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

The old woman snorted, but she took such a good grip on the nape of Joe’s neck that he had a sudden flash of her reaching with both hands and squeezing; her fingers were as strong as a man’s. “I won’t be long,” Dillon said, and she was gone down the hall toward the entry. Joe stared after her wondering what she was up to. Maybe the kid was going to skip-beatit out the front door.

“That’s not?” Eula called after her, but Dillon was gone.

Joe could see the rest room in the opposite direction, a door clearly marked, just outside the dining room. He listened for the front door to open, but he heard nothing. Where was the kid headed, acting so secretive?

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“That cat killed an entire litter of newborn pigs,” Eula Weems said. “Biggest cat on the farm. So mean even the sow couldn’t run it off.

“And after it killed those pigs it kind of went crazy. From that day, it just wanted to bite your bare toes. You couldn’t go barefoot all summer, had to wear shoes. Terrible uncomfortable and hot.” Eula stared accusingly down at Joe, where he crouched rigid in her lap, glowering at him as if the dead pigs were his fault.

Mae Rose said,“If they won’t let us see Jane or Darlene or Mary Nell, then I say they aren’t here. Not in Nursing, not anywhere in Casa Capri.”

“Maybe in the county home,” Eula said helpfully. “Maybe they couldn’t pay. County home is free. When that cat got run over by the milk wagon everyone celebrated. It sure did feel good to go barefoot again. Took a month, though, for my feet to harden up on them tar roads. Burn your feet right off you.”

Mae Rose pawed through the contents of one of the hanging pockets attached to her wheelchair until she found a handkerchief. She blew her nose delicately. Joe watched the arch where Dillon had disappeared, listening for the front door to open and close, convinced the kid was going to leave. He’d like to beat it, too. Mae Rose blew her nose again and wiped her eyes, then wadded up the handkerchief. “Maybe they’re dead.”

Eula Weems snorted.“How can they be dead? You know Darlene Brown was in the hospital with cataracts, and you saw her yourself when her cousin came. Right there in that corner room with the dark glasses. You’re not making sense, Mae. And you know James Luther’s trust officer was over there all one afternoon withhim talking and signing papers.”

“That’s what they told us.” Mae Rose glanced across the room toward the open double doors, where a nurse had appeared.

The white-uniformed woman propelled Dillon along before her, clutching the child’s arm. Dillon balked and twisted, trying to pull away, her thin face splotched with anger.

“I was only looking for the rest room,” the child argued, “I don’t see?”

“The rest room is there, beside the dining room, not a block down the hall in the private wing. That area of the building is reserved for the very sickest patients, and they must not be disturbed.”

“But-”

“You’ll remain here in the social room as you were told, or you cannot come back to Casa Capri. You will not disturb the residents.” The thin woman dropped Dillon’s arm, stood staring down at her as if to make her point, then turned away. Dillon’s face was red, her scowl fierce.

Across the room a man in a wheelchair watched the little exchange with interest, and as Dillon sat down on the couch across from Eula, he headed in their direction.

Though he was wheelchair-bound, he seemed too young to be living here among the elderly. Joe thought he couldn’t be out of his late twenties-though Joe admitted he was no authority on human age. The man’s smooth, white face was lean, his blue eyes friendly, but his body was puffy from inactivity. The roll of fat around his middle, beneath his white cotton shirt, looked like a soft white inner tube. Wheeling his chair toward them, he swerved around couches and chairs with a flashy disregard for the occupants. Coming to rest beside Mae Rose, he gave his” chair a final twist like a young man spinning his sports car, and parked beside her chair. He looked Dillon over with curiosity, winked conspiratorially at Eula, then leaned toward Mae, looking hard at the tabby cat in her lap. Dulcie looked back at him warily.

“What’s that, Ms. Rose, a fur neckpiece? Did someone drop a moth-eaten fur piece in your lap?”

Eula Weems giggled.

Mae Rose’s painted cheeks flamed brighter, and she petted Dulcie with quick, nervous strokes. Dulcie didn’t move; she lay stretched out across the pink afghan coolly regarding the young man, and definitely not looking moth-eaten-her dark stripes gleamed like silk. She was very still, and nothing about her seemed to change except that her green eyes had widened; only Joe saw her stiffen imperceptibly, as if to strike.

Eula smiled coquettishly, stroking Joe.“Look, Teddy. I have an old fur piece, too.”

Teddy laughed.“Or is that one of those moldering gray union suits you tell about on the farm, that your mama sewed you into?”

Eula favored him with a girlish guffaw.

Teddy said,“Mae, you’re hugging that cat like it was a baby. Or like one of your little dolls.”

“Leave me alone, Teddy. I shouldn’t wonder if it was you that drove Jane Hubble away.”

The young man’s eyes filled with amazement. His smile was sunny and very kind; he looked as if Mae Rose could not help her aberrations.

But Dillon, watching them, was suddenly all attention. Gripped by some inner storm, Dillon raised her eyes in a quick, flickering glance at Mae Rose and the pale young man; then she looked down again.

Eula said,“Everyone knows Jane Hubble’s right over there in Nursing.” She looked to Teddy expectantly.

“Of course she is,” Teddy said kindly. “They can’t let us visit them, Mae. It’s too hard on sick people to have us underfoot going in and out, getting in the way. Of course she’s there. Where else would she be? Ask Adelina.” He put his arm around Mae. “I know you miss her. Maybe when she’s better, something can be arranged.”

Dillon had turned away, seemed to have lost interest in the conversation. She was all fidgets, moving restlessly, and when she settled on the arm of Eula’s chair and leaned down to pet Joe, her fingers were rigid, tense; she was filled with hidden excitement-or apprehension.

“She could send word,” Mae said. “The nurses could at least bring a message.”

“She’s too sick,” Eula said. “So sick she has tubes in her arms. They wanted to send me over there with the blood pressure, but I wouldn’t have it. I won’t have all those tubes stuck in me.”

Mae Rose’s wrinkled face collapsed into a hurt mask. “I’d only stay a minute.”

“The doors are locked,” Eula said. “That’s all I know. That’s all there is to know.”

Mae Rose said nothing more, sat quietly stroking Dulcie.

“If she’s sick?” Dillon began, “if this Jane Hubble is sick?”

Teddy turned to look at her.

Mae Rose burst into tears, covering her face with her hands. Dulcie sat up and touched a paw to the old lady’s cheek as the little woman huddled, sobbing.

“How long since you’ve seen her?” Dillon said to Mae, ignoring Mae’s tears. “How long since you’ve seen your friend Jane?”

“Mae doesn’t remember,” Eula said. “She gets mixed up-in this place all the days run together. She knows Jane’s all right; she just likes to make a scene.”

But when Mae Rose finished crying and blew her nose, she fixed Eula with an accusing stare.“Your own husband went over to see her. He tried to see her. He was angry, too, when they wouldn’t let him in.”

“I told Frederick, don’t you go over there.” Eula’s fat fingers pressed irritably along Joe’s back. “I told him, you’re not to go over there alone to see that woman.”

Dillon looked at Eula uncertainly.“You didn’t want your husband to see Jane? But??” She looked blank, then looked shocked suddenly. Then fought to keep from laughing. “You didn’t want your husband?” She swallowed, then began again. “Does your husband-does he live here, too?”

“Lives over in Cottages,” Eula said. “You can have your own car, very stuck-up. Then if you get sick you come over here. Frederick says he can’t stand it over here, says it’s depressing. If you get real bad sick, like Jane with a stroke, then you go into Nursing. I don’t know what Frederick does over there in that cottage all day. He says he goes into the village on the bus, to the library. I don’t know what he does. I don’t know what goes on over there with those women.”

Dillon rose and turned away, smothering a laugh.

But after a moment she turned back, gave Mae Rose a little smile.“You must miss your friend. I had a friend once who went away.”

“Her room was next to mine,” Mae said. “The corner room, the one they use now for visiting. When Jane? When they moved her to Nursing,” Mae said doubtfully, “they closed that room, and now they use it for visiting.”

“Which corner room?” Dillon asked.

“The one behind the parlor right next to my room.” Mae pointed vaguely out through the glass doors toward the far side of the patio.

Dillon walked over and peered out. Turning back, she said thoughtfully,“I don’t understand. You mean visitors stay overnight?”

“They-” Mae began.

“No,” Eula said irritably. “No one comes overnight. But if you’re in bed all the time-bedridden-and you have a dinky little room, you have your visitors there in the big room, it makes a better impression. Those corner rooms are the biggest, private bath and all. If you have a little poky room, or if you’re in Nursing, they move you into the corner room to entertain company. Your relatives come, it looks grand. They figure you’re getting a good deal for what they pay.

“But when they’re gone again, it’s back to your own dinky room, and they shut the big room. It’s all for looks. Everything for looks.” Eula yawned and settled deeper into her chair, shaking Joe. He rose, turned around several times against her fat stomach. Teddy left them, spinning his chair around and wheeling away. From the kitchen Joe could hear a clatter of pots and then a nurse came out, rolling a squeaky metal cart with a cloth draped over.

“Meals for the Nursing wing,” Eula said. “Not many of ‘em can eat solid food. They get fed early, then get their medicine and are put to sleep.”

Joe shivered.

Dillon watched the white-uniformed nurse push the cart away toward the admitting desk. And, ducking her head, pretending to scratch her arm, she kept glancing out the patio doors.

But not until Eula loosed her grip on Joe and began to snore, did Dillon pick Joe up in her arms and head for the patio. His last glimpse of Eula Weems, she had her mouth open, huffing softly.

Pushing open the glass slider, Dillon slipped out into the walled garden, into patches of sun and ragged shade. Joe sniffed gratefully the good fresh air.

Along the four sides of the building, the rows of glass doors reflected leafy patterns. Most stood open to the soft breeze. In some rooms a lamp was lit, or he could see the shifting colors of a TV. The corner room was dark, the glass sliders closed and covered by heavy draperies. Dillon, tightening her hold on him, pressing him against her shoulder, headed quickly for Jane Hubble’s old room.

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Up in the hills above Molena Point the Martinez family was gathered at the pool, Juan and Doris Martinez sitting at their umbrella table wrapped in thick terrycloth robes, their hair streaming from their swim, the two children still doing laps, skimming through wisps of chlorine-scented steam. The harsh light of afternoon had softened, and the shadows stretched long. Though the wind was chilly, the spring day was bright and the pool was comfortably heated-the water was kept all year at an even seventy-eight degrees. The couple sipped their coffee, which Doris had poured from a thermos, and watched ten-year-old Ramon and seven-year-old Juanita swim back and forth the length of the long pool as effortlessly as healthy young animals. The adults had already completed their comfortable limit for laps. Doris’s limit most days was about twenty, Juan’s twice that. The kids would swim until hunger drove them out.

With careful attention to the changing times even here in Molena Point, to the increase in household burglaries even in the village, they had left only the patio door unlocked, and it was in plain view behind them. They were discussing an impending trucker’s strike, which would delay deliveries of window and wall components for Juan’s prefab sunroom company. This, in turn, would delay scheduled construction and throw the small firm behind in its work for the next year or more, depending on how long the strike lasted.

While the adult Martinezes were thus engaged discussing alternate sources of income to tide them through the coming months, a woman entered the yard behind them, making no sound, and slid open the glass door, timing its soft sliding hush to the noisy rumble of a passing UPS truck.

Slipping inside, she found herself in the large, comfortably appointed family room, all leather and soft-toned pecan woods. Crossing the thick, soft carpet, she headed for the front hall and moved quickly up the stairs; she liked to do the upstairs first. Usually, when people were in the pool or the yard, there would be a billfold left on the dresser, perhaps a handbag. Or she would find the handbag in the kitchen when she went down. Climbing the stairs, she thought about making a trip soon up to the city. She didn’t like keeping such a large stash of stolen items. She liked to move the goods on, dump the take-all but those few pieces that were so charming she couldn’t bear to part with them.

She thought of these as keepsakes. She was not without her sentimental side. She enjoyed the houses she entered, liked looking at the furnishings and getting to know the families, if only superficially, by the way they lived. Each new house, while offering fine treasures, offered also a little story about the residents. And though she knew it was foolish to hang on to keepsakes, she did love the little reminders she had saved, the lovely Limoges teapot from the McKenzie house, the five porcelain bird figurines carefully packed, and the little Swiss clock with a white cloisonne face that she couldn’t bear to part with. She had yet to determine the value of the clock, but she thought it would be considerable. She needed more specific information on these miniature clocks; she was finding quite a few. The cloisonne clocks, imported from Europe, were big in California just now. She’d take care of the research up in the city at the main branch of San Francisco Public, not here in Molena Point, where someone might recognize her; she felt particularly wary of that ex-parole officer in the library’s reference department.

She’d like to drive up to the city early, spend several hours with Solander; Solander’s Antiques was the most reliable fence, and she didn’t have to hobnob with little greasy shoplifters. No, Solander was strictly first-class. Then a stop at several banks to get rid of the cash, and a nice lunch, maybe at the St. Francis. Then the remainder of the day in the art reference room of San Francisco Public. The trips made a really nice change from her everyday routine. Maybe she’d stay over, catch a play, do a little shopping.

Though before she left, she did want to get her map of Molena Point in better order. She’d nearly made a bad mistake yesterday, had really scared herself when she realized she was in the Dorriss house. And she had forgotten, if she’d ever known, that the upstairs was a separate apartment.

But no matter, she hadn’t gotten that far. Though not until she saw Bonnie Dorriss’s car pull into the drive, saw her getting out with that big brown dog, that poodle, did she realize where she was. Luckily the young woman had taken the dog around to the backyard, and she had slipped out the front. She hadn’t time to lift anything, and the experience had left her unsettled.

Upstairs, in the Martinez master bedroom, she found a billfold containing something over two hundred in small bills. She didn’t find a purse, but she did find a jewelry box and picked up a nice pearl choker and a lovely antique emerald necklace. This last could be a real find-it must be well over a hundred years old and was probably Austrian by the looks of it. If those tiny emeralds were real, she had a fortune in herhands. But even if the emeralds were only chips, or even paste, the finely made antique piece would still be worth a nice sum.

She found a few gold and silver coins in a cuff-link box, none of them in protective envelopes, but found nothing else of value. She was checking the other bedrooms when, in what appeared to be the guest room, she came on a glass case containing five big dolls.

These were not children’s toys, but replicas of adult women, works of art so lifelike that at first sight they shocked her. As if, peering into the case, she was looking into a tiny alternate world, spying on live miniature people. The doors of the case were locked.

Each female figure was a very individual little being, her skin so real one wanted to feel its warmth, her tiny fingers perfect. And each lady was totally different from the others, each face different, registering very different human emotions. She could not resist the Victorian woman’s aloof smile. Each tiny woman was so alive that even their individual ways of standing and looking at her were unique. In their lovely period lace and satins, these lively ladies were surely handmade. She wondered if they were one of a kind; certainly they were collector’s dolls.

Thinking back, she could remember glancing at magazine articles about doll shows, and at ads for dolls, but obviously she hadn’t paid sufficient attention. She had missed a whole movement here.

Well she would pay attention from now on, close attention. Her fingers shook as she fished out her lockpicks.

The operation took forever, and she was growing nervous that some member of the family would come slipping in from the pool and up the stairs before she had the glass case open. Her hands were trembling so badly that when she did get the lock open she almost dropped the first doll. The little lady’s full silk skirts rustled, and her direct, imperious gaze was disconcerting.

Each doll was over twelve inches tall. They were going to make a huge bulge under her coat. But at last she got them tucked away in the deep pockets that lined the garment, and, still in the guest room, she checked herself before the full-length mirror.

Not too bad, if she stood with her shoulders hunched forward to make the coat fall away from her. She could hardly wait to research these beauties and get them up to the city.

She would take these to Harden Mark; he was the best with the real art objects. And, of course, before she saw him she needed to educate herself. There wasn’t a fence in the world who wouldn’t rip you off if he could.

She had finished upstairs, was downstairs in the kitchen going through Mrs. Martinez’s purse, when she heard the sliding door open. She stuffed the bills in her coat and closed the purse. On her way out the back door she snatched up a handful of chocolate chip cookies.

Silently closing the door, she let her body sag as if with fatigue and discouragement, shrugging deeper down into the lumpy coat, and slowly made her way along the side of the house ambling heavy and stiff, peering into the bushes, calling softly,“Kitty? Here, kitty. Here, Snowy. Puss? Puss? Come on, Snowy. Come to Mama, Snowy.” Her old voice trembled with concern, her expression was drawn with worry. She did not let down her guard until she had left the Martinez residence unchallenged-really, this was a great waste of talent-and had ambled the three blocks to her car.

Driving home along Cypress, up along the crest of the hills heading for Valley Road, passing high above the sprawling wings of Casa Capri Retirement Villa, she slowed her car, pulled onto the shoulder of the narrow road for a moment. Sat looking down with interest at the red-tile rooftops softened by the limbs of the huge old oaks and at the tangle of cottages climbing up the hill; even those small individual houses gave one a sense of confinement.

From this vantage she could look almost directly down into the patio. Though the garden was charming, shadowed now, and the lemons and the yellow lilies shining almost like gold, the high walls made her shiver. Casa Capri was beautiful, but it was still an institution, sucking dry your freedom. As the poem said, she could wear red rubber boots to dance in, she could drink wine on street corners if she chose and laugh with the bums, and who was to stop her?

Parked above Casa Capri, she eased off her heavy coat, folded it carefully with the five dolls protected inside, and laid it on the seat. Studying the sprawling complex, she laughed because she did not belong there, then headed away thinking of supper and a hot bath.

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The patio doors were securely closed and partly obscured by the drawn draperies. Dillon could feel her heart pounding as she pressed her face against the glass, cupping her hands-and ramming the cat’s face against the doorframe. Growling, he backed away as if to jump, but she grabbed the nape of his neck. “I’m sorry, Joe Cat, you have to stay here.” She stroked him and hugged him, and he settled down again. He was really a good cat. She rubbed his ears, then cupped her hands once moreto peer in.

The room showed no sign of life, no lamp burned, no TV picture flickering, no figure moving about or seated in a chair reading. She could see a dresser and a chair, and a bed neatly made up with a white spread, its corners tucked at exact angles. There were no clothes lying around, nothing personal, no glasses or book or newspaper, not a stray shoe, not even a wadded tissue. The surfaces of the dresser and nightstand were bare. The room was definitely empty.

Mama said they charged a bundle to stay here at Casa Capri. So why would they keep a room empty, even for the reason Eula gave? She was so intent on the room that when Joe turned to nibble a flea, jerking around to bite his shoulder, she grabbed at him again, startled.

Pressing him against her cheek, she looked behind her, glancing toward the social room. Making sure no one was watching, she tried the door, testing the latch while pretending to smell the blooms on the lemon tree.

It was locked. Well she’d known it would be. She tugged and jerked to be sure, then turned away.

Moving on down the brick walk close to the row of glass doors, she paused to look in through each, searching for a familiar face, for Jane’s tall straight figure, and knowing she wouldn’t find her.

At home, the minute she and her folks had gotten back from living in Dallas after their year away, the minute they pulled in the drive, with the car still loaded with suitcases, she had run up the street to Jane’s house. They’d lived in Dallas while Dad did a special project at the university, and she’d really missed Jane, specially after Jane stopped writing to her, because at first they’d written every week. Four times while they were living in Texas she’d tried to call Jane, but there was never any answer. Mama tried twice, and then Jane’s phone was disconnected, and she didn’t know what had happened. By then it was time to come home, so Mama told her to wait, that she’d see Jane soon. But she hadn’t seen her; when she got home, Jane was gone.

That afternoon, when they pulled into the drive and she ran down the block, there was the FOR SALE sign pounded into the lawn in Jane’s yard. And all the curtains drawn. The neighbor said Jane was in Casa Capri with a stroke and that a trust officer was selling the house.

She had run home, gotten her bike, and come up here to Casa Capri, but they said Jane was too sick to see anyone. They said children weren’t allowed in the Nursing wing because of germs. They weren’t very nice about it.

As she moved down the patio beside the glass doors, Joe Cat began to wriggle. Though his whiskers tickled her ear, he was being really careful not to dig in his claws. The old people sitting in their rooms watching TV made her sad; they looked so lonely and dried up.

Jane wouldn’t be watching TV-she’d be reading or doing exercises or out walking, shopping in the village, maybe buying some little trinket; she loved the antique stores. Jane might be wrinkled, but she’d never be old like these people. Moving along, peering in through the glass, she approached the end of the patio, where sunlight slanted in through the panes across the carpets and beds, across the unmoving old folks as though they were statues-virtual reality that didn’t move, figures in stage sets, like the animal dioramas in the museum. Each old person looked back at her, but no one changed expression, no one smiled. One old man sat propped in a reclining chair, sound asleep, with his mouth open, under a bright reading lamp. She was never going to get old.

She knew that the Nursing rooms were directly behind this row of rooms. The second time she came up on her bike, she’d tried to get in there, had gone around to the little street in the back between the main building and the retirement cottages. She’d tried to go in that door directly to Nursing, but it was locked. She’d looked in the windows of the rooms, and they were like those in a hospital, with metalbeds and IV stands and bedpans. And then today, when she went down the hall and tried to get into Nursing, that nurse made her go back. She didn’t see why everything was so secret, and everyone so grumpy. Unless there was something to hide. And that was what she meant to find out.

Before she started back up the third side she sat down on a bench beneath an orange tree and pulled Joe Cat off her shoulder down into her lap, petted him until he lay down. She supposed it was hard for a cat to be so still. She’d like to let him loose, but she’d been told not to. She could imagine him scorching away up a tree and over the roof and gone, and it would be her fault.

That first time when she came to see Jane and she told Mama they wouldn’t let her in, Mama called Jane’s trust officer. He said Jane was too sick to have company, and that was the policy here, that they allowed no visitors into Nursing, that only the family could come.

He said Mama could take his word that Jane was doing as well as could be expected, whatever that meant, and that he was in constant touch with the doctor who cared for Casa Capri’s patients. And Mama believed him. With Mama going back to work, she didn’t have time to go up to Casa Capri and raise a little hell, which Mama really could do when she wanted.

Mama’s office, the real-estate office where she worked before she took leave of absence to go to Dallas, wanted her back right away. Three people were out sick, and the office was having a Major Panic. And after that, Mama hardly had time to pee. She did the laundry at midnight, or left it for Dillonand Dad, and they ate takeout most nights, or Dad made spaghetti. All you could hear around the house was “deeds” and “balloon loans” and “termite inspections” until even Dad was tired of it. Mama did talk to the doctor, though, and he said exactly the same thing, that Jane was too sickfor visitors, and she was getting excellent care at Casa Capri.

Any sensible child, Mama said, would believe the combined word of several responsible grown-ups.

But she didn’t. She didn’t believe any of them.

Sliding Joe back onto her shoulder, she rose, catching her hair in a branch of the orange tree. Working it loose, she almost let Joe leap away, but then he settled down again, nosing at her hair, and began to purr. She hated her hair black. But if she’d come up here with red hair again, the nurses would have recognized her. Everyone remembered red hair.

Freeing her ugly black hair, petting Joe Cat, she moved toward the third wing of the building that would lead back to the social room. Moving along the row of mostly open glass doors, she tried the screens.

The third screen was unlocked, and the room empty. Dillon slipped inside.

“Just a little look around, Joe Cat. Who’s to care?”

He purred louder, and seemed to be looking, too.

This was a man’s room, a pair of boxer shorts tossed on the chair, a man’s shoes under the dresser, and that made her sort of uncomfortable. Across the unmade bed lay a rough navy blue robe, and on the dresser beside a little radio, was a pile of paperback books with covers of tigers, grizzly bears, and half-naked women. When she opened the closet, his slacks and shirts hung loosely and smelled sour. Closing the closet again, she slipped on through the too-warm room and out into the hall, turning down toward Nursing.

The door at the end of the hall was locked. She pushed, and pushed harder, then turned away.

Moving back up the hall she inspected every room she could get into, slipping quickly from one side of the hall to the other. She and Jane used to readAlice in Wonderland,where Alice tried all the doors, like this, never sure what she would find inside.

But there was no magic mushroom here to make her a different size and maybe give her special powers.

The lady’s clothes in one room were all purple, purple satin robe, purple slippers, a lavender nightie tangled on the floor. On the nightstand a stack of romance novels teetered beside a vase of purple artificial flowers, their faded petals icky with dust. She picked up a worn paperback and read a few lines where it flopped open. And dropped it, her face burning.

Did old people read this stuff?

She wanted to look again, but she didn’t dare. Reading that stuff, even in front of a cat, made her feel too embarrassed. And strange; she could feel Joe Cat peering over her shoulder staring.

What was he staring at?

She put the book back on the pile and left the room quickly, before someone caught her here.

She thought the occupant of the next room must be moving in or out. At least all her possessions were in boxes. Shoe boxes were neatly lined up on the dresser, and bigger boxes lined up on the floor, all stuffed with sweaters and books, with little packets of letters tied together with ribbon, with lace hankies and little china animals wrapped in tissue. This room faced the outside of the building, toward a narrow terrace.

At the outer edge of the terrace ran a tall wrought-iron fence, separating it from the lawn and garden beyond. Farther away rose the oak grove, and in the wood among the shadowed trees a figure moved swiftly, rolling along in a wheelchair, her short gray hair lifting in the breeze, her chair pulled by the big brown poodle. The dog trotted along happily, pulling her, the two of them looking so free, as if they never had to come back inside Casa Capri. She pretended that the woman was Jane. But of course that woman was Bonnie Dorriss’s mother. Dillon turned away, feeling lonely.

Each patio was separated from the next by a low stucco wall, with an open space at the end so you could walk from one patio to the next. But when she tried the wrought-iron gates that led outside, they were all locked.

All our nurses are required to carry keys,that’s what Ms. Prior said. The wrought-iron fence ended just where Nursing began, turning at right angles to join the building. The Nursing wing went on beyond. Its wall had only high, tiny windows. There was one outer door, like the emergency exit door in a movie theater. From this, a line of muddywheelchair tracks led away, cutting across the grass and across the concrete walk to the blacktop parking lot. The nine cars in the lot looked new and expensive.

She stroked the tomcat lightly.“I never told them my name. When I was here before, I told them my name was Kathy.

“Jane Hubble was my friend ever since I was seven. We read the Narnia books together, and she took me horseback riding my first time and talked Mama into letting me have riding lessons.

“Jane let me ride Bootsie, too.” She sighed. “That trust officer sold Bootsie. I hope he got a nice home. I wish my folks could have bought him, but no one told us, no one called us when Jane got sick.”

Joe yawned in her face and wiggled into a new position. She was sure he’d like to run and chase a bird. When he started squirming again, she gripped the nape of his neck. “I can’t let you loose, I promised. Please, just stay quiet a little while longer, then we’ll go back to Eula.” She gave him a sidelong look. “Eula will love holding you.”

She left the row of terraces, moving back inside to the hall, and wandered up the hall in the direction of the social room, stopping to check each open room. Hoping maybe she’d see something of Jane’s in one of the rooms, a sweater, a book. But she knew she wouldn’t.

“Somehow, Joe Cat, I have to get into Nursing. Find Jane for myself-if Jane is there.”

Joe was, he thought, maintaining a high level of patience considering that he hated being carried, particularly by a child, and that prowling these small cluttered rooms where lonely old folks waited out their last years, was infinitely depressing. He might tell himself that he took a realistic view of getting old, that getting old was just part of living, but this Casa Capri gig was more tedious than he cared to admit.

As for Dillon playing detective, whatever the kid was up to with her intense search for Jane Hubble, the project had begun to wear. He felt as nervous as fleas on a hot griddle. By the time they returned to the social room he was ready to pitch a fit, so strung out that he actually welcomed being dropped down into Eula Weems’s lap. Maybe if he just lay still, he could get himself together.

It was not until late that night, as he and Dulcie hunted across the moonlit hills, that he learned more about Dillon’s missing friend. And that he began to wonder if Jane Hubble, and maybe those five other old folks, really had disappeared.

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

Cloud shadows ran along the street where Dulcie trotted, skittish in the wind. Ahead, moonlight shifted across Clyde’s cottage. She approached through uncertain heavings of darkness and moonlight; above her the oak’s twisted branches plucked at the porch roof, scraping and tapping. But beneath the roof the shadows were deep and still, framing the lit rectangle of Joe’s cat door.

Slipping across the damp grass, she leaped to the steps, watching the smear of pale plastic, willing Joe to hurry out. Midnight was already past; the small wild hours, in which the dull and civilized slept, in which the quick creatures of the night crept out to feed and to bare their tender throats for the hunter’s teeth, lay before them. The hour of the chase waited, the hour of adrenaline rush and fresh blood flowing.

But as, above her, the moon swam and vanished, and the clouds ran unfettered like racing hounds, the cat door remained empty.

Waiting, she sat down to lick the dew from her claws.

Soon, then, the deepest shadows fled, the moon appeared suddenly again, and at the same instant the plastic door darkened, struck across by a sharp-eared shadow.

The door flipped up. Joe’s nose and whiskers pushed out, and he thrust out into the night, jerking his rump through, shaking himself irritably as the plastic flopped against his backside.

She was so glad to see him.“About time! Come on-I’m wired, let’s go, the mice will be out in droves.”

But Joe had stopped within the shadows of the porch, his ears down, his shoulders and even his stub tail drooping. He looked like an old, old cat, an ancient worn-out relic, a sad cat skin filled with weariness.

She approached him warily.“What?” she said softly. “What’s happened?”

He did not move or speak.

She pressed against him, her nostrils filled with the scent of mourning.“Barney? It’s Barney.”

His eyes were filled with pain.

She sat down close to him, touched him with her nose, and remained quiet.

“His liver gave out. The pain was terrible. There was nothing? Dr. Firetti gave him pain pills, but there was nothing else he could do. It was terminal. He gave him?”

“He put him down?”

Joe nodded. They sat looking at each other. Clyde and Dr. Firreti had done what was needed.

“He’s somewhere,” she said at last.

“I don’t know.”

“Remember the white cat. The white cat could not have come to me in dream if he wasn’t somewhere. He was already dead when I dreamed of him, and he told me things I couldn’t know.”

The white cat had led her to the final clue, led her to Janet Jeannot’s killer. And this happened long after he died-his flesh was rotted when they found him, his bones bare-yet she had dreamed of him only days before.

There was, Joe knew, no other explanation but that the white cat had spoken to Dulcie from beyond the grave. Yet as they had stood over the white cat’s desiccated body, over his frail, bare bones with the little hanks of white fur clinging, a hollowness had gripped him. He had not experienced Dulcie’s joy at proof of another life. He had been filled with fear, with a sudden horror of the unknown. Terror of whatever lay beyond had ripped through him as sharp as the strike of a rattlesnake.

She nudged against him, and licked his ear.“Barney is somewhere. He’s somewhere lovely, Joe. Why would a sweet dog like Barney go anywhere but somewhere happy?” She pressed against him until he lay down, and she curled up close. “He doesn’t hurt anymore. He’s running the fields now, the way he was meant to do.” And lying tangled together in the shadows of the little front porch, comforting each other, they remained quiet for a very long time.

But at last Joe rose and shook himself.“He was such a clown,” he said softly. “Every time I came home from hunting he had to smell all the smells on me, the stink of rabbit, the smell of bird, every trace of blood. He’d get so excited, you could just see him sorting out the scent of mouse, raccoon, whatever, wanting to run, wanting to retrieve those beasts the way he was bred to do.”

Dulcie swallowed.

“He’d know when I stopped by Jolly’s, too. He went crazy over the smells from the deli; he always had to lick all the tastes off my face.”

She said,“He did that, once, to me. It was like sticking my head in a hot shower.” She rose. “Barney knows we miss him. Maybe he knows we’re talking about him.” She nudged him until, at last, they left the porch, Joe walking heavily as if he were very tired.

Ignoring the little side streets and alleys where they sometimes liked to prowl, she led him straight for the open hills. They passed the little tourist hotel, where an elegant Himalayan presided over the clientele, a cat whose picture was featured on the hanging sign and in the inn’s magazine ads; they could smell her scent on the bushes. The inn’s clients liked to have the Himalayan in their rooms at night to warm their feet and sleep before the fire, and perhaps to share their continental breakfast. She, and all Molena Point’s cats, were as revered in the little village as were the felines of Italy, taking the sun atop a bronze lion or stalking pigeons across Venice’s ancient paving.

“She’s a snob,” Joe said.

“Not at all. She just fell into a good thing. If she knows how to milk it, more power to her.” She nudged him into a trot, and soon they had crossed above Highway One and into a forest of tall dry grass that rustled overhead, casting weavings of shadow across their faces and paws.

It was much later, after several swift chases, after feasting on half a dozen mice and a ground squirrel, that Dulcie, too, began to feel uncertain and morose. Pausing in her elaborate bath, she flicked her pink tongue back into her mouth, licked her whiskers once, and stared at him.

He stopped washing, one white paw lifted.“What? What’s with you?”

“I was thinking. About Mae Rose.”

“Don’t start, Dulcie. Not tonight.”

“Mae Rose thinks maybe Jane Hubble ran away. That the home didn’t look for her, that they didn’t want to tell the police that someone ran away.”

“Mae Rose is bonkers. How could an old woman run away from that place, an old woman who’d had a stroke? How far would she get before she collapsed somewhere, or someone brought her back?”

“Mae Rose says Jane got better after her first attack, that she was getting really restless. Then she had the second attack, and they moved her over to Nursing.”

He just looked at her.

“She might have run away. I read once about an old woman who-”

“Probably she couldn’t even get out of bed, let alone out of the Nursing wing.” He gave her an impatient glare. “If the doors to Nursing are all locked, as Dillon says, and with nurses all over thick as a police guard, you think Jane Hubble got out of bed by herself, got dressed by herself,picked up her suitcase, and walked out.”

She lowered her ears and turned away.

Joe sighed.“She’s there. In Nursing. Safe and sound. Too sick to have visitors. Mae Rose has latched onto one fact, that they won’t let anyone visit Jane, and she’s turned it into a disaster.”

The moon behind them had dropped below the clouds, turning the tomcat into a silhouette as dark and rigid as an Egyptian statue.“Mae Rose is full of fairy tales. Old people get childish, they imagine things.”

“But she isn’t childish, she’s still very sharp. She’s told me all about her life, and she isn’t imagining that. She showed me her albums, she remembers every play she sewed for, every costume, she showed me the pictures, told me the characters’ names and even the actors’ names, she remembered them all. She-”

“She showed her albums to a cat? She showed pictures to a cat, told her life history to a cat?”

“No one else is interested; they’re tired of hearing her.”

“Dulcie, normal people don’t talk to cats, not like the cat can really understand.”

“But we do understand.”

“But no oneknowsthat.” He hated when she was deliberately obtuse. “Mae Rose doesn’t know we can understand her. Anyone-except Clyde and Wilma-who thinks a cat can understand human speech is bonkers. If Mae Rose thinks you can understand her, that old lady is certifiably round the bend.”

She crouched down, deflated.“I’m all she has to talk to; everyone else treats her like she’s stupid.”

“Dulcie, the old woman is in her second childhood. For one thing, what sane, grown woman would carry a doll around with her? Does she talk to the doll, too?”

“She makes doll clothes; that was her living. If she still has dolls of her own, if she still sews for them, I don’t see anything strange. She supported herself doing that, the clothes are all silks and handmade lace. She said Jane Hubble loved her dolls.”

“Dulcie?”

The moonlight caught her eyes in a deep gleam, her pupils large and black, the thin rim of green as clear as emeralds.“No one understands how she feels; she’s so terribly alone, and Jane was her only real friend. We could at least try to help her-try to find Jane.”

“Can’t you understand that she’s making this stuff up? That no one is missing?” He moved away through the grass, irritated beyond toleration, so angry that he didn’t want to talk about it.

He didn’t want to admit his own unease.

Mae Rose was not the only one who thought Jane Hubble was missing. Whatever the truth turned out to be, he didn’t think little Dillon Thurwell was bonkers.

Nor had Dillon and Mae Rose invented this story together. The two hadn’t met each other until today, yet both were possessed with this fixation that Jane Hubble had met with foul play.

“I want to help her, Joe. Somehow I’m going to help her.”

“Dulcie, we’re cats, not social workers. We weren’t born to help little old ladies, we were born to hunt and fight and make kittens.”

“Fine. You go make some kittens.” She lashed her tail, her green eyes blazing. “You do what you were born to do, act like a stupid tomcat. And I’ll do what I think is right.”

“Dulcie-”

“You were eager enough to solve Samuel Beckwhite’s murder.”

“But there hasn’t been a murder.”

Her ears went flat, her whiskers tight to her face, her tail lashing.“And you’re anxious enough, now, to spy on that harmless woman burglar just because she loves pretty things.”

“Come on, Dulcie. The woman is stealing.” Dulcie’s logic-female logic-drove him crazy.

“I suppose,” she said, “it makes no difference that Jane Hubble isn’t the only one who’s missing. That there are five other patients who were moved to Nursing and haven’t been seen again.”

“That old woman ought to write for Spielberg. And you heard what Eula said, that some of those people have been seen-the one with the cataract operation, and the man who spent all afternoon with his attorney.”

She gave him a dark look. She didn’t have an answer; but that didn’t change her mind. Exasperated, he stared down the hill toward the lights of the village.

She said,“If I can help you stalk the cat burglar, which I think is stupid, then you could help me search for Jane Hubble.”

“If it’s so stupid, why did you read all those news clippings? Why??”

“Will you help me look? It’s safer with two,” she said softly.

Joe knew he was defeated. She always knew how to push some vulnerable button.

“For starters, I want to search the Nursing wing.” She assessed his mood through narrowed eyes. “If we can get into Nursing,” she said softly, “we can see for ourselves if Jane and those other old people are there. And that should settle it.” She lay down in the grass watching him, all gentleness now, quiet and submissive.

He was beaten. She wasn’t going to let go of this; when she got her claws in like this, and then turned gentle, she’d hang on until her quarry-him-was reduced to shreds. “All right,” he said, ignoring the uneasy feeling in his belly. “Okay, we’ll give it a try.”

She smiled and rolled over, and leaped up. Sooner than he liked they had licked the last dribbles of mouse blood off their whiskers and were headed across the hills for Casa Capri.

Trotting across the grassy slopes between scattered houses, as he looked past Dulcie, down the hill, watching the tiny lights of a car leave the police station, heading away toward the beach, he thought about Dillon Thurwell.

Dillon had joined Pet-a-Pet so she could look for Jane Hubble; she had dyed her hair so the nurses wouldn’t recognize her. And maybe because of Dillon more than any other reason, he’d let himself get hooked into a predawn break-and-enter that could get plenty hairy. He thought of getting locked into that hospital wing among half a dozen antagonistic nurses, nurses who could wield a variety of lethal medical equipment, and he could almost feel the needles jabbing.

The doll lay in a small dark enclosure just large enough to accommodate her eight-inch height. Her blond hair was matted. Her blue eyes, dulled by grime, stared blindly into the blackness. Her little hands were raised as if she reached but there was no one to pick her up and cuddle her or to examine the knife slit across her belly beneath her little dress.

Her porcelain skin, which had once been clear and translucent, was grayed with dust. Her flower-sprigged blue-and-white frock, made of the finest sheer lawn, and her white lacy slip, all hand-sewn with tiny, even seams, now hung yellowed and limp. And beneath her pretty dress, where her cloth body had been ripped, the three-inch gash had been sewn up again with ugly green thread in large, ragged stitches jabbing any which way into her white muslin body, and the thread knotted with a heavy, lumpy closure.

The walls around the doll were of thick oak, and the container bound outside with brass corners. Someone had hidden the doll well. If anyone had ever loved this doll, she lay forgotten, abandoned. If someone should find her there, they might have no notion of her significance-she was simply a grimy old doll ready for the trash or the Goodwill. Very likely, if she had a tale to tell, no one would know or care. No one would question who had ripped her apart and sewn her up again, or question why. And if there were significant fingerprints remaining on her porcelain face or arms, who would think to look for such a thing? She was not, at this juncture, a clue to any known crime.

17 [????????: pic_17.jpg]

As the cats crouched on the moonlit hillside, above them the high grass stems thrust black and sharp as knives against the moon. Through the grass they looked down onto the rooftops of Casa Capri, the sloping tiles struck into patterns of curving shadow. Far down beyond the retirement villa and beyond the village roofs, the moon’s path cut like a yellow highway across the dark Pacific.

Nothing moved. No wind. The night was still and bright.

Just above the main building of Casa Capri, the rows of small retirement cottages climbed up toward them, their moonlit roofs gleaming pale, their little streets lit at intervals by the decorative lamps spaced along the winding lanes. But the cottages themselves were dark. No light shone, no curtain stirred where retirees slept. The time was 4:00 A.M.

The main building of Casa Capri was dark at the front. Along the sides, a thin glow from the softened hall lights seeped out from the residents’ rooms. At the back of the building, in the Nursing wing, bright lights burned. One imagined sleepless patients suffering late-night changes of IV bottles, or perhaps restless with pains and discomforts and with the fears which can accompany old age.

Glancing at each other, the cats slipped on down through the grass, down between the dark cottages, and across the little narrow streets. Pausing in a geometrically neat bed of pansies, they studied the Nursing wing.

The windows in Nursing were high and securely closed, as if perhaps those shut-in patients disliked the cool night air. There was no access there, through those windows. They had crossed the last street into the shadow of the building when suddenly a clashing explosion of sound hit them, loud as the crash of wrecking cars. Metal clanging against metal. They crouched belly down, staring wide-eyed, frozen to the earth, ready to run.

But then they identified the harsh metallic music of a radio booming out from the Nursing wing, a blare of Spanish brass, of trumpets blasting and snorting, and they crept on again, ears tight to their heads, slinking.

The next instant someone turned the volume down, and the noise subsided to a nearly tolerable decibel level.

Eight cars stood in the parking lot, their metal bodies pale with dew from having been parked most of the night. Not a car among them was more than two years old, and they were all top-of-the-line Buicks, Chevys, even two Mercedeses. Skirting the parking lot, the cats headed for the Care Unit, and there, slipping in through the wrought-iron fence that guarded the little terraces, they searched for an open glass door, for access to a bedroom and the hall beyond.

Most of the glass doors were closed. The two that had been left open a few inches were secured in place by a bar, and the screens were latched. As if the occupants worried seriously about human intruders scaling the six-foot fence and strangling them in their beds.

The cats could hear the soft breathing of the shadowy sleepers, but some of the occupied beds looked hardly disturbed, the covers nearly flat and only a small, thin mound where the sleeper lay. Other occupants had tangled their covers and twisted them or thrown them on the floor. One old man, wrapped in a cocoon of blankets, snored like a bulldog with bad tonsils.

Trying each door and screen, they were nearly to the end of the row before they found a glass standing open and the screen unlatched, or perhaps the latch was broken. The room smelled of cherry cough syrup. Slipping inside, they crept past the bed and its mountainous occupant. A metal walker with rubber feet stood beside the open door to the hall. They crouched beside it, looking down the empty corridor, then fled along it toward the social room.

In the darkness, the room seemed huge, the hulking shapes of couches and overstuffed chairs looming like fat, misshapen beasts. Beyond their hunching black forms, the white-clothed dining tables were moonlit, the moon itself shining in through the glass. To the left of the dim room, the patio gleamed pale through its glass doors. They leaped to the back of a dark sofa, listening.

From down the hall, toward the admitting desk, two women were talking; and the cats could smell coffee. Leaping from the couch to a chair, and to a couch again, they moved in that direction, then quickly through the open doors and down the hall.

At the parlor they slipped into the deep shadows beneath a chair. Staring out, they studied the brightly lit admitting desk and the open doors of the two lit offices.

The admitting desk was deserted, but in one of the offices the two women were laughing, and a coffee cup rattled. The cats fled past and down the hall, toward the closed door of Nursing, where they could hear the brassy music playing softly. Sliding into the nearest darkened bedroom, they sat close together, looking out through the crack of the door, studying the secured entrance to Nursing.

The door was one of those pneumatic arrangements which, the cats knew from past experience, was beyond their strength to open. If they waited long enough, someone had to come through; all they needed was patience. Behind them, in the dark bedroom, the sleeper moaned and turned over; the room smelled sour, of sleeping human, and was too warm. Soon Dulcie began to fidget, and then a flea began to chew at Joe’s rump. He bit at it furiously, easing the itch, trying in vain to catch the little beast. Lately he’d begun to think of his minor but stubborn flea infestation as a serious breach of personal hygiene, a scourge on the civilized being he had become, a source of deep embarrassment.

Clyde had suggested that if he hated flea spray so much, he might try a daily shower. Well, of course, Clyde would offer some incredibly stupid solution. Joe was surprised Clyde hadn’t bought him a razor, encouraged him to take up shaving; certainly that would get rid of the fleas.

They waited, watching the lit crack beneath the door to Nursing for what seemed an endless time before suddenly that space darkened, and footsteps hushed on the carpet within.

The pneumatic door sucked inward, and a nurse hurried out past them, her white shoes flashing along, inches from their noses. Before the door sucked closed they bolted through.

They nearly rammed into the heels of a second nurse. Crouching behind her, their hearts pounding, they stared around for a place to hide, but the best bet, the only real option, was the cart beside her. She stood with her back to them, arranging something on its metal shelves. They could smell hot cocoa and buttered toast, and, as she turned toward a counter, they fled underneath, between the chrome wheels.

Soon they were creeping along beneath the moving cart as she pushed it down the hall, their ears flicking up against the cold metal. The rubber tires made a soft pulling sound on the carpet, like tape being ripped from a fuzzy surface. Around them they could see only the wheels, the wooden molding along the wall, and the bottoms of the evenly spaced doors. If there were charts on the doors presenting the patients’ names, they could see nothing of these. They might be passing Jane Hubble’s room at this moment and never know. This procedure wasn’t going to cut it. If they could ride on top the cart, that would be an improvement. Dulcie glanced at him with impatience, her tail twitching nervously against the metal wheel.

Some of the rooms were dark, but most were lit, and in some the voice of an elderly occupant groaned or called out. The smells of medicine and of sick people made them both want to retch. They could see the bandage-wrapped feet of one patient who was out of bed sitting in a chair. Halfway down the hall the cart stopped, the black rubber tires were stilled, and the nurse’s white shoes padded away into a softly lit room. Behind her, they crept out to look

Through the open door, a bedside lamp threw a narrow glow across the metal bed and across the thin, wrinkled occupant; he had an obedient, gentle face, as if he had long ago resigned himself to the entrapments of old age. As the nurse turned to straighten his nightstand, the cats slipped in behind her and under the bed.

Crouching beneath the dusty springs, they were only inches from her size five white oxfords, so close they could smell the mown grass through which she must have recently walked. This blended pleasantly with the smell of cocoa and buttered toast, and they could hear her arranging a tray before the patient, could hear the plate slide on the metal surface. She spoke to the old man in Spanish, but he answered her in English. Both seemed comfortable with the arrangement. They could hear her fluffing his pillows, then she braced her feet as if helping him into a sitting position. When she had him settled she left the room, wheeling her cart away.

The patient ate with little sucking and clicking sounds, as if his teeth didn’t fit very well. They could see no chart on the inside of the partially open door, to tell his name. They had started to creep out when another nurse came down the hall.

Retreating again beneath the bed, Dulcie hunched uncomfortably, her paws tight together. She didn’t like this part of Casa Capri-the Nursing wing was a fullblown hospital, reminding her too sharply of the vet’s clinic. The disinfectant and medicinal smells and the cold, hard surfaces brought back every dreadful moment of her five days in Dr. Firetti’s animal hospital, when she was sick with a respiratory infection.

She had, over in the social room, been able to maintain the illusion of happy days for these old folks, in a comfortable little world set aside just for their nurturing. But suddenly illness and the failure of the body were too apparent. In this wing of Casa Capri, all she could think of was sickness and dying.

Still, though, the old people were cared for, their meals were prepared, and they were warm and clean. If they had no one at home to look after them, and if they could not care for themselves, then where else would they be happier?

The cats remained beneath the bed until the hall was silent again, until they could no longer hear the rubber tires of the cart working its way from room to room. Above them, each time the old man set down his cocoa cup, it rattled as if his hand was shaky. He spilled a few crumbs of his toast, which rained down over the edge of the bed. He coughed once, then gulped cocoa. When he picked up the remote from the nightstand and turned on the TV, when presumably his attention had become fixed on an ancient John Wayne film, they slipped away, streaking out of the room.

Surely he hadn’t seen them; behind them he raised no cry of surprise. Gunshots cut the night, and a horse whinnied.

They fled down the hall without the cover of the cart, repeatedly looking behind them, and quickly scanning the charts affixed to the patients’ doors. Looking for Jane, Lillie, Darlene, Mary Nell, Foy Serling, and James Luther. They were just at the corner where the hall turned to the right when someone spoke behind them. Joe careened against Dulcie, shoving her down a short, side corridor.

The voices came closer, two nurses speaking casually as they approached on some routine business. The end of this little hall was blocked by a door which must lead back to the Care Unit. They sucked up against the wall as two nurses passed, their white-stockinged legs and white oxfords marching in rhythm. One heel of the taller woman’s size nine shoes had a minute speck of dog doo. The cats wrinkled their noses at the smell. Speaking Spanish, the women turned down the longer hall, passing a fire door. As they moved away the cats followed. Joe paused at the heavy, closed door.

“Teddy went out here. Spice shaving lotion.”

“So?”

“So when Dillon was dragging me all over, I saw wheelchair marks going out the fire door and into the parking lot.”

“Mae Rose said he drives a car, one of those specially equipped cars. If he’s Adelina’s cousin, probably he comes and goes as he pleases.”

“Then why does he live here? Adelina Prior is loaded. Why wouldn’t she get him a nice apartment and hired help? Or why doesn’t he live on that big estate with her?”

“Maybe he’s sort of unofficial social director. Mae Rose says most of the old people like him, that he’s always doing little favors, asking for the special foods they want, remembering their birthdays. He doesn’t seem as sarcastic with the others as he is with Mae Rose.”

Someone changed the Spanish radio station to hard rock, and the thudding drummed at the cats’ nerves like a distant demolition crew. Over the din they heard another nurse coming, the sticky sound made by her rubber-soled shoes on the carpet, and quickly they slid into a darkened bedroom.

Immaculate white shoes and red-tasseled sox passed them at a trot, trailing the scent of Ivory soap. Then two more nurses, their snowy Oxfords flitting like two pairs of white rabbits hopping along the hall.

When the way was empty again the cats moved fast, looking up at the names on the charts. The hall formed a rectangle around a block of center rooms, so that only the outside rooms had windows. By the time they had rounded the last corner and could see the nursing station again, they had found not one of the six residents that Mae Rose claimed were missing.

The nursing station ahead was so busy they might never get past it and out the door. Nurses moved swiftly between two counters, which were covered with medicine bottles and boxes and cartons and a stack of paper towels, with a large stainless-steel coffeepot and a tray of ceramic mugs. As they slipped into yet another darkened room, they were beginning to fidget with impatience. Staring out at hurrying feet and listening to disjointed snatches of conversation, both in English and in Spanish, they felt completely surrounded. Trapped. They grew so irritable they nearly hissed at each other.

Someone changed the radio station back to Spanish music. One of the nurses began to sing with it in a sultry voice. When at last the hall was clear for an instant, they fled for the nursing station, running full out, pausing only to scan the remaining charts, then slide beneath the counter.

Crouching under the crowded shelves that lined the back of the counter, they were hardly out of sight when Size Nine returned, moving in near them, smelling of dog doo. She had only to glance down beneath the shelves to see them huddled. Standing inches from their noses, she began to stack papers, tamping the stacks against the desk. The air under the shelf was hot and close. They heard the pneumatic door to the hall open, and someone wheeled the food cart away, presumably back toward the kitchen.

A nurse came to the counter, there was a short conversation about medications, then Size Nine went away with her, down the hall. The instant she left, they reared up to examine the contents of the shelves, looking for some record of the patients’ names.

They found boxes of syringes, tongue depressors, small packets containing artificial sweetener and fake coffee cream. There was a row of nurses’ handbags lined up, fat and wrinkled, smelling of peppermints and makeup and tobacco; but no files, no list of patients.

“Come on,” Joe said. “Check out the other counter. You watch the hall while I look.” Leaping to the counter among the medicine bottles and IV tubes and the makings for a hot cup of coffee, he sorted through the tangle, patting irritably at the boxes.

“Here we go,” he said softly, pawing a small file box out from behind the coffee canister.

She leaped up, watching the hall, watching him impatiently as he clawed through the alphabetized tabs. The cards contained patients’ names and their medication information, the dosage, times per day, and for how many days.

They found no Jane Hubble, no Darlene Brown or Mary Nell Hook. They had no time to look for the others. Dulcie hissed, and they leaped down, dived back beneath the shelves as three nurses appeared.

“I’m beginning to feel like a windup toy,” Joe said. “Programmed to jump at the sight of a human. I need a good run, need to clear my head.”

“Shh. They’re coming.”

The nurses moved back and forth. Medicine bottles clinked. Someone sneezed. Coffee was brewed, and the radio station was changed again. They waited nearly half an hour before Size Nine returned to pick up her stack of papers, thumped them on the desk again, and headed for the pneumatic door.

They followed behind her heels and fled into the hall. For an instant, behind her, they were as visible as dog turds on a white sidewalk If she had turned to look back, it would have been all over; they’d have had the whole staff chasing them.

They dodged into a bedroom, and in the dark, Joe paced. He couldn’t settle. When something furry touched his nose, he jumped and raked at it, hissing.

But it was only a furry slipper. He shook it and shoved it aside. Out beyond the glass the moon was setting, its slanting light fading into the blackness of predawn. When the nurse vanished down the hall, they fled for the admitting desk.

In less time than it took for the moon to sink beyond the windows, they had searched not only that tall counter but two nearby file cabinets, clawing open the drawers, pawing through the folders. The procedure gave Joe fits-he’d been creeping and stealthy too long. All this snooping made him feel as if he was going to jump out of his skin. He needed to storm up trees, yowl at the moon. His mood would be considerably improved by a good bloody tomcat brawl.

But Dulcie pressured him on. She was most interested, of course, in the one office that was locked. They could smell Adelina’s scent beneath the door, the same expensive perfume that had accompanied her into the entry the first time they saw her. The same scent which had already settled faintly into the leather upholstery of her new red Bentley the day Clyde took them for that memorable ride. Dulcie tried the door, leaping and fighting the knob, but at last she turned away.

In the two open offices they clawed open the desk drawers and file drawers, pawing through, flipping the file tabs with their claws.

They found the patients’ full-sized record files, each set of documents in its own manila folder, but they found no record of any of the six missing residents. If those people had ever really existed, they weren’t here now. Or at least their records weren’t here.

“Maybe Jane took off for Tahiti, booked a cruise. Maybe right this minute she’s paddling her feet in some balmy tropical bay, eating coconuts.”

“Very funny.” Dulcie leaped down from where she had been balancing on the last file drawer.

“There have to be records, even if those people aren’t here. Dead files.” She shivered.

“Whatever secret this place is hiding. I’m betting it’s in Adelina’s office.” She leaped up onto a desk. “That would be the?”

She paused, looking down between her paws at the glass-covered desk top. Beneath the glass, the desk was overlayed with photographs.

“Movies-they’re movie stills. All the old reruns. Look at this, here’s Clint Eastwood before he had any wrinkles. And Lindsay Wagner-she can’t be more than twenty.”

Joe leaped up. Strolling across the desk, he nosed at the pictures.“Who’s the washed-out blonde? She’s in every shot.”

The thin woman appeared in the background behind Clint Eastwood, and at a restaurant table with a very young Jack Nicholson. Joe twitched a whisker.“She looks familiar, but I?”

Dulcie studied the lank-haired woman, frowning.“That’s Adelina’s sister.”

“Come on. Why would Adelina’s sister have her picture taken with Clint Eastwood?”

“It is her, only younger.” The pale blond appeared as a maid standing stiffly beside a fireplace, appeared in several group scenes, and in the backgrounds behind the stars. “She’s a bit player. Or she was-she’s really young, here.”

Beyond the office windows the wind had quickened, and the sky was beginning to pale, the branches of the oaks twisting black against the running clouds. Joe turned, watching the office door.“What time does the shift change?”

She shrugged, lifting a tabby shoulder.

“I don’t relish getting caught in here. Like flies stuck to the chopped liver.”

“We can have a little nap in the parlor while we wait. We can see the front door from there.”

“While we wait for what?”

“For Adelina to get here. Don’t you want to search her office? As soon as she unlocks her door, we-”

“Sure, we’ll nip right on in, she’ll be so pleased. Dulcie, I want into that woman’s office like I want into the rabies lockup at the city pound.”

She gave him a cool look, leaped down, and trotted away toward the parlor. Bellying beneath the damask sofa, she curled up yawning.

He gave it up and joined her. Far be it from him to back out. If they ended up murdered by Adelina’s stiletto heels, there was always, presumably, another life. Unless, of course, they’d already used all nine.

They were cuddled together dozing beneath the sofa when Joe glimpsed movement beyond the black glass. Waking fully, he watched something shiny flickering through the heavy shadows beneath a lemon tree. Quickly he slid along beneath the couch for a closer look, pulling himself across the Chinese rug. Why did people make couches so low? How many cats in the world had to scrape their backs every day, every time they crawled under the family sofa? Where were people’s minds? Didn’t they think about these things?

Again the movement, glinting and dancing through the dark: the metallic flash of spokes.

Chrome spokes-the spokes of a wheelchair. He watched the chair turn and wheel away into the heavy shadows of the dark, predawn garden. Dulcie was beside him now, peering out. They could see, deep within the blackness, a figure standing, facing the wheelchair, as if the two were talking softly, their voices inaudible through the glass.

The cats looked at each other and slid back deeper under the couch.“I didn’t hear the wheels,” Joe said nervously. “And I didn’t hear footsteps. I don’t like when I can’t hear something that’s moving.”

Dulcie stared out at the patio.“Maybe Teddy doesn’t sleep well at night; maybe he and some other patient like to roam the halls.” Uneasily, she curled up close to Joe, trying to purr, to calm herself. And at last they slept.

Joe woke to the first chirping of birds from the garden. The leaves of the lilies and azalea bushes shivered with activity, forcing Joe’s eyes open wide, his metabolism to swing into high, and he crept out from under the couch.

The branches were full of birds. Flitting wings, hopping little bodies. Rigid, his muscles geared immediately into the kill mode, he crouched, staring out at that fluttering feast, at that brazen display of fresh meat, inches from his waiting claws. These birds, reared in that sheltered garden without a cat in sight, would be as stupid and tame as pet chickens.

18 [????????: pic_18.jpg]

It was early morning when she passed Police Captain Harper; he was just coming out of the drugstore as she went in. He smiled and nodded, and she turned away, hiding a laugh. He’d looked right at her, didn’t guess a thing. Not a clue.

But why should he? If she went clanking by him in her black raincoat loaded and lumpy, he’d be onto her like an ambulance chaser onto a five-car collision. But dressed as she was, she could safely pass any village cop or, for that matter, could likely walk right by any hillside resident who had seen her looking for poor lost “Kitty.” People weren’t that observant. Who would connect?

In the drugstore she made her purchases, thanking fate that there were three druggists in town, so frequent purchases of certain items would not be easily noticed. She returned directly to her car, dropped her packages on the seat, and drove west down Ocean. Turning along Shore Drive, she cruised slowly, admiring the large and expensive beach homes. Out over the sea, the sky was blue and clear, not a cloud. Going to be a bright, boring day. Too much sunshine, the kind of day that seemed to turn the village into a featureless cardboard diorama. She was getting tired of Molena Point. When a town began to pall on her like this, it was time to move on, time to scratch these itchy feet.

Surveying the two-and three-story residences that faced the sea just across Shore Drive, she slowed and parked for a moment, letting the engine idle. She was powerfully tempted to give one of these beauties a try.

But every time she headed down here, she turned back again. The houses were expensive and well furnished, but the area made her nervous. Too much activity, too many tourists on the beach and wandering the sidewalks. Tourists provided good cover, but idle people saw a lot, too. And tourists drew police patrols; there were always cops cruising, checking the teenagers, spotting for possible drug sales or some unlawful sexual display; and keeping an eye on the dangerous and illegal swimming areas.

Watching the oceanfront houses, she considered several other areas of the village that she had so far neglected. She had, in fact, restricted her work entirely to the newer houses up in the hills, had stayed away from the village proper, from the cottages which flanked and were mixed in with the shops and restaurants, mainly because of the street traffic.

Putting the car in gear, she cruised Shore Drive. Where the houses ended, giving way to rising sand dunes, she turned back again, driving slowly, studying the three houses that interested her the most, houses where she had never seen more than one car in the drive, and never seen much activity-not a lot of people going in and out.

It wasn’t hard to check out such a house-a look at the city directory, then a few phone calls to see how many different people answered; but she seldom bothered. So far, her routine had worked fine without making all that fuss.

Turning off Shore Drive up Ocean into the village, she headed for the library. Wouldn’t hurt to run in for just a minute, take care of that last bit of research. She wanted more information on the cloisonne clocks. Once in a while, using this library wouldn’t hurt, as long as she kept an eye on who came in and didn’t get involved with the librarians. Yesterday, in the San Francisco library, she’d been too busy learning about handmade dolls, trying to assess the value of the five dolls from the Martinez house. This whole business of handmade dolls was fascinating.

But the pricing range was incredibly large, their value depending on the skill and creativity of the artist and on his reputation, just as in the art world, where a painter spent years building a following. The price depended, as well, on whether the doll was one of a kind, or whether it had been produced in a limited edition, as was an etching or serigraph.

She had made quite certain of what she had before she approached Harden Mark. All five dolls were by a well-known name and were of small, limited editions, the retail price of each doll ranging close to five thousand.

She’d had the dolls only overnight before she packed them up to take to the city, but just having them propped on the dresser overnight she’d hated to part with the perfect little ladies. At the last minute, she’d kept one back, the blond sixteenth-century lady in the blue silk. She could alwayssell her later.

In the city she had come away from Harden Mark’s office with ten thousand in cash, half the dolls’ retail value, which was fair. She’d gone directly to her three banks, distributing the cash among them to avoid undue interest on the part of some nosy teller.

Now she drove on past the library and parked a block beyond. The library’s pale stucco walls and sheltering oaks looked incredibly boring. She was getting tired of this faux-Spanish architecture. Maybe she was taking an unfair and warped view of the small coastal towns, but she found more color in San Francisco. The skies were more fitful, the wind-driven clouds seemed larger, vaster, the city more dramatic. Or maybe she just noticed the drama of the city more, looking out from the high, upper floors of the better hotels, the Mark or the St. Francis.

Before leaving the car, she reached under the seat for her good shoes, slipped them on, and flipped down the sun visor to redo her hair. The long tresses offered infinite possibilities. She pulled out the pins and combed it out, letting it fall over her shoulders.

Reaching into the backseat, she retrieved a large, floppy sun hat printed with pink flowers. Settling this low over her face, she applied a careful smear of hot pink lipstick. Peering up into the mirror at herself, she grinned, then slid out and headed up the street for the library, moving through alternate sun and shade beneath the oaks that spread across the narrow street. It wasn’t such a bad village, picturesque in its way, though really too cute with all the steep roofs and balconies and gables. Maybe she’d hit two or three more Molena Point houses, then move on. Get out before the papers started about the cat burglar or before Captain Harper picked up a make on her car-though she’d been incredibly careful, painstaking in the switches she’d made.

Entering the library, she glanced around for the cat, hoping fervently to avoid it. How totally stupid, for a public office to keep a cat. There’d been a big fuss in the paper about how wonderful it was to have a “library cat,” editorials, letters to the editor. And then that battle to get rid of the beast, headed up by the librarian who was allergic to cats. And people getting up petitions to keep the animal. What idiots. Half the village thought a library cat was just darling-and of course the tourists loved it. The cat was of no earthly use, just a common cat, shedding hairs and fleas, one of those ugly, dark-striped creatures-there were hundreds like it-that you could see in any alley.

Passing the checkout desk, she studied the adjoining rooms warily but didn’t see the beast. It gave her the creeps to approach a table or the book stacks thinking she might suddenly see the cat wander out under her feet. Just thinking about it made her ankles itch, as if any minute it might find her and rub against her.

The woman behind the desk kept staring, so she smiled brightly back at her. What was she looking at? Watching her like she was some kind of character. Didn’t she like floppy pink hats and pink lipstick?

Well I like them, and I’m the one wearing them.And she had to smile-if she was a character, that was just fine, she didn’t give a fig what some librarian thought.

19 [????????: pic_19.jpg]

In Casa Capri, Dulcie woke beneath the parlor couch, curled up warmly on the thick Chinese rug. Joe was gone. Looking for him, out past the squat couch legs and through the glass to the patio, she stiffened to full alert.

The garden was alive with birds, with the swift flitting and chirping of sparrows among the low bushes and flower beds, with quickly winging finches darting under the leaves to harvest the morning’s insects; that busy, winged feast beckoned and enticed, begging to be sampled.

She saw Joe at the glass doors, standing on his hind legs working at the latch, pawing at the lock, his teeth chattering as if he was already crushing succulent sparrow bones.

She settled back. She wasn’t particularly hungry; really she felt too lazy to leave the soft, warm rug. She’d like to nap a little longer. Let Joe hunt, she’d catch breakfast later.

Rolling over, she pawed at the rug’s intricate, labyrinthian patterns. Then, rolling onto her back, she reached a paw above her to stroke the bottom of the couch. Through the black gauze dust cover-it did smell dusty-she could see the rows of springs and the couch’s thick wooden frame. Patting at the black gauze, smoothly she let her claws slide into the thin, flimsy fabric.

She raked hard, ripped down through the thin material a long, straight tear, felt her blood surge at the delicious sound of ripping cloth.

She clawed again. Again. In long straight gashes. She had no idea why the underside of a couch roused such an irresistible urge to tear and shred. She was about to kick with all four feet, really give the dry, frail gauze a workout, when she heard the front door open.

Flipping over, she peered out toward the front entry.

The door opened slowly, as if someone were not sure of a welcome. A nurse slipped in, a small woman, and thin. She wore the requisite immaculate white uniform, white oxfords, a white nurse’s cap tipped over her dark, sleek pageboy. Her hair was beautifully done, not a strand out of place, as if she had just come from an expensive beauty parlor. Her face was made up with blusher and dark eyeliner, and with a touch of green eye shadow that made her brown eyes look larger, made her look far older and very sophisticated. Her lipstick was bright and carefully applied, her gold earrings small and tailored.

But even beneath the scent of cosmetics, the young nurse still smelled like Dillon. Dulcie hardly knew the child-a casual observer would guess this young woman to be at least eighteen.

She watched Dillon move away quickly toward the social room and on through, among the couches, to the dining room. Watched her push the door open with casual assurance and slip into the kitchen. The door swung back and forth behind her, slowed to a stop.

Dulcie watched the closed door, expecting any minute to hear angry scolding from within, and see Dillon come flying out again.

Nothing happened. There was a long silence. She waited nervously, her tail twitching, her paws growing hot with wary anticipation. Any minute she was going to hear enraged shouts, and Dillon would be hustled out by some irate kitchen employee, would be roughly scolded and sent packing for her effrontery.

But after a few minutes the door swung out again and a breakfast cart appeared. Dillon pushed it out swiftly and efficiently, letting the door swing closed, looking as if she did this job every morning. The top shelf was heavily laden and covered with a white cloth, the rubber tires made the same soft sticky hum that the snack cart had made over in the Nursing wing.

Dillon pushed the cart past her toward the admitting desk and around the corner toward Nursing, trailing the scent of eggs and toast. Dulcie was about to follow her when Joe returned from the patio, licking blood from his whiskers, slipping under the couch beside her.

He stared toward the passing cart, sniffed the child’s scent, got a glimpse of her sleek hair and grown-up face. “What the? That can’t be Dillon?”

Dulcie smiled.“Would you take her for twelve years old?”

Joe licked his whiskers.“More power to the kid. She might get away with it.”

“But if they catch her again, what will they do? Those nurses? She’s only a little girl. Would they??”

“They won’t hurt her. Get a grip. Why would they hurt her? This isn’t some den of murderers; it’s an old people’s home. If they catch her, they’ll give her hell and pitch her out and maybe that would do the kid good. Got to admit she’s pretty nervy.”

“How did she learn to make herself up so beautifully? If I didn’t know her?”

“She’s a girl, Dulcie. Girls are born reaching for the eyeliner. To a girl, that stuff comes naturally, you ought to know that better than anyone. Look at how you fuss over silk nighties, dragging them home. And you should see Clyde’s sleepover girlfriends. Lipstick and junk all over the dresser. They drive Clyde crazy, hogging the bathroom mirror.”

“But she’s only twelve. She-”

“So she’s twelve. So look at those child models you read about. Eleven years old, and they look like they could buy a double martini.”

He slipped out from under the couch and returned to the glass, fixing his gaze again on the birds.“I could eat another; guess I didn’t get my fill. Come on, we can-” But when they heard footsteps and a sharp voice in the hall, he slid back under.

Around the corner, a woman was hurrying down the hall, scolding. The nurse rounded the corner, pulling Dillon along by one arm.

Dillon had abandoned her cart. Her nurse’s cap was gone, and her pretty pageboy hair was all mussed, her uniform awry, and one white shoelace untied. But though the nurse was scolding, pushing her out into the entry toward the front door, Dillon didn’t look repentant. She looked mad, red-faced and scowling.

The nurse reached around her, opening the door.“If I see you back there again, young lady, if there’s a hint of trouble because of you-if I lose my job over this, you’re going to be a sorry little girl.” The woman pushed her out onto the porch. Dulcie crouched to leap after Dillon, but Joe grabbed her leg in his teeth. She stared at himand hung her head.

The nurse slammed the door, shutting Dillon out, and turned away.

“What were you going to do?” he whispered. “Run after her and tell her you’re sorry?” He licked her ear. “She’ll be okay. She’ll cry and then go home.” He groomed Dulcie’s ears and her face until she calmed. He was washing his own whiskers when they heard a car door close softly, heard high heels on the walk, heard the knob turn.

Adelina came in quickly, seeming preoccupied. She did not seem unduly upset, had evidently not seen Dillon slinking-the kid must have gotten out of there fast. Adelina was dressed in another little black suit, this one with a low-cut jacket over a fluff of white lace. She wore patent spike heels, black sheer stockings. Behind her, as the door swung in, they glimpsed the pearl red Bentley standing in the drive.

Slamming the big double door, she moved toward her office, her black skirt swishing in soft friction against her silky legs. Her keys jangled, and they heard the click of the lock opening. She disappeared into her office, leaving the door ajar.

Dulcie crouched, tail twitching, eyeing the open door. The next instant, she was gone, had fled through, not waiting for Joe. Without asking for his opinion, without asking if he was coming, she was gone into Adelina Prior’s lair. Within the room a blue light came on, and Joe could hear the click of computer keys. He waited to see if Dulcie got pitched out again.

When nothing happened he stifled his urge to beat it out of there and, slinking, followed Dulcie.

Just inside the door and to his right stood a little seating group, a purple leather love seat and matching chair, and a dark, polished corner table. He slid beneath the love seat, flattening himself down into the white carpet. The piece was so low he had to belly along like a snake. Oozing along in the dark space, he realized he was alone, that Dulcie wasn’t there, the space was unoccupied except for a spider huddled inches from his ear, clinging to the squat mahogany leg. This schlepping around under furniture was getting old. He felt as if he’d spent his whole life underneath couches and beds and desks, like some weird mole-cat, living entirely in a four-inch-high world beneath heavy furniture. Why was he doing this? He was a cat, not an earthworm; he was a freewheeling tomcat born to the wind and high places.

From this vantage, all he could see of Adelina were her well-turned ankles and spike heels, the desk legs, and the five-castered pedestal of her wheeled desk chair.

Slipping out to the edge of the love seat for a wider view, he studied the sleek black desk and the computer behind which Adelina sat, her smooth profile bathed in green light, her black hair a shining wing pulled back into an elegant roll, her diamond earrings catching green sparks with the movement of her typing. He did not see Dulcie. She wasn’t under the desk, nor under the upholstered chair. Searching for her, he crept farther out, careful to stay out of Adelina’s line of sight. Surveying the room, he was not impressed by the decor of purple and black against the lavender walls. And who would want paintings of flat, purple, naked humans that looked like they were drawn with a ruler? The work had no passion, was like purple cutouts, or as if the artist had filled in the outlines for a street sign.

Adelina stopped typing, removed a tissue from her top desk drawer, and delicately, blew her nose. She smoothed her hair, touching the intricate dark coil, then resumed her work. He could not see the computer screen, it angled toward the window at her back. The window was open a few inches above a long window seat covered with decorative pillows. There was no screen on the window. Dulcie could, if she’d lost her nerve, simply have slipped on out. Escape out the window, through the scrolled iron bars and away, leaving him in the lurch.

If she’d ditched him, if she’d cut out of here, she’d never hear the end of it. He judged his distance, ready to leap across and follow her. One jump into the cushions, and he’d be through before Adelina could grab him. The pillows were done in such a maze of wild patterns and colors they dizziedhim, a tangle of intricate tapestry, a panoply of color and texture that must have cost a bundle. He suddenly saw, tucked between the lavish weavings, a pair of green eyes watching him.

Swallowing back a laugh, he crept out and winked at her. Among the pillows, she looked exactly like a puff of dark, striped embroidery.

She cut her eyes at him, then blinked them closed, was at once invisible: a little commando hidden in jungle camouflage.

She had positioned herself directly behind Adelina, where she could see clearly the computer screen. When she opened her eyes again, she glanced at him, then watched the screen intently. She seemed impatient at what she was seeing. He could see, between the pillows, the end of her tail irritably twitching.

He wondered if Adelina was working on the files they had sought, on the information they’d searched for all night.

If she was, whatever it showed, Dulcie didn’t look pleased.

Soon Adelina turned on the printer, and the state-of-the-art machine spit out five pages as fast as bullets. When the printing ended she punched a few keys, turned off the machine, then unlocked a desk drawer.

As she removed several files, Dulcie emerged from among the cushions and reared up behind Adelina, peering over her shoulder like some sudden, ghostly visitation. They watched Adelina remove an untidy sheaf of papers from the top folder, and a sheet of stationery. With a thin gold pen, she began to write. Behind her Dulcie stood taller, so fascinated, stretching up to see, that she rocked precariously on her hind paws, her front paws drooping over her pale belly, her tail switching for balance. Joe guessed they were both thinking the same thought: Why would Adelina turn off the computer and write a letter by hand?

Exchanging another glance, they watched her finish one letter, address the envelope, seal it, and drop it in her purse. When she opened a second file, she removed a large pad of lined paper, the kind a school child might use, and started a second letter, writing with a lead pencil. Adelina had written two pages when the soft scuff of shoes in the hall sent Dulcie diving into the pillows again and Joe slinking deep beneath the love seat.

The feet, in scarred, flat shoes, that scuffed across the carpet belonged to Renet. He caught her scent, and, as she went around the desk, he could see her, pale hair hanging ragged around her ears, no makeup-that plain face could use some help-her cotton skirt and cotton blouse wrinkled and baggy. She dropped a large brown envelope onto the desk.“Done. Good job if I do say so. Worked it out last weekend. Did the prints this morning, to make sure.”

She sat down on the love seat, her light weight nearly squashing Joe. Maybe the love seat needed new springs. If she’d been heavy, he’d be flat as a twenty-cent hamburger. Belly down, he slid away to the other end, then out between the love seat and the wall.

From this vantage he watched Adelina remove a sheaf of photographs from the envelope and lay them out on the desk. She studied them solemnly.

“Yes. Very good. How long does this one take?”

“An hour to be safe. I hope that Mae Rose woman doesn’t come snooping.”

Adelina raised her dark, expressionless eyes.“Forget Mae Rose. You’re fixated with the woman just because she knew Wenona.” She gave Renet a long, chill look. “Wenona’s dead, Renet. Please forget everything connected with her.”

“But Mae Rose-”

“And as for Mae Rose going on about Jane Hubble, that’s all talk. What possible connection could she make?”

“I don’t like her. I think Mae Rose should-”

“Mae Rose has three daughters. Get your mind off her.”

“They never visit her, they live clear across the country. I could easily-”

“She’s not a suitable subject. For one thing, she’s too small, you know that. Pay attention to the business at hand. If you do just one sloppy presentation, Renet, it’s over. You’ll have no need to worry about Mae Rose.”

Adelina slipped the files back into the drawer, locked it, and put the photographs back in the envelope.“I don’t know why these people have to visit the same day as that Pet-a-Pet business. And I don’t know whether allowing those animal enthusiasts in here is worth the trouble, for the little PR it affords.”

“Well it certainly wasn’t my idea.”

Adelina sighed.“Have you done all the errands?”

“Of course. What time?”

“Two-thirty. Don’t leave half the box in the closet.”

“I never do. What about that new nurse, that big slow woman? I don’t-”

“I’ll see that she’s kept busy. Have you made any progress on her? I don’t like keeping her when she-”

“So far, nothing. You should have looked deeper before you hired her.”

“I didn’t have any choice. It isn’t easy to get help. Just get on with your job. Everyone has some skeleton in the closet, and you’re to keep on until you find it. You’ve had two weeks, and you don’t have a thing. If you’d pay more attention to business-”

“I’ve checked DMV. Five credit bureaus. Four previous addresses and talked with three of her landlords.”

“What about NCI? That was foolish, to allow that Lieutenant Sacks to get married.”

“What was I going to do, poison his dearly beloved? There’ll be someone else. Max Harper-”

“You’ll leave Harper alone; he’s not to be approached. I don’t trust him for a minute. What about that Lieutenant Brennan?”

Renet did not reply.

“If not Brennan, then you’ll have to buy the information in San Francisco-that should be no problem.”

“You needn’t be sarcastic. And I might have other things to attend to.”

“You had better plan your time around matters of first importance.” Adelina rose. “Lock the door when you leave. And make sure you have your little party under control.” And she disappeared into the hall, her black skirt swishing against her silken thighs.

Renet didn’t move from the love seat for some time, but sat tapping her foot irritably. When she did rise, she stepped to the desk and tried the locked drawer. When she couldn’t open it, she tucked the brown envelope under her arm and left the room, locking the door as she’d been instructed.

The instant they were alone, Dulcie slid out from between the pillows. Standing on the window seat she shook herself, licked her paw, swiped at her whiskers.“I’m all matted down-those pillows are hot as sin.” She watched Joe slide out from under the love seat, pawing dust from his whiskers. He leaped up beside her, and they sat looking out to the drive and the gardens.

They could see no one. The red Bentley and Renet’s blue van were parked before the door. When they were certain they were unobserved they slipped out beneath the open window, through the scrolled curves of the burglar grille, and dropped into a bed of marigolds.

Crouched among the sharp-scented flowers, they scanned the gardens. They saw no one.

“The smell of marigolds is supposed to keep away fleas,” Dulcie said.

“Old wives’ tale. Come on, we’re out of here.” Close together they raced across the drive away from the manicured grounds, flew down the hill into a tangled wood so wild and unkempt it could never be a part of Casa Capri. At once they felt safe again, and free.

Fallen branches and drifts of rotting leaves lay tangled against the trunks of the ancient, sprawling trees. Together they fled, leaping from log to log, plunging through piles of crackling leaves, shaking off the tight sense of closed rooms and locked doors and under-furniture niches that would hardly let a cat breathe. They were flying down through leafy tangles and branches when a shrill sound stopped them. A strange and muffled cry. They froze still, two statues, listening.

20 [????????: pic_20.jpg]

The woods angled downward, the old twisted oaks rising among fallen, rotted trees, among dead branches and dry, brittle foliage: a shadowed graveyard of dying trees. The cry came again, a muffled gurgle. Puzzled, the cats trotted down among the shadows, watching, leaping silently over logs, sinking down into drifts and damp hollows. Far below them, between a tangle of dead branches, they glimpsed something bright, a gleam of metal glinting from the dark tangles.

Slowly and warily padding down, they could soon make out the handlebars of a bike. The crying came from there. The rough, gulping sobs sounded more angry than hurt.

The bike leaned against the forked trunk of an ancient oak that had split down the middle, its two halves leaning jagged against their neighbors. At the tree’s base, Dillon sat in a pile of dead bracken, her head down on her knees, her arms around her knees, bawling so hard she didn’t hear them, heard no rustle of paws crunching leaves.

Dulcie dropped down beside her. Dillon startled, looked up. The child’s face was smeared with tears and makeup, black eyeliner and lipstick and powder all run together. Dulcie climbed up into her lap, touched Dillon’s cheek with a soft paw. Dillon smiled through her tears, grabbed Dulcie to her, hugging her, burying her face in Dulcie’s shoulder-then began bawling again, crying against Dulcie until Dulcie’s fur was wet. Joe sat watching, exasperated at the female display of weeping. All this because she’d been booted out of Casa Capri.

When at last Dillon stopped crying, she eased her grip on Dulcie and reached her fingers to Joe, touching his nose.“What are you two doing, way up here in the hills? You’re miles from home. This isn’t Pet-a-Pet day.” She frowned, puzzled. But then she grinned through her streaked makeup. “You were hunting-Wilma said you hunt all over these hills.”

She looked hard at them, and her eyes widened.“Did you hear me crying? Did you come down here because you heard me crying?”

Dulcie snuggled against her, but Joe turned nervously to lick his paw. Had they shown more than a normal cat’s interest? The kid didn’t need to get any ideas about them.

But she was only a kid. All children believed in the sympathy and understanding of animals; most kids thought their dogs understood every word they said. Kids grew up on fairy tales featuring helpful animals, and even onLassiereruns-a helping animal was no big deal, to some kids as natural as a loving grandmother.

Dillon wiped her tears with the back of her hand, smearing black and red.“I only wanted to see Jane. They acted like I was some kind of criminal.” She gave them a deep, confiding stare. “She isn’t there. Why else would they be so nasty. And they know that I know she isn’t there.” She gave them a determined look, her brown eyes blazing with anger. “Well they can go to hell. I’m going to find out what’s going on.

“Yesterday I called her trust officer, but the switchboard said to leave a message. Voice mail-big deal. I gave my name and phone number, but now I’m sorry. My folks’ll have twenty fits.”

Dulcie reached a soft paw again, patting the child’s face. Dillon gathered them both into her arms, pulling Joe into her lap with an insistent little hand. She held them against her as if they were rag dolls, pressing her wet face into their fur. The child was warm, and smelled of the perfumed cosmetics.

“I love you both. I wish you could tell me what to do.” She kissed Dulcie’s pink nose. “They were so gross, marching me out of there like a baby.” She looked at them bleakly. “Jane isn’t there. And no one will believe me.”

Unblinking, Dulcie stared at the child, so intent that Dillon widened her eyes, looked into Dulcie’s eyes deeply, suddenly alarmed. The two gazed at each other for a long moment, in a strange, silent aura of communication.

Dillon whispered,“What, Dulcie Cat? What is it? What are you trying to tell me?”

Joe wanted to shove Dulcie away, she wasn’t behaving like an ordinary cat. He could feel her concern for Dillon. If the people of Casa Capri were this adamant about keeping out strangers, then maybe there was reason to fear for the child.

Dillon said softly,“Are you afraid of them, too?”

When Dulcie looked almost as if she would forget herself and speak to Dillon, Joe pushed her aside.

Scowling, she jumped down, turned her back on him, began to wash herself, contrite suddenly, and embarrassed.

They sat with Dillon for a long time, until at last she sniffled, blew her nose. Finally, she picked up her bike and began to drag it through the woods, heaving it over the tangles, heading for the road.

They didn’t follow her.

At the top of the hill she blew her nose again, looked down at them once more, puzzled, then kicked off and sped away, coasting down the dropping street. They watched her small, lone figure until she disappeared around a curve.

They were licking Dillon’s salty tears from their fur, licking away her makeup, when suddenly Dulcie gave him a wild look and exploded away through the sunshine, racing up across the hills-too wild to be still another instant. Shedding the restraint of cautious hours last night and this morning, shedding the tension of dealing with Dillon, she leaped invisible barriers, careened around bushes and through dead grass and across driveways and gardens, across the open fields. Joe sped behind her, infected by her drunken lust for freedom, their ears and whiskers flattened in the wind, their paws hitting only the high spots.

Dulcie paused at last, half a mile north of Casa Capri in a favorite field where three boulders thrust up. The smooth granite glinted hot with morning sun. Leaping to the top, she stretched out across the warm stone, twitching her tail, rolling in the heat. She chased her tail, then lay on her back, letting her paws flop above her, idly slapping at a little breeze.

Joe lay in the warm grass below, nibbling the tender new blades which thrust up between last year’s growth. “The kid’s going to get herself in trouble, nosing around.”

“Not if we find out what’s going on first.”

He looked up at her, exasperated.“So what was Adelina writing? I’m surprised she didn’t feel you breathing down her neck.”

Dulcie lifted her head, her eyes slitted against the sunlight.“Personal letters. She was writing to a friend of Lillie Merzinger. The file had Lillie’s name on it, and there were letters to Lillie in a scrawly handwriting, and some snapshots of two ladies standing beside a lake, with pine trees behind. There were graduation announcements, too, and weddinginvitations, little personal mementos, the kind of personal stuff people save.”

She rolled over to look at him.“There were machine copies of letters from Lillie to Dorothy. Adelina spread them all out, as if to refer to them, before she began to write.”

She rolled again, to warm her other side.“What did she do, open Lillie’s mail? Open the letters Lillie wrote, before they were mailed, and make copies?”

“What did the letter say?”

“Boring stuff. About Lillie’s poor digestion, and about Dorothy’s old dog and about Cousin Ed. Dull, personal things. Why would Adelina write the letter in the first person, and sign Lillie’s name?”

“So Lillie Merzinger’s too sick to answer her mail,” Joe said. “Someone has to answer her letters, or her family would worry.”

“But why doesn’t she tell Lillie’s family she’s too sick to write? Why wouldn’t she type a regular letter on the computer? Print it out with the rest of her letters. Tell them how Lillie’s feeling, that she’s taking her medicine, maybe getting a little better. And if someone’s really sick, wouldn’t she phone the family?”

Dulcie’s eyes narrowed to green slits. “And the other letter, the one she wrote on lined paper-she wrote it in a totally different handwriting. She signed it James. Addressed the envelope from James Luther.”

She snatched at a flitting moth, caught it in curving claws, chomped and swallowed it, then fixed him with a hard green gaze.“And why was her handwriting different for each letter? Why was she forging those letters?”

They both thought it:Because Lillie and James aren’t there anymore.Their thought was as sharp on the wind as if they’d spoken.

Joe slapped at a wasp, turned away and began to wash his back.

Normally he’d be as eager as Dulcie to find out what was going on, but this situation made him edgy. He felt as though very soon they were going to wish they’d kept their noses to themselves. Casa Capri, with its locked doors, gave him the fidgets.

“And what,” Dulcie said, “is Renet’s mysterious presentation tomorrow? Like a speech? Why would Renet give a speech? A speech about what?” She sat up tall on the warm boulder, her eyes narrowed, thinking. She shivered once, then lifted a paw and began to clean her pink pads, licking fast and nervously, tugging fiercely at each claw. Tearing off each old sheath, she angrily released the sharper rapiers beneath. She was wound tight, edgy and irritable.

Joe wanted to say,You thought visiting the old folks would be all kippers and cream,wanted to say,Casa Capri didn’t turn out like you expected.But she glared at him so crossly he shut his mouth.

As he bent to tend to his own claws, suddenly she leaped from the boulder and streaked away across the hills again, all nerves and temper. He stared after her, watched her vanish into the tall grass, watched the heads of grass shake and thrash in a long undulating line as if a whirlwind fled through.

He took his time about following her, lingering to sniff at the sweet dusty smells, at masses of yellow poppies which seemed to have bloomed overnight, at old scents of mouse, at rabbit droppings. She was headed diagonally across the hills moving north, and occasionally he stood on his hind legs, so as not to lose her.

He couldn’t see her cross the crest of the hill but he could see the grass shaking. Beyond them to the north, the hills were black from last fall’s fire but were slowly turning green again, as new spring grass sprang up between the remains of that terrible burn. He could still smell burned wood on the wind, and wet ashes. And against the sky there still stood the skeletons of black, dead trees, and a lone chimney, an abandoned sentinel, though some of the houses had been rebuilt.

Janet Jeannot’s studio had been replaced in a way Janet might not like if she were alive to see it. It was now a second-floor apartment, an inoffensive cedar structure without any of the excitement of an artist’s studio. To the east of Janet’s house, up beyond the highest homes, he could see where the drainage culvert emerged from the hills, the place where he and Dulcie had discovered the final key to Janet’s killer.

Dulcie had disappeared. He leaped to the highest hillock to look for her. Gazing down the rolling hills, he thought how they must have been a century ago, before there were ever houses. A wild land, all open, alive with animals far larger than the creatures he and Dulcie hunted, a land of cougars, of wolves and bear, a land belonging to beasts that would sendFelis domesticusscooting for cover.

And though the wolves and bears were gone, still sometimes the cougars and coyotes came down out of the mountains, driven by thirst or hunger, and by encroaching civilization-where tracts of new houses covered their hunting territories-wild animals moving closer each year to human dwellings. Now sometimes in the small hours, a lone coyote wandered the street of a coastal town, hunting domestic cats and small dogs. And already two humans had died at the claws of attacking cougars. He was gripped with amazement that a shy, totally wild creature would dare enter the world of houses and concrete and fast cars.

But the animals, if they were starving, had little choice. He was no philosopher; the only conclusion he could draw was that if humans kept pushing the animals off the land they needed to survive, then humans had better sharpen their own teeth and claws.

Rearing above the grass, still he did not see Dulcie, saw no thrashing where she sped through, only a faint susurration all across the grass tops where the breeze fingered. He heard no sound above the hush of wind and the churr of the buzzing insects.

But suddenly he knew where she was headed, and a chill of fear touched him.

High above the last houses, an ancient barn stood rotting and half-fallen in, its silvered boards leaning inward, its roof torn open to the sky. Dulcie would be there, he’d bet on it. Hunting the rats that ruled that dim, cavernous ruin.

Someday the remains of the old barn would collapse and rot to nothing, but now it belonged to wharf rats. Having long ago cleaned out the last kernel of grain in the feed bins, they subsisted on roots and on mice and lizards, and on whatever smaller creature ventured into their domain.

Some of the rats had migrated down to the boatyards again, but the biggest and boldest had remained to challenge whatever predator invaded their dark and rotting home. Raccoons did not bring their kits to hunt there. A fox had to be full-grown before it would face those beasts.

A stupid place for Dulcie to go, insane to go alone. Terrified for her, he raced across the hills, hoping he was wrong, but knowing she was there. That rat-infested mass of timbers was exactly the place she would go to work off frustration from their night of confinement. He wished she wasn’t so damned volatile.

Ahead, the old barn towered drunkenly, its timbers balanced precariously against one another. He was on the crest of the hill some ten feet above when he saw Dulcie, crouched in shadow among the fallen walls. She seemed, at first, a part of the shadows. She moved slowly, slinking beneath the timbers, her belly hugging the ground. She was poised to leap, but he could not see her quarry. He watched her swing her head from side to side, sorting out some tiny sound that he could not yet hear.

He sped down soundlessly, but he did not approach close enough to spoil her attack. He waited, ready to leap, every muscle and nerve jacked into high voltage, watching her creep deeper into the blackness.

She froze, remained still, the tip of her tail flicking.

She was gone in a sudden blur, flashing through shadows into the blackness.

Silence. No sound, no movement. He could see nothing within that dark, rotting world. He crept swiftly closer.

A scream jarred him, the enraged scream of a rat. A board fell, thundering. Dulcie yowled. He dived for the blackness, charging in, storming in beneath fallen boards.

She screamed again, then another rat scream. He saw its eyes red in the blackness. The two were thrashing; it was a huge rat, a monster. Joe piled into the thudding squealing flailing bodies, grabbing at rat fur. He found the rat’s face and bit deep. Pain burned him. Dulcie twisted and shook the rat so violently she shook him, too. His ears rang with rat screams and with the thuds of his own body. The three of them slammed into timbers, into the earth. His blood pounded, he felt teeth in his leg.

And then, silence.

His mouth was filled with the bitter taste of rat. The beast lay between them, unmoving, their fangs in it, Dulcie’s in its throat, his seeking its heart, its ribs crushed against his tongue. It was a huge, grizzled beast, its body as long as Dulcie, its coat rough with age, its pointed muzzle knobby with old scars. Its eyes even in death were cold and mean.

They rose, spit out rat hair.

But they did not turn away from the kill in the usual ritual to wander aimlessly, cooling down and letting off steam. They remained watching, one on either side of the rat, staring at that giant kill.

It was the biggest rat Joe had ever seen. He wanted to yell at Dulcie for having attacked such a beast, for having been so damned stupid. And he wanted to cheer her and lick her face and laugh. His lady had killed the monster, had killed the king of rats.

She gave him a green-eyed grin of triumph and leaped up. She spun, clawing at the timbers. She leaped over the rat, racing and whirling among the fallen boards, careening in circles; she laughed a human laugh; she spun and danced, driving out the built-up tension, ridding herself of that last terrible violence and rage. She careened into him broadside, pummeled him.

“We killed the king-king of rats-we killed it.” She was insane, rolling and spinning and chasing her lashing tail. “The king, we killed the rat king.” She was crazy with victory and release.

She collapsed at last and lay still. He sat beside her, washing himself. They licked the blood and cobwebs from each other’s faces and ears, licked the deep wounds that would, too soon, begin to hurt like hell.

Joe’s paw and leg were torn, and his cheek ripped. There was a gash across Dulcie’s pale throat, another up her shoulder. They cleaned each other’s wounds carefully, though they would be tended again at home. Joe could hear Clyde now, ragging him about how septic rat bites were. And Wilma would pitch a fit.

But they had demolished the great-great-granddaddy of wharf rats.

The midmorning sun warmed them. Dulcie rubbed against him sweetly and smiled. A gleam of sunlight picked out the shingles and boards of the old barn, the rusted nails, and the rat’s mangled body. Joe supposed that some possum coming on the rat in a week or two would be thrilled, would maybe drag the moldering rat away to its babies. Possums would eat anything, even the blood-spattered cobwebs.

He watched Dulcie stretch out limp across the grass, her green eyes closed to long slits, her purr rumbling with little dips and high notes. Life had turned out better than he’d ever imagined. If a cat really did have nine lives, he hoped he and Dulcie would be together in all the lives yet to come.

Last summer, his alarm when he found himself able to speak human words had nearly undone him. He knew himself to be a freak, an abnormal beast fit only for a side show. He hadn’t dreamed there was, anywhere in the world, another like himself.

But then he’d found Dulcie, and he was no longer alone in his strangeness. She was the most fascinating creature he had ever met; their love had changed his very cat soul. Lovely Dulcie of the dark, marbled fur, her pale peach paws and peach-tinted nose so delicate, her green eyes watching him, laughing, scolding, emerald eyes set off by the dark stripes perfectly drawn, like the eyes of an Egyptian goddess.

Only a master artist of greatest talent could have composed his lady. And she was not only beautiful and intelligent, she’d beaten the hell out of that rat.

She rolled over, her green eyes wide.“I’m starved. Too bad rats are so bitter.”

“How about a nice fat rabbit?”

She flipped to her feet and stood up on her hind legs, looking away across the grass to where the hills rose in a high, flat meadow bright with sun, a meadow so riddled with rabbit burrows that any human, walking there, would fall through to his arse pockets. And within minutes, high on the sun-baked field, they were working a rabbit, creeping low and silent, each from a different angle, toward a shiver of movement within the dense grass.

No normal house cat hunted as these two; ordinaryFelis domesticushunted only as a loner. But Joe and Dulcie had developed a teamwork as intricate and beautifully coordinated as any team of skilled African lions. Now they crept some six yards apart, moving blindly through the grass forest, rearing up at intervals to check the quarry’s position. They froze, listening. Slipped ahead again swift as darting birds.

Joe stood up, twitched an ear at her.

She sped, a blur so fast she burst at the cottontail before it had any clue. It spun, was gone inches from her claws. Joe cut it off. It doubled back. Dulcie leaped. It swerved again, angling away. They worked together hazing, doubling, then closed for the kill.

The blow was fast, Joe’s killing bite clean. The rabbit screamed and died.

They crouched side by side, ripping open its belly, stripping off fur and flinging it away. Joe ate as he plucked the warm carcass, snatching sweet rabbit flesh in great gulps. But Dulcie devoured not one bite until she had cleaned her share of the kill, stripped away all fur. When the warm meat lay before her as neat as a filet presented for her inspection by a favorite butcher, she dined.

They cleaned the rabbit to the bone. They washed. They cleaned one another’s wounds again, then climbed an oak tree and curled together where five big limbs, joining, formed a comfortable nest. The breeze teased at them, and, above the oak’s dark leaves, the blue sky swept away free and clean. Below them, down the falling hills, where the village lay toy-sized, theirown homes waited snug and welcoming. Home was there, for that moment when they chose, again, to seek human company.

But at that moment the cats needed no one. They tucked their chins under and slept. Joe dreamed he was a hawk soaring, snatching songbirds from the wind and needing never to touch the earth. Dulcie dreamed of gold dresses and of music, and, sleeping, she smiled, and her whiskers twitched with pleasure.

They woke at darkfall. Below them the lights of the village were beginning to blink on, bright sudden pricks like stars flashing out. The smell of cooking suppers rose on the salty wind, a warm and comforting breath of domesticity reaching up to enfold them.

Galloping swiftly down the hills, within minutes they were trotting along the grassy center median of Ocean Avenue beneath its canopy of eucalyptus trees, their noses filled with the familiar and comforting aromas of Binnie’s Italian and an assortment of village restaurants, and with the lingering scent of the greengrocer’s and the fish market; how comforting it was, when home smells embraced them. Their wounds were beginning to burn and ache.

They parted at Dolores Street, Dulcie trotting away toward the main portion of the village, where, beyond the shops and galleries, her stone cottage waited. Joe turned left, crossed the eastbound lane of Ocean, and soon could see his own cat door, his own shabby white cottage. He pictured Clyde getting supper, pictured the kitchen, the two dogs greeting him licking and wagging.

He stopped, sickened.

Only Rube was there. Barney would never again greet him. He approached the steps slowly, riven with sadness.

His plastic cat door was lit from within, where the living-room lights burned, and he heard the rumble of voices. Looking back over his shoulder toward the curb, he realized that he knew the two cars parked there-both belonged to Molena Point police officers.

Turning back across the little scraggly yard, he leaped up onto the hood of the brown Mercury. It was only faintly warm; Max Harper had been here a while. Sitting on Harper’s dusty hood studying the house, he tried to decide-did he want to spend an evening with the law?

He didn’t relish Harper’s cigarette smoke. But he might pick up some useful information. And it amused him to hassle Harper, and to spy on the police captain, to lie on the table among the poker chips, listening. Learning things that Harper wouldn’t dream would go beyond those walls. And even if hiseavesdropping didn’t prove useful, it was guaranteed to drive Clyde nuts.

Flicking an ear, he leaped down and trotted on inside.

21 [????????: pic_21.jpg]

The letter had been folded many times into a tiny rectangle no larger than a matchbook. It had been stuffed between layers of cotton filling in the belly of the doll, and the doll’s stomach sewn shut again with the ragged green stitches. The letter had lain concealed for more than three months, and the doll hidden and forgotten.

Dear Mae,

I don’t know if I’m being foolish in writing this. Maybe my distress and unease are only a result of my condition or of the medication they give me. Maybe that causes my shaky handwriting, too. I do feel odd, off-balance, and my hands don’t work well. I was so hoping you would visit me here and that we could talk. The nurses say you haven’t asked about me, but I don’t believe them. I’ve longed to come over to your room or the social room. You’re so near, just beyond this wall, but it’s as if a hundred miles separate us.

The doctor told me to walk, so I have been all around the halls, but always accompanied by a nurse, and none of the nurses will let me come over to the social room. They are so needlessly stria, and I haven’t the strength to defy them, not like I once had. Six months ago I wouldn’t have stood for this high-handed treatment.

Ihaven’t seen anything of your friends, Mae, though I have watched the doors where the charts are posted. I don’t think any of them are here. Their names are not on the doors, and I’ve looked carefully.

If your fears continue, maybe you should talk to the police. But I wouldn’t ask these nurses questions, they get terribly cross.

I heard the supervisor scolding one of the nurses when she thought I was asleep. Though I don’t know much Spanish, just a few words, I’m sure she was saying something about a phone call and your friend Mary Nell Hook. I think she told the nurse not to answer questions from anyone, told her to tend to her own job unless she wanted-something “guardia,” something about the police. Though I didn’t understand much of it, the conversation frightened me. The supervisor mentioned Ms. Prior, too, in a threatening way. I think Adelina Prior can be very cold, I would not want to cross her.

I don’t know if there’s any connection, but twice late in the night I’ve awakened to see a man standing across the hall inside a darkened room, just a shadow in the blackness, looking out. And once when I woke around midnight I thought someone had been standing beside my bed watching me. Not one of the nurses but someone studying me intently, and I felt chilled and afraid-but maybe it was only my overactive imagination, or maybe the medication is affecting my nerves.

I’m putting this note inside Mollie, and I mean to ask Lupe to bring her back to you. I’ll tell her that I don’t want her anymore, that the doll makes me sad. I know you’ll make Mollie a new dress. When you do, you’ll find my stitching hidden under her skirt and slip-Ijust hopeLupe doesn’t find it. I’ll use green thread so you won’t miss it-but you wouldn’t miss it, my hands are no better for sewing than for writing.

I know I seem very depressed. I suppose that’s natural, given my illness. Though I do wonder if the medicine doesn’t make me feel worse.

I long to see you, Mae, but I’m so very tired, too tired to argue. I miss you. And I long for my friend Dillon, too. Since I came here, she hasn’t written, though I have written to her several times. How strange the world has become. I feel very disoriented and sad.

With all my love,

J.

22 [????????: pic_22.jpg]

Joe pushed in through his cat door and headed for the kitchen, toward the cacophony of good-natured male voices and the click of poker chips. He heard someone pop a beer, heard cards being shuffled. When he heard Clyde belch and politely excuse himself, he knew there were ladies present. And that meant a better-than-usual spread from Jolly’s Deli. He could already smell the corned beef, and wished he hadn’t eaten so much of that big cottontail rabbit.

As he quickly shouldered into the kitchen, the good smells wrapped him round, the thick miasma of smoked salmon and spiced meats and crab salad, this gourmetic bouquet overlaid with the malty smell of beer, and, of course, with a fog of cigarette smoke that he could do without. His first view of the group as he pushed in through the kitchen door was ankles and feet among the table legs: two pairs of men’s loafers below neatly creased slacks; a pair of well-turned, silk-clad legs in red high heels; and Charlie Getz’s bare feet in her favorite, handmade sandals. Clyde, as usual, was attired in ancient baggy jogging pants and worn, frayed sneakers. On beyond the table, Rube lay sprawled listlessly across the linoleum, the big Labrador’s eyes seeking Joe’s in a plea of lonely grieving.

Slipping between the tangle of feet, Joe lay down beside Rube, against the dog’s chest. He tried to purr, to comfort the old fellow, but there was really no way he could help. He could only be there, another four-legged soul to share Rube’s loneliness for Barney. Rube licked his face and laid his head across Joe, sighing.

Clyde had buried Barney in the backyard, but he had let Rube and the cats see him first. Dr. Firetti said that was the kindest way, so they would know that Barney was dead and would not be waiting for him to return. He said they would grieve less that way. But, all the same, Rube was pining. He and Barney had been together since they were pups.

Joe endured the weight of Rube’s big head across his ribs until the old dog dozed off, falling into the deep sleep of tired old age, then he carefully slipped out from under the Labrador. Rube didn’t stop snoring. Joe was crouched to leap to the table when he glanced toward the back door and saw the latest architectural addition to the cottage: Clyde had installed a dog door. He regarded it with amazement. The big plastic panel took up nearly half the solid-core back door, was big enough to welcome any number of interested housebreakers. Clyde had evidently reasoned that Rube would need something to distract him from grieving. Surely this new freedom, this sudden unlimited access to the fenced backyard, couldn’t hurt. Too bad Barney wasn’t here to enjoy it.

The other three cats would certainly find the arrangement opening new worlds. They had, heretofore, been subject to strict supervision. They were kept shut away from the living room so they couldn’t go out Joe’s cat door, and Clyde let them into the yard only when he was with them. In the mornings and evenings he let them have a long ramble, but strictly inside the yard. With the aid of a water pistol, he discouraged them from climbing the back fence. Two of the cats were elderly, and disadvantaged in any neighborhood fight, and the little white cat was so shy and skittish she was better off confined. Joe wondered what they’d make of their new liberty. Clyde must have been really worried about Rube to instigate this drastic change in routine.

As for himself, he had never been confined, not from the very beginning of their relationship, when he was six months old and Clyde rescued him from the San Francisco alleys. For the first week he’d been too sick to go out, too sick to care, but when he was himself again and wanted access to the outer world, and Clyde refused, he’d pitched one hell of a fit. A real beauty, a first-class, state-of-the-art berserker of snarling and biting and raking claws.

Clyde had let him out. And from that moment, they’d had a strict understanding. They were buddies, but Clyde would not under any circumstances dictate his personal life.

Leaving Rube sleeping, Joe leaped to the poker table, gave Clyde a friendly nudge with his head, and watched Clyde deal a down card. This group seldom played anything but stud. If the ladies didn’t like stud, they could stay home. Max Harper glanced at his hole card, his expression unchanging. Harper had the perfect poker face, lean, drawn into dry, sour lines as if he held the worst poker hand in history.

Harper had gone to high school with Clyde-that would make him thirty-eight-but his leathery face, dried out from the sun and from too many cigarettes, added another ten, fifteen years.

The other officer was Lieutenant Sacks, a young rookie cop whose dark curly hair and devilish smile drew the women. Sacks had recently married, the heavily made-up blonde with the nice ankles and red shoes had to be his new wife. Joe thought her name was Lila. Absently he nosed at Clyde’s poker chips until the neat round stacks fell over, spilling chips across the table.

“Oh, Christ, Joe. Do you have to mess around?”

He gave Clyde an innocent gaze. Clyde’s second card was a four of clubs, and Joe wondered what he had in the hole. With Clyde’s luck, probably not much. He tried to think what he’d done on poker nights before he understood the game. Just lain there, playing with the poker chips. The smell of the feast, which had been laid out onthe kitchen counter, was making his stomach rumble. Clyde always served fancy, in the original paper plates and torn paper wrappers. He tried to remember his manners and not dive into Clyde’s loaded plate, which sat on the table just beside him, but the smell of smoked salmon made his whiskers curl. Watching the bets, he studied the two women.

Charlie Getz was Clyde’s current squeeze, a tall, liberally freckled redhead, friendly and easy, the kind of woman who did most of her own automotive repairs and didn’t giggle. She wore her long red hair in a ponytail, bound back, tonight, with a length of what looked like coated electrical wire in a pleasant shade of green. Charlie tossed in her chips to raise Harper, and absently petted Joe, then handed him a cracker piled with smoked salmon. Across the table the little blonde watched this exchange with distaste.

He tried to eat delicately and not slop salmon onto the table, but when he took a second cracker, this time off Clyde’s plate, the blonde shuddered, as if he’d contaminated something.Who the hell are you, to be so picky?

Though the fact did cross his mind that he’d recently been gnawing on a dead rabbit and had, moments before that, bitten and ripped at a flea-infested rat.

Sacks bet his king, and Lila folded on a six of hearts. On the last card, Clyde dealt himself another four. Across the table, Max Harper’s lean, leathery expression didn’t change. There ensued a short round of bluffing, then the hole cards came up and Harper took the pot on a pair of jacks. Charlie made a rude remark, rose, and filled her plate. She prepared a plate for Harper, too, and set it before him, then fixed a small plate for Joe, a nice dollop of crab salad and a slice of smoked salmon cut up small so he needn’t make a mess, so he wouldn’t have to hold it down with his paw and make a spectacle of himself chewing off pieces. Charlie did understand cats. He feasted, standing on the table beside her, thoroughly enjoying not only the fine gourmetic delicacies, but the scowling blonde’s disgust.

When he had finished, he gave Lila a cool stare and curled up next to Charlie’s chips, ducked his head under one paw, and closed his eyes. He was dozing off when Charlie said, “Oh, hell,” and tossed her three cards toward the center of the table.

Joe reared his head to look. Harper had a pair of aces showing. With Harper’s luck, probably his hole card was an ace. Clyde started to bet, glared at Harper, and changed his mind. He folded. Sacks and Lila folded.

“Bunch of gutless wonders,” Harper said, gathering in the few chips. “What kind of pot is this?” He did not turn over his hole card, but shuffled it into the deck.

“His luck won’t last,” Sacks said. “It’s the full moon-screws up everything.” Sacks rose and opened the refrigerator, fetched five cans of beer, and handed them around.

Lila gave her bridegroom an incredibly sour look.“Honey, that’s such a childish idea. I wish you wouldn’t talk like you really believe in that stuff.”

Harper looked at her.“Believe in what stuff?”

“In these silly superstitions-that the full moon changes your luck. The moon can’t affect people. The moon-”

“Oh, it can affect people,” Harper told her. “You’d better read the arrest statistics. Full moon, crime rate soars. Moon’s full, you get more nutcases, more wife beatings, bar fights.”

Charlie, petting Joe, had discovered his wounds. She sat examining them, parting the fur on his paw and leg, holding his head so she could see his cheek. Anyone else tried that-except Clyde-he’d get his hand lacerated. But for Charlie, he tried to behave, waited patiently as she rose, opened the kitchen junk drawer, and fetched the tube of Panalog. Returning to her chair, she began to doctor him, drawing from Lila a look like Lila might throw up.

“The presumption is,” Harper said, “that the increase of crime is caused by the pull of the moon, same as the moon’s pull on the ocean causes the tides. That people emotionally or mentally unstable lose what little grip they have on themselves, go a little crazy, teeter on the edge.”

Lila studied Harper as if he had suddenly started speaking Swahili.

“It’s the same with animals,” Charlie said. “Ask any vet. More crazy things happen, more cat fights, runaway animals, dog bites during the full moon.”

Lila looked at them as iftheycame from the moon. Joe had never seen a more closed, disgusted expression. The woman had no more imagination than a chicken. He wanted badly to set her straight, tell her how he felt when the moon was full-like he was going to explode in nine different directions. The full moon made him wild enough to claw his way through a roomful of Doberman pinschers.

But he couldn’t speak; he could tell Lila nothing. She wouldn’t buy it, anyway. She stared at Charlie and Max Harper as if they were retarded. “You can’t really believe that?”

“Come down to the station,” Harper said. “Take a look at the stat sheets, check them with the calendar. Right now, today, full moon. Seven domestic violence, five dog poisonings, and one little old lady brought in a human finger.”

Lila shuddered.

Joe raised his head, watching Harper.

Clyde said,“A finger?”

“Nettie Hales’s motherin-law called the station.” Harper sampled the crab salad from the plate Charlie had fixed for him. “The Haleses live up the valley, a little five-acre horse farm up there. Her terrier brought the finger in-just a bare bone, dirt-crusted.”

Harper tilted his beer can, took a long swallow.“The old lady didn’t know where her dog had been digging. Said he’d brought the bone in the house and was chewing on it.” Harper laughed. “Gumming it. Old dog doesn’t have a tooth in his head. Still, though, even gumming it didn’t please the lab. Bone was fractured, and covered with dog slobber. Don’t know what kind of evidence it might have destroyed.”

Lila’s blue eyes had opened wide. “You mean it might be a murder? Al, you didn’t tell me there’d been a murder. You didn’t tell me anyone was missing.”

Sacks gave his new bride a sour look.“The finger is old, Lila. Old and dark and brittle. And when do I ever talk about that stuff?” He glanced uneasily at Harper.

Lila grew quiet.

It was Joe’s turn to study the blonde.This woman isn’t only a snob, she isn’t too bright.He didn’t realize he was staring until Clyde began to stroke his back, pressing down with unnecessary insistence. He lay down again and shuttered his eyes, tried to look sleepy.

Clyde said,“What did the lab come up with?”

“Nothing yet. That finger’ll be sitting under a stack of evidence until Christmas. They’re so backed up, the place looks like a rummage sale. The court’s putting all criminal investigations on hold, waiting for the lab. Victims’ relatives can’t even collect insurance until the lab is finished, can’t do anything until they get a death certificate. Thirty investigators working the county lab, and still they can’t stay on top.”

Harper sipped his beer.“That Spanish cemetery up the hills, it may have come from there-that old graveyard on the Prior place. It’s only a mile from the Haleses’ house.” For Charlie’s benefit, because she hadn’t lived in Molena Point long, he said, “It was part of the original Trocano Ranch from Spanish land-grant days. Family members were buried at home, tradition to be buried on family land. Even after the land passed down to the children and grandchildren, the family still buried their dead there. The funerals-”

“Isn’t there a law against that?” Lila interrupted.

Harper looked at her, a hard little pause as expressive as an explosion. He did not like interruptions.“No one would enforce that law, with the Trocanos,” he said shortly. “Long after Maria Trocano married Daniel Prior, they buried family at home. Both Daniel’s and Maria’s graves are there.

“When Adelina came of age she sold off all but five acres. Kept the original old ranch house and the cemetery, turned the house into servants’ quarters,” Harper said. “Built that big new house for herself and Renet, and I guess Teddy’s there part of the time. Turned that fine stable into garages. Not a horse left on the place.

“That was quite some stable in its day,” Harper said. “Some of the finest thoroughbreds in California came off the Trocano Ranch.”

He drained his beer.“When Mrs. Hales brought in the finger bone, we had a look at the old cemetery. Thought the dog might have dug into one of the old Spanish graves, but not a clod disturbed. The Priors keep the grounds nice, the grass mowed and trimmed around the old headstones.

“We’ve got three men out walking that area looking for where the dog was digging, and I’ve ridden every inch of that land. So far, nothing.” Harper lived on an acre up in the hills several miles north of the Prior estate. He kept only one horse now, since his wife died.

“I told Mrs. Hales to keep her terrier in before he picks up something worse than a finger bone. The dog poisonings were in that area, too. Three dogs this week, dead of arsenic poisoning. We’ve put two articles in theGazettetelling people to keep their animals confined.” He looked at Clyde. “That would go for cats, too. If I recall, that tomcat’s a real roamer.” He studied Joe intently. Joe gazed back at the police captain. Harper was talking more tonight than Joe had heard in a long time; Harper got like this only occasionally, got talky.

But it wasn’t until Lila left to use the bathroom that Harper told Clyde, “One good thing turned up this week, we got a line on that old truck that hit Bonnie Dorriss’s mother.”

“That’s good news. Wilma will be glad to hear it, too, she’s fond of both Susan and Bonnie. How’d you get the lead? Another anonymous phone tip?”

“No, not another anonymous phone tip,” Harper snapped. Those phone calls were a sore subject for Harper. He hadn’t a clue that his anonymous snitch was sitting on the table not a paw’s length from him.

“That auto paint shop out on 101,” Harper said. “They fired one of their painters, Sam Hart.” He grinned. “Getting fired made Hart real mad. The guy plays baseball with Brennan, and he told Brennan about this pickup he’d painted. It was a job his boss wanted done in a hurry, and the truck’s owner had acted nervous. Hart thought maybe the vehicle was hot.

“A week after he was fired, Hart spotted the truck up in Santa Cruz in a used lot. He was up there looking for a fender for a ‘69 Plymouth he was rebuilding. He saw this Chevy truck with fresh brown paint. Same model, same year. He could still smell the new paint, and when he checked the front bumper there was the same little dent. Looked like someone had scrubbed at it with maybe a Brillo pad.

“Brennan had filled him in on the green truck we were looking for, so Hart called Brennan, and Brennan hiked on up there.”

Harper shook his head.“By the time Brennan got there, just a couple of hours, the dealer had sold it. Described the woman who bought it as a looker, tight leather skirt, long auburn hair.

“We ran the new registration but it came up zilch. False ID. And the previous plate was stolen, registered to an L.A. resident, guy with an ‘82 Pinto. Plate had been stolen three months before.”

Lila had returned. Clyde rose, and set the sandwich makings on the table with a stack of fresh paper plates.

“We’re trying to get a fix on the woman,” Harper said. “Samson did a sketch from the dealer’s description, but the guy didn’t remember much about her face, he was looking at her legs.”

Charlie grinned.

Lila looked annoyed. This woman, Joe decided, wasn’t going to be a cop’s wife very long.

There was a long silence while sandwiches were constructed. Rube went out his dog door, barked halfheartedly, and came back in again. Charlie fixed Rube a corned beef sandwich. It was near midnight when the poker game broke up and the officers and ladies left. Charlie’s parting remarks had to do with an early repair to a rusted-out plumbing system; she seemed actually eager to tackle the challenge.

Clyde opened the back door and the window to air the kitchen, shoved the remains of the feast in the refrigerator, and emptied the ashtrays in deference to the animals who had to sleep there. Joe left him stuffing beer cans and used paper plates into a plastic garbage bag, and lit for the bedroom.

Pawing the bedspread away so not to be disturbed later, he stretched out on his back, occupying as much of the double bed as he dared without being brutally accosted. He was half-asleep when Clyde came in, pulling off his shirt.“So how was Pet-a-Pet day?”

“What can I say? Paralyzing.”

“You are such a snob.”

“My feline heritage. And why are you so interested?”

Clyde shrugged.“When you weren’t home last night, I figured maybe you liked those folks so much you moved in with them, took up residence at Casa Capri.”

“Slept in a tree,” Joe said shortly. He did not like references to his nocturnal absences. He didn’t ask Clyde abouthislate hours.

But then, he didn’t have to. It was usually apparent where Clyde had been, the clues too elemental even to mention, a certain lady’s scent on his collar, his phone book left open to a certain name, hints that did not even add up to kindergarten training for an observant feline.

He did not mention that he and Dulcie had searched the Nursing unit at Casa Capri, and had run surveillance on Adelina Prior in her private office. No need to worry him.

“Harper said, before you came slinking in tonight, they think the cat burglar is getting ready to move on up north.”

“What made him say that?”

“This morning’s police report had an identical operation in Watsonville, and another at Santa Cruz. Harper thinks she’s testing the waters up there. That’s what happened down the coast, a couple of isolated incidents weeks apart before she moved in for the action.”

Clyde wandered around in his shorts, belatedly drawing the shades. No wonder the elderly matrons in the neighborhood turned pink-faced and flustered when they met him on the street.“TheGazetteis going to do an article on the cat-lady angle. Max never did like keeping that confidential, but he didn’t want to scare her away. Once that paper hits the street, she’ll be gone.” He picked up the remote from beside the TV and turned on the late news.

“Pity,” Joe said, “that a police force the size of ours didn’t have the skill to nail her. Do you think they’d like the make on her car?”

Clyde turned off the volume, turned to stare at him.

“Your mouth’s open,” Joe said, yawning. He burrowed deeper against the pillow.

“So what’s the make? I won’t ask the details of how you got it.”

“Blue Honda hatchback. Late model, not sure what year. California plate 3GHK499 with mud smeared on it.”

Clyde sighed and picked up the phone.

But he set it back in its cradle.“I can’t call him now. Where would I have gotten that information, just a few minutes after he left?”

Joe gave him a toothy cat grin.“Where else?”

Scowling, Clyde settled back against his own pillow and turned up the volume, immersing himself in a barrage of world calamities, avoiding the subject he found far more upsetting.

Joe rolled over away from him, curled up, and went to sleep. But he did not sleep well, and in the small hours before the first morning rays touched the windows he rose and padded into the kitchen to the extension phone.

The time was 3:49 A.M. as he punched in the number of the Molena Point PD and gave the duty officer the make on the blue Honda: the color, style, and license number. The officer assured him that Harper would get the information the minute he walked into headquarters.

And that, Joe figured, would be the end of the cat burglar’s long and lucrative spree. Harper would have her cold. And if a twinge of sympathy for the old girl touched him, it wouldn’t last.Dulcie’s the easy mark, not me. She’s the sucker for thieving old women, not Joe Grey.

23 [????????: pic_23.jpg]

Eula rose hastily from the couch, spilling Joe to the cushions. Scowling, clutching the back of the couch to support herself, she stood looking out the glass doors across the patio toward the empty corner room.“There’s someone over there; the curtains are open. There’s a light on-there, in Jane’s old room.” This was Joe’s second visit. Again, he’d been paired with Eula.

Mae Rose came alert, wheeled her chair around, almost upsetting it, staring out. On her lap, Dulcie rose up tall, looking, her tail twitching with excitement, her green gaze fixed across the patio on the corner room, where figures moved with sudden activity.

Joe leaped to the back of the couch, looking out, nipping at his shoulder, pretending to bite a flea, as he gave the distant view his full attention. Across the patio, through the loosely woven draperies, a bedside lamp shone brightly, picking out three busy nurses. The room seemed to brighten further as the sky above Casa Capri darkened with blowing clouds.

Along the length of the patio garden, each room was lit like a bright stage. In some, the occupant was reading or watching TV; other rooms were empty, though residents had left lights burning while they came to the social hall. Dillon came to stand beside Joe, leaning against the back of the couch, stroking him, but her attention was on the far room.

He hadn’t expected to see Dillon again after finding her bawling in the woods, after the nurse booted her out. He’d figured she was done with Casa Capri, that she’d give up looking for Jane Hubble, but here she was, fascinated by that far bedroom, her brown eyes fixed intently on the action behind the curtain.

Suddenly, everyone moved at once. Dillon fled past him out the sliding door, leaving it open to the wind. Mae Rose took off in her wheelchair toward the front entry and the hall beyond, moving faster than he thought that chair could move, Dulcie balanced in her lap, stretching up to see. Eula followed behind Mae Rose’s wheelchair, hobbling along in her walker as fast as she could manage.

Joe delayed only a moment, then nipped out the glass doors behind Dillon.

The kid stood across the patio beneath an orange tree, pressed against the glass, shielded by the partially open draperies, looking in, her hands cupped around her eyes. Joe, slipping along beneath the bushes, rubbed against her leg. She looked down and absently scratched his ear with the toe of her jogging shoe. She must think, with the patio darkening and the room so brightly lit, and the flimsy drapery to shield her, that she wouldn’t be noticed. He sat beside her in the shadows, watching the three white-uniformed nurses within. One was setting out some books on the dresser, another was filling the dresser drawers with folded garments: neat stacks of lacy pink nighties, quilted satin bed jackets, and what appeared to be long woolly bed socks. The closet door stood open, but the space within did not contain hanging clothes.

The closet was fitted with shelves, and the shelves were stacked with cardboard boxes, wooden boxes, plastic bags, small suitcases, several small flowered overnight bags, and two old-fashioned hatboxes. Dillon seemed fascinated with the jumble; she peered in as if memorizing every item. She looked away only when a fourth nurse entered the room, wheeling a patient on a gurney, a thin old lady tucked up beneath a white blanket, her face pale against the white pillow, her body hardly a puff beneath the cover. The nurse positioned the gurney beside the hospital bed and set its wheel brakes.

Two nurses lifted the patient. Working together they settled her onto the taut, clean sheets of the hospital bed and tucked the top sheet and blanket around her. She squinted and murmured at the light from the bedside lamp, and closed her eyes. A nurse turned the three-way bulb all the way up, forcing a moment of bright glare, switching on through to the lowest, gentle setting. For an instant, in that brief flash of harsh light, something startled Joe, some wrong detail. Something he could not bring clear.

He had no notion what had bothered him, whether some detail of the room, or something about the patient, but soon the feeling was gone. If something was off here, he didn’t have a clue. Probably imagination. Annoyed at himself, he lay down across Dillon’s feet, watching the room as the nurse pushed the gurney out into the hall.

Another nurse attached an IV tube to the patient’s wrist where a needle had already been inserted, and hung a bottle on the IV stand. The old lady was dressed in a lacy white nightie with a high, ruffled collar, and on her hands she wore little white cotton gloves.

“The gloves,” Dillon whispered, looking down at him, “are so she won’t scratch herself. Wilma says their skin is like tissue paper when they get old. Mae Rose’s skin is thin, but I don’t remember Jane’s being like that.”

He wondered if a cat’s skin got thin and fragile in old age. Old cats got bony. Old cats looked all loose-hinged, their eyes got bleary, and their chins stuck out. Old cats had a lot of little pains, too. Maybe arthritis, maybe worse.

He didn’t think he wanted to hang around after he got frail and useless; he’d rather go out fast. End it quick in a blaze of teeth and claws, raking the stuffings out of some worthy opponent.

Slowly Dillon backed away from the glass.“It’s not Jane,” she said sadly. She picked him up, buried her face against him. But soon she moved closer to the glass again, peering in as if the sight of that poor old soul fascinated her. He still couldn’t figure out what was off about the scene-the old woman looked comfortable and wellcared for; the room seemed adequately appointed.

The old lady was very pale, but so were a lot of old people. Her white hair fanned out in a halo onto the white pillow, hair so thin he could see her pale pink scalp beneath. Her wrinkled cheeks and mouth were drawn in, her pale blue eyes were rimed with milky circles. Her lids were reddened, too, and at the corners of her eyes liquid had collected. Dampness shone at one side of her mouth in a small line of drool.

A nurse bent to wipe her face, taking such gentle strokes she seemed hardly to touch the old woman. Behind the nurses in the hall, two visitors appeared, figures robed in black, stepping heavily into the room, two square and hefty old women dressed all in black like two Salvation Army bell ringers.

Their gray hair, frizzed close to their heads, formed little caps as kinky as steel wool. Their shoes were black and sturdy, their black skirts reached nearly to the floor. They seemed as ancient as the bed’s occupant, but of a different breed. These two ladies looked indestructible, as if they had been tempered perhaps by some demanding religious sect. Or maybe the vicissitudes of life, alone, had toughened them, just as old leather becomes tough.

The shorter of the two carried a brightly flowered handbag of quilted chintz, its yellow and pink blooms screaming with color against her sepulchral attire. The taller lady bore in her outstretched hands a small bowl covered with a white napkin. Adelina Prior moved behind them, shepherding them inside. She wore beige today, a tailored suede dress that showed less leg, and she wore less makeup, her eyes almost naked, her lips a flesh-colored tone.

The women paused uncertainly by the foot of the bed, watching the patient. She lay with her eyes closed, whether in sleep or out of shyness or bad temper was impossible to tell. The two black-robed ladies leaned forward, peering.

“Mary Nell? Are you awake? It’s Roberta and Gustel.”

“Mary Nell? Can you hear us? It’s Cousin Roberta and Cousin Gustel.”

When the patient didn’t open her eyes, Ms. Prior took the ladies’ arms and guided them to a pair of upholstered chairs that had been drawn up at the side of the bed, the backs to the wall and facing, across the bed, the glass doors. The black-clad women sat woodenly. The shorter lady leaned forward. “Mary Nell, it’s Roberta. Are you awake?” As she leaned, she deposited her flowered handbag on the floor. The tall lady remained silent, clutching her bowl in her lap.

Joe, dropping down from Dillon’s arms, slipped behind the orange tree, then leaped up into its branches. The sky had grown darker, and the clouds were moving fast. A damp wind scudded through the branches, shivering the leaves. He settled in a fork where he could see out between the moving leaves, directly down upon the bed, upon Mary Nell Hook and her two sturdy cousins. He could see, as well, beneath the bed, Dulcie’s two hind paws and the tip of her twitching tail.

Dulcie’s view was restricted to the floor, the bed legs, a corner of the blanket hanging down, and the high-topped black shoes of the visitors. Each woman, when seated, kept her feet flat on the floor as if to assure adequate balance. Above their ankle-high shoes, two inches of leg were encased in thick, black corrective stockings-a sharp contrast to Adelina’s silk-clad ankles and creamy pumps, her sleek narrow foot tapping softly beside the bed. The two ladies smelled of mothballs, a strange mix when combined with Adelina’s perfume and the sweet aroma of vanilla from the bowl that Gustel held. These, with the strong air freshener that had been sprayed earlier, left her nose nearly numb. But she did catch a whiff from the bed above, of nail polish remover. This seemed a puzzling aroma to be associated with a frail, bedridden lady. But maybe she liked nice nails-though one couldn’t seethem beneath the white cotton gloves.

She could see Dillon standing beyond the glass door and draperies, a shadow among shadows in the darkening patio, a subtlety probably not detectable by human eyes. She had seen Joe streak for the tree-he was hidden, now, high among the leaves-but she caught a glimpse of his yellow eyes, watching.

A chair creaked as if the short lady had leaned forward.“Mary Nell? Mary Nell, it’s Roberta. Open your eyes, Mary Nell. It’s Roberta and Gustel.”

There was a rustle of the covers as if Mary Nell had turned to look at her visitors.

“Mary Nell, Cousin Grace sends her love,” Gustel said. “I’ve brought you a vanilla pudding.”

Mary Nell murmured, faint and weak.

“Her husband Allen’s son is graduating from Stanford, and we came out to the coast for the ceremony, and, of course, we wanted to see you; it’s been years, Mary Nell.”

Mary Nell grunted delicately.

“Do they treat you well? We talked with your trust officer, and she said they are very kind here.”

Another soft murmur, a bit more cheerful.

The conversation progressed in this vein until Dulcie had to shake her head to stay awake. From Mary Nell’s responses, the patient, too, was about to* drift off. The cousins took turns talking, as if they had been programmed by some strict familial custom which allowed exactly equal time to all participants. Mary Nell’s answers remained of the one-syllable variety. Not until Gustel began to talk about the old school where Mary Nell had taught did the patient stir with some semblance of vigor.

Gustel, holding her pudding gently on her lap, told about the grandchild of one of Mary Nell’s students, who was now vice principal of that very same school. When she described for Mary Nell the new modern gymnasium with a skylight in the dome, this elicited from Mary Nell her first decipherable comment. “A light in the roof. Oh my. And little Nancy Demming, just imagine, she was no bigger than me.”

“We have all your old history books and cookbooks, Mary Nell; we’re keeping them for the great grandchildren.”

“A regular window,” Mary Nell said. “A regular window in the roof.” The springs grumbled as if she had shifted or perhaps leaned up for a better look at her cousins. It was at this moment that Dulcie saw Mae Rose.

Mae Rose had abandoned her wheelchair and was creeping along the hall. Walking unsteadily, clutching at the wall, she was headed for the open door.

Dulcie had left Mae Rose near the front door, in the parlor. When Mae Rose stopped to wait for Eula, Dulcie had lost patience, leaped down, and streaked in through this door behind the nurses’ feet. She thought that not even Dillon peering in through the glass had seen her as she slid beneath Mary Nell’s bed.

She didn’t know why Mae Rose had left her wheelchair; it frightened her to see the little woman walking so precariously. She did not see Eula, though she could see a good slice of hall from where she crouched; it was only close up that her view was limited to chair legs and feet. Mae Rose crept along to the door, clutching her little doll Lucinda and hanging on to the wall. Moving inside, she approached the bed, drew so close that Dulcie could see only her pale, bare legs and her bright pink slippers. The smell of air freshener was so strong she couldn’t even catch Mae Rose’s sweet, powdery scent. Just the chemical smell of fake pine.

Wanting to see more, she reared up behind the bed, shielded by Mary Nell’s plumped pillows, and peered out through a tiny space beside Mary Nell’s left ear. She watched Mae Rose lean over the bed, smiling eagerly at Mary Nell, holding out the doll. Mary Nell grunted, perhaps startled at the proximity of the doll. When she leaned up a few inches from the bed, Mae Rose pressed the doll toward her, as if by way of a loving gift.

The cousins, sitting beside the bed like two black crows, watched this exchange with blank stares. And Dulcie drew back imperceptibly, deeper into the shadows behind the bed.

She felt that if either cousin spotted her, escape would be imperative. And now suddenly Eula appeared in the hall, stumping along in her walker. Behind Eula came a scowling nurse, pushing Mae Rose’s empty wheelchair.

Soon the nurse had forced Mae Rose away from the bed, back into her rolling chair, and started away with her, pushing determinedly. But then the nurse seemed to take pity. She turned back again, rolled the chair back into Mary Nell’s room, and up to the bed.

Again Mae Rose held out the doll.“Mary Nell, do you remember Lucinda?”

“I remember her,” Mary Nell said weakly.

“She’s for you, to keep you company. She’s your doll now.” Mae Rose thrust the doll at Mary Nell. The bed creaked as Mary Nell reached. Dulcie watched intently through the tiny space between the two pillows. Mae Rose and Mary Nell looked silently at each other. Mae Rose said, “I’ve missed you, Mary Nell. And I miss Jane. Do you see Jane over in Nursing?”

“She’s not well,” Mary Nell told her. “She misses you. She said-she said, if I saw Mae Rose, to give her love.” Her voice was weak and shaky. The effect on Mae Rose was to bring tears; Mae Rose’s face crumpled. And at the same moment, Adelina appeared.

Adelina paid no attention to Mae Rose’s weeping; she dispatched the tearful old lady back to her own wing, and Eula with her; sent them both away, escorted by two nurses.

The two cousins had sat scowling and silent through the little episode. Seated firmly, their feet planted, they gave each other a meaningful look, then rose as one. Moving slowly, with a measured precision, Roberta clutched her flowered handbag. Gustel turned away from her sister only long enough to deposit her vanilla pudding on the dresser beside the books.

As the two cousins made their good-byes to Mary Nell, Dulcie studied the hall and the glass door, weighing her chances. She could likely unlatch the glass door, but she didn’t want Dillon to see her do that. She was assessing the traffic in the hall when she saw the foot.

The nurses had wheeled the empty gurney back into the room. Even as the cousins departed, clumping away, they prepared to lift Mary Nell onto the rolling cart. Wrapping Mary Nell’s blanket around her, and one nurse lifting her shoulders while the other supported her hips, they set Mary Nell on the cart for her return to Nursing. But as they slid her acquiescent body off the bed and onto the gurney, her blanket caught and was pulled awry, pulling her off-balance. She kicked out against the bed, to right herself.

Dulcie, looking up from beneath the bed, saw Mary Nell’s bare foot kick out beyond the edge of the cart. A slim, smooth foot, without the blue veins and knobby joints of an old woman. A lightly tanned foot that might easily run and dance.

She paused, frozen with amazement, then reared up beneath the blanket for a closer look. Staring at that healthy, slim foot, she was so fascinated that she forgot herself and let her whiskers brush Mary Nell’s skin, catching a whiff of disinfectant from the blanket. At the tickle of her whiskers, Mary Nell grunted, startled, and reached to scratch her instep. Dulcie dropped down, crouching deep beneath the bed, in the far corner. Mary Nell scratched her foot vigorously with a white-gloved hand, drewher foot back beneath the covers, and pulled the blanket closer around herself. And she was wheeled away.

Dulcie remained hidden until they had gone, her mind fixed on that slim, smooth foot with its neat, professional pedicure of bright red toenails, and on the sudden, vigorous movements of that frail old lady.

24 [????????: pic_24.jpg]

It was getting dark in the grove. Susan knew she should head back, should turn her wheelchair around. She had only to speak to Lamb, and he would circle back toward Casa Capri. Bonnie would be wanting to leave; she had scheduled this afternoon an hour later than usual, having had to work later, and now it looked like rain, the clouds so dark and low overhead they seemed to cling in among the oak trees. Beyond the grove, the lights of the dining room and the long line of bedrooms shone brightly, the big squares of the glass doors marching along behind the wrought-iron fence. She could see, down at the end, a portion of Teddy’s wheelchair behind his open drapery, saw movement as if perhaps he sat reading. He didn’t stay long at the Pet-A-Pet sessions. Mae Rose thought the proximity of so many animals annoyed Teddy, irritated him.

The wind was picking up. Speaking to Lamb and stroking him, she gave him the command to turn back. Willingly he led her around, pulling her chair in a circle off the path and back again. It was at that moment, as they turned, that she saw Teddy rise from his wheelchair, stand tall, move away from it.

She spoke to Lamb, and he stopped in his tracks, stood still.

She watched Teddy walk across the room to the other side of the glass doors. No mistaking him, his hanging stomach forming a pear-shaped torso.

She watched him reach to pull the draperies, saw him pause a moment, looking out-then step back suddenly against the wall, out of sight.

Saw the draperies slide closed as if by an invisible hand, from where he had concealed himself.

He had seen her, despite the gathering dark. Had seen some glint, maybe her white blouse, seen her here in the grove. Seen her watching him.

She shivered deeply, unaccountably frightened.

Now the draperies obscured the room. Those drapes on the outside windows were not like the thinner casement curtains that faced into the patio. These window coverings, facing away from Casa Capri, were opaque, totally concealing.

She sat still, watching the obscured glass door, still shaken, chilled.

Teddy couldn’t walk. Not at all. His spine had been crushed. He was completely incapacitated from his waist down, could use only his arms. Drove his car with special hand equipment.

That is what they had been told. That is what Adelina Prior told them.

Ice filled her.

And in her fear she made some movement, some little body language that made Lamb whine and nose at her. Stroking him, hugging the big poodle to her, she felt very alone suddenly, the two of them, too vulnerable alone here in the gathering night.

But Bonnie would be waiting. She spoke to the poodle, urging him on, and headed fast for the social room. Wanting Bonnie, wanting company, wanting to be around other people.

25 [????????: pic_25.jpg]

The cats read the newspaper article while standing on the front page, on the Damen kitchen table. They were not amused at the eveningGazette’streatment of Max Harper. Behind them at the stove, Clyde and Wilma were cooking lasagna, boiling pasta and making sauce, Wilma’s silver hair tied back under a cloth, Clyde wearing an ancient, stained barbecue apron. The steamy kitchen smelled deliciously of herbs and tomato sauce and sauteed meat; and the room reverberated with banging from the roof above, where Charlie was at work replacing shingles. Working for her supper. There was, Joe thought, nothingverycheap about Clyde.

Dulcie sat down on the paper and read the article again, her tail lashing with annoyance.“This is really a cheap shot,” she said softly.

Joe agreed. He might make fun of Harper, but when theGazetteput Harper down, that made him mad.

“Not only bad for law enforcement,” Clyde said, chopping cilantro, “but bad politics.”

“And poor taste,” Wilma said, glancing up toward the roof. Further banging told them Charlie was still out of hearing. “Max Harper is a fine man. He keeps this town clean, and that’s more than I can say for some city officials.”

There was a big difference, Joe thought, rolling over on the newspaper, between his own good-natured and secret harassment of Max Harper, and theGazette’scaustic misinformation.

POLICE FAIL TO NOTICE OPEN GRAVE

Molena Point Police, searching earlier this week for the body from which a finger bone was stolen supposedly by a neighborhood dog, failed to find during their investigation of the Prior estate, the wide-open grave of Dolores Fernandez. The excavation, in plain sight in the historic Spanish cemetery, had been dug into so deeply that the dirt was scattered across the grass and the body uncovered. Police gave reporters no explanation for their failure to find the body until their second visit to the estate, just this morning.

On Tuesday of this week, the human finger was brought to Captain Harper’s attention by Mrs. Marion Hales, who had taken the bone away from her dog. Harper claims his men searched the cemetery at that time but says they failed to find any ground disturbed. Yet this morning, inexplicably, the Prior caretaker reported the grave open, the body revealed, and the finger missing.

The grave of Dolores Fernandez is an historic landmark. Fernandez, who died in 1882, was first cousin of Estafier Trocano, one of the original settlers of Molena Point and founder of the Trocano Ranch. The Prior estate is part of the original Spanish land grant given to the Trocano family by Mexico. Police have sent the finger, and samples from the body, to the State Forensics Lab in Sacramento for analysis.

Sacramento forensic expert Dr. Lynnell Jergins told reporters that several weeks may be required to make positive identification.

Dr. Jergins said the county forensic laboratory is facing a large backlog of work because of a shortage of scientific personnel. The grave is not open to public observation, and is under police surveillance until their investigation is completed. The Prior Ranch is private property and is patrolled.

Joe rolled over and began to wash. Above their heads, Charlie’s pounding came steady and loud as she fitted in new shingles. Last night’s rain had flooded Clyde’s hall closet, drenching half a dozen jackets, Clyde’s suitcase, and an old forgotten cat bed. It was about time Clyde got around to some repairs. Typical, of course, to get the work for free, if he could manage it.

But better free than not at all. In this household, it was a big deal if he remembered to buy lightbulbs before the old ones burned out.

Joe felt eternally thankful that cats didn’t have to replace lightbulbs, repair shingles, and paint walls. And, of course, no cat would write such a misleading newspaper article. This display of bad taste was beneath even the scroungiest feline. TheGazettehad no reason for their caustic slant; it was obvious to any idiot that the grave had been dug up after Harper’s men searched the Prior estate. Probably someone at the paper had a grudge against Harper, not uncommon in the politics of a small town.

He could see that regardless of the slant, the story of the open grave fascinated Dulcie. You could bet your whiskers they’d be up there digging before you could shake a paw. And he had to admit, whatever scoffing he’d done about missing patients, the fact that a skeleton had turned up, and that maybe the finger bone belonged to that body and maybe it didn’t, shed a new light. His interest had suddenly shifted into high gear. His feline curiosity sat up and took note.

Glancing at Dulcie, he knew they were of one mind: investigate the grave. Maybe, as well, they could get into the Prior house. Who knew what they’d find, maybe more photographs like the ones of Mary Nell Hook that Renet had put on Adelina’s desk yesterday morning.

There was no doubt the pictures were of Mary Nell-Dulcie had seen them clearly, and she had seen Mary Nell clearly. They had no idea what use Adelina had for such pictures. She hadn’t given them to the two black-robed cousins; they had left empty-handed except for Roberta’s flowered handbag. He supposed Adelina could have given them the pictures as they stepped out the front door, but when Adelina appeared in the hall earlier, she hadn’t been carrying them.

Dulcie hadn’t dared follow the cousins; there had been nurses all over. Besides, she’d been too busy watching young Dillon. The minute the room was empty, Dillon had slipped in through the glass doors, making directly for the closet. And as Joe and Dulcie watched, Joe from the orange tree and Dulcie from under the bed, Dillon had removed from the crowded shelves one item. She had known exactly what she wanted.

Dillon had only an instant alone, before two nurses returned and began straightening the room, opening drawers, and putting Mary Nell’s clothes into cardboard boxes. In that instant she had removed a wide, flat oak box with metal corners. Carefully lifting it out, watching the door to the hall, she had opened the lid-and caught her breath.

From the tree, Joe could see into the box clearly. It was like a little portable desk, with a slanted top for writing, and with small compartments inside. He could see that some of the spaces still held stamps, a pen, some white envelopes. But in the largest compartment, which was probably meant for writing paper, lay a doll.

Her porcelain face looked dusty, her pale hair matted, her blue-and-white crinoline dress wrinkled and limp with neglect. Dillon lifted it out quickly and tucked it inside her shirt, where it made a large lump.

She closed the box, looked undecided for a moment, then shoved it back into the cupboard. As she slipped out through the glass door, Dulcie had nipped out behind her, crowding against Dillon’s heels. They were hardly out when two nurses entered. Just as Joe slipped down from the tree, the rain hit. By the time the three of them reached the social room, racing across the garden, they were soaked. The cats had sat behind the couch, dripping onto the carpet, washing themselves, as Dillon squinched across the carpet to Mae Rose and laid the doll in the old lady’s lap. She had kept her back to the room, and her voice low.

“Is this the doll you gave Jane Hubble? The one you told me about?”

“Oh yes.” Mae Rose’s smile shone bright with surprise. “This is my little Becky. Where did you find her?” She cuddled the doll, staring up at Dillon, then immediately slipped the doll out of sight beneath the pink afghan, tucking the cover around her. “Where did you find her? Did you see Jane? I gave her to Jane before she was moved to Nursing. Where??”

“She had a little writing desk, a lap desk.”

“Of course. It’s one of the few things Jane asked her trust officer to bring from home.” She looked up at Dillon, her blue eyes alarmed. “Jane wouldn’t give up her little desk and give up Becky. She wouldn’t give her up if she? No matter how sick she was. How did you know about the desk?”

“We were neighbors; she kept it on a table by the living-room window. She’d carry it to her easy chair before the fire to write letters. Fix herself a cup of coffee and sit by the fire to pay her bills, or write a letter to the editor of theGazette-she loved doing that. She didn’t have any close friends to write to.”

Dillon looked down at Mae Rose, touching the arm of Mae’s wheelchair. “I found the doll in the desk, and the desk was in the cupboard of that room-the room where you went, where Mary Nell was. But why would they take Jane’s desk away from her?”

Mae Rose stroked the afghan where the doll was hidden. She didn’t reply.

Dulcie and Joe glanced at each other. Dulcie shivered. She told Joe later that it was Dillon’s finding the doll and the desk that made Wilma decide to go to Max Harper.

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She had a sudden change of mind about stealing from one of the oceanfront houses. After what happened Thursday afternoon, she decided to give it a shot; how could she resist. The conversation she overheard in the drugstore, the exchange between this Mrs. Bonniface and the pharmacist seemed destined specifically for her enlightenment. And Friday morning, when she woke and saw the fog thick outside her windows, fog heavy enough to give her total cover approaching and leaving the Bonniface house, there was no decision to make. She was on her way. Not only would the fog conceal her, but the beach would be virtually empty, the tourists all in bed, warm in their motel rooms, or bundled up drinking hot coffee in the little restaurants. And the cops, with minimal beach attendance, wouldn’t put out a full patrol.

In the drugstore, Mrs. Bonniface, whom she had seen around town, of course, had been standing at the pharmacy counter waiting for a prescription. Bonniface was a big name in Molena Point-he was the founding partner of Bonniface, Storker, and Kline. Dorothy Bonniface was thirtysomething, one of those beautifully groomed blondes, perfect haircut and professional makeup, one of those women who could walk into the Ritz Carleton wearing out-of-style jeans and a worn-out sweatshirt and still have the entire staff falling over themselves to serve her.

Mrs. Bonniface, standing at the pharmacy counter, had told the druggist conversationally that Donald was in Japan wrapping up a sales contract with some Sony subsidiary, that he would be home a week from Friday. They talked about little Jamie’s cough, which was not bad enough to keep her out of school. The prescription was for Jamie. She said the other two children were just fine, she was on her way to pick them up from school and drop them at a birthday party. Her shopping list, lying on the counter beside her, included a flat of pansies and a flat of petunias and six flats of ajuga ground cover, presumably from the local nursery. This meant, with any luck, that Dorothy Bonniface might be spending the next morning in her garden, putting in the tender plants, leaving her house unattended.

She had left the pharmacy, walking out behind Mrs. Bonniface, feeling high, a delicious surge of excitement. She had stopped in at the Coffee Mill two doors away to look up the Bonniface address in the Molena Point phone book.

There were three Bonnifaces; she knew they were related. The Donald Bonnifaces lived at 892 Shore Drive. Leaving the Coffee Mill, she got her car and took a swing by the Bonniface house, cruising slowly.

The nicely kept two-story blue frame featured a huge patio in front, with expensive wrought-iron furniture. The handsome outdoor sitting area, walled in by glass to cut the sharp sea wind, reached to within ten feet of the sidewalk, and was given privacy by a row of pyracanthas. The entry walk, the lawn, and the flower beds were to the right of this, with a wide expanse of bare earth where some kind of bedding plants had recently been removed.

She had glimpsed behind the house another bricked terrace, sheltered by a series of freestanding walls, these supporting espaliered bushes, and offering privacy from the neighbors’ windows. As there were openings between them, it was a perfect setup. She could park on the back street a block away and slip through the neighbors’ yards and into the Bonniface yard calling for her lost kitty.

Friday morning she did just that: parked on the back street and wandered on through, calling softly for Kitty. She was certain no one noticed her moving through the fog; she could hardly see the neighbors’ flower beds and fences. Approaching the Bonniface house, she wandered innocently to the back steps.

Wiping the damp from her feet, she surveyed what she could see of the neighbors’ windows, which wasn’t much. But no one was watching. She tapped lightly at the back door, though she didn’t expect an answer. As she drove by the front, she had seen Dorothy Bonniface already on her knees in the dirt, hard at work setting out her petunias. The woman was an early riser. The pansies were already in place, perky and bright in the pale fog; and the flat of ajuga stood waiting. There was no car in the drive, as if a maid might be working within, and no car nearby on the street. Most Molena Point families, except for those with estates in the hills, hired help only for housecleaning and to assist at dinner parties.

No one answered her knock. She tapped again, hoping she wouldn’t be heard from the front yard, and after a safe interval she turned the knob. The door was unlocked. Smiling, she slipped inside.

Dorothy Bonniface had left the coffeepot on, and the cooking brew smelled as strong as boiled shoe polish. The morning paper lay folded on the table as if Mrs. Bonniface had saved it, perhaps to read during a midmorning coffee break. The kitchen was handsome, all creamy tile, deep blue walls, and whitewashed oak cabinets. Under one of the upper cabinets was installed a nice little miniature TV set. She wiggled it in its bracket. Yes, it would slip right out. And, in the fog, it wouldn’t be too noticeable beneath her tan raincoat.

She’d get it as she left. Moving on into the dining room, she spent a few minutes assessing the Spode and crystal in the china cabinet. These items weren’t much good unless she took a whole set, and she had no way to carry so much. The china was lovely. Maybe she’d come back later, load up her car, do things a bit differently for a change.

Down the hall, the master bedroom faced the front, opening with sliding doors onto the glassed terrace. Standing at the dresser, she broke the lock on Dorothy Bonniface’s jewel chest and surveyed an impressive collection of gold and diamond earrings, amethyst and emerald chokers, a topaz pendant, a few gold bracelets. Dorothy Bonniface liked color, though all the pieces were delicate and in good taste. She was lifting them out, tucking them away in the various pockets beneath her coat, when the phone rang.

There was only one ring. When the phone stilled without ringing again, a stab of alarm touched her. Had Mrs. Bonniface come into the house? Had she been passing the phone when it rang?

But when she stepped to the bedroom window, she saw Mrs. Bonniface still kneeling on the walk, talking on a remote, holding the phone gingerly so not to dirty it with her soiled gardening glove. Her trowel lay in the half-empty box of petunia plants. She was not speaking, now, but listening. She glanced once toward the house, glanced up the street, and made a short reply. When she hung up, she rose and headed for the front door, studying the living-room windows.

At the porch she removed her shoes, stepping through the front door in her stocking feet. Someone had snitched, some nosy neighbor.

Moving fast down the hall and through the kitchen as Dorothy Bonniface crossed the living room, she slipped quickly out the back door, moved quickly away through the fog-shrouded backyards. Softly calling the cat, she glanced around toward the neighbors’ indistinct windows, wondering which busybody little housewife had made that phone call.

Ambling around through a neighbor’s garden to the street, she moved slowly down the sidewalk, still calling for Kitty, but wanting to get out of there fast. She was half-wired with nerves, and half-strung with amusement. Heading through the fog for her car, she glanced back several times.

The houses behind her had nearly vanished.

She had not brought the blue Honda, and she had put a Nevada plate on this car, along with half a dozen bumper stickers pointing up worthwhile wonders to be seen around Nevada. She had applied the stickers with rubber cement so she could tear them off in a hurry.

She drove eight blocks up the beach to where the houses ended, where the dunes rambled away to the south. Getting out, she left the engine running as she removed the stickers and stuffed them in her purse. Then she headed for the village and across it to The Bakery, craving a cup of coffee and a chocolate donut.

She left her coat and slouch hat in the car and changed her shoes. In the restaurant she chose a veranda table, where she could enjoy the fog-muffled sea. She ordered, then headed for the rest room.

In the little cubicle she tore the bumper stickers into tiny pieces and flushed them away, then worked her loose hair into a knot.

Returning to her table, to her steaming coffee and an incredibly sticky, nut-covered donut, she got her first look at the morning edition of the Molena PointGazette.

The paper lay on the next table; she nearly had palpitations before the occupant left, and she could snag the front page.

The Molena PointGazettepaid little attention to world events. People could buy the San FranciscoChronicleorExaminerfor that. Village news, the small local stories, that was what sold theGazette.Yesterday evening’s paper, putting Max Harper down about missing the open grave, had been sufficiently amusing. But this article in the morning edition, though it, too, put down Harper-and that pleased her-this article did not cheer her. She felt, in fact, a chill depression, an emotion which perhaps had taken some time to build, and which she did not care to examine closely.

She might enjoy this newspaper column later, about the cat burglar, and she would certainly save it, but at the moment it presented only a personal warning. And though maybe it wasn’t that warning alone that frightened her, whatever emotions caused this hollowness in her belly, she knew it was time to go, time to leave Molena Point.

CAT BURGLAR ON THE PROWL

The recent rash of Molena Point burglaries, police report, are very likely attributable to a shabbily dressed old lady that local police have dubbed“The Cat Burglar” but whom they have not been able to apprehend. Captain Max Harper was not able to explain to reporters the failure of his officers to arrest the lone woman who has entered and burglarized more than a dozen Molena Point homes.

As the woman prowls Molena Point neighborhoods, she pretends to be looking for her lost cat. If questioned, she gives a plausible story about the escape of the cat from her car. The woman’s operation is not unique to Molena Point. Within the past year, she has burglarized countless homes in cities up and down the coast, including San Diego, La Jolla, Ventura, Santa Barbara, Paso Robles, San Luis Obispo, and smaller towns between. She is in and out of a house so quickly she seems to move like a cat herself, as silently and with as furtive intentions.

To date, in Molena Point, she has burglarized fifteen homes. None of the stolen items has been recovered. And while Captain Harper has been unable to apprehend her, he warns homeowners to keep their doors locked even when they are at home, either inside or working in their yards.

“This is the time of year when everyone likes their doors open to enjoy the spring breeze,” Harper said. “Leaving a door unlocked is an invitation. The old lady will wander the neighborhood where people are working in their gardens or enjoying their swimming pool. She slips into the house quickly, looking for jewelry, cash, and small collector’s items. If she is discovered inside by a surprised homeowner, she claims to be looking for her lost cat.”

Besides cash and jewelry, she favors expensive cameras, the more expensive brands of small electronic equipment, and she has been known to take small pieces of artwork. Missing from the home of John Eastland on Mission Drive is a complete set of rare ivory chess pieces, and from an unnamed residence in the hills, five valuable, limited edition collector’s dolls of unusual beauty. From the Elaine Carver residence the woman has stolen a small etching by Goya valued at a hundred thousand dollars, and for which there is a generous reward. The rash of burglaries is an unfortunate stain on the reputation of Molena Point. Anyone having information about the identity of the woman, or about the stolen items, should contact Captain Harper of the Molena Point Police.

She set down her coffee cup, staring at the newspaper. Mrs. Garver’s claim of a missing Goya so amazed her she had almost choked. There had never been a Goya. She’d seen no etching by Goya in that house, nor had she seen any valuable artwork there. The woman was flat lying. Planning to rip off her insurance company for a cool hundred thousand, and using her as the patsy.

The fact that someone would piggyback a scam of that magnitude on her own modest operation was both annoying and, in a way, flattering. But then she started to get mad-mad that this Garver woman would set up a poor little old bag lady to take the rap for a hundred-thousand-dollar painting.

The idea so angered her that by the time she finished her coffee and paid her bill, she was seething. The woman wasn’t going to get away with this.

Returning to the ladies’ room, she dropped a quarter in the pay phone and called the Molena Point PD.

She was able to reach Max Harper himself, and told him there was never any Goya etching.“I expect the Garvers’ insurance agent will be pleased to have that information.” And because she was feeling so mad, and because she had to prove to Harper that she spoke the truth, she gave him a complete list of the items she had taken from the Garver house, gave him a far more detailed accounting than was in the paper.

Hanging up the phone, she stood a moment, letting her pounding heart slow. Then she got out of there fast.

In the car she pulled on her coat again, against the chill of the fog, and headed on through the village. That insurance company would nip Mrs. Garver’s scam, jerk her up short. And as far as Harper tracing her phone call, he hadn’t had time. She knew how long such a thing took; she’d researched phone tracing carefully. Anyway, she’d be out of here in a day or two, and on up the coast. Withcat burglarsmeared all over the front page, the whole village was alerted, she didn’t dare hang around. Just a few loose ends to take care of, and she’d be gone. In Molena Point she’d be history.

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Max Harper left the police station at midmorning, heading up the hills to have another look around the Prior estate. He didn’t intend to pull into the Prior drive in his police unit. He thought he’d stop by his place, saddle Buck, and take a ride. He’d been using Buck all week to quarter the hills above the residential areas, looking for human bones or a shallow grave. And he could do with a break this morning, get out of the station for a few hours. The morning had not started out well, everything he’d touched seeming as murky and vague as the fog itself. Driving slowly uphill through the thick mist, he went over this morning’s and last night’s phone calls, looking for some detail he might have missed.

He had come in just before eight, parking in his reserved slot in the lot behind the station. He was pouring his first cup of coffee when his phone buzzed. The caller was a woman; she wouldn’t give her name. She told him that Elaine Garver had lied about the Goya etching, said there was no etching. He couldn’t dismiss the call; the woman gave him a detailed list of stolen items, information that only the Garvers or the burglar herself could know-or one of his own people, and that wasn’t likely. If he prided himself on anything, it was on the quality and honesty of his officers, in a world where that wasn’t always the case. Nothing made him as deeply angry as hearing some report about a bad cop, about someone’s inner departmental decay.

When the anonymous caller hung up, too quickly to trace, Wilma Getz was on another line. She wanted to come in with the little Thurwell girl, see him for a few minutes. She said just enough to make him uneasy, make him think the problem might be tied in with Susan Dorriss’s phone call late last night.

He would never peg Susan Dorriss as one to pass on wild stories, any more than he would think of Wilma that way. Yet the story Susan gave him was the same wild tale he’d heard weeks ago from that Casa Capri patient, little Mrs. Mae Rose.

Last night, Susan had called from her daughter’s car phone, sitting in the parking lot of Casa Capri. Said she didn’t want to use a phone inside Casa Capri. She had called her daughter at about ten, and Bonnie came on down and wheeled her out to the car.

Susan had called Bonnie just after Mae Rose came to her with the note she had supposedly found inside an old doll, a note from the woman Mae thought was missing, from Jane Hubble. Susan said the note and the doll smelled musty from being closed up in a locked closet. His immediate reaction was, what was he supposed to do about a note some old lady found inside a doll? And maybe he’d been short with Susan. When she read the note to him, his temper flared. He’d wanted to say, maybe it was something in the water up at Casa Capri that made everyone nuts, that he’d rather deal with any kind of straightforward crime than some groundless mystery that had just enough truth toturn him edgy. And when Susan told him about seeing Teddy Prior get out of his wheelchair and walk, that set him back. Everyone knew Teddy was incurably crippled-everyone thought they knew that.

And then this morning when Wilma brought the kid in, little Dillon Thurwell, to tell him about the doll, neither Wilma nor the kid knew that Susan had called him with the same story. Neither Wilma nor the kid knew about the note; Mae Rose had found that hours after the two of them left Casa Capri yesterday afternoon, and Mae Rose had taken the note to Susan.

He’d never known Wilma Getz to go off on a tangent. She’d worked her whole life in corrections and wasn’t the kind to buy into some nut story. Unless Wilma herself was getting senile. On the phone, she’d said, “I guess it’s all nonsense, Max. I know it sounds crazy-but you know that little niggling feeling? That ring of truth that’s so hard to shake?”

“Go on.”

“I saw Dillon take the doll from the closet, I could see clearly across the patio, from where I stood in the glass doors of the social room. I watched her slip inside, remove the lap desk, open it, and take out the doll. She shoved the desk back, hid the doll in her shirt, and made a dash out thedoor just as it started to rain. The cats?” She’d paused, stopped talking.

“The cats? You started to say, what?”

“Oh, that the cats were out in the rain, too. You know, the Pet-a-Pet cats.”

“So?”

“I don’t know-so they got wet. What time can I come in?”

“Come on in,” he had said, sighing. “I can give you a few minutes.” He had hung up, poured another cup of coffee, and gotten some paperwork done. Not twenty minutes later, there was Wilma coming into the station with the kid. Threading their way back through the crowded squad room, Wilma herded the kid along, her hand on the little girl’s shoulder, the child looking fascinated by all the uniforms, and looking scared.