charlie’s late supper party was long over, the guests departed and by now sleeping deeply, the predawn village deserted. The time was five A.M. The courthouse clock had just struck, as the black tom left the roof where he had slept.

Pacing the streets through the muted glow from the shop windows, he looked up with interest at interminable arrangements of holiday confection, leather coats displayed among autumn leaves, hand-knit sweaters and bright jewelry framed by golden pumpkins-every window so full of fall excess they made a cat retch. Swaggering as he approached the windows of the Aronson Gallery, he considered with disdain the seven pieces of Charlie’s work that hung facing the street, the large drawing of Joe Grey dangling a mouse from his teeth, the color print of Dulcie reclining on a paisley cushion like some 1940s girlie calendar.

These little cats were too high above themselves, they had grown far too vain with all this attention. It was time they were taken down.

At five o’clock on this dark fall morning the streets were still deserted, no lone gardener working along the sidewalk tending the shop-front flowers, not even a seagull careening and diving across the inky sky. The only living creatures in view besides Azrael himself were a couple of homeless men huddled in a doorway trying to keep warm, trying to maintain a low profile in this village where police did not encourage nonpaying overnight guests.

Azrael had slept quite comfortably on the roof of the Patio Cafe tucked between the steeply slanting shingles of a small penthouse and the restaurant’s chimney, which had held its warmth until long past midnight. The brick-and-shingle cave, conveniently out of the wind, had been scented pleasantly with aromas from the restaurant, with the heady smell of steak and lobster and fried onions.

He hadn’t slept hungry. Before he retired to the roofs he had taken a leisurely supper from the restaurant’s garbage bins, probably scrounging the leavings, he thought sourly, of Charlie Harper’s dinner party.

From the roof last night he had watched the party break up and emerge from the restaurant in twos and threes, Charlie and Captain Harper pausing to bid good night to Wilma and her houseguest. Very nice. Wilma had invited Charlie to an early breakfast, so that Charlie could then show Kate Osborne the duplex that Kate wanted to rent.

No one but these weird women would invite company for breakfast at six on a winter morning-all this human camaraderie made Azrael retch.

Now, swarming up an old, thick bougainvillea vine, he prowled the rooftops again. They were barely beginning to brighten. To the east, the first light of dawn smeared bloody fingers across the dark hills. Heading across the roofs for Wilma Getz’s cottage, he shivered in the cold wind that whipped in off the sea-felt like it came straight out of the Arctic. He never would get used to the damp chill in these northern regions, he could never shake the longing to sidle up to a sunny wall or to a rooftop heat vent. This part of the continent was fine for a short visit, for a brief session of snatch-and-grab with one human partner or another, but he would never want to live here.

He had tolerated the chill when he knew that he and Greeley would soon be taking off again for warmer climes, but this trip without Greeley was another matter. Having severed relations with the old drunk, he now had no sure promise of a return to that comfortable latitude; he didn’t in fact know just where he was headed.

But something would turn up, something always did. The longing for a place of one’s own, that senseless yearning that beset most cats and most people, had never troubled him. Meanwhile, his present situation was more than tolerable. Excellent food, excellent sleeping arrangements when he chose to take advantage, and some most interesting ventures.

Staring over the gutter where the two homeless men had left their lair to check out the trash cans, Azrael understood perfectly their wanderlust: those two might be scruffy and smelly but they had the right idea. Adventure was far more important than walls and a roof. The lure of what was out there around the next bend, the challenge of whatever lay beyond the shadows, of thrills yet untasted, that was the true quality of life.

He had parted from Greeley in Panama City to look for just such fresh vistas after a bellyful of Greeley’s newly wedded bliss, a sickening surfeit of Greeley’s prissy bride and her attempts to domesticate Greeley’s sweet little cat. Expecting him to drape himself around the house and purr on cue-he’d had enough of that in a hurry. Walking out for the last time, he’d taken up with that blond floozie in Panama City, had found her in a local bar, spent the evening winding around her ankles and had gone right on home with her to her poky little hotel room. By the time she headed stateside again, he’d not only revealed to her his conversational talents, he’d convinced her that he was the partner of a lifetime, that she couldn’t take full advantage of her light-fingered skills without him. Oh, Gail had had a lust to steal. He’d greatly admired her talents. He’d picked her out of the crowd at the bar, as sure of her nature as if he’d caught her in the act.

Traveling with Gail to the States, he’d endured the kitty carrier and the nine-hour plane ride only because of the challenges that lay ahead. In San Francisco, where Gail had a boyfriend, they’d burgled a few shops and pulled off some amusing shoplifting gigs. And he had discovered a colony of cats that deeply interested him-he’d learned a lot in the city before they hit the road again traveling south, to enjoy a few easy heists along the coast. The weather had been warm for that part of California. Settling for a while here in the village while Gail entered a contest for wouldbe starlets, they had hit the jewelry stores and the upscale shops smooth as butter-until the dumb broad killed a guy and got herself sent to prison.

Then he’d split again, making himself scarce. But he hadn’t gone far; this wealthy part of the coast was full of prospects. He’d remained on his own until he took up with his present associate, a partner far smoother than Gail or Greeley. Though both the blonde and the old man had been good for laughs.

His present colleague was much more talented than either of those two, a thief as cold as an Amazon boa. This partnership could, in fact, be the most interesting venture yet in his varied career. And now, concentrating his attention on Kate Osborne, he might really be onto something.

Leaping from a cafe balcony to the slanted roof of a bay window, he dropped down to a patio table, one of a dozen that the restaurant kept filled even in winter months. Tourists would freeze their figurative tails off to be seen eating al fresco in a sidewalk cafe as if they were in Europe. Thumping heavily to the brick paving, he headed up past the crowded shops, where cozy, close-set cottages took over.

Approaching Wilma Getz’s small stone house, he slipped in among the masses of flowers that forested the woman’s front yard beneath the oak trees. The old girl got up early; already the kitchen window was brightly lit, its glow reflecting blood-red from the bougainvillea flowers that framed the glass. The gaudy blooms stirred within the tomcat a painful longing for the hot streets of Panama.

Charlie Harper’s van was not yet in sight; but Kate’s car of course stood in the drive, the cream-colored Riviera silvered with dew. He found it interesting that she drove a seven-year-old vehicle. Maybe Clyde Damen kept it in running order for her. Azrael had learned a good deal last night about Kate Osborne.

Before the gallery opening, wandering in that direction to have a look, he’d been sidetracked by an appealing white Angora. She had insisted on leading him on a circuitous route of hide-and-seek, sickeningly coy. Why couldn’t females simply accept what was offered and forget the foreplay? When he followed her under the deck of the Bakery Cafe, he had recognized Kate and Wilma’s voices above him and caught a snatch of their conversation.

Promptly abandoning the Angora, driving her away when she returned to him coyly rolling over, he had listened with rising interest to the conversation above him. Kate was saying something about a cat museum, then mentioned some unusual pieces of jewelry carved with cats. That had brought his ears up.

The two women were apparently enjoying a light, early dinner on their way to the gallery opening. Lashing his tail with interest, he had settled under the deck just beneath their table.

The dining deck was crowded, all the tables were full, the tangle of conversations assaulting his ears like the dissonant caws of a flock of unruly crows. As he sought to isolate Kate and Wilma’s discussion, he was nearly overcome by the aroma of broiled salmon-one didn’t get fresh salmon in Panama, the waters were too warm, although the local fish and fresh prawns were quite superior. Pushing up between the supporting timbers of the deck, peering up through the cracks between the slats, he had studied Kate. The slim, blond young woman had an air about her that deeply interested him, that set her apart from other humans, that made him want to observe her closely. She was leaning across the table speaking softly, “Of course it’s foolish. Why do I relate the jewelry to such an idea? Why do I keep imagining the jewelry linked to some impossible lost world? Except,” she said uncertainly, “McCabe’s journals-the man I think was my grandfather-speak of such a world as if he believed in it. Strange remarks, Wilma. Why do I keep returning to those entries? Surely I misread them. What is it in my nature, that wants to believe such things?”

What, indeed?Azrael had thought, observing Kate and smiling.

Having been raised in Latin America where unusual tales were believed, where wild stories had substance, where myth was a powerful part of life, the tomcat was a strong believer in matters supernatural. And why not, given his own surreal nature.

“The gold work,” Kate was saying, “is so unlike anything else I’ve ever seen, like nothing I’ve found in any book on jewelry.” But she laughed. “I take one class in the history of jewelry, ten years ago, and I know it all.”

“But you did research it,” Wilma said. “You spent hours in the city libraries.”

Kate had leaned back, sipping her tea. “I’m being so silly. Those twelve pieces, even if they’re a couple of centuries old, were very likely made right here in California. And even if the jewels are paste, the appraiserwasinterested in them-as curiosities, he said.”

“Who was he? You had them appraised in San Francisco?”

“Yes. Emerson Bristol. He came highly recommended.”

The tomcat stiffened and remained still, watching Kate through the cracks.Emerson Bristol. Well doesn’t that win the gold cat dish.And as he considered this unlikely happenstance, some interesting pieces began to fall into place.

“I know who he is,” Wilma said. “Yes, he has an excellent reputation.”

“Bristol showed me some pictures from different periods. That, with what I remember from art school and then what I found on my own, made me see clearly what he meant. The style of my pieces is almost Art Deco, yet very different from that, much more primitive. Yet not medieval. Or baroque or Spanish, but a little of all of them. Not anything like nineteenth-century European work.”

She looked intently at Wilma. “Whoever made that jewelry had his own ideas. Maybe some lone jeweler emigrating from Europe, wanting to work alone, to do his arthisway. I can understand that, that he did not want to follow tradition.”

She broke a French roll, dropping a few crumbs down onto Azrael’s nose. “Maybe he produced a small body of work that found its way into private collections but never into any big collections or museums. And then it got scattered again when people died off, and was all but lost.”

“Did Bristol think that might be the case?”

“We didn’t discuss that. He simply said he found the work different and interesting.” Kate had leaned forward again, as if looking intently at Wilma, her face hidden above the table. “Could that lone jeweler have been my ancestor? And those twelve pieces stayed within his family? Then through their attorney, they found their way to me.”

“I’m no authority,” Wilma said, “but if others found it interesting, as your appraiser did, why was it ignored and forgotten? When the jewelry is so unique, whydidn’tsome collector search it out? You said Bristol wanted to buy it?”

“He said he has a small collection of oddities. He didn’t offer me much. After all, the jewels are paste.” Kate paused. “Well the gold, of course, is worth something. It’s lovely, but�”

“You have the other pieces safe, not lying around your apartment?”

“They’re in my bank box, because of the gold and the workmanship. Until I know what they’re all about.”

“You said five other pieces, besides the barrette you gave Charlie, are designed with the images of cats?”

“Yes. But lots of designers use cats, have done, all through history.” Kate sat very still at the table. The setting sun piercing down through the slats had warmed Azrael. Kate said, “Perhaps the piecesareolder, from some European village that was very fond of its cats. Or maybe the jewelry was made in some isolated community here, by talented immigrants who settled back in the mountains, a little enclave where cats were valued.”

She was, Azrael thought, denying the very world he sought, denying the very world from which she surely had descended.

“Folk who stayed together,” she said, “a little pocket of civilization that preferred to remain off by itself.”

“But why,” Wilma said, “when the pieces are so beautifully made, weren’t they set with real stones?”

“A common practice in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and even today, I guess. It didn’t seem to make much difference whether the jeweler was working with real stones or imitation, the craftsmanship was equally fine.” Kate set down her teacup. “The most amazing part, to me, was to finally track down the legal firm that gave them to me. The firm that served my grandfather-if McCabe was my grandfather. It’s changed its name twice, and it looks to me like it won’t be around much longer. The one remaining attorney is ancient. I can’t imagine hiring him. I understand he does mostly grunt work now.

“But for him to simply give me the jewels, to haul out those old photographs of me as a child, and the names of the foster homes, and to feel that he had adequately identified me-” Kate shook her head. “Poor old thing. He must have been well over eighty, and had palsy, and�well I have to admit, when he gave me the box of jewels and said they were mine, I signed a release for them and got out of there as gracefully fast as I could manage. Before he changed his mind.

“And when I saw Bristol,” Kate said, “I didn’t give him my real name or phone number. I know that’s bizarre. I-This whole thing, that doddering attorney, the jewels hidden away like that, all of it has me edgy, but strangely excited.”

“It would have me edgy, too. And very interested. I think you were wise, keeping your identity to yourself until you know more.”

The Getz womanwouldsay that. She didn’t trust anyone, Azrael had thought, scowling. Now he knew why Bristol hadn’t been able to find his mysterious client after she left his office. The tomcat had licked his whiskers-his partner would be pleased to hear the answer to that little puzzle.

If,he had thought,if I choose to share what I know.

“Why,” Wilma was saying, “hadn’t the lawyer ever been in touch? Why had he never contacted you, when apparently the firm, in its better days, kept track of you as a child?”

“The instructions he read to me said I was not to be given the jewelry until I was eighteen. By that time there was only the one partner; he didn’t explain but I’m guessing he was already letting things slide, forgetting things. That walk-in safe-anything could be stashed in there, from the year one.

“When he opened its door and we went in, there were boxes of files in the back that looked like they’d been there since the place was built, in the eighteen hundreds.”

“Were there no papers for you, nothing besides the jewelry?”

“There were two yellowed newspaper clippings. Something about Marin County, about a large number of cats disappearing and a tide of cats racing away in the night through a garden. The other clipping was the same kind of thing, in the city. Both from the same year, half a century ago.” She was silent a moment, looking at Wilma. “Cats disappearing where? It gives me the shivers. And the strange thing is, ever since I saw the appraiser, I have this idea I’ve been followed.”

Beneath the table, Azrael was riven with interest.Cats racing away to where?To what mysterious place? To the netherworld that he felt certain lay deep beneath northern California? And couldBristolknow of such a world? Was this why he wanted the jewels? Or did he want the jewelry for its value?HadBristol hired someone to follow Kate? But how could he, when he didn’t know who she was? And that wasn’t Bristol’s style. The manwasan upscale appraiser, hewaswell accepted in the city, very proper and circumspect. His under-the-table ventures were always accomplished at arm’s length, by a man who knew far more intimately how to circumvent the law.

“The first time,” Kate said, “I was coming out of Macy’s, juggling some packages and trying to find my car keys. When I looked up, a man in the park was watching me. A thin, shabbily dressed man, very ordinary looking. Dull-colored hair, brown I guess. And a prominent nose, I remember that. I looked away and hurried the three blocks to my car. When I glanced back he had left the park and was half a block behind me. I was more curious than afraid. I stopped for a coffee so I could watch him; I wanted to see what he would do.

“He stood in a doorway looking away in the other direction, but when I left the coffee shop he followed me again. He was half a block away when I unlocked my car. By that time I was scared, I wanted to get away. Of course he would have seen the make and color of my car, the license. I was foolish to lead him to it, but I really didn’t think�”

“When you pulled away, did any car follow you?”

“No, no one followed. I did watch for that.”

“And the next time it happened?”

“Three days later. I was going into a fabric house, returning an armload of samples. When I turned into the door and glanced back, there he was half a block behind me.

“I dumped the samples inside, went back to approach him. But he slipped into a store and was gone. Just gone. I went all through the store. Apparently he went out the back through the stockroom. The three clerks were busy, and I was late so I went on.

“Maybe I’d have been foolish to confront him. Now, since I’ve glimpsed him twice more, the idea frightens me.”

Azrael didn’t know who this was. He didn’t know if the stalker was, indeed, connected to Bristol. When the two women left the Bakery, heading for the gallery, he had followed above them, trotting across the rooftops.

From the roofs he had observed the gathering at the gallery, the fancy clothes, the expensive cars pulling up. Then much later he had looked down through the skylight on the Harper party’s cozy little supper, and heard Kate and Charlie make their date for breakfast.

Turning away to pace the midnight rooftops, his black tail lashing, his nerves rippling under his skin like electrical shocks, the black tom had devised a plan so audacious, so perfect in its concept, that even when at last he settled down beside the brick chimney, mightily purring, he was so wired he found it hard to sleep. Stretched out against the warm bricks he lay for a long time perfecting the details, the tip of his tail flicking with challenge.

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Dawn had not begun to bloody the sky when Azrael brushed through Wilma Getz’s daisies, trampling the white blooms, and paused beneath her lighted kitchen window. The front yard had no lawn, just stone and brick walks, which he avoided, and flower beds as tangled as a Panamanian jungle and so heavy with dew that immediately his fur was soaked. Scowling, he moved swiftly up the back steps.

Both the front and back doors of Wilma Getz’s stone cottage opened to the front garden. The house didn’t have any useful backyard, in human terms. The hill that rose nearly straight up behind it was wild with tall grass and heavily populated with small creatures: a serviceable hunting spot. He had seen Dulcie and the tortoiseshell up there just yesterday dragging out a fat rabbit.

Pausing on the back porch, he sniffed the plastic flap of Dulcie’s cat door, drinking in the sharp female scents-though he didn’t need that message to know that Dulcie and the tortoiseshell had already left the house. Coming down from the roofs he had seen them racing away, likely going to hunt. The tortoiseshell had been talking a mile a minute, making Dulcie drop her ears in annoyance then turn to hush the younger cat before they were overheard. The young tortoiseshell was so eager, so filled with curiosity. The black tom smiled evilly.

Slipping under the flap, he stopped its swinging with his nose and moved through the shadows of the small laundry room, pausing behind a cardboard box filled with newspapers. How civic-minded of the old woman to dutifully recycle her copies of the Molena PointGazette.

Though maybeold womanwasn’t the term for Wilma Getz, even if she did have white hair hanging down her back. Maybegun-toting granny,the way Greeley called her. The woman had taken no guff from Greeley, that time he came here to see his sister.

Greeley had been drunk as a boiled owl, stinking of booze and needing a bath. No wonder the woman had treated him like dirt. Though she hadn’t messed with him, with Azrael. It took more than some white-haired ex-parole officer to runhimout of a house.

From the shadows of the laundry, he looked through the open door to the kitchen. Wilma Getz stood at the sink, her back to him, mixing something in a bowl. He could smell raw eggs, and milk, and the sharp aroma of bacon sizzling in the skillet, sending tremors of greed through the tomcat. He licked away some drool. Wilma Getz’s long white hair was tied on top her head with a yellow scarf, her sweatshirt printed with yellow flowers; the woman was as wild for color as some Panamanian maid, wearing red and purple and dragging her ragged bouquets.

Padding silently across the blue-and-white linoleum behind her, he could hear a shower running from deeper in the cottage. Moving on past Wilma to the dining room, he slipped under the cherry buffet, where he stretched out on the thick Kerman rug, tucking his paws under trying to keep warm. Why the hell didn’t people turn up the heat?

He knew the layout of the house from his visit here with Greeley. That had been a year ago this last summer, when Greeley’s sister Mavity got herself hit on the head and had come here from the hospital to recover. Neither Greeley nor Azrael had had anything to do with that little caper. Greeley was drunk the whole time, the old man laying up in that storeroom among those stacked cases of liquor, drowning himself in Scotch and rum-though Greeleyhadcome to visit his sister that once, before they took off again for Panama.

But then Greeley had dragged that shopkeeper woman along on the plane and had married her down there. What a laugh. Couple of old farts playing at being newlyweds, trying to act like spring chickens.

Peering out from beneath the buffet past table and chair legs, he scanned the living room on his left, with its stone fireplace and blue velvet furniture and the painting of Molena Point rooftops over the mantel. Its dark green trees and bright red roofs reminded him of Panama. A wave of homesickness filled him, deeply angering him. He had no use for such sentiment.

Across the dining room from him, the door to the hall stood open, leading to Wilma’s bedroom on the left and the guest bedroom on his right. Wilma’s big room, where he and Greeley had gone to visit Mavity, was furnished in white wicker, flowered chintz, and a red metal woodstove. A room that, despite his disdain for human trappings, touched within him some regrettably cloying hunger, some weak aspect of his nature that made him want to curl up in there, purring.

He heard the shower stop.

In a minute the bathroom door opened; a cloud of scent reached him, as soft barefoot steps went down the hall. From the guest room came little rustling sounds as if Kate were getting dressed. He imagined her stepping out of her towel naked, beautiful Kate with her creamy skin and silky golden hair, and her golden eyes-unusual for a human. He imagined her as cat, golden and creamy, and again he smiled.

After dressing in pale jeans and a cream polo shirt, Kate pulled on her sandals and flipped a brush through her short hair. She needed to make a decision this morning on one of the three apartments-Charlie’s, or one of the other two she had already looked at. If she was really serious about moving, she needed to put down a deposit. In Molena Point, as in the city, nice rentals didn’t last.

The thought of moving again, of starting life over once more, though in a smaller way, wasn’t pleasant. Moving out of her pretty Molena Point house after Jimmie tried to kill her, hiding from him, then later selling the house and furniture, at the same time being involved in his trial and conviction, had been more than traumatic. She had thought that when she moved to the city that would be the last move.

But now again everything was changed. Now, when she returned to the city, she’d be followed once more, the strange man appearing in the shadows, in dark doorways, always with her like some incurable illness.

She had never really thought, until these last weeks, that when someone threatened you, they stole your freedom; that by following you they confined you, hindering your movements, limiting your options.

Heading down the hall for Wilma’s bright kitchen, badly wanting coffee, she paused in the dining room, startled.

Was someone here? Someone in the house besides Wilma and herself? What did she sense? What a strange feeling. A sense of something unwelcome, someone who did not belong here.

Stepping into the living room, she found it empty. She moved back down the hall to Wilma’s room. That room, too, was empty; the light, bright room with its red stove, its white wicker furniture and flowered chintz, seemed undisturbed. The bath and the open closet were empty. Yet the feeling of a foreign presence, of being watched, persisted.

This was not at all like when Dulcie or the kit watched her, not a friendly and amused little awareness, no sense of camaraderie.

Surely she was imagining this-yet the sensation was so real, she felt goose bumps. Strange that last night talking with Wilma over dinner she’d had the same uncomfortable idea that someone was watching them and listening-though the patrons at the surrounding tables had all been deep in their own conversations, paying no attention to them.

Taking herself in hand, she moved into the bright kitchen where Wilma stood at the stove making pancakes. The first pale light of dawn had begun to brighten the diamond-paned windows. Wilma’s homemade orange syrup was warming on the back burner, sending out a heavenly scent to mix with the aroma of pancakes and frying bacon. Wilma, in her yellow daisy-printed sweatshirt and her white hair pinned on top, looked as ragtag as a girl. Wilma moved like a girl, long and lithe despite her sixty-some years.

As Kate poured herself a cup of coffee, Charlie pulled up out front, driving her company van, the old blue Chevy that Clyde had rebuilt and made to look like new. He had fitted the inside of the van with specially designed storage for Charlie’s cleaning and repair equipment, all beautifully planned between the two of them, every shelf and cupboard secured so nothing would jar loose and fall as Charlie plied the steep Molena Point hills. Kate wondered, now that Charlie and Max were married, and Charlie’s career as an animal artist had taken off, whether Charlie would still run Charlie’s Fix-it, Clean-it. Maybe she’d keep the business but turn the management over to one of her employees. As Charlie swung out and headed for the back door, Kate reached for another cup.

Pouring coffee for Charlie as she came in through the laundry, Kate added milk and sugar. Charlie was wearing a pale blue sweatshirt over a thick white turtleneck and fleece pants. Setting a covered bowl that smelled of fresh oranges on the table, she hugged Wilma and Kate. “Cold out. I’m sure it’s going to snow.” She smelled of horses from having done the morning feeding and cleaning the stalls, chores that she and Max shared equally since they had returned from their honeymoon. One of them got breakfast, she’d told Kate, while the other did the stable work. “There were in fact a few flurries,” she said, “as I was getting in the van.”

Wilma laughed. “It might snow in the hills but it better not snow on my garden.” Snow in Molena Point might happen once every ten years, and then melted at once. Wilma dished the bacon onto a paper towel and handed plates of pancakes to Kate and Charlie, pouring another batch onto the griddle for herself. The two younger women settled at the table feeling cozy and pampered; yet even as they sat comfortably talking and enjoying Wilma’s good breakfast, Kate had the feeling of a foreign presence. She looked up at Wilma. “Where’s Dulcie? And how come the kit’s not out here with her face in the pancakes?” “They’re off hunting. Bolted out of here almost before daybreak-as if the mice and rats couldn’t wait to be slaughtered.” Wilma shrugged. “When I ask Dulcie her hunting secrets she just smiles, and sometimes pats my cheek with a soft paw.”

From beneath the buffet, Azrael’s view of the kitchen was primarily legs-chair and table legs and human legs: Kate’s slim, tanned ankles below her jeans, Charlie’s leather paddock boots that smelled of horse even at that distance, Wilma’s jogging shoes, scuffed and worn. He grew still and intent when Charlie asked about Kate’s search for her family.

He had no idea why being adopted was so traumatic for humans. What difference if your mother took off, and whoever sired you was long gone? Except he did wonder, sometimes, about those cats that had produced him. But Kate was saying, “Every time I go through McCabe’s papers, I grow uneasy.” The smell of pancakes and bacon was making him drool.

“He was a construction contractor in San Francisco?” Charlie asked.

“Yes, and something of a philosopher. He wrote a regular column for theChronicle,on all manner of subjects. McCabe and his wife-my grandmother, I guess-died in the 1939 earthquake. Apparently their baby survived, though I have found no birth certificate for her, nothing about her in the city records.”

“It must be hard, with your foster home records so incomplete,” Charlie offered. “But what led you to McCabe’s journals?”

“The adoption agency was finally willing to release what information they had. It wasn’t much, just the name McCabe who, they said, might have been my grandfather. I guess, with the earthquake, records were destroyed.

“TheChroniclearchives produced some of his columns on microfilm. I found no address for him, no social security number, though that wasn’t signed into law until 1935, no bank records, not even his contractor’s license, and that is so strange. There were city records destroyed in the earthquake, but� I don’t know. It’s discouraging.

“I found a few relatives of people who had run the foster homes, but no one could tell me much. TheChronicleoffices had nothing else, none of the vital information you’d think would be in their files. But I did find his connection to the San Francisco Cat Museum. Strange, I had visited the museum when I was in art school, studying the paintings and sculpture. Of course I hadn’t a clue that the man who designed and built the museum might be my grandfather.”

Kate broke a slice of bacon, eating it with her fingers. “It was in the museum that I found his journals, in their archives. And in the journals I found the name of his lawyer.

“The firm was still in the phone book-well you know the rest,” she told Charlie. “That old man, the shoddy old office, the box of jewelry at the back of that walk-in safe.”

Wilma rose to fill their coffee cups. Beneath the buffet, Azrael crouched, fitting the fragmented pieces together; not much yet, but he knew her parents were not of this world, and that deeply excited him. Then as the conversation turned from Kate’s search to the three apartments that she was considering, he began to yawn, his pink mouth gaping wide in his sleek black face. Even the death angel needed an occasional nap.

“There’s a big living room,” Charlie said, “with a high, beamed ceiling. A small kitchen, and one bedroom at the back. A double garage underneath each unit, a deck along the front with a view of the village and the ocean. And of course Ryan is next door in the studio unit, with her lovely big weimaraner-if you don’t mind occasional barking. Rock is a good standin for an alarm system, if that’s ever needed, and he’s a real love.”

Azrael yawned again, so hard he nearly dislocated his jaw. He was dozing when he heard the slap of Dulcie’s cat door. The sound jerked him to full attention. And before he could slip away, Joe Grey shot through the room, under the dining table, and past Azrael straight for the living room. Azrael heard him hit the top of the desk. Either the gray tom had fled by so fast that he didn’t smell Azrael-not likely-or he was too preoccupied to care. Azrael heard Joe knock the phone from the cradle, and heard from the kitchen Dulcie’s hastily whispered question and Wilma’s casual reply.

“Anyone else here?” Dulcie hissed.

“Just us three,” Wilma said. “What’s the matter?”

So,the black cat thought. Both Charlie and Kate Osborne knew that these little cats could speak. Interesting. Apparently Joe Grey and Dulcie hadn’t been very careful.

“Whatisit?” Wilma repeated.

“Gas leak,” Dulcie mewled. “A house up the street. Really strong, not like when you catch a sniff of it on the street.”

Azrael could hear Joe Grey talking into the phone, giving the location, most likely talking to a police dispatcher. Telling her how strong the gas stink was and from which side of the dwelling. The next moment, some blocks away, a siren began to scream, and a fire engine went rumbling through the narrow village. He could feel the tremors in his paws as it passed, sharp as the precursor to an earthquake.

Listening to the blasting horn and the siren’s final shrill scream just a few blocks away, Azrael flattened his ears. He could hear men shouting, then two more sirens, probably emergency vehicles in case there was an explosion. All these conscientious do-gooders flocking to help, so dedicated they made him gag. He imagined firemen searching for a gas cutoff, plying a wrench to stop the gas at the street. Imagined them gingerly pulling open front and back doors, ducking away and covering their faces in case the gas exploded. All that drama to save a few human lives, when the world was already overpopulated. In Azrael’s view, the human herd could stand some thinning.

He froze, closing his eyes when Joe Grey streaked past. The gray tom didn’t pause. Had Joe Grey caught his scent, even over the smell of fried bacon? Azrael heard Joe hit the kitchen and keep running. The plastic door flapped once, twice, and both cats were gone-and Wilma and Kate and Charlie were running out, humans and cats gripped by the urge torescue someone,tohelp people.Enough smarmy goodwill to sicken a crocodile.

Now, with the house to himself, he left the shadows with leisurely insolence, and strolled into Wilma’s kitchen. Leaping to the table, he polished off three pancakes and two slices of bacon. He licked the plates clean then licked the cube of butter and drank the cream from the pitcher, nearly getting his head caught. Why would anyone make a pitcher so ridiculously small? He sniffed at the cooling coffee but it smelled inferior, not the rich Colombian brand he preferred.

Dropping to the blue-and-white linoleum again, he sauntered back through the dining room and down the hall to the guest room. Likely both humans and cats would be up the street all morning preoccupied with helping their neighbors. The black tom smiled. Fate couldn’t have planned it better.

Alone in the guest room he set about a methodical search, pawing among Kate’s silk lingerie bags and rooting in the gathered elastic pockets that lined the sides of her suitcase, his agile black paws feeling carefully for a small metal object. For what could be his passport to a greatly elevated position in the eyes of his current partner. For what, possibly, might also be a source of information that could prove most interesting.

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The yellow-and-white Victorian cottage stunk so powerfully of gas that the two cats thought it would go up any minute in an explosion of bricks and splintered wood and shingles. They’d seen such a disaster before. They didn’t want that experience again. But with typical feline curiosity, they were too interested to leave. Cops were on the scene now, and that generated more questions.

Once the fire crew had cut off the gas, having circled the house peering in, they had broken the lock and gone inside. Shortly thereafter a rescue vehicle pulled up in front, then two police cars came screaming.

The house belonged to James Quinn, a Realtor with Helen Thurwell’s firm. Quinn was, in fact, Helen’s partner, handling sales with her as a team. The air around the handsome Victorian cottage was, even from a block away, so heavy with gas it made the cats retch.

Scorching up a pine tree, they clung in the frail branches side by side, where a breeze helped clear the air. Watching the police evacuate the houses along the block, they were both alarmed and amused by people running out of their homes loaded with valuables and carrying their pets. A frazzled-looking young woman apparently forgetting something tried to run back inside, and pitched a fit when an officer stopped her. An old woman in a pink bathrobe hobbled out accompanied by an officer, her arms loaded with a two-foot high stack of what looked like photograph albums, the little tie cords at the spines flopping in her face. As if she was saving all the family pictures. A portly lady in a red-and-black sweat suit clutched three cats, the frightened animals clawing her as she hurried down the street. When Wilma and Charlie saw her, they took two of the cats and ran with her, carrying the cats three blocks to a neighbor and handing them inside. Neither Joe nor Dulcie had seen the kit. Scanning the street looking for her, Joe moved from paw to paw, growing so nervous and restless he seemed about to explode, himself.