Cat Shining Bright - читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги автора Unknown (Начало книги) #1

Dedication

For Amanda, Ellie, and Sophie

Epigraph

When a young cat dreams, what far lands and ancient times does he bring alive once more?

Does his wild spirit brighten again the fading road he once traveled, embrace again those he knew upon his endless journey?

Does man’s own past, if cherished and observed, tell us where we have been, and, perhaps, where our own untrodden road might lead?

—Anonymous

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Prologue

About the Author

Also by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

About the Publisher

Prologue

On this early May evening in Wilma Getz’s stone cottage, the tall, older woman kneels by the hearth, the blaze reflecting from her long silver ponytail as she adds another log to the fire. Around her, cat friends and humans sit in the flowered chairs and couch but no one is at ease as they usually are in Wilma’s welcoming home. All are rigid, waiting. Wilma’s slim, redheaded niece, Charlie, holds Joe Grey securely on her lap, the tomcat struggling to get free and go to Dulcie, so nervous he can hardly be still. Hearing his tabby lady’s cries, he has tried twice to claw Charlie, shocking them both. Beside them, blond, beautiful Kate Osborne waits restlessly, as do Lucinda and Pedric Greenlaw. The elderly couple snuggles tortoiseshell Kit between them, stroking her fluffy coat, trying to calm her fidgets as well as their own. But Kit will not be calmed, and she does not want to be petted. Rising irritably, she drops to the floor and settles stoically before the hearth beside red tabby Pan, the tomcat straight and solemn, attempting in his own stern way to show no unease. Kit, beside him, tries hard to hide her own nerves, intently listening.

They hear no more cries of pain—but when, from the bedroom, Dr. Firetti calls Wilma, Joe Grey starts to fight Charlie again trying to break free, trying to go to Dulcie, the vanished echo of his lady’s whimpers still striking deep through him.

But John Firetti’s voice is cheerful. “Could we have the warm blanket now? While Mary and I clean up?” At the pleasure in his voice, everyone relaxes, worried faces turn to smiles. From the bedroom there is only silence, no more cries of pain from Dulcie. As Wilma rises to get the blanket, soft footsteps come down the hall; the doctor’s wife appears, Mary’s brown hair mussed, her brown eyes aglow with pleasure. “The last kitten has been born. Oh, so beautiful. Three fine kittens,” Mary says, “healthy and strong. And Dulcie is just fine,” she says, looking deep into Joe Grey’s worried yellow eyes. “Let’s give her a little while before we go in. Except you, Joe,” she says, reaching to pet the tomcat. “You can go see your new family.”

Joe leaps off Charlie’s lap and heads for the bedroom, shy suddenly, nearly electrified with uncertainty. He has never seen newborn kittens, not his own kittens. He slips up onto the bed where he can look down into the kittening box.

There they are, three tiny, beautiful babies. So little and naked, wriggling weakly against their tabby mother: the two buff-colored kits are boys, he can tell by their scent. And, oh my, the girl is going to be a striking calico, he can already see the faint patterns on her tender skin. Dulcie has cleaned them up; she lies resting. The tiny ones squirm close to her, pressing at her, nursing hungrily against her striped belly.

Dr. John Firetti, kneeling over the box, looks up and nods. “Come, Joe. Come down and see your babies.”

Joe Grey eases off the bed, approaching warily. He crouches very still, looking into the birthing box at his new family, breathing in their intriguing kitten scent—but he is fearful. Even now he is afraid of how he might respond, he is too aware of the ancient instinct of some tomcats to ravage their own young. Would this age-old urge surface in him? Shivering, he is ready to turn and run before he hurts his helpless kittens—and when Dulcie lifts her eyes to him, he sees for an instant the female’s equally primitive response, the inborn ferocity of a mother cat to protect her babies.

But then her look softens, her green-eyed gaze is content, loving their kittens, loving him. Joe Grey purrs extravagantly for her. Watching Dulcie and their three beautiful newborns, he knows only wonder; he knows they have made a fine family. Three infants so tiny and perfect that Joe can’t resist reaching his nose in, breathing deeper of their sweet kitten aroma.

“Courtney,” Dulcie says, licking the calico and looking up at Joe. “You can hardly see her markings, but she will grow into them.” She licks the boys. “What kind of lives will these three make, our three tiny mites?” Powerfully the moment holds them, holds the little family in the hands of gentle grace.

Those first weeks were idyllic, Dulcie caring for the kittens, washing and nursing them, Joe Grey with them more often than not, galloping over the rooftops between his house and Dulcie’s. If he swung by Molena Point PD for a moment to read police reports as he lay casually on the chief’s desk, if he worried about the car-theft ring that was working closer and closer down the coast toward Molena Point—already the cops had readied extra forces—if Joe knew in his wily cat soul that it wouldn’t be long before the thieves hit their village, he kept his concerns to himself. Dulcie didn’t need to fret over a possible new crime wave, all she and the kittens needed was their cozy, safe home, quiet and secure. Wilma kept the TV and radio off, and the newspaper out of sight; nothing of the outer world intruded to disturb the little family’s tranquillity, only soft music on the CD player, or a little easy jazz, or Wilma would read to Dulcie, something bright and happy.

Two weeks after the kittens were born their eyes were open and their tiny ears unfurled. Another week and they could see and hear very well and were toddling about their pen. Courtney’s colors were clear now, the bright orange and black markings along her back, her white sides and belly, her little white face with orange ears and a circle of pale orange and darker freckles around her muzzle, the three perfect black bracelets circling her right front leg. Now, when the kittens heard Joe Grey come in through the cat door, they squealed with delight. When Joe jumped into the cat pen that Wilma had set up in the kitchen, the babies climbed all over him, pummeling and mauling him, rolling under the tomcat’s gentle paws. The biggest question in both parents’ minds, the same question that nudged those few humans who knew that Joe Grey and Dulcie could speak, was when would the kittens say their first words?

Would they speak? Would they be speaking cats like their parents and like tortoiseshell Kit and red tabby Pan? Or would Joe and Dulcie’s babies grow up without knowing the human language, without the humanlike talents of their parents? Everyone was filled with anxious hope, with nervous waiting. Wilma’s niece, Charlie, came often to visit, the kittens climbing from her lap to her shoulder to tangle wildly in her long red hair and to pat with curiosity at the celestial scattering of freckles that spilled across her cheeks, making her laugh. Charlie, as Police Chief Max Harper’s wife, knew all the details of the coastal auto thefts. She said nothing in front of Dulcie, though she might exchange a glance with Joe Grey. Charlie talked to the kittens of other things, naming items in the kitchen, asking questions, hoping to draw out a word or two. But the babies only meowed.

June rolled away, and still no kitten said a word. Soon it was July and then August. The kittens at three months old were all claws and teeth, loud and demanding yowls, boundless energy, leaping from chair to table, climbing draperies; but not a word did they say. A cat tree stood by Wilma’s desk looking out at the garden, another at the dining room window, a third in the bedroom, their carpeted shelves and climbing posts already shredded by sharp claws where calico Courtney and her buff-colored brothers leaped, flew, battled one another, wildly fierce and happy. And still, Courtney and Buffin and Striker said no word.

Every night Wilma read to them, the book open on her lap with the kittens crowded around. Dulcie read to them, and often fluffy, tortoiseshell Kit came to visit and read to them, too; always the kittens’ blue eyes followed the words on the page; though they wanted to wrestle and play with Kit, as well, for she was much like a kitten herself. “Will you ever speak to me?” Kit asked them, her yellow eyes wide. “When we read to you—fairy tales or the old myths—I know you understand. Speak the words, Courtney. Say them back to me.”

Courtney meowed happily, pawed Kit’s nose playful and sly, and switched her calico tail. Kit turned away irritably, settling on the boy kittens. “Speak to me, Buffin. Read to me, Striker.” No one said a word. Kit knew they could read, she could tell by their expressions. None of the three were normal kittens. And if they could read, surely they could speak. Stubborn, she thought. Her yellow eyes staring into baby-blue eyes, all she could say was, “You are toying with us. You are stubborn kittens, stubborn and willful.”

But a week later, it happened: Buffin was the first.

The sand-colored kitten with the gray patch on his shoulder had sneaked out the cat door when it was accidentally left unlocked. Padding into the garden, where he was not allowed alone—because of hawks and stray dogs—he discovered a fledgling bird perched low among a tangle of bushes. The nestling, having tried to fly, had ended in a crash landing.

Buffin, with a surge of inborn killer instinct, was about to pounce on the youngster with raking claws and sharp teeth when a strange new emotion stopped him. He backed away, puzzled.

He had no notion that Dulcie had slipped out the cat door behind him, that she crouched among the flowers feeling excited that he would make his first kill, but feeling sad for the bird as she often did. Mice and rats didn’t stir her sympathy but this little bright creature was as lovely as a jewel. But what was Buffin doing?

Carefully and gently he crept forward again. He reared up and, with soft paws, he lifted the little bird down and laid it on the grass. It was only a tiny thing, yellow and brown. Dulcie could have told him it was a warbler. She watched him stroke the bird softly. She watched him put his ear to the bird, gently listening—and suddenly Buffin spoke.

“There, there,” the kitten said softly. “There, you can breathe all right. And I can feel your heart beating. Bird,” he said, “little yellow bird.” His words were in full sentences, not baby talk at all. He crouched over the bird, hardly touching it but keeping it warm; for a long time it didn’t move, and Buffin was still and silent. Only when he felt the bird stir beneath him, felt it shiver and move its wings, did he back away from it, waiting.

The bird shook itself, and gave a little “peep.” Poised between Buffin and the bushes, it fluffed its wings and flapped awkwardly, trying to rise. It flapped twice more, clumsily—then suddenly it flew straight up, stumbling on the wind; beating its fledgling wings hard, it climbed straight up the wind and crashed into its nest among the reaching oak branches.

“Oh my,” said Buffin.

“Oh my, indeed,” said Dulcie behind him. When he spun around, she cuddled him and licked his face and her tears fell on his nose. Buffin had spoken, the first of her children to say a word; and what a strange thing he had done. What kind of kitten had she borne, what kind of little cat was he, so caring and tender that he would save the life of a bird? How could he be her and Joe’s son, the son of fierce hunters, when he didn’t want to kill a baby bird? (Though Dulcie, too, had had her moments.) But what kind of cat would he grow up to be? Indeed this kitten, Dulcie thought, had inherited something strange and remarkable in his nature.

Buffin looked at his mother, happily purring. He looked up at the bird in the tree, and purred louder. “Little yellow bird,” he said again, softly.

Everyone had thought Striker would be the first to speak because he was so bold. He was always first to start a battle, the first to show his rowdy ways and swift claws. He was first to dive into the food bowl, the swiftest up the cat trees, the first to do anything wild and foolish. But not until a week after Buffin’s debut, as Wilma called it, did Striker shout out his own first words, and he sounded just like his daddy.

The cats’ human housemate stood tying back her bright gray hair into a ponytail, watching Striker’s usual crazy race around the house. Even Wilma, a retired parole officer who had seen plenty of mayhem, shivered at the chances the kitten took. She watched him sail to the top of the china cabinet, leap six feet up to the cat tree, foolishly misjudge his balance, lose his footing, and plummet to the buffet, knocking a glass bowl of flowers to the floor, spilling blossoms and water and shattering the vase. Striker’s shout filled the house.

“Damn! Damn, damn it to hell,” he yowled.

He stared down at the mess he had made and before he could be scolded he fled, diving from the buffet through the dining room, racing down the hall into the guest room and deep under the bed. There he stayed, in the darkest corner, listening to Wilma and Dulcie laughing. Laughing at him! He was far more embarrassed by their amusement than by his own clumsiness.

Only when Dulcie crept deep under the bed herself and hugged Striker and told him it was all right, only when Wilma had swept and vacuumed up the broken glass and sopped up the water and thrown away the flowers did Striker come out from under the bed. He meowed with pleasure when Wilma told him it was all right, when both Wilma and Dulcie hugged him and laughed with joy because he had spoken; because, they said, he was a very special cat. No one scolded him for the mess; and certainly no one scolded him for swearing.

But what of calico Courtney? It was September, the kittens were four months old. Both boys were talking. Courtney had spoken not a word. The calico was keen and observant, she saw everything, she listened to every conversation; Dulcie had thought she’d be the first to ask questions. Their human friends, redheaded Charlie Harper; Joe Grey’s own housemates, Ryan and Clyde Damen; and Lucinda and Pedric Greenlaw, Kit’s lean, elderly couple, all waited expectantly for Courtney’s first words. Dr. John Firetti came to visit far more often than was needed, greeting Wilma but then going right to the kittens. John had known about Joe and Dulcie for years, had known the secret of speaking cats since he was a boy. He had waited all his life to see new, speaking kittens born, which was indeed a rare event. He loved these kittens with an amazing rapport and they immediately loved him. The minute he knelt down by their pen the boy kittens were all over him, talking and cuddling and playing, Buffin stroking his face with a soft paw. As Buffin clung to him snuggled under his throat, John would look over at Courtney.

“No words yet?” he would ask Wilma.

“None. She hasn’t spoken,” Wilma would say sadly, looking down into Courtney’s baby-blue eyes.

Courtney would lie in Wilma’s lap as Wilma read to her, would lie purring but mute, loving the ancient myths and tales, listening in total silence—until one evening before the fire, as Joe Grey stretched out on the couch, Dulcie and the kittens on Wilma’s lap, Courtney suddenly put her paw on the page, on the very words Wilma was speaking.

Wilma hushed, watching her. Courtney sat up straighter and began to read aloud, just where Wilma had left off. She read the tale smoothly and clearly all the way through, she spun the story out as lyrically as Wilma herself had ever done.

When she’d finished, they were all silent. Joe Grey looked so ridiculously proud that Dulcie had to hide a laugh; she licked Courtney, both she and Joe smug with their calico’s cleverness—until the morning that the words Courtney read brought not smiles but alarm.

It was a week after Courtney started to read that, sitting on the kitchen table on the edge of the newspaper, she placed a paw on the front-page article. “‘car thieves moving down the coast. to hit molena point again?’” She looked up at Wilma. “What is this? What are car thieves? What does it mean, to hit Molena Point? Hit how?” She kept reading, dragging her paw down the lines of type.

Joe Grey still hadn’t told Dulcie about the car-thieving ring, he didn’t want her thinking about village crime. Not because she’d be afraid; Dulcie was seldom frightened. But because his tabby lady would be torn with painfully conflicting desires—longing to prowl the night with him tracking the perps, but too deep with love for their babies to leave them. Wilma still kept the morning paper hidden and the TV news off. Dulcie was so entangled in busy motherhood that she hardly noticed Wilma’s changes in the household.

But the village had been struck, the thieves had been there twice, weeks apart and many weeks after the kittens were born. Both times in the small and darkest hours, the gang working fast, vanishing into the night in stolen cars. Then they had doubled back north, striking small towns that thought they had missed the attacks: Santa Rosa, Bodega Bay, San Anselmo, Ukiah, Mendocino. Molena Point PD remained on alert waiting for their return. Both the cops and Joe Grey found it interesting that in only a few cases were the perps able to steal the cars they broke into. Maybe only one of them carried the latest electronic equipment to unlock the ignition, or maybe the device they used worked only on certain makes. Joe slipped into Max’s office every day, leaping to the chief’s desk, picking up details that were not in the paper about the heists up the coast.

In the gang’s first descent on Molena Point they had stolen only three cars but had broken into twelve more, gleaning a fine array of cameras, clothes, money that some fool had hidden in the lining of a beverage holder, three pairs of binoculars, and a handgun tucked into a briefcase under the driver’s seat. The car owner reporting the stolen gun had been cited for not having a permit and for not properly securing his weapon. By the time Joe Grey and Kit and Pan arrived on the rooftops, the streets were black, clouds covered the thin moon, all was silent and the perps had apparently fled.

The second round of thefts was up in the hills beyond Wilma’s cottage. A houseguest had awakened hearing glass shatter, had looked out his bedroom window to the drive where two men were breaking into his new Audi. Grabbing the bedside phone, he had dialed 911.

The dispatcher sent out the call and then had called the chief at home. Max had risen, dressing hastily. Behind him, Charlie sat up in bed, pushed back her red hair, and tried to come awake, watching him pull on his boots. “What’s happened? Another car heist?”

Max nodded. “Up on Light Street. They broke into an Audi but couldn’t get it started, and burglarized five other cars.”

“They’ll be all over that neighborhood.”

“So will we,” Max said, belting on his holstered gun. Heading out, he didn’t imagine that his call from the dispatcher threw Charlie, too, into high gear. The minute his truck skidded up the drive, throwing gravel, Charlie called the Damen household to alert Joe Grey.

In the Damen master bedroom, Clyde snatched up the ringing phone, listened, then shouted grumbling up at Joe in his rooftop tower. “It’s Charlie. Are you there?” Hearing Joe yowl an answer, he laid down the phone and immediately dropped back into sleep. Beside him Ryan lay half awake, her short dark hair tumbled across the pillow. Above them, Joe Grey pushed in through his cat door onto a rafter, leaped down to Clyde’s study onto the desk, talked with Charlie on the extension, and was out of there, grabbing a small leather pouch in his teeth, leaping to the rafter, out through his tower, and racing across the rooftops. At the same time, at the Harper ranch, Charlie was calling the Greenlaws. By 2 a.m. tortoiseshell Kit and red tabby Pan had hit the roofs, too, heading for Light Street. Spotting the red lights of two cop cars and following them, they soon saw Joe Grey on a nearby peak, carrying his small cell phone in its leather pouch. Separating, the cats roamed the roofs watching the dark streets just as, below, the law was searching. They could see two cops attending to the Audi, taking prints, their flashlights and strobe cameras flashing off broken glass.

By three o’clock the cats had spotted and called in five other cars with broken windows. They could only imagine what contents might be missing. In the dense night they had barely seen two dark-clad men running, vanishing among the houses; one tall and heavily muscled, the other tall and thin. Not much for the cops to go on but Joe made the call, sliding out the phone, its pouch wet with cat drool. They watched three officers melt into the bushes, searching, but they never found the men. From the roofs, the cats watched patrol cars slide along the streets, spotlights flashing in among the houses, while other officers on foot prowled the tangled yards. Cats and cops found no one. There was no sound but the quiet passing of patrol vehicles.

The next morning Joe hit the station early, slipping under the credenza in Max Harper’s office, into the smell of freshly brewed coffee. Max was at his desk, Detective Dallas Garza sitting on the arm of the leather couch blowing on his hot brew. Two missing cars had just been called in, probably hours after the vehicles were taken.

Now, several weeks later, none of the stolen cars had been recovered. The first round of thefts had run for three days, each night in a different neighborhood. Weeks passed before the next assault. Both times, all MPPD got were fingerprints of the cars’ owners or passengers, many smeared by the thieves’ gloves. That second round began when a man getting home at midnight was knocked down in his driveway. The perp grabbed his keys, took his car, and was gone. The victim’s cell phone was in his car. His house key was on the ring with the car key. He dug a spare key from between two strips of wooden siding near the garage door, ran in the house and called the department. Patrols hit the streets. And, at Charlie’s call, the cats hit the rooftops. This time the thieves got away with four cars, one an antique Bentley, but they had broken into nine other vehicles.

Now, as Courtney read the article and Wilma explained to her what car theft was, the calico looked up at her, wide-eyed.

“Surely,” Wilma said, “they won’t return now, the weather page says a big storm is brewing. Slashing rain, high winds.” Already the kitchen had grown dim; outside the windows, high, dark clouds lay waiting to descend. “Why would that front-page reporter think car thieves would be out in a downpour?” She pushed back her long, silver hair. “Surely they’ll wait for better weather.”

“Maybe,” Dulcie said, “a storm is the best time. Harder for the cops to see or hear a man jimmy a car window, harder to see them drive away.” She was shocked and annoyed that neither Joe nor Wilma had told her about the thefts, that even Kit had been silent. But then, on second thought, she was glad. These last weeks, life had been so peaceful, nesting with her kittens, training them, reading to them, seeing them grow each day to develop his or her own unique habits and interests; no crimes to distract her, no worries about Joe out in the night stalking thieves—until now. Now she began to fret. Life beyond the cottage began to push at her; she longed suddenly to run with Joe across nighttime roofs hunting the bad guys. She was torn sharply between the excitement of the hunt, and the security of snuggling and caring for their bright and riotous kittens, safe in their peaceful cottage.

But she couldn’t leave her family, not yet, it wasn’t time yet to go off in the night leaving her babies for Wilma to tend.

Though she had been right about the weather. By midnight the September storm had hit Molena Point hard. The car thieves hit just as fiercely.

Again they chose the predawn hours, the black night windy and rainy, wind so powerful a cat could hardly cling to the rooftops. That whole late summer had become a grand slam for the meteorologists as they tried to explain storms that arrived months after El Niño should have come and gone.

The first report was a hijacked car. The woman driver, when officers reached her, was crying, badly bruised, and rain soaked. While medics took care of her, Max put out double patrols along the village’s hidden lanes where cottages crowded together, invisible in the dark, where all sounds were muffled beneath blowing oaks and pines. Ten cars were robbed between three and four in the morning while the village slept; ten cars robbed, five more stolen.

The next night in the predawn hours patrols were increased, prowling the tangled neighborhoods with their twisting roads among the woods but with expensive cars parked behind houses and in narrow carports; and of course no streetlights, Molena Point did not have streetlights.

But this night, Joe Grey and Kit and Pan didn’t follow the cops, they chose the very places where police patrols were thinnest, just in the center of the village. Staying to the most open streets, they separated across the dark rooftops, Joe Grey taking one route while Kit and Pan took another, all three of them straining to hear, over the wind, any sound of a wrench on metal or of breaking glass. The rain increased, the wind fierce as a tornado. Kit thought she heard Joe Grey shout, but couldn’t see him, couldn’t tell what he was saying. Had he even seen the stolen car that she and Pan had been watching, had he seen the man hide it? Or had Joe come from the other direction? And now she’d lost sight of Pan. Clinging to the shingles, she searched the dark for both tomcats and searched for the vanished thief, the wind slamming her face so hard she thought it would tear out her whiskers.

Kit clung to the rooftop, wind lashing her black and brown fur, flattening her ears and whipping her fluffy tail. Creeping along on her belly, digging her claws into the shingles, she watched the dark shadow below that she and Pan had followed—but now she followed alone, she’d lost Pan. As she turned to look behind her, the wind slammed her so hard she thought it would throw her to the sidewalk. Joe Grey had said the gale would come harder, close to dawn, that it would grow so violent that she and Pan had better be off the roofs early.

But they hadn’t listened to Joe.

Right now the gray tomcat was most likely safe at home wondering where they were, ready to come out again looking for them. So far they’d seen only the one breakin, the lone, dark-clad figure jimmying a white car and starting it, driving away so slowly they were able to follow him. Only three blocks away they had watched garage lights come on, the driver getting out to swing the old-style garage door open. He’d driven in, gotten out, they’d had one good glimpse of his back, heavyset, a black jacket. They’d watched the lights go out as he shut the door. Hiding that nice BMW? Or did he live here, was this his house? They didn’t think so, the way he was prowling around it now, even if he did have a garage key. And then she’d lost Pan—a minute ago they’d been together. Now, not a sign of the red tabby—when she turned back to look for him the twisting wind hit her face so hard it choked her. Come on, Pan! She cringed lower, searching—wishing they had listened to Joe Grey. Did Pan have to linger, snooping around that house? They knew where the car was, they could report it later, could call the law in a little while.

She dug her claws harder into the crusty shingles as the wind, like great hands, tried to throw her straight down to the sidewalk. Wind made the moonlight race and shift, that’s how they’d first seen him walking the street stopping to look at each car, a darkly dressed man caught in moving streaks of light. A broad man, not fat but heavily muscled under his padded jacket. A hard-looking man, dark cap pulled down against the weather or against recognition.

Having ditched the sleek white BMW and locked the garage padlock, he had moved close to the house, pressing his ear to the wall where, from the size of the windows and the drawn shades, there might be a bedroom. He’d stood listening. He looked angry when he turned away and headed for the front door. Taking another key from his pocket, he unlocked it and slipped inside.

He was gone only a few minutes before storming out again and taking off up the street. That’s when Kit followed him; she glanced back once to see Pan, too, listening at the bedroom wall. Kit didn’t go back, she stayed close to the thief, clinging to the roofs, wondering where he would make his next hit. He was only two blocks from Joe Grey’s house and she thought about Clyde’s vintage Jaguar in the drive, and Ryan’s nice truck with all her tools, Skilsaws, and building equipment secured in the back and in the side lockers, her long ladder chained on top. Don’t let him steal the Damens’ vehicles, don’t let him hit the Damens’ house.

Instead he headed up the side street, stopping again at each parked car, whether at the curb or in a driveway. He tried each car door to see if it was unlocked, then tried the various tools he carried; moonlight caught at a long slim blade, at several keys that, she guessed, might have been shaved, at other tools that bulged from his pockets. He avoided some of the newest cars with their sophisticated alarm systems. He carried a duffel bag—if he did get a car open but couldn’t start it, he rummaged through, stole whatever he wanted, dropped it in the bag, and left.

Strange, though. He seemed to have stolen the BMW with no trouble. He’d had keys to the garage and house, though he didn’t act like he lived there, he was too sneaky as he entered and then slipped away. And now, up the side street another man appeared, a tall, slim shadow moving within patches of blowing moonlight; he stood beside a sleek new sports car, looking down at his hands—operating some device. It didn’t take long, he had the door open, and slid into the driver’s seat. A few more minutes, he started the engine and drove away, cool as you please, turning right at the next corner. They’d seen only two men, but this was a larger gang than that. Where are the others? And why does this one have more sophisticated equipment than the other?

All summer Kit and Pan and Joe Grey had prowled the rooftops at two and three in the morning watching for the car thieves. Often they had seen plainclothes officers in the shadows of the streets below, and several arrests were made; but the thieves must have had replacements. They would work Molena Point for several nights, then would move north. A few days in one place, then gone again to another town, their movements so evenly spaced that their operation became a guessing game for local TV and small-town papers: Which town would be next?

Molena Point was only a mile square, the streets so crowded with cottages, the yards so dense with bushes and fences and giant trees—and no streetlights to pick out a prowler—that it was hard for cops, or even cats, to spot a thief. Sometimes, if there was moonlight, the cats got a license number or a make and model. More times clouds covered the moon, or the breakin was accomplished in black alleys between buildings or in the thick shadows of sprawling cypress branches. The first week the cats had worked this gig, they had reported five cars with dark-clothed men prowling around them, but by the time they reached a phone the vehicles were gone.

The next time, Joe Grey carried the small old cell phone with its fake registration, thanks to Clyde, his human housemate. Because of Joe’s calls, a number of stolen cars were apprehended, and arrests were made—but still the thefts continued.

Below Kit, the heavy man had stopped and began working on a car door. Even in the windy dark, she could see it was an older Jeep sedan. Before she knew it he’d popped the lock. He slid right in, and soon, through the sound of the wind, she heard the engine start.

He moved the car ahead slowly, driving without lights, turning left in the direction of Joe Grey’s house—maybe meaning to heist the Damens’ vehicles? Had Joe come home? Was he in his tower out of the worst of the blow, waiting for her and Pan to come bolting in out of the storm? Would he see the Jeep? She had to smile, that Joe had been so much more careful of his own safety since the kittens came. The responsibility of the three babies had made him, not less brave, but far more watchful for his own safety. Now, was he up there watching the Jeep approach? As Kit scrambled down a little pepper tree to cross the street to Joe’s house, the wind shook the small tree so hard she thought its limbs would break—the next instant, a tree did break. Not the lacy pepper tree but a tall eucalyptus that spread across the narrow street: there was a giant splintering screech as a reaching branch cracked, the main trunk split, and the tree came crashing down filling the street and covering Joe Grey’s roof, its upper branches hiding his tower, its heavy trunk twisted across the Jeep’s hood.

The man inside moved fast; killing the engine, he swung the door open. Kit bolted from the pepper tree across the fallen eucalyptus onto Joe’s roof. She heard the perp running up the street, the pounding of his shoes soon lost in the roar of wind.

Joe Grey’s tower was buried in the top of the fallen tree, covered with leaves and twiggy branches, Joe’s beautiful windowed aerie. Praying the gray tomcat had escaped, she yowled and yowled for him—she couldn’t shout his name, since the thief might still hear her. Worried for Pan but terrified for Joe, forgetting the vanishing thief as she scrambled across the last of the broken tree limbs and into the tangle of the shattered tower, she heard Clyde’s voice from within.

“What the hell! Joe, are you all right?”

“Fine!” Joe yowled. “Get this damn tree off me.”

Kit bolted through a jammed-open tower window into Joe’s broken aerie, into a mass of leaves and branches, and broken safety glass scattered like small diamonds. She watched the tomcat crawl out from under. “You okay?”

“Fine,” he repeated crossly, the white strip down his face narrowed with anger, his gray ears flat to his head. “I never in all hell thought that big tree would fall.” He began to paw glitters of glass from his face, from his sides and shoulders. “Cops, go call the cops. This stuff sticks like glue.”

Kit fought her way past him through the tower and in through Joe’s cat door onto the nearest rafter, dropped down to Clyde’s desk to report the thief but already Clyde was on the phone—mussed dark hair, rumpled robe—describing the fallen tree to the dispatcher. Apparently he hadn’t seen the smashed car, hadn’t seen the driver run. Kit could see Ryan through the sliding doors to her studio; she had grabbed the extension before Clyde hung up, her blue robe twisted around her, her green eyes frightened.

“A car,” she told the dispatcher. “The tree fell on a car, I can see it from my studio. The driver jumped out and ran. A square, heavy man, dark clothes, dark cap …” At the same moment, Kit thought she heard, up the street, another car starting. She leaped to the mantel to see better. “There,” Ryan said, “around the corner. He’s getting in another car, just the parking lights on. They’re moving off, turning north, maybe headed for Highway One?”

Kit didn’t hear Rock; the Damens’ big Weimaraner should have been barking up a storm from the moment the tree fell. Then she remembered he was off on a fishing trip with Ryan’s dad and his wife, Lindsey; they often took Rock with them. On the love seat Snowball, the Damens’ little white cat, sat rigid with alarm in her mound of quilt. She usually had the Weimaraner to shelter and protect her. Now, alone, she was shivering at the crash, her eyes huge and afraid, though she was unwilling to race downstairs and leave the comfort of her humans. Snowball didn’t speak, she could only meow, and now her cry was pitiful.

Clyde stopped to cuddle and reassure her, then stepped into Ryan’s studio, put his arm around her, stood looking down through the window at the wrecked Jeep. He turned to look at Kit. “Where’s Pan? He’s still out in the storm?”

“Firettis called,” Ryan said. “They’re worried about him, worried about you cats out in this. And Lucinda … she knows I’ll call the minute you show up, Kit. I can just see her pacing, I know how she fusses over you. But Kit, where is Pan?”

Kit didn’t answer, she leaped back up to the rafter and pushed out through the tangle of eucalyptus branches. Joe, having freed himself of some of the sparkling glass pellets, shouldered through beside her. “Kit, where is he? Were you together? Watch the glass. Where the hell is Pan?”

Kit’s heart was pounding so hard it shook her all over. Had other trees fallen? Could Pan be hurt? She raced from the broken tower down the pepper tree to the street, Joe beside her. Across the street and up again to the roofs on the other side, back the way she had come. The wind shifted and twisted, was choking them, pushing against them so they could hardly move. “We were together,” she shouted in Joe’s ear, “we saw that man hide a car then hurry away looking in other cars. I chased him but Pan jumped up to peer in the bedroom window of the house where the car was hidden and he never caught up with me.” The full terror of what might have happened to Pan sent her racing hard into the heavy blow.

In the Damen bedroom, Clyde had pulled on a pair of pants and was grabbing a jacket when Ryan stopped him. “We can look for Pan but no good trying to follow that man from the Jeep, by now the car that picked him up is probably on the freeway.” She had dressed quickly, she was reaching for her slicker when Clyde shook his head.

“Wait here, Ryan, please. Someone needs to be here, Pan might be hurt, they may need us.” He was halfway down the stairs when they heard sirens: Ryan ran to the studio window. Below, headlights were coming from either end of the street, their red flashers bright on the fallen tree and smashed car. The two black-and-whites drew close to the wreck and parked; their loud whooping stopped. Ryan followed Clyde down to meet them, praying that their noise and lights might bring Pan home.

Out in the wind Joe and Kit heard the sirens, heard them stop, heard the squawk of a police radio. The wind had died a little, the rain had stopped, and several blocks down where swaying trees led across from roof to roof, they saw a pale shape among the blowing branches. When they reached it, the ghostly shape was gone.

As they searched, balancing among swinging tree limbs, they heard scrambling, the sound of claws on rough bark. When they looked up, a cypress branch shook hard and Pan leaped down, straight into Kit’s and Joe’s faces. Kit threw herself at him nuzzling and scolding him; the three hunched together as the wind gusted harder.

“Where were you?” Kit said. “I thought you were behind me and you weren’t and that man stole another car and then a tree fell and I thought Joe was killed, it fell right on top of his tower and I couldn’t see you anywhere and I went to help him … Are you all right?” She stopped talking long enough to lick Pan’s ears, to look him over and see he wasn’t hurt.

“I’m fine,” Pan said. “I’d started to follow you, then I saw the same man up the side street breaking into cars and when he couldn’t get one started he just stole what he wanted. I thought you’d be following but I couldn’t find you. There was another, skinny man breaking into cars, taking things, then he broke into a black Audi.

“It didn’t take him long, he got the engine started, neat as you please. He took off, turned right at the next block but moving real slow as if looking for someone. I followed him. Behind me, I heard a couple of windows break, heard a car start. I kept following the Audi. He met another car, they stopped and talked, so low I couldn’t hear, then they both took off without lights. When I heard a tree fall I went back to look for you to see if you were all right. The street was quiet, the Jeep that had been parked there was gone. I was two blocks past the plaza when I heard sirens, saw red lights. Looked like the cops were at Joe’s house and I headed back fast.”

“The tree fell on Joe’s house,” Kit said, “on Joe Grey’s tower and on the stolen Jeep! The driver squirmed out and ran. Ryan reported it but we need to tell the cops he stole the BMW and locked it in that garage and—”

“No,” Joe said.

“But—”

“No way. How do you think that would look? What would the phantom snitch be doing at this hour out in the storm, so close to Clyde’s house?”

There had already been too many questions over the years about who the snitch was, the voice that had given the department so many useful leads but who would never identify himself. Even though the cops knew the snitch’s voice wasn’t Clyde’s, they’d have to wonder who would be out in this blow, so close to Clyde’s, at three in the morning, following the thieves.

“No,” Joe said again, his ears back, scowling at Kit.

She hung her head in silence. It wasn’t likely the cops would ever guess anything so bizarre as that a cat was their informant—though there had been some strange looks from the chief, and from the officers. “But,” she said, “someone has to tell them …”

Pan nuzzled Kit and licked her face. “Let it be. We’ll think of a way.”

“But we need to tell them now.”

“Let it be, Kit,” Pan said gruffly.

“I guess,” she said doubtfully, rubbing her face against his—and wondering how long the stolen BMW would remain in that garage.

Joe, watching the two, wanted suddenly to be close to Dulcie and the kittens, wanted to be tucked up with his own family, listening to the storm’s howl only from beyond solid walls.

He knew Dulcie worried about him, out on a wet, windy night. But he worried about her in a different way.

Ever since the kittens were born Dulcie, in the house with them most of the time, had experienced fits of cabin fever, a fierce longing to run the roofs with Joe and Kit and Pan, tracking the car thieves—or just to run the roofs alone, to snatch a few moments of freedom. Even now, when the kittens were four months old, even with Wilma to watch them, Dulcie wanted another cat to be near the youngsters, a cat who would make the unruly kittens behave, a cat more stern with them than Wilma ever was. Those three were so hardheaded, so adept at thinking up new trouble. To Wilma, disobedient kittens were amusing, they were not the same as a human parolee, to be sternly disciplined.

Now, crouched in the wind, the three cats moved quickly back to the safety of Joe’s house, dodging the blaze of lights from the two patrol cars and the cops’ LED flashlights. Near the wrecked car, Clyde and Officers Crowley and McFarland stood talking. On the roof, Pan paused, intently watching the officers. “Maybe we do need to call in and report that white BMW hidden car in the garage.”

“No,” Joe said again. “It’s too close, they don’t need to get curious.” Backing down a pine tree beside Ryan’s studio they beat it to the downstairs cat door. In the living room they were safe from the wind and, hopefully, from falling trees. They were wildly hungry; they were heading for the kitchen when Joe saw three white flecks clinging to the rug behind Pan’s hurrying paws.

He sniffed at them, and nudged Pan. “Hold up your paws.”

Puzzled, Pan held up one hind paw, then the other. Deep in the creases between his pads Joe found five more flecks. “What are those?” The specks had a faint but unfamiliar smell. Pan frowned, studied his paws and sniffed at them. Kit sniffed, and nosed at a fleck that clung to the rug. It came away sticking to her nose.

“Styrofoam,” she said, pawing it off. “Flecks from Styrofoam packing? Like they use to ship china or glassware? How could that stuff stick to your paws when you were running, out in that fierce wind?” She nosed at Pan’s front paw. “It does stick. Like wool threads stick to your fur. Static electricity, Lucinda says.”

“Where did it come from?” Joe said. “From that house?”

“Maybe,” Pan said. “Even in the wind and dark, I noticed some specks. I thought they were from the bushes, maybe flower seeds. I was more interested in trying to get the smell of the man.”

“Did you?” Joe said.

“A sooty smell,” Pan said, “like he could use a bath. I still say we need to report that BMW before … the way he acted, he doesn’t live there. So why would he leave the car there for very long? You can bet your paws he plans to move it, and maybe pretty quick.”

“We can’t report it,” Joe repeated. “Too close to my house. The cops know all our voices, and of course they know Ryan or Clyde.”

“We’ll think of a way,” Pan said. He said no more as the cats raced for the kitchen where a battery light was burning and the smell of coffee and of the butane camp stove wafted out to them. They could hear someone puttering about, and Joe thought about the leftover roast beef he knew was in the refrigerator. With the camp stove and a minute’s wait, they could settle in for a nice warm feast.

From the kitchen Ryan heard the cat door flap open. She looked out to the living room as the three cats bolted in, sopping wet. As they fled for the kitchen she grabbed the phone. First she called the Firettis. “Pan’s here, and Kit, too. They’d better stay until morning, until the storm dies. Yes, Joe’s fine, they all seem fine, just hungry as bears.” The cats stared up at her impatiently, dripping puddles on the linoleum. On the phone, John Firetti said something that made her laugh but that made her wipe a tear, too. “I know, John. Well, it keeps the adrenaline flowing.”

When she’d hung up, she dialed Kit’s house. Normally, Kit might be out anywhere at night getting into all kinds of trouble, Lucinda and Pedric had learned to sleep through their worries; but they didn’t often have a storm like this. She had started to tell Lucinda about the fallen tree when Kit hopped to the counter. Ryan held the phone so Kit could talk; she imagined tall, gray-haired Lucinda Greenlaw in her robe and slippers listening patiently as the bedraggled tortoiseshell went on and on in her usual endless narrative. “… and there was glass over everything, too, all over us like little diamonds, but Clyde and Ryan got it off us and Officers Crowley and McFarland are here lifting prints off the car and …”

Ryan put a hand on Kit, and at last Lucinda, at the other end of the line, was able to quiet her. Lucinda gave her strict orders, she was not to come home until morning, until the wind died and branches quit falling, and she was to watch for power lines. Kit, switching her tail, hissed at the phone and stalked away. She did not like to be told what to do.

Ryan, laughing, breaking the connection, called Wilma because Dulcie would be worried about Joe; then she called Kate Osborne. Their beautiful blond friend was staying by herself up in the hills at the cat shelter that Ryan and her construction crew had just completed. The living arrangement was temporary, until Kate could hire acceptable caretakers; she wouldn’t leave the shelter cats alone at night, in case of fire or some other emergency. But it was a lonely place, and Ryan worried about her, in this storm. When Joe and Pan leaped to the counter beside Kit, crowding close to listen, Ryan turned on the speaker.

“I’m fine,” Kate said. “Scotty’s here. He … wanted to make sure we didn’t have any damage.”

Joe and Pan glanced at each other, guessing that Scotty had been there much of the night.

“But then there was an accident,” Kate said. “That neighbor who lives alone on the five acres that I wanted to buy? Voletta Nestor? The wind broke the window over her bed, cut her pretty badly. Scotty drove her down to emergency and they patched her up. They just got back, he covered the window with plywood. I had cleaned up the glass, pulled off the bedding, dumped it on the back porch and remade the bed. Scotty told her he’d order a new window.

“You can imagine how grouchy she was,” Kate said. “She’s bad tempered at best, and the storm and broken window and her cuts and pain didn’t help. He was glad to get her home again, see her settled and get out of there. The doctors wanted her to hire a nurse to be with her, but of course she refused.” Voletta Nestor, small and wrinkled, with frizzled gray hair sticking out as if she’d stuck her finger in a light plug, and her disposition about the same. Kate said, “She seemed edgy and nervous to have Scotty in her house, even if he was helping her. Taking her home, helping her down the hall, he glimpsed, on the dresser in one of the guest rooms, a stack of cartridge boxes, .38 specials. Voletta didn’t see him looking, she was too busy trying to use the walker the hospital rented her.”

Ryan laughed. “That little old woman with a firearm? Well, it is lonely up there. I hope she’s had some sensible training—she can be pretty cranky.”

“Scotty said that in her bedroom she kept glancing nervously out the other window down at that flat half acre of mowed weeds that she calls her lawn. What was she looking at? Or looking for?”

Ryan said, “She is strange. Could you put Scotty on the phone? We have a tree down, across the roof. And we’ll need new windows for Joe’s tower.”

“Oh my,” Kate said. “Is Joe all right?”

“He’s fine,” Ryan said as the cats began to wash themselves dry. Scotty came on the line, he said he’d be down in the morning to clear away the tree and start repairs. Ryan said, “I’ll have Manuel and Fernando here. It’s that big, heavy tree that stood just across the street.”

Hanging up, she turned to feed the cats. They sat glaring at her, demanding her full attention, hungrily licking their whiskers. She warmed up a helping of roast beef but saved a nice slab for Officers Crowley and McFarland. If they stayed to watch over the stolen Jeep as she guessed they would, they’d be hungry before morning. Her last words to the cats were, “You three are to stay out of the refrigerator. Paws off. The rest of the roast is for the law.”

Joe Grey scowled.

“If you ever want to eat in this house again, Joe, you will leave the rest of it alone. Eat the cold spaghetti.” Followed by another angry scowl, she moved out to join the men. She stood with Clyde, his arm around her, looking up at Joe’s poor, damaged tower.

Officer Crowley, tall and gangly, and young Officer Jimmie McFarland stood beside the wrecked Jeep. They watched Detective Dallas Garza pull up in his tan Blazer and get out, carrying his camera and strobe light. Garza’s dark, short hair was tangled in the wind, his square, Latino face solemn from sleep. He had pulled on a faded sweat suit. His shoes had no laces. “My God, a straight hit. Is Joe Grey all right?”

Clyde laughed. “We thought a bomb had struck. It took Joe a while to untangle himself and shake off some of the glass beads.”

“But he wasn’t hurt?” Dallas said. The Latino detective had never been much for cats, had been a dog man all his life, but with Joe Grey hanging around the station, Dallas had learned to care for the tomcat. Dallas didn’t know Joe’s secret, no one in the department knew that the tomcat could have sassed them back as cuttingly as they needled each other.

Dallas put his arm around Ryan. “Did you see the driver before he took off, did you see anything?”

“I saw just what I told the dispatcher,” Ryan said. “Darkly dressed, heavy man. Ran around the corner, got in a waiting car, and took off. The car was running dark.” One could see the resemblance between uncle and niece; though Ryan’s eyes were green, and Dallas’s nearly black, their hair was dark, they had the same warm Hispanic coloring, the same fetching smile—and often the same deadpan expression that gave nothing away. Dallas had been her mother’s brother. Redheaded Scott Flannery, her building foreman, was her father’s brother—Ryan a charming Scots-Irish and Hispanic mix. Her two uncles had moved in with Mike Flannery and the three little girls when their mother died. Raised by three men, two in law enforcement, the girls had grown up obedient, hard workers, and with minds and tempers more keyed to the interests of three sensible men than to frilly dresses and callow high school boys.

“The crash woke us,” she told Dallas. “I grabbed the flashlight, I thought the tree would be halfway through the ceiling. But there were only leaves and smaller branches poking through Joe’s cat door. Clyde and I pulled the ladder off my truck, he held it while I had a look. In the wind, the whole roof was a mass of blowing leaves. With clouds coming over the moon, I couldn’t see much of the shingles, just the damaged tower.”

Dallas photographed the Jeep, the damage to its body and interior, as much as could be seen beneath the fallen tree. Working in between the broken branches, wearing gloves and using a flashlight, he found and copied information from the registration so he could notify the car’s owner. When he’d finished, he turned to the two officers.

“I’ll be back as soon as it’s daylight, for more shots. Crowley, McFarland, go ahead and set up sawhorses and reflective lights. You’re on watch, leave your cars where they are. And try to stay awake. On my way out I’ll check the side streets.” None of the three officers, heading for the fallen tree, had seen on the dark side street the vandalized cars that the cats had observed. With the noise of the wind, it was doubtful any of the nearby residents had heard the sound of breaking glass and called the station, unlikely that anyone yet knew that their cars had been broken into or were gone.

Ryan told Crowley, “Give me your thermoses. I have a fresh pot of coffee, and I’ll put together some sandwiches.”

In the kitchen, the cats heard Dallas’s Blazer pull away. They heard Clyde come in, fighting the front door against the wind. He was carrying a roll of plastic from the garage. “I gave Crowley a key to the front door. Make sure the coffeepot’s full.”

The cats followed him upstairs, watched him cover Joe’s broken window and cat door with plastic and duct tape to break the heavy wind. Clyde cleaned the rest of the glass fragments off Joe, removed those that clung in Kit’s long, fine fur. Ryan toweled them dry, and they all piled into the big king bed, Ryan and Clyde, the three cats, and little Snowball. As the wind howled harder, the down comforter felt deliciously cozy. Kit, curled up beside Pan, fell at once into deep sleep, worn out and full of supper. But in sleep she dreamed of her own small house, her tree house blowing and shaking, she could feel its oak branches whipping and her pretty pillows sucked away and thrown across the yard; in her dream she thought the wind grabbed her and carried her away, too, she thought the whole world was blowing apart.

Voletta Nestor was so drugged with painkillers, with whatever the doctors had given her, she should have slept at once. But she still hurt and some of the bandages felt tight enough to strangle her. Tucked in her bed, trying to drift off, she woke fully and suddenly, remembering the front door. Had that Scott Flannery locked it as he’d promised? Sitting up, reaching painfully for the walker, she made her way unsteadily down the hall.

Yes, the door was locked. But coming back along the hall she could swear she’d left the middle bedroom door closed. Now it was open. She peered in, then shut it, wondering what he, or that woman from the cat shelter, might have seen lying on the dresser. Crawling back into bed, trying to get comfortable, she wondered about that blonde throwing her money away on useless pens for stray cats.

She had never expected a new building to rise so close to the ruins, she didn’t like people so near. That’s why she’d kept her share of the Pamillon property separate from the family trusts. She’d figured they’d never be able to sell the estate, never do anything with the old place. And then that Kate Osborne buying the mansion and the whole acreage, her and her sharp attorney finding a way to untangle the trusts. That was a nasty shock, and then Kate trying to buy her five acres, too.

Well, she and Lena had put a stop to that. Her niece was just as hard-minded as Voletta herself, they weren’t selling to anyone. And then that woman contractor shows up, her and her carpenters. And the foreman, this Scott Flannery, who she’d heard was Ryan Flannery’s uncle.

At least he had been there to help her tonight. She supposed she should have been polite and thanked him, he might be useful again sometime. Maybe he was Kate Osborne’s lover, he was over there a lot. She didn’t care what they did but the arrangement complicated things for her. From up at that shelter they could see her whole property, she knew that from when she’d walked up there, looking around at the half-finished building. Who would build a “shelter” for cats? Cats got along fine by themselves.

Well, she’d picked up a good trowel and a hammer. They wouldn’t know where they lost them. Scowling, she got as comfortable in bed as she could and drifted off into a mildly drugged sleep. If she dreamed of her own plans, she floated down into them, smiling.

When Lucinda and Ryan had hung up, Pedric turned off the gas log and set the camping coffeepot off the heat. With the power off, the house was freezing. They were both up when Ryan had called, had been looking out into the night, calling Kit. Now, carrying the emergency battery light, they hurried back to their warm bed, Pedric silently giving thanks that Kit was safe and that she would follow Lucinda’s instructions—and Lucinda wondering if Kit would do as she was told. Wondering if she herself would now be able to sleep.

Lucinda did sleep, but she woke at first light. Maybe it was the silence that woke her: there was no wind beating at the windows.

When she tried the bedside lamp, there was still no power. The tall woman rose, brushed back her gray hair, pulled on her robe again, relit the fire, and put the coffeepot back on the flames. She supposed there would be trees down all over town. Beyond the windows the sky was heavy with clouds. One small streak of red glowed behind the eastern hills. Nearer the house, down in the hollow to the west, lay the torn branches of eucalyptus and acacias, and four fallen pine trees. The coffee started to perk. She heard the cat door flap open and she turned.

Kit sat on the dining table looking smug.

Her tangled fur was a wet mess covered with damp leaves. Lucinda grabbed the tortoiseshell up in her arms hugging her close, pressing her face against Kit’s cold little face, stroking litter from her flyaway fur—saying a silent prayer that she was safe. Never had they had such wind, not in the middle of summer. Never had she worried so over Kit as she had last night—well, almost never.

The sweet cat was purring so loud she drowned out the sound of the perking coffeepot. “I dreamed my tree house was all blown apart, but before I ever dreamed, that one tree did fall, Lucinda, the one that fell on Joe Grey’s tower and the windows are broken and it fell on a car, too, a stolen car and smashed it in the middle, I was following the man and he crawled out and ran but I didn’t follow I was so worried for Joe, but then Joe was all right and Ryan and Clyde, too, only I’d left Pan behind and Joe and I went to look for him and—”

Lucinda placed a soft hand over Kit’s mouth. “Slowly, Kit. Slowly, you’re making my head spin. You told me most of this last night.”

Kit had to tell it again but she tried to go slower. “And Pan was following another man but we found him—Pan—and he came home to Joe Grey’s and Ryan made breakfast and she called the Firettis and we called you and it was still dark and we all piled in bed and went to sleep and the police were down on the street at the wrecked car and I dreamed about my tree house blown away and when I woke up the wind was gone but when I slipped out on the roof there were no lights down in the village, no power anywhere, but I was careful of loose wires anyway and Pan went home to the Firettis, they need him, they were worried about him.”

Lucinda hushed her again, picked up the phone, and dialed the Firettis.

“Did Pan get home?” Pan had been staying with the Firettis much of the time since Pan’s father died. The doctor and Mary mourned Misto so, he had been very special to them. Misto passed away shortly before Joe and Dulcie’s kittens were born. Now his headstone and little grave graced Mary’s flower garden; and Pan had moved in to fill the empty place in their lonely household, to ease their grieving. Though late after midnight he still prowled the rooftops with Kit, or dreamed away the small hours in her tree house.

“Pan just got here,” Mary said. “And Kit? Is she all right?”

“She’s home, she’s telling me all the details. Did you have much damage?”

“John’s been over at the clinic most of the night. Everything seems fine.” They talked for a few moments as, outside, the dark sky began to bloom with thin red streaks. As Lucinda hung up, Pedric woke, came out to the kitchen and was treated to another long dialogue before Kit devoured a lovely breakfast of pancakes and leftover salmon.

At Dulcie’s house, Wilma, too, had been up and down all night, checking the windows with a flashlight as the blow increased, checking the cage in the kitchen making sure the babies weren’t upset by the rattling wind. But they, tucked down in the blankets warm against Dulcie, had slept right through; what sturdy kittens they were. Dulcie looked up at her and purred and curled down deeper among them. The house was so cold, with no power, but the kittens’ bed was warm. Taking her cue from them, Wilma went back to her own bed.

Wilma was asleep, her long gray-white hair spilled across the pillow, when the wind ceased; the silence woke her, and the kittens’ mewling and hissing in play from the kitchen. They, having slept all night, were wild with energy. Wilma pulled the pillow over her head and closed her eyes, hoping to doze again.

In the kitchen, Dulcie played with them, tussling and wrestling, up over table and chairs and counters, atop the refrigerator and down again, running and leaping until she was worn out, but she hadn’t worn them out. She hadn’t slept much, the night wind had made her feel trapped, as if she were its prisoner.

Ever since the kittens grew older she had gotten these locked-in feelings every few days, hungering to be out of the house, yearning for a wild run under the open sky unencumbered by demanding youngsters. She loved her babies dearly—but did all mother cats feel this way? The kittens were big enough to be left in their pen, with Wilma to watch over them, but they made such a fuss when Dulcie left them. And now, this morning, her housemate needed sleep.

She wouldn’t take the kittens outside with her, they were still too small, with hawks in the sky and an occasional loose dog roaming. She had resumed batting and chasing them across the linoleum, trying to wear them out, when the two-sided bolt of her cat door slid open with an impatient paw, the plastic door flew up, and Joe Grey pushed inside.

The kittens hadn’t figured out the latch yet, but it wouldn’t be long. Joe Grey nuzzled Dulcie for only a moment then was mobbed by their babies, all three climbing Joe’s sleek gray sides, biting his ears and nipping his paws. He pressed Striker down with a big paw, then looked tenderly at Dulcie. “You look battered.” He licked her ear. “Go run, the wind’s gone. Be careful of the wires and …” But Dulcie was already out the cat door and up an oak tree onto the roofs running, running …

“Run safe,” Joe said to thin air. He pawed open the cage door and settled inside, the kittens following him. With sharp claws he pulled closed the top of the cage to keep them from climbing out and tearing up the house. The kitchen curtains were glowing with the first touch of dawn.

Out on the roofs Dulcie ran, she did flying leaps, she dodged loose wires and broken trees; the village below was dark, not a light burned anywhere. Racing across the tops of the neighbors’ houses between thin, rising paths of wood smoke, she watched the dawn come flaming and then fading to peach, the color of her ears and nose. She ran until she was winded, until the last twitches of constricted nerves had eased, until her heart pounded with freedom instead of frustration—until, in her wildness, the world was hers again. She passed a man below walking the neighborhood looking at the damage, the fallen trees, the rubble-strewn gardens, at a lawn chair in the middle of the street—a tall young man, thin face, thin, long nose, wearing a tan golf cap and tan Windbreaker. At last, eased and purring and feeling whole again, she sat down and licked loose bark and wet leaves from her paws. Life was good. Joe Grey was dear and loving to have taken over the kittens after a hard night himself, to offer her a little freedom. Refreshed, she galloped home longing to snuggle down with her big gray tomcat and their youngsters, hoping that Joe had played hard with them and had settled the last of their wildness—for the moment.

Yes, Joe had quieted them. Dulcie arrived home to find the kittens sleepy and docile, willing to stay in the cage as she and Joe played gently with them. Joe gave her a brief picture of last night’s thefts, the tree falling, its leafy branches breaking his tower windows and sticking through into the main house, the smashed, stolen Jeep; the thief’s escape; their windy race to find Pan. “Ryan and Scotty will be taking down the tree. Will they break my windows even more, cutting the branches out? Can Ryan fix it, can she make it right again?”

“Of course she can fix it. She built the tower!” Dulcie lashed her tail. “It will be as good as new.” Seeing how restless he was, that he was beginning to fidget, “Go,” she said, “go hit the PD, you’ll feel better when you can see some reports, find out what they have.”

Joe gave her a whisker kiss, nuzzled the kittens, and was gone, out through the cat door.

He was back in less than a minute. He flew into the kitchen, leaped to the table then to the sink to peer out the window.

Wilma was up now, she came into the kitchen, clipping back her pale hair. In the dawn light it shone silver against her blue T-shirt. “What?” she said, frowning at Joe and stepping to the side of the window, out of sight.

“There’s a man walking the street,” Joe said, “stopping here and there in the shadows. He keeps looking this way as if he’s casing the house. He was there when I got here, but then he was just strolling along.”

“I saw him, too,” Dulcie said. “Walking casually, looking at the rubble, at the broken trees and damage …”

“He isn’t casual now,” Joe said.

Wilma, hidden by the blue curtain, frowned as she stood looking. Just as Dulcie leaped up beside her, the man backed deeper between the neighbors’ houses, but still looking at their windows. Only when light from the rising sun hit his face did he move deeper into the shadows—but not before Wilma got a good look.

Startled, she stepped back farther beyond the curtain. A tall, slim young man, thin but with strangely broad shoulders slightly hunched forward. A thin face but with wide cheekbones, a straight, thin nose and narrow chin. Light brown hair sticking out from beneath his cap. Wilma was very still, her hands gripping the edge of the sink so hard her knuckles were white. Behind them Courtney leaped to the counter, pressing against her.

Wilma stroked the calico idly, her attention on the man. “I saw him near the market yesterday, I got just a glimpse. For an instant I thought I knew him—as if he had stepped right out of time, stepped into this time from some twenty years ago.”

Courtney’s eyes, when Wilma mentioned stepping out of time, blazed with interest. The boy kittens leaped up, too, cocking their heads, intrigued.

Wilma said, “He’s a dead ringer for one of my old parolees. Calvin Alderson.” She studied the man, his face, his stance. “I had his case for over a year, until the PD picked him up for murder. He was indicted, went to trial, was convicted—some twenty years ago, but this man’s a dead ringer for young Calvin just as he looked then.”

“And at the market,” Dulcie said, jumping up beside Wilma and Courtney, “he was watching you?”

“He seemed to be. Passing a row of shelves twice, glancing in at me, standing in the shadows as I left, turning away when I went to load my car.”

Dulcie had never before seen her housemate afraid. Wilma Getz was no shrinking violet, she had been well-trained in her profession.

“Same build,” Wilma said, “slim but with those broad, angled shoulders. That day when they led him out of the courtroom he yelled that he’d find me one day, that he’d take care of me good.” She said this almost amused. “That wasn’t the first time I was ever threatened. It goes with the program. But seeing him now, exactly the way he looked then … Seeing someone who looks exactly like him,” she corrected herself.

“Alderson was on death row five years before they executed him. He was convicted of killing his wife’s lover. The investigating detectives were convinced he killed the wife, too, but her body was never found. They had some shaky evidence, but no body. Not enough to make a second case for murder.”

Wilma stood looking into the shadows at the man. “This could well be his son, their little boy, Rickie. He was placed into child care, he was about seven then. He was in trouble later, in his teens. I check his record now and then, except for small local crimes that might not be included. He did a couple of long stretches for assault, and here and there short jail time for theft or breaking and entering. Last I heard, he was in prison in Texas.” She stroked Dulcie. “I’ll call Max later, see if he can find out where Rick is now. Meanwhile, it’s nothing to worry over. That young man isn’t Calvin Alderson, and why would his son care about me? He hated his father, scared to death of Calvin. He should have been glad we locked him up—at the time, just a little boy, he was furious at me, at the law. Later, when I visited him in child care, he was fine.”

Courtney, snuggled between them, looked up at Wilma, intently curious about any new, intriguing human event. But her eyes held a shadow, too. As if the presence of a stalker, of danger to Wilma, stirred some long-ago memory, some ugly dream.

The sun was higher now, pushing back the shadows between their neighbors’ houses, and the man across the street moved briskly away, turning at the next corner, out of sight. They heard a car start and drive off. Joe Grey raced out the cat door and scrambled to the rooftops meaning to follow but already the car was gone.

Joe returned to the kitchen feeling concern for Wilma and frightened for Dulcie and the kittens. He didn’t want this guy hanging around. Was he Calvin Alderson’s son? Why would he be here? What did he have in mind? How did Wilma fit into his unfortunate life if, as she said, he had hated his father?

But Wilma wouldn’t let anything happen to Dulcie and the kittens, or to herself. A breakin wasn’t likely; she had good locks on her windows, and more than one handgun.

Still, restless over the watcher, hastily he licked up the cold custard Wilma set before him. Then using his damaged tower as an excuse, wondering aloud if the carpenters had started on it, if they were taking proper care, if Ryan was there to oversee the work, he headed for the cat door.

Dulcie, watching him, had to smile. “Go,” she said. “Go see to your tower, they’ll be clearing away the rubble.” And Joe Grey hit the roofs, making detours, peering into alleys, watching the streets for the prowler as he headed home.

Joe was three blocks from home, coming across the roof of the house where the BMW had been stashed, when he paused looking away along the side street. The department had put up sawhorses and crime tape barriers at either end of a three-block area. Along the curb stood seven cars with broken windows. All other parking places were empty where, before, there had been more than two dozen vehicles, many damaged. How many had the thieves gotten away with? How many had already been towed to the police lot, or their owners had been contacted and allowed to claim them? Two squad cars were parked inside the yellow tape, an officer seated in each, most likely running the license plates to find the last seven owners.

They would want to check for fingerprints on the cars and their interiors, or maybe wait for Dallas to do that. They would need lists from the owners of what was missing. He thought about the BMW that had been hidden just below him. He hoped it was still there, he still felt guilty that they hadn’t reported it. He thought of Pan’s words, Let it lie. It will come right, we’ll think of a way. The padlock was still hanging locked.

But maybe the cops had already jimmied it, and found the car. Was it there or was it gone? That was a nice BMW, one of those sporty models. Joe wondered if the owners even knew, yet, that it was missing, if they had even reported it stolen.

The tomcat still wasn’t willing to risk calling in, risk placing the snitch so close to his own home. Leave it, he thought, but it wasn’t like Joe Grey to do that.

He arrived home on his own roof to find Ryan, her uncle Scotty, and two of their carpenters clearing away the fallen tree. They had cut the heavy trunk into sections, had removed all but the spreading top that was still tangled in Joe’s tower windows. Corners of one window stuck out at an alarming angle. Another of the shattered panes had given way, scattering more diamond-bright fragments across the dark shingles. Ryan knelt beside the tower carefully cutting small branches, pulling them free of the structure.

At the curb, Manuel and Fernando were stacking the cut lengths of the tree into a truck bed. Joe stood looking at his beaten-up tower, his belly feeling hollow. He’d never realized how much the destruction of his cozy, private aerie would shake him. Staring at what was left of his private digs, his ears were back, his growl was fierce and yet dismally sad.

Below him, Officers McFarland and Crowley were going over the wrecked car, lifting prints. Dallas Garza was working inside the front seat also taking prints and dusting with a small brush for lint, fabric fragments, human hairs. Just up the street a tow car waited to haul the wreck to the department’s impound yard for further inspection. Joe guessed Clyde had gone on to work, concerned about damage to his automotive shop, to the windows and the tile roof. As Joe stood looking at his tower, Ryan tossed an armload of branches down to the lawn below, then came to sit beside him. Her short, dark, windblown hair was full of eucalyptus leaves, her green eyes more angry than sad.

“It’s all right,” she said, smiling down at him, smoothing her hand down his back the way he liked. “It will be all right, we’ll soon have it good as new.”

He couldn’t talk, couldn’t answer her, with the men working so near them. But she could talk to him, holding him, speaking softly without anyone paying attention, women talked to their cats all the time, and even tomcats endured cuddling.

“We’ll order the new windows as soon as we’ve finished clearing out,” she said. “I need to see what else is needed. Meantime, with the plastic and duct tape, you’ll be as snug as your kittens in their quilt.”

Joe wasn’t sure he’d ever feel snug again. Life seemed to have gone totally off center: the destruction of his tower, and Dulcie so moody at home, tied down with the kittens—even if she did love them more than life itself; and now, the threat of that man watching Wilma’s house.

If that guy came after her and there was a dustup in the house itself, even if Wilma was armed, Dulcie and the kittens would be in danger—his family was too vulnerable there, as was Wilma herself. Though she was armed and well trained, still she was alone. Despite the many dangers Joe had known, working behind the scenes snitching for the cops, life seemed now more perilous than he could ever remember—maybe his sudden sense of threat and concern since the kittens arrived had changed the way he viewed the world, maybe he was suddenly not so wild and devil-may-care anymore. From the moment he’d looked down at those tender babies, and had realized his full responsibilities, Joe Grey’s every thought seemed heavier and more serious.

Quietly, he snuggled closer to Ryan.

“It will be all right,” she repeated, scratching his ears. And almost as if she could read his thoughts, “The kittens and Dulcie are fine and safe with Wilma, you know that.”

Yes, Joe thought. But Ryan didn’t know yet, and he couldn’t tell her now, about Wilma’s prowler; not with an audience busy below them.

“And these car breakins,” she said softly, “are no different from any other village crime—most of which you’ve helped to solve.” Tenderly she scratched under his chin. “You and the cops will get to the bottom of these thefts. Your tower will be fixed before you can sneeze, and everything will be fine. The world, Joe, is just making its bumpy rounds, that’s all.” She kissed him on the forehead, set him down on the shingles, and got back to work.

It was only when Ryan had cleared the last branches from his tower; when Manuel and Fernando had gone to dump the logs and detritus from the cut tree; when Officers McFarland and Crowley had left; when Dallas had finished fingerprinting and photographing the car and had gone in the house to clean up; when the tow truck had hauled the wrecked car off to hold for additional evidence; and Scotty had left in his truck to get shingles and lumber and order Joe’s and Voletta’s windows, only then could Joe say a word. Before Ryan began to sweep up broken glass, they sat side by side on the roof in a comfortable two-way conversation as they looked out at the village. Most of the power was still off. A strip of shop windows was lit where one power line had been repaired. Joe told her about the man watching Wilma’s house.

“Wilma doesn’t need this,” she said angrily, her green eyes flashing, her Irish-Latino temper blazing. “We’ll know more once Max has done some checking. Maybe this is the killer’s son, but why go after Wilma after all these years, if he hated his father? It was Wilma who helped put the man away, he ought to thank her. Maybe,” she said, “he’s just curious. Maybe he just wants to learn more about his father?” She sighed. “You don’t always know what’s in people’s heads when they look back at their past.

“Well, I know one thing,” she said, scratching his back, “the night’s events and the storm have left us all feeling ragged and out of sorts.”

“Even that cranky old woman Voletta had to get into the act,” Joe said with very little pity, “had to roust Scotty out, drag him out in the storm.”

Ryan nodded. “Kate is trying to get hold of her niece, Lena. She needs someone with her until her wounds start to heal. Lena comes down every few weeks to see her aunt anyway, she lives somewhere up the coast. I think there’s a husband and son. Remember, Kate contacted Lena when she was trying to buy that five acres from Voletta, and the old woman refused to sell?” Voletta Nestor’s five acres lay just below the mansion and below the land where Ryan had built the new cat shelter. CatFriends had wanted it for parking and for extra space if they needed to expand.

“That was too bad,” Ryan said. “But it’s her property, she can do what she wants with it.”

“She was lucky Scotty was up there in the middle of the night,” Joe said innocently, “to take her to the ER.”

Ryan gave him a look. He didn’t need to get nosy. Kate and Scotty’s sudden, low-key romance was none of his business.

“It’s lucky Scotty was there,” Ryan said. “Kate could have helped her, but there’s no way she would have left the shelter cats alone in that storm, she said they were all nervous.” She tipped up his chin to look at him. “Kate said Scotty was very good with them. They moved all the feral cats that were in the screened runs out of the wind, into the infirmary and offices. She said they spent hours calming individual cats, talking to them and soothing them.”

“I just meant—”

“I know what you meant. Let it be, Joe, and wish them happiness.”

She looked into his yellow eyes. “But it is worrisome. If they do become a serious twosome, if they were to marry, Kate would have the same problem as Charlie Harper. Keeping the secret of you cats from her husband. It’s hard to conceal a lie, even for a good cause, and keep a marriage honest and happy.

“Though Max Harper,” Ryan said, “would be more disbelieving than Scotty would, if he came face-to-face with the truth.”

“You mean if I spoke to Max?”

“Don’t even think it,” she said, laughing. “You are kidding?”

“Why would I spoil a good thing? Why would I give the chief nightmares? And where would that put Charlie? She’d have to admit she’d lied or she’d have to play stupid, and Charlie Harper is anything but stupid.”

She just sat looking at him. “After all these years, the way Max has grown to like you, you wouldn’t speak to him, you wouldn’t give away your secret?”

The tomcat laid a paw on her hand. “I’m not about to do that—my problem is, can we keep the kittens quiet?”

Ryan sighed, and hugged him, and prayed that he and Dulcie could keep those youngsters in line. “I wonder about the clowder cats last night, I wonder how they fared, up at the ruins? Kate told me she’d walk over this morning and try to find them.”

“There’s plenty of solid shelter,” Joe said. “They know every inch of the mansion, they know the cellars, the safe places that won’t crack or fall. But what about Dr. Firetti’s sun dome? That big kennel space is half the hospital.” The solarium had been built to join two small cottages together, to form the large veterinarian complex.

“The dome’s fine,” Ryan said. “I talked with John again, he said not a crack, nothing damaged, and their patients were all settling down.”

But when she stroked Joe, she felt his muscles tense. “You’re still wound tight. Go on down to the station. You’ll feel better when you look at the reports on the car thefts.” She envisioned Joe sitting in Max’s bookcase peering over his shoulder at his computer screen as officers logged in information on the stolen cars and on whatever property was missing from the remaining, damaged vehicles.

Thinking of the PD, of the homey atmosphere in Max Harper’s office, Joe gave her cheek a nudge, and trotted off. Leaping across the neighbors’ roofs, he paused a moment to watch the cordoned-off street below where Dallas and Officers Crowley and McFarland were at work. The owners of three cars had appeared. Two were quietly answering questions as the officers filled in their reports. The one woman, standing beside her black Audi, was making clear to Dallas how disgusting it was that the department had allowed this shocking spree of vandalism and thefts to happen yet again in their quiet village—and to her nice new Audi. “Just look at the damage they’ve done, the side window broken out, glass everywhere, my expensive camera and leather jacket gone.” Joe Grey smiled, watching Dallas’s blank expression as the detective controlled his temper. Joe could imagine what the Latino detective would like to say. There was always one critic among the victims, vitriolic and rude—it didn’t matter that the cops had been up most of the night, or that she shouldn’t have left her valuables in plain sight in the car. Heading for Molena Point PD, he wondered if the desk clerk, soft, blond Mabel Farthy, might have brought some homemade cookies to work this morning or maybe a snack of fried chicken. Galloping over the rooftops toward the station, Joe Grey had no notion he would be followed or, more accurately, that his point of destination had already been invaded by unwanted company.

Wilma Getz’s cottage was cold, the power still off, the morning light through the windows a depressing gray. Buffin and Striker were curled in an afghan near the fire, warm and half asleep. Dulcie and Courtney lay on Wilma’s lap as she read to them but soon Wilma was yawning. The boy kittens watched her. When her book slid to the carpet, when she fell asleep reading, Striker woke fully. He looked all around. There was no roar of wind now, no sound but the crackle of the fire, and the drip of water from the eaves—he watched Dulcie and Courtney drift into sleep. He lay thinking about the car thefts, what little their pa had told about them, then with a soft paw he nudged Buffin.

The two kittens watched their mother, watched their sister and Wilma. When no one stirred or looked up at them the two young cats smiled, slipped out from the folds of the afghan, and padded silently from the living room, through the dining room and kitchen, and into the laundry to the cat door.

Striker tried to slide the bolt, though he had tried many times before. This time, more determined, he made only tiny sounds as he worked metal against metal until at last the shiny lock gave way and the forbidden door swung free.

Slipping out, they stopped the plastic flap with careful paws, easing it quietly down, and they shot out into the garden. Around the house they sped, out of sight of the front windows. Scrambling up a bougainvillea vine to the neighbor’s roof, their pale coats blending with the tan shingles, they reared tall, looking down at the village, gray in the cloud-smothered morning. They had never been in the village, the crowd of cottages tangled among tall trees fascinated them.

“There,” Buffin said.

“The courthouse tower,” said Striker. “That’s where MPPD is, that’s where Pa goes when there’s been a crime.”

“If he catches us, he’ll kill us,” Buffin said.

“Maybe only bat us a little,” said Striker.

“And scold. I don’t like scolding.”

Intently they looked at each other. They could go to MPPD, stay hidden from their father—they hoped. Or they could go to where the crime scene had been, but they weren’t sure where that was among the tangle of village streets. The courthouse tower stood tall and clear and was easy to follow. Another conflicted look between them, their blue eyes wide, a twitch of ears, a lashing of tails, and they were off over the roofs heading for the cop shop.

They had no notion, when they arrived, what they would do, how they would get inside, and how they would avoid their dad. They just wanted to know more about what went on last night, to know more about the crimes and what secret clues their pa had found—even if they were heading for trouble.

Joe Grey approached MPPD from the south, from the direction of his own house, galloping atop a row of shops, not over the taller courthouse that rose on the north side. One of the new shops smelled of chocolate. He peered over at the fancy little tearoom that Ryan said had good desserts and salads but that, with its flowery décor and frilly curtains, no cop would ever be caught there. There were no lights on, on this street, though lights shone farther away in the village. Only a dim glow here at the back, from the kitchen, as if the chef were cooking on a gas stove, working by lantern light.

At least MPPD was brightly lit, from their emergency generator. Gaining its roof, Joe watched the glass door swing busily back and forth below him as officers entered. This was change of shift, men coming on duty heading for the conference room, for morning count. Each time the door opened it emitted a strong waft of cinnamon to mix with the chocolate scent from down the street. Licking his whiskers, waiting until the foot traffic had all but ceased, he backed down the oak tree and slid inside behind the heels of Detective Juana Davis. He didn’t duck into the holding cell that stood to the right of the door, a small barred room meant for a few minutes’ confinement before an arrestee was taken back to the jail and booked. There was no one in the lobby but Davis, heading back for her office, black uniform, black stockings, black regulation shoes. And, at the front counter, clerk Mabel Farthy, grandmotherly blond, soft and round and always with a smile. When Mabel saw Joe her face lit up. She turned to her desk for a familiar baking dish that she often brought from home. Joe leaped to the counter. Mabel gave him a big hug, then broke a warm cinnamon roll into pieces, onto a paper plate. Joe devoured it as if he hadn’t eaten in days.

Purring for Mabel, he enjoyed a nice ear scratch as she went on about the kittens. “New babies, Joe Grey. Well, not so new anymore. Four months old already, and Charlie says they’re beautiful.” Charlie was often in and out of the station, her freckled, red-haired beauty always turning heads. Though Mabel had no notion the cats could answer her, she talked to them in a long and loving ramble as she fed them whatever treat she’d brought for the officers, and for the cats themselves.

“Two boy kittens as sleek as you,” Mabel said, “but pale as sand. And the girl kitten … a little calico. Charlie says she’s a beauty. So, Joe Grey, when do we get to see them? When will you bring your family to the station?”

Not any time soon, Joe thought, feeling a shiver of dismay. He lived in mortal fear of the kittens finding their way to MPPD, slipping in to prowl, all wild energy and curiosity and forgetting they were never to speak to a human or in front of a human, one of them blurting out a question before they realized the blunder they’d made. They can’t come here, Joe thought nervously. The department is used to Dulcie and me, and that’s fine. We keep our mouths shut. But wild, scatterbrained, half-grown kittens wanting to know everything? They don’t need to be anywhere near the station.

At that very moment two of the kittens peered out at their father and Mabel from deep beneath the bunk that occupied the holding cell, their buff coats blending well into the shadows. They were as motionless and silent as stuffed toys. They were thankful for the strong smell of cinnamon and chocolate and the stink of the holding cell itself that they hoped had hidden their own scent from their father as he’d passed by.

They had not come through the front door as Joe had, padding in behind the skirts of the woman detective.

Up on the department’s roof, they had found the open, barred window that looked down into the cell.

“Here we go,” Striker had said, slipping in through the bars. Buffin had looked with trepidation at the long leap down to the bunk’s thin mattress. Striker had gone first, had waited until Mabel was talking on the phone and then slipped in between the bars, hitting the mattress in a flying leap. Quickly Buffin followed. Now, in the far corner beneath the cot they were out of their father’s sight.

All the officers had vanished into the conference room where, even with the door pushed closed, the kittens could smell coffee and hear the mumble of voices. They watched Joe drop from Mabel’s counter, approach the door, and casually lie down beside it with his ear to the crack.

Max Harper didn’t waste much time at roll call. He went over the details of the stolen Jeep that was wrecked in front of the Damens’ house; that bit of news drew angry comments, both because it was the Damens’ house and because the perp had gotten away. Joe didn’t need to see into the room to know that the officers sat at the big table, papers and electronic notebooks scattered around them, and most with freshly poured coffee. The chief was quickly into the rest of the car thefts, but soon turned the meeting over to Detective Garza, for the numbers, models, and makes of the cars, which young Officer Bonner recorded on his laptop. They went over which cars belonged to tourists, how many were local vehicles. The square-faced Hispanic detective read off a list of what had been stolen from each car that wasn’t driven away, how each car was broken into, and the few that were able to be hot-wired and so actually stolen. Dallas hadn’t had much sleep, working the street during the predawn hours. He had cleaned up at Joe’s house, he was clean shaven, thanks to Clyde’s razor. He no longer looked as if he’d just rolled out of bed, as he had when Ryan served him a quick breakfast. Joe had to smile because he was wearing Clyde’s newest T-shirt.

“These guys are mostly amateurs,” Max was saying, “yet look at the number of cars they’ve stolen. Looks like three or four have the devices or phone apps, and the know-how to use them on the newer cars. Who knows how many others there are, just to do breakins or hot-wire older cars. We’ve got twelve older Jeeps reported missing, those are easy pickings—a few professionals and maybe a dozen or more to do breakins, and to drive the stolen cars out of the village. Question is, to where?”

Dallas looked over at Max. “An antiques dealer called in half an hour ago about a missing white BMW. Robert Teague?”

Several officers, who knew Teague, nodded.

Brennan said, “Teague was dating Barbara Conley.”

A few officers laughed. Dallas said, “Half the town was dating her.” He gave them the description and license of the BMW. “I went on over, talked with Teague, he was pretty upset. He lives in the area the thieves were working, said he left a valuable tea set, some kind of very old antique porcelain, in the back of the car.”

“Parked outside overnight?” Crowley said. “That was smart.”

“No. It was in the garage,” Dallas said. “He told me he drove up to the city yesterday to sell a few pieces of china for a friend. He spotted this tea set at the dealer’s, which Teague appraised at about thirty thousand but that he picked up for much less. Said he got home late, he was tired. Instead of carrying the box in the house he locked it in the car, locked the car in the garage. He thought it would be as safe there as in the house.

“He gets up in the morning, the car’s gone and the box with it. And no sign of a breakin.” No one had to say the thief, maybe at some earlier time, had used an electronic device to record the opening mechanism for the garage door.

“Apparently,” Dallas said, “the thief opened the car door all right, but his device wouldn’t start the car.” Dallas shook his head. “Teague, in a hurry last night, forgot about the concierge key he kept hidden on a wire under the seat.”

The concierge key, Joe thought, the key with no electronic signals. So when he pulls into a fancy restaurant he can give the attendant that key without electronic features that can be copied. He must have thought no one ever thinks to look for that. Last night, he goes on to bed, the key right there in his car. Human inventions are a wonder—until something goes wrong. Look at the world of computers … is nothing safe anymore?

But worst of all was the fact that Joe Grey knew where the BMW was and that information needed to reach the department. He still didn’t know how to report it without putting the sleuth within seconds of Joe’s own house at three in the morning on a stormy night when no human would be out on the streets except the thieves, or some nearby neighbor, like Clyde.

“So far,” Max said, “we’ve picked up three perps. And we have Ryan’s rough description of the guy driving the wrecked car. Some departments think there are more than a dozen members; but if they’re stashing the cars somewhere close, then moving them later, even three or four men could take down a dozen cars or more in one night. How many home garages have these people rented or made deals for? Given two or three days, as they’re doing up the coast, that many cars each night, that’s three dozen cars, some broken into and left, maybe a dozen stolen. Those are the numbers we’re getting from Watsonville, Santa Cruz, Sonoma.”

Max wrapped it up quickly. When Joe heard feet shuffling and chairs pushed back, he beat it down the hall and into Max’s office. Leaping to the desk, he didn’t see two pale shadows race soundlessly in behind him and under the credenza where Joe had often hidden, long ago, when he was still wary of being seen.

Under the credenza, Buffin and Striker smiled. So far, so good.

They hadn’t been able to hear much from the conference room. Leaving the holding cell, they had crouched below Mable’s counter where she wouldn’t see them without leaning over and looking straight down. They had waited nervously until Joe Grey pulled back from the crack beneath the door and fled down the hall. Like shadows they had followed him.

All in the timing, Striker thought boldly as they slid through Max’s door behind Joe and into the shadows. All with the grace of the great cat god, thought Buffin with more humility as he crowded close to his brother.

They knew the office layout from listening to Joe’s tales; they had only prayed that Joe wouldn’t slip under the credenza with them. But he wouldn’t; they knew their pa made himself at home in Max’s office. Peering out, they watched Joe leap to the bookcase and settle in among stacks of files and manuals behind the chief’s desk. When Max Harper and Dallas came in, the kittens pressed deeper still into the shadows.

In the bookcase Joe Grey, licking icing from one white paw, watched the officers casually. He hadn’t a clue that the kittens were in the room, all he could smell was cinnamon, and the clean, horsey scent of Harper’s boots. Detective Davis came in behind Dallas; she was, as usual, the only one in uniform. She and Dallas sat at either end of the couch, their papers, laptops, and two clipboards spread out between them.

Davis looked at Max. “Who was the friend that Robert Teague sold the china for, when he made that run up to the city?”

“Barbara, the hairstylist he was dating,” Max said. “Why, what do you have?”

“Nothing. Just curious. She gets around, doesn’t she?”

Max smiled. “Teague said this was china Barbara’s mother had left her, said the pieces were rare and expensive, two hundred years old. Said she’d never liked them. He said the market was good now, and she’d rather have the money.”

They had pretty well covered, in roll call, the locations and number of cars broken into and robbed, or stolen. That information would now, thanks to Officer Bonner, be on all the officers’ computers. They were discussing the gang’s mode of operation and waiting for more reports from men still on the street, new reports on other cars vandalized or missing, property damage from the storm itself, and reports on anyone injured. They had Scotty’s report on Voletta Nestor, the old woman living below the Pamillon estate.

“He took her to the hospital,” Max said, “brought her home and got her settled. He was … up at Kate’s. When the wind got bad he went up to check on the cat shelter, he knew she was alone up there.”

Dallas smiled. “About time he found someone. Ryan should be pleased.” Ryan was always matchmaking for her uncle, but so far no one had come up to Scotty’s standards. If more officers had been present, they wouldn’t have discussed private matters.

“Voletta Nestor shouldn’t be living alone up there, either,” Davis said. “She can hardly get around. She’s a Pamillon, part of that big family. Even if they are all at odds, have all moved away, you’d think someone would help her.”

“None of the Pamillons want anything to do with her,” Max said. “You hear a lot of rumors. I don’t know what the real story is.”

For years the Pamillon estate had stood partially in ruins while heirs squabbled over selling it. None of them, nor even their attorneys, could sort out the tangle of various trusts and wills to a point where the property could legally be sold. It was Kate Osborne’s attorney who finally made sense of the bequests, distributions, land descriptions, and overlapping amendments to make a sale possible.

Kate had the money, the Pamillon family was tired of bickering, and she bought at once. The day she signed the final papers, she signed a trust donating ten acres to CatFriends for their new shelter—to care for starving cats, cats that had been abandoned when the economy took a sharp downturn, when so many folks lost their homes and, too often, simply left their pets behind. Joe Grey couldn’t understand people who would abandon a pet. The tomcat might not be much for religion but he knew there was a hell, all fire and brimstone. And that there was a special place in it for people who threw away a member of their family. He was licking the last fleck of cinnamon from his paw when, over that sweet scent, he caught the faintest aroma of cats. Young, male cats. At the same moment, Max’s private line rang.

Max picked up, listened, then, “You’re sure they’re dead? Get out of there, Charlie. Get out now!” At this point, he switched on the phone’s speaker. “Are you carrying?”

“I’m out, I’m nearly to my car. Yes, I’m carrying.”

“Get in the car, lock yourself in. If you see anyone, take off fast.”

She didn’t need to be told those things. But she wasn’t going to go anywhere and miss seeing the killer; she didn’t tell Max that. She said, “I’m parked three blocks north,” and she clicked off.

Immediately Max put out the alarm and barked out half a dozen names. Joe heard officers racing down the hall for their squad cars, heard the shriek of the ambulance from the fire department only blocks away; Joe was headed for the door behind Max and the two officers when he skidded to a halt.

The shadows beneath the credenza smelled of young tomcats, his young tomcats. Four blue eyes peered out at him, frightened but defiant. Joe sat down. He looked at the kittens.

They crept partway out from under the credenza, their heads down, ears and tails down, looking more browbeaten than he’d ever hoped to see.

He had fully intended to scold them, to give them all kinds of hell. But what good would it do? And after that, what? What was he going to do with them? Take them home, and miss the first part of what appeared to be a murder investigation? He wanted to know if Charlie was all right. He wanted to see the victims before the coroner got busy on them.

He could send the kittens home. He doubted they’d ever get there, he knew they’d follow him. Neither Buffin nor Striker said a word. Neither kitten would look at him.

“Come on out of there.”

The kittens crept out and sat guiltily before their father, their ears still down, their tails tucked under, waiting for their scolding. Joe’s heart pounded with anger—while at the same time he tried hard not to laugh.

How could he be mad? Maybe he had fathered a couple of bold little cop cats; he’d been wondering how soon they’d take matters into their own paws.

“You will follow me,” he said sternly. “You will stick to me like syrup to whiskers.” He had to get them out of the station without being seen passing the front desk, prompting Mabel to make a fuss over them. He wanted to get to the crime scene, and these two would sure slow him down.

“Oh, what the hell!” Joe said. “Come on.”

Peering out into the hall, he found it empty. He cocked an ear and the kittens drew close to him. He sped out and to the counter, both kittens crowding him, the three hugging the wall of the counter. They could hear Mabel on the phone. “No, sir, Captain Harper is not available. Would you like his voice mail?” They could see, through the glass entry, a civilian woman approaching, wheeling a baby in a stroller. The instant she entered, backing against the door to push the stroller through, the three cats fled past them. Joe still wanted to scold the kittens, but he couldn’t, they were already suffering from their own guilty consciences. And he had to admit he was proud of them. They had gone off on their first adventure, they’d had the chutzpah to come right on into the station. He knew he’d regret this, but what else could he do? Buffin and Striker had wanted adventure. Well, they were going to get their first taste.

It was earlier that morning when Charlie Harper pulled her Blazer into a tight parking place a block from the beauty salon, a lucky find where a car had just pulled out. The time was eight-thirty, folks coming into the village to go to work or heading for the several popular breakfast restaurants. Areas of the village had their lights back, the windows bright, other shops flat and dim among fallen trees and work crews. She was still trying to decide whether to have her long, red, kinky hair shaped and trimmed as usual, or to get it cut really short, just feathered around her face. That would be easier to take care of, but would Max like it?

The salon was closed on Mondays, though sometimes Barbara took a few early-morning clients. It was a small shop, just the two hairstylists and the owner-beautician, Langston Prince. She’d always been amused at Langston’s fancy name, and by the austere and impeccable manners of the tall, thin, bespectacled gentleman.

Leaving her car on a residential block, she walked along the edge of the street over pine needles and well-packed earth to where lighted shops began. Max hadn’t come home this morning after departing the house in the small, dark hours. He had called later from the Damens’ to fill her in on the fallen tree and the wrecked car. Would the thieves spend two or three days in Molena Point as they had before, then move on to any number of towns up and down the coast—their agenda as neatly laid out as a preplanned summer vacation? She wondered if they sold the newer cars in the States or overseas. She supposed the older ones were dismantled and sold for parts. Turning into the courtyard that led to the salon, she headed past potted geraniums and flowering bushes to the open stairway, past a little charity shop, a camera shop, a small but exclusive cashmere shop—and two empty stores with For Rent signs in the windows, thanks to the downturn in the economy.

The stairs were tiled in a pale blue glaze, and with an intricate wrought-iron rail leading to the second-floor salon that rose above the two, single-storied wings that enclosed the patio. She could hear music from above, an old Glenn Miller instrumental. Her hairdresser, blond, buxom Barbara Conley, liked the forties bands of the last century, and that suited Charlie fine. As she stepped in, the recording began to play a Frank Sinatra number. The soft ceiling lights were on, and in the back, brighter lights shone over Barbara’s station.

Moving on back, Charlie stopped abruptly. Her hand slid beneath her open vest to her handgun. She could smell the residue of gunpowder.

The client’s big, adjustable chair was empty. Barbara lay sprawled on the floor beside it, her male customer fallen across her, their smocks and clothes soaked with blood, his glasses lying broken, his unfinished haircut shorter on one side. Shop owner Langston Prince, getting a quick haircut before Barbara’s appointments arrived.

Had someone already been in here when they opened the salon? Or had the killer slipped in behind them? A chill shivered through her as she eased against the nearest wall, looking around her.

There were two bullet wounds in Barbara’s chest, oozing blood. The shot that had killed Langston had torn through his throat. The blood and ripped flesh sickened her. Backing along the wall, she scanned the shop. The doors to the inner office and two storerooms were closed. No footprints marring the freshly waxed floor, no smears of blood. Drawing her Glock, she eased toward the front door, her heart pounding until she was through it again and outside. Her back to the building, she scanned the patio below then headed down the stairs, her gun still drawn.

She fled across the patio into the recessed doorway of the camera shop, stood watching the courtyard and stairs, watching the street as she slipped her phone from her pocket and hit the single digit for Max’s private line.

At MPPD, as Max and his officers raced for their cars, Joe Grey slipped out behind them, the kittens pressing against him. Moving south along the sidewalk close to the walls of the small shops, hunching down whenever they passed a low window, Striker and Buffin were his shadows. They’re good kittens, Joe thought, still half amused and half angry.

At the new little tearoom, he paused.

A line of tan clay pots planted with red geraniums stood against the low window. “In there,” Joe said softly, “in the shadow.” The two young cats slipped in between the tall containers and the display window, crouching down, their tan color matching the pots so well that they were almost invisible. They watched Joe rear up, push open the door of the tearoom and slip inside. The door had flowered curtains, tied back with bows, and flowery curtains hung at the windows. An elderly brown cat lay curled on a window seat, sleeping so deeply that he didn’t even open his eyes when Joe entered.

There were no customers, the shop had just opened. He could hear voices at the back, beyond the counter and kitchen, an echo as if through an open back door, could hear thumps as if boxes were being unloaded. Leaping onto the front counter, he silently slipped the headset from the phone.

The kittens watched Joe Grey punch in a number, but through the glass they could hear only a few words—enough, though, to tell he was talking about them as he kept an eye on the back for anyone approaching.

“He’s talking to Mom,” Buffin said.

“Maybe not. Maybe she’s already looking for us,” Striker said. “Maybe he’s talking with Wilma.” Whatever the case, they were still in trouble, and their mother would be far angrier than their dad.

“I don’t care,” Striker said. “This is better than staying in the yard, with Mama watching us like leashed puppies.” They had seen the neighbors’ dogs pulling at their tethers, longing to be free.

The talking at the back of the shop ceased suddenly. Joe pushed the headset back into place and dropped softly to the floor. Racing for the door he pulled it open with raking claws and slid through. Slipping along the wall, he crouched between the pots beside Striker. The kittens were afraid to ask who he had called.

Dulcie had been searching, she had covered the neighborhood and the hill behind her house. Angry and worried, she was pushing in through her cat door to tell Wilma she was going to look farther away, was going to look for the kittens in the village, when the phone rang. She slid quickly into the kitchen, her coat covered with grass and the seeds of a dozen weeds. Usually she cleaned herself off rolling on the back-door mat before she entered. Now she just bolted through as she heard her housemate cross to the phone. On the second ring, Wilma answered.

Dulcie already knew where Joe would be. Twenty minutes ago she had heard sirens moving through the village, police cars and a medics’ van. By now Joe would be at the scene, whatever had happened. Were the kittens there, too? Wandering the roofs alone, had they heard the emergency vehicles and gone bolting off after them?

Had they already found Joe, were they with him? Lashing her tail, angry that she had fallen asleep and allowed them to slip out, she was filled with guilt, too. They were too young to be out on their own, they hadn’t learned all the dangers of the village, they hadn’t learned nearly enough about cars or about strangers, they might be bold but they were still innocent. Cursing her own neglect, she galloped into the living room where Wilma had answered the call.

Courtney sat on the desk, her orange, black, and white softness pressed close to Wilma, her ear to the phone beside Wilma’s cheek, listening, her blue eyes wide and innocent. She hadn’t sneaked out of the house while Wilma and Dulcie slept. Dulcie wondered if the little calico had seen those two leave. Had seen, and had kept her kitty mouth shut?

On the phone, Wilma said, “Hold on,” and she turned on the speaker. “It’s Joe, he’s in a café by the station, he only has a minute. The boys are with him, he said not to worry.”

“They’re sticking to me like glue,” Joe said. “I’ll take good care … Gotta go, someone’s coming,” and the phone went dead.

Dulcie knew they were headed for the crime scene. She knew that Joe would keep the kittens out of the way, and safe; he was always careful not to be seen by the law. If cats are conspicuous at a scene, and then within hours or a day an anonymous call comes in, a tip from the snitch, that was not a good combination.

It will be all right, she told herself. Whatever happened, the danger’s over now. There was no need for her to show up, one more cat who might be seen, making the cops wonder. Instead she wandered the house, repeating to herself, They’re fine, the danger’s over, they’ll just watch from cover. But while Wilma made herself a soothing cup of tea over the open fire, and Courtney sat on Wilma’s desk clawing at the blotter, her calico body taut and uneasy, Dulcie paced nervously. Even if the police were there and Joe and Striker and Buffin would be safe, she felt that something was yet to happen. As if somehow her boy kittens were edging toward trouble.

Kate Osborne, leaving the small caretaker’s apartment in the CatFriends shelter, headed down to the vet’s to leave three rescue cats, and then to the hairdresser to meet Charlie for breakfast; for a few moments she sat in her car warming it up, tucking a scarf into the throat of her sweatshirt against the morning chill. Her two daytime volunteers had already arrived, were feeding the rescues and cleaning their cages. The petting and grooming sessions would come later, after the kennels were immaculate and the cats all fed. Neither woman’s home had had serious wind damage, only a few fallen branches, but they said trees were down all across the village.

Sitting in the Lexus, turning on a soft CD to calm the yowling cats, she could see that Voletta’s blinds, in the left-hand bedroom, were drawn. She supposed she should go down the hill, take her some breakfast, but maybe she was still sleeping after last night’s injuries. Scotty said she could get around all right in the walker. Voletta was a strong old woman. How many times had Kate seen her wandering the overgrown estate with its tumbled rocks and fallen walls? Kate liked to walk the ruins, too, but Voletta was always surly if they met. “You shouldn’t be walking up here, Ms. Osborne, this is Pamillon property.”

“It’s mine, now,” Kate would say. “Had you forgotten?” She couldn’t bring herself to be falsely polite to the old lady. Even if Kate were only cutting a few roses from the estate’s wild-growing bushes, Voletta would scold her.

Kate’s hair appointment was just after Charlie’s. Her short trim wouldn’t take long, and they’d have a late breakfast at the Swiss Café, if the power was on. Parking at the vet’s, she took two carriers to the door and went back for the third. Two of the scrawny rescues had been brought in last night before the winds grew fierce, the third cat early this morning, found by a paper deliveryman, the old cat shivering, ice-cold and very hungry. They had been fed and warmed up, but all three needed to be examined by Dr. Firetti and have their shots before they could join the shelter community.

The clinic wasn’t open yet but when she pulled up to the door and rang the bell John Firetti answered. Tanned, with a boyish face despite his years, brown hair cut short above a high hairline, a kind smile, a hug for Kate, and gentle words for the three frightened rescues. A man who would never look old, not with that happy, caring grin. No wonder Dulcie’s kittens liked John so much; whenever he visited, the boy kits were all over him roughhousing and clowning, while Courtney, in the background, rolled over and flirted.

When he took the cages in, Kate headed for the hairdresser, thinking about the thefts and the storm. She knew a tree had fallen on the Damens’ roof, she had talked with Ryan earlier; she was thankful that Joe was safe, that everyone was all right. She was tempted to stop for a moment, take a look at the damage; but the street would be filled with cops working the wrecked car, or maybe with Ryan’s crew already cutting and clearing away the tree. Life, Kate thought, was a poker game: good luck sometimes, and sometimes not so much; all an inexplicable and surprising mix.

She thought of Scotty, of all the years they’d known each other, and not until these last few weeks had a sudden spark of real interest begun; though both were still a bit shy, both still holding back. Where would this lead, this slow, careful, yet for Kate heart-pounding relationship? Neither of them had ever been deeply serious about anyone. Kate, when she married Jimmie Osborne, had thought she was in love; but that was not the real thing, that partnership hadn’t lasted long before she knew the real Jimmie. That painful marriage was why, from the time she left him, she had been so wary of getting involved with anyone else. She certainly didn’t have Kit’s wild, head-over-heels exhilaration, the way the impetuous tortoiseshell had fallen at once, paws over ears, for red tabby Pan. Kit was so joyous, so certain that this was the moment, this meeting was the spark that would ignite the rest of her life—of both their lives. In Kit’s case, it looked like she’d been right.

Kate thought about Scotty, last night, how quick and efficient he had been getting Voletta Nestor down to the hospital, carrying her out to his pickup, the wind blowing so hard it made her frizzled gray hair stand out every which way, wind had rocked the heavy truck so it nearly skidded off the road. Kate had watched them from Voletta’s house as they descended the narrow lane toward the village; hastily she had cleaned up the mess in the bedroom then had fought her way back through the wind to the safety of the cat shelter, to calm the frightened and nervous cats.

First thing this morning she had called Voletta’s niece, she told Lena that Voletta had been in the hospital, she described the extent of the wounds just as Scotty had described them to her on the phone from the emergency ward. Lena had sounded shocked and distraught. She said she would be down before noon, and that she would stay as long as Voletta needed her. She wanted to know what she could bring. A walker? A wheelchair? Yes, she would be alone, she said nervously. She said she had no one to help her, but something in her voice was hesitant and uncertain.

Lena was about fifty, she was surely responsible enough to take care of Voletta. Kate had met with her several times when she was trying to buy Voletta’s five acres. A small, light-boned woman like Voletta herself, but with smooth complexion, brown hair cut in bangs and straight to the shoulders. A quiet, hesitant woman, she seemed so shy, her voice as soft as that of a young girl. Still, Lena had been strong enough in the sales discussions, siding with her aunt. The cranky old lady had no intention of selling and Lena had been bold in backing her up, cool and emphatic suddenly, as forceful as Voletta herself.

Coming down Ocean Avenue into the village, Kate started to turn onto the side street that led to the beauty salon but she halted abruptly.

The street was blocked with police cars. Charlie’s red Blazer was parked just beyond where officers were stringing crime scene tape across the wide entry to the courtyard. Her stomach turned when she saw the coroner’s van, Dr. Bern’s van, parked inside the courtyard at the bottom of the steps that led up to the beauty salon. Two cops stood at the top of the stairs. She caught a glimpse of Dr. Bern inside. She sat in her car shaky and chilled. Charlie had had the only early appointment. Charlie, and Barbara Conley, their hairdresser, would have been in there alone.

Speeding on two blocks to the first parking place she could find, she skidded in at an angle, jumped out, and ran, she was ice-cold deep down inside. As she reached the patio, the coroner was coming down the tiled stairs. Behind him, four stern-faced young medics came carrying two stretchers, one behind the other. Each stretcher sagged with a wrapped body.

Sick and shaken, Kate spun around searching for Charlie, for her wild red hair and vibrant smile. Looking and not finding her she felt more and more hollow. She didn’t dare go to Dr. Bern, didn’t dare go to his van, didn’t want to see what was there. When she couldn’t find Charlie, she sought among the officers for Max Harper.

There: his back to her, Levi’s, boots, western shirt. He was talking with someone. He was so tall and the way he was standing blocked her view, she couldn’t see … she ran …

She stopped, and started to breathe again.

Charlie stood close to Max, the two deep in serious discussion. Max held a clipboard, taking notes. Charlie was all right, she wasn’t one of the bodies on a stretcher. Kate broke in between them, threw her arms around Charlie trying not to cry.

Charlie held her, both of them shivering. “It’s … Barbara,” Charlie said. “Barbara’s dead. And Langston Prince. They were … I found them shot.” Charlie tried to sound steady, to stay steady in front of Max. “I just walked in and—” She stopped, pressed her fist to her mouth. Behind them, the medics were sliding the stretchers into the coroner’s van. “I just …” Charlie was saying when a yowl like a cat cry came from the roof above, loud enough to draw the attention of every officer present.

Staring up, Kate and Charlie could see no animal, no shadow among the cluster of metal air intakes and protruding vents. But they knew that voice. Charlie looked at Max. “Are we done, can I … ?”

“Go,” Max said, frowning, watching the roof. He got edgy whenever he saw or heard a cat around a crime scene. Charlie and Kate ran up the stairs, swung over the rail, and along the one-story roof to the metal pipes—but now there was only silence. They called softly, “Kitty? Kitty? Come, kitty,” in deference to the men below.

They found Joe and the two kittens crouched among the tangle of air ducts, Striker holding his paw up, blood flowing from his pad, the buff youngster looking frightened, and ashamed because he had cried out. The cats were silent now, staring up at Charlie and Kate wanting help, Joe Grey’s eyes fierce with the need to hurry.

Kate, pulling off her scarf, wrapped the cut paw. Charlie picked Striker up, cradling him as Kate picked up Buffin and Joe Grey, father and son draping themselves across her shoulders. She knew Joe wouldn’t stay here, and they couldn’t leave Buffin alone, she didn’t want to think of the trouble he could cause.

Coming back over the roof and down the stairs, every officer watching them with their passel of cats, they ran for Charlie’s Blazer to head for the veterinary hospital, and to hell with what the cops thought. Passing Max, he looked at the blood-soaked scarf. “How bad is it? You need help?” And he gave Charlie a deeply puzzled look. Why were Joe Grey and his kittens there, what were they doing there? One was hurt, but why take all three to the vet?

“Not too bad,” Charlie said coolly. “Just a lot of blood.”

Max studied Charlie again, an unsettling gaze. “Call me on my cell if you need anything, we’ll be securing the two victims’ houses,” and he turned away, frowning.

Dulcie paced the living room trying to ignore Wilma’s glances. Joe had said Striker and Buffin were fine, but that didn’t keep her from worrying nor did it ease her anger that they had sneaked off and that he hadn’t brought them straight home. She thought of hawks, of stray dogs, of skidding cars.

“They’re growing up quickly,” Wilma said. “Wanting adventure just as you did at that age—just as you still do,” she said softly. Having encouraged Dulcie to wait, not go chasing after the boy kittens, Wilma sat in a chair before the fire, Courtney in her lap, a book open before them, reading aloud one of James Herriot’s stories, about a lone little cat who had no home.

The house was dim, her electricity still off, the only brightness this morning was where the fire’s blaze lit the pages of the book and warmed the living room. Wilma had gotten to a part of the story that brought tears to Dulcie’s eyes and that made Courtney shiver when suddenly the lights came on. In a moment they heard the soft rumble of the furnace. At the same time, the phone rang. Dulcie leaped to the desk and pressed a paw to the speaker, making sure the volume was turned up. It was Lucinda.

“Is your power on yet? Did you weather the storm all right?”

“Power just came on,” Wilma said. “Yours is still out? Is Kit there, is she all right?”

“She’s fine,” Lucinda said, “but I worried all night. Yes, our power’s still out.”

“The neighbors have two pines down across the street,” Wilma said. “A real tangle. Lucky they hit the garage and not the house. The young couple was out looking at it, I expect they’ve called a tree service—if they can get one in this mess. Do you want to come down to breakfast? I’ll make pancakes … There’s no one else here,” she added, for Kit’s benefit.

“We’d love it,” Kit and Lucinda said together, Kit’s cry almost drowning Lucinda.

Wilma rose as Dulcie clicked off the phone. She put aside the book, tucked Courtney down again in the warm chair, and headed for the kitchen. In moments the two cats could hear the sound of cracking eggs and then the beater going, then soon the sound of Wilma setting the table—but suddenly Courtney was no longer in the chair. She was on Wilma’s desk looking out the window. She was not waiting for Kit and the Greenlaws, but peering across the street where the two pines had fallen.

“That man,” she said as Dulcie leaped up. “That same man again, watching our house.” She crouched lower, just her eyes and ears visible above the window frame. “Why is he watching? What is he watching?” The cloud-dulled sun rising behind Wilma’s house put the cats in shadow. Across the street, the fallen trees and broken branches made their own shadows among the damaged walls of the garage so little of the darkly dressed figure was visible. Dulcie was about to trot out to the kitchen and tell Wilma he was there when, again, the phone rang.

Wilma picked up the kitchen extension. On the desk, Dulcie hit the speaker. What she heard made her hiss and lift a paw as if to strike the tomcat at the other end of the line. “Oh, Joe! How could you take them there and not keep them safe?”

“I didn’t mean to bring them! If you’ll remember, I left them with you,” he said sharply. “The little brats followed me. I didn’t see them slip into the station. When a call came in for the medics and coroner, then I did see them. But what was I going to do? It was Charlie on the line, she’d walked into a murder. What else could we do but … ?”

“Oh,” Dulcie said more meekly.

Wilma said tensely, “Is Charlie all right?” Charlie Harper was Wilma’s niece, she was Wilma’s only family.

“Fine, Charlie’s fine,” Joe said.

“But,” Wilma said, “I thought she was going to the hairdresser …”

“It was the hairdresser,” Joe said. “Barbara Conley was shot, and the owner of the salon. Just the two of them in the shop.”

Wilma was silent. There was talk around the village about Barbara, and Langston Prince—but then, there was talk about Barbara and any number of men, some who lived in Molena Point and others whom no one seemed to know.

“She … Barbara had been giving Langston a haircut,” Joe said. “But right now we’re …” Joe’s voice went low, as if he saw another scolding coming. “Striker cut his paw. It isn’t bad but Charlie and Kate brought him to Dr. Firetti, he’s putting a little bandage on it. I’m in Charlie’s Blazer, on her cell phone … Dulcie, don’t be mad. He’s fine, he’s enjoying the attention.”

Dulcie was silent. Joe, at the other end of the line, heard only a hollow emptiness. She said, finally, “How did he hurt himself? He wasn’t in the middle of the murder scene? What was he doing? How bad is he? What does Dr. Firetti say?” She knew she sounded tightly wound. And all the while that she was trying not to scold, she and Wilma and Courtney watched the man across the street. She said, “I hope Buffin wasn’t hurt, too?”

“Buffin’s fine,” he said stiffly. She needn’t be so judgmental. “He’s having the time of his life looking in at all the other cats. Kate’s giving him a tour.”

Dulcie sighed. “Bring them straight home when you’re done.” She knew how bossy she sounded. And what good was it to scold? She could hear in Joe’s voice his dismay that this had happened. She’d get the details later. The man across the street hadn’t moved, blending into the shadows of the fallen trees. As the clouds thinned and the sun lifted higher they could see more of his face: wide cheekbones, straight, thin nose, and narrow chin. He wore a cap, with pale hair sticking out. When the Greenlaws’ car pulled up, he slipped back among the branches, there was a ripple of shadow around the side of the shattered garage and he was gone.

Dulcie and Courtney watched the street in both directions but he did not reappear. Dulcie started for the cat door, wanting to follow from the roofs. Wilma picked her up and held her firmly. “Not this time. Let him go, Dulcie.”

Dulcie obeyed, startled at the unease in Wilma’s voice. They heard the back door open. Kit bolted into the kitchen ahead of Lucinda and Pedric; it seemed strange to see her without Pan, but the Firettis did need him just now, since Misto died. Wilma went to put the bacon in the microwave and pour pancake batter on the grill. Soon the smell of both filled the house, joining the scent of coffee.

But Dulcie’s mind wasn’t on breakfast. It was partly on the vanished man and, most of all, on her injured kitten. How soon would they be home? Kate and Charlie were with them, and Dr. Firetti would take good care of Striker, yet still she wanted to race over the roofs to her child.

Joe is there, she thought. And so is Pan. Striker doesn’t need his mama racing to comfort him after every little mishap. Yet even as she lapped up her pancakes, her mind was at the veterinary hospital, imagining needles and blood and the big metal examining table. She watched Wilma, who was nervous, too. About Striker? Or about the man casing their house? Did Wilma know more about him than she had yet told them?

Shortly after breakfast, while Lucinda cleared the table and did the dishes, Wilma turned on the phone’s speaker and called the clinic. An aide switched the line to John Firetti.

“Striker’s fine,” John said. “He had a local sedative so I could put three stitches in his paw. They’ll pick him up in a few hours, when that wears off so he can walk steadier.”

“Can he walk, on the wound?” Wilma said, glancing at Pedric who sat before the fire, intently listening.

“If he’s careful,” John said. “It isn’t bad, but it will take a few weeks to heal fully.” When they’d hung up, Wilma and Dulcie looked at each other.

“He’s a youngster,” Wilma said, “he’s going to get a scratch now and then.”

“It’s more than a scratch!” Dulcie snapped. “Three stitches!” But then she jumped to the desk beside Wilma and rubbed her face against her housemate, apologizing, loving her. Wilma picked her up, cuddling her. Dulcie knew she shouldn’t be mad. Striker would be all right, she was just edgy. And now, before the fire, Pedric began a tale—to comfort Dulcie and Courtney, to keep them all from worrying. But the tale was for his own Kit in a very special way. Kit loved Pedric’s stories, the tortoiseshell was all about stories, she had been ever since she was a tiny orphan following the wild band of talking cats, trying to cadge enough to eat from their leavings and shyly listening to the ancient tales they told. None of the big, wild cats had wanted Kit, but traveling at the edge of their clowder, she felt protected from larger predators. When they gathered at night, she crouched close in the shadows, hidden but safe, listening to their tales and memorizing every one.

Now, Pedric’s story of long-ago Ireland brought a keen brightness to Courtney’s eyes, too. There was a band of wild speaking cats in that legend, living among the Irish downs. It was a long tale, and two others about speaking cats followed. When Pedric finished with the classic “they lived happy forevermore,” Courtney put a paw on his hand. “Now tell about our wild feral band, about the speaking cats that live up in the ruins.” She looked at Kit. “Were those the ones you lived with when you were a kitten? Can we go to see them?”

“Who told you about the Pamillon cats?” Dulcie asked gently.

“Striker did. He heard you and Pa talking.”

Dulcie wished the kittens didn’t catch every casual remark, every whisper. She’d hoped they wouldn’t want to make that journey to the wild, feral band until they were older; she had started to explain about the clowder cats when a car pulled up the drive.

In a moment the plastic cat door banged open and Buffin came bounding through, then Joe Grey. The kitchen door opened behind them and Charlie came in carrying Striker tucked against her shoulder, his bandaged paw tangled in her red hair. Kate was last, carrying a little box of bandages, medicine, and instructions. Dulcie leaped up on the table to greet her child. When she sniffed at Striker’s bandage and the strange medicine smells, and then nuzzled him, Striker looked happier. But it was the expression on Joe Grey’s face that startled her.

Joe did not look guilty for letting Striker get hurt. He looked keenly excited.

“What?” she said.

“Coming back down Ocean,” he told her, “we turned on my street to see how Ryan and Scotty were doing with the tree removal. The tree’s all down, and cut up. They were loading it in the truck. Ryan has plastic sheeting over the broken roof. The side street is still blocked, officers still going over the broken-in cars and talking to the residents. But the house on the corner?” Joe said, looking at Kit. “The house where you and Pan saw the BMW hidden? They’ve got crime tape around it, too. Harper’s truck is there and two squad cars. The swinging doors to the garage are open and the car is gone.”

“Oh my!” Kit said. “Did the officers break the lock and find the garage empty? Did the thief come back and drive it off before they ever got there? Or have the cops already returned the car to its owner or had it towed to the compound?”

“Maybe,” Wilma said, “the car thefts aren’t why Harper and Dallas are there.”

“Why, then?” Joe said. “They had to get a warrant to search the house, had to get the judge out of bed early …” He watched Charlie untangle her long hair from Striker’s bandaged paw.

“That house,” Charlie said, “is part of the murder scene.”

They all looked at her.

“Barbara Conley lived there, she rented it two or three months ago. Didn’t you know that? Her rent, where she’d been living, had nearly doubled.”

This embarrassed Joe. He lived only two blocks away, he thought he and Ryan and Clyde knew everything that went on in the neighborhood. They did know that someone had moved in, late one evening—a small rental truck, a few boxes, minimal furniture. A curvy blonde, a couple of guys helping her. Joe had watched idly from his tower, and thought little of it. What was there to think? The house was a rental. He didn’t know Barbara Conley—sweet-scented beauty salons were not his hangout of choice. And Ryan might not have known Barbara at all, Ryan cut her own dark, blow-away hair, cut it after she’d washed the sawdust out.

“You sure, last night, there was a car?” Joe asked Kit. “Maybe we should have called Harper. But it was so damned risky.”

“Maybe,” Kit said, “we should call him now.”

“He knows your voice,” Joe said. “He knows Dulcie’s voice, and he sure as hell knows mine.”

“I can disguise my voice,” Kit said. “I can …”

But Courtney had already leaped to the desk. “Captain Harper doesn’t know my voice.” Courtney’s voice was quite different from Kit’s and Dulcie’s, her higher tones were still that of a youngster, a tender human teenager.

“You’ve never done this,” Joe said. “You don’t—”

“She’s listened to you make a call or two,” Dulcie said, lashing her tail. “Take her in the bedroom, Joe, show her how to use Wilma’s cell phone, help her with what to say.”

But Courtney scowled and lashed her own tail, she didn’t need to be told what to say, she knew what to tell Captain Harper.

Wilma’s “safe” cell phone lay on the nightstand, the old phone with no GPS, that Clyde had doctored, like Joe Grey’s phone, with a false identification. Courtney, hopping on the bed, and with very little instruction from her father, pawed in the single dial for Max Harper.

She told Harper, in her little-girl voice, that she’d seen the police “investigating that house on Dolores Street. I saw something there last night that you might want to know about. In the wind, around four in the morning, a car pulled in that driveway. A man got out, unlocked the garage, pulled the car in, and padlocked the doors again.

“He stood by the house, where the bedroom is, then he went in the front door, he had a key for that, too. He was in there about five minutes then came out again, locked the door and went away. I thought maybe he was visiting, that lady has a lot of company, but then when I saw the police there …”

“Do you want to give me your name?” Max said. “Want to tell me where you live?”

“I’d rather not,” Courtney said. “My mother would say I was spying.”

Max was silent; he’d started to speak when Joe Grey reached out a paw and punched the disconnect.

“You did great,” he said, purring and licking Courtney’s ear. “You’re my big girl. My big, grown-up girl.” And that thought, while it made Courtney smile, sent a sinking feeling right to the middle of Joe’s belly. She was growing up. It seemed like the kittens had just gotten there, tiny little blind things, then soon little balls of fluff. And now look at them, look at his smart, beautiful daughter. All three kittens were growing up too fast, racing toward the time when they would leave home to make their own lives. And Joe Grey followed Courtney back to the living room feeling painfully sad—until he caught Kate’s glance and Charlie’s, and knew that their minds were on Buffin, on the amazement that had happened at Dr. Firetti’s.

Joe wasn’t yet ready to talk about that. Nor, it seemed, did Kate and Charlie want to discuss Buffin’s behavior this morning while Striker was having his paw tended. Maybe because none of them, maybe not even Buffin himself, knew quite what to make of his keen and peculiar interest in Dr. Firetti’s caged patients.

It had been just after Charlie walked in on the double murder and then Striker cut his paw, that Buffin discovered a new wonder. An amazement that filled his mind right up.

Charlie had parked her Blazer in front of Dr. Firetti’s clinic, its two older cottages joined into a large complex by the sun dome between. She got out carrying Striker with his bloody, wrapped paw. Kate carried Buffin snug across her shoulder but Joe Grey galloped ahead, a frown of worry in his yellow eyes.

The minute the tech behind the desk saw them and rang for Dr. Firetti, John appeared and took Striker from Charlie. Carrying the wounded kitten gently in his arms, he led them back into one of the examining rooms. The space had cages all around three walls, two long metal tables in the middle, and a counter and sink on the fourth wall beneath bright windows.

On the counter was a shallow round basket lined with a clean towel. Curled up comfortably was red tabby Pan; he looked up at his friends, frowned down at the look on Joe Grey’s face, and watched John Firetti unwrap Striker’s wounded paw. Since Pan’s father died, he spent considerable time in the clinic, he could not abandon the Firettis yet, he could only try to fill the empty place in their lonely household—except when the car thieves were at work, when, in the predawn hours while John and Mary slept, Pan and Kit and Joe Grey stalked the rooftops. Now, seeing the bloody scarf around Striker’s paw, Pan watched intently, his amber eyes filled with questions.

He didn’t leave his basket and approach. He remained where he was, watching as Joe Grey leaped to the metal table where John had unwrapped Striker’s paw. A cart stood beside the table, laid out with alcohol, swabs, bandages, local anesthetic, syringes, and more, an array that, Pan could see, made Joe Grey go queasy, made the gray tomcat’s ears drop and his pupils darken with alarm.

Joe had had his blood drawn once, maybe on this very table, to help save the life of one of the feral cats. He’d almost fainted at the sight of his own blood flowing into the glass tube. Now, he began to feel the same.

A tech had come in to help, a small, dark-haired girl, but John sent her away and told her to shut the door. He asked Charlie to scrub up, at the sink before the windows. Charlie often doctored her own dogs and cats and horses, sometimes under his telephone directions. Once the tech had gone, and humans and cats could talk freely, John wanted to know how Striker had cut his two pads so badly, and on what.

“A metal roof vent,” Joe Grey said, ashamed he’d let that happen.

“You’ll need a tetanus shot,” John told Striker. “You’re lucky not to have cut a tendon.” As he prepared the needle, Joe shut his eyes. For a tough, street-battling tomcat, his fear of a hospital was quite another matter. Joe Grey could whip the biggest German shepherd he’d ever met, but that sharp needle undid him. Young Striker, on the other hand, seemed quite in charge of himself. He hadn’t let out a sound since that one cry, on the rooftop, when he’d cut his paw.

But it was Buffin who was the most interested in the clinic. He gave John a loving look. John winked at him and then for a moment stood watching him as Buffin looked all around the hospital room, his eyes wide, studying with keen interest each cat or small dog in its cage. Some looked sick, some were bandaged, several were asleep.

“You kittens have had all your shots,” John said. “The few cats who are infectious are in a separate ward.” He glanced up at Kate. “You and Buffin want to look around?”

“Yes,” Buffin said immediately. “They are sick and hurt. But you can cure them.”

“I do my best,” John said. “I mean to heal your brother’s paw, if he will follow my instructions.” Kate, leaving Charlie to assist at the operating table, took the buff kitten on a little tour, carrying him slowly from cage to cage, pausing at each. Behind them John Firetti was softly asking Striker questions as he worked cleaning and disinfecting the paw’s two cut pads.

“How did this happen? This was a roof vent?”

“Something sticking up from the roof. A bunch of somethings where we were hiding, watching the cops.” Striker was very calm, the sight of his own blood didn’t seem to bother him. Joe watched his son with envy.

“There was a murder,” Striker said. “At the place where Charlie gets her hair cut. They were bringing two bodies out, all wrapped up. We ducked down behind those metal boxes and pipes on the roof and that’s when I hit my paw on a raw edge.” He watched without flinching, Charlie’s hands holding him gently as John began to put in the stitches. John was telling Charlie all the while where and how to stanch the blood, what to do to assist him. John had helped deliver the three kittens, they were special to him.

John Firetti had spent all his life, as had his father before him, keeping the secret of talking cats—and searching for a speaking cat or kitten among the band of ferals they fed, down at the seashore. They had never found such a wonder there—but John had discovered, early on, the talents of Joe, Dulcie, Kit, Pan, and at last Misto. Never had he and Mary thought they would have such a housemate as the elderly, golden cat, and the end of Misto’s life had come far too soon.

Now as John and Charlie worked on Striker’s paw, across the room Kate’s attention was on Buffin; the kitten knew these were not speaking cats, he didn’t try to talk to them. But, “This tabby,” he told Kate, “he’s healing, but his middle still hurts. Tell Dr. Firetti that his middle hurts, he will want to know that.” Buffin didn’t know yet what one’s insides were called, but he could sense the hurt. He looked in at a Siamese with a splint and a long white bandage on his broken leg. The cat was lying patiently, but in his eyes Buffin saw how tense he was.

“He wants out, he wants to run and he can’t. But his leg is healing,” he said softly, looking up at Kate. Resting easy in Kate’s arms, he said, “What would cats do, if they didn’t have humans to help them?”

“Some would die,” Kate said, trying not to show her amazement at the young cat’s observations. This kitten was sensing what human doctors might not be able to see. He looked in at a little fluffy dog who raised its eyes to him. “He’s lonely, Kate. I could stay in there with him while Striker is coming awake.”

Kate looked up at the doctor. John nodded, and she opened the cage. As Buffin settled in, the little dog grew brighter and snuggled up to him, licking Buffin and wagging his tail.

When Kate looked up, Pan was watching Buffin. He sat very alert on the hospital counter, she could almost read what he was thinking: What is this kitten, who seems to possess even more than our own special talent?

Now, as Dr. Firetti wrapped Striker’s paw in fresh bandages, Pan joined Joe Grey on the table. Joe, having tremulously watched the surgery, looked determined to regain his dignity. Pan, having lived with the Firettis for over three months, was used to the blood, the cutting and stitching. What the red tom was wondering was, What about Buffin and his strange observations? What skill does this kitten have, that is beyond even his gift of speech? He wondered if Buffin would speak to Dr. Firetti about the caged cats, about what he sensed. He wondered what this son of Joe Grey would be capable of, in his amazing life.

It was early that evening, just below the Pamillon estate, when Lena Borden arrived to take care of her aunt Voletta until her wounds healed. The sun had sunk behind the woods, night reaching down to quench the last glow across Voletta’s five acres that ran from the house down through the trees and on into land that might once have been pasture; land that was now rough with short-nibbled weeds, thanks to Voletta’s donkey and three goats. Kate watched from up the hill at the shelter. She had just finished feeding the rescue cats and had sent a young couple on their way with a pair of spotted kittens to replace their elderly Siamese whom they had lost to illness a month ago. All the paperwork was done, Kate had talked with their veterinarian, had visited their home, which turned out to have a delightful garden inside a large, catproof enclosure. She had even done a background check, which she knew would be clean. She was pleased with the match, the couple truly loved those kittens.

Now, standing at an open window, pushing her short blond hair back from her cheek, she saw Lena’s old white Ford station wagon making its way up the narrow road that branched off to Voletta’s cottage, the little lane narrowing as it ran on up into the woods behind the Pamillon mansion. Kate wasn’t thrilled to see Lena; the three times she had talked with her, while offering to buy Voletta’s place for enough so the old woman might move into a nice retirement home, Lena had at first been surly, then had gotten an almost frightened look in her blue eyes. Kate still wondered what that was about.

She watched Lena pull around the house on the gravel drive, to Voletta’s front door, though that entry was seldom used. Voletta Nestor and any occasional visitor parked at the back near the kitchen door. Lena stepped out, opened the trunk, hauled out a suitcase and a large duffel bag and set them on the porch. She was a pretty woman, her creamy complexion and straight-cut hair gave her the look of a young girl. Most of the time, she had the voice and the ways of a young girl, shy and uncertain.

This morning, after Scotty brought Voletta home from the hospital, Kate had taken her down some breakfast, had checked on her twice during the day, and had taken her a hot lunch. For this reason alone, she was glad to see Lena. Her visits to the old lady weren’t pleasant—Voletta was crankier than the donkey and goats that roamed her yard and tore up the neighbors’ gardens for miles around. Kate wondered how long Lena could tolerate them, as well as tolerate Voletta.

When Kate had offered to have Ryan Flannery’s carpenters fix Voletta’s falling-down fence to keep her animals in, Voletta’s response had been rude and hateful—the wandering goats and donkey still came up to push and nose at CatFriends’ outdoor shelters, upsetting the cats. They would keep coming, pushing at the heavy wire mesh until they tore up the shelter or until Ryan had built her own heavier fence to keep them out.

Lena dragged her luggage inside the front door and Kate saw a light go on in the right corner bedroom. Returning to her car she pulled it around the cottage to the back. From the shelter, you couldn’t see much on that side of the house, couldn’t see who came and went. If Lena had stopped for groceries she would unload them there, directly into the kitchen. Before Kate turned away, glancing up toward the ruins with its exposed living room and nursery where the two-story wall had long ago fallen, she saw three of the wild, clowder cats crouched at the broken-away edge of the nursery floor, looking down watching Lena.

The wall of those two front rooms had, years ago, been shattered by falling trees during a storm far worse than this year’s blow. The rotted trees still lay among the rubble, with green saplings growing up through them. Ryan’s crew was building supports in preparation for tearing apart and rebuilding that part of the mansion. As the three cats watched Lena, Kate thought they were whispering to one another.

Why would the ferals have any interest in Lena or Voletta—except to stay clear of the cranky old woman and the motley animals she tried to keep corralled within her rickety fence? Kate wondered if the ferals, in the storm, had heard Voletta’s window shatter and had come down from their new hiding place, curious, as Scotty took Voletta away in his car. Wondered if they had watched them return this morning, Scotty helping her inside in a walker. Ever since Ryan’s engineers had begun tramping the ruins, photographing and measuring, and then when the construction work started, the cats had stayed away. They had chosen for their new lair a northerly hillside above the estate, dense with boulders and cypress trees—one of their favorite early-morning hunting grounds and now a new temporary home.

“We don’t mind moving up there,” Willow had told Kate. “The carpenters are noisy, and when the machines are here we don’t want to be anywhere near them. When we do come down, to see what the men are doing, we stay here in the back away from the machinery.”

“It won’t be for long,” Kate told Willow, “and you’ll have your favorite places in the mansion back, only better.”

Cotton said, “We used to watch Voletta Nestor take her morning walks up among the ruins. Now she’s been hurt, I guess she won’t be doing that for a while.”

“Wandering,” Willow said, “as if she’s searching for something.”

“And other times,” Cotton said, “going right to where she keeps her special box.”

“Safe,” Willow said. “It’s a safe. When she goes there she puts in packages wrapped in brown paper. She keeps it locked—in a niche under the back kitchen stairs, and boards pulled over. But now, since you bought the property, she’s been taking packages out instead of putting them in.”

“How often did she do that, put packages in?”

“Every few weeks,” Willow said. “You weren’t around much then, we never thought to tell you. She’d go to town, bring home groceries. Later she’d walk up there, the little packages in her pockets.”

The ferals had watched Kate, earlier, as she went down to tend to the elderly lady. She had looked up at them and smiled, and they had switched their tails in greeting. It had surprised her that they would return to the mansion when Scotty, Manuel, and Fernando were working there; but this morning it was quiet work, no tractor or heavy equipment, just shovels and hand tools.

Ryan’s crew would make this part of the house whole again. It, like some of the other added-on wings, had not been as solidly constructed as the core interior—that main, old house was a ruggedly sturdy, four-bedroom retreat that even now needed only cleaning up, minor repairs, and new wiring and plumbing. None of the later additions, the front rooms and outbuildings, had been so strongly built, and these would be replaced. The basements and cellars were solid enough, Ryan had had an engineer examine them. “A fine foundation,” he had told her. Some of those underground spaces would be used for storage, but many would be left for the feral band, just as, outdoors, Ryan and Kate would leave the piles of old stone and rubble, and a number of strengthened storage sheds to afford shelter and hiding places.

Kate wasn’t sure what she would do with the renovated mansion. She had in mind a cat museum like the one she so loved in San Francisco. Paintings, sculpture, tapestries; that museum had originals by many famous artists. And she wanted rooms for art classes, too. The cellars and tunnels left for the ferals would be blocked from the public. Parking could be a problem, which was why she had wanted Voletta’s land. As dusk gathered, at the back of Voletta’s cottage the trees turned bright when the kitchen lights blazed on. Then lights in the living room, too, shining out on the rear yard. At the front of the house, the windows in the right corner bedroom were now dark.

She watched Scotty and their two carpenters, higher up the hill, putting their tools away, wrapping it up for the night. Scotty’s red hair and beard caught a last streak of vanishing sun. His big square hands were quick and capable as he loaded the tools in his truck. Watching him, a warmth touched her, a sense of his arms around her. The memory of her head on his shoulder; Scotty holding her as she’d cried against him, the day the old yellow tomcat died.

But a shiver chilled her, too. As much as she knew she loved him, this could never be permanent.

She wanted to stay with Scotty, she wanted them to be married, and she was certain that he did, too. But that could never happen. Not when she must lie to him, when she could never share her knowledge about the speaking cats. That confidence was ironclad among the few humans who did know the cats’ secret. And, with Kate, there was even more to keep hidden.

In the Harper marriage, Charlie knew the cats could speak, but Max didn’t. Charlie had to swallow back every accidental hint, every incriminating remark that might want to slip out. And Kate would have to do the same. She would have, too often, to lie to Scotty, and she would hate each deception. A solid marriage wasn’t meant to harbor secrets, marriage was meant for openness, the only secrets being those shared by both.

But, she thought, the lies have worked for Charlie, she has made them work. Though it was never easy. Too many times she had seen Charlie turn away from Max’s observing look, cross the room to refill their coffee cups, straighten the kitchen chairs, hunt in her pocket for a tissue, anything to distract from what might have been a misstep. Kate wondered if she could live like that with Scott Flannery, who seemed to conceal nothing, who held back no secret.

But thinking of living without Scotty was even more painful. Now, as Manuel and Fernando climbed in their truck and took off down the hill, and Scotty’s truck headed for the shelter, Kate turned away and went to start dinner in the kitchen of the little apartment. Two small filets, scalloped potatoes in the microwave, a salad. While she set the table, hearing Scotty’s truck pull up, her heart was pounding with conflicted thoughts, with the sight of him, tall and muscled, his flaming hair and neatly trimmed red beard. She could feel his hand in hers as they walked through the woods, or as he helped her install walkways and bridges in the big enclosures for the shelter cats.

These cats were not meant to be confined for long, they were meant to have homes. Or, if they were feral and had roamed wild and free, they would be returned to their own territory and looked after, from a polite distance, by the CatFriends volunteers. They would have had shots and been spayed, they would have water, and food besides the rats and mice they hunted, and would have secure outdoor shelters. Scotty understood that these wild cats that CatFriends had trapped were wary and frightened, and he was gentle with them.

She had watched Scotty around the ruins, how he would glance at the ferals, knowing they were wild. She could see his smile when they peered out at him, could see his interest in their shy ways. He always paid attention, as the men got to work with loud equipment, to how the cats would disappear, avoiding the very places the men meant to break and dig.

Now, as she watched Scotty come up the steps, moving on into the bathroom to wash up, she put the potatoes in the microwave, the steaks on the hot skillet, and the salads on the little apartment table.

“Those feral cats,” Scotty said, sitting down, “that band around the ruins. Will they stay at all, when we bring in more heavy equipment, bigger tractors and backhoes? Or will they leave for good, frightened and displaced? Where will they go?”

“There’s a lot of land,” she said. “Rocky places up in those trees, caves to hide and to den in. Places so far back in the woods, you can hardly see the mansion. I’m guessing they hunt there, in the early hours.”

“You know a lot about them,” he said, watching her.

“I’ve read a lot about ferals. And I know one thing, no cat wants to hunt down there at Voletta’s, intently stalking a rabbit hole, when that bad-tempered donkey and those three billy goats might come charging down on them.” She was interested that he cared, that he had thought about the cats’ fear of the workmen and heavy equipment—but then he startled her sharply:

“Wilma says there are pictures in the library of feral cats centuries ago. Pictures that look just like Dulcie’s calico kitten. I told her, that seems pretty strange. Wilma said it must be some special breed of that time, that the kitten is some kind of throwback.”

“Could be,” she said. “Genetics is a complicated science, I don’t begin to understand it all.”

“Pedric has seen the pictures. He thinks that kitten has been reincarnated,” Scotty said, smiling. “That’s his Scots-Irish blood, Pedric loves the old, mythic tales—we Scots are all storytellers.”

“Are you a storyteller?”

“I can’t make up the wild tales that Pedric does,” he said easily. But Kate wished, oh how she wished, that Scotty could believe those ancient stories—that he could believe all the wonders that surrounded him right here and right now, miracles that she knew to be true.

The stalker returned to Wilma’s the next night. This time he didn’t just watch her house, nor had he followed her as she shopped. He had waited out in the night until he was sure she slept, waited long after the reading light went out in her bedroom, until the house was dark.

Wilma and Dulcie and the kittens were sound asleep, tangled together in the double bed, Courtney’s paws in Wilma’s hair, Dulcie’s head on Wilma’s shoulder. Buffin was snuggled close to Striker, who was curled around his bandaged paw to protect it. Striker was the first to wake, raising his head, softly hissing. “There’s a noise. Someone …”

Wilma sat up, listening. Dulcie reared up beside her. “Someone’s out there,” the tabby whispered. They all could hear scraping noises at the front window. Dulcie slipped off the bed, stood tall on her hind paws, her tail twitching, her ears sharp. The kittens slid stealthily down beside her, everyone listening.

But now there was no sound. Only silence.

Then the sudden sharp clink of shattering glass.

In a moment they heard the front window slide open, then another sliding noise as if someone was climbing in over the sill.

Quietly Wilma rose, pulled on her robe, lifted her revolver from the nightstand, unholstered it, and slipped it in her pocket. The kittens watched her wide-eyed. Without a sound she opened the bedroom window and silently slid back the screen. She motioned the four cats through—but Dulcie didn’t want to leave her.

“Go,” Wilma said softly. “Go now. Up to the neighbor’s roof, out of the way in case of gunfire.”

Dulcie just looked at her. Wilma picked her up forcefully and dropped her out the window, down among the waiting kittens. Thin light from a quarter moon followed the cats as they climbed the neighbor’s honeysuckle vine. When they were gone, safe on the roof, Wilma crouched by the bed, her voice muffled by its bulk and covers, and softly called 911. Then she moved to the bedroom door listening.

The invader was in the living room, trying to open desk drawers. She heard him try the large, locked file drawers first, then pull the small drawers open, heard him rummaging as if he might be looking for the file-drawer key. But why, what did he think she had? She had nothing of real value that she’d ever kept in the house—well, except the Thomas Bewick book, the rare collector’s volume that she had at one time hidden in the secret compartment behind the files in the locked drawer. The book that she and Charlie had dug from among the Pamillon ruins.

But how would a burglar know about that? Or know its value? No one knew about the Bewick book except her closest friends. If that was Calvin Alderson’s son out there, the young man who had been watching her, how could he know about the handmade, one-of-a-kind volume that they’d found on the estate? What connection could Rick Alderson, or his father, have had to the Pamillons?

How could he know about that one volume printed differently from the rest of the edition, the one book that because of what the author had added to it, held a secret that must never be told? A book that, despite its considerable value, she had at last destroyed? How would he know any of the Pamillon secrets?

Quietly she slid the bedroom door open and moved down the hall toward the living room. Across the room he was still rummaging at the desk, his back to her. She watched him trying to jimmy the file lock on her nice cherry desk and that made her mad. “Stand up,” she said, cocking the revolver. “Turn around, hands laced on top of your head.”

He spun around, staring at the gun. A slim man. In the dark, backlighted by faint moonlight, she couldn’t see his face but it was the same man, the same wide, slanted shoulders, exactly like Calvin Alderson twenty years ago. Seeing the cocked gun in her steady grip he was still for only a second then spun around grabbing at the front door, turning the lock, jerking it open, and was gone. In that second she could have fired, could easily have killed him.

She let the hammer down slowly. She heard his footsteps pounding down the walk, then heard a car take off. Quickly she found a tissue, put it over her hand to open the door. She ran, chasing the car … a pale SUV. What make? She couldn’t tell. Nor, in the faint moonlight, could she see the license number. She was shocked to see Dulcie chasing it, too, running down the street. Oh, Dulcie! She was half angry, half filled with love to see Dulcie’s dangerous, insane effort. When the brown tabby at last lost the car and returned, Wilma grabbed her up, hugging her.

“It was a Subaru,” Dulcie said, “but I only got the first three numbers.” Wilma grabbed the desk phone and called back to the dispatcher. Then, carrying her gun cocked once more, she cleared the house, though she felt certain he’d been alone. When at last she let down the hammer and pocketed the weapon she picked Dulcie up again, hugging and loving her. “The kittens are still on the roof?”

“Yes,” Dulcie said. “What was he after? Why didn’t you shoot him?”

“He didn’t come at me or I would have. Think of all the legal fuss that would bring down on us, when he didn’t actually attack me.”

They waited sitting together until Officer McFarland arrived. A second squad car stopped briefly. From the driver’s seat, Officer Brennan asked her a few questions. He double-checked on the license, on the car’s description, then took off fast in the direction Wilma had seen the SUV disappear.

In the house, young Jimmie McFarland, clean-cut, short brown hair, looked the damage over carefully. He took a dozen photos, then began to scan for prints on the window casing, on the front door and knob, on the broken glass, the desk. Most were Wilma’s prints, some smeared as if with gloves. He did find a few additional prints where the invader had apparently taken off his gloves to manipulate the locks on the desk. It was the half-dozen white flecks on the oriental rug near the desk that interested him most. “What are these?”

Kneeling to look, Wilma shook her head. McFarland picked them up with a needle, searched the rest of the room for more. He found one speck caught on the concrete step where it joined the doorsill, he put them all in a small plastic bottle and dropped it in his pocket.

“They look,” Wilma said, “like bits of Styrofoam packing. Could they have been caught in his shoes?”

Jimmie gave her an interested look but was silent. A look that said, I’d like to tell you, but I can’t, a look she knew well. These specks were connected to something else, to some other case they were working. Maybe, in the morning, Max would tell her. She sat in her favorite chair holding Dulcie in her lap, stroking her, while McFarland called Dallas.

He told the detective what he’d found, what he’d collected, including the Styrofoam flecks. He answered several questions with a simple yes or no. During their conversation, the kittens were not to be seen. Obeying their mother, they were still on the roof. They were probably freezing, but they had minded Dulcie.

Was the burglar Rick Alderson? That little seven-year-old boy she had known so long ago? Was he not still in prison in Texas, but out on parole? She knew nothing at all to put him together with the Pamillons and the Bewick book. But what other interest would he have here, except a valuable item he meant to sell?

Or was his interest in her, instead, in retribution for his father’s death? But that didn’t make sense, little Rickie had hated Calvin Alderson.

Once McFarland had every bit of evidence he wanted, Wilma found a cardboard box in her garage, they took it apart and taped it over the window, closing off most of the broken area. It wouldn’t keep people out, but it would block the wind and keep more glass from falling.

She knew there were few civilians who would get this much attention from the police, particularly since breakins had become a misdemeanor in California instead of a felony. Was there more to this break and enter that she didn’t know, that McFarland wasn’t telling her? Could the attempted theft be connected to something more than a rare and vanished book?

McFarland said they were sending someone to cruise the neighborhood, and asked what she knew about the man.

“Not much, Jimmie. He looks exactly like an old parolee from twenty years back, Calvin Alderson. Such a startling likeness that I feel sure this must be Alderson’s boy, Rick. He’s been in and out of jail—but you and Max and Dallas know all that.

“I check on him every few years, out of curiosity. Or maybe a feeling of unease. Even at seven years old, that little boy … screaming that it was my fault his daddy went to prison even though the child hated Calvin. But then later he seemed to change his mind, and he was friendly enough. Now, for the past couple of weeks, he’s been hanging around watching me. Yes, I talked with Max, he’s checking to see if Rick is still in jail in Texas, or if there’s a warrant out for him.”

“Do you have a lock on your bedroom door?”

“That’s first on my list in the morning—and double bolts on the outer doors. It was the cats who heard him, they got frightened and woke me. For the rest of the night I’ll prop the dresser against the door. If he tries to get in, that will wake me.”

“And the bedroom windows?”

“I’ll turn the outside lights on. And balance some little bottles on the sill so if the window moves, they’ll fall.”

“You might be smart to move out for a couple of weeks.”

Wilma laughed, pushed back her long gray hair. “That’s exactly what Max will tell me, to move out.” Though what she meant to do was quite different.

“Or have someone stay with you,” Jimmie said diffidently. “Though I know you’ve handled a lot worse than this guy. But even though you’re well trained, it’s nice to have a backup.”

“I’ll be careful, Jimmie.”

Jimmie gave her a hug, and glanced with confidence at the weight of the gun in her robe pocket. “Take care,” he said softly. “There’ll be a patrol.” He turned, and was gone. Wilma locked the door behind him.

While Dulcie went to get the kittens, Wilma swept and vacuumed up every shard of glass on the floor and rug and in the window casing. She had vacuumed the rug three times, wiped down every surface with a damp cloth to catch the tiniest splinters, and put the vacuum away. She was in the bedroom straightening the covers when the kittens came slipping in through the window, silent and wide-eyed.

Pushing the dresser against the bedroom door, Wilma watched them settle among the covers, then she arranged the bottles along the sill. From the expressions on the kittens’ faces she could almost tell what each was thinking. Buffin wasn’t sure he liked this disturbance so much. Striker was still all hisses and fight, as if he had wanted to chase the man right along with Dulcie; Wilma suspected only Dulcie’s scolding, and his hurt foot, had stopped him.

But it was Courtney who looked amazed and excited, her ears sharp forward, her baby-blue eyes gleaming, one paw lifted, reaching out; her black and orange face wildly alight, she looked as if her head were swimming not just with this crime, tonight, but with remembered scenes, with visions exploding as if from dreams of a time long past.

Gently Wilma took the calico in her arms. “What are you remembering?”

Courtney, her black and orange blotches and three black bracelets bright in the lamplight, only looked at Wilma. At last she said, “Swords. Men on horseback with swords. I was on the roof—but a thatched roof. I was huddled down in the thatch and they didn’t see me.” She frowned up at Wilma. “That’s all I remember, a fuzzy dream, but I can smell the horses and the blood, I can smell the blood. They broke into the house, three men …” She closed her eyes. “Later, when they’d gone, when I came down from the roof … In the house the smell of fear and blood, two people dead, the old farm couple dead.”

“What did you do?” Wilma asked softly, only glancing at the silent boy kittens and Dulcie.

“I … The king’s soldiers came. I was there in the house, grieving over the old couple, mewing at them, grieving. The soldiers burst in and I didn’t know what they would do to me. They swung their swords and I ran between them, ran between their legs and kept running and … and …

“That’s all I remember,” she said softly. She looked up at Wilma, looked at Dulcie and her brothers. “Another life? Not just a dream?” she whispered. “Why do I remember? That man … That man, tonight, breaking in. That man, he lusted for something. That man made me remember.”

Wilma settled Courtney down under the covers, and slipped in beside her. The boy kittens and Dulcie, quiet and solemn, crawled in beside them.

Easing into sleep, her gun ready on the nightstand, Wilma knew Max would be there at first light. He would come to investigate the scene himself and he would tell her to move out, to take Dulcie and the kittens and go to stay at Clyde and Ryan’s house, and Max could be hard to deal with.

What she meant to do was take the cats there, while she stayed at home. Next time, she intended to catch the prowler. Next time she would corner him, would shoot close enough to make him talk. She wanted to know if this was Rick Alderson, and to know what this was about.

Wilma begrudgingly agreed to move in with the Damens after a heated discussion with Max Harper—an argument she knew she wouldn’t win. Max arrived early, just as she’d gotten out of the shower. She could hear him knocking, and Buffin ran to get her, the kitten looking very serious. “It’s the chief,” he whispered. “It’s Captain Harper, I looked out the cat door.”

Hastily she slipped on her robe. She answered the door barefoot. They sat in the living room for a few minutes before she went to get dressed, to pull on jeans and a sweatshirt. When she returned, Max was wearing cotton gloves, checking out the window and desk, even though he had the trace evidence and prints that Jimmie had collected last night.

He had started a pot of coffee, they sat at the kitchen table, she knew what was coming. “I want you to move in with Clyde and Ryan until we get this sorted out.”

“I don’t want to do that, Max. I’ll take the cats to the Damens’, to keep them safe, but I’m staying here. I want to know what he wants, what he was looking for.”

“That,” Max said unnecessarily, “is our job. That is why I want you out of here. With the evidence we picked up on your carpet, this guy could be Barbara’s and Langston’s killer. Do you still think this was Rick Alderson?”

Max was quiet, watching her.

“I can only say he looks exactly like Calvin Alderson. Even when he was a little boy, Rick had the same wide, slanting shoulders, slim, long face, thin nose …”

Max shook his head. “This man isn’t Rick.”

She just looked at him.

“Dallas put a rush on the fingerprints. There is no record at all on this man. None. No charges, no arrests, no convictions. Not even a driver’s license—which implies he’s using a fake.”

“But Rick is bound to have prints on record, he’s spent half his life in prison.”

“We have Rick Alderson’s prints, from AFIS. This man who broke in is not Rick Alderson—but whoever this is, we have enough to hold him on the two murders, we have a BOL out on him.

“If—when—we pick him, have him behind bars, you can come down to the station, watch the interview on closed circuit. Meantime, I don’t want him back here while you’re in the house. I don’t want you cornering him in here thinking you can handle him alone, that you can force information from him, by yourself. That’s not even good police procedure.”

She didn’t answer. She wanted to say, Have you forgotten that I’ve interrogated hundreds of felons? She wanted to say, I think I might know what this is about. I’d like a chance to soft-talk him, see if I can ease it out of him. But she couldn’t tell Max about the book, not all of it, the core of the story was too close to the truth about Joe Grey and the rest of the cats.

They argued while they shared coffee and a plate of lemon bars she’d had in the refrigerator. No matter what excuse she made, Max outbullied her. Wilma might be stubborn, but the tall, lean chief—her own niece’s husband—was far more hardheaded.

She’d been thrilled when Max and Charlie married. Max’s combination of a cop’s tough single-mindedness and his kind gentleness was just what Charlie needed. And now, though she and Max disagreed, neither was really angry. But, knowing that the burglar could be the killer that Charlie narrowly missed this morning, she told herself Max was right. She would go to the Damens’. Scowling at the tall, lean chief, she knew she didn’t have a choice.

“We’ll move one of the officers into your house for a few days,” Max said. “Same lights in the bedroom, same routine of lighted rooms behind the drawn curtains, showers and meals at the same time, and maybe our thief will try again. My hunch is, he wants you here, that he’s looking for something you’ve hidden and, thwarted once, he intends to make you give it to him. That means he’ll come well armed. What might he be after? You don’t keep stocks and bonds or cash in the house?”

She shook her head. “Nor valuable jewelry or coins,” she said, laughing. She couldn’t tell Max the whole story, but she could tell him part of it.

The regular copies of the Bewick book were valuable enough, in their own right, to interest a small-time thief maybe intending to auction it to collectors. She told him about the ancient, hand-printed volume with its wood engravings, that for some time she’d kept in the house; she put its value at maybe eight thousand. She left out that this one volume had been a singular and very special copy. If it still existed, which it didn’t, the information it revealed would have brought maybe a hundred times that much. She just said, “A breakin, for an old book,” and shook her head.

“We’ll leave your car in the drive,” Max said, “so it looks like you’re here. I’d get on over to the Damens’ as soon as Ryan or Clyde can pick you up. We’ll have patrols on the streets. While you’re gone, Ryan’s men can replace your window—after the lab has a closer look at the evidence McFarland collected around the desk and your front door.”

When Max had left she put fresh sheets on her bed for Officer McFarland. He would keep the shades drawn, lights would go on and off on her usual schedule of supper, reading for a while before the fire, then off to bed to read there for an hour or so—her own habits would become McFarland’s habits, except for the company of the cats. Whatever the breakin might involve, she thought as she ran a load of laundry, she was lucky to have Max and MPPD at her back.

Joe Grey woke in his newly repaired tower, new glass in the damaged window, brand-new pillows, the old pillows thrown in the trash to be sure all the broken glass was gone. He yawned and stretched, wondering what had awakened him. Had he heard the phone, had Charlie called? Had the car thieves returned, after all that went on the night before? But then he smelled coffee.

He slid out from under the pillows, stretched again, pushed in through his cat door onto the rafter, and dropped to Clyde’s desk. Glancing into the bedroom, he saw Clyde’s side of the bed empty and that Ryan still slept. He beat it downstairs to see why Clyde was up at this hour.

Clyde sat at the kitchen table devouring cold, leftover lasagna. Joe leaped up beside him. “That’s disgusting. Cold lasagna and coffee in the middle of the night. The combination makes me retch.”

“No kind of food makes you retch. You love lasagna. I couldn’t sleep, waiting for the phone to ring.”

“My guess is, the crooks are gone. Maybe, with the cops all over that house on the corner, they got spooked.” Joe looked at Clyde, frowning. “Did one of that scruffy gang kill Barbara Conley? Is that why her house is cordoned off, is that the connection?” Joe intended as soon as Max got to work, to hit the station. Police reports scattered on Max’s desk were what he needed now.

“Speaking of Barbara Conley,” Clyde said, “why the hell did you bring the kittens to a murder scene? You need to be more careful, Joe! They’re too young to drag all the way across town and straight into a murder. What did Dulcie say? And what do you think the cops thought? It’s bad enough if you accidentally let yourself be seen snooping around—but to bring the kittens! What the hell were you thinking!”

“I didn’t drag them across town. I didn’t know they were there in Max’s office. They beat me to the station. They were hiding under the console when I got there. I didn’t see them until Charlie called in, and Max was out of there, me right behind him—and there were the damned kittens! What was I supposed to do?”

“Take them home,” Clyde said reasonably.

“There was a murder! Charlie called in a murder! Don’t you think I was scared for her? How could I … I just took them with me, what else could I do? They promised to behave. I didn’t know Striker was going to cut his stupid little paw and make a scene.”

“The way I heard it,” Clyde said, “Striker didn’t make a scene. Kate and Charlie made a scene getting you cats out of there. The whole department was watching. Wondering what you and your kittens were doing there. You’re always hanging around the station. Don’t you think they wonder, when you show up at a crime scene, too? Don’t you think some of those guys, particularly Max and the detectives, wonder why the hell you’re so interested? And now you’re bringing kittens …”

“Everyone knows cats are weird. Some cats steal their neighbor’s laundry and drag it home. Some cats … There was a clip on TV, some cat in England rides the train every day. Gets on in the morning, spends the day at the zoo, takes the train home again at suppertime. And James Herriot wrote about a cat that attended all the town meetings. Don’t you think Max and Dallas, if they do wonder, would do a little research? That they would look up that stuff on the web and understand that many cats do strange things, that some cats have weird interests like stealing clothes and shoes. Look at Dulcie. Stealing silk teddies from the neighbors. She started that when she was a kitten. There’s nothing strange for the cops to wonder about—or for you to get worked up about.”

“I’d say you’re the one who’s worked up.”

Joe sighed. In fact he worried a lot about what Max and the detectives thought. But right now it was really too early to argue. Night, beyond the kitchen window above the half curtain, was still as black as a rat hole.

“And,” Clyde said, “what about Buffin at the vet’s? When Kate and Charlie took Striker in to stitch up his paw and Buffin was so interested in the patients. What was that about?”

Joe just looked at him. Who had told Clyde about Buffin’s unusual concern over the hospitalized animals? Either Kate or Charlie. Couldn’t human females keep their mouths shut? The two were as bad as Kit, with her excited rambling.

Though the fact was, the buff kitten’s perceptive remarks had frightened Joe, as did Courtney’s inexplicable dreams or memories or whatever the hell they were. Couldn’t he and Dulcie have had normal kittens—except for the talking part? He wouldn’t want them to lose that talent, but did they have to add to the strangeness?

Royally irritated, Joe cleaned the rest of the cold lasagna from Clyde’s plate, turned tail, and went back up to his tower, to calm himself before he hit the station.

When he passed the love seat in Clyde’s study, Snowball looked up at him sleepily. She was so lonely with Rock away, on the fishing trip with Ryan’s dad. Joe gave her an ear lick, a nose rub, then curled up and snuggled with her for a little while before he jumped to the desk then to the rafter, pushed through his cat door, and burrowed down among his pillows.

His early-dawn nap didn’t last long. He was up again before the sun rose, ready to hit the rooftops, to slip into Max’s office before the chief arrived. Ready to scan any reports that might have come in, try to figure out the relationship between Barbara Conley and the car thieves.

The sun was barely up when Max Harper called Clyde, who had gone back to bed after Joe left. Answering, Clyde tried to shake off the dark dream that had harassed him. “Of course they can come,” he said sleepily. He didn’t bother to ask why. “They can stay as long as Wilma likes,” and he turned over and went back to sleep.

Wilma called twenty minutes later. She got Ryan, who was fully awake, dressed, and downstairs in the kitchen. Wilma told her about the breakin.

“That bastard,” Ryan said. “What does he want? Of course you’ll stay here.”

“Dulcie will make the kittens behave. Max says—”

“It’s a treat to have all of you. The kittens will be a blast. Have you had breakfast? Can I help you move?”

“In fact, you can pick me up. Max wants me to leave my car in the drive. So it won’t look like I have moved out. This is so … unnecessary. If anyone else told me to leave, I’d …” Wilma sighed. “Max is so stubborn.”

Ryan laughed. “That’s why he’s a good chief. You’re all packed?”

“What little I’m bringing. An overnight bag, and kitten food.”

“I’ll be right over. Clyde can get breakfast.”

While Wilma stood at the kitchen window waiting for Ryan’s king cab, Joe Grey, headed across the rooftops toward the station, had no notion that his family was moving in with the Damens’, that his home would be wild with his own mischievous kittens. He slipped into MPPD behind two arriving officers, shortly before Max got to work. Easing down the hall into Max’s office, he leaped to the desk where he could read quite handily the reports neatly arranged on the blotter, watching the door and listening for footsteps as he flipped each page with a practiced paw.

One stack was printouts regarding the car gang working up the coast in Cupertino. One stack was copies of Max’s officers’ reports about Molena Point’s breakins and thefts. Joe was stretching out for a better look at Max’s handwritten notes on Barbara Conley’s rental when he heard the chief coming down the hall, talking with Detectives Garza and Davis. Immediately he slipped into the in-box, curled up, and closed his eyes in deep sleep.

He heard Juana Davis pause by the credenza to start a fresh pot of coffee. Luckily the maintenance crew cleaned the pot every night, or they’d be brewing road tar. He barely slit his eyes open as Max settled into his desk chair, hardly glancing at Joe.

Dallas, carrying a printout, tossed his tweed blazer on the back of the couch and sat down. His jeans were freshly creased; he wore a white T-shirt, bright against his fresh Latino coloring; his short black hair was neatly trimmed. Davis, at the other end of the couch, was as usual in uniform, Joe seldom saw her in anything but black skirt and jacket, black hose, black shoes. Her square build, square face, and short dark hair seemed right for the regulation attire—but Joe preferred Juana in something less formal, the jeans and sweatshirt she wore on a hasty night call.

Max reached underneath Joe, into the in-box, to retrieve a sheaf of papers. It had been years since he’d been careful handling Joe, wondering if he’d get scratched; now he glanced down, amused. “Looks like you have houseguests, tomcat. Looks like your family’s moving in with you.”

His words shocked Joe. Had Wilma kicked Dulcie and the kittens out? What could they have done that she would evict them? He was unsettled, too, that Harper talked directly to him. He seldom did that, sounding as if he expected an answer. But why not? Max talked to his dogs that way, and to his buckskin gelding. What pet owner didn’t carry on a conversation with his animals?

But what was this eviction about?

Max looked at the two detectives. “A common breakin is one thing. But the trace evidence in Wilma’s living room—same as that from the salon and from Barbara Conley’s house.”

Joe Grey kept his eyes closed, trying to hide his alarm. Someone had broken into Wilma’s? Were Dulcie and the kittens all right? He’d seldom burned so fiercely to speak up and ask Max for the details.

“I want foot patrol, all three shifts,” Max said. “Wilma’s taking her cats and moving in with the Damens until we corral this guy.

“He broke the living room window around 3 a.m., was going through her desk when Wilma came out. When she drew on him he took one look at the gun, bolted out the door, and was gone. She chased him—a pale Subaru SUV, but she only got the first three numbers.”

Davis said, “And you found the same trace evidence as from the murder scene?”

“McFarland did. Apparently the same flecks of Styrofoam, same as from Barbara’s house.”

Davis sat frowning, Joe could feel her eagerness to compare the evidence from the three sources.

“Ryan’s picking Wilma up,” Max said. “They’ll leave Wilma’s car in the drive. I’m sending McFarland to stay there, turn the lights on and off, the TV, the fireplace, let this guy think she’s home. Either he’s looking for something special or, after he tosses the place, he means to harm Wilma.” Max looked at the papers Dallas held. “Is that from the lab?”

Dallas nodded. “Just came in—on some of the trace evidence from the Conley house.” The detective smiled. “Looks like Langston Prince was in Barbara Conley’s bed, maybe that same night.”

Dallas took a sip of coffee. “And also in bed with her, fairly recently, was the man who killed them. The same dark hairs, other than Langston’s, that we bagged near the bodies at the salon. Looks like all the Styrofoam flecks are the same, too. The lab is comparing them. And,” he said, “they’re comparing the blond hairs we found in both houses. Not all were Barbara’s. Hers were dyed, long and everywhere in the house. The others were shorter, like a man’s hair. But none of those were in her bed,” he said, grinning.

Two men in her bed the same night, Joe thought, isn’t that enough? Maybe the car thief was there earlier that same evening. And, he thought smiling, she didn’t even bother to change the sheets? Tomcats weren’t that fastidious, but Joe Grey found this particular situation disgusting.

“Strange about that neighbor’s call,” Max said. “Just a young girl, but she was as secretive as our snitches.”

“Maybe some teenager,” Dallas said. “Sneaked out with her boyfriend, didn’t want her folks to know.”

Davis said, “What about the fingerprints at Wilma’s? Did they come up a match for those at Barbara Conley’s? When do we get the word back on Rick Alderson, see if we have a match?”

Max leaned back in his chair. “We have Alderson’s prints, from his records. The prints we got from Barbara Conley’s match those we picked up at Wilma’s—we got a quick answer on that. AFIS says there’s no record on them. Nothing. This guy is not Rick Alderson.”

“They’re sure?” Dallas said. “Wilma says he’s a dead ringer.”

Max shrugged. “They’re sure. No record. The prints from Wilma’s match those at the Conley house and no record on them. AFIS ran both, to be certain—but there were smears, too, as with rubber gloves. A few partials where a glove was torn, but not much to go on.”

This was all news to Joe. Pretending sleep, he tried to put it together. The trouble was he couldn’t be in two places at once, he’d missed too much.