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“The kit’s all right,” Dulcie said. “She won’t�”

“You don’t know what she’ll do. And it isn’t only the kit�” Joe’s yellow eyes narrowed. “Coming through the dining room-I think I caught the scent of that black beast.”

“Azrael? In the house? Oh, but why would he�? Where, Joe? We have to go back.”

“As I passed the buffet. Just a faint whiff of scent-the whole house smelled of bacon.”

Her eyes wide, she crouched to leap down. But he reached a paw to stop her. “I’ll go back, Dulcie. Stay here, watch for the kit. Who knows where she’s gotten to. You know how she is, she’ll be in the middle somewhere�” He sounded truly worried, his frown deep and uneasy.

“I’ll watch, I’ll find her. But you� Be careful, Joe. Why did he go into Wilma’s house? What’s he up to?”

Joe’s eyes were filled with conflicting concerns. “Watch for the kit but don’t go near that house. Promise me!” He gave her a whisker rub and was gone, backing fast down the rough bark of the pine tree and streaking for Wilma’s house. Dulcie stared after him, her ears flat with frustration, then she turned to search the gathering crowd again and the surrounding rooftops for the dark small presence of the tortoiseshell kit; the kit could vanish like a shadow among shadows. And, by her very nature, she was powerfully drawn to any kind of village disaster.

Dulcie looked and looked for a long time, but didn’t see the kit. She saw no cat at all among the bushes or slipping between the feet of the thickening crowd or concealed in the branches of the surrounding trees. No cat hidden among the angles of the rooftops. Growing more and more worried, she left the safety of pine tree at last, and galloped across the roofs toward the gas-filled house.

Crouching on a shop roof just across the narrow street from the yellow Victorian house, she watched several officers in the front yard gathered around a paramedic’s van. Below her hung a striped awning that bore, along its front edge, the name of the antique store it sheltered. Dropping down into the sagging canvas, crouching belly to stripes like a sunbather in a giant-size hammock, she studied the windows of James Quinn’s yellow house.

All the windows were open to let out the gas, as was the front door, and still the air stunk of gas. She could see Captain Harper and Detective Garza inside. She could not see the medics, they were not around their van. Were they in there working on someone? Was Mr. Quinn in there? Dulcie’s skin rippled with dismay. If he was still there, if he had not run out�

Had he been asleep when the gas leak started, had he perhaps had not awakened? Was he dead in there?Dulcie thought, sickened.

James Quinn was an elderly man, though he still worked as a Realtor. He was a very nice single man living alone, with no one to wake him if he slept too soundly during such a disaster.

Or, she thought, had he already gone to work when the leak started? Maybe he didn’t even know about the leak, maybe he had left the house really early, to show a distant piece of property, maybe he had no idea what was happening here. James Quinn did not seem to Dulcie the kind of person to have carelessly left a gas jet on, to have not turned it off properly. According to Wilma, Quinn was if anything overly careful and precise.

Helen Thurwell’s real estate partner was a short, gentle, wiry man, thin and bald, with leathery skin from hours on the golf coarse. His tee time was dedicated as much to business as to pleasure. Though pushing seventy, Quinn was still a top salesman with the firm, low key, easy, never pushy. That was what Wilma said. A man to whom clients came, as they came to Helen, when they wanted to avoid the hard sell. Playing golf with his clients, Quinn made many a casual, million-dollar deal.

Where was the kit? She was always in the front row when anything happened in the village. Searching the block for Kit, from her high vantage where she could hardly miss another cat, Dulcie began to entertain a sick feeling. Was the kit in that house?

But why? Why would she be in there?

A crew from PG&E was working at the curb where, earlier, the fire crew had removed a concrete cover and turned off the gas. Most of the utility trucks and squad cars were parked down the block, safe in case of an explosion. The crime tape the police had strung was not enough to keep back onlookers without the officers who were politely but firmly directing them. She saw Wilma and Charlie and Kate standing with the crowd waiting for any opportunity to help. But where was the kit? Surely she had heard the sirens, there was nowhere in the village where she couldn’t have heard them.

The medics were bringing someone out on a stretcher. James Quinn lay unmoving, his face and hands strangely red. They set the stretcher down on the lawn and the medics knelt over him. But soon they rose again; they did not work on Quinn. He lay waiting for the coroner’s attention.

Dulcie knew that under other circumstances the body would not have been moved until a detective had photographed the scene and made sketches and notes. She supposed with the house full of gas, that hadn’t been an option. But to leave him lying here on the lawn seemed strange, even with a police guard around him. Maybe Detective Garza wanted to photograph the body and let the coroner have a look before they moved Quinn again. How could Quinn have died in there? How could he not have smelled the gas? Even in sleep, one would think the stink of gas would wake him. He wasn’t a drinker. Never touched liquor; so he had not slept in an alcoholic stupor too numbed to wake. And from what she had heard of Quinn’s careful nature, it would not have been like him to leave the gas on accidentally. She saw Dr. John Bern’s car being driven over the lowered police tape, coming slowly up the street; she glimpsed Bern’s bald head, the glint of his glasses.

Dulcie was watching Dr. Bern kneeling over the body when a thumping on the shingles above her jerked her up. The kit came galloping straight at her and, hardly pausing, dropped down onto the awning, rocking the canvas and digging her claws in. Dulcie was so glad to see her, she nuzzled against Kit, licking her ears and whiskers. The kit stunk of gas.

“You’ve been in there,” Dulcie hissed.

The kit looked at Dulcie, shivering. “He’s dead.” She stared across the street at the stretcher and the body. “I was in there when you came the first time, I looked out and saw you and Joe, I saw you sniff at the gas then turn and race away. I knew you’d call the station so I� but listen, Dulcie�”

The tattercoat’s round yellow eyes were wide with the news she had to tell. “The gas stunk so strong I went in through the back door-to see if he was in there, to wake him if he was still asleep, to�” The kit stared at her with distress.

“You could have died in there.”

“I pushed the back door open to get in, a little breeze came in. I wasn’t there long and I stayed low against the floor, but it choked me and I felt dizzy. He was lying on the kitchen floor. I stuck my nose at his nose and there was no breath and he was cold, so cold, and the gas was making me woozy so I got out of there fast and you and Joe were there, then running away up the street so I knew you’d call for help. Why was there gas in there?”

Dulcie sighed. “You didn’t paw at a knob, Kit? And make the gas come on?”

“No! I never! The gas was all in there. Why would I do that!” she said indignantly. “I smelled it from the street. That’s why I went in.” Her eyes darkened with pain. “But he was dead. Cold dead.”

Dulcie looked and looked at the kit. The kit settled down beside her, pushing very close. She was quiet for a long while. Then in a small voice Kit said, “Where’s Joe Grey?”

“He’s following someone.” Dulcie didn’t mean to tell the kit more. For once, the kit could keep her nose out. Below them, the coroner still knelt over James Quinn, Dr. Bern’s bald head and glasses reflecting the morning light.

Down the block within the growing crowd, the cats saw Marlin Dorriss pushing through. The tall, slim attorney was dressed in a pale blue polo shirt and khaki walking shorts that, despite the chilly weather, set off his winter tan. His muscled legs were lean and brown, his white hair trimmed short and neat. He was a man, Dulcie thought, that any human woman might fall for-except that Helen Thurwell had no business falling for anyone. In doing so she had royally screwed up her daughter’s life, had sent Dillon off on a tangent that deeply frightened Dulcie.

It was hard enough for a fourteen-year-old girl to grow up strong and happy. In Dulcie’s view, human teen years must be like walking on the thinnest span across a vast and falling chasm where, with a false step, you could lose your footing and go tumbling over-as the kit would say, falling down and down.

The cats didn’t want that to happen to Dillon.

Watching Marlin Dorriss approach the stretcher, seeing the concern and kindness in his face as he observed from some distance the body of James Quinn, it was hard for Dulcie to imagine him willfully destroying a close little family. The matter deeply puzzled her.

Dorriss had lived in Molena Point for maybe ten years, in an elegant oceanfront villa. A semiretired lawyer, Dorriss served only a few chosen clients, representing their financial interests. He was gone from the village much of the time, keeping a condo in San Francisco, a cabin at Tahoe, and condos in New York and Baton Rouge. He was a sometime collector of a few select painters, mostly those of the California action school, such as Bischoff, Diebenkorn, and David Park. He collected a few modern sculptors, and bought occasional pieces of antique furniture to blend into the contemporary setting of his home. Dorriss was charming, urbane, easy in his manners, but a man deeply frustrating to the local women. If he dated, the relationship never went far.

Certainly he had woman friends across the country if you could believe the photographs in the Molena PointGazette,the San FranciscoChronicle,and one or two slick arts magazines. Dulcie imagined Dorriss consorting, in other cities, with wealthy society women as sleek and expensively turned out as a bevy of New York fashion models.

So what was it about Helen Thurwell that so attracted him? The tall, slim brunette was nice enough looking, but she was not the polished, trophy-quality knockout that Marlin Dorriss seemed to prefer. And why was Helen ruining her own life and Dillon’s for a high-class roll in the hay when Dorriss had dozens of women?

As she crouched in the sagging awning studying the attorney, she saw Helen Thurwell approaching from the alley behind Jolly’s Deli. At the edge of the crowd Helen paused, standing on tiptoe trying to see. When she realized which house was surrounded, she began to force her way through the crowd.

She stopped when she saw Quinn’s body, then started forward again, her hand pressed to her mouth. At the same moment she saw Marlin Dorriss.

Even now, at this stressful moment, there was a spark between the two. They stood very still, as if joined by an invisible thread, both looking at Quinn but sharply aware of each other.

Then Dorriss turned away and headed up the street.

Helen remained looking, her face very white, her fist against her lips. Behind her, Detective Garza emerged from the house carrying a clipboard and a camera, his square, serious face and dark eyes filled with a stormy preoccupation, with an intensity that Dulcie knew well.

Pressing forward on the sagging canvas, Dulcie didn’t take her eyes from the detective. As she watched Garza, he in turn watched Helen Thurwell.

Not until Helen turned away from Quinn did Garza approach her. The two spoke only briefly, then they moved up the steps and inside the house.

Across the street, half a block away, Helen’s daughter stood watching them, pressed into the crowd with three of her school friends. Dillon’s look followed Helen with an anger that made Dulcie shiver. The same expression, the same hate-filled resentment with which, moments earlier, Dillon had observed Marlin Dorriss as he turned and left the scene.

Glancing at Kit, Dulcie dropped from the awning to a bench, then to the sidewalk. With the kit close behind her, they skirted through the bushes past the uniformed officers and the coroner and the body. Crossing the porch in shadow, within moments they were inside the house, silent and unseen. Following Detective Garza and Helen Thurwell through the house, Dulcie and Kit glanced at each other, their curiosity equally sharp, equally predatory and keen.

Joe Grey trotted fast up the four blocks to Wilma’s stone cottage and, avoiding the front garden, galloped around behind where the wild hill rose steeply at the back. Leaping up through the jungle of tall grass, its dry swords laced through with new green shoots, he spun around, standing tall on his hind paws and peered over the rustling jungle, in through the guest-room window.

He could see Kate’s tan wheeled suitcase lying open on a luggage stand. The only clothing not folded into it was her blue velvet robe, which was thrown across a chair. The black tom crouched just beside the bed. Even as Joe watched, Azrael slid up and into the open suitcase among her sweaters and silk lingerie bags, and began to paw through them, his black tail lashing as he prodded and poked with demanding paws. Joe watched him, frowning. Kate was all packed to head home, the hangers in the closet empty, the bedding turned back, the sheets and pillowslips removed and piled in a heap in the corner. That, Dulcie had told him, was the way Wilma liked her guests to leave a room. Neither Dulcie nor Wilma could understand why a house guest, on departing, would make up the bed with dirty sheets when his host would only have to strip them off again, to put on clean ones for the next round of company.

When the tom had finished patting and pawing at the sweaters and lingerie, he turned his attention to the side pockets of the suitcase, sliding his quick black paw into one pocket after another, searching as thoroughly as would any human thief.

But searching for what? Why would this feline thief waste his time with maybe a few hundred dollars in cash, say, when he was accustomed, working with a human partner, to robbing far more productive safes and cash registers? And why Kate?

Kate had told Wilma that the choker she wore last night was paste, fake jewels. So why would this black beast want it? And where was his human partner? Who was Azrael running with now, if old Greeley was out of the picture? Joe watched, fascinated and filled with questions as the tomcat rooted and dug.

When the cat had investigated nearly every inch of the suitcase and had slyly smoothed each item back as it had been, when he was rooting in the last small pocket, he paused.

With his paw deep in the smallest pocket, he remained very still. His mouth was open, panting, his ears shifting in every direction, seeking for the faintest sound.

The tip of his tail twitching with excitement, Azrael withdrew his paw, claws extended. Dangling from those curved rapiers was a round flashing key fob attached to a long silver key.

Dropping his prize on the carpet, he stood looking down at it. A very plain key and curiously flat, no little ridges as most keys had to fit into the mysterious depths of their given lock. This key did have little protrusions to code the tumblers, but each was precisely cut, at right angles. And Joe Grey smiled.

Clyde carried a key like that, struck from a flat sheet of metal, each straight cutout with only right angles and precise corners, a key that looked as if it would be easy to reproduce but, for reasons Joe didn’t understand, was apparently hard to duplicate-or maybe locksmiths did not keep that kind of blanks, in some universally agreed-upon deference to security.

Leaving the safe deposit key lying beside the suitcase, Azrael leaped to the dresser. Pawing through a sheaf of papers that were weighted down with a hairbrush, he was once more thorough and intent. He sorted carefully thought the stack but, not finding what he was seeking, he abandoned the papers at last and tackled a leather briefcase that stood leaning against the mirror.

Poking his black nose in, then all but climbing inside, the tom wiggled and shook the bag as if fighting some inner fastener. Pawing and nosing, he backed out after some minutes, gripping in his teeth a small blue folder. A checkbook? Joe was so fascinated that he stepped on a thistle hidden among the grass, the barbs stung like needles. Flinching at the pain, he watched Azrael open the folder and stare down at the pad of checks.

Was he reading the bank’s name and location? Joe watched him remove a check carbon with a careful paw and pat at it until he had folded it into quarters. Pressing the creases with his paw, he retrieved the key, laid it on the folded carbon and took them both clumsily in his teeth.

Holding his head high so as not to drag the key and maybe not drool on the carbon, Azrael left the room flaunting his prize as he might flaunt a pigeon he had captured on the wing.

Outside on the hill, Joe Grey moved fast, leaping down through the grass, heading for Dulcie’s cat door. He was around the house by the corner of the garage when he heard the cat door flap, and the black beast burst out and down the steps, flashing away through Wilma’s garden.

Silently Joe followed.

Metal and paper are not mouth-friendly, the one brutally hard, the other inclined to become soggy. But, heading across the village and keeping to the shadows, Azrael was on an incredible high. What he carried was practically an engraved invitation, a passport to jewels that, according to Emerson Bristol’strueaccount of the matter, were worth a hefty fortune. The scenario was quite different from what Kate Osborne believed. And that should lead to ridiculously easy pickings; as simple as snatching baby birds from a sparrow’s nest.

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The body had been taken away. On the trampled front lawn of the yellow Victorian cottage, the coroner stood talking with Captain Harper. Inside the house could be seen, through a front window, Detective Dallas Garza and Helen Thurwell standing in a book-lined room, talking. In the same room, unobserved, Dulcie and the kit lay sprawled beneath a leather easy chair, peering out, watching and listening.

The cats weren’t sure whether Helen was some sort of witness, or a suspect. Though of course Garza would want to question her, she was Quinn’s sales partner. Dulcie looked around the study, mentally yawning. Quinn’s house was dullsville.

One would think a real-estate agent would have a lovely home, maybe small and modest but certainly designed with character and imagination. James Quinn’s residence looked as if Quinn, who was a widower, cared little about his surroundings. As if the living room were no more than a wide passageway to the bedroom or kitchen but otherwise of no use. The furniture was old and cheap, the colors faded almost to extinction; there were no pictures on the walls, no books or flowers or framed photographs on the end tables. She imagined Quinn bringing home a bag of takeout for his supper, eating it alone in the kitchen or on the couch as he watched TV on the relic set, imagined him coming into his study to do a little paperwork, then off to bed.

Maybe his social life and nice meals, whatever elegance he might enjoy, centered around the golf course. Certainly Quinn had nice clothes, certainly he dressed very well; she had seen him around the village. Whether dressed for work showing houses or for the one sport in which he indulged, he always looked well turned out.

Quinn’s study was just as dull as the rest of the house, furnished with scarred and mismatched furniture and cheap plywood bookshelves. Helen stood looking down at Quinn’s battered oak desk, which was strewn with folders and papers lying every which way atop a black leather briefcase.

“He never kept his papers like this, in such a mess. James might not be� have been much for a pretty house,” she said almost as if she’d read Dulcie’s thoughts, “but he was a neatnik when it came to work.”

Helen Thurwell was a few inches shorter than Garza. Her cropped, dark brown hair was straight and shining, her black suit neatly tailored. She wore flat black shoes, simple gold earrings, and she still wore her thick gold wedding band. Dulcie watched her cover that now, with the cotton gloves that Dallas Garza handed her.

“We’ve fingerprinted and photographed,” Garza said. “Even with the gloves, please handle the papers by the edges.

I’d like you to go through them, tell me if anything looks strange, or if you think anything is missing.”

Watching the detective, Helen was quiet for a long moment. “As if someone� As if this wasn’t an accident?”

“Until we learn otherwise,” Garza said shortly.

“I’ll have to sort them into some kind of order.”

Garza nodded.

Standing at the desk, Helen began sorting through Quinn’s papers, arranging them into stacks, each atop one of the empty file folders that were mixed in with loose sheets. “He was always so neat, he never made this kind of mess. Each sale has its file with several pockets for offers and counteroffers, for miscellaneous notes, for the inspection and related work. He� he used to tease me about my haphazard ways.” She compared several sheets, stood thinking a moment, then put the papers in their proper files. When she had finished, she moved away from the desk, turning toward the window. The cats could see her face now, her dark eyes filled with distress. Shelooked up at Garza.

“I see nothing missing, all the clients we were working with are here. Their files seem complete. His field book is here and doesn’t look tampered with. The only thing that’s strange, outside of the mess, is a notebook seems to be missing. Not part of our work but a small personal notebook. Maybe it’s somewhere else in the house. I don’t know what it was for, I’m sure it didn’t have to do with business. It wasn’t anything that the rest of us kept.”

Helen shook her head. “I didn’t see it often, and he never shared it with me. Occasionally I would see him making an entry, but it seemed a private thing. A small brown notebook maybe three by five inches. Sometimes he carried it in his coat pocket. Reddish brown covers� what do they call it?Deal?A slick mottled brown, sort of like dark brown parchment, but heavier. Black cloth tape binding. The kind of notebook you’d get in any drugstore or office supply.”

“Did you ever see the entries?”

“No. When I came in he was usually just putting it away. Not hiding it, but as if he’d finished whatever he wrote there. Possibly something to do with his clients’ personal likes and dislikes, that was my guess. Not about what they wanted in a house, that we kept in a mutual binder. But maybe for little gifts, you know? What kind of flowers or candy. We send a little gift when a sale is completed.

“And yet that does seem strange,” Helen said, “to take that much care with those routine presents. He usually let me handle that.”

She looked with desolation at Garza. “James was a very matter-of-fact guy, not a lot of imagination. Honest-a good person to work with.” But as she said this, her face colored and she turned away.

Watching from the shadows, the kit put out a paw as if to comfort her, then quickly drew it back out of sight. Dulcie considered Helen with interest. Had mentioning James Quinn’s honesty embarrassed her because of her own cheating? Why else would she blush like that?

When Detective Garza and Helen had left the house, the cats trotted to the far end of the living room and leaped to the sill of an open window, ready to follow them out. But, hitting the sill, they saw who was out there and dropped again to the floor. Dillon Thurwell stood in the shadows not six feet from them.

Unwilling to miss anything, the two cats hopped up onto an end table that stood behind the dusty draperies. Crowding together, they could just see out where Dillon and three of her girlfriends were giggling and whispering rude remarks-as if they had been there for some time watching the coroner and ogling the dead man, as if they had seen Quinn taken away to the morgue and found the tragedy highly amusing. In the morning light, Dillon’s red hair shone like copper against the dark hair of two companions, and against the long, pale locks of the one blonde. The girls were dressed in low-cut sleeveless Tshirts that showed their bellies. Their remarks about the pitiful dead man were filled with rude humor.

Dillon seemed so cold and hard, Dulcie thought sadly, compared to the young girl she knew. Last year, Dillon had been among the first to suspect the murders of those poor old people at Casa Capri Retirement Home. Acting with more compassion and more responsibility than most of the adults involved, and far more creatively, she had helped to uncover the crimes. Then this last winter during the Marner murders, when Dillon was kidnapped by the killer, she had again kept her head better than many adults would have, defying her captor, and quick to move when Charlie and the cats helped her escape.

Now Dillon seemed not at all in charge of herself, as if suddenly she was letting others totally rule her. She was no longer someone Dulcie wanted to be near, no longer a person whom a cat would love, whom a cat would go to. Dillon Thurwell seemed now ready to explode into an emotional hurricane.

And one of Dillon’s friends greatly puzzled Dulcie. Consuela Benton was not a classmate, but was several years older, a beautiful Latina, her long, black, curly hair rippling in a cloud around her slim face. She must be at least eighteen, to Dillon’s fourteen. In every way she seemed a world apart from the other three.

Consuela’s lipstick was nearly black. She wore such heavy eyeliner that she looked more like a vampire than a human girl. Why would an older girl like this bother with younger children? What did she gain from their company? Dillon and her friends, even with their attempts at sophisticated dress and cool makeup, compared to Consuela, were like scruffy kittens next to a battle-hardened alley cat.

These last months, Consuela had surely become a leader for the oldest junior high girls. Dulcie had seen her hanging around Dillon’s school or with a crowd of young girls in the shops, where they were loud and rude. Both Dulcie and Joe, following the girls casually, had seen them shoplifting.

The first time, Dulcie didn’t want to believe that Dillon was stealing. By the third time she followed them, she was trying to figure out where they were stashing the stolen items. At one of the girls’ homes? Neither she nor Joe wanted to call Captain Harper. As proud as they were of their impeccable record of solving local crimes, they didn’t want to tell Harper this. Dillon was Max Harper’s special friend. Harper had taught her to ride, on his own mare, Redwing. He had helped her to become a capable horsewoman, had tried to help Dillon move easily and surely through her teen years without falling.

But then the kit had followed the girls and, apparently, had seen something so upsetting the kit would not talk about it. Dulcie had found her at home curled up in a little ball beneath the blue wool afghan looking wan and forlorn.

Pawing at the knitted throw, Dulcie had nosed at her. “Are you sick, Kit? Are you hurt?”

“Fine. Not hurt.”

“Sick?”

“No.”

“Then what’s the matter?”

“I don’t want to tell.”

“You must tell me. I can help.”

“Must I? Can you?” That was all the kit would say.

“Did someone hurt you? Did someone do something to you?”

The kit had shaken her head. Dulcie, having seen Kit following the four girls earlier that morning, could only suspect that she was upset about something Dillon had done. But Kit refused to get Dillon in trouble or to dismay the captain.

Well, Dulcie had thought, no one could force her. Kit would have to decide in her own time. Now, as she glanced at the kit, the tall, broad-shouldered girl with the black braids laughed loudly. “I bet he killed himself. Turned on the gas and sucked it up and croaked.” She clutched her throat as if strangling, gagging and sticking out her tongue.Leah,Dulcie thought. The girl’s name was Leah. Dulcie wanted to claw her.

“IfI was that old and wrinkled,” Consuela said,“I’dkillmyself.”

The three younger girls doubled up with merriment, their giggles self-conscious and loud.

“The dead guy’s your mother’s partner,” said the blonde.

“I guess,” Dillon snapped. “It stinks here, let’s go.”

“And that was her lover.” Leah giggled. “That tall guy who left a while ago, that was your mother’s squeeze.”

“You have a big mouth,” Dillon told her. “A big cesspool mouth.”

“Soisn’the her lover?Yousaid�”

Dillon slapped the girl. Hit her so hard that Leah reeled. Catching herself Leah swung at Dillon.

Consuela stood leaning smugly against the side of the building, watching them, grinning slyly when Leah grabbed Dillon’s hair. As Dillon swung to hit her again, she was grabbed from behind.

Max Harper was quick and silent, holding Dillon’s arm. The captain’s thin sun-creased face was drawn into an unforgiving scowl. He stood, thin and muscled and tall, staring down at Dillon. “Go home, Dillon. Go home now. And go alone.”

“You can’t make me,” Dillon said tremulously, her face flushing.

Harper looked hard at her, and at the other three. “Leah and Candy, you get on to your own homes.Do it now.’”

Leah and Candy backed away from him, and left. Redheaded Dillon stood still, defying him. Consuela stood watching, still smirking.

Ignoring Dillon, Harper fixed on Consuela. “Miss Benton, I don’t want to see you around Dillon anymore. You have no business with these girls.”

“What I do is not your business!”

“It is my business if you are arrested for a crime.”

Consuela flipped Harper the bird, turned away, and sauntered insolently up the street. Max Harper stood looking after her, then looked down at Dillon. All the closeness between them, all the easy companionship, was gone. “Go now, Dillon.”

At last Dillon headed away in the direction of her own house, sullenly scuffing her feet like a young child. Harper, watching her, looked so sad that Dulcie wanted to reach out a paw and comfort him. He looked as if his own child had fallen in front of him and refused to get up.

The kit watched the captain, too, very still and frightened. Was there nothing she could do to make him feel better? She knew how to tease the captain, but she didn’t know what to do about his hurt. She watched the girls fade away through the village wondering why Dillon ran with those others. Did you call a group of human girls a clowder, like cats? Why were those girls so angry? Why had Dillon turned so mean? The kit was so full of questions she began to shiver-but part of her shivers were hunger, too. The deep-down belly-empty hunger she always felt when her head was too full of fear and questions.

Behind them, an officer had come into the house and started closing windows; soon the house would be secured and additional crime tape strung around it. Dulcie and Kit looked at each other, slipped through the drapery, leaped out the window and up the nearest tree-and they raced away across the rooftops and along sprawling oak branches until they reached Jolly’s alley.

On the roof of Jolly’s Delithey paused with their paws in the gutter, their pads sinking down into the mat of wet leaves, looking down into the pretty brick paved lane with its flowers and benches, anticipating the usual nice plate of treats that Mr. Jolly put out for the village cats; after the stressful morning, a cat needed comfort food.

Mr. Jolly himself was just coming out the back door, dressed in his white pants and white shirt, white shoes and white apron. Bending over with a grunt because his stomach got in the way, he set down a paper plate loaded with smoked salmon and shrimp salad and roast beef, all smelling so good the kit drooled. The cats were ready to scorch down the jasmine vine and enjoy the feast, when Dulcie nipped the kit’s shoulder and pulled her back quickly onto the shingles where they would not be seen.

Below them, Consuela was entering the alley pushing irritably past the flowering trees in their big clay pots. The black tomcat swaggered in beside her. Consuela, swiveling her hips, sat down on the little wooden bench. Azrael, glancing the length of the alley, crouched before the plate of deli scraps, and in seconds the food was gone. He scarfed it all, the smoked salmon and roast beef and the nice shrimp salad. The kit wanted to fly down there and cuff him away but he was pretty big. His purrs of gluttony filled the alley as loud and ragged as another cat’s growls. Behind the rudely slurping beast, Consuela sat impatiently waiting, tapping her booted toe and tossing a key in her hand. Each time she flipped the key, it clinked against its dangling metal fob. With her frowzy black hair and black lipstick and black-lined eyes, the two were as alike as human and cat could be. Watching them, the kit looked up when Dulcie nudged her; and she looked where Dulcie was looking.

Across the chasm of the alley on the opposite roof, among the leafy shadows of an acacia tree, Joe Grey stood so still that he seemed at first glance no more than a smear of gray shadows among the dark leaves.

Had he been there all the time? His yellow eyes gleamed intently, telling the kit to be still. Then his gaze dropped to the alley where the black tomcat was cleaning the paper plate with a rasping tongue, holding it down with his paw.

As the black tom turned and sauntered across the bricks and leaped onto the bench beside Consuela, Joe Grey came to the edge of the roof, listening.

“Well?” the black tom said, watching her.

Coldly Consuela studied him. “What do I get? What’s in it for me?”

“You’ll greatly impress our friend, I can guarantee that. I expect he’ll split with you.”

Jingling the key, she looked unconvinced.

“A blond wig, a little practice with the signature, you’re in and out and no one the wiser. Banks don’t bother to see if you have your checkbook or if you remember your account number. They just want you in there with your money. In this case they want you in and out fast. Opening the vault makes them edgy.”

“You’re an authority, you’ve cased a lot of banks.” She whipped out a little mirror and applied another layer of dark lipstick, then spit on her little finger and smoothed a perfect black eyebrow. “What if she misses the key?”

“What if she does? She’ll think she misplaced it. Who would come into her room there at the Getz house and know to look for a safe deposit key?”

“You did,” she said fluffing her hair.

The cat shrugged. “She’d never think of that.”

The two continued in this vein for nearly half an hour before Consuela agreed to pack a bag, gas up her car, and head for the city while Kate was still in the village. The three cats listened in amazement to Azrael’s persistent and artful barrage; but only Joe Grey had the full story. Dulcie and Kit glanced across at him, impatient for him to fill in the blanks. As Azrael painted for Consuela visions of her wearing mink and driving a Jaguar escorted around San Francisco by any man of her choosing, both Dulcie and Kit had to clench their teeth to keep from collapsing in fits of giggles. Whatever scam Azrael was pushing, they thought he ought to stick to robbing antique stores and stealing the savings of little old ladies. Banks were big time, out of his and Consuela’s league.

Or were they? By the time the two left the alley, Azrael was strutting beside Consuela lashing his tail with triumph.

10 [��������: pic_11.jpg]

Late September rains had turned the hills above Molena Point from summer gold to the clear bright green of winter. To visitors from the East Coast, where the summer hills are green and the winter hills brown, the reverse in color seems strange. Gold rules the California summers, green paints the colder months. High above the village rooftops the Harper pastures glowed as green as emerald.

Charlie stood at her kitchen window looking down the verdant slopes past their neat white pasture fences to the village and the far sea, waiting beside the bubbling coffeepot for Ryan Flannery’s red pickup to turn into the long drive, waiting to go over the blueprints so that Ryan could start the new addition.

Having moved to the ranch as a bride just a month earlier, to the home where Max had lived with his first wife until she died, Charlie had been reluctant at first to suggest any changes in the house. But when she did broach the subject, Max had been all for it. This home was their retreat, their safe place, their serene and private world. The new addition would make that haven even more perfect, a lovely new space in which they were together, and in which she could do her own work while Max was off locking up the bad guys.

Max’s wife, Millie, had been a cop. She hadn’t needed space to work at home, other than the small study that she and Max had shared. That marriage had been nearly perfect. Max’s friends, Clyde in particular, had thought Max would never marry again.

Charlie had no notion that she could take Millie’s place, nor would she want to. She had married not only Max, she had married the good and lasting presence of Millie, the woman who so deeply loved him and had so strongly shaped his life. That was not a matter over which to be jealous, she wanted only to treasure Max as Millie had done and to love him.

The house had been Max and Millie’s retreat. Now it was Max and hers; she thought the change would be positive and healthy.

There was Ryan’s red truck, right on time. Charlie watched the big Chevy king cab, with its built-in toolboxes and ladder rack, approach the house between the pasture fences, watched Ryan park and swing out of it carrying a roll of blueprints. The big silver weimaraner that rode beside her did not leave the cab until Ryan spoke to him; then he leaped out, all wags and smiles, dancing around her. Laughing, Charlie watched Ryan cross the yard to the pasture gate, and carefully open it. Pushing the two resident dogs back inside, she released the weimaraner; the three took off racing the pasture wild with joy, secure behind the dog-proofed pasture fence.

This small ranch was Charlie’s first real home since she’d left her childhood home. She’d lived in rented rooms while she was in art school, then in several small San Francisco apartments nattily furnished with a folding cot, a scarred old dinette set, and the cardboard grocery boxes that served in place of shelves and dressers.

At the pasture fence, Ryan stood a moment watching the three dogs race in circles, then turned toward the house. Coming in, she gave Charlie a hug and spread the blueprints out on the table, weighting the corners with the sugar bowl and cream pitcher, and with her purse. Ryan’s dark hair was freshly cut, a flyaway bob curling around her face. Her green eyes were startling beneath her black lashes, her vivid coloring complemented perfectly by a green sweatshirt that she wore over faded jeans. Ryan’s mix of Irish and Latino blood, from her Flannery father and her Garza mother, had produced great beauty, great strength, and vivaciousness.

“Anything more on the dead waiter?” Ryan asked, sitting down. “I haven’t talked to Dallas.”

“Nothing,” Charlie said. “Strange that Max hasn’t been able to reach Lucinda and Pedric, that they haven’t answered their cell phone messages.”

“That is strange. And what about James Quinn?”

Charlie had no hesitation in relaying information to Ryan. Max would do the same, as would Ryan’s uncle, Dallas. “There were no prints at all on the handle of the gas valve,” Charlie said. “The gas starter in the fireplace had been full open, apparently for some hours. When Sacks and Hendricks first arrived on the scene, the doors and windows were all locked. When Wilma and Kate and I got there, Sacks was very carefully working on the lock, and we were all afraid the place would blow. Just one spark� Well, when they got inside and opened up, when they were able to go through, there was no sign of forced entry.”

Ryan shook her head. “What a pity, if it was suicide-and more the pity if it wasn’t. This will keep Dallas and Max busy for a while.” She turned the blueprints to a page of elevations, and laid it out facing Charlie.

The new addition soared to a raftered peak with long expanses of glass looking down the hills to the sea and, at the back of the room flanking the stone fireplace, plain white walls for Charlie’s framed drawings and prints. Before they came down on a final design, Charlie and Max and Ryan had spent nearly an hour standing on ladders in the front yard seeing just how high the room should be raised, how it should be oriented for the best view.

From the new raised floor level they would see the village rooftops to the west with the wild rocky coast beyond. The old living room would become the new master bedroom, retaining the original stone fireplace and bay windows. Ryan would cut a new door to the existing master bath and closet, and those would need no change. The old master bedroom would become Max’s larger and more comfortable study. Ryan was, Charlie had learned, very skilled at saving what could be saved, but running free with what should be added.

Charlie greatly admired Ryan Flannery. Ryan had done something practical and exciting with her art degree, while Charlie’s own art education had certainly gone awry, or had seemed to until recently. Her attempt at a commercial art career had been a royal bust, had at last sent her scurrying to her only living relative, to her aunt Wilma-for moral support and for a roof over her head. She had been living with Wilma when she started Charlie’s Fix-it, Clean-it service. Not until much later did she have this surprising success with her animal drawings. Animals had always been her one great pleasure in the arts.

They sat studying the elevations, looking for any undiscovered problems. As Charlie watched Ryan red-pencil in a change they had agreed on, she could see, through the bay window, the three dogs playing in the pasture. The two young Great Dane mixes still acted like puppies. The presence of Ryan’s beautiful weimaraner with his devilish cleverness made the two mutts act far more juvenile. Rock was smarter than they were, a year older and far quicker, a handsome canine celebrity who had come to Ryan quite by accident-or maybe by providence, Charlie thought, if you believed in such matters. The dogs were chasing one another and chasing the sorrel mare, when she agreed to run from them.

Charlie studied the plans again but could find nothing to be improved upon. In her view the design was perfect, and she could hardly wait to get started. She had risen to fetch the coffeepot, glancing out at the lane, when someone on a bike turned in, heading for the house.

“Dillon,” Charlie said with curiosity. “She hasn’t been here in a while.”

“Surprised she’s here now, after Max scolded her this morning at the Quinn place. You heard about that?”

Charlie nodded. “Max wasn’t happy with her.” Charlie had stopped by the station after she showed Kate the apartment. Max had been glum and silent, hadn’t much wanted to talk about Dillon. Charlie watched the pretty redhead bike slowly up the lane, hardly peddling. Even at a distance, Dillon looked sour and unhappy.

“Sullen,” Ryan said. “I’m sorry to see that. Consuela Benton is not a good influence.”

Dillon walked her bike to the porch and leaned it against the porch rail. Slowly she slumped up the steps. Dillon was tall for fourteen. Her red hair was piled atop her head, tied with a purple scarf. Her tan windbreaker was tied by its sleeves around her waist, hiding her bare belly under the very tight T-shirt. She mounted the steps with a belligerent swagger. Charlie rose to let her in. No one used the front door. With the new addition, that, too, would change. Back and front entries would become one, with a large mud room for coats and dirty boots. Entering the kitchen, Dillon crossed in silence to Charlie’s side and plunked down at the table, staring at the blueprints that drooped over the edges. “What’s all this?”

“Plans for the new addition,” Charlie said. “You want coffee? Or make yourself some cocoa.”

Dillon rose, slouched to the counter, and poured herself a cup of coffee, dumping in milk and three spoons of sugar. Charlie was deeply thankful to have gotten past that age long ago-too old to be a child, too young to be a woman, caught in a world where you were expected to be both but were offered the challenges of neither. In ages past, at thirteen you werelearningto be a woman, learning the needed survival skills, the small simple skills involved in everyday living and in raising a family and, in the best of times, the urgent intellectual skills so necessary to human civility. Charlie found it hard to conceal her anger at the change in Dillon. Observing the girl’s attitude, she found it difficult to remember that only a few months ago she had considered Dillon Thurwell nearly perfect, had thought Dillon was working very hard at growing up. Training the horses under Max’s direction, Dillon had been mastering the skills of concentration and self-management, building confidence in her own strength-absorbing the building blocks that she would so badly need as a strong adult.

To see Dillon now, to see the change in her, to see the twisting of her strong early passions into self-destruction, angered Charlie to the point of rage.

All because of her mother-and yet that was so lame. Dillon was still her own master, she still had the luxury of choice in what she would make of herself, no matter how her mother behaved.

Sipping her coffee, Dillon stood by the table staring at the plans and elevations, then glanced down the hall toward the living room and three bedrooms. “What’s the point? This house is big enough already.” She stared at Charlie. “You starting a family? You pregnant?”

“I am not starting a family. Not that it would be any of your business. I need workspace. A studio.” Charlie couldn’t help feeling confrontational. She watched Ryan, who was studying Dillon, probably fighting the same impulse to paddle the child.

“So what was this murder last night?” Dillon said. “Some guy fell dead in your lap?”

Charlie managed a laugh. “That’s putting it crudely but accurately. You missed the excitement. I was hoping to see you at the opening.”

“I don’t go to art exhibits. I suppose my mother was there with what’s-his-name.”

“I saw Marlin Dorriss. I didn’t see your mother.”

“So who died? Some waiter? What, poison in the canapes?”

“He worked at Jolly’s. Sammy something. Blond, good-looking guy.” Charlie’s voice caught at Dillon’s expression. “You know him?”

“Why would I know some waiter?”

“Why not? Something wrong with waiters? You never go in Jolly’s? Who knows, he might be-have been, some college student working his way through. Not that it matters. Did you know him?”

Dillon stared at her.

“What?”

Dillon shrugged. “Maybe he hung out around the school. Some tall, blond guy hung around the high school.”

“Not around your school? Not around the junior high?”

Another shrug.

Charlie wanted to shake her. “He was a bit old to be hanging out with school kids. What was the attraction?”

“Maybe he has a younger brother.”

Charlie just looked at her. Ryan turned the blueprints around, laying the elevations of the new living room before Dillon. Dillon, in spite of herself, followed the sweep of the high ceiling and tall windows.

“This is what we’re doing,” Ryan said. “This will be the new living room. There,” she said pointing to where the new arch would be constructed, “off the kitchen and dining room.”

“That’s gonna cost a bundle.” Dillon had grown up knowing, from her mother’s business conversations, the price of real estate, and knowing what it cost to build. “I didn’t think a cop made that kind of money”

Charlie and Ryan stared at her.

“I guess it’s none of my business what you do with the captain’s money.”

“I’m spending my money,” Charlie said quietly. “Andthatis none of your business. However, for your information, we’re using money from the book I worked on after the author died. And from my gallery and commission sales.” She wanted to say, What’s with you? You think dumping on me is going to solveyourproblems? You think belittling me is going to make you feel better about your mother or yourself? With heroic effort, she said nothing.

Ryan said, “The two smaller bedrooms will be joined to make Charlie’s studio. Tear out this wall, here, we have a fifteen-by-thirty-foot room. Add a couple of skylights and voila, Charlie’s new workspace. You have a problem with that?”

Dillon looked at Ryan with interest. Charlie watched the two of them face-off, Dillon a defiant, angry young lady; Ryan both angry and amused. Charlie thought that Ryan was a far better match for Dillon Thurwell’s rage than she herself. She didn’t much like confrontation-but Ryan had grown up with cops, and she knew how to give back what she got.

Charlie would have liked to share with Dillon her excitement over the new studio as she shared it with her other friends, to relay her delight over simple details like the big adjustable shelves to hold drawings and prints and paper supplies, the new printing table, her anticipation over a new (used) desk, over a decent place for her computer.

She studied the girl, looking for a spark of the old Dillon. “I’ll be working on the building project as carpenter’s helper, under Ryan’s direction. I want to improve my carpentry skills. I’m already pretty good at Sheetrock, from helping with Clyde’s apartment building.” She wished she could hone her people skills as easily. She wished she could master the moves to make the world right again for Dillon.

Dillon looked at her and rose. “Can I ride Redwing?”

Charlie nodded. “Don’t let the dogs out of the pasture. You want company? We’re about through here.”

“Could I call my friend? Could my friend ride Bucky?”

Charlie stared at her. Bucky was Max’s big, spirited buckskin. The sun rose and set with that gelding, no one else rode Bucky. “What friend is that?” she said carefully.

“From school. My friend from school.”

“A girlfriend?”

Dillon said nothing. The child’s stare made Charlie very glad she didn’t have a teenager to raise. “You know that no one rides Bucky. Even I don’t ride Bucky, without a very special invitation.”

“I guess I’ll go home then.” Dillon turned on her heel, heading for the door.

Ryan rose, moving quickly around the table. She put her arm around Dillon. “Christmas vacation isn’t far off.”

“So?” Dillon turned a sour look on her. But she didn’t move away.

“You have a job for the two weeks of vacation?”

Dillon shrugged. “Who needs a job? Who wants to work during vacation?”

“You want to work for me?”

“Why would I want to work for you? Doing what?”

“Carpenter’s gofer. Fetching stuff. Sweeping up, cleaning up the trash. Maybe some nailing. Learn to lay out forms and mix cement. I can get a work-learning permit through the school. I’ll pay you minimum, which is likely more than you’re worth.”

Dillon stared at her. “Why would I want to do that kind of work?”

“Something wrong with it? It’s the way I started, when I was younger than you. At about the same time I began to learn to shoot a gun and to train the hunting dogs-carpentry skills might come in handy, whatever you do with your life.” Ryan looked hard at Dillon. “What you do right now-while you’re hurting-will shape the rest of your life. You want to spend it sneaking around shoplifting?”

Dillon pulled away. Ryan took her hand. “You are not your mom, Dillon. And she’s not you.” Ryan’s green eyes flashed. “You plan to mess up your life just to punish her? What do you get out of that? If you’re a survivor, as I hear you are, you’ll stop this shit. You’ll not let the dregs of the world plan your life for you, you’ll write yourownticket.”

She drew Dillon close and hugged her. “Charlie and Max love you. Clyde and Wilma love you. I don’t love you but I’d like to be your friend.” She tilted Dillon’s chin up, looking hard at her. “You come to work for me, you’ll have more fun with my carpenters than with your smarmy girlfriends-I bettheywouldn’t have the guts to tackle construction work.”

Dillon said nothing. She stared back at Ryan, her jaw set, deeply scowling.

But something was changed. Charlie could see it; deep down, something was different.

Ryan said no more. Dillon moved away and out the door, swung on her bike, and took off up the lane. Charlie watched her pedal away alone. But maybe her shoulders were less hunched, her back not quite so stiff. Ryan glanced at her watch and rolled up the plans. “I’ll leave one set. If you can go over them with Max tonight, if you’re happy with everything, call me and I’ll be at the building department first thing Monday morning.” She gave Charlie a twisted smile. “To start the permit process rolling.” They both knew that the county building department was hell to work with, that weeks of officiousness might be involved, enough unnecessary bureaucratic red tape to break the spirit of a marine sergeant.

Ryan shrugged. “I can only hope we get a good inspector, hope he doesn’t find some trumped-up excuse to trash the whole plan.” She grinned at Charlie. “It’ll be okay, I’ll sweet-talk him, as disgusted as that makes me. I can hardly wait to get started, I’m as excited as a kid-as enthusiastic as a kidshouldbe,” she said, glancing toward the lane. She slipped an elastic around the blueprints. Charlie unplugged the coffeepot, and they walked out to the pasture gate, discussing the work schedule and where the building materials should be stacked. At the gate, the three dogs came bounding. The big silver weimaraner weighed eighty pounds and stood over two feet at the shoulder, but he was dwarfed by the Harpers’ half-breed Great Danes. The three dogs charged the gate like wild mustangs, but Ryan and Charlie, with fast footwork and sharp commands, got them sorted out, got Rock through the gate without the pups following. Ryan loaded Rock into the passenger seat of her pickup. “You still planning on a groundbreaking party?”

“The minute we have the permit. Max needs some diversion.”

Ryan grinned, gave Charlie a thumbs-up, and took off up the lane. Charlie stood by the pasture gate petting the pups and scratching behind Redwing’s ears, thinking about Dillon, about the building project, about the several commissions she’d promised, including the Doberman studies; and about the two recent deaths in the village. All the fragments that touched her life, both bright and ugly, seemed muddled together like the contents of a grab bag: You pay your money and you take your chance. Or, as Joe Grey would put it, whatever crawls out of the mouse hole, that’s your catch of the day.

11 [��������: pic_12.jpg]

The only luggage the black tomcat required was a canvas tote containing a dozen assorted cans of albacore and white chicken, and a box of fish-flavored kibble. A little something to snack on, between room service. His traveling companion, by contrast, had packed three suitcases, effectively filling the entire trunk of her pale blue Corvette.

Consuela hadn’t been thrilled about him coming along on this little jaunt. He had prevailed, however, having more plans than he had mentioned to her-far more than cleaning out Kate Osborne’s safe deposit box.

Traveling north from Molena Point, Consuela preferred Highway 101 to the coast route, despite the heavy traffic and the preponderance of large tractor-trailers. She was a fast driver with flash-quick reactions and a competitive take on life. Azrael studied her with interest.

She no longer looked like the bawdy young woman who had hung out with those younger girls; her transformation was, as always, remarkable. She looked her true age now, of twenty-some. Without the frizzed-out hair and theatrical makeup, her sleek, fine-boned beauty was startling; and the transformation hadn’t taken long. She had scrubbed her face and now wore very little makeup, just a touch of pink lipstick. He had watched her dampen her dark hair, twist it tightly around her head, and cover it with the sassy blond wig that she had styled like Kate Osborne’s hair. She was wearing a tailored beige suit, much as Kate might wear. She looked serious and businesslike, and in fact far more interesting than the painted child who had run with Dillon and her friends. She had wanted to make reservations at the St. Francis, on Union Square, but Azrael had quashed that notion. The Garden House on Stockton was just a block from Kate Osborne’s apartment.

He slept during much of the two-hour drive, waking in San Jose, where Consuela stopped at a Burger King. She ordered orange juice and coffee for herself, and a double cheeseburger for him, hold the pickles. That would tide him over until they hit the city and had visited Kate’s bank-though as it turned out, their errand didn’t take long.

The branch that Kate frequented was old, with round marble pillars in front, its floors and walls done all in marble. Azrael, not trusting Consuela, rode into the bank in her carryall. No one questioned her when she presented the safe deposit box key, read off the number, and waited to sign in.

But when the clerk gave her the signature card, a hot rage hit Azrael, and Consuela went pale.

The card had been signed just an hour earlier by Kate herself.

“Forgot something,” Consuela told the clerk, smiling and shaking her head at her own pretended inefficiency. The bank clerk looked hard at her but accepted the signature card.

Playing dumb, Consuela followed the clerk into the vault.

This was apparently not the same teller who had helped Kate an hour earlier; that clerk would have remembered her, or at least remembered what Kate was wearing. Azrael watched the other clerks warily, looking for some trap; his paws began to sweat. These tellers might, for all he knew, know Kate personally. It was a small branch, and Kate did work right in the building. He’d considered that before but had thought, what were the odds? You couldn’t cover every contingent.

Moving into the vault, waiting for the teller to open up the little drawer, both Azrael and Consuela were strung with nerves. Before they were alone in the locked room he’d nearly smothered in the damn bag.

Opening the metal box, Consuela stared into the empty container. Not a scrap of paper, not a paperclip or a speck of dust.

“Nothing,” she said, having expected as much. “Nothing. What did you do! How did you tip her! This is your fault,” she hissed, her face close to his. “You stupid beast. You drag me all the way up here forthis,fornothing.Either you tipped her or� What did you hear last night, that made you think� You’d better start explaining.”

“Keep your voice down! You’re supposed to be alone in here! Katesaidthe jewels were here. Plain as day.”

She just looked at him.

He raised his paw, wanting to slash her. She might look like a refined lady now, but she was still little more than a streetwalker. “Are you calling me a liar?”

“If theywerehere, she’s cleared them out. An hour ago, you stupid beast. Did she burn rubber getting here before us? And why? Who tipped her? Is there another name on the box? Did she call someone here in the city?”

“Youwere looking at the card. I was inside the damn bag.”

“They don’t keep that information on the sign-in card. I looked.” She stared hard at him. “How the hell did sheknow!What did you do when you took that key, leave black cat hair all over her room? Paw prints on the dresser?”

He extended his claws until she backed away. She closed the box, and held the carryall open, looking at him until he hopped in.Well, screw her,he thought hunkering down in the dark bag. And they did not speak again until they hit the Garden House and Consuela turned into the parking lot.

The place was so typically San Francisco it made him retch, all this Victorian garbage to impress the tourists. And he was hungry again. A bad gig always made him hungry. He waited in the car while she signed the register, then rode in her carryall up the elevator. They did not learn until later that the hotel allowed pets, that he would have been welcome, that catering to domestic animals was their specialty. Though one might have known from the smell of the room. It stunk like poodle poop.

When the bellman departed, Azrael hassled Consuela until she phoned for takeout of cold boiled crab legs and sushi. Before he got down to the work at hand he wanted sustenance. Even now, despite Consuela blowing it with the safe deposit box, this little trip held promise.

Their room was on the south side of the building, a location for which Consuela had paid an extra ten bucks a night, as the manager had at first said those rooms were all taken. From this vantage, Azrael would have a perfect view down the block to Kate Osborne’s apartment. When the bellman left, Consuela dumped the carryall on the nearest chair, dropped his bag of food in the closet, picked up the phone, and ordered his takeout. Then, changing into jeans and a T-shirt, she turned on the TV and sprawled on the bed. She was still scowling. He got the feeling too often that the woman didn’t like him.

Well, she was going along with his plan all right, the mercenary little bitch. Maybe she just didn’t like cats. The times they’d worked together, he’d never bothered to ask. Now, after the bank fiasco, her mood was as dark as the murky worlds that filled his late-night longings.

Kate must have missed her key shortly after she returned to Wilma Getz’s house this morning, after she’d looked at that apartment.

Why didn’t she simply assume she’d misplaced it? What made her hustle on back to the city?

Right,he thought.That meddling gray tomcat.

Somehow those little cats had spied on him when he was in the Getz house or when he and Consuela were in the alley. When he finished with those three, they’d be dog meat.

Listening to the inanity of some late-afternoon sitcom, he clawed open the window and slipped out onto the fake balcony, crowding against the metal rails in the four-inch-wide space, looking across the flat roofs to Kate’s apartment building. Consuela had at least had the decency to slow the car as they passed, to make sure of the number. From Kate’s description to her friend Wilma, the apartment at the north front was hers. At least, that seemed to be the only one with a view of both Coit Tower and Russian Hill. The windows in that apartment were open, the white curtains blowing in and out, stirred by a rain-scented breeze. Above him, thick gray clouds were gathering.

He waited a long time jammed against the rail before he glimpsed Kate moving around inside, hurrying as if preparing to go out. He waited until she turned away, then dropped to a lower portion of the roof, and leaped to the flat roof of the next building. Fleeing across the hard black tar among air conditioner units and heat vents, he reached the wall of Kate’s building.

The window above him must open to the kitchen, he could smell bananas, and lemon-scented dish soap. Crouching out of sight, hidden by the blowing curtains, he was about to rear up and peer in when he dropped again fast and flattened himself against the roof.

Kate stood above him, looking out just where he would have appeared. He lay very still, his eyes slitted, a black shadow against the black tar.

12 [��������: pic_13.jpg]

Kate stood at the kitchen window waiting for her kettle to boil, looking out at the darkly striated cloud layer that was moving above the city rooftops, taking a moment to calm herself. She was still all nerves and anger. The hurried drive to reach the city before Consuela did, and rushing to her safe deposit box� The sense of invasion knowing that Consuela had her key had left her shaky with nerves and anger. And she felt watched again, too, as she had at Wilma’s house.

But Consuela wouldn’t have the nerve to follow her home. Surely the woman would think she’d be ready to call the police, or already had called them.

Through the trails of gray cloud the late-afternoon sun threw vivid glances of light onto the flat roofs, reflections so sharp they blurred Coit Tower and obscured her view of the Oakland hills. Selecting an English Breakfast tea bag, she poured the boiling water into her cup and, letting it steep, took the cup to the bedroom to sip while she unpacked her small bag.

An hour earlier, returning to San Francisco, she had headed straight for the design studio. Parking in her marked slot, she didn’t go upstairs to her office but hurried around the corner to the branch where she did her banking, praying she wasn’t too late. Having borrowed Wilma’s duplicate safe deposit box key, she had given it to the teller and signed in. She had shared her box with Wilma ever since she opened it, when she’d left Molena Point three years ago. Having no living relatives that she knew of, she had wanted someone to be able to take care of business if she were in an accident, if something unforeseen happened.

Following the overweight, pale-haired teller through the formidable iron gate of the vault, impatiently waiting for her to wield the pair of keys, she had pulled out the metal box, nearly collapsing with relief when she saw the thick brown envelope in which she kept her important papers and the small square cardboard carton that held the jewelry. Stripping the safe deposit drawer of its contents, dropping the box and papers in a leather carryall, she had debated about reporting that an imposter might try to open her box.

But there was nothing in it now for Consuela to steal. With the time and fuss such a report would take, she had decided not to do it. Surely the bank manager would be summoned, forms would have to be filled out, the police brought into the matter. The rest of the day would be shot when she had other things to do. Leaving the box empty, she had settled for the smug satisfaction that she had arrived before Consuela.

As she left the bank she had scanned the parking garage for Consuela’s blue Corvette, or for anyone who might be watching her as she hurried up the three interior flights to the design studio and her own office.

The lights were on in several offices but she saw no one.

Shutting her office door behind her, she slit the tape that sealed the little cardboard box to make sure the jewelry was still inside. Fingering the lovely, ornate pieces, she had longed to keep them out in the light where they could be admired, longed to wear and enjoy them. But at last she put them back and sealed them up again.

Opening the bottom drawer of her fireproof file, she tucked the little box at the back and locked the drawer. Not the safest place, but better than any SD box, if that woman was able to copy her signature. She really didn’t understand what this was all about, when the jewelry was paste. The whole matter made her feel so invaded and helpless. Was nothing secure anymore? Leaving the office and hurrying home, she had wanted only to tuck up safe in her apartment and shut out the world.

Kate’s apartment building was a stark, ancient structure with two units upstairs and three down, and a parking garage underneath, a tan stucco box so old that one wanted to sign a long-term lease hoping the landlord would be forced to honor it, would not give in to the sudden urge to level the building and go for a high-rise. Kate’s apartment was reached by a concrete stairwell that held smells she did not like to think about. The apartments themselves, though, were in prime shape, freshly painted and with new carpet. The large windows opened without sticking, the kitchen appliances were new, with granite countertops gracing the pale pickled cabinets.

Opening up her hot, close apartment, she had sorted through four days’ worth of mail and made a quick trip to the corner Chinese market for milk, eggs, some vegetables, and frozen dinners. She planned to spend the rest of the week wrapping up two interior design jobs and doing the preliminary house call for a couple who were moving out from the East Coast. That job, which she had committed to some weeks ago, was the last new work she meant to take. The Ealders had bought a lovely town house facing Golden Gate Park, and she was looking forward to that small but interesting installation.

She had been approached by two other prospective clients but had turned both over to other designers. She could take on nothing new. She wanted, when she left the San Francisco firm in March, to have all her work completed. She expected she would move back to the village. She had been offered an enticing position as head designer, if she would move to the firm’s new Seattle office; but that was so far from her friends.

In Molena Point, she had given Charlie a deposit on the duplex apartment and had made arrangements to start work for Hanni the first of March. That gave her four months to finish with all her clients. She didn’t want to hand over any last-minute items to her successor.

During the next busy months she would have little time for personal concerns, little time to follow the confusing leads to her family; and maybe that was just as well. Anyway, the most pressing matter at the moment was to clear her desk and calendar before Lucinda and Pedric arrived-and hope that whoever had followed her was gone, and that Consuela returned to Molena Point, out of her sight. She wondered if Lucinda and Pedric could shed some light on the jewelry, on its age and background. The fact that Lucinda had bought similar pieces in that small shop up the coast invited all manner of speculation.

Russian River was just a tiny vacation village, but it had a colorful past filled with strange stories from the Gold Rush. So many immigrants had ended up there, panning for placer gold or working the mines, people from dozens of countries and divergent cultures. She wanted to go up there later in the year if she had time, dig around and see what she could learn.

She chose her clothes for work the next morning, then straightened the apartment, picking up papers she’d left scattered and doing a little dusting. The cool serenity of the cream and beige rooms welcomed and calmed her, the simple white linen couch and chair and loveseat, her books and framed prints. She had brought nothing with her from the Molena Point house when she left Jimmie, had wanted nothing from that old life that had gone so sour, not a stick of the furniture she had taken such care to select. She’d had an estate dealer sell it all, the Baughman pieces, the handmade rugs, everything that had at one time meant so much to her.

Shehadwondered if Jimmie would like her to ship the furnishings up to San Quentin, for his new residence. If a convict had free access to large-screen cable TV and the latest computers, if he could make and receive all the phone calls he pleased, and could, in the prison library, study for a law degree with which later to sue the prison authorities, if he could place bets on the horses and professional sports and buy lottery tickets, maybe he’d like to customize his cell, redesign his personal environment in keeping with his new mode of living.

Clyde would say she was bitter.

Clyde would be right.

Filling her briefcase with the needed papers and work schedules for Tuesday, and setting aside a stack of sample books, she moved about the apartment with an increasingly uneasy sense of being watched again, even in her own rooms. Oh, she didn’t want that to start, that awful fear that had stopped her from taking the cable car or walking to work, that had made her cling to the comparative safety of her own locked vehicle whenever she left a building.

Finishing her housekeeping chores she fetched a favorite Loren Eiseley, a copy in which she had carefully marked the passages she loved most, and she curled up on the couch under a quilt.

But she couldn’t concentrate for long; she kept looking up from the pages toward the kitchen where the north window was open to the breeze.

Of course there could be no one there, she was on the second floor.

Except, the roofs were flat out there and, she supposed, easy enough to access if one knew where the fire escape or maintenance stairs were located.

Rising, she closed and locked the window, then got back under her quilt holding the book unopened, listening.

And later when she checked the window before she went to bed, the lock was not engaged. The closed window slid right open, though she was sure she’d locked it. She locked it now, testing it to make sure-it was not a very substantial device, just one of those little slide clips that sometimes didn’t catch, that she would have to press hard with her fingers while she slammed the window, to make it take hold properly.

That night she did not sleep well. And every night for a week, arriving home after dark, she checked the kitchen window first thing. It was always locked. But then on Friday evening, she discovered that her extra set of house and car keys, which she kept in her jewelry box, was missing.

She looked in the locked file drawer in her home office where she sometimes hid the extra keys and extra cash. The cash was there, but not the keys. She looked in the pockets of her suitcase-where that black tomcat had been poking around, hooking out her safe deposit key.

The pockets were all empty.

Well, she’d misplaced her extra keys before, and later they’d turned up. Only this time the loss frightened her. She felt chilled again, and uncertain

But what was Consuela going to do, let herself into the apartment and bludgeon her? How silly. Bone tired from the week’s intense work and late hours, but more than satisfied with the Ranscioni house, she gave up the search. The keys were somewhere. No one had been inside the apartment. If they didn’t turn up, she’d change the lock. Making herself a drink, she slipped out of her suit and heels and into a robe, thinking about the Ranscioni job.

The buffet installation and fireplace mantel and new interior doors were perfect. She was more than happy with the work the painters were doing. The furniture had been delivered on time, and today the draperies had been hung, right on schedule. Tomorrow, Saturday, she’d place the accessories herself. She did so enjoy doing the last details on a house by herself, wandering the rooms alone for a leisurely look at the finished product, uninterrupted even by her clients; a little moment to herself, to enjoy and assess what she had created.

A young woman, Nancy Westervelt, had come in just this morning wanting her to take an interesting small job. Kate had regretfully turned her down. The woman-handsome, dark-haired, and quiet-had wanted Kate to incorporate her South American furniture and art into a contemporary setting. Nancy was mannerly and soft-spoken and, given that their tastes were so similar, would have been fun to work with.

She had thought a lot that week about the safe deposit box incident. She had paid close attention to her office file drawer, often checking to see that the cardboard box was there in the bottom drawer at the back, and that the tape hadn’t been disturbed. She had gone back to her safe deposit box twice to see if Consuela had returned. After that once, just after she’d cleared the box herself, the girl had not been back. But the presence of that frowzy, thieving girl there in the city, presuming she was still there, bothered her more than she wanted to admit.

She had not glimpsed the man who had followed her before she left the city, and that was a plus, although she had not found her spare house and car keys yet. And then on Saturday morning, leaving the Ranscioni house, coming up the stairs with her grocery bags she opened the door-and paused, feeling cold. That prickly sensation as if her hair wanted to stand up. Had she heard a small, scraping sound? Had she felt some unnatural movement of air against her face?

She stood for a long moment trying to identify what was disturbing her, what held her so rigid and still. She sniffed for some strange scent, a hint of cologne perhaps. She listened for the faintest brushing, the tiniest shifting of weight on the wooden floors.

Silence.

But someone was there, she could feel the difference on her crawling skin. The way she had felt in Wilma’s house that morning when she had paused in the dining room, certain that someone was present.

Setting down her groceries on the hall table, she snatched the vial of pepper spray from her purse and walked slowly through the apartment opening each door, pushing back the two shower curtains, checking the window locks and looking in the closets. She even opened the wall bed in her office.

There was no one; the rooms were empty, the windows locked as she had left them. Quickly she put away her groceries, all the while listening.

Returning to her study where she’d left the wall bed down, she opened a package of new white sheets and made it up, although Lucinda and Pedric wouldn’t arrive until Sunday evening. Covering the taut sheets with a thick, flowered quilt, she cleared off her oversize wicker desk, stashing papers and samples in her bedroom. She always brought work home, room layouts, catalogs and price lists, and the heavy books of fabric and carpet samples.

In the living room she cleared away the week’s newspapers that she’d hardly had time to look at, then tossed the pillows from the window seat into the dryer for a good freshening. A few short, dark hairs clung to one of the pillows.

A friend had brought her poodle over a few weeks ago, a small black toy that had snuggled on the window seat. She hadn’t thought that poodles could shed, but maybe she was wrong. She removed the hairs with a damp sponge and tossed the pillow in with the others.

On her way to the trash with the papers, an article caught her attention. Pulling that section out to read later, she laid it on the kitchen counter-something about a jewel robbery. Shoving the rest of the papers in the trash and straightening up the kitchen, she thought how good it would be to see Lucinda and Pedric.

How excited the old couple had been, planning their tour through the Cat Museum’s gardens and galleries. Picking up the phone, she made lunch reservations for Monday at an elegant Chinese restaurant near the museum, a small place that she thought would please them. She was so looking forward to their visit, this elderly couple with their twinkling eyes and dry wit, this pair of eighty-year-old newlyweds with their Old-World knowledge about cats that made her want to know them better. And she had to smile. How thrilled the kit was that the Greenlaws would soon return to the village to stay. Lucinda and Pedric were the kit’s true family, and now at last she would have a home with them, in a brand-new house atop Hellhag Hill.

The cave within the hill that frightened Joe Grey seemed not to have dampened the resolve of the Greenlaws to live there. They connected that dark fissure in some way to the ancient Celtic tales they collected, to the myths that had been handed down from their ancestors. The day after they were married they had bought the entire hill, some twenty acres.

Kate had, when she first saw the cave, been as intrigued as the kit, wanting to go down into it. But then she had grown frightened, and had ended up leaving quickly. On later visits to the village she had stayed away from that part of the hills.

When she had the apartment in order for the Greenlaws, she made a cup of tea, then pulled on a warm sweater over her jeans and walked up Russian Hill to the Cat Museum, wanting one more look at her grandfather’s diaries. Maybe to winnow out some overlooked clue to her heritage. The afternoon was cool and sunny, with a brilliance one could find, she thought, only in San Francisco, the sky a clear deep blue behind a scattering of fast-running white clouds. When she looked down the hill behind her, the shadows of the crowded buildings angled crisply across the pale sidewalks; the dark bay was scattered with whitecaps, the bridges glinting with afternoon sun. The breeze off the bay tugged at her like a live thing. She kept thinking about the dark hairs on the cushion of her window seat; she had found, when she cleaned out the lint catcher of the dryer, a wad of straight, black hairs, not really like poodle hairs.

Had Consuela brought that cat to the city? Joe Grey had said only that Azrael had been the instigator of the bizarre effort-the dismally failed effort, she thought with satisfaction. Why would Consuela have brought the cat here?

Entering the wrought-iron gates of the Cat Museum, she stepped into a world that seemed totally removed from the city. Between the various gallery buildings, its gardens were as lush and mysterious as the secret garden of her favorite childhood book. The cats who lived there watched her from where they sunned themselves lying on the low walls or atop various pieces of cat sculpture. Today, she did not linger in the gardens, but went directly to the desk to sign out McCabe’s diaries.

She spent several hours in the reading room but found nothing she’d missed before. From his early years as a stevedore, then as a building contractor and newspaper columnist, through his marriage, to the weeks just before the earthquake in which he died, he had written what he observed of the city but offered no fact about himself. Kate could not even find his wife’s name. Several entries mentioned their baby girl, but nowhere did McCabe write her name. Had he had some superstition, some objection to setting down the names of those close to him? Or had there been deletions in the journals, pages removed? With such short entries, that might be easy to do, and sometimes the flow did seem disjointed. The passages to which she kept returning were vague: McCabe’s occasional offhand mentions ofthe other place,orthose grim kingdoms,andone day till I make that journey?These, and mentions of not liking to be shut in, not liking a low, heavy sky-and of dreams that disturbed him in the small hours when he prowled sleepless.

But thoseweredreams, perhaps nightmares. Not facts about his life.I dreamed last night of a granite sky lit by a green haze� Ihave dreamed of caverns falling, and of the echoing cries of beasts in a world I have never seen�

Kate left the museum frightened. She must give up the search. Whatever lay in the tangle of her heritage was not for her, she had learned nothing about her parents and she was only upsetting herself.

Arriving home, she meant to put on her robe, fix herself a drink, have a light supper, and tuck up on the couch with a book. When she turned into the kitchen, the newspaper she had left on the counter had slid to the floor. She picked it up, puzzled.

A stain of grease darkened the article that had interested her, grease smeared across the account of a downtown jewel robbery. Frowning, she wiped the counter more thoroughly where she had earlier prepared some chicken, and wiped the paper as best she could.

The robbery had occurred ten days ago as the owner was locking up to go home. When he stepped outside and turned to lock the door, two men pinned him against the building demanding to be let in. He grabbed one of them, and there was a fight. Apparently someone, perhaps a neighbor, called the police. The store owner, James Ruse, said it was just seconds until he heard sirens. He told reporters that as the cops belted out of their car, grabbing one man, the other seemed to go insane, jumping on Ruse and beating him. Ruse grabbed the brick he used to prop open the door on hot days and hit the man hard in the head. That didn’t stop the burglar; he beat Ruse again, injured one of the cops, and escaped. Police captain Norville said it was likely the man was on drugs, that he had been almost impossible to subdue.

The article unnerved her, the city was getting so violent. She didn’t understand why the police didn’t shoot the man, when he had almost killed an innocent shopkeeper, had been trying to kill him. She didn’t turn on the kitchen TV for the news as she usually did when she fixed her dinner, but put on a CD while she made her salad.

When she went to the refrigerator for the bowl of chicken, she saw that it was empty.

Someonehadbeen here. Had eaten the chicken, apparently while reading the newspaper.

Quietly she reached for the phone, meaning to dial 911, then to leave, to wait for the police on the street or in her locked car. She had started to phone when she saw the paw prints.

Greasy paw prints on the stove, catching the light when she stood at an angle. And when she examined the back of the newspaper, there were greasy prints there, as well.

Checking all the window locks, she angrily searched her apartment, looking in every tiniest niche, under every piece of furniture. In the living room she found the cat’s black hair matted on her white couch: a stark and insolent greeting. She imagined the huge black creature riding in the car beside Consuela, peering coldly out the front window-laying what kind of plans?

Because they had missed stealing the jewelry, he had come here into her apartment, had very likely searched the entire apartment looking for it. What next? Her office? And where had he been when Consuela entered the bank? Riding on her shoulder snarling at the tellers? Following her on a leash like some pet jungle cat, commanding irate or amused stares from tellers and customers? Although most likely he had kept out of sight.

If he had jimmied her window, he had probably let Consuela in through the front door, and Consuela had taken her extra keys. They had most likely locked the window and locked the door behind them when they left; and now they could enter at their pleasure.

Searching again, she could find nothing else disturbed. Whatever they had done in here, that black beast frightened her far more than that little snip Consuela could ever do.

Well, she couldn’t tell the cops that a cat had broken in, and she had no evidence that any human had been in here. Unplugging and removing her kitchen phone, and then her office extension, so that neither phone could be taken off the hook, she carried them into the bedroom, setting them down beside the nightstand where she left the third phone plugged in. Locking the bedroom door behind her, she checked every small hiding place once again, behind the boxes on the closet shelf, behind her clothes. She was thankful she’d had the bedroom lock installed; it gave her a sense of security after she’d been followed. She didn’t like surprises; she would not want to wake with someone in her room.

Certain that the cat was not in the room with her, she washed her face and brushed her teeth. She was tucked up in bed, reading, by 8:15, the dark winter evening shut away beyond the draperies-wanting to lose herself in a favorite book as she had done when she was a child in one foster home or another.

But, again, the book didn’t hold her. Putting out the light, turning over clutching her pillow, she wanted to sleep and didn’t think she could. Then when she did sleep, her dreams were filled with Azrael, and with phantom worlds that beckoned to her from the darkness. She woke at three and lay sleepless until dawn, her mind racing with unwanted questions.

13 [��������: pic_14.jpg]

Long after Kate slept, that Saturday night, down the coast in Molena Point, rain swept in torrents along the rocky shore, turning sodden the cottages and rooftops and, south of the village, bending double the wild grass on Hellhag Hill, drenching the two friends who climbed through the black, wet tangles, desperately searching.

Joe Grey heard it first, a lonely and mournful weeping as he reared up in the tangled wet grass. He and Clyde were halfway up the hill, Joe’s paws and fur were soaking. In the driving rain, he could see nothing. Leaping to Clyde’s shoulder, he stared up through the windy night toward the crest. The weeping came and went in the storm as unfocused as the cries of spirits; the gusts pummeled him so hard he had to dig his claws into Clyde’s shoulder. Clyde grunted but said nothing. Above them, the grieving lament increased: somewhere in the cold blackness the kit sobbed and bawled her distress. The time was three A.M. Scuds of rain hit their backs fitfully, then were gone again.

Of course no stars were visible, no moon touched the inky hill. Pressing a paw against Clyde’s head for balance, Joe prayed the kit hadn’t gone into the cave. Crouching to leap down, to race up to the crest, he peered down into Clyde’s face. “Can you see her? Can you see anything?”

“Can’t see a damned thing.You’rethe cat. What happened to night vision?”

“It takes alittlelight. I’m not an infrared camera!”

The yowl came again, louder, making Clyde pause. “You sure that’s the kit? Sounds like the ghost itself.” The ghost of Hellhag Hill was a treasured village myth, one Joe didn’t care for. Rising tall against Clyde’s head, Joe peered harder into the black night. Had he seen an inky smudge move briefly? Clyde stunk of sleep, a sour human smell.

“There,” Joe said. “Just to the left of the cave.”

Clyde moved to stare upward, clutching Joe tighter. The trouble had started an hour ago with the ringing phone in their dark bedroom. Burrowing beneath the covers, Joe heard Clyde answer, his voice understandably grouchy. “What?” Clyde had shouted into the phone. “It’s two in the morning. This better not be a wrong number.”

There was a long silence. Clyde said, “When?” Another silence, then, “Are you sure?” Then, “We’re on our way.” Joe had peered out as Clyde thudded out of bed and stood looking around the dark room, then staring toward the study and Joe’s aerial cat door. “Joe! Where the hell are you?Joe!Come down here!Now!Wilma just called. It’s the kit, she’s run away!”

Joe had crawled out from under the blanket yawning. “What do you mean, she’s run away? She’s probably out hunting. She doesn’t mind the rain. Where’s Dulcie? Isn’t she with Dulcie?” But the feeling in his gut was uneasy. The kit had disappeared last winter for several days-and had fallen, paws first, into trouble.

“What happened?” he said, stalking across the blankets. “Why suddenly so distressed? What else did Wilma say?”

Clyde was pulling on his pants and a sweatshirt. Joe leaped to the top of the dresser, waiting for an explanation.

“They’re dead,” Clyde said, staring back at him. “Lucinda and Pedric. There was an accident-somewhere north of Russian River. The minute the kit heard, she ran out of the house bawling and yowling. Dulcie raced after her, but apparently she lost her, couldn’t track her in the rain and wind. They don’t know where she went or what she’ll do. She was so upset, Dulcie thinks she’ll head for Hellhag Hill.” Clyde pulled on his jogging shoes. Hastily tying them, he grabbed his keys.

In the downstairs hall Clyde dug his parka from the closet, snatched Joe up in his arms, and headed for the car. Racing down the hall, they heard Rube huffing behind the kitchen door. Clyde double-timed it through the dark living room and out the front door, not bothering to lock it. Sliding into the old Buick sedan that he’d driven home that night-to avoid putting up the top in his yellow antique roadster-he dropped Joe on the passenger seat like a bag of flour, hit the starter, and fished a flashlight from the glove compartment.

Shining the light along the sidewalk, Clyde headed for the hills, man and cat watching every shadow, every smear of darkness. Joe, crouched on the dash where he could see the street, glanced over at Clyde.

“How could there have been a wreck? When did this happen? How could they have a wreck at night? Lucinda and Pedric don’t drive at night. Never. At eighty, that’s smart. So how-”

“Wilma didn’t give me details, she was frantic for the kit, I’ve never heard her so out-of-control. The Sonoma County coroner called her. A wreck, a tanker truck-gasoline. A nighttime wreck, a fire. My God, those two innocent people. The kit was wild, hysterical.”

“Watch your driving. I’ll do the looking. Why did Wilmatellher all that? Didn’t she know the kit would-”

“Kit had her ear stuck to the phone, you know how she is. She heard before Wilma could snatch her away. And even if she had-”

“There! Slow down.”

Clyde skidded to a stop.

“Is that her in the bushes?” Joe had been ready to leap out when he saw it was not Kit but a raccoon-and his concern for the kit escalated into a sharp fear. The car lights picked out raccoons’ masked eyes, an unwelcome gang of midnight predators.

Joe had shouted and shouted for the kit as they moved on between the close-crowding shops and houses. “I think she headed for Hellhag Hill,” he had said tightly, hoping she hadn’t bolted down into the caves that, as far as he knew, might go clear to the center of the earth. Because the kit could, in her volatile grief, mindlessly run and run and keep running. Even at best of times, the kit was all emotion-and Lucinda and Pedric were her family.

Trying to see out of the slow-moving car, Joe had been weak with nerves by the time they reached Hellhag Hill. Clyde parked along the dropping cliff where the waves slapped and churned below them, set the hand brake, and snatched Joe up again. The minute he opened the door, both man and cat were drenched. The hill humped above them like a bloated black beast. Impatient with human slowness, Joe had leaped from Clyde’s arms and raced blindly upward through the forest of wet, blowing grass.

But now, perched on Clyde’s shoulder again where he could see better, he tried to identify that faint smear of blackness.Was that the kit, rearing up for a better look down at them? But as he watched, the black speck disappeared, was gone. Now, not a sound from above. Only when Clyde paused again and stood still did they hear one tiny sob.

Rearing up taller against Clyde’s head, Joe shouted,“Come down, Kit. Come down now! Right now!I have something to tell you. Something about Lucinda and Pedric.” And he leaped down into the tall wet grass and raced ahead of Clyde up the black hill.

Only when they were very near the tumble of boulders on the crest did the kit peer out, crouching and shivering. This was not their fluff-coated, flag-tailed tortoiseshell, their sassy, brightly animated friend. This rain-soaked, forlorn little animal was dull and spent, a miserable ragged beast who, with her wet fur matted to her body, seemed far smaller, far more frail.

“Come here,” Joe said, shouldering through the wet grass. “Comenow.””

The kit came to Joe, with her head down, slow and grieving. She looked like the first time Joe had ever seen her, a terrified feral animal afraid of humans, afraid of other cats, afraid of the world, totally alone and without hope. She stood hunched in the grass before him.

Behind Joe, Clyde stood very still. Then in a moment, he took two careful steps toward her. She didn’t spin away. Two more steps, and another, and he knelt beside the kit, where she cowered with grief before Joe Grey.

Gently Clyde picked her up, gently he held her. The wind beating at them made her shiver. Unzipping his jacket, Clyde tucked her inside, then zipped it up again. Only her dark, lean little face could be seen. Pitifully the kit looked up at Clyde. “They never drive at night. They would never be driving at night. Why were they out at night on the highway?”

She stared into the wind and up at the stormy sky. “How could your strange human God cause Lucinda and Pedric to be dead? Why would he do that?” She looked at Clyde, and down at Joe Grey. Around them, the black hill rolled away, uncaring. Above them the black sky stormed uncaring and remote. To the vast and incomprehensible elements this small cat’s mourning went unheard, her pain unheeded. What possible power, so beyond mortal ken, would bother with this insignificant beast? What power in all the universe would care that she was hurting?

They had started down the hill, Clyde snuggling the kit close, Joe Grey shouldering through the wet grass beside him, when lights appeared on the highway below coming slowly around the curve.

When Clyde and Wilma, Kit and Joe and Dulcie, were all together, sitting in Wilma’s car, the kit crawled out from Clyde’s jacket. Obediently allowing Wilma to towel her, she was quiet, very still. As Wilma worked, her yellow slicker made crinkling sounds over her soaking pajamas, and her wet boots squelched with water. As the kit began to dry and grow warmer, when her small body wasn’t quite as rigid, Wilma said, “I don’t know much more than you heard. I can’t imagine why they were on the highway at that hour. It’s been storming all night up there.”

She looked at Clyde. “Sheriff’s office called me just before I called you. The accident happened on 101 somewhere north of Ukiah. They had been heading north. A gas truck� apparently hit them on a curve.” She looked desolately at Clyde. “Both vehicles rolled and burned. Justburned…” Wilma covered her face. “Exploded and burned.”

She was quiet for a long time, holding the kit, her face pushed against the little cat. Still the kit was silent. Wilma looked up at last. “There was nothing left. Nothing. The vehicle’s license was ripped off in the explosion, went flying with torn pieces of the RV. That’s how the sheriff knew who to call.” Since Lucinda had sold her house just after she and Pedric were married, the newlyweds had used Wilma’s address for all their business, for everything but interest income, which was handled by direct deposit. Wilma faxed their bank statements to them, and sent any urgent papers. Wilma’s address had been on the couple’s drivers’ licenses and on their vehicle registration.

As the five sat in the front seat, close together, dulcie nosed under the towel, into Wilma’s arms, snuggling close to the kit. Around the car, the wind eased off, and the rain turned from fitful gusts to a hard, steady downpour. It seemed to Dulcie that fate had, since early in the year, turned a hard and uncaring countenance on their little extended family. First Captain Harper had been set up as a suspected murderer. Then that terrible bomb that came close to killing everyone at Captain Harper and Charlie’s wedding. Then during Charlie’s gallery party, that man dying. And now this terrible, senseless accident to Kit’s human family. She felt lost and grim, she wanted only to be home with Kit, tucked up in Wilma’s bed with hot milk and kitty treats, where nothing more could happen.

When Clyde and Joe slid into their own car and headed home, Joe settled unashamedly against Clyde’s leg. He felt more like a pet cat tonight, needful of human caring. Not since his days as a stray kitten, sleeping in San Francisco’s alleys, had he felt quite so in need of security and a little petting-it was all very well to have a solid record of murder and burglary convictions to his credit, but sometimes a little mothering of the bachelor variety was a nice change. The thought of Lucinda and Pedric gone, forever and irrefutably gone, had left him feeling uncharacteristically vulnerable.

Glancing down at Joe, Clyde laid his hand on Joe’s shoulder and scratched his ear.

They’d been home for half an hour, Clyde had toweled Joe dry and used the hair dryer on him, and Joe was half asleep under the covers when Clyde came upstairs bringing with him an aroma that brought Joe straight up, staring.

Clyde set a tray on the bed, right in front of him. Imported sardines? He had to be dreaming. A whole bevy of those little pastramion-rye appetizers that Clyde kept stashed in the freezer, now warm from the microwave? He looked at Clyde and looked back at the brimming tray.

Clyde, who had showered and pulled on a robe, set his hot rum drink on the night table and slid into bed, propping the pillows behind him. “So tuck in. What? You’re not hungry?”

Joe laid a paw on Clyde’s hand. He gave Clyde a whisker rub, then tucked into the feast with a gusto and lack of manners that, tonight, Clyde didn’t mention. If Joe slopped on the covers, Clyde didn’t seem to care. With the wonder of Clyde’s offering, and with the bodily nourishment as well, a wave of well-being surged all through Joe Grey. He began to feel warm all over, feel safe again; began once more to feel strong and invulnerable.

14 [��������: pic_15.jpg]

In the Getz house, the kit slept safe and warm, tucked in the blankets between Wilma and Dulcie, worn out from her grief, escaping into exhausted oblivion. The bedroom smelled of hot milk and hot cocoa and shortbread cookies, and of the wood fire that had burned down now to a few glowing coals. Outside, the rain had abated, but at four a.m. the cold wind still found its fitful way along the wet streets; wind shook drumbeats of water from the oak trees onto rooftops and car hoods-and on the cold and windy streets, others were about, who cared nothing for the windy cold, who cared only for adventure.

A giggle cut the night, then soft but urgent whispers as three girls moved quickly down the narrow alley that opened to the backs of a dozen shops.

Most of Molena Point’s alleys were appealing lanes as charming as Jolly’s alley, brick-paved byways lined with potted flowers and with the leaded-or stained-glass doorways of tiny backstreet stores. This concrete alley, however, was only a passage hiding garbage cans and bales of collapsed cardboard cartons that awaited the arrival of a sanitation truck. It was closed to passersby with a solid-wood six-foot fence.

The gate wasn’t locked. Candy pushed it open and entered the long, trash-lined walkway, followed by Leah and Dillon. They were on their own tonight; Consuela did not shepherd them. Flipping back her blond hair, Candy fitted a key into the lock of Alice’s Mirror. The three slipped inside, Candy reaching quickly to cut off the alarm system, just as the shop’s owner would do upon entering.

The girls were gone only a few minutes. They emerged loaded down with velvet pants, cashmere sweaters, wool and leather jackets, with plastic bags of scarves and designer billfolds and necklaces. They had known the location and distribution of the stock as well as any store employee might know it. Dillon, swaggering out with the biggest armload of stolen clothes, glanced back as Candy locked the door. She was grinning.

Piling their loot into the trunk and filling the backseat of the car they had left parked at the curb, the three slid into the front seat, the blonde at the wheel, and moved quietly away. Watching the streets for cops, or for a stray and observant pedestrian, they saw no one.

“Cops are all home in bed,” Leah announced. “Or drinking coffee at the station.”

Dillon giggled. But as the car slid past Wilma Getz’s stone cottage and she smelled the smoke of a wood fire, she sobered, studying the house. The sight of that solid and inviting cottage where she had so often been made welcome filled her with a sharp jolt of shame, with a moment of clarity, an ugly look at what she was doing.

In the stone cottage, Wilma was not asleep. She lay in bed in the dark, between the two cats, thinking about Lucinda and Pedric. Whathadthey been doing out on the highway at night? Kit had spoken the truth, the old couple never drove at night. And there could be no emergency that would account for a late-night run. Lucinda had no family and none of Pedric’s relatives lived on the West Coast to take him racing to them.

Before the kit slept, she had looked up at Wilma suddenly, her round yellow eyes opening like twin moons, and had said decisively, “They can’t be dead! Pedric is so clever. Lucinda and Pedric call themselves survivors. Survivors like me, that’s what Lucinda says.”

Dulcie and Wilma had exchanged a look.

Yet what Kit had said held some truth-everything Wilma knew about the Greenlaws showed how resourceful they were. She lay thinking about their well-appointed RV, where they always carried extra food, warm clothing, medical supplies, and of course their cell phone. Pedric had fitted out the RV with all manner of innovations to make life easier for them, from a bucket with a tight lid in which they put their laundry and soap and water, letting it bounce and agitate as they traveled, to locked storage compartments that could be opened from either the inside or outside of the vehicle. Pedric had grown up traveling all over the country in similar vehicles, and he was almost obsessed with self-sufficiency.

That did not explain why they were out in the storm at night. It was not as if they had been traveling to a new campsite. They hadbeenat the one site for over a week and according to the registration had not checked out. The sheriff said they had left behind a folding camp table, two canvas chairs, and a large cooler. As she lay thinking, warm between the two cats, she heard a car slide past the house and wondered idly who was out at four in the morning. Maybe a police car.

And as Wilma drifted off again into a depressed and anxious sleep, across the village the hardtop sedan pulled into the garage of a small rental cottage that stood behind a brown-shingled house. The cottage had once been servants’ quarters.

The minute the ten-year-old Cadillac sedan entered through the automatic door, the door rolled down behind it. Inside, by the light from the door opener, the three girls unloaded the clothes. Most were still on their hangers, which Leah hung in the oversize metal storage lockers that lined the garage wall. She filled five lockers and snapped on padlocks. Four other units stood unlocked.

Leaving the car and letting themselves out the side door, which Candy locked behind them, the three girls headed away in separate directions, each to her own home. As Candy and Leah melted quickly into the night, Dillon, hurrying toward her own home, kept well away from the shadows. She didn’t like being out in the small hours alone, though she would never let the others know that. Her girlfriends were about the only family she had now that she could count on. Her mother was zilch, a zero. And her dad had caved. He didn’t fight back, he didn’t do anything. He was just very quiet, turning away even from her-so patient and tolerant with Helen that he made Dillon retch. If she’d been her dad, she’d have packed up and hauled out of there, the two of them. Leave Helen to ruin her life any way she wanted.

Or she’d have booted Helen out and changed the locks, let her move in with what’s-his-name.

But he wasn’t doing either; he wasn’t doing anything. Moving quickly along the dark streets, she was just a few blocks from home when she started thinking about that contractor, Ryan Flannery; when she saw suddenly a flash of green eyes and heard again the woman’s rude comments, there in the Harper kitchen.Bitch.

Except, hearing Ryan’s voice, for a moment Dillon was drawn beyond her anger. Ryan’s retort had been almost exactly the same as Captain Harper’s angry words.

And a small still voice down inside Dillon asked, what was she going to do about Ryan Flannery’s challenge?

15 [��������: pic_16.jpg]

Kate Osborne didn’t learn about Lucinda and Pedric’s deaths until Sunday evening as she waited for the elderly couple to arrive for their visit. Lucinda had called two nights before, to say they’d be there by late afternoon, that they would be driving down from somewhere near Russian River, some little out-of-the way campground. And Kate had to smile. She was sure Lucinda hadn’t had this much fun in all her adult life before she married Pedric. Her earlier marriage to Shamus, while busy with social functions and exciting for the first few years, had deteriorated as Lucinda aged, Lucinda staying home ignoring the truth while Shamus played fast and loose.

“I thought we’d eat in,” Kate had told her. “That you might be tired, so I’d planned a little something at home. I make a mean creole, if you’d like that.”

“That sounds like heaven,” Lucinda had said. “A hot shower and a good hot creole supper. Couldn’t be better. We’ll plan to take you out the next night.” Kate thought that maybe, with Lucinda and Pedric there, she could get her head on straight, maybe could look at her own problems more objectively. This last week had been so strange and unsettling.

She had actually grown reluctant to go out at all after dark, and that was so stupid. But of course she’d have to work late, if she were to finish with her present clients in a timely manner. The work week would have been satisfying if she hadn’t kept watching nervously for the man who had followed her to reappear.

At least she had found her extra keys in the drawer where she sometimes kept them; they had fallen down between the folds of her sweaters. That had eased her mind; and nothing in the apartment had, again, been disturbed. The windows had remained locked, and she saw no one lingering down in the street.

But still she was nervous. And then on Thursday evening, leaving work, she saw him. When she started out of the building, a man stood across the street, tucked into the darkness of an unlit doorway. She had stepped back inside her building.

She couldn’t tell if he was watching her, couldn’t tell if it was the same man. She had remained inside the glass door until he left the mosaic of shadows, ambling on down the street in plain view, a perfectly ordinary man wearing nondescript jeans and a brown windbreaker-but his face had been turned away. She wanted to see his face. And in spite of common sense, her fear escalated. The next day, did she imagine a shadow slipping away behind a building? Imagine that the man on the crowded sidewalk in broad daylight was keeping pace with her?

Then late last night she’d heard a series of thuds, either in the apartment or on the roof.

Taking her flashlight and her vial of pepper spray, she had made the rounds of her familiar rooms. Nothing had been amiss. But then this morning she’d noticed two desk drawers protruding, not pushed in all the way. And the couch and chair cushions were awry, and a kitchen cabinet door ajar. This had occurred after she had prowled at midnight. Then she found a wad of short black hair on the kitchen counter.

She had flushed it down the toilet and Cloroxed the countertop. She had no idea how the cat was getting in. No lock had been disturbed, and she had found her lost keys, though she supposed they could have been copied then returned to her. But what was the purpose? Consuela knew by now that the jewels were not here; she must have learned that the first time she searched the apartment.

Kate was not afraid of Consuela. And sheshouldnot be afraid of the black tomcat. On Sunday, with Lucinda and Pedric due to arrive, she hurried home from finishing a stack of orders at the office, showered, and dressed comfortably in a velour jogging suit and scuffs. She wanted dinner preparations finished early, as they would be there before dark. She boiled the shrimp and made the creole sauce and measured the rice to be cooked. She set the table in the little dining room with her new paisley place mats, and put together a salad with all but the two ripe avocados she’d selected from her hoard on the windowsill. She set an amaretto cheesecake out to thaw. The scent of the freshly boiled shrimp and of the creole sauce filled the apartment, stirring her hunger. She filled the coffeepot, using a specially ground decaf, and curled up on the couch near the phone with a book, waiting for Lucinda’s call that they were about to cross the Golden Gate. From the bridge, it was only ten minutes.

She read for some time Loren Eiseley’s keen observations of the world. Strange that they were so late; it was growing dusky. Traffic must be heavy; not a good time to come into the city, with people returning from the weekend. When it was nearly dark, she rose to pull the draperies. Before closing those on the east, she stood a moment looking out toward East Bay, watching the lights of Berkeley and Oakland smear and fade in the gathering fog. She hoped Lucinda and Pedric arrived before the fog grew thick. Making a weak drink, she returned to her book. Only belatedly did she pick up the phone to see if they had left a message on the service before she ever got home.

She no longer used an answering machine; three power outages with the resultant failure of the machine had prompted her to subscribe to the phone company’s uninterrupted reception even when the phones were out.

There was no beeping message signal. There was no sound at all from the receiver, no dial tone.

How long had the system been out? This happened every now and then, particularly in bad weather. As her apartment had not been disturbed, she didn’t think anyone had tampered with the line.

Lucinda didn’t have the number of her cell phone. Anyway, she realized suddenly, she’d left that phone in the car, plugged into the dash, the battery removed to keep it from turning to jelly She had meant to bring it up with her; now she did not want to go out in the night to get it. She was disgusted that she had forgotten it when all this last week she had carried the phone even when she walked.

It was nearly seven thirty when she poured herself another mild drink and decided to fix a plate of cheese and crackers to calm her rumbling stomach. Lucinda had said they’d been up around Fort Bragg, poking along the coast. They did love their rambling life. For a pair of eighty-year-olds, those two folks were remarkable. Slicing the cheese, she reached to turn on the little kitchen TV that had been a birthday present to herself. She didn’t watch much TV, but she liked to have the news on while she was getting dinner. Shaking out the crackers, she caught something about an accident in Sonoma County. An RV and a tanker truck. She glimpsed a brief shot of the wreck, the vehicles so badly burned you couldn’t tell what they had looked like. Fire trucks, police cars, and ambulances filled the screen. She stood at the kitchen counter unmoving.

When had this happened? This couldn’t be�

She relaxed when the newscaster said the collision had happened late last night. This had happened while Lucinda and Pedric were safely asleep in their RV, or in some cozy inn up the coast-not at a time when the Greenlaws would have been on the highway.

She didn’t like to look at the TV pictures. It was a terrible wreck, those poor people hadn’t had a chance. She had reached for the remote, to turn to another channel, when a cut of the newscaster came on, interviewing the Sonoma County sheriff. She paused, curious in spite of herself.

“Now that the nearest relatives have been notified, we are able to release the names of the deceased. The tanker driver, Ken Doyle of Concord, is survived by a wife and two young children.” There was a still shot of a dark-haired young woman holding a little boy and a fat baby. “The occupants of the RV were residents of Molena Point. Lucinda and Pedric Greenlaw had been�”

She couldn’t move. Suddenly she couldn’t breathe.

“� vacationing up the Northern California coast. The eighty-year-old newlyweds, who were married just last year in a Molena Point ceremony, were returning home to the central-coast village�”

She needed to sit down. She stood leaning against the counter, holding on to the counter, staring at the TV.

She had seen Lucinda and Pedric only a few weeks ago. She had spent the evening with them. She left the kitchen, making her way to the living room and the couch, which seemed miles.

Sat with her head down between her knees as she had been taught as a child, until the nausea passed.

Why would Lucinda and Pedric be on the road late at night?

A long time later she rose to put the shrimp and creole sauce and salad in the refrigerator. Standing in the kitchen with her back to the TV and the sound turned off, she made herself a double whiskey and took it into the living room.

But there, she couldn’t help it, she turned on the larger TV mindlessly changing channels looking for more news, though she did not want to see any more. The wreck had happened Saturday night while she lay sleeping. Today she had gone about her pointless affairs while Lucinda and Pedric lay dead. She had stopped at the grocery, buying shrimp, flowers for the table, imagining the thin, wrinkled couple tooling along in their nice RV, stopping at antique shops, stopping to eat cracked crab� Staring at the TV, she didn’t know what to do or what to think. She simply sat.

Did Wilma know? She ought to call Wilma. Should she call Clyde, ask Clyde to tell Wilma? Clyde was closer to Wilma than she was, they were like family. If they knew, why hadn’t they called her?

And she couldn’t call out; the line was dead.

She’d have to go down and get her cell phone. How stupid, to have left it in the car. Fetching her keys, she pulled on her coat, snatched up the pepper spray, locked the door behind her, and went down the stairs, hating this sense of fear. Reaching the garage she moved quickly, watching between other cars. Unlocking her Riviera she snatched up the phone, hit the lock, and slammed the door. She was up the stairs and in the apartment again before fear had immobilized her. This was crazy; she couldn’t live like this. On a hunch, she tried the apartment phone again-and got the insistent beeping of the message service.

Sitting down on the couch with the now functioning phone, she started to play back her messages, then decided first to call Clyde. She needed, very much, to hear his gruff and reassuring voice.

The downstairs rooms of the Damen cottage were dark, but upstairs behind the closed shutters the bedroom and study were bright, the desk lamp lit, a warming fire burning in the study where Clyde sat at his desk filling out parts orders. Or trying to, working around the prone body of the sleeping gray tomcat where he lay sprawled across the catalogs. Far be it from Joe to move. Far be it from Clyde, who found the tomcat as amusing as he was exasperating, to ask him.

Ryan had left half an hour ago, after an early supper in the big new kitchen: takeout from their favorite Mexican cafe. Impatiently waiting for the building permit for the Harper place, she had gone home to her blueprints, anxious to finish putting together a design proposal for a remodel at the north end of the village. “I want to get that wrapped up, so I can concentrate on the Harper job.”

“You are not,” Clyde had said, “going to get so busy that you keep pulling men off one job to work on another, like most contractors? Delaying all the jobs?”

“No fear.” She had grinned at him, flipping back her short dark hair. “I can manage my work better than that.” She had given him a warm, green-eyed smile and laid her hand over his; her closeness led him, more and more lately, to imagine her always there with him. He sat at his desk now thinking about Ryan sharing the house, comfortable and warm and exciting.

Clyde’s view of women had changed dramatically since the time, a few years back, when every conquest was exciting, when every new looker was a challenge even if he couldn’t stand her as a person. Joe Grey had chided him more than once about bringing home some airhead. Well, that life was not for him anymore; the idea of bringing home some bimbo now disgusted him.

The change had started when Kate left her husband and came to him for help. He had been so smitten with her, and for so long, but after that night when he had hidden her from Jimmie, he had been so confused by her bizarre nature.

He had mooned over Kate for a long time after that, but she had distanced herself. She had known better than he that with the difference between them a relationship would never work; she had seen too clearly his fear of her impossible talents.

The night she left Jimmie and came running here to him, he would not believe what she told him about her alternate self, although her feline nature was part of the reason Jimmie wanted to kill her. In order to prove to him what she could do, she had done it. Standing before him, whispering some unlikely spell, she had taken the form of a cat. A cream-colored cat, sleek and beautiful, with golden eyes like Kate’s and marmalade markings.

His fear had been considerable. He had charged into the bedroom and slammed the door and wouldn’t open it. He did not want to see her again in either form. The next day he’d been better, although the concept still shook him. He became civil once more; but he would never get over it.

And yet even after that shattering incident, he had longed for her, had tried every way to get her to come home again after she moved to San Francisco.

Neither Joe nor Dulcie could take human form. Nor did Joe Grey want to; the tomcat said he liked his life as it was, that the talents hehadwere plenty. Well, the upshot for Clyde was that he had begun to look at a woman as aperson.To want to know who she was and what she thought about life.

While pining over Kate, he had dated Charlie, a woman as honest and real as anyone he’d ever known. It was then he had let himself realize, as he had known deeply all along, what the real values were. It was then he put away his shallow philosophy and turned, as Max had done years before, to look at what a woman believed deep down, what she cared about in life.

Joe Grey would say, big sea change. The tomcat had ragged him plenty about his earlier lifestyle. Clyde stared down at Joe now. The tomcat seemed to make himself twice as big when he sprawled across a desk where a person was working. “You wouldn’t consider rolling over, so I can finish this order?”

Joe stared up at him, his yellow eyes wide and innocent. “You think you should try Kate again? The phone has to be out, it wouldn’t be busy all this time, even Kate can’t talk that long-but she has to be home, she’s expecting Lucinda and Pedric, she’ll be worried.”

They had been trying all evening to get her, calling both the house and her cell phone. Clyde wished he had started calling that morning. Both he and Wilma had been waiting for more information, for the sheriff to find the bodies, for some assurance the old couple had indeed been killed. Then when he tried to get Kate this evening, busy signal. “I left a dozen messages on her cell phone. Why the hell doesn’t she check her messages!”

Joe said, “Maybe by now she’s had the TV on. If it’s been on the news, she�”

Again Clyde hit the redial. If shehadseen the news, if she knew, maybe she was talking with Wilma.

He got another busy. Five minutes passed as he tried to work, patiently lifting Joe’s gray paw to check a price, peering under a gray ear to retrieve a parts number.

“Try again,” Joe said. “I’m worried about her.”

Clyde tried three more times before Kate’s phone rang. Just one ring, and she picked up. Clyde left the speaker on so Joe wouldn’t crowd him pressing against the phone. “Kate? You okay?”

“No, I’m not okay. Did you�”

“You heard the news.”

“This can’t have happened. It’s impossible to believe. What were they doing out on the highway in the middle of the night? If they’d had some emergency, say one of them got sick, they’d have called the medics. Or the sheriff. Or a cab. They’d been staying in a campground, they could have called the manager. Have you talked with anyone up there? The highway patrol? The Sonoma County sheriff? What have they found? Couldn’t it be some kind of mistake? The wrong RV. Or maybe they-”

Clyde said, “Wilma talked with the sheriff. They’ve had a crew there all day going through the wreckage.”

“And?”

“They-So far, no bodies. Nothing much at all left.” He glanced at Joe. “It was a terrible fire, Kate. Ashes, rubble. The truck driver� they did find his body, in his crashed truck. The truck wasn’t burned as badly as the RV.”

Kate was silent for a long time. When she spoke again, her voice was very small. “They were so happy together. Their late marriage was like a fairy tale, like one of their Old-World folktales. It isn’t fair. They were having such a good time traveling. And planning to build their dream house�”

Clyde stared at the phone.

“It’s all wrong,” Kate said. “Their campsite hadn’t been vacated, they left canvas chairs, a folding table set up under the pines. The late news said some towels were left hanging on a portable line, an expensive bear-proof garbage can.”

The fur along Joe Grey’s spine felt rigid. His paws were cold as he sorted through the facts-Lucinda and Pedric heading for San Francisco to stay with Kate, Lucinda with the same kind of jewelry that Consuela had gone to steal from Kate and that the appraiser had tried to buy.

Moving closer to the phone, Joe placed a paw on Clyde’s hand, staring at the speaker.

Clyde scowled and shoved the phone at him.

“In spite of this mess,” Joe said into the speaker, “one seemingly unrelated question. Did you get there in time?”

“I did,” she said sadly. “I moved it all, thanks to you. I wanted to call but I� Joe, that cat has been here. Inside my apartment.”

“The cat can’t hurt you, Kate.” He paused. He wasn’t sure of that. “But Consuela could,” he said staring at the phone. This whole gig made him edgy; this stuff was happening too far away, and there were too many loose pieces, events that didn’t add up. “Come home, Kate. Come back to the village now.” He glanced at Clyde. “You can stay with us.”

Clyde looked surprised, then nodded.

“And I’ve been followed,” Kate said.

“Followed where? When was this? Consuela? Who?”

“A man. I�”

Clyde nudged Joe away from the speaker. “Did you report it to the police? Do you know him?”

“I� No. And I didn’t report it, not yet.”

“Why not?“Clyde snapped. “Never mind. Kate, get a second appraisal on the jewelry. This is all too weird.”

“Emerson Bristol has an excellent reputation, Clyde. He’s a big name in the city.”

“You researched the subject,” Clyde said. “You know that such unusual work, made by a master craftsman, ought to be cataloged somewhere. Even if it is paste. You said you’ve been through all the catalogs, the books in San Francisco Public and in the museums. Don’t you think it’s strange that there’s absolutely no mention of it?”

“Yes,” she said in a small voice.

“I don’t like this. Joe’s right. Come home, Kate. Bring that stuff down here to someone in the village-someone Harper recommends.”

“I have so much work, installations�”

“Come home, Kate. Come now.”

“I� After tonight, I feel all in pieces. Will you call me when you know more about Lucinda and Pedric? More about what happened?”

Clyde sighed. “I’ll call you.”

“And� there’s something else,” she said. “I almost forgot. Likely it’s nothing, but� I threw out some newspapers when I was cleaning up, but I saved one. It was dated three days before Charlie’s gallery opening. There was a jewel robbery here, on Market Street. A cheap, touristy kind of place. It happened around six in the evening, just before the shop closed. The police got there before the three men could get away. They arrested two, but the third man got a cop down and escaped. The paper said he took a hard blow to the forehead, the store owner hit him with a brick. It’s probably coincidence,” Kate said, “but I�”

“Harper is checking the police records for fights,” Clyde said with interest. “For batterings, anything like that. He’s sure to catch it, but I’ll tell him. Save the paper, the date. And come home, Kate. Where it’s safe. We all miss you.”

“I’ll think about it, Clyde. Good-night, you guys.” Her voice was weepy. “Good-night,” she whispered. “I guess I feel better.”

When Clyde hung up, Joe dropped off the desk and leaped to Clyde’s new leather easy chair that sat before the fire. Clyde had brought the Molena PointGazetteupstairs with him. The Greenlaw accident filled the upper half of the front page. Scanning the article, he saw with disappointment that it gave no more information than the TV news had supplied.

The lower half of the page was devoted to Saturday night’s clothing store burglary. Alice’s Mirror had been relieved of its highest-priced stock. There was no sign of forced entry. The theft hadn’t been discovered until this morning when the owner opened the store for the usual Sunday tourists.

Joe sat staring into the fire, wondering how much he should tell Clyde. It was just this morning, the morning after the Greenlaw accident, that Kit had told Joe himself, and Dulcie, about the missing key.

After their night on Hellhag Hill, Joe had awakened very late, alone in the rumpled bed. The bedside clock said 8:15, half the day gone, from any cat’s point of view. Clyde would long ago have gone to work. Joe was crawling out from among the tangled sheets when the phone rang. He didn’t knock the bedside phone from its cradle, but trotted through to the study. Leaping to the desk, he listened as the machine answered.

Only one word was spoken.“Joe?“Dulcie hissed.

He hit the speaker.“Damen residence.”

“Jolly’s,“she said softly and immediately hung up.

He hit the erase button and was out of there, leaping to the rafter above the desk and up through his rooftop cat door.

Pausing in his private tower for a drink of water, he raced out across the shingles, then along an oak branch, across slanting and angled roofs until he was forced to descend to the sidewalk, at the divided lanes and grassy median of Ocean Avenue. Crossing Ocean among the feet of a group of tourists, he shied away from their reaching hands.What a smart cat, crossing the street with us� Cute kitty�Do you think he’s lost? We could�Dodging away, he headed for Jolly’s alley. Dulcie’s voice had sounded desperate. All manner of disasters, most of them involving the kit, had raced through his tomcat mind as he swerved along the sidewalks and at last into Jolly’s alley.

16 [��������: pic_17.jpg]

Belting into the alley, Joe found Dulcie and the kit crouched beneath the jasmine vine beside the deli’s back door, their ears down, their eyes filled with distress. Though it was midmorning, the alley was empty. No other cats, no tourists. George Jolly’s ever-present offering of delicacies stood untouched before the closed deli door. The kit had not even sampled the smoked salmon and egg custard. She sat staring listlessly down at her paws. Joe nudged at her, deeply distressed by her grieving for Lucinda and Pedric. Pushing in beneath the vine, he nosed at her. When she glanced up at him, the kit looked not only heartbroken, but ashamed.

“What?” Joe said. Dulcie, too, looked devastated.“What?“he repeated. “What’s with you two?”

“She took the key,” the kit said.

“Who did? What key?”

“Dillon. I should have told before but I thought� I didn’t want her to be in trouble.”

“Whatkey, Kit? Key to what?”

But he knew.

“The key to the back door of Alice’s Mirror,” Dulcie said. “The store that was burglarized last night. It was on the local news this morning.”

“I followed them,” the kit said. “The four girls. One afternoon weeks ago. Followed them into Alice’s Mirror. They were acting so� I just knew they were going to do something. I slipped inside behind a rack of satin and velvet and I watched them. Dillon looked so� sort of wandering pretending not to look all around. Like a bird when it’s busy pecking the ground but really watching you. She was wandering just beside the door to the shop’s office, admiring a rack of blouses, sliding them along-then she vanished.

“I could see her in the office where customers aren’t supposed to go, so I went in there behind her. She didn’t see me; I slid behind some boxes and watched.” The kit sighed. “She took a key from a hook beside the desk and slipped out again and left the shop. Her two friends picked out some clothes, asked a clerk some questions about them and took them to a fitting room. I went outside and saw Dillon down the street, handing something to Consuela. Consuela turned and hurried away. I went up an oak tree until she came back and gave it back to Dillon; it was a key. Dillon went back inside the shop. I followed and watched her put it back in the office, hang it on a little hook. Then in a minute, all three girls left and they met Consuela outside.

“And I ran home.

“But I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t want to tell Wilma or you or anyone. I knew I should call Captain Harper, but I didn’t want to get Dillon in trouble and make the captain feel worse about her, so I didn’t do anything. I curled up under the afghan and tried to sleep and pretend it didn’t happen.”

Joe Grey listened quietly. All along, Kit had carried this burden, wanting to protect Dillon. Kit looked up at him. “They copied it, didn’t they? In one of those key places. It was all over the news. The burglary.”

Joe nuzzled her and licked her ear, and the three cats looked at one another. What was happening to Dillon? And, more to the point, what were they to do about it?

Joe said, “It’s time to tell the captain.”

The kit’s eyes widened; but she didn’t argue. She just looked very sad.

“The closest key maker to Alice’s Mirror,” Joe said, “is Jarman’s, just down the street behind the fire station. Otherwise she’d have to go out on the highway.” Thoughtfully he licked his paw. “Mr. Jarman would remember her.”

Harry Jarman was an elderly, round-faced, gray-haired, gentle old man who had been making keys for the village ever since he was a young fellow. He knew everyone in Molena Point. Even though Consuela hadn’t been in the village long, the old man would know who she was, he didn’t miss a thing. If he had made a key for Consuela Benton, he would remember that.

Dulcie licked the kit’s ear. “Don’t grieve, Kit. You did just right to tell us. This is best for Dillon, she can’t go on like this, she’d have no life.” Dulcie looked at Joe. “You want to call the captain, or shall I?”

“I’ll call him. I can tell him Consuela took the key to be copied. I don’t have to mention Dillon.”

Dulcie’s eyes widened. The kit’s ears pricked up, and her tail lifted more cheerfully. But as the three cats headed for Dulcie’s house and the phone, Joe himself felt frustrated and sad. Even if he didn’t mention Dillon, Garza and Harper would know; they would quickly uncover the younger girl’s role in the matter. And, glancing at Dulcie, he knew she was thinking the same.

Before Max Harper had the interior of the building that housed Molena Point PD remodeled, his desk had occupied a six-by-six space at the back of the open squad room. He’d had no walls for privacy, no bookshelves, preferring, then, a work area where he could see and hear everything that went on among his officers: a sacrifice of privacy for control that Harper no longer needed. Now, since the remodeling, the captain enjoyed the luxury of real walls and a solid door, which he had quickly come to appreciate. Charlie said he’d lived a spartan life long enough. She had bought the leather couch as an anniversary present: one month married, time to celebrate. She had added two red leather easy chairs and a bright India rug from their own home. Three of Charlie’s drawings hung on the walls where Max could enjoy them, portraits of Max’s gelding, Bucky. Harper’s work calendar and charts stood in a rack to the right of his desk, at easy glance for the chief but not openly displayed to visitors-though that did not deter Joe Grey.

Joe entered Harper’s office this morning on the heels of Mabel Farthy, the blond and portly dispatcher, as she delivered Harper’s early lunch, her approach down the hall wafting the scent of garlic and pastrami like a long and diaphanous bridal veil behind her. As Mabel set the takeout bag on the desk, and Harper turned to slip some reports into the file drawer, a swift gray shadow slid behind the couch.

Charlie had carefully arranged the furniture with the cats in mind. The couch stood as near the door as she could manage, and she had chosen a style with legs high enough so Joe and Dulcie didn’t have to squeeze down like pancakes. Feline surveillance didn’t have to be an exercise in flattened spines and shallow breathing.

Joe, drinking in the heavy aroma of pastrami, watched two sets of shoes enter: Detective Garza’s tan leather loafers and Detective Juana Davis’s regulation black oxfords over black stockings. Garza settled into one of the red leather chairs, stretching out his long legs. His tan chinos were neatly pressed, his Dockers fashionably scuffed.

Beneath the couch, Joe made sure his paws were out of sight-he didn’t want to appear to be spying.

Dallas Garza had a deep fondness for fine hunting dogs, but until recently he had never understood, or given much thought to, cats-until Joe Grey came on the scene. Working judiciously on Garza’s attitude, Joe had seen the detective develop, over many months, an almost passable fondness for certain felines, at least for those cats who crossed his professional path.

Having spent a week freeloading in the Garza cottage closely observing the detective, Joe had decided that he could trust this new addition to the department. Of course Garza had no notion of the intimate telephone conversations and interdepartmental reports that he had shared that week with the gray tomcat.

As Joe pulled in his paws, Detective Davis sat down at the end of the couch just above him. As she slipped off her shoes and tucked her feet up under her, her shifting weight forced little squinching noises from the new leather. Protocol was not an issue with these three; you could take your shoes off if you liked. Only honesty and ethics mattered. Juana, Max, and Dallas played poker together, usually in Clyde and Joe’s kitchen.

As the three tucked into their deli lunch, Joe couldn’t help an occasional drool dampening Harper’s new carpet. Listening to paper rattling and the sounds of their satisfied munching amid small talk, he had a long and hungry wait before Harper laid down his sandwich and picked up a file of reports.

Covetously Joe eyed the sandwich, but told himself to forget it. He could see from his position beneath the couch a long reflection in the glass-fronted bookcase that gave him a view of Harper’s desk. This thoughtful touch, too, had been Charlie’s. She and Joe had tested it early one morning when Harper was downstairs on the indoor pistol range.

Harper looked up at Garza. “You have no indication that Quinn’s house had been broken into.”

“None,” Garza said. “And no other prints besides Quinn’s. Only Quinn’s prints on the handle of the gas jet, where of course his prints would be.”

Harper shuffled the stack of papers. “There seems nothing out of place here, among his real estate transactions. Both Helen and their broker have been over everything, found nothing out of the way, except for the missing notebook. You searched the real estate office?”

“Yes,” Davis said. “The broker, James Holland, helped Helen look for the notebook while I waited. They ransacked the entire office. We searched Quinn’s car again, took out the seats, everything short of dismantling the vehicle.”

“The notebook may be of no value,” Harper said, “but the case is open until it’s found.”

The three were silent, finishing their lunches. Harper asked Davis about two identity thefts that had been reported, both involving scams on local residents. These piqued Joe’s interest because this was the first he’d heard about them. Crimes like identity theft made him glad he was a cat without the encumbrance of a charge card, social security number, and other invitations to embezzlement.

“The victims are getting their papers together,” Davis said. “Paid bills, canceled checks. Both have retained attorneys. The one woman, Sheila James, is looking at a five-thousand-dollar-a-month mortgage on a house that is, in fact, completely paid for. The other folks, Ron and Sandy Bueller, moved here just a year ago. Six new credit card accounts in their name, some sixty thousand in debts outstanding, so far, plus payments on a two-million-dollar piece of land in the north part of the county that they didn’t buy and have never seen.”

Davis shifted her position on the couch; the leather creaked again. “All of that within the space of a week. And we have nothing so far. Zilch.”

That, Joe knew, was par for the course in these cases. The officers discussed every possible venue at their disposal to get a line on the guy; Davis and Garza were working on them all, and would keep digging; the loopholes, the lack of ways to nail these thieves was, Joe thought, like chasing mice through a metal grating: the chasee escapes, the chaser bangs his nose on the barrier.

“What about the Greenlaw accident?” Davis said. “Still no bodies?”

“Not so much as a scorched bone,” Harper told her. “Sheriff thinks, now, that neither of the Greenlaws was in the RV when it crashed. He’s searching the area, thinking they might have been murdered and dumped before the wreck.

“If they were alive,” Harper said, “someone would have heard from them. Wilma, certainly. She’s not only Lucinda’s friend, but her executor. She’s ready to drive up there, car gassed up, suitcase packed. She’d like to help the sheriff’s teams search but right now there’s nothing she can do that they’re not on top of. Sheriff has dogs out, the works.”

“They’re eighty years old,” Garza said. “There are some desolate stretches in those forests.”

“Eighty years old and tough as boots,” Harper replied. “Certainly Pedric is. And Lucinda, since they married, has become just about as strong mentally and emotionally. When Shamas was alive, Lucinda was little more than a wilting violet, acted like she was scared of her own shadow.”

Harper studied his two detectives. “I had a call this morning, about the burglary at Alice’s Mirror.

“Our favorite snitch,” Harper said, “suggested we ask Harry Jarman about a key he might have duplicated for Consuela Benton.” The captain smiled. “I picked up a key from Alice’s Mirror this morning, stopped by Jarman’s with it. He remembered Consuela coming in a couple of weeks ago. I laid seven keys on the counter, six from my own pocket.

“He picked it out right away. Remembered he’d used the last blank like that, and had to order more.”

Davis gave a little pleased”All right!“Dallas laughed softly.

“I have aBe-on-the-lookoutfor Consuela,” Harper said. “Soon as we can print her, if we get a match, maybe we can make a case and get a warrant for the cottage she’s renting up on Carpenter. I understand the garage is part of the rental deal.”

Beneath the couch, Joe Grey grinned.Right on, Kit,he thought, both saddened and relieved.You nailed her. And if the department can make Consuela for masterminding the burglary, maybe it will go easier for Dillon.And, Joe thought, the cops might need a warrant to toss Consuela’s rental. But a cat didn’t.

The three officers moved on to the rash of coastal burglaries, and for over an hour they discussed the various reports from up and down the California coast, comparing MOs. The information from some two dozen fences was all negative. None of the stolen items had been traced to any of the known fences. The burglaries covered the geographic area from Malibu in the south to Point Reyes in the north, and inland as far as Oakland and Berkeley and Thousand Oaks. Garza had prepared a chart on the computer, listing the dates of the burglaries, the time of day they were discovered, the length of time since the items had last been seen. In the case of jewelry kept in a home safe, the lapse of time might amount to several months, the piece in question might have disappeared at any time during that period. There had been no report at all on Clyde’s antique Packard.

Peering out from beneath the couch, Joe could barely see the chart without being seen himself, without his gray-and-white nose and whiskers protruding. As the three officers talked, Davis swung one stockinged foot over, twiddling her toes just inches from Joe’s nose. Her feet smelled of talcum powder. Dallas’s chart showed all social gatherings at each address within the last three years, with size and description of events, from dinner parties to charity functions. An addendum provided guest lists, and lists of household help and maintenance people for each event.

None of the houses had been for sale, none had been shown to buyers. Joe was awed at Garza’s thoroughness, and at the details possible when law enforcement from different cities shared information. Seven names surfaced as guests in more than two of the burgled residences. Joe grew so interested, pushing out farther and farther, that his whiskers brushed Juana’s ankle. She jerked her foot away and leaned over, peering under the couch to see what was there.

Joe Grey was gone, curled into a ball among the shadows of the far corner, hiding the white markings on his face and chest and paws, and squinching his eyes closed.

When Juana decided there was nothing under there and settled back, Joe crept out again where he could see. It was interesting that, of the list of guests, three had themselves been victims of that rash of bizarre thefts. The statistics were broken down further into a morass of facts, which, without the written information before him, left the tomcat’s head spinning.

He watched enviously as Garza printed it all out and stepped down the hall to the dispatcher’s desk to make copies. He would dearly love to have that printout. But even without a copy, two names on the list held Joe’s attention.

A woman up the coast in Marin County had attended four of the listed affairs, all charity events. And Molena Point’s own Marlin Dorriss had been a guest at five of those houses, at private dinner parties.

In no case had the two been guests at the same function.

“Dorriss knows everyone,” Detective Davis said. “He’s all over the state, on the board of a dozen museums and as many charities.” She laughed. “Until this business with Helen Thurwell, Dorriss appeared to be without flaw in his personal life. And that,” she said coolly, “is all the more reason to check him out.”

Dallas said, “Max, you talked with Susan Dorriss-Susan Brittain? Her husband was Marlin Dorriss’s brother? Why did she suddenly change back to her maiden name, all these years after her husband died?”

“She’s never been close to her brother-in-law,” Harper said. “Something to do with Dorriss’s two sons, her husband’s nephews. Bad apples, Susan says. She didn’t see much of Dorriss when they all lived in San Francisco. Said that not until after she moved down to the village to be with her daughter, did she know that Marlin had a place here.

“Then she had that accident and was in the nursing home, and she didn’t think much about him. But after she recovered and was back in her own place she ran into Marlin. That distressed her, that he was living here. That’s when she decided to drop the name, exhibit no more connection with him than necessary.”

“All because of his sons?” Juana asked.

“She said they were impossible as young boys and she’d heard they were no better now. She was very critical of the way Marlin raised them. I got the impression that if she’d known he had a home in the village part-time, she might not have moved to Molena Point at all.”

“Interesting,” Garza said. “Didn’t her daughter tell her?”

“No, she didn’t,” Max said. “Susan thinks that’s because her daughter wanted her to move down, to get out of the city. I’d give a month’s pay to see his phone and Visa bills, his gas station receipts. See if we could put him in those locations during the burglaries.”

“That’s stretching a bit,” Dallas said. “No way the judge would issue a search warrant on that kind of conjecture. And if we went directly to the phone company and to his credit card people, if we got into that gray area�”

“I don’t like to beat a dead horse,” Davis said, “but life was simpler twenty years ago.”

Garza grunted in agreement, then the three were silent. And beneath the couch, Joe Grey smiled. Marlin Dorriss might be as innocent and clean as driven snow, but the guy was worth checking out.

17 [��������: pic_18.jpg]

On a rocky point just at the south edge of the village, Marlin Dorriss’s villa rose among giant boulders that had been tumbled there eons before by the earth’s angry upheaval. Its montage of angles and converging planes reflected moving light from the sea’s crashing waves. The pale structure seemed, to some, harsh and ungiving. Others, including Dorriss himself, admired the play of light across its pristine surfaces, the shifting shadows always changing beneath swiftly blowing skies.

Few windows faced the street. Those slim openings, like gun slits, glinted now in the morning sun as Joe Grey slunk among the boulders. Studying the house, he prayed that he hadn’t left Dulcie in danger as she went to investigate Consuela’s rented house. He had made her promise that if she heard any noise from within, any small hint of a human presence, she’d get the hell out of there fast.

“What can happen? So I’m hunting mice. If a mouse ran in through an open window, why wouldn’t I follow?”

“Not everyone loves a prowling cat. Just be careful.”

“You’re feeling guilty because you suggested this gig and you’re not coming with me. I think it’s a blast. Who knows what I’ll find?”

“I had hoped the kit-”

Dulcie had flashed him a look of green-eyed impatience. “Idon’t know where she is. Andyouknow she’d only make trouble. She’d be into everything, and I’m always afraid she’ll start talking a mile a minute.”

But Joe had parted from Dulcie with an unaccustomed fear tickling along his spine, a taut wariness that almost made him turn back. Only the urgency of Marlin Dorriss’s personal papers led him on, calling to him like the sound of mice scurrying in the walls.

It would set him up big time to lay his claws on the precise evidence that Max Harper would so like to obtain, papers that Harper’s officers couldn’t legally search for, and without which they might never have the lead they needed-if indeed Dorrisswasinvolved in these high-class thefts.

And if Dorriss wasn’t the thief, nothing lost. A few hours’ adventure.

“You’re courting trouble,” Dulcie had told him. “Getting too bold. That place is huge, and built like a fort. Let me come�”

“We really need to know where the stolen clothes are hidden,” he’d said, and had bullied until he sent her away; and now he couldn’t stop worrying about her. She had left him, scowling, her ears back, her tail lashing, her parting words, “You’re going to trip on your own claws if you’re not careful,” ringing in his ears as he crossed the village.

But what was life for, if not to balance on the edge? He just didn’t want to put Dulcie in that danger. Consuela’s small house led itself to quicker escape. Anyway, he had not the faintest notion that he would fail. With sufficient tenacity and clever paw work, why should he fail? Every human had bills to pay; every human kept his paid bills stashed in some drawer or cubbyhole.

“And how,” Dulcie had said, “are you going to keep from implicating Detectives Garza and Davis? You daren’t make it look like one of them broke into Dorriss’s. They both were there in Harper’s office when he talked about the bills.”

Joe had been worrying about that. He’d told Dulcie, “No problem. I’ll think about that after the deed.” If he could find evidence that Dorriss had been in those towns at the time of the burglaries, Harper would have something to work on. It had to be frustrating to have a multimillion-dollar case like this and not a useful bit of evidence. Harper and Dallas Garza’s strong cop-sense that Dorriss could be involved was good enough, anytime, for Joe Grey.

A granite-paved parking area curved before the front of the house, between the huge pale boulders and the natural, informal gardens. Granite flagstones led to the heavily carved front door that was recessed beneath a white slab. Above the door at either side, surveillance cameras looked down on Joe. To a master of break-and-enter, the place looked like Fort Knox. He hoped to hell those cameras weren’t running at the moment, closely monitoring him. Even if he was only an innocent feline, electronic surveillance made him nervous-though Dorriss ought to be happy to have a stray cat wandering the property ridding the area of unwanted moles and gophers.

Passing the entry he trotted along the side of the house to the back, into a fine mist of sea spray. Crossing the stone patio he stood looking back at the house. Only here facing the sea were there wide expanses of glass looking out at the boulders and the crashing surf. The huge windows would, from within, afford an unbroken view of the Pacific.

The patio was protected from the wind by a six-foot glass wall, its panels skillfully fitted around the mountains of granite. From this sunny shelter a stone walk led down the cliff to the sea, doubling back and forth in comfortable angles until it reached the sand far below. For a few moments Joe crouched at the edge of the cliff rocked by the sea wind, caught in the timeless dance of the violent sea; then he turned away, approaching the house through the glassed patio.

He paused, startled.

Either luck was with him, or a trap had been laid.

Of the four pairs of sliding glass doors that opened to the seaward patio, the one at the far end stood open perhaps four inches, just wide enough for a cat to slip through.

Looking along the bottom of the glass he saw where it was locked in place so no one larger could enter. Higher up where the glass door joined the wall, he saw the tiny red lights of an activated security system, a strip of lights that rose from six inches above the floor to about six feet, a barrier impossible for a human to circumvent unless he was circus-thin and agile enough to slide in on his belly, or was a skilled high jumper. Sniffing all around the open glass he could catch no animal scent, cat or otherwise, could smell only salty residue from the sea spray. He could see no one inside the room beyond the glass, but the place was huge, with angles and niches that might conceal an army.

Slipping beneath the electronic barrier ready to spin and run, he eased beyond the beam. Once inside, he expected his every move to trigger an interior beam, but no alarm sounded. Uneasily he rose to his full height, his gray ears pricked, his short stub tail erect, his yellow eyes searching every angle of the furniture, dissecting every shadow. Still no alarm-and talk about architectural bravado!

The walls of the soaring, two-story great room were hung with large and vivid action paintings from the mid-1950s. Thanks to Dulcie’s coaching, he recognized several Diebenkorns, two Bischoffs, half a dozen Braden Wests. Opening from this soaring gallery were a dozen low, cavelike seating niches, cozy conversation alcoves that were tucked beneath the floor above. Each little retreat was furnished in a different style designed around some esoteric collection. One conversation area featured miniature landscapes. One was designed to set off a group of steel sculptures. In another, couch and chairs were tucked among huge six-foot-tall chess pieces. An array of carved wooden chests and small cupboards was arranged among soft velvet seating. Joe could imagine Dulcie and Kit prowling here for hours, riven with delight at every new discovery, rolling on every velvet settee and handwoven cushion.

Keeping to the shadows, scanning every niche to make sure he was alone, he expected any second to see someone sitting among the exhibits, silent and still, watching him. Or to come face to face with whatever animal, most likely a cat, enjoyed access through the open glass door. At the back of the room, behind a vast, two-sided fireplace, was a dining room with dark blue-gray walls. The huge carved table and chairs were rubbed with white, the chair seats upholstered in white. He would not have noticed these niceties if he had not spent so many hours with Dulcie. At every break-and-enter, she had to admire, examine, and comment upon the decor.

In the left-hand wall of the dining room, a door stood open to the kitchen. Far to the left of the kitchen an entry hall led to the carved front door, and here rose a broad and angled stairway. Was Dorriss’s office up there on the second floor, his desk and files? Or did Dorriss have a secretary hidden away in some village office to take care of business matters? Likely he relied on a broker in some large firm to tend to his investments, but he had to have letters, personal bills. Wouldn’t a house of this size and quality have a safe? Did Dorriss keep his stocks and bonds at home, along with the valuable pieces of antique silver and jewelry that he was known to collect?

Skilled as he was with his paws, Joe’s expertise did not, as yet, include safecracking. Anyway he was here for bills, not silver. Who kept their Visa bills in a locked safe? Contemplating the possible extent of Dorriss’s security arrangements, and his skin rippling with nerves, he made for the wide stairway.

Leaping up the carpeted stair, he gained the top step and stood listening, sniffing the soft flow of air from open windows somewhere on this floor, seeking any waft of human or cat scent. The house was meticulously clean; peering into a bedroom, he could see that the spaces under the chairs had all been freshly vacuumed. He could smell the faint afterbreath of the vacuum cleaner, that dusty aroma ejected through the dust bag even in the most expensive of models-though this dust-scented air was perfumed, as well, with cinnamon. Likely the housekeeper added powdered cinnamon to the fresh dust bags. Joe knew that trick-both Clyde and Wilma did it, to delicately perfume the house. Surely Clyde had learned the habit from Wilma, he’d never have thought of it on his own. The spice was far superior to air fresheners, which made Joe and Dulcie sneeze.

The wide upstairs hall was lit from above by a row of angled skylights. Paintings were spaced along both walls, again work by Diebenkorn, Bischoff, West, and James Weeks. Each piece had to be worth enough to keep Joe in caviar for ninety-nine cat lives. Five bedrooms opened from the hall. Each was handsomely designed, but none looked or smelled lived in. Only the last room, on his left, smelled of recent occupancy and looked as if it were regularly occupied; the shelves were cluttered with books and papers and several small pieces of sculpture, the smell of aftershave mixed with the scent of leather, and of charred wood from the fireplace. The fireplace was laid with fresh logs over a gas starter. The paneled wall on either side looked hand-carved, the oak slabs thick and heavy.

The master bedroom joined Dorriss’s study through an inner hall, which also opened to the master bath and dressing room. This suite occupied the entire south end of the second floor. Around Joe the house was silent, the only sound the dulled crashing of the sea and the whispering insistence of the sea wind. Intently listening he trotted into Dorriss’s office and leaped to the desk.

The desk faced a wall of glass; one of the three panels was cracked open a few inches. Crouching on the blotter with his nose to the window, Joe had the sensation of floating untethered above the cliff and the sea.

A fax machine stood beside a phone. Dorriss’s computer occupied an adjacent worktable of boldly carved African design. The monitor was the newest model, flat, slim of line, dark gray in color. There were no file cabinets, but the desk had one file drawer. How would all of Dorriss’s various business and charity pursuits be conducted with no more file space than that one drawer? At home, Clyde’s automotive interests overflowed four file cabinets and all the bookshelves, plus six more file cabinets at the automotive shop. Did Dorriss keep all his business records in the computer? For the first time Joe wished he’d brought Dulcie; she could get into that computer like a snatching paw into a mouse hole.

With her official position as Molena Point library cat, Dulcie’s access to the library computers, and her interest in such matters, had allowed her to become more than conversant with the daunting world of megabytes and hard drives. That, plus her female-feline stubbornness, assured that no computer program would outsmart this sweet tabby.

Joe stared at the computer wishing that he’d paid attention. Instead, he tackled the desk drawers, surprised to find them unlocked. Clawing the top drawer open, he wondered if, any second, he’d trigger a screaming alarm. Or a silent alarm that would alert some private security company? Because why would Dorriss leave his desk unlocked unless he had it cleverly wired?

Or unless he kept nothing of value here.

The smaller drawers contained only office supplies: pencils, pens, paperclips, various-size labels, and thick cream-colored stationery embossed with Dorriss’s elegant letterhead. Joe tackled the file drawer. As he clawed the drawer out, a noise above him brought him up rigid, ready to scorch out of there.

But it was only a bird careening against the window and gone, leaving a long smear of feathery dust. He scowled, annoyed at himself. He was a bundle of rigid fur, rotating ears, nervously twitching whiskers.

Why did he do this to himself? Why wasn’t he out napping in the sunshine like a sensible, normal cat?

The drawer was neatly arranged with a row of hanging files-and talk about luck. Dorriss’s paid bills were right there in front, in one of six color-coded files that were tucked into a hanging box folder. The packets of paid bills were each held together by a large clip: utility and phone, automotive and gas, Visa and American Express. Other receipts and documentation were filed behind these, the entire box folder marked “current year taxes.” When income tax time came, Dorriss had only to haul this stuff out and add up the numbers.

How strange that he would keep his credit card bills in plain sight. Or were these fake bills? Decoys meant for prowlers, and not the real thing?

But that was so dumb, that was really reaching. How would Dorriss even make that kind of fake bill?

Glancing over his shoulder toward the empty hall, he lifted out the packets with his teeth and spread them across the blotter. As he pawed carefully through, his ears went up and his whiskers stiffened-he was looking at hotel and restaurant charges in cities where the thefts had occurred.

He was pretty sure of the dates, though who could keep every burglary and every date in his head? The more he looked, the more he thought that the numbers did indeed match. The excitement made his skin ripple and his tomcat heart pound.

So what was he going to do now? Haul all the bills away with him, down the stairs, out the glass door, and around the house in the snatching wind, then drag them across the village in broad daylight?

Well, of course he was.

And of course Marlin Dorriss wouldn’t miss the contents of these files. Particularly when, the minute he opened the drawer, there would be the empty file folder sagging like an abandoned mouse skin.

He studied the fax machine that stood beside the phone. Could he fax the bills to Harper, then put them back in the file?

But that operation, if he faxed all of them, could take hours. And were faxed bills adequate evidence for the judge to issue a search warrant?

Digging deeper back in the drawer he found files for previous years’ taxes, each year carefully marked, each containing similar bills, credit card on top, phone bills at the back. Dorriss was so beautifully organized that Joe wanted to give him a medal.

Lifting a packet of paid bills from an earlier year, he dropped it into the front file in place of those he had removed. Voila. Who would know? Unless of course Dorriss had reason to refer to his recently paid bills. Digging a large brown envelope from the drawer of paper supplies, he pawed the bills into it, and worked the two-pronged fastener through its punched hole. Clawing the fastener closed, he tried not to think about possible tooth marks on envelope or bills. He was pushing the file drawer closed with his shoulder, bracing his claws in the carpet, when he heard a door open in the house below, and the breeze through the slightly open window accelerated as if in a wind tunnel.

Directly below, footsteps rang across the entry tiles, a man’s heavy and hurried tread. Joe heard no voice. Dorriss didn’t call out as if there was anyone else in the house-if it was Dorriss. The hard footsteps moved toward the stairs and started up, muffled suddenly by the thick runner to a faint brushing sound.

Gripping the heavy envelope in his teeth, lifting it free of the floor so as to make no sound, thus nearly dislocating his neck, he hiked the package across the hall to the nearest guest room. There on the thick antique rug he hastily dragged his burden under the bed; no dead rat or rabbit had ever been more cumbersome. Beneath the bed he paused, startled.

Now he smelled cat.

Tomcat?The scent of cinnamon was too strong to be certain. And the aroma was combined with the nose-twitching stink of a woman’s perfume.

Helen Thurwell’s perfume? But what kind of affair was this, if she occupied a guest room? Sniffing again at the expensive scent, he thought it was too heavy to be Helen’s. Whose, then? Another of Dorriss’s lovers, taking her turn when Helen wasn’t available? He could hear Dorriss coming softly up the carpeted stairs. He hoped to hell the window above the bed was open. He could feel no movement of air, no breeze slipping in fingering under the bed.

This room would look down to the front entry, over the angles and juttings that faced the street, over descending roofs and ledges that should give him a quick passage to freedom-if he could get out. Listening to the approaching footsteps, he caught, over the numbing perfume, a whiff of Marlin Dorriss’s distinctive aftershave, an aroma he had never smelled on any other human, that he had never encountered on the village streets; only those few times when he had happened on Dorriss in a patio or shop. Maybe Dorriss had it blended just for himself. The lawyer’s soft footsteps on the thick carpet turned into the master bedroom.

Joe was about to slip out and check the window above him, when the sounds from the bedroom gave him pause. Stone sliding across stone? Wood scraping stone and wood? Dorriss coughed once, then Joe heard the heavyclunkof thick metal.

A safe? Was that why the desk wasn’t locked? Whatever Dorriss wanted to keep private was locked away behind a wall of metal? Joe listened to papers being shuffled, then the scrape, again, of stone on wood. Then Dorriss moved into the dressing room; Joe heard the unmistakable snap of a briefcase or suitcase, then the slide of a zipper.

Leaving the brown envelope under the bed, he slipped out and padded down the hall into the master bedroom, watching the partially open door to the dressing room where papers still rattled. He could see, on a luggage stand, a black leather suitcase lying open. Dorriss stood over it, putting in folded clothes. On the stand beside the suitcase lay a sheaf of papers, and atop the papers a black automatic. A clip and a box of bullets lay beside it, the sight of which sent ripples of alarm through the tomcat.

He’d had enough of guns. His hearing hadn’t been the same since he and Dulcie played moving target in the attic above Clyde’s shop, chased and shot at by counterfeiting car thieves, and Clyde tried to rescue them. That was three years ago, part of that little caper during which he and Dulcie discovered their powers of speech, and their lives had so dramatically changed. The shock of seeing one human murder another had brought out latent talents in them that they had never suspected. One of those thieves had been Kate Osborne’s husband, Jimmie, who subsequently took up residence at San Quentin.

Now, looking at the gun, he considered leaving the Dorriss house at once, even without the evidence.

Oh, right. Marlin Dorriss was going to shoot an innocent cat that happened to wander in? Dorriss must like animals, if he’d left the glass door open for some household kitty.

The more specific implication of that open door Joe did not want to think about.

Worrying only briefly about his own gray hide, wondering only briefly which of his nine lives he was living at the moment, Joe waited until Dorriss turned away, then slipped past the dressing room door deeper into the bedroom.

Creamy, hand-rubbed walls greeted him; a pastel Persian rug over blackish stained hardwood floors; a seating alcove arranged with a charcoal leather love seat and chair before a dark marble coffee table.

At the other end of the room stood a king-size bed with a pale brocade spread and a dull, carved headboard and matching nightstands. On the wall opposite the fireplace, next to the double dresser, stood a huge armoire inlaid with ivory, an antique cupboard that would be large enough to hold both a small bar and a thirty-inch TV But it was the fireplace that held Joe’s attention.

A portion of its ornate paneling stood open and a steel safe loomed within, its steel door also wide open.

Rearing up, Joe could see nothing inside. Before he could leap up for a better look he heard Dorriss coming. Diving under the bed he watched Dorriss’s black oxfords cross the room, heard him slam the safe closed, heard the little clicks as he turned the dial to lock it.

Joe watched Dorriss return to the dressing room, then came out from under the bed again and began to check out the room.

The tops of the carved night tables were empty. These roughly made chests with their dull unpolished wood looked handmade and expensive, perhaps pieces that Dorriss had imported from South America.

Rearing up, he could see two dark, flat items on the dresser. Leaping up and miscalculating, he hit the small plastic folder, sliding so hard he nearly went over the edge. He froze, listening, sure that Dorriss had heard him.

When the sounds of packing continued, he guessed not. Examining the folder, he found it was a little loose-leaf booklet designed to hold a dozen or so photos of one’s dog or cat or baby, depending on the holder’s preference, each photo protected within a clear little pocket.

These pockets held credit cards.

Laying a silent paw on the slick plastic, Joe felt far more elated than if he’d discovered a warren of fat rabbits. Studying the cards, he found examples from half a dozen credit card companies, each card issued in a different name. Behind each card in the same little pocket was a white file card containing an address and phone number, social security number, birth dates, and a woman’s name. A mother’s maiden name, that universal code for certain identification? And, best of all, a driver’s license issued to the cardholder, each one bearing Marlin Dorriss’s photograph. Joe was so pumped he wanted to shout and yowl.

But even this prodigious find was not the most interesting.

Next to the credit card folder lay what might be the real kicker, the veritable gold mine. For a moment he just stared. Then he started to grin; he could feel his whiskers tickling his ears. Right here beneath his paw was the ringer. The first-prize trophy. He heard again Dulcie’s description: a small notebook with a mottled reddish-brown cover and a black cloth binding.

The notebook still smelled faintly of gas, of whatever substance PG&E put into their natural gas supplies so users would know if there was a leak in the line. Joe was reaching a paw to flip through the pages when he heard Dorriss coming back again, the scuff of his shoes on the dark hardwood. Joe had only time to leap from the dresser to the top of the armoire, where he crouched as flat as a pancake hoping he was out of sight. But then when Doris approached the dresser, he couldn’t resist, he slipped to the edge to watch.

Picking up the notebook, Dorriss flipped through it as if reading random passages; the expression on his face was one of deep rage. Glowering at the open notebook, he ripped it in half. Ripped it again, then tore each half straight through the offending pages.

Scooping up the stack of torn pages, he moved to the fireplace. From the top of the armoire Joe stared down at Dorriss, his heart doing flips.As sure as queens have kittens, he’s going to burn those pages.

Dropping to the bed behind Dorriss and slipping silently to the rug, Joe began to stalk the man. He wanted that notebook, he wanted those little mysterious pages that could be, that his cop-sense told him were, hard and valuable evidence to the death of James Quinn.

18 [��������: pic_19.jpg]

The five freshly cut oak logs in the fireplace were artfully crisscrossed over the gas jet. Marlin Dorriss, dropping the torn pieces of the notebook on the raised hearth, turned to find a match or, more likely, Joe thought, some sort of mechanical starter. As he reached into a small carved chest that stood at the other end of the hearth, Joe slipped silently behind him.

Closing his teeth on the wadded remains of the notebook he was gone, a gray streak disappearing under the leather love seat. It wasn’t the best place to hide but it was the closest. If Dorriss came poking, Joe hoped to slip out at the far end. Once concealed, he carefully spit out the pages so as not to drool on the evidence, and crept to the edge of the love seat where he could see his adversary. He hoped he had all the bits of paper. The notebook cover still lay on the hearth, the slick brown cardboard bent and twisted, victim of Dorriss’s rage.

Dorriss turned, reaching for the notebook. He stared at the hearth and searched the carpet and into the fireplace, frowning and puzzled. He stared around the room, then moved swiftly to the dressing room and bath, looking for an intruder. Joe could hear him banging the glass shower door and the closet doors. The next minute he flew into the study then out again and down the hall, Joe heard him swerve into the first bedroom.Not under the bed! Oh please God don’t let him look under the bed and find the bills! Cat God, human God, I don’t care. This is a bona fide feline supplication. Please, please, please don’t let him look under that bed.

But why would he look there? The guest beds sat low to the floor. The frames that held the box springs were no more than six inches high, not enough space for a burglar to hide-at least, not for the kind of burglar Dorriss would have in mind. Joe heard the closet in that room slide open, then Dorriss was in the hall again searching the other bedrooms, banging open closet doors. Immediately Joe fled for the guest room and under the bed.

Fighting open the metal clasp, he shoved the notebook pages in. Laboriously, with an impatient paw, he managed to fasten the flap again. Next time around, he’d like to have opposing thumbs. Down the hall, Dorriss was making more and more noise, searching, then pounding down the stairs apparently to search the rest of the house-but he’d be back. Slipping out from under the bed, leaving his burden for the moment, Joe scrambled up to the sill.

There was no breath of air behind the closed shutters; no window was open. Balanced on the sill, he challenged a shutter’s latch with frantic claws. But when he’d fought it open, the window behind it was not only closed, but locked. From the stairs, he heard Dorriss coming.

The lock was a paw-bruiser, invented by designers who had no respect for feline needs. He heard Dorriss turn into the study, heard him opening the desk drawers-maybe wondering what else the thief might have taken. Joe’s paws began to sweat, slipping on the metal lock-and he began to wonder.

If, as unlikely as it seemed, the downstairs glass door had been left open for one black tomcat, if against all odds the opportunistic Azrael had somehow partnered up with Marlin Dorriss, Dorriss might well be knowledgeable enough to be looking for more than a human thief. Frantic, Joe could hear him shuffling papers.

By the time he got the lock open and slid the glass back, he was a bundle of nerves, and his paw felt fractured. Dragging the heavy brown envelope up to the sill, he balanced it against the glass. As he pulled the shutter closed behind him, he heard Dorriss coming out of the study, heard Dorriss pause at the door as if looking in. Joe wondered if his gray fur made a dark smear behind the closed white louvers? Or if the shutter humped out of line where he crouched? He wondered if cats were subject to sudden coronary occlusion? He was ready to leap out into space clutching the envelope, calculating how best to negotiate the twisting angles to the lower roof, when the phone rang.

Thank you, great cat god or whoever.

Dorriss let it ring twice, but then he crossed the hall to answer. Joe knew he should jump at once, but for an instant he remained still, listening.

“I can’t talk now,” Dorriss was saying, “there’s someone in the house.” Joe heard a sharp metallic snap, as when a bullet is jacked into the chamber of an automatic.

“I can’ttalknow. You’re where?”

Pause. Against all good sense, Joe remained listening, gripping the envelope in his teeth.

“What the hell are you doing there? What the hell made you take off? Call me back, I can’ttalk.’”

Silence, then an intake of breath. Then, “You’re telling me the truth?”

Pause. Then, “All right, get on with it. That’s very nice indeed. Then you need to get back here. I told you not to play these games with your little friends.They’vemade a mess, and you’ll have to clean it up. I don’t want any more of your childish pranks, I can’t afford to deal with that stupidity, and I won’t have it rubbing off on me. Get back here fast, my dear, and take care of this.”

A soft click as Dorriss hung up. Joe crouched on the sill, his teeth dug into the envelope, adjusting his weight-and-trajectory ratio, eyeing a lower roof. With the extra baggage, if he missed his mark he’d drop like a rock, two stories to the stone terrace.

But he didn’t want to toss the envelope, let it fall and maybe split open, spill the evidence all over Dorriss’s front yard, to be snatched and sucked away in the sea wind.

He took a deep breath and was airborne-airborne but falling heavily, his usual buoyancy gone. His ability to twist in the air had deserted him. He felt like a rock, a flung boulder. Falling, he was falling�

He landed on the little roof scrabbling with frantic claws, five feet to the left of the window and five feet below, coming down with a thud that shook him clear to his ears.

But he was all in one piece and, more to the point, so was the envelope. He was poised to jump again when a sound to his right stopped him. Made his blood turn to ice, made him search the low roofs.

A dark little gargoyle stared up at him. Crouched on the edge of the tiles, Kit watched him wide eyed, but then stared suddenly past him at the window above, at the sill he had just abandoned. Her voice was a terrified hiss.“Jump, Joe! He’s coming! Jump! He’s opening the shutters! Jump now! Drop that thing and jump!”

Earlier that morning, the kit had seen Joe Grey heading for the police department as she prowled the roofs alone thinking about Lucinda and Pedric, mourning them, deeply missing them. Wandering the peaks and shingles feeling flat and sad, she had seen Joe Grey below, galloping up the sidewalk, headed somewhere in a hurry. Coming down, she had followed him and when he galloped through the courthouse gardens, of course she had followed. But then he turned and saw her, and instead of his usual friendly ear twitch, inviting her to join him, he’d given her a hiss, a leaveme-alone snarl, and had cruelly sent her away again. Or he thought he had.

Slinking away through the bushes hurt and angry, she had turned when he wasn’t looking, and followed him to the front door of the PD. Had watched him slip inside on the heels of the judge’s secretary. The tall blonde, delivering a sheaf of papers, took no notice of the gray tomcat padding in behind her. The kit wanted to follow, but he’d been so cross she daren’t. And then only a minute later a delivery boy hurried up the street carrying a big white bag of takeout that smelled of pastrami and made her lick her whiskers, and she had watched the dispatcher buzz the boy through.

Joe Grey had gone in there to share the captain’s lunch and had sent her away alone. Feeling incredibly hurt and sad, and mad too-all claws and hisses-she didn’t even want to beg lunch by charming some likely tourist in one of the sidewalk cafes as she so often did. She felt totally alone and abandoned. She had no one. Lucinda and Pedric were gone forever. And this morning, Dulcie had rudely slipped off without her. And now Joe Grey didn’t want her. How cruelly he had driven her away.

All alone, with no one to care about her, she climbed to the roof of the PD and hunched down in the oak tree. There she waited for nearly an hour angry and lonely, until Joe Grey came out again. But then, leaving the station, he was not licking his whiskers, he did not look happily fed. He looked so gaunt and hungry himself thatthatmade her feel better. Much better.

She watched him crouch in the geraniums drinking hungrily from an automatic bubbler that watered the courthouse gardens, then he took off fast, heading across the village. The kit followed. Joe was so interested in wherever he was going that he paid no attention now to who might be behind him. He was all hustle, dodging people’s feet and up trees and across roofs, his ears pricked, his stub tail straight out behind. She trailed him five blocks to Ocean and across Ocean among the feet of tourists and on again to the fine big house that looked like a museum from the front and was all glass at the back.

Sneaking low and carefully the kit had followed him around the side of the house and saw him go in through an open glass door. Hiding in the shadowy bushes that grew among the boulders, she watched him enter that big house through an open slider. Was that door open forhim}He sniffed the door, then went right on in, as bold as if he lived there. When he had gone inside she pressed her nose against the door, looking.

Joe had disappeared. She peered into the room, then she followed her nose. Joe’s scent led across the huge big room that had brightly colored caves all around, all elegantly furnished, so many places to play and to hide. She investigated one fascinating niche then another, rubbing and rolling, racing across the backs of the couches and trying her claws in the brocade. Sniffing leather and velvet, exploring every single object in every single room, she never did find Joe Grey. At last she approached the stairs.

But looking up that broad, angled flight, the kit stopped and backed away. What was up there? Joe had been up there a long time. What was he doing? She had heard no sound, no thump of paws, and she was frightened. She was standing undecided, looking up, when she heard a car park out in front, heard the car door open and close, then a man’s footsteps on the stone terrace. Quick she hid behind the closest chair, crouching against the thick, soft velvet.

The kit knew Marlin Dorriss. Didn’t everyone in the village know him? He was a philanthropist, whatever that meant, and a womanizer. She knew what that word meant. Wilma said he was usually circumspect in his personal life and that meant quiet and careful like a hunting cat. Except he wasn’t circumspect about Helen Thurwell. Marlin Dorriss was tall and slim, with a lovely tan, beautiful deep brown eyes, and short-clipped white hair. Handsome, and kind looking.

But as he crossed the big room and headed up the stairs where Joe Grey had gone, she felt afraid.

She couldn’t race up the stairs past him to warn Joe. But she could slip out, and around to the front, and maybe, if she could gain the angled roofs and ledges, she could get inside.

Scooting through the bushes to the front of the house she clawed and scrabbled her way up bits of wall and across slabs of roof, looking above her for an open window-and then suddenly above her, a windowslidopen.

And there was Joe Grey. She saw his white paw slide the glass back, saw him press between the glass and the shutter with a huge packet in his mouth. He remained so for some time, staring back into the room. Then he crouched as if someone was coming and leaped into space twisting to land on a roof below. Above him, Marlin Dorriss appeared; she could see him at the next window. She choked back a cry. Joe stared down at her.

“Jump,“she hissed.“He’s coming! Jump! He’s opening the shutters! Jump now! Drop that thing and jump!”

Then everything happened at once. Dorriss closed the shutters and turned away, and Joe leaped to the next angle with the brown paper bundle, then leaped again to the concrete. The bundle split open just at the edge of the bushes. In the wind, papers began to flap and dance. Kit had never seen Joe move so fast. Grabbing a mouthful of papers he pulled the package under the bushes and was back again snatching up more. The kit leaped.

And she was beside him snatching pieces of torn paper from the wind. Had Dorriss turned back? Was he looking? Had he seen the package fall before Joe snatched it away? The kit could not see Dorriss now, his silhouette was gone from the window-but then there he was standing at another window looking out.

Surely he couldn’t see them beneath the bushes. Had they caught all the papers? Like catching swooping birds from the rooftop. The kit stared at the papers under her paws. “What is all this?”

“Evidence,” Joe said, pushing little bits of paper back into the torn envelope, trying to fold it around the ragged mess. Kit helped him stuff papers in. Pressing the envelope into folds with their paws they gripped it between them, their teeth piercing the heavy paper as they tried to hold it together. And when Dorriss turned away, when the windows were clear once more, they dragged it out from the bushes and away.

Keeping to the shadows along the sidewalk, they tried to shelter their burden from the wind. It was a long way to Joe’s house, and already the package was heavy. Trying to find a rhythm together, falling into an unwieldy pace, eight paws attempting to move in harmony, they hauled their burden through an empty alley and along the less-frequented backstreets. Kit’s head was filled with questions which, with her mouth full, she couldn’t ask.

The envelope grew heavier with every step. The wind died as they left the shore, and that helped. But the day grew muggy hot. Kit wanted to stop and rest but Joe didn’t pause, pushing on from shadow to shadow and from bush to bush. When a human appeared far down the street they dragged their burden under a porch or behind a fence.

It seemed to take hours to cover those long blocks. When at last they neared Joe’s house, the kit’s entire being cried out for water, food, and a nap. A pair of tourists wandered past, and they slipped deeper among the bushes where they rested a moment, panting. Peering out at the house, the kitsolonged to be inside,solonged for a drink of cool water.

The Damen house looked not at all as it once had. When Kit first came there as a young cat, the house was a white cottage with only one story, what Wilma called a Cape Cod. Now with its new facade of heavy Mexican timbers and plastered walls, it was truly elegant. And the best part was Joe’s tower high atop the new upstairs. Kit loved Joe’s cat-size house with a view of the village rooftops-it was a cozy bit of cat heaven.

Lucinda and Pedric had planned to build a tower just like it. Atop their own new house. “You will have a tower,” Lucinda had said. “A fine tall cat tower looking out at all the world just like Joe Grey’s tower.”

Now Lucinda and Pedric would never build their dream home.

The kit would give all the towers in all the world to have them back. A tear slid down, spotting the brown envelope and its papers as they hauled their unwieldy burden through Joe Grey’s cat door.

Pulling the package through, the papers catching on the door, they dropped it on the African throw rug and lay beside it.

“Heavy as a dead raccoon,” Joe said. “Thank you, Kit. I guess you saved the day.”

“What did we save? What are those papers?”

Joe Grey smiled. “With luck, this could be the claw that snags the big one. A killing bite to the slickest burglar this village has ever seen.” He glanced toward the front door, listening. But the car he’d heard went on by. You never knew when Clyde might bring company, Max Harper or Dallas Garza or Ryan Flannery. “Come on, let’s get it upstairs before someone walks in.”

Dragging the envelope between them, they hauled it up the new stairway that had been built in half of the old guest room. The other half of that room was now a walk-in closet where Clyde kept all manner of oddments, from unused parts for his weight-lifting equipment to stacks of outdated automotive catalogs. At the top of the steps, in the new master bedroom, they dragged their burden across the new carpet to Clyde’s study.

Hauling it up onto Clyde’s desk, Joe pawed the papers out and carefully separated the various bills from the torn pages of the notebook. Fetching a rubber band from a box on the desk, he managed to secure the small bits of torn evidence. Watching him, Kit retrieved another rubber band, but he made her put it back. “Don’t chew that, Kit. It could kill you.”

“That little thing? How could it?”

“Just like string, Kit. You know about string. The barbs of your tongue hold it back, you can’t spit it out, it gets wrapped around the base of your tongue, you swallow the rest and you’re in trouble.”

She spit out the rubber band. She’d been told more than once about string, that if she should ever swallow a string not to pull it out with her paw, that she could cut her insides doing that. Joe studied the stack of bills. Who knew which were of value? No one would know until they were compared with the dates of the burglaries. Even then, there would be a lot of play in the machinery. The Tyler family in Ventura, for instance, had opened their safe in January and not again until October when they found the antique diamond necklace missing; the burglary could have happened anytime in those nine months. The Von Cleavers, in Montecito, were in Europe for five weeks. Got back to find a glass cabinet broken into and a silver pitcher missing, a museum piece signed by a famous craftsman from the 1600s, but nothing else was gone. Each burglary was the same, the rarest and most expensive item lifted, nothing else touched. Marlin Dorriss himself had been at his Florida condo when his favorite Diebenkorn painting vanished from his Molena Point house-if it vanished, if that was not a red herring.

But what kind of thief took only one piece and left a houseful of treasures?

Joe Grey smiled. Someone out for the thrills, for the rarity or historical value of the items stolen, someone who didn’t need the money. Who got all the money he wanted in other ways?

Impatient with the lack of solid answers to what he suspected, impatient for darkness so he could deliver the evidence to the law, Joe restlessly prowled the study.

But the kit had curled up in a corner of the love seat with her nose tucked under her paw, so sad and withdrawn that Joe paused, watching her. He stood worrying over her when a click from above made him stiffen.

The rooftop cat door made a slap, and Dulcie popped out of the hole in the ceiling, dropping daintily to the rafter beneath. Perched on the high, dark beam, she peered down at him-and her green eyes widened.

“You got the bills!” She dropped to the desk beside him with a delicate thud. “Tell me! Tell me how you did it. Dorriss didn’t see you? Why are you frowning?”

He glanced across to the love seat. She turned to look at the kit.

“So sad, Dulcie. She keeps falling back into sadness.”

Leaping to the love seat Dulcie nosed at the kit and washed her tortoiseshell face, washed her ears, nudged and loved her until at last the kit looked up and tried to smile. When the tattercoat had snuggled against Dulcie, Joe said, “Kit saved me from a bad trip, she warned me just in time.” He gave her a brief replay that made Dulcie shiver and laugh, then he asked, “What did you find at Consuela’s?”