Cat On The Edge. Cat Under Fire. Cat Raise The Dead

He was hypnotized by her longing. And when, looking down at the village, she sensed him watching, she gave him a look so filled with mystery that it made his claws curl. And she laid her head against him, purring.

And in the night when he missed Clyde, and Dulcie missed Wilma, they would curl up close together and she would lick his face.

She told him a lot about Wilma, how they always shared supper, Dulcie sitting on a little rug by the sink, how they watched television curled on the couch together eating popcorn, and how nice it was to be in the garden with Wilma as she dug in the flowers; she told him about the books Wilma read aloud to her, and that was one thing they had in common, both their housemates read to them. The two humans shared a keen taste for mysteries, and traded paperbacks. They were always trading books, every time they got together.

But the biggest mystery, more urgent than any book, the real and frightening mystery, Dulcie found difficult to talk about. She would mention it, skirt around it, but soon change the subject.

And then on their third day in the hills as they crossed the yard of a redwood cottage where newspapers had blown out of the trash can, part of a headline drew Joe. He trotted over and found, on a crumpled portion of the paper,?POLICE SEARC? WEAPO?

He spread the paper out and smoothed it with his paw.

POLICE SEARCH FOR MISSING WEAPON

Police have as yet little evidence to the identity of the killer of Molena Point car dealer Samuel Beckwhite. No weapon has been found. Captain Harper requests that anyone having information about the killing, or anyone who may have found a heavy object such as a length of metal discarded in the vicinity of Jolly’s Deli, contact him immediately. Employees of the Beckwhite Automotive Agency have been questioned as a routine matter. Captain Harper reminds Molena Point residents that withholding evidence to a crime is a felony punishable by imprisonment.

“I don’t understand,” Dulcie said. “If the killer went to the trouble of stealing that wrench from Clyde, meaning for the police to find it with Clyde’s prints on it, why didn’t he leave it beside the body?”

“I don’t know. All I know is, if he plants the weapon later, for the police to find, Clyde’s in big trouble.”

“But why would he?” She cocked her head, puzzled. “Unless he means to use it to force Clyde to do something.”

“Or keep him from doing something,” he said. “All I know is, I’ll feel better if-when we find the damn thing.”

But it was not until late that night after finding the newspaper, that Dulcie woke mewling and shivering. Joe cuddled her close, clutching his paws around her.“What is it? What’s wrong?”

“I dreamed about the murder. I dreamed about the third man.”

“What third man?” he said sleepily, then woke more fully. “What man?” He looked hard at her. “There was no one else in the alley. Only Beckwhite and the killer. And you and me.”

“A third man.” She shoved her nose against his neck. “In the shadows. Standing near me between the jasmine vine and a little oleander tree. When he saw the killer hit Beckwhite, he slipped away fast, down the dark street.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“I didn’t think of it. I supposed you saw him, too.”

“What did he smell like? Could you see his face?”

“I couldn’t smell anything, the jasmine was too strong. And it was so dark in the bushes. Just a darkly dressed figure, a thin figure, standing in the shadows where the bush and the vine blocked the light.”

A tremble shook her, and she snuggled closer.“I saw the killer leap at you and swing his wrench. Then you ran, and a police light caught me in the face, I couldn’t see where you went. I heard the police radio. When they shone their lights in, the killer moved toward me away from the street and stood still, his face turned toward me.

“He was looking right at me, Joe. He saw me, but then he turned back and chased you.” She pressed her face harder against him. “He knows about us. He knows we saw-and more. He knows that we can tell what we saw.”

She stared at him in the darkness.“I think that man knows more about us than we know about ourselves.” And she curled down tight against him in a hard little ball.

He licked her face and ears. In a little while, he said,“If the second man was a witness, why hasn’t he gone to the police?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he’s afraid.”

“Or maybe he has other plans,” Joe said. Then, “Maybehefound the wrench. Maybe he came back and found the wrench, before the police ever discovered the body. Maybe he’s keeping it for his own reasons.”

“Blackmail?”

“Maybe.” He pawed at an itch on his shoulder. “Then again, maybe he didn’t find it.”

“Could it still be in the alley, somewhere the police didn’t look? But how could the police miss it?”

“I don’t know that, either. But it’s a place to start looking. If it is hidden there, we need to find it before someone else does.”

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Twelve-year-old Marvin Semple had nearly finished his evening paper route. He was headed home on his bike, wheeling beneath low branches along the dim and shadowed residential street, pedaling past a row of overhanging oak trees, when he heard a cat scream.

The cry came from somewhere ahead, up near the end of the block. A second scream cut the silence, and he pedaled faster. Maybe a dog had some poor cat. He didn’t know anyone on this street who had cats, but it could be any village cat. He was gazing ahead into the thickening shadows when he saw movement in the Osborne yard. A man was standing near the house straddle-legged, flinging something at the ground.

Crouching over his handlebars he raced toward the man, not wanting to believe what he saw.

Yes, it was a cat. The man was flinging a cat at the concrete walk. For an instant he saw the animal clearly, its pale fur bright in the dark evening as the man swung it down. Its scream chilled him.“Stop it!” What was the guy doing! Again the man flung the cat at the ground. Marvin shouted again and doubled over his bike pumping as hard as he could.

He screeched to a stop and dropped his bike, scattering his remaining papers as the man pushed the cat under the bushes. The guy ran. Marvin raced to where the cat lay.

Crouching, he lifted it gently from beneath the bushes.

It looked dead.

Holding it carefully, he glanced up in the direction the man had disappeared. A black car was pulling away fast, skidding around the corner.

He carried the cat beneath the streetlight and stood cradling it, trying to see if it was breathing. He couldn’t see any rise and fall of its chest, but when he put his face to its nose, he could feel a faint breath. Gently he cradled it, deciding the best thing to do. The evening was fast growing dark. He was fifteen blocks from home.

Soon his exploring fingers found a barely discernible heartbeat. He could see no blood. The cat was beautiful, cream-colored and mottled with orange streaks. Marvin held her as delicately as he could in one arm. With his other hand he picked up his bike and straightened the nearly empty paper bags across the rack.

He laid the cat inside one bag, on a bed of folded newspapers, then removed the belt from his pants and used it to bind shut the bag against her escape. He knew from reading every book he could find about animals, that an injured cat or dog, or any injured animal, might run blindly away, evading the very person who sought to help it. If a horse or dog were injured, you should always get a lead on them to hold them steady. The first aid book said always confine a hurt animal as gently as you could. He had wanted to feel more carefully for broken bones, but he was afraid he’d injure the little cat. He picked up the scattered papers to balance the weight of the cat, so the bag wouldn’t slide.

He was sure there would be enough air inside the closed canvas bag-he had left an inch hole at the top, and the canvas was thin and cheap.

With the cat safely bedded down, he took a running start and headed for the upper perimeter of the village.

It was six blocks to Ocean, then up Ocean five more blocks, then over two. He didn’t know any faster way to get help. If he called his dad, it would take a while to find a phone, and a while more for his dad to reach him. And they’d still have to lift the cat into the car, and drive the same route he was taking.

He was headed for one of two animal clinics in town, the one his family used for their assorted pets, for their dogs and their guinea pigs and rabbit, the one he took stray cats to several times a month.

The clinic would be closed, but Dr. Firreti lived next door. Dad had gotten Firreti out of bed when their terrier was hit by a truck, and Firreti had been real nice. He’d saved Scooter. It had taken him half the night to patch up the little dog. Now, with this cat, Dr. Firreti wouldn’t mind having his supper interrupted. Pumping hard, swerving around cars, Marvin sped the seven blocks to the blue frame house next door to the clinic.

He propped his bike against the porch, undid the canvas bag, and lifted out the unresisting cat.

Holding her close, he banged on Dr. Firreti’s front door. Bending over her, he could still feel her breath soft against his cheek.

From inside he heard Dr. Firreti’s step coming toward the door. Heard the knob turn.

The door opened and he looked up into the veterinarian’s round, sunburned face. Dr. Firreti was silent and still for a moment. “Evening, Marvin. Good, another cat. How come it’s not still in the cage? I see, it’s too far gone to fight you. My God, we don’t need a sick one.”

“She’s not sick. A man beat her. He banged her against the ground, tried to kill her.”

Firreti bent down to look closer, touching the cat lightly, feeling its pulse, lifting an eyelid.

Marvin held her securely, in case she should come awake and try to get away. How many cats had he brought to Dr. Firreti? Nine, he thought. Nine cats, and with each one he had stood beside by the metal table watching Dr. Firreti prepare the needle-the syringe. And the last two times, Dr. Firreti had let him watch the operation.

Now, he was ashamed of his sudden tears. He hadn’t cried with the other cats.

But then, no one had beaten them. No one had tried to knock the life out of them. And his dad said it was no crime to cry, not for something hurt and smaller than you. Not the way he’d cried for Scooter. But he was ashamed anyway.

“We’d better get her over to the clinic,” Dr. Firreti said. He shut the door behind him, put a hand on Marvin’s shoulder, and together they headed next door to the white, cement block building.

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

Pale fog brightened the midnight village with auras of diffused light gleaming around the streetlamps. The two cats ran through the mist like small, swift ghosts, hardly visible; it was a low fog, of the kind villagers called a marsh fog. Weaving near the ground it twisted in uneven masses along the sidewalks smearing the lit windows of the galleries, hiding the small details of doorknobs, hinges, potted trees. Above the low river of wet air, the roofs and treetops and the sky shone sharp and clear. The fog’s white mass effectively veiled the brick alley beside Jolly’s Deli.

The cats moved quickly into the alley past the fuzzed gleam that swam around the wrought-iron lantern. They stopped beneath the jasmine vine beside Jolly’s back door, and looked back warily toward the street.

They saw no dark, moving shapes within the fuzzed light and mist. They heard no footfall, heard only the muffled beat of Dixieland jazz from Donnie’s Lounge up on Junipero. The time was just after midnight.

Slowly and methodically they began to search the alley for the stolen wrench. They dug into the earth of the planters, around the roots of the oleander trees though surely the police had dug in the pots, looking for the murder weapon. The police must have investigated every crevice in the alley; but the cats searched anyway. Dulcie poked her paw into cracks beneath the uneven thresholds at the doors of the little shops, feeling into every small opening she could find in the old, renovated buildings.

They nosed up under the windowsills, and beneath the climbing vine at the other end of the alley where Dulcie had been crouching when Beckwhite was murdered. They climbed the jasmine trellis to the roof and searched there, pawing along the metal gutters into a sticky mixture of mud and slimy dead leaves. Joe grinned. If he found the mess repulsive, Dulcie was ready to retch. Every little while he heard her trying to lick off the stickly accumulation, then sputtering out cat spit.

They searched the entire roof, then searched the alley again, but they found no weapon.

Sitting on the damp brick walk, Dulcie said,“Maybe he still had the wrench when he chased you. Maybe he hid it somewhere else.”

“If he just wanted to hide the evidence, it could be anywhere.”

“But Joe, if he hid it to get Clyde-so if Clyde crossed him in some way, then?”

“I still don’t get why Clyde would cross him. They weren’t friends. It would have to be something at the shop.” He frowned. “Clyde serviced the cars Wark shipped in, but that’s all. They didn’t even like each other-at least Clyde doesn’t much like Wark. What else could have been between them?”

She licked her paw.“Could Clyde know something about Wark? Something to do with the shop?”

Joe flicked an ear.“I’ve never heard him say anything. Never heard him say anything to Max Harper. If he knew something illegal that Wark had done, he’d tell the chief of police. Clyde’s as straight as an old woman.”

She shifted her bottom on the cold brick paving.

“But Clyde has been coming home from work really short-tempered lately. Not like himself. And when Beckwhite?”

He stopped speaking. His eyes widened.“I just remembered something.” He spun around, and headed for the fog-muffled street. “Come on. Maybe I know where Wark hid the wrench.”

She ran to catch up. Within minutes, racing along the foggy streets side by side, they slid into the crawl space beneath the antique shop where Joe had escaped from Wark.

The earth was cold beneath their paws. The dark, moldy dirt smelled sour. Neither of them mentioned the sharp scent of female cat. As they pushed underneath, festoons of cobwebs caught at their ears and whiskers.

He said,“That night, when I hid under here, just before I ran out the back, Wark knelt and looked in. I thought he meant to crawl in, but he only reached, feeling around. Maybe that’s what he was doing; maybe he was hiding the wrench.”

He reared up, sniffing at the top of the concrete foundation where it supported the heavy old floor joists.

Dulcie patted at the earth along the foundation beneath the opening, to see if Wark might have dug a shallow hole. But the earth was smooth and hard. Probably no one had dug in this ground for a hundred years, except for the resident cat-a female, she had noticed. She wondered about that, about why Joe had picked this particular building to hide under.

But he’d told her. It was the first place he could get under. All the other shops were store buildings on concrete slabs, no crawl space. This old place had been a house, once. Houses had crawl spaces. Wilma’s house had a lovely crawl space, cool in hot weather, and delightfully mouse-scented, thoughthe mice themselves had long ago met their maker.

She nosed along the top of the concrete foundation, reaching her paw warily behind ragged bits of black building paper. She didn’t want to rip her soft pads on a hidden nail. She wondered how far Wark could have reached in. After some feet of poking and sniffing, she hissed, “Here. Something cold.”

She pawed aside a ragged corner of building paper that was caught between a double joist. Its end sat securely atop the cement foundation, a double beam built to support some extra weight in the house above. Maybe a refrigerator; or more likely an old-fashioned icebox, from the age of the place.

The wrench was there, shoved up between the two joists. She tried to pry it out, then Joe tried, clutching it between his paws. The wrench wouldn’t budge.

“Be careful,” she said. “His fingerprints could be on it, as well as Clyde’s.”

“Damned hard to get it out without pawing. I wonder if he wore gloves.”

“Well, did you see gloves on his hands?”

“I don’t remember. I was too busy saving my neck. I don’t know how else to get it down, without smearing it. Do you have a better idea?”

She stood on her hind legs, tapping at the wrench with a delicate paw.“What about this hole, here in the end?”

The small hole that ran through the end of the handle wasn’t big enough to get a paw through. Joe could just hook his claws in. He pulled as hard as he dared without tearing out a claw, but the wrench remained solidly secured. As he backed away licking his paw, Dulcie said, “What would a human do?”

“How the hell do I know?”

He pictured with amusement Clyde’s infrequent household repairs.

But Clyde did know how to use a lever. Clyde claimed levers had been one of the great steps forward for mankind. That seemed to Joe a little much, but what did he know? Certainly the lever system was innovative, at least from a cat’s point of view. He’d been fascinated when Clyde levered up the heavy file cabinet in the spare bedroom, when a black widow spider ran underneath.

Clyde wouldn’t have bothered to kill a spider just for himself. Probably if a black widow bit Clyde, it would be the one to die. But, afraid for the animals, he had lifted the file cabinet by wedging it up with a long metal rod. When the spider ran out, he stomped it. The smashed spider had left a permanent black spot on the carpet.

Thinking about the lever, he moved away into the blackness to prowl the cavernous space, and soon Dulcie joined him, searching for a piece of iron, maybe a scrap left from some repair, or even a stout stick to help dislodge the wrench.

Searching through the scent of female cat, he was interested that Dulcie did not remark upon the matter. Well if she wasn’t asking, he wasn’t offering. Anyway, what difference? That was another life. That female meant nothing, now.

When they found no lever to use on the wrench, nothing but a few rusty nails, Dulcie headed for the street. Trotting out the hole in the foundation, moving along through the fog, she stared up at each parked car until she found one with a window half-open.

She leaped, hung by her front paws, and climbed through, her belly dragging on the glass. She disappeared inside.

Joe waited, watching the street. Twice he leaped up the side of the car to stare in, but she was on the floor, he couldn’t see what she was doing. When she appeared at the glass again, she had a thin, rusty screwdriver in her mouth, securely clamped between her teeth.

As she climbed out, the metal hit the glass with a little ping.

Within minutes, in the dark beneath the antique shop, they had pushed the screwdriver through the hole in the torque wrench. Bracing the lever against a joist, Joe laid his weight on the handle.

The wrench gave, it slid down a few inches.

But then it stuck again. He pried harder. He was able to force it slowly out, until it protruded so far he couldn’t get a purchase.

When still it was stuck, Dulcie pushed him aside. Leaping up, wrapping all four paws around the screwdriver, hanging upside down, she swung hard, lashing her tail, jiggling and bouncing.

The wrench fell with Dulcie under it, she hit the ground hard. She lay still, panting. The wrench lay across her. Joe nosed at her, frightened, until she began to untangle herself.

“You okay?” he said at last.

“I’m fine.” She licked at her shoulder. “We’d better find something to wrap the evidence. The police use plastic.”

“Or we’d better wipe it clean, if Clyde’s prints are on it.”

“We don’t know what’s on it. The killer’s prints could be there, too, if he was careless.”

They found a newspaper on the porch of the antique shop and removed the plastic bag into which it had been inserted to protect it against damp weather. Within moments they had bagged the evidence.

They left the cellar carrying the heavy package between them, heading north. When a young couple approached them out of the fog, walking slowly with their arms around each other, they ducked into a doorway. When the bleary lights of a car sought them, they crouched over the wrench to hide it.

Several times Joe left Dulcie guarding the plastic bundle as he investigated possible hiding places. But nosing through the mist into niches between walls and into doorways, no place suited him. As they approached the Dixieland music emanating from Donnie’s Lounge, he quickened his pace.

A walled patio served as entry to Donnie’s neighborhood bar. The little stone paved rectangle was bordered on three sides by wide flower beds planted with marigolds. The flowers’ sharp scent tickled the cats’ noses.

They laid the murder weapon among a tangle of yellow blooms where the earth was soft, and they dug.

As they loosened each flower, Dulcie laid it aside, careful not to bite through the stem. She thought the flowers might be poison, too. She had seen a list once of plants poisonous to cats, but she didn’t remember much of it. Only oleander and, she thought, tomato leaves. Who would want to chew on a tomato vine? Each time the doors to Donnie’s swung open, the music burst out, hurting their ears, but with a wildly compelling beat. The surge of jazz was laced heavily with the sharp smell of beer and whiskey. As they dug, Dulcie got that faraway look as if dreaming again, dreaming about a night of barhopping.

When the hole was some eighteen inches deep, they lowered the plastic-wrapped evidence. Dulcie said,“I feel like we’re burying a corpse in one of those body bags.”

“Should we say a few words over the deceased?”

She grinned.“Say a prayer for the man who killed Beckwhite. I think he’s going to need it.”

They pushed dirt back on top of the plastic-wrapped wrench, and Dulcie pressed each marigold in carefully, patting earth around its roots just as Wilma would do.“We don’t want them to die, someone might investigate.”

She resettled the last of the soil, then pawed dry leaves over the earth’s wound. When no sign of digging remained, she stepped out of the flower bed, shook her paws, and licked the remaining earth from them. “No sense in leaving pawprints.”

They were headed across the small stone patio for the street when the bar door swung open. Light from within hit the stone wall, driving them back down its length into shadow.

At first sight of the two men emerging, they hunched lower, and Joe swallowed back a snarl. Dulcie’s fur bristled.

Lee Wark came down the path not five feet from them.

“And that’s Jimmie Osborne,” Joe breathed. “Why is Osborne out drinking with Beckwhite’s killer?”

The men swung past them out the gate, both jingling car keys, and headed north. The cats followed, Dulcie proceeding warily, Joe pushing ahead quick and predatory, coldly hating Wark, and with precious little love for Osborne.

He’d never liked Osborne-the man was a bully and a coward. How many times when Jimmie and Kate were over to the house for supper, had Osborne been coldly rude to Kate.

Joe smiled. It made his night to annoy the man; he considered it a perfect evening when he could harass Osborne, torment him until he turned pale with rage. And with fear.

Now, hurrying through the fog after the two men, both cats grimaced at the smell of the killer. Wark’s scent, more distinctive than Osborne’s faint aroma, lingered sharply in the damp air. The smell goaded Dulcie, she forgot her earlier fear. Moving along beside Joe, she crouched to a slinking stalk, her ears clutched flat to her head, her tail lashing. Creeping through the fog, she gauged her distance. She considered the angle of thrust needed for a clean leap onto Wark’s back, contemplating with delicious anticipation her claws digging in.

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

The cream-colored cat lay sick and confused, looking out through the wire door of a cage. Her thoughts were fuzzed, her vision blurred. She could make out rows of cages lining the small, square room, wire enclosures stacked three tiers high, marching around three walls. Nothing would stay in focus; no thought wanted to stay in focus. She lay sprawled on the metal cage floor, too weak to try to get up.

She was terribly thirsty. There was no water inside her enclosure, no small metal bowl as she could see in the other cages; she could smell the water, mixed with strong, less appealing smells. She didn’t know how she had gotten into a cage; she had a sharp physical memory of Lee Wark throwing her against the concrete, a sharp replay of the pain, of terrible jolt exploding in blackness-then nothing.

She could remember waking before in this cage, waking then dropping back into sleep; her mind was filled with fragments of detached voices and with sounds that would not come together, with the rank medicine smell, and with the sounds of metal instruments against a metal table. She had no idea how long she had been here, no notion of time passing.

She remembered the feel of a plastic tube bound to her front leg, and of its little pin inserted with a sharp prick beneath her skin.

The stink of medicine clung to her fur. Her left foreleg was bandaged. It smelled so sharply of medicine that when she sniffed it she sneezed; the jolt of sneezing hurt her deep inside.

As her vision began to clear, she looked around intently for a way out. The walls behind the cages were made of unpainted concrete block. All but three of the cages were empty. The other tenants were a big brown dog sleeping deeply, four kittens asleep tangled together, and a black-and-white terrier pacing his enclosure dragging a stiff white leg. No, it was a white cast on his front leg.

Her eyes didn’t work right, everything was fuzzy. Overhead, one soft light burned, a long fluorescent tube in a white metal fixture. Two other fixtures hung from the ceiling, one at either side, both unlit. The fourth wall of the room was blank except for a window and a metal-clad door, and a water hydrant protruding from the concrete floor.

The lone window was dark with night, but its blackness was rimed with fog, too, with a pale, blowing mist so thick that the window seemed to be underwater. The closed window was shielded from entry, or from escape, by a thick metal grid. As she looked, a flash of light ran striking across the fogged glass, as if from a car passing somewhere beyond; and she could hear the swift hush of tires on wet pavement, then the roar of several cars, fast-moving, as they would be passing on a highway. Her mind was as muzzy as her vision; but it clung to the one distressing fact that she was in an animal cage, that she was locked up in some kind of kennel.

But no, it was a clinic. Dr. Firreti’s clinic. She had a vague memory of Firreti’s face, round and smooth and sunburned, leaning close to her.

Firreti did something with stray cats. She could not remember what.

Why wasshehere? She wasn’t a stray.

Had Lee Wark brought her here? Had Wark brought her here after he beat her? But why? For what purpose? Or had she gotten here somehow on her own after she was hurt, had come here needing help?

She stared at the closed wire door. Shut in like this, Wark or anyone could get at her. She tried to get up but lay back; the effort left her weak.

She could remember being in another room with concrete walls, and the same medicine smell; that was the room of the metal table and the voices, and the hands on her gentle but insistent. Her thoughts kept going around; she couldn’t concentrate.

She tried again to get to her feet, but it was an effort even to lift her head and shoulders, a terrible effort to roll from her side onto her belly. When she did roll to that more erect position, pain shot through her ribs.

On the next try, she made it to her feet, but the hot jab forced her down again, crouching and panting.

She listened, but heard no sound from beyond this room. She tried again to rise, suppressing a sharp, involuntary mewl. She lurched up; and this time she remained standing and moved to the cage door, stood leaning against it.

The door was secured from outside. She thrust her paw through, ignoring the hurt, feeling around for a latch.

She found a slide bolt, and began to work at it, pulling and wiggling it.

After a long time, when the bolt didn’t give, she forced both paws through. The pain as she stretched out brought another involuntary mewl. The thought of something broken in her small, tender self turned her nearly helpless with fear.

But the thought of Wark finding her in here; or of the veterinarian prodding and examining her further, filled her with a deeper terror. What would a veterinarian find if he studied her closely? Not a normal cat. She fought the bolt, clawing and poking, bruising her paws, and at last managed to work it free. The gate swung out so suddenly she nearly fell.

Catching herself, backing away, she rested. She had no strength. She was so terribly thirsty, panicked with thirst. The metal water pipe drew her with an insistence that sent her leaping down; she landed so hard on the concrete that tears spurted. She crouched and threw up bile. The terrier began to bark. His shrill cries filled the room, echoing, hurting her ears.

Beneath the water hydrant beside a round metal drain shone a small puddle of water. She lapped thirstily. The floor smelled of Clorox and of dog urine. When the water was gone she fought to open the tap, but she couldn’t budge it. Defeated, she approached the heavy door. The terrier’s shrill staccato was so loud that it, too, seemed to be physical hurt.

Someone would hear him-there were houses close to the clinic. Staring up at his cage, she yowled at him. She might as well have yowled at a blank wall.

In desperation she shouted.“Stop it! Shut up and lie down!”

The human command, lashing out from a cat, threw the beast into a frenzy. Yapping he flung himself at his door, trying to get at her. As he heaved at the wire, she crouched before the tall metal door. Ignoring the furor she whispered, making the spell.

She was falling, spinning down, dizzy, whirling, then spinning up.

She was tall, she was Kate again. The terrier roared in shocked rage. She knelt by the hydrant, turned it on, and drank deeply, like a starving animal, getting soaked and not caring. Then, accompanied by the nerve-shattering barking, she turned the door’s dead bolt and pulled the door open just enough to look out.

She was facing a parking lot, its black surface drowned by fog. She saw no cars-it was empty. The mist was penetrated by one dim light at the far corner. Up to her left was the highway, with its swiftly running smears of light.

Yes, this was Dr. Firreti’s clinic. The front of the building would be to her left, facing Highway One.

Her pain was more tolerable now. Maybe, as a human, her sense of pain was duller, as were her other senses. But she ached all over. She longed for a nice hot bath, a hot supper, and a nice bed. She slipped out and shut the door.

There were plenty of motels nearby. She’d just check in somewhere, maybe order in a pizza. She grabbed at her pocket to see if she still had her checkbook.

Yes, it was still with her-so there were rules of some sort; but her credit cards were in her purse, on the top shelf of her closet. What would a motel clerk think if she walked in with no credit cards? Some motels wouldn’t even rent a room if you didn’t have a credit card. And she had no car, no luggage. She’d been so frantic to get out of the house, to get away from everything to do with Jimmie that she hadn’t planned at all.

Why hadn’t she had kept some of the money from Jimmie’s dresser? She’d been stupid to put it all back. How would he know if she’d kept a couple of bills. She didn’t even have any loose change for a phone call.

She could go home. No one would see her in the dark and fog. Unlikely that Jimmie was home, he’d still be in Sheril’s bed. Go home, get her clothes and money and her car.

But she was afraid to go home, afraid of Jimmie finding her there; and she was ashamed of her fear.

She crossed the parking lot and headed down the dim back street between fog-wreathed cottages. Only a few of the small houses had lights on behind the mist.

She had no notion what time it was. When she reached Ocean, the shops were closed, the streets were nearly empty except for a few parked cars. She turned away from the long block beside the automotive shop, and headed down into the village toward Binnie’s. The little Italian restaurant stayed open late. They didn’t have a pay phone, but they’d let her use the house phone. She hurried through the chill fog hoping a police car didn’t come along and wonder about a woman out alone at this hour without a purse or coat. Hoping Jimmie wasn’t cruising the streets looking for her. But fat chance of that, when he was playing games in Sheril Beckwhite’s bed.

She couldn’t leave it alone, the thought of Jimmie playing footsie in the conjugal bed of a dead man.

She could smell Binnie’s garlic and spaghetti sauce before she reached the white-shingled, converted cottage. Gratefully she pushed into its warmth, in among the wooden booths and checkered tablecloths and the good smell of spices.

The cafe was nearly empty. There were only three customers, a young couple in the corner holding hands across the table like a couple in some fifties movie, and an elderly man in a dark suit, salt-and-pepper hair below his collar, sitting at the bar drinking espresso. He glanced at her without interest. She could see Binnie in the back, his dark, sleekly oiled hair, his long, solemn face above his white apron. He and the busboy were washing dishes.

She glanced through at them and waved, and picked up the phone; Binnie gave her a casual wave in return, nodding and smiling. Binnie’s clock, behind the bar, said twelve-thirty.

She prayed Clyde would answer. Then she hoped he wouldn’t. What was she going to say? Come get me because I can’t go home? Take care of me because I have no home anymore and no money? Because I am a cat now, and have abandoned all human dignity?

The phone rang and rang.

Thank God he wasn’t home. Oh, Clyde, please be home.

Maybe he had company, maybe he was not alone.

She had started to hang up when he answered. She clutched the phone. She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know how to explain. It occurred to her that she could have walked down to his place, it wasn’t that far. She felt as if, any minute, she was going to start bawling.

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

In the mist, the village was silent except for the muffled footfalls of the two men. Jimmie Osborne’s oxfords pounded up the sidewalk but Wark’s pace in his jogging shoes was almost silent; his soft walk made Joe’s skin crawl. Following them, the cats drew closer, though Dulcie had restrained herself from launching in a clawed leap onto Wark’s back. She moved quickly beside Joe, staying close to the shops where the fog was most concealing. Their quarry moved fast, jingling car keys.

The sour smell of liquor and cigarette smoke that clung to the men, absorbed while they sat in Donnie’s bar, left a heavy trail behind them. Wark’s voice was so soft the cats had to strain to hear. They caught a few indecipherable words, then Wark said, “No one’ll link us to that.”

“And the wrench?” Osborne said.

“It’ll be found at the proper time. Don’t fret.”

When Wark turned to look at Jimmie, his head in profile seemed unusually narrow; his nose protruded boldly.“Quit worrying don’t always be worryin’.”

His low voice insinuated itself with an intimate penetration that made Joe shiver unpleasantly.

“You’re sure Damen’s prints are still on it?”

Wark’s lilt sharpened with irritation. “They be on it. Quit fussin’. One phone call, the cops have the wrench and Damen’s prints all over it.”

“But all that handling, swinging it around while you chased the damned cat.”

“Still had t’gloves on. Might be smearing it some, but it be full of prints, had t’ be with Clyde using it every day. Back off, man. You be nervous as a cat your ownself.”

“It’s the damned cats that have me on edge. I didn’t count on this when we? ” He turned to look at Wark. “Where did the unnatural things come from? How do you think that makes me feel, my own wife? Did you take care of that?”

“I be workin’ on it.”

“You’ve had more than a week. You caught her once. Why didn’t you? Now, who knows where she is?” He stopped to stare at Wark. “You’re afraid of the damn things.”

Dulcie had stopped, startled. She pressed against Joe’s ear. “What’s he talking about? What does he mean, about his wife?”

Joe thought about Kate Osborne, about her golden eyes that were not exactly like human eyes. He thought about the way she sometimes seemed to slip away within herself, dreaming-perhaps as a cat dreams private and delicious imaginings. He thought about Kate’s catlike grace, about her easy, agile movements.

He thought about the time, when the two couples were in the backyard barbecuing, and he had trotted into the kitchen and found Kate alone, chewing on a raw steak bone. Clyde always cut the T-bone out before he grilled, he said you could plump up the meat better.

When Kate turned and saw him, her eyes widened. She had a speck of red meat on her cheek. She laid the bone down, embarrassed; then she seemed to laugh at herself. She knelt and picked him up, and tore off a morsel of the raw meat, offering it to him.“Hey, Joe Cat. What do you care what I eat?”

She put him down, and gave him another piece of steak. She left the raw bone on the paper wrapper on the counter, picked up her drink, and went back outside where the barbecue was smoking up the neighborhood.

Now, following the two men, he was quiet for so long that Dulcie said,“What? What are you thinking? Could Kate be? But that’s impossible.”

He thought about the rude way Jimmie treated cats and tried to avoid them. And about the rude, patronizing way he treated Kate.

This was incredible. Was he imagining this? Was he putting the wrong spin on the men’s conversation?

Dulcie watched him with huge eyes, letting him work it out.

When he tried to imagine Kate Osborne as a cat, it wasn’t hard to do. She would be a pale, voluptuous cat with golden eyes, very clean. He glanced at Dulcie and grinned. “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe Kate is like us.”

“I don’t understand. How could she be? What-what would that make us? What??” She let her words trail off, her eyes huge.

“I don’t know, Dulcie.” A shock of fear had gripped him. He didn’t like this. He’d just gotten used to a cataclysmic change in his life. He wasn’t ready for anything more, not for the implications generated by this conversation.

But they had missed something up ahead; Jimmie had grabbed Wark by the shoulders.

“What did you tell her? What does she know?”

“Why would I be tellingheranything?” Wark shrugged Jimmie’s hands away, mumbling something they couldn’t hear.

“She knows, doesn’t she?” Jimmie growled. “That’s why she ran away, she knows I want her dead. Well, you’d better do her, Wark. And soon. I don’t like her roaming around loose. I wake up at night sweating. It’s a nightmare that couldn’t happen. I want it to stop happening.

“I wake up thinking it can’t be happening, then I remember that cat you changed and killed. I remember how that cat looked.” Jimmie shook Wark hard. “You’d better do her the same. And you’d better do those other two.”

“Get your mind off t’ cats. I be taking care of the cats.”

“You haven’t so far.”

“I said, don’t fret. I be doing it. And soon we be out of here, lapping up rum and playing with the girls, in Boca.” Wark laughed. “But business first. We tend first to the job at hand. We’ve a long drive t’night. Might be we could tow one car, but I don’t like?”

“Sheril’s driving. I told you. It’s not my fault your man got sick. Christ, he might have changed the VIN plate before he took off on you. I don’t like doing that in the shop yard.”

“We be back before daylight. T’ tools all be there, only take a minute.”

The two men stopped beside Jimmie’s silver Bugatti; it waited low and sleek and bright, reeking of money. Joe had listened a dozen times to Jimmie’s recitation of how fast the Bugatti was, how it could do over three hundred, and how much it would have cost if he hadn’t got such a deal. Sure he got a deal. Five hundred thousand bucks worth of car, and Jimmie gave Kate the story that he got it cheap in a trade. He told Kate the Bugatti was a tax writeoff, good advertising for the agency. Joe wondered how much Kate swallowed of that. Clyde said a hired salesman would play hell trying to take a writeoff like that.

Jimmie said,“You better ditch the key, in case of trouble tonight.”

“There won’t be no trouble. Unless Sheril be messing us up. And who would know-innocent little brass key.”

As Jimmie opened the driver’s door and the interior light came on, the cats drew back behind a planter, jamming their rumps against a shop wall. Jimmie’s face, lit by the low interior glow, appeared transformed, and not in a pleasant way. He slid into the low, sleek car. “Let’s get rolling, pick up Sheril, or we won’t be back before daylight.” He stroked the pearly leather interior, and softly shut the door. In a second the Bugatti’s engine came to life, a soft and powerful purr like a giant, sleek silver cat.

Wark moved on down the street to a black BMW. When, a minute later, his headlights came on, the cats shut their eyes so they wouldn’t reflect. The cars swept by them and were gone.

And Joe crouched in the fog fearing for Kate. She had left home, run away. Was that what Jimmie meant? It was about time. He hoped she was a long way from Molena Point. He wondered if she did know what these two had in mind for her.

But if she didn’t know, and if she was still in the village and she went home, if Jimmie found her there, that could be ugly.

Dulcie said,“Where are they going tonight? What are they up to?”

“They could be stealing cars. A VIN plate is an automotive identification.” He slitted his eyes. “Is this why Wark killed Beckwhite? Were they stealing imported cars, and Beckwhite found out?”

“But they wouldn’t kill him just over some cars.”

“Expensive cars, Dulcie, if they’re foreign makes. Cars worth way up in the six figures.”

“Should we call the police? You could?”

“And tell them what? We’re only guessing. If the police went up to the agency tonight, and nothing happened, then what?”

“We could go up to the shop. We could get inside and watch them.”

He smiled.“I was thinking the same.”

“But we have all night,” she said, “and I’m done for. I need to rest and eat, first. We’ve been going since early morning.”

“Okay. We’ll try to find Kate, and warn her, then we’ll grab a bite. I don’t know where the Osbornes live. We need a phone book.”

Dulcie stood still, watching him, the tip of her tail twitching.“I need to eat now.” At his expression, she tightened her ears to her head. “We’ve had nothing to eat since early this morning, and hardly anything to drink-a few laps of gutter water. If you don’t want a dead cat on your conscience, we’ll eat first.”

He rose and turned back the way they had come, toward the bar.“There’ll be scraps at Donnie’s, plenty of scraps. And they’ll have a phone book.”

She didn’t move.

He stopped and looked back.“We’ll just slip into Donnie’s, find some leftover hamburger, and find Kate’s phone number. They’re so crowded no one will see us, just slip in between people’s legs.”

“Sure we will. And get stepped on or kicked trying to snatch a mustard-soaked bun or a few chips and peanuts and find a phone book.” She sat down, staring at him.

“We need to find Kate, don’t you understand. She’s in danger, Dulcie. We need?”

She rose and started off up the street away from the bar. When he didn’t follow she turned; her look seared him. “Comeon,Joe. Wilma has a phone book. And there’s food at home.” And she trotted away through the fog, her ears and whiskers back and her tail lashing.

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

The bubble bath was scented with vetiver. The water was deliriously warm, easing every muscle. Kate lay back in the tub, letting her body relax, absorbing the welcome heat and sipping her cold beer, listening contentedly to the comforting sounds from the kitchen, where Clyde was cooking spaghetti for her.

What other man would rise from sleep at midnight, get dressed and in the car, pick her up and bring her home, then draw a bath for her and cook her supper? Above the herbal scent of the bubbles, she could smell the wonderful aroma of the rich sauce and garlic bread.

She had already consumed a plate of cheese and crackers, which he had set beside the tub with her beer. What a nice man he was, what an absolutely comforting and comfortable and caring man.

On the phone, when she called him from Binnie’s, he hadn’t asked one question. He hadn’t even asked why she didn’t just walk down to the house from Binnie’s, it wasn’t more than ten blocks. He had just come to get her, had walked her out and had sat in the car gently holding her, letting her cry.

Clyde might not have a lot of polish, he might make rude remarks, and belch with good-natured humor, but he was a veritable paragon among men.

He had not only drawn a bath for her and waited on her, he had cleared out the spare room as if she were royalty, had put fresh sheets on the guest bed, had hauled away stacks of tool catalogs and a pile of folded sweatshirts, had shoved the heavy, movable parts of his weight equipment out of her way, under the bed.

He had, while picking up his sweatshirts from the desk, quietly slipped a small spiral notebook and a thin briefcase in between two shirts, and carried them away.

Something obviously private; maybe something belonging to one of his girlfriends. She imagined that the vetiver bubble bath would belong to dark-haired Caroline Waith. Or maybe the little redhead-she couldn’t keep them all straight.

She finished her beer, and lay back. She had remembered what it was about Dr. Firreti doing something with cats. It was, after all, nothing alarming. Quite the opposite. He collected stray cats from somewhere, very likely the thin cats under the wharf. Firreti neutered the cats, gave them shots, and turned them loose where they had been found. She grinned. That was what she had smelled in the damp sand, the metallic scent of a trap, mixed with human smell, probably Firreti’s scent. Though it seemed more like that of a young boy.

She stepped out of the tub and toweled off, enjoying the thick, huge towel Clyde had provided.

Looking in the mirror, she studied with distaste the purple smudges across her body, like the marks of giant fingers. Ugly souvenirs of the bashing Wark had given her small cat self.

She resisted putting on Clyde’s robe, though he had left it folded on the counter. She dressed in her jeans and shirt, and used his dryer on the edges of her hair. Then, limp and sleepy and content, she padded barefoot out to the kitchen.

Clyde turned from the sink. He was dressed in cutoffs and sandals and a faded purple T-shirt with a hole in the sleeve. He had set the kitchen table and was pouring her another beer. The fresh glass was white with frost from the freezer. She sat down at the table and petted the two old dogs who crowded against her knees.

But the three cats made no move to greet her. They sat in the center of the kitchen watching her intently, and not in a friendly way. She looked back at them uneasily.

She’d known these cats for years. They always ran right to her. All their lives she had held them and stroked them as they napped beside her or on her lap. She had played games with them, and had lain on the floor with all the cats asleep across her stomach.

But now, in those three pairs of eyes, was a look that chilled her. She daren’t put out her hand and try to touch them.

Clyde seemed not to notice their wary behavior. Draining the spaghetti and pouring on sauce, he set the heaping plate before her. It looked so good she wanted to push her face in, slurping. He brought a bowl of salad and a basket of garlic bread, then found the grated cheese and a bottle of salad dressing.

He sat down across from her, toying with his beer and with a piece of garlic bread. She couldn’t help gobbling. She couldn’t take time to wind her spaghetti, she hardly cut it before she raked it in; she was almost panicked with hunger. Clyde busied himself with his bread and beer.

He not only ignored her unusual bad manners, but waited patiently, without questions, for her to explain her seeming abandonment to the streets without money or her purse, without her car.

When, halfway through her meal the first emptiness was satisfied, when the good hot spaghetti began to give back to her some warmth, she settled back and slowed that flying fork. Sipping her cold beer, she told the story slowly. She told him how she had found herself in the alley behind that old office building, standing barefoot among garbage, her clothes and hands filthy, and with no memory of going there, no idea of where she had been, no memory of leaving the house. She told him how, when she left the alley, Wark had chased her. She told him what happened when Wark’s foreign, rhythmic words touched her. She told him how it felt to be suddenly small and four-footed, how nice her soft fur had felt, how nice it felt to run so swiftly and to lash her tail. When he didn’t laugh, she described all the sensations she had encountered. She was telling him what she could remember about living under the wharf, when he came to life suddenly.

“Stop it, Kate! For Christ sake, stop it!”

She stared at him.

“Why, Kate? Why would you make fun of me? And how did you know?”

She wasn’t tracking, she’d lost something here. What was he talking about? “How did I know what? I’m not making fun of you.” She stared at him, perplexed.

“How did you find out what happened? No one would? Did Wilma tell you?” He stared hard at her. “That couldn’t have been you on the phone.” His look bored in, then he shook his head. “No, not that voice.”

She didn’t know what this was about. He was so angry the look on his face made her cringe. She rose and went around the table, clutched his shoulders. “What’s the matter? What’s happened? I don’t understand.” She could read nothing from his expression.

They were silent for a long time, looking at each other, each of them trying to fill in the blanks. A little heat of excitement shivered through her. She said,“Clyde, where is Joe?”

“He’s gone, of course.”

“What do you mean, of course?” Her pulse began to race.

“He disappeared a few days ago. I’m sure you know all about it. You know he hasn’t been home. That he?” He stopped speaking.

“That he what?”

“That he’s? That he’s been in touch,” Clyde said tightly.

“How do you mean, in touch?”

“Look, Kate, why go through all this? Why bother? You know all about this. Why hand me that long involved story about wharves and about Lee Wark chasing you. Why not just?”

“Been in touch how, Clyde?”

“The phone, damn it! You knew that.”

It took her a while to work it out. She stared at Clyde and stared at the phone. She studied him again, then gulped back a laugh.

Joe Grey had phoned him.

Joe Cat was like herself. And he had figured out how to use the phone.

She collapsed in a fit of merriment that weakened her. Joe Grey had phoned him, had talked to Clyde. Joe Grey was more than a cat, he was like her. And the nervy little beast had had the balls to phone Clyde.

She could not get control of herself. She rocked with laughter. She was giddy, delirious with the knowledge that she was not alone. That she was not the only creature with these bizarre talents, that there was another like herself in the world.

Clyde’s face was a mix of rage and confusion. “What the hell’s wrong with you! After the story you just told about turning into a cat, where do you get off laughing?”

She stopped laughing and watched him quietly.“You don’t believe what I told you.”

“For Christ sake, Kate.”

She played it back to him.“You truly believe that Joe Grey phoned you. But you don’t believe what happened to me.”

He just looked at her.

“I wasn’t lying,” she said softly. Clyde was the only person in the world she could talk to-it was shattering that he put her off like this. “I wasn’t lying, I’ll show you.”

And she did the only thing she could do. She used the only rebuttal that he would understand. She said the words, felt the room twist and warp. She let him see her do it, she forced him to witness the whole fascinating transformation. She was suddenly small, standing on the linoleum looking up at him mewling, lifting a paw to touch his leg.

Clyde’s face was white. He stared at her, then rose, pushing back his chair, and backed away from her toward the hall door.

She followed him, and wound around his ankles. She felt him shiver. She brushed her whiskers against his bare, hairy leg, and heard him groan with fear. She pressed closer to him, rubbing her face against his leg. She was terrifying him. How delicious. It served him right.

He backed away, snatched up his beer, fled away from her down the hall. She heard the bedroom door close.

The three cats had run into the laundry and leaped to their high bunk. Even the dogs were wary, pressing against the back door, their ears and tails down as if they’d been whipped. She hissed at them all, flicked her tail, and trotted away down the hall.

She sat down in front of Clyde’s closed door and licked her paws, listening.

She heard him rustling some papers, and muttering. She heard him set down his beer glass, heard the springs squeak as if he had sat down on the bed. She began to feel sorry that she’d scared him.

Well what had she expected? That he’d be thrilled?

One thing sure, she wasn’t going to get anywhere with him, as a cat. She said the words again, and returned to the Kate he knew. She knocked.

“Can I come in?”

“Go away. You can stay the night if you want, in the guest room, or you can go sleep in a tree.”

“Please, Clyde.”

When he didn’t answer, she pushed the door open.

He was sitting on the bed holding a sheaf of papers. When she opened the door he’d been staring sickly at the threshold, expecting the cat. He stared up into her face, shocked, then watched her warily.

“Come on, Clyde, I’m still Kate. The cat is gone. What’s to be upset about?” She sat down on the bed beside him. He winced and moved away.

“Hey, I don’t have rabies. I’m just Kate. How else was I going to convince you?”

He remained mute.

“I really need you. I really need to talk.” She moved away from him to the foot of the bed, and pulled her legs up under her. She stared at him until he looked back.

“I have something to tell you, something else, that hasn’t anything to do with-with what I just did.”

She looked at him pleadingly.“I’ve left Jimmie. Or, I am leaving him. I’ll have to get my things.”

He didn’t seem surprised.

She gave him a cool, controlled look.“It’s Sheril Beckwhite. Jimmie and Sheril Beckwhite. So damned shabby.”

It was hard to talk when he just sat looking at her. She told him how cold Jimmie was in bed, how decorous and boring; how, if she could get Jimmie drunk enough he would make wild, delicious love to her but that didn’t happen often, and the next morning he wouldn’t look at her; for days he would be cold and silent, as if he was ashamed, as if she shouldn’t have such feelings.

How ironic, she said, that he’d gone to Sheril Beckwhite.

“And once when we were out drinking and walked the village streets for hours laughing, looking in the shop windows, acting silly, he said, ‘You love the night, Kate. You love the night better than the day,’ and he looked at me so strangely. As if he knew something,” she said uneasily. “Asif he knew, a long time before I did.”

Clyde set his beer down carefully on the night table. He looked at her and kept looking.

“What?” she said, watching him, puzzled. And then a shock of anger hit her. “You knew about them.”

“I knew. I’ve known for months. I didn’t?”

“You knew, and you didn’t tell me.” She stood up, holding herself tight. “I thought you were my friend. I just finished baring my whole damned life to you, I just told you the most intimate secrets of my life. I justperformedthe most intimate, shocking, personal act for you, and you? You knew all the time about Jimmie and that woman and you didn’t tell me.”

“Christ, Kate, how could I tell you. I wanted to tell you. But I thought? I thought I might make things worse. Men don’t run to the wives of their friends with that kind of? Jimmie and I go clear back to grammar school.”

“You and Jimmie are not friends, you don’t even like Jimmie. You let me suffer, when I was trying to make things work, trying to overlook the painful things Jimmie said and did, when I thought it was all my fault. And all along he was fucking Sheril Beckwhite and you knew it.”

She had been going to tell him about finding the foreign bank books. She had wanted to ask his advice, try to figure out together what Jimmie was into. She had been so sure she could trust Clyde, that they were friends and totally open with each other.

And, she thought, if he hadn’t told her about Jimmie and Sheril, what else was he keeping to himself?

Could Clyde be part of whatever illegal business Jimmie was into? Was Clyde a part of that?

Was that why he’d kept quiet about Sheril? Because of secrets, because of what he and Jimmie were doing?

She turned away and left the room. She went into the guest room and shut the door. In a childish gesture she pushed the lock and propped the desk chair against the door. She stripped off her clothes and got into bed, lay curled with her arms around the pillow, lost and angry and alone.

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

Kate woke reluctantly. A heavy depression gripped her. She had no clue to its cause. She was not fully awake; she felt certain that the missing fact would make itself known the moment she came alive. The waiting revelation would, in just a moment now, sock her in the belly.

The impending weight was accompanied by a sense of helplessness, as if she would be able to do nothing whatever about the bad news. In one more minute she’d have to face some unavoidable irrevocable truth.

And it hit her. She came fully awake: she remembered her small cat self.

She remembered changing from woman to cat. Remembered doing that last night in front of Clyde, remembered rubbing against Clyde’s ankles. Remembered his sick disgust.

She remembered that he knew about Jimmie and Sheril; and that he hadn’t told her. That he had behaved with some kind of uncharacteristic loyalty to Jimmie, a loyalty he would never exhibit, normally, given his long-standing antipathy to Jimmie.

She stared around at Clyde’s small, homely guest room; at the drawn blind awash with early light; at the scarred oak desk, the ugly green metal filing cabinet, the large black-and-chrome structure of his weight equipment, whose immovable part was fixed to the wall. The weights, she remembered, Clyde had shoved under the bed. On the dresser, the small digital clock said six-forty.

She could hear no sound in the house. She couldn’t hear Clyde stirring, couldn’t hear water running. There was no impatient shuffling from the kitchen, no scratching at the kitchen door as if the animals were wanting their breakfast. Maybe Clyde was walking the dogs or was out in the backyard with them. She unwrapped herself from the twistedcovers and rose, stood naked looking into the mirror.

Her eyes were puffy. A dark bruise sliced across her neck. The bruises on her arms and body, like giant finger marks, seemed even darker. Her short, pale hair stuck up all on end.

She smelled coffee, then, as if it had just started to perk, and heard from the kitchen the metallic sound of the can opener. She heard Clyde’s voice, low and irritable, then heard the dogs’ toenails scratch the linoleum, scuffling, as if he had set down their food. She heard a cat mewl.

She didn’t want to face Clyde this morning. She’d just dress and slip out, go away somewhere. Maybe around nine o’clock she’d call the shop, disguise her voice and ask for Jimmie. Then, assured that he was at work, she’d go home, throw her clothes in the car.

She guessed she’d left Clyde’s robe in the bathroom. She pulled the sheet off the bed, wrapped it around herself, and headed down the hall to wash. She wished she had her toothbrush, wished she had her comb and lipstick. Passing the door to Clyde’s bedroom, she stopped to look in.

Last night when he was so upset, why had he been sitting on his bed calmly reading a bunch of papers? The briefcase and notebook lay in plain sight on the dresser.

She could hear him in the kitchen talking to the animals. She slipped in, walked to the dresser, and flipped open the notebook.

The pages were filled with short entries listing foreign cars: the year, the make, then particulars as to model, color, type of upholstery and the various accessories. All were expensive models. Each entry listed a state and county, a license number, then a date and the name and address of a Molena Point resident. That could be the purchaser. Twelve pages were filled. She put the notebook down, opened the briefcase, and drew out a stack of papers.

They were photocopies of book and magazine pages. All were articles about cats. She read quickly, at first amazed, and then eagerly as one would read a letter from home filled with welcome news.

She read until all sound from the kitchen ceased. She stuffed the papers back in the briefcase, laid the notebook on top as she had found it, and fled for the bathroom.

She turned on the shower and stepped into the welcome warmth and steam. Why did Clyde have all that amazing stuff about cats? Where had he gotten it? And why, if he’d read it, was he so upset with her last night?

He must be trying to find out about Joe Cat. In her own distress, she’d almost forgotten Joe. Clyde had gone to some trouble to put together that remarkable information. But if he’d read those amazing articles, he shouldn’t have been so upset last night.

She got out of the shower, brushed her teeth with her finger and Clyde’s toothpaste, and brushed her hair with his hairbrush. When she came out, glancing down the hall, she could see him in the bedroom standing at the dresser.

He was dressed to go out, wearing tan jeans, a dark polo shirt and an off-white linen jacket. As she stood looking, he slipped the little notebook into his jacket pocket.

He moved to the nightstand and picked up the phone, and she backed away into the guest room. Through her open door she listened to him punching in a number.

He didn’t ask for anyone, he just started talking. “Can I meet with you this morning? Yes, two days ago.” He listened, then said, “Don’t do that. That could mess us up real bad.”

He listened, then,“No, nothing. But I’m not done with it. It’s the money?”

Then,“Yes.” He laughed. “Ten minutes,” he said softly. “Soon as I can get there.”

She shut her door quietly, dropped the sheet, and pulled on her clothes. She heard him pass her door going down the hall, then heard the back door open, heard him talking to the dogs as if letting them in. Quickly she slipped out to the living room and out the front door.

In the carport she slid into the open Packard, thankful that he kept the top down most of the time. The bright red car was an antique, valuable and lovingly cared for, always clean and well polished. Well why not? The men at the shop kept it washed. Sitting in the front seat she took a deep breath, whispered, and in an instant she was little again, four-footed, her tail lashing with nerves.

She leaped onto the back of the seat, then down to the floor in the back; she did it all so fast she thought she was going to throw up. Crouching on the floor among a tangle of jogging shoes, automotive catalogs, rags, paperback mysteries, and what smelled like stale peanut butter, she heard the front door slam, heard his footsteps. She hoped he wouldn’t throw anything heavy on top of her. She heard him calling Joe. After a long silence, he came into the carport.

Standing beside the car, he called Joe again, and waited, then grumbled something cross and slid in. As he started the engine and backed out, Kate smoothed her whiskers and stretched out behind his seat, hidden on the shadowed floor. Stifling an excited purr, she smiled. Wherever he was going, whomever he planned to meet, he was going to have company.

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

Dulcie led Joe a fast pace home through the misty night; crossing her own yard she wasted no time but bolted straight in through her cat door and made for the refrigerator.

Coming down the fog-shrouded street, sniffing on the damp air the distinctive scent of Wilma’s garden, of the geraniums and lemon balm, she had streaked blindly on, skimming past the big old oak trees, racing across the fog-obscured lawns, then careening inside far ahead of Joe.

The intricately broken front of the charming stone cottage, the deep bay windows, and the incorporation of the two porches deep beneath the peaked roof lent the cottage a warm and cozy appeal. Wreathed in fog, the house, Joe thought, looked like a dwelling in one of Clyde’s favorite Dean Koontz novels, a house both mysterious and welcoming.

He felt uneasy, though, coming inside in the middle of the night, when Wilma would be sleeping. The intrusion made him feel unpleasantly secretive and stealthy. He would rather have had his supper at Donnie’s Lounge cadging hamburger scraps, half-deafened by Dixieland jazz among the feet of happy drinkers.

He pushed into the dark kitchen behind Dulcie and found her stretched out on the linoleum between the dim counters and the refrigerator beside an empty kibble bowl.

She was still munching.“Home,” she whispered, smiling. Her breath smelled of kibble.

“Thanks for leaving me some.”

“That was just an appetizer. As soon as I digest this, we’ll have supper.”

He sniffed the scent of wet tea bags and onions that radiated from the trash; these were mixed with the smell of floor wax and of a woman’s faint perfume. “Will Wilma hear us?”

“The bedroom’s at the far end of the hall. She sleeps like a rock. I can lie down across her stomach at night, and she doesn’t wake up. Come on,” she said, getting up, yawning. “When I open the refrigerator, hold the door open.”

Lightly she leaped to the counter and pressed her front paws against the inside of the refrigerator handle. Bracing her hind paws against the edge of the counter, she pushed.

The door flew open, and Joe pressed inside to stop it from closing again. Leaning into the chilly shelves, he smelled the mouthwatering scent of roast chicken.

Together they hauled out a package wrapped in the kind of white paper Jolly’s Deli used. They pawed the paper off, tearing it with their teeth, to reveal a plump half chicken, its skin crisp and brown.

Joe braced the drumstick between his paws and tore off chunks of dark meat as Dulcie quickly stripped meat from the breast. Dulcie was way too hungry to think about manners. The notion that cats were dainty eaters was an amusing human myth, no less silly thanSick as a cat,orCat got your tongue.

They cleaned every scrap from the bones of the chicken, then they liberated from the refrigerator a foil-wrapped cube of cheese, a plastic container of oyster stew, and a wedge of cream pie. Dulcie lifted the aluminum pie tin out with her teeth, smearing her nose with cream. Joe hadn’t realized he was so hungry. But as soon as the rich supper settled in his stomach he began to feel sleepy, and to yawn. He didn’t want to sleep. If they planned to break into the automotive shop before dawn, he didn’t need to pass out in a heavy, postsupper stupor.

He cleaned pie from his whiskers as Dulcie lifted what trash she could manage up into the trash receptacle. They left the floor a mess, but who could help it? They were cats, not kitchen maids.

They retired to the living room, to the top of Wilma’s desk, where Joe pawed open the phone book and committed to memory Kate’s number.

The room was old and comfortable. A worn blue afghan was thrown over the arm of the needlepoint couch. The big rag rug was thick and hand-braided, the desk was a nice rich cherry piece, carved and well polished.“Wilma keeps talking about redecorating,”

Dulcie said.“She keeps collecting pictures of rooms she likes.” She shrugged. “Maybe she will, maybe not.” The painting over the fireplace was the best thing in the room, a loosely rendered, painterly study of Molena Point cottages as seen from the hills, lots of red rooftops tucked among rich greens, and a slash of blue at the bottom that was the sea.

Joe lifted the receiver by the cord, and punched in Kate’s number. The phone rang for a long time. He gave up at last, and lifted the handset back. He hoped she had left the village, that she was safely away from Molena Point and out of Wark’s and Jimmie’s reach.

At the back of the phone book, in the yellow pages, he found the automotive shop. Then, in the map at the front that the phone company had furnished for newcomers, he located Haley Street. He wondered if the people who had put together the phone book would be pleased that a cat was using their map.

The automotive shop was a block off Highway One, at the corner of Haley and Ocean. He thought that was near the vet’s where Clyde took him once a year to get poked with a very sharp needle. Now that he had a little say in the matter, now that he was totally his own person, he wouldn’t be dragged back there so easily.

The desk clock said two-twenty as they snuggled down on Wilma’s blue afghan, pawing it off the couch arm onto the seat, and into a comfortable nest. Dulcie yawned hugely and rolled over, wriggling deeper into the soft wool.

Joe rolled onto his back, and licked a bit of chicken that he had missed between his claws.“I want to be out of here by four, up and headed for the shop.”

“I’ll wake up,” she said sleepily. “I always wake up.” Four o’clock was the shank of the night, the mysterious roaming hour; the time when her active imagination could soar into moonlit dreams; and, when the mice and small, succulent creatures come out of their burrows.

The warmth of the afghan seeped into their tired bodies, easing their tense muscles. But as Joe was dropping off, he felt Dulcie shiver.

He lifted his heavy head.“What? What’s the matter?”

“I’m going to slip into the bedroom for a minute, and curl up with Wilma. Just for a little while, to let her know I’m all right.”

He flattened his ears, hissing.

“Why not? What harm can it do? She’ll be so worried about me. I’ve been gone for days.”

“She might be so worried she’ll shut you in. Maybe shut us both in, and call Clyde. You can bet he’s told Wilma I’m gone.” He sat up, alarmed. “Who knows what he’s told her. Maybe about my phone call.”

Dulcie smiled, and yawned.“So? It wouldn’t matter, she won’t tell anyone.” She raised her head, frowning. “Haven’t you thought about going home?”

“Wark knows where I live-and where you live. Sure, I miss Clyde. But even if I could go home, everything would be different.

“Life at home couldn’t ever be the same as it was. What would we do? Have a beer together? Brag to each other about our conquests? Two crusty bachelors sitting around the living room telling each other whoppers about our love lives?” He stretched out again, wriggling deeper into the afghan. “A few days of that, and we’d both end up in the funny farm.”

“Couldn’t you just be yourselves? Why do you have to even think about it?”

“Because I’m not myself anymore. Not my old self. Because cats don’t talk to people. Because cats and people don’t have conversations. On the phone, okay. That was an emergency. But not everyday talk.”

“But I? “

“On the phone, Clyde wasn’twatchingme talk. To talk to him in person-no way. Think about it. That’s more than I could handle. More than Clyde could handle.”

“But I’ve always sort of talked to Wilma. Roll over to tell her I want petting, scrunch down when I don’t feel good. I tell Wilma a lot of things. I don’t see? “

“That’s body language. Body language is natural. Petting and stroking, tail lashing and snarling and purring and rubbing against, those are normal talk. But a conversation in the English language, face-to-face talk about everyday trivia, about what to have for supper, what channel to watch-no way.”

She sighed.“Maybe you’re right.” She rose, prepared to jump down.

“Dulcie, believe me. If you go in there now, we might never get out of here. Not in time to see what Wark and Jimmie are up to.”

“I suppose,” she said, and settled back beside him, into the warm nest. “But I hate knowing she’s worried about me.”

He put his paw around her, laying his front leg over her shoulder, and licked her ear.“Do you think I don’t feel bad because Clyde’s worrying?” He yawned. “Go to sleep, Dulcie. There’s nothing we can do about it; they’ll just have to worry.” He gave her a final lick, a little squeeze, and in an instant he was asleep.

Dulcie lay awake a long time, listening to Joe’s faint, tomcat snoring. She longed to pad into the bedroom and snuggle down with Wilma. She had slept with Wilma ever since she was a tiny kitten, when Wilma brought her home, separating her from her litter because the bigger kittens kept pushing her out and wouldn’t let her eat. She had vague memories of fighting those bigger kittens, but she never won.

She had slept in a little box, lined with something soft. At night, Wilma put the box beside her pillow, and whenever Dulcie woke hungry, Wilma would rise and go out to the kitchen to warm some milk for her. It didn’t taste like the regular bottled milk tasted, that they used now. She supposed it was kitten formula, like in the ads on TV.

When she was big enough so Wilma wouldn’t roll on her and crush her, she’d slept right on Wilma’s pillow snuggled against her shoulder, into Wilma’s long hair.

That was when Wilma first started reading to her, when she was snuggled on the bed late at night with her head on Wilma’s hair.

She thought warily about the morning to come, when they would break into the automotive agency. She was just as curious as Joe was, about what those men were up to. But she thought she was more scared than Joe.

She wasn’t afraid of dogs or other cats, but people could frighten her; and the automotive shop looked to her, when she hunted near it along the side streets, like a huge prison.

The idea of getting trapped within those high walls, of being cornered there by Lee Wark, was not pleasant.

But they had to do it. This was the only way she knew to stop Wark from pursuing them. Get the goods on him. Somehow, get him arrested. Then maybe the police would figure out about the murder, too, and Wark would be locked up for good.

But she couldn’t sleep for thinking of being trapped inside that huge building. She tried to purr to calm herself, but she could only stir a small, uncertain growl. And she didn’t sleep-she lay awake until time to wake Joe.

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

The Molena Point Police Bureau was in the center of the village, occupying the south wing of the courthouse. It was, like many Molena Point business buildings, a Spanish-style stucco structure with a heavy, red tile roof. The tower of the courthouse rose above it to its right, its peaked red roof the tallest point in the village.

At the curb before the front, glass door into the police station, two patrol units were parked. Identical units filled the back parking lot behind the building. There was a small public parking area directly in front of the courthouse. There, Clyde snagged the last space, pulling his red Packard in next to a rusting Suburban. The morning sun was bright. The time was nine-fifteen. From the number of parked cars in the public lot and on the street, he guessed that court was in session.

He left the top down, checking to be sure he hadn’t left anything of value on the seat or in the glove compartment. There was nothing valuable behind the seat, only old shoes and junk. Anything deposited back there was quickly mixed with the tangle, and might never be seen again. He kept the outside and the front seat of the car clean. The backseat was no-man’s-land, but he hardly ever had more than one passenger. He swung out and headed across the parking lot to meet Max Harper.

Entering the glass door of the police station he passed the fingerprinting bay on his right, beside which stood a stack of boxes labeledcopy paper.An office boy was loading the boxes onto a handtruck, three at a time. He saw Harper at the back of the big room, past a tangle of desks where officers, coming off duty, were doing their paperwork. Harper motioned him on back, and rose to fill two Styrofoam cups from the coffeemaker that stood on a table against the wall. Clyde eased back between the desks, stepping over several pairs of rubber boots and around crammed wastebaskets. Who knew why they needed rubber boots in this weather? He wasn’t going to ask.

Max Harper was tall and lanky, his thin face prematurely wrinkled, his expression habitually bleak. Though he was no older than Clyde, he joked that he could pass for Clyde’s father. They had worked together for two summers, when they were still in their teens, on a cattle ranch north of Salinas. And for several summers they had ridden bulls in the local rodeos, raising a lot of hell, drinking too much.

Clyde reached the back of the room. They talked for a few minutes, then he picked up his coffee and followed Max down the hall toward one of thethree conference rooms, where they could speak privately.

In Clyde’s parked car, the cream-colored cat leaped up to the back of the driver’s seat and clung, crouching. Looking out past the windshield of the big open car, she watched Clyde head for the police station. She hadn’t expected to see him going in there; she had imagined something quite different. She had imagined a clandestine meeting in a back booth of one of the darker bars, or perhaps two cars meeting outside the village on some lone strip of highway. When he disappeared inside, she jumped gingerly out of the car to the blacktop. The jolt hurt, but not as it had last night, when she woke in the vet’s cage. She was convinced that there were no broken bones, but only trauma and deep bruises.

Trotting across the parking lot, she stood to the side of the glass front door, peering around the molding to look in.

The room was full of officers, most of them occupied at their desks. Near the front, behind an official-looking counter, two male and one female officer were bent over a book or ledger. She knew from Clyde that Captain Harper wanted to redesign the station, give the separate operations more privacy and security. But Molena Point’s mayor was a hard man to deal with, stubborn and shortsighted. Though, from the talk she heard, the mayor was sure to be replaced, come the next election.

She could not see Clyde inside. She backed away from the door and slipped into the bushes that flanked the solid brick wall of the building.

She waited a long time. A woman went in, but she seemed nervous and kept glancing at her feet. A young couple entered but he held the door for her. There was no way a cat could slip past him, unseen.

Finally two officers entered arguing, swinging the door wide and hurrying on in. She nipped in behind their heels and slid behind a stack of brown cartons.

Concealed, out of sight of the preoccupied day watch, she peered out across the floor, studying the tangle of feet and desks and wastebaskets. The metallic bark of the police radio was low, but jarring. She thought communications was in a room to the left. Now she spotted Clyde, she got just a glimpse of him at the back of the room. He was moving away down the hall beside a uniformed officer.

She thought his companion was Max Harper, but who could see much from this angle? Everything was desk legs, human feet in black regulation shoes, and wastebaskets. She studied the room, weighing her options.

She could make a dash between the desks, hoping the preoccupied officers wouldn’t notice her. Or she could go around through the courthouse, and in through the back hall. She had used that route from the courthouse the last time she renewed her driver’s license. She watched an office boy making his way toward her, pushing a metal handtruck. As he approached the boxes, shehunkered low.

He stooped right beside where she was hidden, not an arm’s length from her, and began to load boxes. She crouched, waiting.

When he had loaded his truck and headed toward the back, she fell in behind him, following at his heels. The boy, intent on his cart and on avoiding the room’s clutter, had no clue a cat was following. She stayed close, but he hadn’t quite reached the hall when she felt eyes on her. Warily she glanced around.

Behind the nearest desk, an officer was watching her with a little twisted grin on his round face, and one eyebrow raised. He was young and pleasant-looking, pink-faced. Just the kind of man, she thought, who might pick a cat up and make a fuss over her. She didn’t know whether to move on quickly, or to get out of there. She sure didn’t want Clyde to see her.

At the next desk a dark-haired woman officer had stopped work, too, and was looking, a dimple playing at the corner of her mouth. In a minute the whole room would know a cat had sneaked in.

But both officers remained silent, glancing at each other amusedly. Maybe she was the best laugh they’d had that morning.

She daren’t look behind her. Who knew how many cops, by now, were watching her four-footed progress? But maybe no one would feel the need to pet the nice kitty, or to chase her away. What had made her think she could walk past a bunch of cops without every eye on her? She held her breath, and moved on quickly.

Catching up to the boy, she pressed so close to his heels that his pant legs brushed her face. And then ahead she heard Clyde’s voice coming from the last conference room.

She swerved away from her companion and slipped inside.

Clyde sat with his back to her, at a conference table. She nipped under a line of straight chairs that marched along the wall.

Max Harper stood beyond the table, copying something on the Xerox. She backed deeper into the shadows, watching his lean back, his long sun-weathered hands delicately flipping over each page of Clyde’s notebook and placing it carefully in the machine.

When Harper finished, he handed the notebook across the table to Clyde. She felt deeply relieved that Clyde wasn’t into this ugly business with Jimmie, that Clyde had come to Harper.

Clyde dropped the notebook in his pocket.“Could you get to those four before they’re sold? While they’re still in the shop?”

“I’ll call San Francisco this morning, see if we can get a man down here. If we can make those four, we’ll start contacting everyone on the list.”

“You can’t keep it in the department, to save time?”

“We can check out the VIN numbers, but we can’t check for any change in the motor numbers. We need a man from the National Crime Information Bureau for that. They won’t tell anyone-not even law enforcement-where the numbers are on the various cars and models.”

Harper grinned.“Just as well. Let that information leak out, and the punks start using acid on the motor numbers, and it all hits the fan.”

Clyde said,“Can you give me a few more days before you contact them? Another week? I still think there’s something more.”

“If you had one shred of evidence, Clyde?” Harper leaned back, lit a cigarette. He exhaled such a heavy reef of smoke that she had to press her nose against her leg to keep from sneezing. “You know I need sufficient cause for the judge to give us a warrant. If you had some indication of hidden cash, of laundered money?”

A jolt shook her. Laundered money. As in foreign bank accounts.

Clyde shook his head.“I’ve searched Beckwhite’s office. Nothing. Nothing in Osborne’s office. But I still think I’m right, that there’s a money trail.”

She waited while they discussed a deadline for Clyde, settling on three days, and finished their coffee. She could hear no sound from the hall, except the police radio. When they began making small talk about Harper’s horse, which he kept up the valley, she nipped out, careened down the hall into the adjoining hall and through the inner door to the courthouse.

Crouched in the courthouse hall behind a concrete cigarette stand, hating the stink of stale ashes, she waited until two secretaries entered the ladies’ room. She slid in behind them; and in a booth, she changed to Kate.

She came out of the booth straightening her shirt. She checked her reflection in the mirror, smoothed her hair. She wished she had a comb and some lipstick. She patted the checkbook and keys in her pocket, and stood staring at herself, thinking.

She could go back into the station now, as soon as Clyde left. See Max Harper, tell him about the foreign bankbooks. Take him home with her, get the evidence he wanted.

But probably Harper would have to ask her questions, and right now she didn’t want to answer any questions. Who knew, maybe he’d need a search warrant to take the bankbooks, even if it was her house. She wished she knew more about the law. The bankbooks weren’t hers-they were Jimmie’s property.

Or were they community property? By being married to Jimmie, was she somehow involved in his crimes?

And if Harper’s questions and police red tape slowed her, the whole thing could take hours. She didn’t want to stay in Molena Point, even for a few hours. She needed to get away, as far away from Jimmie as she could, away from the village.

She left the ladies’ room and stood looking out the glass courthouse doors at the bright morning. Clyde’s car was gone, the parking space beside the Suburban was empty. The courthouse clock said nine-forty.

She could be home, get the bankbooks and her purse, stuff her clothes in the car, and be out of there by ten-thirty. Bring the bankbooks back to Harper, then leave town. Drive up to the city, get lost in San Francisco.

Excited, and scared, she swung out of the courthouse and headed home, walking fast, hoping no one she knew saw her. It hit her hard that she was finally leaving him, but that no matter where she went, Jimmie might find her.

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

The sea wind scudded around Wilma’s ankles like a seeking animal racing along the wet shore. The dawn sky was gray, the sea was the color of old pewter. She walked quickly, skirting just above the white foam and kicking through thin sheets of water that crawled black and sleek up the sand. Thinking of Dulcie, she felt ridiculously hurt.

The little cat had come home late last night but she had left again without ever padding into the bedroom to greet her, she had simply eaten and gone away again.

Around three-thirty this morning a thud had woken her. She had lain listening, wondering if she had a burglar, if someone was in the house. She thought it wasn’t the first thud she’d heard; but it took a lot to wake her. As she lay trying to decide whether to get up, she heard the soft thump of the cat door.

She had expected that Dulcie would eat her kibble, then come on into the bedroom and settle down. She waited for quite a while, then swung out of bed and went to the kitchen. Before she could switch on the light she slipped and nearly fell. Backing up, she stepped on something sharp, a tiny object that pierced her foot like a splinter.

She flipped the switch, and in the blaze of light she froze, puzzled.

Chicken bones and greasy food were smeared across the floor. From the trash can protruded the white paper wrapper from the roast chicken she had brought home from Jolly’s. And when she looked more carefully into the garbage, there was the stripped chicken carcass, as well as a plastic container that had held some oyster stew, and an empty pie tin. Greasy pawprints were everywhere. She sat down at the kitchen table puzzled, and then amazed. Then shaking with uncontrolled laughter.

There were two sets of pawprints, of different sizes. Both trails led to the living room, and up onto the desk. There was a smear of cream pie on the phone, and pawprints all over the phone book. The book lay open to the map of Molena Point. She stood at the desk remembering vividly Clyde’s description of Joe Grey’s telephone style.

She found a stain of grease on the couch, too, and the blue afghan was matted into a round nest which, when she laid her hand in it, was still warm. She was amused, but she was hurt that Dulcie had been there and gone away without even coming into the bedroom for a pet; and she was embarrassed at her resentment. It was childish and was silly.

She stroked the afghan where cat hairs clung, Dulcie’s chocolate and peach hairs, and Joe’s short gray hairs, sleek as silk. She should call Clyde later, at a decent hour, tell him Joe had been there. She sat stroking the afghan, trying to imagine how the two cats had opened the refrigerator. And she was caught again in the haze of childlike astonishment that had haunted her for days.

But she was frightened, too. She couldn’t stop thinking about Lee Wark-Wark and his mysterious interest in cats. Something about the man troubled her deeply. She did not like the pattern which was taking shape.

She had gone back to bed at last, but she didn’t sleep. She rose before six, made a cup of coffee, drank it restlessly, and left the house, needing to walk off the tangle of disturbing thoughts which had descended. Shake them off or try to make sense of them.

She was well beyond the village, now, where big older homes sat atop the low cliff, their lawns and gardens glistening with sea spray. At the front of most of the houses, a large and well-appointed glass room had been added. Or, in the newer homes, a big sunroom had been integrated into the original design. These provided warm retreats all year from the ever-present sea winds, but offered a wide view of the changing sea. She liked to glance in at the expensive wicker furnishings, at the carefully tended houseplants and the bright fabrics.

Sometimes she thought she’d love a house out here, if she could afford it. But these beachfront houses ran up into six and seven figures. When a hard storm hit the coast, however, she was glad enough to have her snug stone cottage away from the worst of the blow. And this stretch of beach, open and windy, and busy with running dogs, was not a good place for cats. There wasn’t much shelter here, away from trees and the concealing hills, not enough shelter for Dulcie from dogs or from people.Nowhere to hide from Lee Wark,she thought darkly.

It wasn’t coincidence that Lee Wark had spent hours in the library, researching cats. She kept seeing his angry eyes that day, when he looked up and saw her. Why would he be so startled, and so angry?

He was angry because he knew she belonged with Dulcie. For reasons still unclear, he hated the little cat. Hated her enough to try to poison her. Oh, that poison came from Wark. She was convinced of it. She didn’t much believe in coincidences.

Somehow, Wark had known where Dulcie lived; he must have been watching the house, so probably he had seen her, too. Very likely he saw her leave the night he poisoned Dulcie’s food.

She had found the buried bowl in late afternoon, when she went out to work in the garden. Puzzled by the mysterious ravages to her pansies, she had dug into the flower bed to replant them. Her shovel hit the bowl, hard and ringing.

When she uncovered it, the salmon was still in the bowl, rotten and stinking. Its smell had gagged her. But there was another smell, too, like bitter almonds. She had shoved the whole mess into a plastic bag, grabbed her car keys, and taken it to the vet.

Jim Firreti was certain the smell was cyanide, but to make sure, he had sealed up the food, bowl and all, and sent it up to San Francisco for analysis.

It was then she realized how dangerous Lee Wark was, and knew that she had to find out more about him. Before she left Firreti’s office she called Clyde and told him about the poison, then she phoned Bernine Sage and made a date for lunch. Bernine was the only person she knew who might give her a clearer picture of the Welshman.

She left Firreti’s office promising to keep Dulcie in the house, but she had no intention of doing that. How could she? Nor did she need to. Who else but Dulcie would have buried that reeking mess? Dulcie knew very well about poison.

She just hoped Bernine Sage would give her a clearer picture of the man. Bernine had lived with Wark, she had to know something about him. One way or another, Wilma thought, lunch would be informative.

The Bakery Cafe had opened five years ago in an old house a block above the ocean, a gray shingle structure with a deep veranda, which was now furnished with small tables. On nice days the veranda tables were all taken before noon. When Wilma arrived at twelve they were full, but Bernine had snagged the last one. She was just sitting down, her red hair flaming like a beach fire above a pale pink blazer.

Bernine Sage was forty-three, a natural redhead who showed off her coloring with tangerine lipstick, orange sweaters, hot pink silk. Today’s cool pink blazer topped a white T-shirt and jeans, and flat sandals. Bernine’s face was thin, her smile quick, though it seldom touched her eyes. She was tall, five-eight, and imposing enough to work a room without ever moving from one spot.

Bernine had left the San Francisco Probation Office at age thirty-eight, with twenty years and a nice pension due her. In Molena Point she had taken a job as curator for the Sentina Gallery, then later had gone to work for Beckwhite. Bernine knew how to run an office smoothly, and Beckwhite had paid nearly twice what Sentina could afford. She was personable, polished, skilled. To Bernine, appearances were everything. And manipulating the facts to enhance her work and her life was as natural as breathing. They had shared a few laughs over Bernine’s past untruths, though Wilma didn’t go along with Bernine’s philosophy.

They made small talk while they studied their menus. When they had ordered, Wilma kept up the pointless chatter for a respectable interlude before she asked Bernine about Lee Wark. She would have preferred to cut right to the bottom line, but anything direct made Bernine nervous. Bernine liked the oblique approach. After ten minutes of idle conversation, Wilma got around to computers, at which Bernine was a whiz, and then to discussing the on-line system at the library, and the recent addition of the Internet. At last she got around to Lee Wark. Maybe her approach wasn’t smooth, but it did the job. “There was an interesting man in the library the other day using the computer, doing some kind of research. I think you may know him. Thin, one of those solemn, hungry, artistic-looking types.” Artistic was not the way she thought of Wark. “He had a fascinating accent; I think he may be Welsh.”

Bernine’s green eyes went agreeable and expressionless. “That would be Lee Wark,” she said pleasantly. “He sells cars to the agency. He’s a freelance car buyer, travels all over. What kind of research could he be doing? Something about foreign cars?”

“I didn’t help him. It was his accent that caught my attention. Didn’t you date a car buyer for a while?”

Bernine waited a moment, assessing her.“I dated Wark, a few years back. He used to bring me cactus candy from New Mexico, pralines from Atlanta, stuff he bought in the airport gift shops.” She laughed. “I broke it off, it got too fattening.”

Wilma smiled.“You were bored with him?”

“Sometimes.”

“I’m not sure I understand about the car buying. Can’t the agency buy the used cars it needs locally, with so many foreign cars in the village?”

“Molena Point people don’t buy as many new cars as you think. Many of the BMWs and Jags and Mercedeses you see were bought from us used. And remember, Beckwhite’s doesn’t serve just Molena Point. We do two-thirds of our business with Amber Beach customers and with people all up and down thecoast.”

“And Wark ships the cars to you?”

“He ships them by truck, or sometimes he trucks them himself. He has a couple of trucks and trailers, those long, open ramps that you run cars up on.”

“Interesting work. I guess he does this full-time, travels and buys cars?”

Bernine watched her carefully.“Wark travels maybe nine months a year. What’s this about, Wilma?”

“Idle curiosity.” Wilma laughed, sipped her tea. “What does he do the rest of the year? Didn’t you vacation with him?”

“I’m over twenty-one,” she said defensively. Then, more pleasantly, “He has a place in the Bahamas. He-it’s very nice, very tropical and pretty.”

“Sounds like a perfect relationship. He’s not here often enough to get tired of him, and he takes you to a nice vacation resort. What made you break off with him?” She paused while the waiter set down their order, a chicken sesame salad for Bernine, a small saute of crab for herself. She knewshe was pushing Bernine, but Bernine, for all her bristling, would give in, if one kept at her.

But now Bernine seemed wound tight. When the waiter had gone, she said,“If you’d tell me why you want to know?”

Wilma just looked at her.

Bernine sighed.“I broke it off because Wark was-so strange. Maybe it was his Welsh upbringing.” She sipped her water.

“Strange, how?”

“Whatever this is about, Wilma, I really don’t mind talking about him. Why should I?” She widened her eyes a little. “But I wish you’d tell me.”

“I would if I could, Bernine.”

Bernine sighed more deeply.“He made me uncomfortable. I never told him why I didn’t-why I ended it. He has some really weird ideas.”

“Ideas like what?”

Bernine nibbled at her salad.“It sounds crazy.”

“Try me.”

“I wish you’d tell me what you’re after. Are you doing some kind of investigative work?” Half the retired probation officers they knew did some private investigation.

“I’d be breaking a confidence, Bernine. I can only tell you it’s important. What was it about Wark that put you off?”

“He? It was the cats.”

“Cats?“Wilma swallowed back an excited littlebingo.She tried to sound and to look puzzled. “Why would cats?” She shook her head as if not understanding. “Cats, as in house cats?”

“Yes, cats. He’d get on the subject of. cats until I could scream, I got really bored with it. Sometimes he scared me, the things he said and did.”

She tossed back her flaming mop of hair.“I don’t much like cats, but he was? We’d be walking down the street, he’d see a cat. He’d stare at it. Right there on the street he’d sort of-stalk it. Would look and look at it, follow it, stare at it, try to see its eyes.”

“How very weird. Did he ever explain his actions?”

“When he did explain, his ideas made my skin crawl. Superstitious ideas. He was really afraid of them, fevered.”

“It’s a phobia,” Wilma said. “Some people have a terrible fear of cats.”

“With Lee, it’s more than phobia. He has this idea that some cats are-I don’t know. Possessed. He thinks that some cats can-that they have, like a human intelligence or something.”

Wilma laughed and shook her head.“He sounds very strange. Where would he get such ideas?”

“I don’t know. His family was full of those stories.”

“Family stories,” Wilma said. “And he grew up believing them?” Then, “How does he get along with the men in the shop? I don’t imagine he talks to them about his fixation.”

“I doubt it. I guess the men like him well enough.”

“How about Beckwhite? Did they get along?”

Bernine’s salad fork missed a beat. “They got along fine, as far as I know.”

“I heard there was tension between Beckwhite and Wark, some difficulty.”

Bernine’s eyes turned steely, then softened. “There’s always some little difference of opinion, that’s human nature.” Her smile didn’t hide an almost-frightened look. “You can’t work in an office without differences. What is this? What are you into?”

Wilma poured the last of her tea.“I wish I could tell you. You know me, I’m incredibly curious.” She looked at Bernine blandly.

The waiter took their plates, and offered the dessert menu. They ordered a flan to share. When he’d gone, Wilma asked her about procedures at the shop.

Bernine, looking resigned, gave her a concise rundown of the routine for the newly arrived cars. Each vehicle was cleaned in the work yard behind the main building. Trash and forgotten personal possessions were removed; the car was washed, the interior given a cursory vacuuming, then it was sent to Clyde Damen, for a tune-up, for any needed repairs or replacements, and for steam cleaning of the engine. The last operation was a final wash and wax, more careful cleaning of the interior, and touch up to any small mars in leather or paint: a final cosmetic detailing before the car went to the showroom. Beckwhite’s handled Shelbys, Ferraris, Lamborghinis, the newly resurrected Bugattis, as well as Mercedeses and BMWs.

“They treat every one like a baby,” Bernine said.

“Who does the original cleanup, when the cars are first brought in? Different employees?”

“Are you writing a book about shop management? Jimmie Osborne does the cleanup.”

“Well he’s a nice young man. We were on the city council together one year.”

Bernine sighed again.“I have to run, my dear. It’s nearly two, I have a hair appointment.” She glanced at the bill, but Wilma picked it up.

When Bernine had gone, Wilma sat for a long while, wondering exactly why her questions had so harried Bernine. Wondering why Bernine had seemed afraid.

23 [????????: pic_24.jpg]

During the hours of darkness, the outer perimeters of Beckwhite Automotive Agency were well lit. The one-story stucco complex occupied nearly a full square block at the corner of Haley and Ocean. It stood three blocks above Binnie’s Italian, and just across from a beautifully landscaped Ocean Avenue motel. Backing on Highway One, which gave it easy access to buyers arriving from other coastal towns, Beckwhite’s occupied a prime location at the upper perimeter of the village shops.

The drive-in entry to the maintenance shop was on Ocean. The agency’s showroom faced the side street, its brick parking area separated from the street by a wide strip of bird-of-paradise plants. In the predawn dark, they shone waxen in the strong glow of the security lights fixed to the side of the building.

The front of the building was primarily glass. The small portions of white stucco wall were freshly painted, below the slanted roof of curved red tile. Twin bougainvillea vines, heavy with bright orange blooms, flanked the glass entry. The streets were silent, no car moved on Haley or up Ocean. The time was four-forty. The two cats stood up on their hind legs beside a bougainvillea vine, their paws against the clean glass, looking in.

The showroom was immense. Its pale walls provided an effective and contrasting background for the six gleaming imported cars which stood bright as polished jewels within the enclosure.“That red car at the end,” Joe said, “is a new Ferrari. Clyde was reading an article about the new model just the other day; he left the magazine open on the kitchen table. It called the car sensuous and artful.” Joe grinned. “Those guys who write about cars really take this stuff seriously. Said the Ferrari was sleek and curvy and provocative.”

“It is,” she said, cutting him a sly glance. “How would it be to drive something that elegant? Or that little blue, open job, careening down the highway?”

“Yeah, right. With the wind whipping your ears down flat and tearing through your fur.”

Far to their left was a closed door with a small, discreet sign which indicated that it led to the drive-through entry and the automotive shop. Straight ahead behind the sleek foreign cars, along the back wall, a row of open glass doors and glass partitions defined the sales offices. Each was furnished with a handsome ebony desk, an Oriental rug, and three soft, leather-upholstered easy chairs.

They had already circled the complex, trotting along the dark sidewalk, crouching against the building when the lights of the occasional car approached. They had climbed up onto the roof, as well, in order to see the entire layout.

Behind the main building was a large, enclosed work yard surrounded by secondary buildings, some of which were open sheds containing various pieces of unidentifiable equipment and a few cars in different states of beautification or repair. To the left of the yard, Clyde’s repair shop was closed off by a wide metal door. At the end of the shop, facing the showroom, a second garage door led to the drive-through. This door was closed. And the drive itself was enclosed by two chain-link, padlocked gates.

The yard was completely shut away from the surrounding streets except for this fenced entry, and for a narrower passage at the back, a slim alley which was also secured by two locked, chain-link gates. That passage led through to a narrow parking strip facing Highway One. Both wire gates hugged the concrete paving, and their tops touched the roof of the walkway.

They had seen, as they circled the block, that other businesses backed up to the rear automotive buildings. The row of separate stores facing the highway included a hobby shop, a quick-stop grocery, a photo shop, a laundry, and a restaurant. The intruding passage ran between the restaurant and the photo shop. Joe knew that in the daytime, when the gates were unlocked, agency employees went regularly through from their work yard to the side door of Mom’s Burgers for coffee breaks and lunch. Clyde usually had a late breakfast there, as did Jimmie Osborne. Midmorning breakfast at Mom’s had been a ritual with Samuel Beckwhite.

Standing against the front glass studying the showroom and the gleaming cars, they stiffened suddenly and ducked as a car turned onto Haley.

It was a wedge-shaped red sports car, long and low and sleek, and was running without lights, headed from the residential section toward Ocean. It turned right toward the automotive shop. Joe thought it might be a Lamborghini, an elegant Italian job that would mean really big bucks.“Get down. It’s slowing.”

They crouched behind the bougainvillea vine as the sleek vehicle slowed before the entrance, then moved on. Seconds later another car followed: Wark’s black BMW, also unlit. Both cars cruised slowly past and turned onto Ocean toward the shop driveway. The instant they passed, Joe and Dulcie swarmed up the bougainvillea and onto the tile roof.

Trotting over the low peak, they crouched at the edge looking down on the lit inner courtyard. A tow truck was parked beside the repair shop, close against the wall, a gleaming tan vehicle with Beckwhite’s logo on the side. Dulcie said, “Why do they need a tow truck, when these are all such expensive cars?”

“I guess any car can have a problem on the road, maybe a flat tire. Anyone can have a wreck.” Both cars had pulled into the drive. Wark got out and unlocked the wire gates, then slid back into the driver’s seat. The two cars pulled in, followed by a low yellow roadster also running dark. Whenthe three were inside, Wark closed and locked both gates.

“I think that’s an antique Corvette,” Joe whispered.

“The yellow one?”

“Mmm. A collector’s model.” He was surprised at how much he’d picked up from Clyde, and from reading over Clyde’s shoulder.

Yes, the red car was a Lamborghini, a vintage model. He recognized the hubcaps from pictures, and he could vaguely remember the names of some of the antique models, Miura, Espada, Islero, because the words appealed to him; he didn’t know which model this was, but it was bucks, all right.

Jimmie Osborne got out of the Lamborghini, and a woman emerged from the Corvette, her long blond ponytail, secured high on her head, bouncing like a tassel. She wore skintight black jeans and a black lace blouse that left nothing whatever to the imagination.

Crouched at the edge of the roof, the cats watched Jimmie unlock the door into Clyde’s shop and wheel out a metal cart, its shelves fitted with tools. Jimmie laid a folded paper drop cloth on the ground beside the Corvette, and Wark slid into the front seat.

There he scrunched down nearly on his back and placed his feet, clad in black running shoes, up on the car’s windshield.

The cracking glass sounded sharp as a gunshot, and the windshield popped out. Jimmie removed it and laid it on the drop cloth as Wark pried at something on the dashboard.

“He’s removing the VIN plate,” Joe said. “The identification number, it’s on a metal plate. They’re stealing cars, all right. I wonder if Beckwhite knew.”

“Does the agency sell those cars?”

Joe licked a whisker.“Clyde was talking about VIN numbers on the phone just?” he stared at her, his eyes round. “He was talking to someone about stolen cars just before Beckwhite was killed.”

Her eyes grew wide.“You mean Clyde’s part of this-this car ring?”

Joe shook his whiskers.“Not old Law-and-Order Damen. No way. I think maybe he suspects something-he’s been really irritable, coming home from work. And he hasn’t seen Jimmie and Kate much lately. And he’s been keeping some kind of list in a little notebook.”

“Could Jimmie and Wark have killed Beckwhite because he found out? How could he sell cars in his agency, and not know they were stolen?”

“I guess if Wark had false papers, they could make it look legit. They killed Beckwhite for some reason. There’s a lot of money down there, I’d guess the Corvette way up in the six figures, and the Lamborghini more than that.”

“Maybe that was why Wark hid the wrench. Because they thought Clyde knew something. Maybe Clyde was nosing around.” She looked at him thoughtfully.

He tried to remember Clyde’s phone conversations over the last weeks, but he’d had no reason to listen carefully. The usual banter with his women friends, a complaint to the cleaners for losing a button on his sport coat, a call to his accountant. Dull stuff. He flicked a whisker and hunched lower, watched with growing interest as the men worked on the Corvette. He hadn’t pictured Wark as a careful person, but the man was careful now as he installed the new VIN number. “I expect they got that plate from a wrecking yard, from an old wrecked Corvette, same model, same year.”

“How do you know so much?”

“From Clyde. And from the late shows. What do you watch, late at night?”

“Wilma reads to me. Or if we’re watching TV, I’m looking at the clothes and the beautiful houses.”

As, above them, the sky began to pale, they drew back away from the roof’s edge. From down in the yard, if one of those three were to look up, they’d see two cats as stark against the sky as gargoyles on a gothic roof.

They watched Wark rivet a new metal strip to the dashboard, working as carefully as a surgeon, while Jimmie removed a new windshield from the backseat of the BMW.

When the men were ready to install the windshield, Wark squeezed cement from a tube, around the edge of the Corvette’s window frame. The smell rose up to the cats, making their noses itch and their eyes blink. As the men set the windshield in place, Joe could see a heavy bulge, like a gun, in Wark’s pocket. He didn’t mention it to Dulcie. She’d been through enough with Wark’s poison and Wark nearly pushing her off the cliff. Even if it was a gun, why make a big deal.

Dawn was pushing into brightness as Wark and Jimmie cleaned up the edges of the glass and cleaned the new windshield. Dulcie crept forward, flattened against the roof, staring over.“What’s the woman doing, rooting around inside the yellow car?”

“Sheril. That’s Sheril Beckwhite.”

The blonde was leaning into the Corvette, feeling under the seat. She had been rummaging through the interiors of all three cars as the two men worked. She seemed to be filling a canvas tote bag. When she backed out of the Corvette, rear first in the tight black jeans, the bag was fat and heavy. She was barely out of the car when Wark snatched the bag from her and headed for the small gate that led to the restaurant.

“Where’s he going? What’s in there?”

“Come on,” Joe said.

“But it’s?”

“Shh. Come on.” He backed away from the edge and led her across the roof until they were over the repair shop. The sky above them was bright with pale, swift running clouds.

Below them in the yard, Sheril put her arm around Jimmie.“I’m starving, lover. And I’m purely dead for sleep.”

“We’re almost done,” Jimmie said. “You sure you didn’t miss any? We’ll leave the cars in the yard-Clyde’s expecting a delivery.”

She laughed.

“A legit delivery. Come on, Wark can stash the bundles, we’ll get some breakfast and grab a couple hours’ sleep.”

“I don’t want to go to my place. I can just feel the neighbors staring, and it’s broad daylight.” She had a whiney voice, as annoying as sand between a cat’s claws.

Jimmie mumbled something the cats couldn’t hear; and Sheril giggled.

Wark was unlocking the small gate. As he swung it back, he looked up toward the roof. The cats sucked down as flat as frogs mashed on a highway. He seemed to be staring straight at them.

But he hadn’t seen them. He moved on away, through the gate into the narrow alley between the stores that faced Highway One. “Where’s he going?” Dulcie said, creeping forward. “What’s he up to?”

Joe stared down at the tow car parked below them, and leaped. Dulcie followed, they made two soft thumps on the metal top, and hit the concrete running. Wark had disappeared but he had left the gate ajar, maybe for a quick getaway.

“Hurry,” Dulcie breathed, glancing toward the two figures beside Corvette, and they slid through the open gate into the alley.

They were facing an open door, a side door into the restaurant; they could smell stale grease and cigarette smoke. The room was dark, but large and chilly. Behind them in the yard they heard the big driveway gate being rolled back, and heard one of the cars start and head out. They slipped inside, to Mom’s Burgers.

The restaurant was so black they couldn’t see Wark. And they couldn’t hear him, not a sound. Moving in away from the square of light provided by the open door, they hunched in the blackness against the wall.

Before them loomed an army of tables, their legs standing at attention on the dirty carpet. Chairs had been piled up on top, a second row of mute soldiers waiting for the carpet to be vacuumed. At the far end of the room near the floor, a faint light shone. It seemed to come from around a corner, and they heard a soft thud, then a door suck closed with a pneumatic wheeze.

They trotted on back between the table legs to a short hall where, halfway down, a strip of light shone beneath a closed door.“Men’s room,” Joe said. They could hear from inside, metal rubbing against metal. As they pressed against the door they heard athunk.Then silence. Then, in a few minutes, a metallic click like the turn of a lock.

The light under the door went out. The hall dropped into blackness. They leaped away as the swinging door opened, emitting a suck of air.

Wark passed so close to them that they could have clawed his ankles to shreds. He was carrying the canvas bag, a pale smear against his dark pants; even in the blackness they could see that it hung limp and empty.

He swung out of the hall and across the restaurant. In a moment they heard the outer door close and the lock slide home. They were locked in.

They heard the wire gate slam, the click of the padlock. Dulcie shivered.

“So he locked the door. So let’s see what he was doing in there.”

They shouldered open the heavy pneumatic door. As they pushed into the dark room, a chill hit them. Their paws hit cold tile. The room echoed with the sound of the door closing behind them.

Joe leaped up the wall, and leaped again. On his third try his groping paw found the light switch and grabbed it, clawing.

Light blazed, shattering against the white tile walls, reflecting back and forth from the slick surfaces, nearly blinding them.

The small, white tiled room had one booth, a sink, and a urinal. It smelled of human bodily functions and of Lysol.

Though the room was cold, an even colder chill emanated from the ceiling, where a black hole gaped.

Above them in the white ceiling, two acoustical tiles had been removed, leaving a rectangular space maybe three feet across, and black as the inside of a locked car trunk. The missing tiles were not anywhere in the small bathroom. Looking up into the hole, they could see in its dark interior only the edge of a wooden beam, and a few taut metal rods, maybe part of the grid that held the ceiling tiles. Joe thought that an attic must run the full length of the store complex. It would be the logical place to hide something.

But Wark would have had to stand on the toilet, then hoist himself up onto the thin partition of the booth. And even if the partition would hold his weight, Joe could find no footprint on the toilet seat or on the top of the tank. There was no strong scent of Wark around those fixtures.“He sure didn’t use the facilities.”

Dulcie reared up to stare with curiosity at the urinal, then grimaced, realizing what it was.“He used this,” she said with disgust. She leaped to the sink and dabbled her paws in the few drops of water that clung around the drain, then examined the rectangular mirror.

The glass was fixed solidly to the wall-it was not like the medicine cabinet at home. In fact, nothing in the room seemed movable, except the toilet tank top, and what could you hide there? The tank would be full of water.

Dulcie said,“I know I heard a key in a lock.” But there was no lock. They were still standing on the sink, pawing at the mirror, when the door swung open behind them.

24 [????????: pic_25.jpg]

The swinging door slammed open; the cats had no time to leap off the sink. Wark stood staring in, into the bright white glare of the men’s room. His muddy eyes glinted with rage. As he lunged at them, they exploded apart. Joe hit the floor. Dulcie leaped straight to the top of the booth, brushing past Wark’s face; but she moved too late, the Welshman grabbed her. As he fought the brindle cat, Joe leaped at his head raking and snarling. This allowed Dulcie to twist free from Wark’s hands; with one last rake of her claws she sprang away into the attic and disappeared within the black hole.

When she appeared again looking over, Wark had scrambled up onto the toilet seat. But Joe still clung to his neck; as the Welshman fought Joe with one hand he grabbed for Dulcie with the other. She fled again. Joe propelled off Wark’s shoulder into the dark behind her but he was off-balance. He hit the side of the hole, scrabbling into the soft tiles, felt them tear under his weight. Wark’s fingers closed on his leg. Joe twisted, bit the offending hand, and leaped upward witha force that carried him up into the blackness.

They fled away through the cavernous dark along the wooden beams, dodging the thin metal struts. They heard him climbing, heard the clang of the porcelain tank as his weight hit it, then a dry, tearing sound as tiles gave way beneath him.

Then a loud crack, a sharp indecipherable word, and the clattering of dislodged porcelain as Wark fell.

Cheered by Wark’s mishap, they turned to look back and in the darkness, Dulcie smiled. “Good for him. I hope he broke a leg.”

But in a moment they heard him step on the toilet seat again, and climb. They moved away quickly.

The attic was vast, its low, sloped roof receding into an endless tunnel of unrelenting night, the tangles of metal struts hindering any swift flight.

“This can’t just be the attic over the stores,” Joe said. “It’s too big, it has to go on over those open sheds.” And why not? The buildings were all attached.

They were headed deeper in, toward the area over Clyde’s shop, when Dulcie stopped and turned back, and began pawing at something.

In a minute, she hissed,“Here! Come and look.”

She stood looking down between two acoustical tiles, where a sliver of light squeezed through no thicker than a thread.

Digging, she tried to force her paw through. They dug together, and soon widened the crack until they could see, below them, rows of metal pipes. The air smelled of cleaning solvent and steam. The pipes were loaded with hanging clothes, all sheathed in plastic bags. They were pawing again, trying to get through, when they heard voices from below, from an unseen part of the room. A woman’s voice approached. She said something about tags and numbers, then laughed. They backed away into the dark.

“There’s another crack,” Dulcie said, “near the men’s room.”

“Its too close. He’ll be up here in a minute.”

But all sounds from Wark had ceased. They dug at the new crack until a tile shifted. A two-inch space revealed an office below. A battered desk and chair stood directly below them, and, to the left, two metal file cabinets. Next to those was a whole wall full of cubbyhole shelves, crammed with papers. As they fought to dislodge the tile, their faces pressed close together, they heard the men’s room door open, and heard a sharp clang of metal.

“What’s he doing?” Dulcie breathed.

“Whatever he’s doing, you can bet your fur booties he’ll up here in a minute. Dig harder.”

But then a rhythmic noise began, a sharp metallicClick click clickrising up.“Extension ladder,” Joe hissed.

They fled again, but their scrabbling feet knocked the tile loose behind them; they heard it fall down into the office. Dulcie paused, turning back.“We’ve time to get through, come on.” But Wark was already up through the hole, his lit face pushing up. They sped away crashing into metal struts and through cobwebs, dragging cobwebs with them. Joe didn’t like to think about being trapped up there with no way to get out.

But if the attic continued over the drive and over the showroom, maybe there would be a way out. They raced on, slowed by the struts, swerving and dodging as if in some fun house obstacle coarse-a fun house as seen in nightmare.

They had scrambled around a corner, they were halfway around the U-shaped building, over the repair shop, when a perpendicular wall stopped them. They slid to a halt. The attic ended.

They crept along the wall nosing and pawing at its base. It was solid, not a hole or a crack. And suddenly light burst across the attic from behind them.

The swinging beam of a flashlight sought them, burning a path through the dark. They crouched behind a beam, out of its range. On it came, picking out beams and struts above them, frosting the curtains of hanging cobwebs. It glanced over the top of the beam where they crouched, and went on, as frantically and uselessly they dug at the floor. And Wark crawled nearer, swinging his light back and forth, searching.

This floor wasn’t soft under their claws, not like acoustical tiles; this ceiling over the shop was hard and unyielding. And again Wark’s light swung close.

“He has a gun,” Dulcie whispered, “I saw it earlier.”

Joe glanced at her“I didn’t?” But from below in the shop came muffled voices and the clang of tools.

“Clyde’s down there, I can hear him. They’ve started work. If I shout?”

“No! It’ll bring his light.” She dug harder, clawing at the dense Sheetrock. Below they heard an engine start. But even over that sound, Wark would hear them digging. He had drawn closer, and his angle of vision was steeper now. He could see partially behind the last beam. Dulcie had managed a shallow indentation in the Sheetrock when Wark’s light found them, blinding them. They were trapped in light. A shot cracked through the attic, exploding with ragged flame as Joe lunged against her, knocking her away. And a second shot thundered.

25 [????????: pic_26.jpg]

Ten minutes after Kate Osborne left the courthouse tucking her shirt more securely into her jeans, the cream-colored cat entered the Osborne backyard.

She scanned the neighbors’ windows, and when she thought she was unobserved, she leaped to the back porch. There she rubbed against the porch rail, surveying again the adjoining dwellings.

She would just slip in, change back to the Kate who was Jimmie’s wife, grab the bankbooks, throw her clothes in the car, and get out.

When she was sure she was alone she clawed the door open, wondering, as she kicked at the molding, if she was leaving claw marks.

Inside, she prowled the house, wary and skittish. Though Jimmie’s car wasn’t in the drive, she couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d appear and grab her-that he would handle her as viciously as Wark had done, bruising and injuring her; that Jimmie was fully capable of killing her, no matter what form she took.

Gentle Jimmie Osborne, the quintessential wimp. Maybe wimps, when they turned mean, were the most vicious of all.

When she was satisfied that the house was empty, she paused in the hall. She was starting to say the Welsh words that would change her when she heard his car in the drive.

She ran into the living room and leaped to the back of Jimmie’s chair, digging in her claws. Peering out through the curtains, she was struck by sunlight careening off the hood of the silver Bugatti. The car glistened in sleek silver curves.

She hated that car. The damned machine had to be worth many times what Jimmie had admitted paying for it. She hated that he lied to her. The Bugatti seemed all of a sudden the symbol of everything ugly about Jimmie. When she saw Sheril getting out, a growl of rage rumbled and shook her.

They came up the steps snuggling and pawing each other. Jimmie had his hand under Sheril’s blouse, but why bother? Everything Sheril had was right there in plain sight. That lace hid nothing; she might as well be wearing a plastic bag.

She didn’t know whether to change to Kate and confront them, or to hide until they left. Hide, then get the bankbooks for Max Harper, and clear out.

Hiding seemed so cowardly.

But if she telegraphed her punches, if she confronted Jimmie, he might snatch the bankbooks and take off. She might be physically strong enough to keep him from taking them, and she might not.

As they opened the door she fled for the bedroom and under the bed, into her shoddy little hiding place.

Crouching on the carpet just beneath the box springs, she heard them coming down the hall. Their voices sounded flat and tired. Had they been partying in Sheril’s bed the whole night?

Their shoes hushed on the carpet. Sheril’s nasal voice rose flat and piercing. Jimmie laughed, and Sheril started to giggle. It was ten o’clock in the morning. Why wasn’t Jimmie at work?

Sheril said,“Your house is so-domestic,lover. Just like your little housewife.”

Jimmie chuckled.“What if the little housewife comes home?”

“Shewalked out onyou,lover.”

“You like doing it in her bed, don’t you, baby? Like a bitch wetting on another’s territory.”

Her claws knifed into the carpet. Her tail struck so hard at the springs she thought they’d hear her. They came into the bedroom yawning. Sheril kicked off her sandals and sat down on the bed, then her feet disappeared upward and the springs creaked.

Jimmie kicked off his loafers, dropped his pants and hung them over the chair. His shorts came next. So much for preliminaries. She could hear Sheril wriggling around, undressing. Jimmie moved to the bed; the springs creaked heavily as he lay down.This is disgusting.She fought a powerful desire to leap on the bed and claw them.

“I don’t see why we have to wait, lover. I don’t see why we can’t get the plane reservations in another name, and haul out of here. It will be so sunny in the Bahamas, so nice and warm. If Wark’s arrested for Sam’s death, or if Clyde is, what difference? The cops have nothing on you. Why do we have to hang around being so careful? I mean?”

“Give it a rest, Sheril. How do you think it would look if we ran out now? You really want to blow it.”

“But we didn’t do anything. Not to Samuel. Wark did that. And Sam?”

“I said, cool it. We’re not going now. Forget it. You don’t understand anything about what the cops think, what the cops might find out.”

Under the bed, Dulcie smiled. He was incredibly nervous. She guessed Sheril didn’t see how nervous, or didn’t care.

The springs squeaked as if he had rolled over, then again as he reached for her. She thought that they really needed a new mattress, then was both appalled and amused that that had even occurred to her. The springs kept squeaking. To the accompaniment of grunts and moans, she crept out and fled for the study.

As she pawed open the desk drawer, she realized with alarm that Jimmie’s car was blocking the garage, that she couldn’t get her own car out.

She wasn’t leaving again without it. She wanted her car and her clothes and everything she could load into the Chevy. She thought about taking Jimmie’s car, but abandoned that. He might let her go without tracking her down, but he’d be after that car. He’d raise all kinds of hell to get the Bugattiback.

Clumsily she clawed out the foreign bankbooks and the savings book, pawing them onto the floor.

This wouldn’t do, she couldn’t carry all these in her mouth, and fetch her car keys and purse.

She listened, but heard only a low moan from the bedroom.

She didn’t want to go back in that room, but it couldn’t be helped. They might be there all day. She wasn’t staying in the house listening to that for hours.

Quickly she changed to Kate.

This time, as she changed, she got a nice little rush that amused her, a surge of exhilaration like a stiff drink. She was tall again, and very grateful, now, for the dexterity of hands and fingers as she picked up the bankbooks and stuffed them in the pocket of her jeans.

She laid the bank statements back in the drawer and closed it softly, then moved back down the hall toward the bedroom.

They were still at it. When, standing against the wall, she glanced in, she could see Sheril’s naked thighs. They were both turned away. She slipped in, snatched her purse and overnight bag from the closet, and dug Jimmie’s keys from his pants pocket, muffling the jingle in her tight fist. She lifted the cash from his dresser drawer, too.

She left the house by the front door. Sliding into Jimmie’s car she backed it out, and parked it at the curb. She’d like to ram it hard into a tree, but that wouldn’t be smart. She pocketed his keys, backed her own car out of the garage, shut the garage door, and headed for the police station.

She entered the station from the courthouse, praying that Max Harper was there. She passed his empty desk, looked around the room for him, then went up to the front, to the counter.

He wasn’t in. She talked to Lieutenant Brennan, a deep-jowled man, older than Kate, who looked like he’d been poured into his uniform as clay is poured into a heavy mold. Brennan wouldn’t tell her where Harper was. He couldn’t tell her when Harper would return. His attitude was unnecessarily formal and distant. He told her only that Harper was out on a call. She wondered if that was what the sirens had been about-she’d heard them east of the village as she was driving to the station.

She didn’t want to give anyone but Max Harper the bank books. “I’m certain Captain Harper will want to talk with me. I have something for him that I can give only to him. A piece of evidence that I think he’ll be pleased to have.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Osborne. I have no idea when he’ll be back. Whatever you want to give him will be perfectly safe with me. I can lock any evidence in the safe, if that will ease your mind.” “Can you reach him? On the radio?” “He can’t be disturbed. Those were his instructions.” She thought that part was probably a fabrication. How would an officer know, when he left the station, that something even more urgent might not turn up? “If you can get him on the radio,” she said patiently, “let me talk to him for just a second. I’ll tell him what I have, and then I’ll stop bothering you.”

Brennan just looked at her. She pressed in again, bullying him, making such a pest of herself that at last Brennan sighed, swung away to his desk, and got Harper on the radio.

The call changed Brennan’s behavior. Within seconds, Captain Harper phoned her, on a private line which Brennan said she could take in the back, at Harper’s desk. She had graduated from faceless civilian to someone Brennan paid attention to. Walking back to Harper’s desk, she glanced innocently at the two officers who had watched her, a little while ago, trot past their desks in cream-colored fur behind the heels of the office clerk.

She picked up the phone at Harper’s desk, standing away from the desk top so she wouldn’t appear to be reading the stack of papers and scattered notes.

Harper’s voice was strained and hurried. “You have some evidence to give me, Kate? For what? What kind of evidence? What is it that can’t wait?” He did sound as if he was in the middle of something urgent.

“I have some bankbooks of Jimmie’s. They were in our desk.”

“What kind of bankbooks? Tell me about them.” His voice had softened, and slowed. He sounded like he might be sitting down.

“There are five books, on five foreign accounts. Big balances. Several hundred thousand each. Money,” she said, “that he couldn’t have legally. I didn’t know what else to do with them, but I think they’re important. I didn’t know who else to go to. I don’t have an attorney, not one I trust.”

She couldn’t say that she knew Harper wanted the bankbooks, that she had heard him tell Clyde how important this evidence was. “There are two accounts in the Bahamas, two in Panama, one in Curacao. The sums have been deposited over a four-year period. They add up to more than two million. This year’s deposits are about two hundred and fifty thousand. Captain Harper, there’s no way Jimmie could have this kind of money.”

“Kate, you bet I want to see them. Can you wait at the station for, say, half an hour? We’re in the middle of something urgent here, but I’ll be back as soon as I can. Within the hour.”

“I have some errands. Could I come where you are?”

“No. Will you leave the books at the station? Meet me there in an hour?”

“I’d rather give them to you.”

“Kate, give them to Officer Brennan. He’s completely reliable. Those bankbooks are-may be more important than you can guess. You can watch Brennan book them in, watch him put them in the safe. Tell him to make photocopies for you. And Kate, do you know where Jimmie is?”

“Right now? He’s? at home. He’s-in bed.”

“At home? Is he sick?”

“He’s-not alone.”

“Oh?” There was a long pause, then, “Thank you, Kate. Let me talk to Brennan. I’ll see you at the station in an hour. Meantime, be? Don’t go home.”

“Not likely,” she said, laughing. But she felt, suddenly, chilled and shaky.

She nodded to Officer Brennan, and he picked up an extension. She hung up. Why had Harper asked her where Jimmie was? Why wouldn’t he assume that Jimmie was at the shop?

In a minute Brennan hung up and came out to the back, his stomach preceding him slightly in the tight shirt. He led her down the hall and into the evidence room. She watched him book in the evidence and make photocopies for her of the bankbook covers and the deposit pages. He stapled them with an itemized receipt on which he listed every detail, names of the banks, the cities and countries, the amounts. She watched him lock the books in the safe with a duplicate of her receipt. The man might be officious, at least sometimes, but he was thorough.

From the police station she drove directly to the Molena Point bank and drew a cashier’s check for the forty thousand in their joint savings account. She took that across the street to the Bank of California.

In the cool, high-ceilinged lobby, with its skylights and potted ficus trees, she sat opposite a bank officer at his desk filling out the required cards and forms for an account in her name alone. And, because everyone in Molena Point knew everyone else, she told the young man that she and Jimmie were making some adjustments for tax purposes.

Leaving the bank, she drove north through the village. The sun was pushing up toward noon through a clear blue sky. It was going to be warm, one of those clear sunny innocuous days that, to Californians, sometimes grew tedious by their very bland repetition. Though according to village custom, this kind of grousing was sure to bring on atypical floods, high winds, or earthquake.

She realized she hadn’t had breakfast, that she was famished again though she’d stuffed herself so late last night on Clyde’s spaghetti and garlic bread. There was a new little restaurant up on Highway One that was supposed to serve light French pancakes, and she headed up Ocean. She’d have breakfast, then drive on up into the hills and sit quietly until time to meet Harper. Take time for a last look at the view she loved; once she was out of town, it might be a long time before she could enjoy the hills again. The morning, despite the sun’s brilliance, was still nice and cool. The heat wouldn’t descend until afternoon. She drove slowly with her windows down, tasting the salt wind. Going up Ocean she saw patrol cars clustered around the shop, and a shock of coldness hit in her. She pulled over, looking.

The police had blocked off the entry to the shop with two squad cars and some sawhorses, and they had blocked off Haley Street with a patrol car angled across it. An officer stood before the door of the agency showroom, as if to let no one inside. She parked, locked her car, and walked over.

26 [????????: pic_27.jpg]

The cats crept behind a beam, cringing down as Wark’s light swept the attic above them; it returned low, just missed them, flashing over along the top of the heavy timber where they hid.

And suddenly he fired again, into the dark beyond the beam but too close, they heard it ping into the ceiling not three feet from them; it was a wild shot. His light careened on along the base of the slanted roof, searching.

When he failed to find them he fired twice more, wild and uselessly. But he was crawling in their direction, hunching along a narrow joist straight toward them.“Split up,” Dulcie whispered. “We can jump him from behind.”

“And get blown to confetti.”

“Have to make him drop his gun, hit him, and leap away. If he drops it down among those wires, that will give us time while he tries to fish it out.”

“I don’t think?” He had started to say it was a crazy idea, when, from below in the street, sirens screamed.

Nothing, nothing had ever sounded so good.

Immediately Wark’s light went out and they heard him scuttle away, back toward the hole in the ceiling. That earsplitting squad car wail was the finest sound Joe had ever imagined.

Two more sirens screamed from the front of the building, then another from the side street. He could just picture the police units careening up Ocean, converging on the agency-fierce and predatory, all muscle.

They sat up and stretched, and slowly their pounding hearts eased into a gentler rhythm. They heard, below, the big metal gates roll open, and then voices. And, nearer, they heard a thud as if Wark had dropped down, perhaps onto the desk in the office.

“Is he gone?” Dulcie breathed.

“He’d better be. This is no way to spend the rest of your life.”

“Short lives,” she said shakily.

In a moment they heard the smaller gate to the restaurant rattle, then thuds and voices in a confusion of sound, and a shout. Then the whish of the men’s room door opening.

When footsteps rang on the tile, they rose and headed for the hole in the ceiling and for civilized company. A click stopped them, a click from the blackness as Wark cocked his revolver. They dropped and crept away; he was still with them.

The ladder rattled, someone was climbing, likely a cop was climbing up. In another second the guy would stick his head up like a target in a shooting gallery.“Look out!” Joe shouted. “He’ll shoot! Keep down!”

Joe didn’t think about what he was doing. He had no choice. At his shout, Wark burst out of the blackness half-running, half-crawling. Avoiding the hole into the men’s room, he dived for the opening over the office. He was a blur plunging down. They heard him hit the desk, a huge thud, hit the floor, heard him running, and heard a door bang.

They approached the opening and looked over.

The office was empty.

Behind them the ladder clinked again, the rattling of footsteps on the metal rungs.

Joe knew he’d blown it, that the fuzz would be very interested in where that voice came from. Well, so the cops had heard a shout. So there was no human up here. So, what cop was going to believe that was a cat shouting?

Another clink, and another. And Clyde’s head appeared rising up through the lit hole.

Joe gaped. He leaped, piling into Clyde, licking his face, purring so hard he choked.

“What the hell? What are you doing up here? What are you so excited about? That was you who shouted! I heard the guy run, heard him jump down.” Clyde held him away. “Are you hurt? I don’t see any blood. Where’s Dulcie?” They heard running and shouting from the laundry, and two more shots were fired somewhere below.

“What the hell’s going on, Joe?”

Joe swallowed.

He’d sworn he could never talk face-to-face with Clyde. He stared at Clyde, frozen. He stared until they heard officers’ voices ring out from below in the restaurant.

They heard the gate slam again, and a car door slam. Then from behind Joe, a soft voice said,“When are we going to get out of here? I’m tired of this crawl hole. I’m tired of cobwebs on my ears, and I’m tired of being shot at.” And Dulcie strolled into the light.

She gave Clyde a green-eyed gaze, and leaped past his face, down through the hole, hitting the ladder twice with quick paws.

Max Harper moved fast into the men’s room, and stopped. He studied Clyde, standing on the ladder with his head stuck through the ceiling.

Clyde looked down.“No one up here. Did you get Wark?”

“Picked him up outside the laundry.” Harper motioned Clyde down. “Move on out. Who’s up there?”

“Not a soul. Just my cat.”

“Has to be. I heard someone talking-two voices.” He switched off the overhead light, slipped his flashlight from his belt, and started up the ladder.

“There’s no one, Max. I was talking to the cats.” Clyde backed down the ladder carrying Joe, and glanced across at Dulcie, where she sat demurely out of the way, in the corner. “I don’t know how they got in the attic, but they were pretty scared.”

“That gray cat’s yours? The one I see around the house? I didn’t know you brought him to work with you.” He scowled at Dulcie. “I don’t remember the other one.”

Clyde shrugged.“That one belongs to Wilma, I’m cat-sitting.” He grinned. “I guess I’m getting old; I talk to them a lot.”

From Clyde’s shoulder, Joe looked innocently back at Max Harper. He’d spent many a night lying under the kitchen table while Harper and Clyde played poker. Then, Harper usually smelled of horses, but not now, when he was in uniform.

Harper scowled at him, lifted his paw, and looked closely at his claws. Joe looked, too, and saw a trace of blood. Harper said,“Wark’s face was torn up pretty bad. Long bloody scratches.” He patted Joe, climbed on up the ladder, and shone his light into the darkness, He stood looking for a minute, then climbed up. They could hear him crawling toward the far end.

He made a surprisingly quick survey. He returned, holstered his gun, and swung down the ladder. Then the two men moved out into the restaurant. The cats followed.

The restaurant blazed with light. Every light was on, bouncing against the varnished pine walls, illuminating the stained, flowered carpet.

Harper stood watching his men as they searched, then he grinned at Clyde, the smile making surprising lines in that somber face.“Hey, we have our evidence.”

“What, the motor numbers?”

“No. Looks like we have some money deposits. Kate Osborne brought in the bankbooks. They’re in the safe, as we speak. Foreign bankbooks, big numbers.”

“Well for Pete’s sake, all this time? Kate didn’t tell me about any bankbooks.”

Harper shrugged.“She told me.”

The four officers searching the room moved nearer to them, and two went behind the bar and began checking the shelves underneath. Joe wasn’t sure what they were looking for, but he knew where it had to be hidden. He slipped close to Clyde, and nudged Clyde’s ankle with his nose.

Ten minutes later, as Clyde and Max Harper stood in the shop yard, followed closely by Dulcie, an officer shouted to Harper that he had another call on the police radio. Harper stepped over to a squad car to take it, grumbling because the department hadn’t been issued cellulars, thanks to local politics.

Joe thought Clyde had handled it very well, just a nudge to the ankle, a flip of the ears toward the door and a long serious look, and Clyde got the message. He had edged on out to the yard, and Harper, finished inside, moved out with him.

When Harper returned, he and Clyde and two officers headed for the men’s rest room. Immediately Joe jumped down from beside the bar phone and the other cat followed.

The officers searched the men’s room, nearly taking apart the fixtures. They examined the water tank, and two men checked the attic again.

At last Harper said,“That call had to be a hoax. There’s not a damn thing in here.” He returned to the mirror, and jiggled it, and examined its bracket more closely. Frowning, he wiggled the glass. When it shifted in its frame he attempted to slide it up.

It slid. He lifted it out, revealing a small metal door the size of a medicine cabinet door, set flush into the wall. He leaned the glass against the booth partition.

“Brennan, give me the key you took off Wark.”

Brennan handed Harper a brass key. As Harper fitted it into the lock, Joe and Dulcie crowded close between a tangle of uniform trouser legs and black regulation shoes. And though Captain Harper didn’t glance down at them, they could tell he was aware of them in that attentive way police had. They hardly breathed as Harper turned the key and opened the metal door.

Crammed inside the little space were four fat plastic bags. Harper pulled them out, opened one, and fanned through a sheaf of hundred dollar bills. Holding one by the edge, he looked at it carefully, then smiled and slipped it back with the rest.

At the back of the rectangular hole was a second metal door. Harper glanced at a thin officer.“Wendell, go check out the laundry, see if you can find this.”

Later when the cats were alone, sitting on top of the tow car, their ears assailed by the police radio, and watching two officers fingerprint the Corvette, Dulcie whispered,“I expected it to be drugs in those plastic bags.”

“So did I. Who would guess that Wark and Jimmie were running counterfeit money along with the cars. And laundering the profits from both.”

Officer Wendell had found the second door to the medicine cabinet in the laundry office, behind the cubbyholes. After some discussion, a laundry employee had been willing to talk. He told Harper the money was wrapped as laundry, loaded into the delivery trucks, and distributed on the regular route to five other restaurants along with clean uniforms, dinner napkins, and tablecloths. He said that was all he knew.

Police assumed that the money was locked in the cabinet from the men’s room side when Wark or Jimmie went for coffee. Harper never did find out who made the anonymous phone call to the station, the call that urged him to search the men’s room. The dispatcher said it was a male voice. “Kind of gravelly,” she told Harper. “He just said to search the men’sroom, that it was urgent. Then he hung up.”

Joe was still stressed from that call. He’d had to wait while the cops finished searching the front of the restaurant and moved on to the kitchen. As he placed the call from the phone behind the counter, Dulcie followed Harper to be sure he received Joe’s message from the dispatcher.

After the money was found, they overheard Captain Harper send two men over to the Osborne house, to pick up Jimmie and Sheril Beckwhite for questioning. Harper kept Lee Wark cuffed in the back of a squad car until they finished up and headed back to the station.

The cats lay stretched out in the sun atop the cab of the tow truck, feeling smug, when Joe glanced up and saw Kate coming from the showroom, walking hesitantly. She stood talking with Clyde and Captain Harper for some time. Then she and Clyde came on across the shop yard. She looked pale. Clyde put his arm around her.

She leaned against his shoulder.“I thought I’d be glad they arrested Jimmie. I don’t know how I feel.”

She looked at Clyde helplessly.“I gave Harper the evidence to convict my own husband. I’m sending Jimmie to jail.” She buried her face against Clyde’s shoulder.

Then she moved away, and blew her nose.“Sheril was with him.” She started to laugh. “They arrested Sheril.” She shook with what Joe thought was pent-up nerves. “The police arrested Jimmie and Sheril?” She doubled over, laughing. “Arrested them-in our conjugal bed.”

She stopped laughing and clung to Clyde, shivering.“What did I do? What did I do to Jimmie?”

Clyde held her and patted her head.

Joe wanted to say,“Who’s sending him to jail. Jimmie’s sending himself to jail.”

But he hurt for Kate. And he watched her with increasing curiosity, remembering Jimmie’s words, the night they followed him in the fog-Where did the unnatural things come from? How do you think that makes me feel, my own wife?

When at last Kate noticed him, she held out her hand.“Hello, Joe Grey,” she said, stroking him. He twisted around, sniffing her fingers, sniffing up her arm. That made her smile. He wanted to tell her she was well rid of Jimmie, that Jimmie Osborne was no good, and that she could do better. He let her pet him and rub his ears until Dulcie growled.

Kate looked startled, and drew her hand back. Joe glared at Dulcie, but Dulcie’s dark tabby coat stood straight up, and her tail was huge. Her growl rumbled so fiercely it shook her.

And Kate stopped looking surprised, gave Dulcie a knowing look, and moved away.

But it was not until two nights later, in Jolly’s alley, that Dulcie and Kate began to be friends; and that Joe and Dulcie were put to the final terrifying test of their strange metamorphosis.

27 [????????: pic_28.jpg]

Old Mr. Jolly, coming out to the softly lit alley to deposit his garbage before he closed up for the night, and to leave a nice plate of scraps for the village cats, paused, puzzled.

The alley was empty, yet just as he stepped out he had heard laughter. It had seemed to be right outside the door.

There was no one passing on the well-lit street. He stepped to the street and looked both ways, but there was no one on this block. Maybe his hearing was going bad, playing tricks.

The only occupants of the alley were two cats, prancing across the bricks batting a leaf back and forth, chasing it through the glow of the wall lamps. Jolly put down his plate of scraps beside the jasmine vine and stood watching them, amused by their antics.

He guessed they weren’t very hungry. Certainly they could smell the good veal and ham, but they didn’t rush to the plate. He knew these two, and they weren’t shy about tying into a nice snack. Both were eager guests at his feline buffet. The little brown tabby belonged to Wilma Getz, who worked in the reference department of the library. He watched the tabby roll over coyly on the brick, glancing sideways at the tom as she reached to bat the leaf. What a flirt; her green eyes were dancing. She seemed as happy as if she owned the world. So maybe she did own it, who knew about cats? The gray tom circled her, feinting at the leaf, then leaped at her and they scuffled. Jolly laughed; it pleased him to see animalssofilled with joy, so happy with being alive.

The cats played for a few minutes, then sat regarding him. And at last they trotted on over, looked up at him bright-eyed and smiling, and tied into the scraps of warm veal roll and the hickory-smoked ham and the crab salad. He liked the way cats enjoyed their food. The tom smacked and gobbled, but the little tabby ate delicately. Interesting that the tom, though he was bigger, shared equally with the tabby, leaving half for her.

The tidbits he set out were never large, but when they were arranged all together onto a paper plate they made a respectable meal. He found it curious that people left good food on their plates. It was never the fat folks-they cleaned up every bite. It was the thin women, the ones who looked like they needed a little nourishment. They left the nicest scraps.

As the two cats feasted, a third cat appeared out of the dark vines at the end of the alley. As it paused beneath the light, its creamy color shone bright, and its eyes gleamed golden. This was a new cat; Jolly did not know this one. It had to be a female, so round and sweet-faced, such a pretty cat. As she drew closer he could see that her cream-colored fur was streaked with orange, like rich whipped cream folded with a dash of apricot jam.

She might be a stranger, but she trotted right on down the alley bold as you please, toward the scrap plate. She stopped once to rub her shoulder against the container of a potted tree, obliquely observing the two cats as if assessing them. The two feasting cats watched her indirectly, their ears twisting toward her, but they did not stop eating.

The cream cat was bold as brass-she trotted right up to the plate, pushed the gray tom aside, and took what was left of his share. The tom didn’t object, but the tabby cat lashed her tail, laid back her ears, screamed, and lit into the cream cat, biting and clawing. Jolly didn’t know whether to stop her or let them alone.

Before he could make up his mind, the scuffle was finished. The two backed off glaring at each other and then looked at the tom. And something strange happened.

The two females, without any more preliminaries, suddenly seemed to make friends. They approached each other with their ears and whiskers forward in a friendly way, sat down near one another, and began to wash their paws. The tom stood looking on, seeming as amused by them as Jolly felt.

Cats. Who knew what went on in those furry little heads.

He picked up the empty paper plate, dropped it in the garbage, and went back inside, leaving the night to the cats, to those amazing beasts.

When Jolly had gone, the three cats trotted away up the alley side by side and disappeared into the dark shadows beneath the jasmine vine.

There, sheltered by tangles of small, dense leaves dotted with yellow blossoms, the cream cat lay down and washed herself more thoroughly. She did not speak for some time. She looked Dulcie and Joe over, her face registering a dozen expressions. They looked back uneasily, and Dulcie shivered. She was both afraid of what would happen, and excited. Joe regarded the cream cat with puzzled unease, and he had to keep reminding himself that this was Kate. This was Kate Osborne.

Kate wasn’t one to make small talk. When she spoke, it was in strange, rhyming words. Words that clung like honey in the cats’ minds. At the rich sounds a tingling dizziness filled Joe. The shadows tilted. He thought he was falling, he clawed at the foliage to steady himself.

But soon his dizziness was gone. Nothing more happened. He crouched in alarm, his stub tail tucked down, his ears flat.

He hadn’t liked the feeling of being out of control, of being pulled away from himself. For a minute he’d felt like some vaporized sci-fi hero zapped away into another dimension.

If that was part of the program, he’d pass, thank you. He glanced at Dulcie. She, too, had remained herself. She did not look happy.

Dulcie had felt nothing at all. She could have gotten a better buzz from a sprig of catnip.

The cream cat tried again, repeating the bright rhyme, but still nothing happened. Joe and Dulcie remained small and four-footed.

The cream cat’s eyes narrow, puzzled, then widened. Standing within the thick shadows, she said the words a third time and this time she allowed herself to change. She was suddenly tall, her hair tangled in the vine, her blouse caught on the twigs.

The cats stared up at her. Dulcie’s green eyes were huge with envy.

Kate said,“Did you feel nothing?”

Joe felt relief. He had no desire to do that stuff. One try was more than he wanted. He was a cat-he had everything he needed just as he was. His human thoughts, his human talents, his ability to read and speak, worked just fine in his own gray fur. He had the best of both worlds. He was Joe Grey, enjoying his human talents without human entanglements. Free and unencumbered.

But Dulcie was crushed. When she realized she couldn’t change, she had crouched, desolate, her ears down, her tail tucked under.

Joe nuzzled her and licked her face, but she couldn’t respond.

Ever since the day in the automotive yard when she saw, within Kate’s eyes, a cat looking back at her, when she saw the astonishing truth of what was possible, she had allowed herself magnificent dreams.

Visions of becoming tall and dark-haired and beautiful, visions of her green-eyed human self, had driven and excited her. She had imagined going out to fancy restaurants, attending the symphony and plays, had dreamed of dancing, of slipping into silk cocktail dresses and spike heels, into little satin bras and lace panties.“Try again,” she whispered.

Kate tried. Dulcie tried with her, repeating the words as Kate said them. But it was no use. Dulcie remained a cat. A tear slid down her fur, a human tear.

Kate knelt in the shadows beside her, touching Dulcie’s face. “There could be other spells. Maybe another spell?”

“Maybe,” Dulcie said, not believing it. “Maybe?”

But then she looked at Joe. Cocking her head, she saw for the first time how relieved he was. She’d been too busy with her own disappointment to see him brighten when Kate’s words didn’t work. She reached to lick his nose. “Why?” she said, pressing close to him. “Why don’t you want to change?”

He nibbled an itch on his paw, and gave her a long, unblinking look.“We’re like nothing else, Dulcie. You and I and Kate-and maybe a few others somewhere. We are unique.”

“So?” She waited, puzzled.

“I want to enjoy what I have. Don’t you see? I like the change just as it is. I’ve been having a ball.” His eyes were bright, intense. “I liked being a special cat. I like being acat.I like my new skills, but most of all I like what I am.”

She tried to understand. He was aware, sentient, yet totally feline. And he was perfectly happy.

She was quiet for a long time.

At last she touched Kate’s hand with her paw. “No more spells,” she said softly. And she pressed against Joe, purring. If Joe was content, then maybe she would be, too. Maybe this was the better way. She would try his way, and see how she felt about it. Try enjoying this new life just as she was-while she went on stealing silk teddies.

28 [????????: pic_29.jpg]

Once a year Jolly’s Deli held a party in the alley. George Jolly and his staff set up tables and chairs along the brick lane, and out along the sidewalk, and served an elegant cold buffet of their specialty salads, cold roast turkey and pastrami and roast beef, and assorted cheeses and breads and desserts. The annual affair was a big event in Molena Point, a time for neighbors to get together. Even the village cats could party if they cared to brave the noisy crowd. George Jolly himself arranged leftovers for the cats on a row of paper plates beside the back door.

This year, so soon after Samuel Beckwhite’s murder, many villagers assumed that Jolly would postpone or cancel the event, but he did not. What better way to dispel the ugly memories of what had occurred in the alley than to fill the lane with good cheer and comradery.

Though the case was not yet closed, though portions of the investigation were still under way, the shock and overwrought publicity had subsided, and the Molena Point Gazette had relegated any new developments to the third page.

Lee Wark had been booked for murder, for grand theft auto, and for passing counterfeit bills. Jimmie Osborne’s charges were similar, but he was booked as an accomplice to the murder of Samuel Beckwhite.

The murder weapon, a British-made torque wrench, had turned up on the seat of a patrol car which had been left unlocked for a moment in the station parking lot. The weapon was wrapped in a plastic bag. The plastic had been buried; it was stained with garden soil. The police lab identified the dirt as coming from a garden that grew marigolds. That could be half the gardens in Molena Point. The lab was trying to pinpoint the exact location of the garden, but that would take some time. They did find on the wrench traces of Beckwhite’s blood. And they found Lee Wark’s prints superimposed over Clyde Damen’s prints. Damen had identified the wrench as among the tools stolen shortly before the murder, from his automotive repair shop.

A pair of thin rubber gloves was found in Wark’s car, and sent to the lab. Captain Harper said that it wasn’t uncommon for fingerprints to go right through the thin, surgical rubber. Wark’s prints, plus testimony by the woman who had been in the alley the night of the murder, would be enough to indict the Welshman for Beckwhite’s death. The witness saw Wark hit Beckwhite and she saw Beckwhite fall.

“And it wasn’t a man, after all,” Joe said.

Dulcie widened her eyes.“How could I tell it was a woman, in the pitch-dark? I couldn’t smell her, my nose was so full of the scent of jasmine I couldn’t have smelled a rotting fish.”

But even with the weapon and the killer’s prints accounted for, the investigation was not complete. Evidence led police to believe that Beckwhite had been a knowing accomplice in the sale of stolen cars, and that matter was still under scrutiny. Sheril Beckwhite swore to police that her husband didn’t know about the counterfeit money, nor did she. Sheril had been indicted as an accomplice to the theft of the cars, but not as an accomplice in her husband’s murder. That, too, was still under investigation. The common assumption around the village was that, even if she was convicted for car theft, Sheril would get probation.

Beckwhite’s funeral had been an impressive occasion. He had been put to rest with mountains of flowers and an endless parade of mourners. The funeral entourage, which ran heavily to gleaming foreign cars, was so long that for two hours the entire village had to be cordoned off by the police, effectively preventing entry into Molena Point even from Highway One.

But once Samuel Beckwhite was laid to rest in the prestigious St. Mark’s Cemetery, which occupied a high hillside plateau above Molena Point Valley, George Jolly set about planning his annual party. He announced the date, as he always did, by taking out a half-page ad in theGazette.The party was planned for just seven weeks after the arrest of Lee Wark and Jimmie Osborne.

Arrested, as well, and out on bond were the owners of Mom’s Burgers and of the adjoining laundry, for trafficking in counterfeit bills. Max Harper still had no idea who his informant was, who had given him the location of the money, and had anonymously turned over the murder weapon. He had questioned all employees of Mom’s Burgers, of the laundry, ofthe automotive agency. The phone call which relayed to him the location of the counterfeit bills behind the mirror in the men’s room had alerted him, as well, that the VIN number on the yellow Corvette had been changed. The dispatcher had prudently made a tape of the voice. Everyone in the department had listened. No one recognized it.

Bernine Sage, the agency bookkeeper, had not come forward with her eyewitness account of the murder until Wark and Osborne had been arrested, claiming she was afraid to do so until they were behind bars. She had described the killing accurately, and had shown Harper where she was standing, concealed behind the combined shelter of the jasmine bush and the oleander tree when Wark killed Beckwhite. She said she had been headed for the drugstore that night, looking in the gallery windows when she came abreast of the alley and heard low voices. She had glanced in at the precise moment that Wark hit Beckwhite.

The day of the party was bright and cool with very little breeze. The two dozen long tables occupied not only the alley but the sidewalks on both streets. They had been covered with white paper tablecloths, as were the two long buffet tables which dominated the alley itself. These were loaded with an array of Jolly’s most popular delicacies. Coffee and soft drinks were served by Jolly’s staff, four young men dressed in their usual immaculate white uniforms.

Captain Harper, standing in line at the buffet, was deeply preoccupied with the several puzzling loose ends to the Beckwhite case. For in spite of his unanswered questions, the case was wrapping up neatly. Two and a quarter million in counterfeit bills. Six restaurant owners already indicated for passing counterfeit money. And his department was slowly putting together a complete picture of the money laundering operation which spread to the East Coast and the Caribbean.

He heaped his plate with Jolly’s delicacies and headed down the alley to Clyde’s table, where Clyde had saved him a chair. Sitting down next to Wilma, he was amused that Clyde and Wilma had brought their two cats. The cats were sitting on a chair right at the table, sitting side by side, very straight, looking around as if they were enjoying themselves. A well-trained dog might do that, but cats?

Max wasn’t a cat person; he much preferred the more direct friendship of dogs and horses. But he had to admire the skill of anyone who could get a pair of cats to sit quietly at the table in a crowded environment. In his experience, cats were skittery and easily frightened. He glanced up to where old Jolly was watching from his doorway, and old Jolly was looking at the cats, too. George Jolly was a real cat nut, worse than Clyde, always feeding the animals. There was always a plate in the alley, always cats hanging around.

Watching the two cats at the table, Max thought about these cats the morning of the arrests up at Mom’s Burgers. He could see again the two cats standing right there among his officers watching intently as he removed the mirror and unlocked the metal door. When he lifted out the bags of counterfeit bills they had stared, had seemed almost excited.

He knew he was obsessed with cats. But the whole case seemed tainted by cats-that joke at the station about a cat walking through as if it owned the place, that had happened the morning Clyde brought him the list of stolen cars. And the night of Beckwhite’s murder, there’d been a cat; some cat had run out from the alley. The patrol field sheet noted that a cat fled from the alley into the car’s lights at about the time Beckwhite had been killed.

He watched Kate serve a small paper plate from her own plate, glancing down at the two cats. So Kate was another one-a big cat person.

Kate was doing very well, he thought, considering the last few weeks. She seemed to be shaking off the failed marriage and becoming eager to get on with her life. He’d heard she had put her house on the market and was talking about moving up to San Francisco for a while. Be good for her. Change of scene, new interests.

He watched her set the small plate down on the chair, watched the cats bend eagerly to the salmon salad and bits of cold meats. But the cats were far too mannerly; their unnatural behavior increased his unease. And when Clyde asked the gray tomcat if he wanted more roast beef, and the cat mewled stridently, Harper’s blood chilled.

He hardly attended as Wilma said,“I’m glad to have Dulcie home, I missed her.” She was speaking to Clyde, but she seemed almost to be speaking to the cat. “I bought her a new silk pillow, and a little Dresden supper bowl, after I cracked hers with my shovel.

“I thought I’d start taking her to the library, it’s quite the thing among libraries now, to have a resident cat. I think she’d like to do that. A good many librarians say that a library cat has increased their book circulation.”

Harper had known Wilma a long time, he knew when she was putting him on. He grinned and winked at her.

But she looked back at him dead serious.“It’s true, Max. Cats do increase library traffic, children and old people particularly will come in to pet the cat, and will stay to do a little browsing, end up with a stack of books. And cats are wonderful at story hour, a loving little cat can calm the children, and keep them from fidgeting. There’s even a Library Cat Society. I think Dulcie will fit right in. I think she’ll find the experience-entertaining.”

Max patted Wilma’s hand. “I’m sure she will,” he said, trying to imagine the city fathers allowing a cat in the library. He guessed Wilma was getting a bit dotty. He didn’t understand the sense of strangeness that gripped him. After all, Wilma was just another cat nut.

He finished his coffee and rose. He needed to get back to the station. Needed to ease down into the normal confusion of routine police work, shake off the weirdness.

But on his way out of the alley, when he turned to look back, both cats were watching him. He could swear they were laughing.

2. CAT UNDER FIRE

1

The night was cool, and above the village hills the stars hurled down their ancient light-borne messages. High up on the open slopes where the grass blew tall and rank, a small hunter crouched hidden, his ears and whiskers flat to his sleek head, his yellow eyes burning. Slowly he edged forward, intent on the mouse which had crept shivering from its deep and earthen burrow.

He was a big cat, and powerful, his short gray coat sleek as velvet over his lean muscles; but he was not a pretty cat. The white, triangular marking down his nose made his eyes seem too close together, as if he viewed the world with a permanent frown. To observers he seemed always to be scowling.

Yet there also shone in his golden eyes a spark of wit, and a sly smile curved his mouth, a hint that perhaps his interests might embrace more of the world than simply the palpitating mouse which awaited his toothy caress-a clue that this big gray torn saw the world differently, perhaps, than another cat might see it.

Crouching low, he did his best to keep his white paws and white chest hidden, keep his white parts from shining out through the dark grassy jungle. He would have preferred to have been born solid gray in color-that would make hunting far easier-but one did not have a choice in these matters. And he did favor his neat white paws.

The mouse moved again, a quarter inch, watching warily for any presence within the blowing shadows.

Quivering, it stretched farther out from its shelter, its eyes gleaming black and quick as it strained to see any foreign movement. Its ears twitched, alert to any threatening sound upon the hushing wind, and constantly its body shivered with the habit of fear, every tiny muscle tensed for flight, ready to vanish again among the heavy roots.

The cat’s eyes didn’t leave his prey; they blazed with hunger and lust for the kill, bright as yellow coals. He drew back his lips over gleaming incisors as he tested the mouse’s musty smell, his pink tongue just visible tasting that irresistible aroma. His shoulders rippled in anticipation, and he licked his nose as if he was already licking warm and succulent mouse flesh. The small rodent was damnably slow about leaving its cover. Joe remained still with great effort.

Below him down the grassy slopes the village of Molena Point slept snugly at this predawn hour, the cottages protected from the sea wind by the giant oaks among which they had been built, and by the surrounding hills into which the homes and shops were tucked like a tangle of kits snuggled against their mother. In the center of the village the courthouse tower rose tall against the dark sky, as pale and lonely as a tombstone. The Mediterranean building housed two courtrooms, various city offices, and, at the far end, the Molena Point Police Department. The ongoing murder trial which would resume this morning in the courtroom was, despite the tomcat’s irritation about the matter, of great concern to him.

For weeks the quiet village had talked of nothing else but Janet Jeannot’s murder and of the fire in which she had died. There was heavy speculation about the young man who had been indicted for her death. Prurient excitement about these events had transformed Molena Point’s usual calm ambience into an emotional bedlam. Gossip and conjecture seethed through the village shops and cafes so that Joe, prowling the village streets catching snatches of conversation, was aware of little else. Though his own interest did not stem so much from village gossip as it did from a far more personal concern.

The mouse moved again, creeping farther from cover, half an inch, then an inch, bravely and foolishly leaving its grassy blind, drawing so close to Joe that Joe had to clamp his jaws to keep from chattering the age-old feline death murmur. He oozed lower, slipping silently toward it through the grass, disturbing no blade, every fiber of his being honed in on that sweet morsel.

The mouse froze.

Joe froze, his heart pounding with annoyance at his own clumsiness.

But no, it hadn’t seen him. It had paused only to gather itself for a dash across the bare earth. It stared across, fixated, toward another stand of heavy grass, where a tiny path led away, a quarter-inch lane vanishing between the green stalks. Joe’s muscles tightened, his lips drew back, his yellow eyes gleamed.

The mouse sped, streaking for its path, and Joe exploded across the little clearing. With one swipe of scimitar claws he raked the creature up into his waiting teeth, it fought and struggled as his fangs pierced the wriggling morsel.

The mouse knew a moment of apocalypse as it hung skewered and shrieking in the cage of teeth clamped through its body. Joe bit deeper into the warm, soft flesh, the sweet flesh. The mouse screamed and thrashed, and was still.

He crouched over it tearing away warm flesh, sucking up sweet, hot blood, crunching the mineral-rich bones, then the surprising little package of stomach contents. The stomach usually contained grass seed or vegetable matter, but this morning he was rewarded by a nice little hors d’oeuvre of cheese from the tiny mouse stomach.Camembert,he thought, as if the mouse had lunched on someone’s picnic. Or maybe it had gotten into the kitchen of one of the houses that dotted the hills. He could taste a bit of anchovy, too, and there was a trace of caviar. Joe smiled. Its belly was full of party food.

How fitting. The mouse had taken its final repast from the silver trays of a party table. Molena Point’s cocktail crowd had supplied, for the little beast, an elegant last meal, a veritable wealth of pre-execution delicacies. Joe grinned, imagining the small rodent up in mouse heaven, gorging for eternity on its memories of anchovies, beluga, and Camembert.

He tried to eat slowly and enjoy every morsel, the rich taste of the tiny liver, the so recently pulsing heart, but the mouse was gone before he could slow himself.

When nothing was left but the tail, he licked a whisker and settled down to wash. He never ate the tail. His purr was deep and contented. This was living; this was what life was about. Forget the complications of that other life that had, some months ago, so rudely infringed upon his normal feline pleasures. It was quite enough at this moment to be no more than an ordinary cat. Insolently he cleaned his paws and whiskers, then gazed up at the star-strewn sky. Titillated by the vast night and by the spinning universe, warmed by the rich, nourishing mouse gracing the inside of his belly, he savored the perfect moment. To be alive and healthy, to roam the wild hills freely and take from the earth what he wanted, this was life’s answer to cat heaven.

The dawn wind rose stronger, tweaking his fur, teasing and exciting him. And from above him in the vast sky came the far, highchshee chsheeof a nighthawk wheeling against the stars, diving and circling as it sucked up insects invisible even to the tomcat’s keen eyes. Joe stretched and yawned.

Only one thing could improve the night, only one presence could add to his pleasure.

Licking his whiskers, he rose on his hind legs to look down the hill. Perusing the lower slopes, studying the faintly lit gardens beneath the softly glowing streetlamps, he watched for any quick flash of a small, swift creature leaping up through the shadows, watched for one small cat racing up the dark hills beneath the sprawling oaks.

But the shadows lay unmoving. He looked and looked, and disappointment filled him. She wasn’t coming. Maybe she’d overslept. She’d had some strange dreams lately, dreams that wakened her and made her prowl restlessly, destroying sleep.

He was about to turn away when he saw, far down between two cottage gardens, a large patch of darkness moving, and he stiffened, watching.

That was not his hunting companion; that shadow was too big. Now it was still again. Maybe it had been only dark bushes shaken by the wind. When he saw no sign of Dulcie he hunched down, feeling lost and lonely. She almost always joined him on such a perfect hunting night, with the wind not too fierce. And the sky, as she would say, as beautiful as black silk strewn with spilled diamonds. He reared again, searching disconsolately, studying the narrow village streets that wound and lost themselves and appeared again, climbing higher up the grassy hills. She could have spared a few moments to join him, even preoccupied as she was.

Though he did wish, if she came to hunt in the predawn dark, that she’d keep her mouth shut about the trial.I’m sick of hearing about the damned trial.These last weeks Dulcie had been interested in nothing else, she seemed able to think only of the fire in Janet Jeannot’s studio and of Janet’s terrible death-and of Rob Lake, who was being tried for the murder. Dulcie was so sure that Lake was innocent, and so damnably intent on proving she was right.

The day Janet died, they had come up the hills as soon as the fire was out, drawn by the activity of gathering police cars, by what appeared to be a fullblown investigation. Concealing themselves above the burn, where the ground wouldn’t scorch their paws, watching the police working within the cordoned-off expanse of smoking, blackened rubble, Dulcie had been both repelled and fascinated. They had watched unmarked cars arrive, watched the forensics people examine Janet’s body. But when forensics lifted Janet gently into a body bag, Dulcie had turned away shivering.

And then, when Rob Lake was arrested for Janet’s murder, she had gone to watch him in his cell, seething with curiosity.

Observing Lake in his solitary confinement, slowly making friends with him as she crouched at the barred window above his cubicle, listening to him talk out his fears to her-baring his soul to a cat-she had become convinced of Lake’s innocence. Soon she had completely bought Lake’s story.

Lake has to be a strange dude,Joe thought.What kind of guy spills his deepest thoughts to a cat-not even his own cat?Sure Dulcie was charming, probably she’d given Lake that bright-eyed gaze that enchanted tourists and inspired shopkeepers to invite her right on in among their precious wares.So she charmed him. So big deal.But to let the accused charm her, to buy the idea that Lake was innocent was, in his opinion, stupid and dangerous. The grand jury wouldn’t have indicted Lake if mere hadn’t been sufficient evidence. Anyway, this trial was not cat business; it was police business.

But Dulcie didn’t see it that way.

And you can’t tell her anything; she’s going to go right on prying like some hotshot detective until she gets herself in trouble.

He hissed at the empty night and scratched a flea. She was only a cat, one small cat, but she thought she knew more than a court full of attorneys. Thought she was smarter than twelve court-selected jurors and a state judge. One small, defiant tabby whose arrogance was enough to make any sensible cat laugh.

He did not consider, in his assessment, that they had, together, already investigated one murder this summer and had helped police nail the killer. That case had been different.

Down the hills, wind scudded the grass in long waves, rolling as the sea. Above him, riding the wind, the nighthawk dived suddenly, skimming straight at him swift as a crashing aircraft. He didn’t duck from the bird, though another breed of hawk would have sent him scooting for cover. At the last instant it banked away, sucking up insects-the poor bird could eat nothing but bugs. Joe smiled. God had, in his wisdom, designed some mighty strange creatures.

As he turned, looking down the hill again, he started, then smiled.There she is.She came streaking up across a patch of lawn, a swift shadow so lithe and free she made his heart leap. He avidly watched her every move as she fled up across a narrow street and disappeared into the tall grass above, watched the grass ripple upward, stirred by her invisible flight.

She burst out of the grass high up the hill, racing up across a last flower bed, then an empty street, and into a tangle of weeds, steeply up, a dark bullet of speed. Halfway up the hill she stopped. Reared up. Stood looking up the hill searching for him. His heart trembled.

She saw him. She stood a minute on her hind legs, her front paws curved softly against her belly, then she sped up again, racing and leaping. When again she vanished, the grass tops heaved and swayed, as if shaken by a whirlwind.

She exploded out of the grass inches from his nose. She leaned into him warm and purring, tense from running, her heart pounding against him, her green eyes caressing him. She was all fire, switching her tail, licking his face. For weeks she’d been like this, a bundle of passion, her tempest generated not by love, though he knew she loved him, but by her fevered involvement with the murder, by the compulsion of purpose that blazed in her green eyes, and in her unexpected bouts of quick temper.

He liked her all keyed up, bright and vibrant, but she worried him. She visited the jail too regularly, listened too intently to Rob Lake, had become totally obsessed. Life had just begun to settle down after he and Dulcie solved Samuel Beckwhite’s murder, and now Janet’s death had thrown her into high gear all over again. The passion of her involvements tumbled and shook him like a dog shaking a rabbit. He was beginning to wonder if life with Dulcie would ever be anything but chaotic. He did not consider-did not choose to remember-hisown intensity, once his own curiosity was aroused.

And Dulcie was possessed not only with the murder itself, but with trying to discover, as well, what made humans kill so wantonly.

Premeditated murder was quite beyond the normal feline experience. A coldly planned killing was totally different from the way a cat killed. Such destruction had nothing to do with hunger or survival or with practice training, or even with instinct. From a cat’s view, Janet’s death had been pointless. Insane. And Dulcie kept trying to understand, in one huge gulp, such human folly. Searching for answers scholars have been seeking for centuries.

Who could tell her that this was a task, for one small cat, as impossible as a gnat swallowing the sun?

But he couldn’t stay angry with her, she was his love, his gamin, green-eyed charmer. Now, as she snuggled close, her gaze melting him, he licked the soft peach-tinted fur on her darkly striped face, licked her ears. She lifted a pale silken paw and smiled at him, then flopped down to roll in the grass, flirting.

But the next minute she leaped away again, feinting a run. As he raced after her, she paused to look back, wild-eyed, then ran again, light and swift as a bird in the wind. He chased her up the hill, careening up through the blowing grass, then crashing through a forest of Scotch broom, up toward the crest of the hills, climbing until at last they collapsed, panting, so high they could see nothing above them, and lay stretched close together, Dulcie limp and warm and silken.

“Needed to run,” she said. “To get the kinks out. I got so cramped yesterday, crouched on that ledge above the courtroom, I thought I’d pitch a fit.”

So don’t stay there all day,he thought, but didn’t say it.

“And then I kept going to sleep during the boring parts-in spite of those pigeons cooing and blathering all around me. And those attorneys aren’t much better, dull as the drone of bees. That prosecuting attorney can put you right to sleep.”

“You didn’t have to waste all day there.” He could never keep his mouth shut.

She lifted her head, her eyes widening.“I left an hour before they recessed. Don’t you want to know what’s happening?” She gave him a steady, green-eyed gaze, then rubbed her face against him. “Lake didn’t kill her, Joe. I swear he didn’t. We can’t let them convict Rob Lake.”

“You have no reason to be so sure. You’re not?”

“There’s not one shred of hard evidence. I told you this is how it would be-all circumstantial. That Detective Marritt didn’t do a solid investigation, and he really isn’t making a good case.”

She flicked an ear.“But what can you expect? Captain Harper never wanted to hire Marritt. Marritt’s nothing but a political appointee. I bet Harper didn’t want to put him on this case; I bet the mayor had something to do with that. Marritt’s so officious in court.”

She saw she wasn’t getting through. “Anyway, why are court trials so damnably slow? Every little legal glitch, and a million rules.”

“They’re slow, and have rules, because they’re thorough.” He looked irritably past her down the hill. “They’re slow because they go by facts and logical procedures, and not by intuition.”

She hissed at him and lashed her tail.“You might just try to keep an open mind.”

He did not reply.

But at last she relaxed, yawning in his face, putting aside their differences-for the moment. Lying close together, warm upon the breast of the hill, they watched the village begin to waken. A few cottage lights had flicked on, and now, all over the village, as if a hundred alarms had gone off at once, little patches of lights began to blaze out. Above them, the sky grew pale, and soon the lifting wind carried the scent of coffee, then of frying sausages. They heard a child’s distant laugh, and a dog barked.

And as dawn lightened the hills, a tangle of dark clouds began to sweep in from the sea, racing toward the north, probably carrying rain. Maybe it would blow on past, drench San Francisco instead of the village. Dulcie said,“Rob will be waking now, his breakfast tray will be shoved in under the bars.”

Joe sighed.

“He needs me,” she said stubbornly. “He talks to me like he doesn’t have another friend in the world.” She licked the tip of her tail. “And maybe it’s easier for him to talk to a mute animal?” She smiled slyly. “Well, he thinks I’m mute. And why would he lie to a cat? As far as Rob Lake knows, he could tell me anything, and I wouldn’t understand, couldn’t repeat it.”

Joe said nothing. Dulcie had an answer for everything. There was no diverting her. She was into the case of Janet Jeannot’s murder with all four paws. Earlier this summer, when they’d searched for clues to Samuel Beckwhite’s killer, they couldn’t help being involved; their own lives were threatened. They’d both seen Beckwhite struck down, had heard the thud of the wrench against his head, had seen Beckwhitefall. They had seen the assailant clearly. And the killer, somehow, had known they could inform the police. From the moment the man saw them, he knew they could finger him, and if he could have caught them, he would have snuffed them both.

They had set out to solve the Beckwhite case because their own lives were at stake, but Janet Jeannot’s murder was different.

Dulcie stared at him deeply, her dark pupils slowly constricting to reveal emerald green as the dawn light increased.“Don’t you want to see the real killer caught? You liked Janet; Clyde used to date Janet. You can’t want her murderer to go free, gloating all the rest of his life while she lies dead.”

She nuzzled his face, licked his ear.“The first witness this morning is Janet’s neighbor, that Elisa Trest. I really do want to hear what she’ll say. Come on, Joe. Come on to the courthouse with me.”

He just looked at her.

She sighed and started down the hill, pushing through the tall grass.

No point in trying to talk sense to her, she was going to do as she pleased. Grumbling, he trotted down beside her keeping pace, half-angry, half-amused.

But halfway down the first slope, she said,“There’s a strange dog down there; I forgot. I don’t see it now, but it followed me earlier, a huge dog.”

“I didn’t see any dog when I came up. Except the boxer and the golden, those two cream puffs.” Those dogs were no threat-they’d chase a cat for sport but were terrified of claws. If no other cats taught the village dogs proper manners, he and Dulcie did. They’d had some interesting chasesover these hills. Though a smart cat never let snapping teeth get too close. Even a playful dog, when excited, could turn innocent play into a killing bite. One mouthful of cat, and a harmless canine could become a killer, tearing and rending before he knew what happened.

“It was a big brown mutt,” she said. “It stayed away from me, behind the bushes, but it watched and followed me. Well, it’s probably harmless. After Mrs. Trest testifies I’m going up to Janet’s burned studio again, and this time I mean to get inside even if it is boarded up.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Why not? Who knows what I’ll find.”

“Come on, Dulcie. You watched the police sort and sift and photograph. We’ve been up there enough, across that burn. That’s the last place I want to spend the day.” The burned hills were hell on the paws, and the rank fumes stung their noses and eyes. And of course there was no game up there among the ashes; the creatures that didn’t die in the fire, that had escaped, would not return to that barren waste.

The fire had cut a half-mile swath through the lush green hillside, and had burned seven homes to the ground, leaving only two houses untouched. Dead, black trees stood bare against the sky, and the stink of burning was everywhere. The thought of padding through a half mile of cinders, broken glass, and sharp, twisted metal, did not appeal.