Cat Shining Bright

“I picked up a call when I came in,” Davis said. “Jerry, the bartender over at Binnie’s.” Binnie’s Italian was one of Davis’s favorites, she and the bartender sometimes dated casually.

“He said Barbara Conley had been in the bar a number of times with a guy who looked like a muscle builder. Dark hair, black leather jacket. They’d come in late, stay sometimes until closing. But this was some weeks back, he hasn’t seen the guy recently. He said she’d been in for an early dinner with Langston Prince a couple of times.”

I guess, Joe thought, there’s nothing wrong with Barbara dating her boss—until the wrong guy sees him in her bed.

Joe Grey didn’t linger long over thoughts of human digression; he was soon out of Max’s office, dropping quietly down behind the chief, slipping out then racing down the hall and out on the heels of a pair of attorneys, then up to the roofs and home. He wanted to be there when his kittens arrived, he wanted to be sure they were all right, after the breakin. Wanted to be sure they behaved. And, maybe he’d like to see his family happily settled, in his home.

14

Ryan pulled her red king cab into her aunt’s drive between Wilma’s car and the back door and quickly they loaded up—a small overnight bag for Wilma, a box of food and toys and quilts for the kittens. Leaving the house watched by three plainclothes officers wandering the neighborhood door to door handing out religious pamphlets, and by one of Ryan’s carpenters measuring for the window, they hoped this much activity would keep the burglar away from the area until the house was quiet again. Wilma’s car had sat in the same spot all night and would remain there.

Quickly the kittens leaped into the backseat, keeping their little mouths shut in case a cop, moving down the sidewalk, might hear them. All three were wide-eyed at this new delight, not only the exciting escape from the burglar, but the adventure of visiting a new house and taking over Clyde and Ryan’s downstairs guest room all to themselves.

So far in their short lives they had been inside only two other houses besides their own: Kit’s hilltop home with Lucida and Pedric Greenlaw, the cats all sitting before the fire listening to Pedric’s tales; and Max and Charlie Harper’s ranch house with its pastures and stable and hay barn where they could climb the tall bales, and chase mice. Now here was another new place to explore, and the first thing they saw as Ryan approached the Damens’ house was Joe Grey’s tower rising above the second-floor roof. It didn’t look damaged at all, it looked brand-new.

“A tree really fell on it?” Courtney asked, switching her tail.

“It did,” Ryan said. “It was all torn branches and broken glass. It doesn’t take my crew long to fix a problem.” As she pulled into the drive, Wilma, Dulcie, and the kittens all piled out, moving quickly into the shadows of the porch. Ryan took the big box from her, as the kittens fled up the walk, hit the cat door at a run, and bolted inside nearly crashing into the big silver Weimaraner. He stood shocked at the onslaught, but smiling and wagging his short tail.

Joe Grey leaped to the couch watching his unruly kittens. “This is Rock,” he said as the kittens warily backed off from the Weimaraner. They had too often been warned about dogs, especially big dogs. “Rock’s all right,” Joe told them, “he won’t hurt you. He’s an exception.”

“Exception,” Courtney said, not sure what that meant, but liking the new word. Was “exception” a kind of dog? Or did it mean different than others? Rock stepped gently among them to lick their faces. Reassured, the kittens rubbed against his legs. Ryan’s dad had brought the sleek gray dog back early that morning from their vacation trip; he had brought, as well, a dozen fresh, cleaned trout that were now in the refrigerator. The kittens, following the delicious scent to the kitchen, searched the counters and table but found no fish at all. Disappointed, they bolted away again through the rest of the house. Dulcie started after them—until she caught Joe’s look, and stopped.

“Let them go,” Joe said. “Let them investigate.”

Ryan agreed. “They can’t get into trouble here as they might have up at the Harpers’ ranch. No horses to step on them, no territorial barn cats to attack them.”

“They have to learn about new places,” Wilma said as the Weimaraner poked his nose at her, begging for a pet. “Even a new house is an adventure, they can’t stay babies forever.”

The kittens raced in again, pounding down the hall to explore the living room more fully, investigating the flowered couch and chairs, the three tall green plants growing in pots against the soft yellow walls, the fresh white draperies that begged to be climbed. But when they eyed the draperies then looked from Dulcie to Joe Grey, they backed off.

As Ryan and Wilma headed for the kitchen, they paused a moment to watch the kittens looking above the couch and the mantel at the framed drawings of Joe Grey and Dulcie, of Kit, of a little white cat and the big silver dog. They looked and looked; and Courtney said, in a whisper, “Charlie Harper did these. Oh my. One day, will she draw portraits of us?”

“I expect she will,” Wilma said, wondering at the kitten’s use of the word “portrait.” A word perhaps from memory? From some long-ago dream?

But Striker and Buffin were most fascinated with Joe Grey’s comfortable chair, frayed, clawed, fur matted; Courtney joined them there, they all had to roll in the deep cushions, in their father’s scent, flipping their tails and purring.

Joe and Dulcie watched them investigate behind the furniture, picking up new smells; they followed the kittens as they prowled again through the big family kitchen with its round table, the flowered chair at the far end that also smelled of Joe and of Rock and of another cat.

“You smell Snowball,” Joe said, leaping to the kitchen table. He looked at his three curious children. “When you discover Snowball, be gentle with her. She’s not used to new visitors. She’s a shy, tender little cat—but she doesn’t speak. Be kind with her, you three.”

The kittens looked back, very serious, then raced away to find Snowball; but pausing to investigate the downstairs guest room, rubbing their faces against its wicker and oak furniture, they quickly made it their own room. It was already scented with Wilma’s overnight bag and with their own sacks of kibble, their own toys and blankets.

Best of all were the softly-carpeted stairs leading from the hall to the rooms above: they raced madly up and down, leaping over one another, flipping around in midair, dashing between Rock’s legs as he ran up the stairs gently playing with them. Dulcie followed to keep them out of trouble. Joe Grey remained in the kitchen watching Wilma slice cranberry bread and Ryan brew coffee; Ryan wore a flowered apron over her worn jeans and khaki work shirt, the ruffled hem brushing the top of her leather work boots. They could hear, upstairs, the thunder of Rock’s paws, and the kittens’ softer thumps as they leaped from desk to rafter and down again; they had strict instructions not to go out on the roof.

Ryan said, as Wilma sat down at the table and poured the coffee, “I’m still nervous about the breakin. That was no casual burglary, not after his following and watching you. You have nothing of huge value, not like the mansions up in the hills or along the shore.”

“Janet Jeannot’s painting,” Joe Grey said, leaping to the table. “Janet’s landscape hanging right there over Wilma’s fireplace.”

Ryan nodded. “That painting of the village is worth a nice sum. But it isn’t as if you own a whole collection of expensive art, or a houseful of priceless silver and antiques. Besides Janet’s landscape there are only the few pieces of jewelry Kate has given you. They’re worth a lot. But even if he’d seen you wearing them, how would he know they were real? And,” she said, putting sugar and cream on the table, “if he was looking for jewelry, why would he look in your desk? He—Oh,” she said, looking at Wilma, then at Joe Grey. The tomcat’s yellow eyes were smugly slanted, waiting for Ryan to catch up.

“Oh,” she said again, “the Bewick book? But how could he know about that? Anyway, it’s gone now,” she said sadly. “There’s nothing but ashes.”

It was the feral cats who had first discovered an old and sturdy, handmade wooden box buried among the ruins beneath a tilted foundation. They had led Wilma and Charlie Harper there to find, within, an ancient and valuable volume, hand printed on thick parchment pages. Old, handmade type, hand set, and printed by some early, manual process. The illustrations were woodcuts, hand carved, hand printed. The volume had been produced by artist and writer Thomas Bewick in 1862.

Of the few original copies that remained, most were owned by collectors, each worth at least several thousand dollars. But this one single copy had an added chapter at the back, where Bewick had written about the cats he had encountered in his travels. Wilma and Charlie had been so excited to find such a treasure; but they were shocked when they read that chapter. Why had Bewick written this?

Later when Wilma researched through all the collectors’ and libraries’ lists of ancient books, through all the sources she could find, there was no hint of this unique, single volume. She didn’t understand why Bewick had produced that copy. He had to know how dangerous any printed word was for the safety of the cats he had so admired—someone who loved the speaking cats should be committed to keeping their secret. Had Bewick let his urge to tell such a wondrous tale, to produce just the one volume with its beautiful woodcuts, override his concern for the cats themselves?

The book, she thought, hidden there in the Pamillon estate, had to have belonged to someone in the Pamillon family. Had they all known the secret, or had only a few? If the wrong person read those words, they might well go searching for the rare cats, meaning to exhibit them, to show them on TV, make fortunes from the innocent creatures.

Fortunately, that seemed not the case with this family—the Pamillons might have been strange in many ways, but the person who had hidden the book had apparently remained silent. One old aunt, who had died recently, had known all her life the truth about the feral band that lived in the ruins but she had said no word, Wilma was certain of that.

There were a few men in prison who knew; no one could say how they found out, but they had cruelly trapped several of the feral band. Charlie had freed the leader of the clowder, and Clyde had helped to release the others from their crowded cage.

The day that Wilma and Charlie found the book and brought it home, Wilma had locked it in her desk; but soon she had moved it to her safe-deposit box, adding Charlie’s and Ryan’s names and giving them keys. Then, not long afterward, for the future safety of the cats, but their hearts nearly breaking, the three women had burned the rare volume. They had felt sickened, standing around Wilma’s fireplace watching the flames devour a treasure singular and precious.

Now, in the kitchen, Ryan said, “How could this Rick Alderson, who is not Rick Alderson, how could he know about the book—if that’s what he was after?” She looked at Joe Grey. “Do you know something we don’t, tomcat, with that sly look? Or are you only guessing that’s what he’s looking for?”

Joe lifted his paw, snagging a slice of cranberry bread. “I wish I knew more, I wish I could put it together—but that’s the only thing Wilma did have of great value,” he said, licking crumbs from his whiskers.

“And who is this guy,” Joe said, “if not Rick Alderson? He’s apparently part of the car thieves, and he could be the beauty salon killer. How does Wilma fit in, how does the book fit in? Could he know about it from someone who’d been in Soledad Prison?” Nothing Joe had picked up, snooping on Max’s desk and listening among the officers, had touched on rare books or the theft of books. But, he thought, if the Bewick book was what this guy was after, even if it had been destroyed, could it be used to trap him? Quietly enjoying his snack, Joe began to put together a plan. “Maybe …” he said. “Maybe if—”

A sound from above silenced him, a rocking and sliding noise, a rhythmic thumping from Ryan’s studio. They all looked up, listening—until a crash directly overhead sent Joe and Wilma and Ryan flying away from the table. A thunder so loud they thought the ceiling would fall sent them racing for the stairs. Between their feet the little white cat bolted down headed for the kitchen and safety. From above, Rock’s thundering bark filled the master bedroom and studio, an angry, puzzled challenge.

Then, as suddenly, silence.

An empty, guilty silence.

Racing upstairs they found, at the top of the steps in Clyde’s study, nothing at all amiss. Ryan moved to her right into the big master bedroom. The doors to the dressing room and bath were closed. She looked in both but everything was in order; the entire room was undisturbed, even the space under the bed.

They headed for her studio.

Sunlight blazed in through the glass walls that framed the oak and pine trees. Sun shone on Ryan’s beautiful, hand-carved drafting table, picking out the ornate curves of its metal stand and its sleek oak top. The table lay on its side, the big, movable drafting surface wrenched away from the intricate metal stand, the floor dented where the table had crashed and broken.

Three pairs of blue eyes peered out from among the wreckage, two innocent buff faces and Courtney’s calico face serious with guilt. The kittens were too chagrined to even run away.

Dulcie, her ears back, her striped tail lashing, hauled Buffin out from beneath the curved metal legs, her teeth in the nape of his neck. Holding him down with one paw, she nosed at him, looking him over. “Where are you hurt?”

Buffin shook his head. “Not hurt.”

“Get up, then. Walk quietly over to the daybed, get up on it and stay there.” She watched him walk, saw he wasn’t limping. Turning, she bore down on Striker. “Are you hurt? Oh, Striker! Your paw is bleeding through the bandage.”

Ryan grabbed some scrap paper from the wastebasket, laid it on the floor. Dulcie said, “Come out from under there and sit right here, put your paw on that. Now, Courtney. Are you all right?”

Courtney nodded, her ears and tail down. She wouldn’t look at her mother.

“Then you can tell me what happened,” Ryan said as she grabbed a roll of paper towels for Striker.

“Rocking,” Courtney said guiltily, her eyes still cast down. “We were rocking. We … we loosened those bolts just a little …” She indicated the handles that held the drafting table at whatever angle Ryan chose. “And we jumped on it and it rocked and rocked and it was such fun that we rocked harder …” Now she looked up, her eyes bright. “Rocked harder still, all three of us back and forth, and …” She looked down again with shame.

“And the table fell,” Dulcie said furiously.

So far Joe Grey had stayed out of it. He was too mad to let loose with what he wanted to say. He watched Ryan wrap the paw in the paper towels, then retrieve rolls of gauze and tape from the master bath; then he turned his fierce scowl on Dulcie. “And where,” he said, “where were you when this happened? I thought you were watching them.”

Now Dulcie’s own look was guilty. “I was on the roof. I heard a car come down the street real slow, heard it stop then creep on again. I got that funny feeling—you know the feeling … I thought it might be the burglar, that he’d seen Ryan pick us up this morning, and I raced up for a quick look. The kittens were quiet, nosing at the cabinet drawers and at the mantel, smelling everything. I thought I could leave them for a minute. They loosened the bolts and started this rocking after I left,” she said quietly.

“I thought at first it was Wilma’s stalker, I’m still not sure, you can’t see much inside a car from the house roof. I could see the driver’s arm, part of a thin face. He was wearing a cap and I think his passenger was, too, a heavy man. They moved on slowly and then paused, moving and pausing, looking at all the houses. There was someone in the back, someone smaller, maybe a woman or child. I was about to race down to the street for a better look when I heard the crash.” She looked at Ryan and at Joe. “I’m sorry I left them. Your lovely antique drafting table, Ryan. Can it be mended?”

“It can be mended just fine, Scotty can mend anything,” Ryan said, stroking Dulcie, giving her a little kiss between the ears.

“And the kittens are sorry, too,” Dulcie said, looking pointedly at Courtney who had seemed to have been the instigator of their game: Rocked and rocked, she’d said, rocked harder still … her blue eyes bright with the fun.

Joe Grey remained quiet, his ears flat, his yellow eyes blazing. The kittens had never seen their father so angry—though, in fact, Joe wasn’t nearly as mad as he looked. Half his mind was further away than broken drafting tables as he put together a plan that he thought might trap Wilma’s stalker.

He watched Ryan call Clyde at the shop. “Could you come home for a little while? Wilma’s here, and Rock’s here, but … I have to run an errand and … we think the burglar could be watching the house. I’ll explain later.”

She picked up Striker, as Dulcie ran for the king cab; Buffin followed, refusing to stay behind. Not so much because he was worried about his brother but because the hospital fascinated him—and because he wanted to be near Dr. Firetti, wanted to watch him work. John was like family, his touch, at their birth, had been Buffin’s first contact with the human world. His presence had honed deeper into Buffin’s emotions even than the love the doctor generated in Striker and Courtney.

Wilma was saying, “I’m fine, Joe, with you and Rock here. Clyde doesn’t need …”

“Let him come,” Joe said. “He needs to keep his mechanics busy.” Wilma sat down on Clyde’s love seat, holding Courtney, who was still quiet and ashamed. Rock soon joined them, herding Snowball up the stairs, the little white cat calm once more, under the Weimaraner’s care. Joe sat on Clyde’s desk secretly smiling, thinking about his project, then joining the dog and Courtney and Snowball stretched out across Wilma’s lap.

“What?” Wilma said, watching Joe. “What are you hatching?” She knew that devious look.

“Just thinking,” he said, hoping to con her into his plan. Wilma might not believe the would-be thief knew about the Bewick book, but Joe wasn’t so sure. Why would he search her desk but not take her checkbook or even the little stack of petty cash she kept there with a rubber band around it? If he was looking for that particular volume, he knew it was worth a fortune. If this man—who might be connected to the man who shot Barbara Conley and Langston Prince, connected to the suspect in a bloody double murder—if this man knew what was printed in the added chapter, all their clan of speaking cats was in danger.

But, Joe thought again, even though the book was gone, it might still trap the prowler. He looked at Wilma, considering. “You do still get upset over having burned the Bewick book. Even a few weeks ago when Dulcie mentioned it, you looked sad, still full of regret.”

“It was a lovely book. The work that went into it, the wood engravings, the hand-set type. I only wish I had one of the other copies, one from the regular edition.”

“You’ve already tried to find one,” Joe said. “But when you did, it was too expensive, enough to keep Dulcie and me and the kittens in caviar for years.” And, taking the direct approach, his pitch went on from there. Wilma listened, stern and silent, as the tomcat laid out his plan.

15

Ryan, with Dulcie on her shoulder and Buffin rearing up beside her, watched John Firetti tuck Striker into a cat kennel on a soft blanket. Immediately Buffin leaped in, too, refusing to leave his brother. John had resewn the wound where Striker had ripped out two stitches. Same routine, but this time the cats were silent as a technician assisted him. Only when she’d left did John speak to Striker, petting him, but stern, too. “You are to rest. You are to stay off the bandaged foot and behave yourself. No running, no jumping. In fact, to keep you quiet, to let the healing begin, I think I’ll keep you for a day or two.”

Striker looked chastised and obedient. Buffin looked delighted, hoping he could stay, too. He looked around for his little dog friend.

“Lolly’s so much better,” John said, “thanks to you, that I’ve tried sending her home.” They looked up as Mary Firetti slipped into the hospital room. She gave Ryan and Dulcie a hug and stood with them beside the cage door. She wore pale tan jeans and a cream sweater that flattered her sleek brown hair. Neither woman liked to see the kittens in a kennel. “They’ll sleep with us tonight,” Mary said, “if Striker will promise to be good.”

“No jumping off the bed,” tabby Dulcie said, “or off anything else. You think that paw will heal with you pounding on it and knocking over furniture?”

Ryan, pushing back her dark hair, reached in to stroke and love the two kittens; and Dulcie padded inside to lick their faces; but soon they left the hospital, Dulcie draped over Ryan’s shoulder. Crossing the garden, walking Ryan to the truck, Mary said, “It will be nice to have those two beautiful boys for a few days. John does love them. And Pan can go home to Kit for a while; he’s refused to leave us since his father died. I’ve told him he should be with Kit, that Misto would want him there, but talk about stubborn.” She looked at Ryan, her eyes tearing. “Pan’s been so dear. It’s been hard, learning to live without Misto. If Pan hadn’t stayed with us, the emptiness in this house would have been intolerable. Even when, sometimes, we sense Misto’s spirit nearby, we can’t touch him or hold him, we can’t snuggle him the way we snuggle Pan—and now will snuggle the kittens.”

“He’ll never leave you for good,” Ryan said. “His spirit will never leave any of us. He might be gone for a while, but he told us all, more than once, that time is different where he is. Misto has families through the centuries to be with when he’s needed, other people he loves, but never more than he loves you and John.”

“Early that morning,” Mary said, “when he passed—the glow rising above us, the echo of his voice as he moved into that next life. We know he isn’t gone.”

Ryan hugged Mary, nearly squashing Dulcie between them. She swung Dulcie into her king cab, and they headed home, Dulcie curled on the seat beside her, already missing her kittens, her chin and paw draped across Ryan’s leg. “They’re growing up fast,” she said sadly, looking up at Ryan. “They’ll want their own lives one day, and they’ll choose their own work,” she said thinking of Buffin there in the hospital and how happy he had seemed.

When they pulled into the drive, Clyde’s vintage Jaguar was there, leaving room for Ryan’s pickup. Rock, still nervous from the crashed drafting table, greeted them at the front door as if he had been standing guard. Ryan, heading for the kitchen, glanced up the stairs where Clyde sat at his desk. “Home,” she called up to him. In the kitchen, Wilma sat at the table with fresh coffee, reading the morning paper; it was so neatly folded that Wilma wondered if Joe Grey had even touched it; she was amused that she didn’t have to read around syrupy pawprints.

Clyde left his desk and came down. “Striker’s all right? And where’s Buffin?”

“Striker’s fine, and Buffin wanted to stay with him,” Ryan said, releasing Dulcie to hop down to the table. “The Firettis were pleased, they love those kittens,” she said softly.

Dulcie lay down on the table close beside Wilma. Joe Grey leaped up beside her, fixing his yellow gaze on Wilma, giving her an urgent, let’s get on with it look.

Dulcie watched him, suddenly wary and alert. From the kitchen counter Courtney watched with bright intensity. While she had napped with Snowball, her father and Wilma had had a long, whispering conversation. What wondrous thing they were planning.

But Clyde glared hard at Joe. Not for a minute did he trust that look, nor did he trust the excited amusement in Wilma’s eyes. “What?” he said. “What’s with you two?”

Wilma shrugged, and looked at Joe. Joe had started to lay out his plan when they heard the front cat door flap open, and Kit and Pan came galloping into the kitchen; smelling cranberry bread, they leaped to the table. As Ryan cut a slice for them, Clyde remained staring at Joe and Wilma, waiting for the bomb to drop. Whatever they were hatching, this was going to mean trouble.

Quietly Joe, under the gaze of his two human housemates and surrounded by the questioning cats, shared his plan.

“Charlie’s the best prospect,” he said. “The stalker might not even know her.” He looked at Ryan and Clyde. “The prowler, if he’s been watching this house, too, he knows both of you. He might have seen Charlie here, but maybe not. And she fits right in, she’s in and out of the art shop all the time, and in and out of the PD.”

“I don’t like this,” Clyde said. “It could get someone hurt, probably Officer McFarland.”

“But McFarland will be there anyway.” Joe reached a paw for another slice of cranberry bread.

“And,” Clyde added, “Charlie isn’t a good choice, she’s Wilma’s niece. He could have seen her there any time—no one could forget that bright red hair.”

“She can wear a cap,” Ryan said. “Tuck her hair under.” There was a long silence, then Wilma rose, heading for the guest room. Clyde and Ryan followed, the cats dashing past their feet.

Within minutes they were all gathered on or beside the desk as Wilma, comfortable in the wicker desk chair, called Tay’s Rare Bookstore, in the village. Yes, they still had the copy she had inquired about several weeks ago, one of the original editions of Bewick’s memoir. Despite the cost she put it on her credit card and asked them to wrap it in plain brown paper. When she’d hung up, she called Charlie.

An hour later, Charlie had cut her long red hair nearly a foot shorter. Feeling naked and regretful she left the house, cranked up the old green pickup they used around the ranch. Heading for the village, she parked in front of the art supply as a minivan moved out. She entered the store wearing a cap, not one curl of red hair showing, her dark glasses propped across the crown.

She spent perhaps fifteen minutes choosing her purchases. Leaving them there to be wrapped, she slipped out through the storeroom’s back door to the narrow alley that ran through from the art store past the backs of a deli and an upscale camera shop, to the rear of Russell Tay’s bookstore; passing trash cans lined along one wall, she slipped in through the unlocked back door.

She moved from the storeroom into the shop, into the smell of old books. She found Russell at the counter, slim, white haired, the lines in his face solemn and patient. He had set the book aside, concealed in brown paper as Wilma had requested. She tucked it into her oversized purse; they talked for only a few minutes, about the weather, the windstorm, and El Niño, then she hurried out the back again.

She knew she was being watched.

Coming down the alley she had glimpsed Dulcie peering over directly above her; and on the roof across the narrow side street she could barely see Joe Grey in a mass of overhanging pine branches, could see only the narrow white strip down his nose, his white chest and paws—and the gleam of his yellow eyes as he watched the street below him.

At the far end of the group of shops, Pan and Courtney crouched at separate corners, Pan above the alley, Courtney above the street looking very full of herself because of this important mission. The calico was as much the drama queen as Kit, giddily proud to be performing a glamorous job while her two brothers lounged in a cage in John Firetti’s hospital, even if they were being spoiled.

Charlie caught sight of Kit last of all, up in the pine tree that hung out over the street where, from its branches, she could see both ways down the sidewalk, could see every passing shopper.

Hurrying back down the alley, her package in her carryall, Charlie was startled when a heavily muscled man turned the corner, coming straight toward her—he fit too closely Kit and Pan’s rough description of the man they’d seen at Barbara Conley’s house on that windy night.

But no, this was not the same man. This fellow was lame, limping along. He passed her paying no attention as she slipped back into the artist’s supply.

Above her, the cats, having watched her progress, crouched together now on the roof of the art supply watching her load her packages in the passenger seat of the old pickup and set her big carryall on the floor. That’s where the book would be, a book like the one Wilma had burned—or almost like it, Courtney thought. How strange and complicated was human life. As Charlie drove away, Courtney snuggled up to her daddy, and knew that his anger about the drafting table was gone. She thought about Charlie going on with Joe’s plans and hoped … No, she knew his scheme would work just fine—as sure as hiding cheese to lure a mouse.

From the art shop Charlie drove to the bank. Taking off her cap, shaking out her red hair, she found a clerk free and went straight to Wilma’s safe-deposit box. She signed their card, used her own key, removed the metal drawer and carried it into a small, locked cubicle.

Removing the book-sized package from the metal box she unwrapped the age-stained white paper, then the disintegrating piece of ancient leather wrap, revealing a small and empty, carved chest. Opening this, smelling the lingering scent of the old book that was no longer there, she unwrapped the brown paper from the book she had just picked up. Same title, same binding, same dated first edition. Placing this in the chest she wrapped it up again in the frail leather and then the brown paper.

This she put in her carryall. She took the metal drawer back where the clerk followed her into the vault, slid the safe-deposit box into its slot, saw that it was properly locked then headed for MPPD. There was nothing unusual about her going into the station, the chief’s wife was in and out frequently, to have lunch with Max, sometimes to pick up their young ward, Billy, after school was out. This morning she skipped Max’s office, found Jimmie McFarland in the conference room typing a report. She gave him the box, and gave him instructions.

“This,” Jimmie said, his brown eyes amused, “you know this is entrapment, Charlie.”

They looked at each other for a long moment. “It really isn’t entrapment,” Charlie said, “that’s more complicated. And it sure isn’t if you don’t arrest him for stealing. If all you cite him for is break and enter, that’s only a misdemeanor.”

McFarland grinned at her. She said, “All Wilma wants is to know if the book is what he’s after. If he finds it and heads out with it, that will be her answer.”

Jimmie still had that stern, cop look that he tried so hard to maintain. The young officer’s natural expression was friendly and warm, and didn’t always suit his profession. Charlie said, “You’re there to protect Wilma’s house. She reported a breakin, she’s afraid he’ll come back and trash the whole place. You’re there not only as a cop, but as a friend.”

“But the book,” he said doubtfully. “How can a book be worth …?”

“It’s old, Jimmie. Nearly two centuries. Handmade, hand printed on leather parchment. The type is all hand set, every picture is an original engraving done by the author.”

Jimmie shrugged; Charlie knew about these things. The art world wasn’t his thing—counterfeit bills, false driver’s licenses, fake IDs, fingerprints, and electronic images he understood. But ancient hand-set type and engravings were something yet to learn about.

Charlie said no more. She was hoping their thief would know so little about that one particular Bewick book that he would think he had found the real thing, had found the one incriminating volume.

She thought, too, that it wasn’t likely he was alone in his search. Her guess was that several people knew about the book, knew more about the Pamillon history than the stalker might know. Could he have some connection to the Pamillons? Or was that only coincidence? Charlie just prayed that, in the process of planting the book and finding out what this was about, they could keep Wilma safe, and Jimmie, too. It seemed a long time, now, until night would fall and deepen and, hopefully, Wilma’s stalker would return.

16

Jimmie McFarland went through Wilma’s usual evening routine, making sure the lights were on and off at their normal times, the hearth fire burning, the curtains securely drawn. Settling down before the fire to read a batch of reports, he waited for their thief—their possible murder suspect—to make an appearance; and wondering if Wilma’s bait, judiciously hidden, was what the guy was really after. Ordinarily, one rare book alone would not be of such interest to a common thief. An entire library of valuable collector’s books, yes. As he mulled over the thought that the burglar had more complicated motives, the evening darkened and the wind sprang up sending shadows racing across the draperies.

Turning on an old CD of Dean Martin, settling before the fire thinking about making a sandwich, he rose when a car pulled up the drive. Quietly he moved into the shadowed kitchen.

The knock on the back door was light and hasty. A woman’s voice called out, “Wilma?” He smiled at Ryan’s voice, she knew Wilma wasn’t there but didn’t want anyone out in the dark to know it. Hand on his holstered gun he stepped into the laundry.

“It’s Ryan,” she called out. “I brought you a steak. We grilled, and …”

He turned on the outside light. Gun cocked in case she was followed, he opened the door, stepping aside nearly behind it.

She was alone. If Wilma were here, and had answered, the music would have covered her voice. “Did you get my call?” she said softly. “I left you a message.” Ryan handed him a plate covered with foil, it smelled like heaven. He set it on the laundry counter and looked at his phone.

He’d left it off; he felt his face color with embarrassment. She grinned at him. “Have a good evening, my steak’s getting cold,” and she was gone, backing out in her king cab.

He locked the door, turned his phone on, uncovered the warm plate with its thick, rare filet, fries, and a salad. He knew there was an apricot pie in the kitchen. This, Jimmie thought, wasn’t a bad gig, for overtime work.

Up the hills evening darkened with the same cloud-shifting wind, but not a gale wind like the night of the car thefts. Kate’s mind was on McFarland at Wilma’s house waiting for the stalker, as was Scotty’s as they sat at the little kitchen table, eating a supper of bean soup and corn bread. Wind fingered at the windows, and across the way at Voletta’s, wind made shadows dance across the dark bedroom glass. The whole front of the house was dark, and there was only a faint light at the back. Had Lena gone out, leaving her aunt alone? She was here to take care of Voletta, not go chasing around. Kate couldn’t see Lena’s car, though if she’d parked up close to the back porch it wouldn’t be visible. Voletta’s old muddy pickup stood farther from the house. As she reached to slice more cornbread, a pair of dimmed car lights came up the back road from the direction of the village and freeway.

The car pulled out of sight close behind the house. They couldn’t see Lena get out but they heard her voice as the driver’s door slammed. Two more doors closed and they heard men’s voices.

“Lena has a boyfriend?” Scotty said. “Or maybe two?”

“She arrived alone, I didn’t see anyone. Voletta didn’t mention anyone.” Soon the living room lights came on, then the lights of all three bedrooms.

“You can see more of the house from the mansion,” Scotty said. “From where we’re working. I saw the shadow of a man down there today, he was careful to keep out of sight.”

“I guess,” Kate said, “we shouldn’t be judgmental, when we’re living …”—she flushed—“conjugally.”

“Only until you agree to marry me,” he said softly. “What is it, Kate? What’s the secret? You divorced your husband years ago. You told me there’s been no one else. Why can’t you tell me what’s wrong? Am I not the right man, am I a one-night stand?” He looked at her deeply. “I don’t think so. And Kate, nothing can be so bad that I couldn’t overlook it. I’m a very forgiving guy.”

Leaning over, he lightly kissed her forehead. The wind rustled harder against the windows. Their supper was getting cold. Across the little hill, the lights soon went off in all three bedrooms and the living room. The kitchen lights had been turned up brightly, lighting the trees beyond; and as the clouds moved on, freeing the moonlight, Scotty looked up at the mansion. In the open-walled upstairs nursery, a movement drew their attention.

“The ferals,” Kate said softly. Three pale shapes were crouched at the edge of the floor where the wall had fallen away. Willow, Sage, and Tansy? They, too, were looking down watching Voletta Nestor’s house.

“I’ve seen them watching before,” Kate said. “At night when the moon’s bright it’s not hard to see their pale coloring. Since you’ve started work, they don’t come down here much, only early in the evening or maybe late at night. I don’t think they hunt down below Voletta’s, her goats and that donkey chase them.”

“Why do the cats watch her?” Scotty said. “What are they curious about?”

“Maybe the kitchen lights, watching the movement behind the curtains. Cats are fascinated by movement.”

“They’re strange little cats,” Scotty said lightly. “Sometimes they watch us at work. Always shy, half hidden, but not as if they’re afraid.” He put his arm around her. “What will happen tonight, at Wilma’s? Will the stalker try again, and take her bait? Or go after Wilma herself, thinking that she’s there? What is the connection between them? I hope McFarland nails him and hauls him off to jail.” Beyond the windows, the clouds scattered southwest, opening up the moonstruck night over the village, over the Damens’ house.

In the Damen patio, warm in sweaters and jackets, their table pulled up close to the hot barbecue, Wilma, Ryan, and Clyde, and slim, elderly Lucinda and Pedric Greenlaw, were wondering the same. Would McFarland trap Rick Alderson or whoever the prowler was, land him in jail and keep Wilma safe? Was this young man connected to the murder scene, and maybe to the car thefts? Joe Grey and Dulcie, Kit and Pan and young Courtney crowded on one end of the table enjoying their share of steak and fries. Only Dulcie ate a little salad. Courtney, having never had filet mignon, gobbled the sliced steak with greedy delight. Never could she remember, in her dreams of other lives, a meal like this, the meat crisp on the outside, rare within, and more flavorful and tender than any scraps of boiled pork or Irish mutton. She knew she had enjoyed grand feasts as well as leavings, somewhere and sometime; but she had enjoyed nothing like this steak dinner right here and right now. She caught Kit laughing at her, the tortoiseshell’s yellow eyes teasing her for her greed. She didn’t care, she hissed smartly back, and returned to her supper.

Clyde was saying, “Last time they hit Sonoma, five cars stolen, twenty more left on the streets robbed or trashed or both.” He looked at Joe Grey. “Max said the Sonoma sheriff has found the five cars, and has two drivers locked up.”

“So?” Joe said. “Sonoma is working car heists. MPPD is also working two murders and now a break and enter. Give our guys a little credit.”

Ryan said, “What about the Styrofoam? How can something as innocuous as scraps of Styrofoam offer a link the police can prove? Seems to me that’s circumstantial.”

“It’s a good start,” Clyde said. “If those flecks did come from a stolen car, and then were in Wilma’s house, and in Barbara Conley’s house … If Max can find that car …” He looked at Kit and Pan. “The car you saw in the garage that night.”

Kit said, “The wind blew away the dust on the drive so clean it blew away the tire marks. But there were tiny pieces of packing, wind blew those so hard into the bushes it was like someone pressed them there, stuck tight.”

Joe said, “Pretty strong coincidence.”

“And you don’t even believe in coincidence,” Wilma said, scratching Joe’s ears. “I hope,” she said, “if the thieves come back to work this area, I hope Scotty will stay on at the shelter. I don’t like to think of Kate up there alone.”

Ryan pushed back her short, dark hair, her green eyes watching Wilma. “With Scotty restoring the mansion, working there all day, it’s easy enough for him to stay.” She smiled. “Kate says he’s grown really interested that the ferals sneak down sometimes to hide and watch them work.”

“The wild, speaking cats?” Courtney said. “But Wilma, you said they’re afraid of humans.”

Ryan said, “They like Kate and Wilma. And Charlie and I used to ride up there a lot. But still they’re shy of most humans, and that’s a good thing.”

Courtney drew herself up tall, lifting her front paw with the three black bracelets, the orange and black markings on her back bright even in the soft patio lights. “I want to go there. I want to talk with the ferals, I want to see the ruins, I want …”

Joe Grey looked hard at her. “If you go there, Courtney, Dulcie and I will take you. Or Kit and Pan will. You are not to go alone.”

“Why not? Kit goes alone.”

“It’s too far. Kit is not a half-grown kitten. You can’t run and dodge and disappear as fast, yet, as she can. You can’t climb as high and fast, yet. Do you remember Kit’s story of the mountain lion?”

“I remember.”

“Sometimes there are mountain lions there in the ruins. And bobcats, and always coyotes. You will not go alone, Courtney, until you are a grown-up fighter. And even then, alone isn’t safe.”

“But if you go with me … ?”

“We’ll think about it,” Joe and Dulcie said together.

“At least there’s no gang of thieves up there,” Pedric said. “What’s to steal at the ruins? Not a car in sight except Kate’s. And Lena’s car, down at her aunt’s. Those crooks want a crowded neighborhood, lots of cars to hit all at once.” The older man, tall and regal looking, took Lucinda’s hand. “I’m glad I got my gun permit.”

“I feel safer, too,” Lucinda said. “And I feel easier with Kit home safe at night, and now Pan, too. We missed you,” she said, stroking the red tabby’s back.

Pan said, “I do love John and Mary, but …”

“But,” Lucinda said, “you didn’t plan to stay forever. Now the kittens have taken over for a few days, and that’s good for all of them.”

Dulcie and Joe looked at each other, thinking about their boys going off into the world. Only a few days seemed to them like the prologue to forever. Did all parents feel this way?

But Courtney’s look was … What kind of look was that? Regret that her brothers might move away? Or a sly smugness at having Wilma and Dulcie to herself, having their house to herself? And at having their daddy all her own, at least some of the time.

When, even in the walled patio, the wind quickened and the clouds drew down, the party picked up their plates and leftovers, Clyde put out the fire in the grill, and they moved inside; the conversation turning again to Jimmie McFarland, tucked up in Wilma’s house, waiting for a window to break, a door to wrench open. But soon the Greenlaws headed home, Kit and Pan trotting close beside them as they unlocked their Lincoln, the car that had once nearly been the scene of Lucinda’s and Pedric’s own murders.

Well, that adventure came out all right, Kit thought, shivering, that night on the narrow mountain road when we nearly went over and I ran from the wrecked Lincoln and called for help for Pedric and Lucinda and the coyotes nearly had me.

When Clyde and Ryan came racing up the highway together with Rock and the cats, they saved me, Ryan shot the coyote and saved me. Life, Kit thought, life is good when you have strong and loving friends to help you. That night, she thought, trembling, they sure saved my little cat skin.

17

The Damen house was dark except for ghosts of moonlight shifting beyond the shades. Joe Grey woke feeling off center. What had woken him? He was not in his tower, nor was he in Clyde and Ryan’s bed. He was downstairs in the guest room stretched out on the quilt between Dulcie and Courtney, the three of them crowded against Wilma. He could just see Rock over by the door, lying on the throw rug, Snowball snuggled warm between his front legs. But where were Striker and Buffin, where were the boys?

When he remembered they were cuddled up with the Firettis, Joe scowled with jealousy. Their kittens were cozy in another household, with new friends. And again Joe felt abandoned.

But the two boy kittens were getting big, their blue eyes showing the first glints of yellow and gold in their pale buff faces. At their age, Joe had been on his own, making his own living—such as it was—evading bigger, vicious alley cats, hiding from stray dogs among the street rubble, rummaging for his supper in San Francisco’s garbage cans. Now, it was nearing the time when his own growing kittens would venture into the world for good, choosing the paths of their separate lives—choosing better than the homeless world where he’d first landed.

It hurt, deep down, to think of Buffin and Striker leaving the nest, it hurt Dulcie, and it upset Wilma. Wilma’s house was their nest, Dulcie had birthed the kittens there, had nursed and trained them, had watched them claw the furniture and climb the draperies and duck their heads in shame when they were scolded. Dulcie and Wilma had told the little ones myths, and Joe had told them stories about the real human world that amazed them. He recalled their heart-pounding delirium when each kitten spoke its first words, proved indeed that he or she was a speaking cat, was as rare and talented as everyone had hoped they would be.

Yawning, knowing that Striker and Buffin were safe, he wondered again what had awakened him—then he was sharply alert thinking of the stakeout, of Wilma’s house empty but not empty, police moving unseen through the shadows of Wilma’s neighborhood, Jimmie McFarland dozing fully dressed atop Wilma’s bed with the light on as if Wilma were reading. Jimmie in dark sweats, soft shoes, gun, holster, radio …

Carefully Joe eased out from beside Dulcie and slid to the floor. When Rock raised his head, bumping against the closed door, Joe gave him that be quiet look. But Rock didn’t need it, he was as silent and alert as if he, too, were off to track a felon.

Joe shook his head. “You need to stay here.” He nudged Rock gently until the Weimaraner slid over a few inches, easing Snowball with him. Joe pulled the door open with his claws, gave Rock another look that told him to stay, and slipped through.

He trotted softly up the stairs, hopped up quietly on Clyde’s desk, leaped noiselessly to the rafter and out his cat door. Nudging open a window he hit the roof and took off running. He didn’t hear a sound behind him, heard no stir of soft paws in the fitful breeze as Courtney followed her daddy—and as Dulcie, angry at them both, raced to catch up, both females staying to the shadows, silent as velvet.

Jimmie McFarland woke as disoriented as Joe Grey—but only for a second. He sat up wide awake, swinging his feet noiselessly to the floor, hand on his holstered gun, listening.

He could hear a thief rummaging the house, moving the couch out from the wall, the hush of books being shuffled back and forth in the bookshelves, of the desk drawers opening. He listened to the prowler search the dining room, the buffet and china cabinet. The kitchen and refrigerator took a long time as he tried not to rattle the dishes and pots and pans. He went through the laundry, Jimmie heard him open the freezer, after a few minutes closing it again. Heard him move the washer and dryer as if to look behind them. Heard him come down the hall, check out the guest bath, then open the linen closet, listened to the soft hush as he shuffled towels and sheets. Then the thief was in the guest room.

The faint sounds of drawers opening, of bedding being tossed aside, of the bed being moved, perhaps so he could look at the back of the headboard. When Jimmie heard the closet door slide open he silently turned the lock on his own door, the heavy bolt that had been installed and oiled the night before.

Moving soundlessly down the hall, he heard the boxes on the shelves being shoved aside—then, a second too late, heard the guest room window slide open, heard the guy hit the ground running. Jimmie was down the hall, through the window after him, racing between the line of neighbors’ garages and the rising hill, moving south, half his thoughts on the two officers working the street, wondering where they were. Tall, big-handed Crowley, six feet four, could pick the thief up like a rag doll if he caught him. Portly Brennan was slower, but tough, and reliable with a gun.

He hadn’t stopped to see if the book was missing, he knew it would be. The guy running between the hill and the garages stopped sometimes as if to listen. Yes, as he fled again, a gleam of moonlight caught the corner of the package. Same size, same pale color like brown wrapping paper. Strange he didn’t climb the hill—except he’d make a perfect target against the moon-pale grass. The moon hung low in the west, hitting the hill, leaving the yards dark. Beyond Wilma’s, the houses were close together. The runner paused at each narrow, dark side yard then went on, dodging bushes and trees. Suddenly he vanished. No sound, no movement in the shadows.

Jimmie used his flashlight, shining it into the narrow yards, into the crowded shrubbery. He was about to double back when he heard someone running again, and then two men …

He knew Crowley’s footfall. He heard the faintest hush of a door closing. Crowley stopped, they both stood still, one at each end of a narrow yard, listening, the faintest streak of moonlight touching Crowley’s cap where he stood by the corner of the garage; the walk-in door was halfway between them.

When there was no more sound, when they shone their lights around the door and into the shrubbery there were only empty shadows. Jimmie flashed his light once, then covered his tall partner while Crowley, wearing gloves, tried the door.

It was locked.

Moments earlier when Wilma’s stalker had slipped out the guest room window carrying the box, he heard McFarland come out behind him. He knew there’d be other cops. Earlier, he had jimmied the lock of one of the garages down the row—when he heard McFarland drawing too near then heard a second man running, he eased open the door, slipped in, locked it from inside. He heard them try the door, fiddle with the lock, then soon they moved on down the row of houses, one at each end of the side yards.

The garage was neat and uncluttered. Low moonlight shone through the narrow, obscure glass in the big double door. There were two cars, both of them unlocked. Silently rummaging, he found little of value in the Ford Taurus.

In the black Mercedes he found, shoved back under a tangle of pamphlets in the glove compartment, the concierge key on a big ring. People were so stupid. They hid, or thought they had hidden, the nonelectronic model so when they went out to dinner or to a hotel they could give the attendant only the car key, no opening codes, no handy house key attached. He was thinking about starting the engine, opening the garage fast and taking off, when he heard a car start up the street, heard it move away south. A quiet, heavy vehicle that could be a cop car.

Quickly he left the garage, he couldn’t lock the side door behind him but the cops had already checked it. Slipping away, keeping to the shadows, he was lucky this time, the patrol car had gone on.

Moving fast and silently along the dirt path, he hustled down the last four blocks to the little corner grocery. He stepped behind it into the narrow strip of woods that separated it from the motel above and from Ocean Avenue. There were two homeless men asleep between the pines. They didn’t wake. The grocery’s little parking lot, which opened to the cross street, was empty. Staying beneath the bordering trees, he watched for the dark SUV that would pick him up. He had no notion that he was stalked by more than cops. When he heard a car coming he was prepared to race to it—until he saw the cop car behind it, and backed deeper into the woods. It wasn’t his ride anyway, but a white minivan.

Dulcie, running shoulder to shoulder with Courtney, didn’t say a word to her. She couldn’t talk, with cops down there on the street, and if she did speak, she didn’t know what would come out; she didn’t want this to end in a spitting match—she was so mad at Courtney for following Joe that she wanted to smack the headstrong kitten.

But Courtney had only meant to help her daddy. The calico’s busy paws tore across the shingles, her determined little face so coldly serious that Dulcie couldn’t scold her. They had crossed Ocean Avenue under dark trees, well behind Joe. There was no traffic. They climbed a vine silently and hit the roofs again. They were on the shop next to the little corner grocery when suddenly ahead of them Joe stopped. Dulcie and Courtney froze.

But he hadn’t seen them, he was peering over the roof’s edge where trees lined the market’s parking lot, intent on a man hidden in the trees’ shadows. When the figure heard a car coming he moved out among the row of trees that led to the street. Dulcie could barely make out his long thin face. He carried the box, wrapped in paper. He stepped back when a minivan passed below, moving slowly. A cop car followed it.

The officers pulled the driver over with flashing lights. They got out, ordered the driver out. He stood facing his van, hands on the roof. They frisked him and questioned him. They searched the van, looked at his driver’s license, then sent him on his way.

At first sight of the patrol car, the burglar had slid deeper in the pines and shrubbery. Now, when the cops had gone, he slipped his phone from his pocket. He spoke softly. Dulcie watched Joe listen from the roof then quickly choose a pine and back down, she watched him warily. If someone was picking this guy up, she knew what Joe meant to do.

“You stay here,” she told Courtney; but already the young cat was wired to move. “Right here!” Dulcie repeated. “Don’t you dare go down off this roof, not for anything. If I … if you are left alone, you are to go to your pa’s house. Do you know how to get to the Damens’?”

“Of course I know,” Courtney said, bristling. “Down that street four blocks, and to the left past Barbara Conley’s with the yellow tape.” And she turned her face away, sulking.

As Dulcie slid into a bougainvillea vine and down among its thorny branches a car pulled into the lot, a dark, older SUV. At once the thief fled from the bushes and opened the driver’s side back door. He folded half of the backseat down so it matched the platform of the rear storage space. Leaning in, he rummaged among the jumble at the back, tucking the box he carried under some duffel bags and bundles.

Behind him, Joe Grey sped for the open door, leaped in and slipped over behind the passenger’s seat. He could say nothing as Dulcie flew in and pressed against him; he glared at her, furious, ears back, yellow eyes narrow. He watched her claw a dark blanket down from the seat above them. As they slid under, Courtney flew in behind them.

They couldn’t scold, they daren’t even whack her lightly for fear she’d hiss and fight. This calico was getting too big for her britches.

Quietly the thief shut the door, went around and opened the front passenger door and slipped in. The driver took off, skidding as he turned.

Headed where? Where was he taking them?

Dulcie pushed the blanket aside for a little light. Courtney was wide-eyed and shivering. She hadn’t thought, she had only meant to help her pa. She hadn’t helped him at all, and now she was filled with fear. Dulcie thought of the time Joe had gotten in a car headed who-knew-where, and ended up in the parking garage of the San Jose airport, some eighty miles north. Lost, alone, surrounded by cars driving in and pulling away, a regular riot of moving wheels, he’d seen a woman he knew shot to death. He had, at last, stolen a cell phone from an open truck, had called Clyde and Ryan to rescue him.

Now, sliding around where she could see between the two front seats, Dulcie got a look at the driver: a heavy fellow, dark, short hair, heavy shoulders. He was built like Pan’s description of the car thief that windy night, the man whose trail bore the same white, flaky evidence as that from the beauty salon murders. Looking closely, she could see the same white specks stuck in the crepe soles of his dark shoes.

Kit and Pan hit the roof of the village market at the moment that Joe Grey, Dulcie, and Courtney dove into the dark SUV, saw them flash into the car and disappear. “Oh my,” Kit said and crouched to leap after them but Pan jerked her back, teeth and claws in her shoulder.

The two cats had, shortly after they’d returned home from dinner at the Damens’, slipped away again after giving Lucinda and Pedric face rubs, and loving them. They beat it out the cat door, headed for the stakeout at Wilma’s house where they knew Joe would be. There they had waited on the roofs across the street for a long time, they had watched Wilma’s living room light go out, then the reflection of the bedroom light come on, glancing off the pale back hill—and Wilma’s stalker appeared from the shadows near the front door.

This time he must have had a lock pick; it didn’t take long and he was inside. They came down from the neighbor’s roof and up onto Wilma’s shingles. They listened to him toss the house, the living room, the kitchen, they moved across the roof just above him the way they might follow the underground sounds from a squirrel tunnel. They heard, after some time, the stealthy sliding of a closet door in the guest room, the dry sound of shuffled boxes. Where was Jimmie? They scrambled down from the roof, they were racing for Dulcie’s cat door when they heard a back window slide open, heard the soft sound of running on the dirt path behind the house. From that moment, everything was confusion; climbing to the roofs again, leaping across the side yards scrambling from tree to tree chasing running footsteps. More than one man running but, in the dark below them, in the windblown night, all was uncertain. What they thought was the perp turned out to be a cop. What they thought were two perps, they saw suddenly were McFarland and Crowley. Where was Joe Grey? The running was louder, then it stopped; a door opened and closed softly. Silence, then a cop approached the door, found it locked, and moved on, looking back. The cops were gone when the door eased open and a tall, thin man came out, closing it behind him. He ran, almost soundlessly, racing along the edge of the hill and behind the village market. When he hid among the trees they crouched on the roof, listening.

They could smell Joe Grey’s scent on the shingles, could smell Dulcie and Courtney. Below, the black, windy, moonlit scene held them, the white van and the cops’ car, then the dark SUV, the perp leaping in, the three cats behind him. Kit crouched at the edge, ready to leap down. Pan grabbed her, stopping her—and the car skidded away, turning onto Ocean.

They followed up Ocean, over cottages and shops. When they couldn’t see up the hill any farther they scaled a tall pine to the top. “There!” Kit hissed. The SUV was climbing the last hump to the stop signal. They waited, panting, to see which way it would turn.

It turned north where Highway One would lead to a cluster of freeways. Kit couldn’t stop shaking. Oh, how did Joe let this happen? And the road was empty behind, no patrol car was tailing them. How did the cops, scouring the neighborhood, how could they miss such a blatant escape? Kit wanted to yowl.

“A phone,” Pan hissed, and they spun around, heading down the tree, dropping from branch to branch. Joe’s house was the nearest; but as they dropped to the sidewalk Kit said, “Wait … Wait one minute.” She raced across the parking lot to where the SUV had stopped. She sniffed where its tires had stood, smelling at the paving; she looked up at Pan making a flehmen scowl. The pavement smelled of … what?

“Garlic,” she said, inhaling again. “Garlic, geranium, eucalyptus, and … goats.” It was a sickening combination. “And here’s a eucalyptus leaf bent and crunched as if it fell out of a tire tread.”

“There are eucalyptus trees all over the village.”

“But that’s exactly what grows at the edge of Voletta Nestor’s weedy yard. I notice it every time we hunt on the Pamillon land, the eucalyptus, that ornamental garlic, its long silver grass. Red geraniums. And the damned goats,” she added. She looked at him, her eyes bright.

“Come on,” he said, and they raced through the dark for Joe’s house.

“If we can slip into the kitchen,” Pan said, “make the 911 call without waking anyone …”

“But we’ll have to wake Clyde, we need wheels. We can tell the cops about the car the prowler got into, and which way it went. I couldn’t see the license, only the first part, 6F … couldn’t see the rest. But how do we tell them that three cats are trapped in there, that the department’s Joe Grey is shut inside with those crooks?” She shivered, approaching the Damens’ cat door. The night was moving toward dawn, and where were Joe and Dulcie and Courtney headed? Slipping inside through the little plastic door, hurrying to the kitchen and a phone, Kit imagined the car turning onto the freeway, its three stowaways crouched out of sight, unable to see much out the windows above them, no idea where they were going or what would happen to them, and again she thought, Why did Joe do this? Dulcie and his own kitten? How could he let this happen?

18

Joe and Dulcie knew they were on Highway One, they had felt the car turn north. Soon they felt the echoing rumble as they went through the long tunnel where, above the highway, the grass grew tall, the land rolling away into the hills so one often forgot that the freeway snaked underneath. They sometimes hunted that lush verge, so dense with ground squirrels, snakes, and mice. Often they caught the scent of coyotes there or a cougar or bobcat that had come down into the village canyons. Now, the cats were more tense at their present situation than at the smell of a four-legged predator. Dulcie and Courtney wished they hadn’t jumped in the car so rashly but they couldn’t have left Joe to be carried away alone. What had he been thinking, to trap himself in here with two killers? Courtney wished her daddy hadn’t come out tonight, wished they were all safe at the Damens’, snuggled among the quilts with Wilma. When they felt the car change lanes, felt it speed tilting down an exit ramp, they dug their claws into the floor mat. Then they were on level road again, moving fast to the northeast.

“For crissake, Randall, slow down.”

“Let it rest, Egan.”

The cats looked at each other. Egan? Then the AFIS records hadn’t missed anything, this man really wasn’t Rick Alderson—unless he was using a fake name.

“We don’t need the CHP on our tail,” Egan said, “after that beauty parlor mess. Maybe, Randall, you need to be more careful.”

“What I need,” Randall said, “is a hamburger, before we load up and take off.” Wide shouldered, muscled, and broad, was this the man who had been in Barbara Conley’s house that windy night?

“We’re already past anywhere to eat,” Egan said. “Why don’t you think of these things sooner?”

“I wanted to get out of there. Them cops …”

“It was you said you’d drive. Ma would have done it, if you hadn’t argued.”

“She’s all over the damned road. I love your ma but I wish we didn’t have to use her for transport.”

“We need every driver we can get. You love her all right. And every other woman who gives you the come-on.” Egan turned, looking dourly at Randall. “You can cheat on them—cheat on Ma—but they better not double-cross you.”

Randall jerked his hand up as if to smack Egan’s face.

“Watch the road, for crissake.”

“I’m watching the damn road.” Randall glanced up at the sky above them. “Hope they’re ready. It’ll be getting light soon, we don’t have that much time.”

Dulcie looked again at the driver’s short black hair, dense and wiry, and thought of the black hair in the trace evidence that the cops had bagged from the murder victims. Slipping over behind the driver’s seat, she peered around to get a good look at Egan, his long thin face, thin nose, and light blond hair. That color hair hadn’t been among the evidence at the murders, but his blond hairs had been collected in Wilma’s house, and Barbara’s, along with the bits of Styrofoam packing that stuck to everything. They could smell the men’s sweat. And could smell the mud on Egan’s shoes—mud from behind Wilma’s house, the scent of mint that grew at the foot of the hill.

Courtney, clinging to her mother, trying not to panic at what might lie ahead and trying not to feel car sick, closed her eyes and ducked her face under her paws. Willing her memory-dreams to take her, carry her away from whatever was going to happen.

Closing her eyes, slipping into another time, another place away from her terror, she eased down among sod houses with thatched roofs, a woman she had loved, milking a small, cranky cow, her long hair tied back, her rough-spun skirts muddy along the hem.

But fear was there, too. When the woman’s sour husband came out and started sharpening a sword, the calico had fled. The scene was so clear. Soon there were more men, in steel armor and helmets, tall men on horseback. She felt the woman pick her up and carry her into the cottage, then the dream twisted into a haze of tall mountains, then broke apart into a meaningless jumble, the woman holding her softly; and she slept.

Dulcie, snuggling her kitten, knew she was off in another time. She felt both curiosity at what Courtney was seeing, and envy that she could bring back those ancient days—just as their friend Misto had remembered his past. As sometimes Kit while dreaming reached out a paw as if to touch someone or something that, in sleep, must seem very real.

Randall had slowed and was looking around almost desperately as if seeking a way past something ahead. The cats could see nothing from their angled view up through the windows, could see only night and the flash from moving car lights. Randall slowed even more, pulled over abruptly onto the bumpy shoulder, speeded up as if to go around some impediment—but suddenly slammed on the brakes. “Hell! Damn it to hell!” His maneuver woke Courtney, startled at his shout and at the lights all around them glaring through the windows, blazes of flashing red, now, that could only be the demanding signals of emergency vehicles.

Earlier that night, when Kit and Pan had raced to the Damens’ to call 911, they’d thought the house would be dark, that everyone would be asleep. But a light burned in the living room, glowing through the plastic cat door as they slipped through.

Three scowls met them: Ryan and Clyde and Wilma, in their nightclothes, solemn with anger. Kit and Pan could smell their fear.

“Where are Dulcie and Joe and Courtney?” Wilma said. “Oh, they didn’t go home to my house? Not in the middle of a stakeout? Oh, Kit! Why do you think I brought Dulcie and Courtney over here, but to keep them safe!”

“But I … we didn’t,” Kit began.

“Where are they?” Clyde said, his frown fierce. He wore a Windbreaker over his sweats and was jingling his car keys. Kit had never seen him so angry, she didn’t know what to say, she didn’t know how to tell them.

“The phone,” she whispered. “We need … They’re in the getaway car …”

Ryan fled for the kitchen, Kit in her arms. Within seconds she had dialed 911; she held the headset for Kit, her own face pressed close to listen. Behind them Clyde and Wilma crowded against them.

“The stakeout at Wilma Getz’s house,” Kit told the dispatcher. “Two men took off from the market parking lot, maybe ten minutes ago. Dark older SUV, maybe a Toyota. First two numbers of the license are 6F, that’s all I could see. They’re heading north … Heavy man like a body builder, dark hair. Thin young guy, blond, long thin face …” She paused a moment, thinking how lame was her little whiff of scent-evidence, wondering if it meant anything.

“They might,” she told the dispatcher, “be headed up toward the ruins, toward Voletta Nestor’s house, the house with that old barn behind, but that’s only a guess.” As the dispatcher put out the call, Kit pressed the disconnect.

Clyde had left the kitchen, they heard the Jaguar start. Ryan shouted and ran, raced out the front door. They heard the Jaguar idling, heard the car door open, heard them arguing, Clyde’s voice quick and angry. “You can’t leave Wilma alone.”

“Her stalker’s gone, Clyde. You heard what Kit said. You’re not going off alone after those men!”

“Shut the door, Ryan. The cops don’t know about the cats. If they catch that car, there’s no one to help the cats. Shut the damn door. Stay with Wilma, she … Oh hell …”

Wilma flung the back door open and slid in, Kit and Pan clinging to her. “I locked the front door,” she said as Rock bolted over her to the other side of the seat. She handed Ryan a jacket, and pulled on her own short coat.

Clyde, looking back at her, swore again briefly before he headed for the freeway. Wilma had been his best friend since he was a small boy when she was his neighbor, a glamorous college student living next door. They’d never abandoned that friendship; she was family—but right now he could have gladly strangled her. He scowled in the rearview mirror. “You carrying?”

“Of course,” Wilma said coolly, pushing back her gray-white ponytail, frowning back at him as he turned onto the freeway.

“Ryan?” he said.

“Yes,” she told him, slipping an automatic and a shoulder holster from her handbag, buckling on the holster then pulling on her jacket.

Kit crowded onto Wilma’s shoulder, looking out the window, prayed the cops were ahead of them, already cornering the SUV. What if the dark car had turned off and somehow evaded the patrol cars? “Oh hurry, Clyde. Please hurry.”

“Driving as fast as I dare,” he snapped; he seldom snapped at Kit. The speedometer said eighty-five. “If we get a cop on our tail, it’ll only slow us down, trying to explain.”

When Kit looked at Pan, he was as nervous as she. She thought of the SUV’s tires that smelled of Voletta’s place. Could they be headed there?

Did they mean to take the book there to Voletta? Who else would know about a hidden book removed from the Pamillon mansion, who else but a Pamillon? Who else would have sent someone to steal it back? None of the family lived anywhere near nor seemed interested in anything about the old place, even Voletta’s niece, and she hadn’t been there often before her aunt got hurt. And if Voletta had hired those men, what was the relationship between them, that she would trust them to bring her the book?

Could Kit’s wild guess about the smells be right? Garlic, eucalyptus, and geranium, growing thick around the old barn. She prayed to the great cat god that her hunch was on target, that the crooks were headed there with their unknown captives, prayed as hard as a little cat can that Joe and Dulcie and Courtney would escape safely.

19

Something woke Kate. She glanced through the bedroom door to the shelter office and caught her breath. A dark figure stood at the window silhouetted by bright lights. Then she saw it was Scotty.

The bedside clock said 3 a.m. Pulling on her robe, she went to stand beside him. Below the shelter and the Pamillon ruins, a pool of light shone across Voletta’s yard, a wider circle than the porch light could ever make.

The wide, weedy yard was full of cars. Three darkly clad figures were pulling cars out of the old barn, lining them up facing the road. Most of them were new or late models, shining in the floodlights.

Only a few days ago the barn had been empty, she had seen Lena open it to get a length of hose. Just a few bales of hay in there, some farm tools and ladders. A couple of dusty trailers pulled in, at the far corner. Now, watching with disbelief, she looked up at Scotty. “Not the stolen cars! Here in Voletta’s yard! This can’t be part of the car ring!”

“I’ve already called the department.” Scotty, feeling her shiver, pulled her closer, his arm warm around her. “Where else would those cars come from?”

“But that gang isn’t working the village now. That night when the wind was so bad was the last night. The paper said they’ve moved on, that they’re somewhere up the coast. Eureka, I think. And Voletta—how could that frail old woman be mixed up in a crime ring? That’s ludicrous.”

Scotty hugged her closer. “Looks like they’re using her place as a storage stop. They might bring cars from anywhere. Or these could be the Molena Point cars, they steal the cars in the village and hide them here. Move them later, during the time the gang has gone on up the coast, drawing more of the highway patrol with them. That means they have more crew than we thought.” He looked down at Kate. “How long has this been going on? Have you seen this before? Seen lights down there?”

“No. But I haven’t been staying up here long, just since we moved the cats in. And I don’t usually wake at three in the morning—not until the storm hit, and you were knocking on my door,” she said, coloring slightly. “I’m up at midnight to check on the kennel cats, then fall back asleep until about six.”

He stood thinking, his red hair and beard caught in the light from below. “How often did Lena visit her aunt, before Voletta was hurt and Lena moved in?”

“Every few weeks, I guess. I didn’t make a point to go down and visit with her,” she said coolly.

Scotty laughed. “No girly chats over a cup of tea?”

She made a face at him.

It was then that Ryan called to tell them about Joe and Dulcie and Courtney. “There may be a car headed to Voletta’s. We … Kate, if a dark SUV pulls in, it’s Wilma’s stalker and that heavyset man. We don’t know where they’re going, but Kit says the scent on the tires could lead there, to Voletta’s place. Joe and Dulcie and Courtney are trapped in that car.”

“Oh my God.”

“The cats dove in behind the driver’s seat. When it stops, see if you can delay the car, give them a chance to get out …”

Kate said, “Voletta’s yard is full of cars, men we’ve never seen are moving cars out of the old barn. These have to be the stolen cars. Scotty’s already called the department.”

When they’d hung up, Scotty, moving into the bedroom, pulled on his boots and a jacket over his sweats and hurried outside. “I’m going over to the mansion,” he said, “where I can see better.”

She watched him cross her freshly mown yard and then the tall grass of the berm that separated the shelter from the mansion. He stood just inside the missing wall of the living room, keeping to the shadows. She dressed quickly in a sweatshirt and jeans, strapped on her shoulder holster feeling slightly foolish, and pulled on a vest to conceal it. Better foolish than unprepared. Max had insisted she be armed when she moved up here alone. “You have your permit, Kate. Use it.” He didn’t know, then, nor had she, that she wouldn’t be alone. She was watching Scotty again when something pale moved beside him. One of the feral cats? Surprised, she watched him crouch and reach out to it.

The ferals never came that near strangers. Even when they watched Scotty working on that part of the house, they were shy and wary. Scotty wasn’t one of the inner circle, those few who knew the speaking cats’ secret. She stood frowning and puzzled.

Yesterday morning when she woke at five, Scotty had already eaten and left; the apartment smelled of coffee and fried eggs and bacon. In the tiny kitchen she’d found his dishes neatly washed, resting in the drainer. Looking out at the frost-pale lawn she had seen where his dark footprints had crushed the frost from the mowed grass; had seen the taller, wild grass of the verge falling aside where he had walked through. Maybe, she’d thought, he’d had some new thoughts about the work on the living room, maybe he had gone over to the worksite to consider some change?

But his footprints did not lead to the front of the house, they went toward the back of the old mansion. Dressing quickly, she had gone into the biggest shelter, down at the end, petting cats as she went and talking to them. Standing on a log that was part of a tall cat tree, she could see Scotty behind the old house at the edge of the small, sheltered patio that joined a large bedroom—the private little garden where, not long ago, Ryan and Wilma had found the Bewick book buried.

She had watched him kneel down. She had frozen with surprise when three of the feral cats came out of the bushes and fairly near to him, stood watching him, unafraid: pale Willow and Tansy, and dark tabby Coyote.

She could swear he was talking to them, trying to entice them closer to be petted, these wild cats who would have nothing to do with most humans.

Did the feral cats sense something in Scotty that made them trust him? Did they see a quality in him that drew them, maybe sense the old Scots-Irish traits that might be sympathetic to their own heritage? The cats did not move closer, they were still for a few moments, listening to him, studying him with interest—but then they turned away, almost as if something he’d said had startled them. They drifted back into the shadows and were gone—and within Kate something joyful had exploded, a hope that bubbled up fiercely and made her smile.

All that day she had found it nearly impossible not to wonder if Scotty had guessed the cats’ secret or was on the verge of guessing. Might he have thought he heard them talking and, though he really couldn’t believe that, he was curious?

Or was it the cats alone who were making the advances? But why? Even if they were drawn to him, why would they want him to know their secret, these cats who were so shy and careful? The secret that no one who knew, could ever tell?

This solemn confidence was the reason she wouldn’t marry him. How could they be one when she was bridled with deception, with a lie by omission that she must forever hide?

All yesterday she had thought of little else. She was so excited that he might know the truth, it was hard to act normal. But now, tonight, with the serious activity below, she put aside her own questions.

Scotty still stood unmoving against the open living room wall, the pale cat companionably beside him, both of them watching the men busy below, moving cars—and was that Lena down there, helping them? Lena dressed in dark sweats, dark boots, dark cap pulled over her hair, stepping out of a pale convertible that she had just pulled into the line of cars? Kate studied the three men, and didn’t recognize them. And where was the dark SUV that Ryan had called about? The car carrying the three terrified cats?

It was hard to think of Joe Grey frightened, but this time he had to be—terrified for little Courtney and for Dulcie, the three of them trapped in a strange car, traveling through the night with men who might be killers. Kate pressed against the office window. Where was the SUV? Was it coming here or headed somewhere else? Where were Ryan and Clyde, where were the cops?

In Clyde’s Jaguar, Kit stood on Wilma’s lap, her front paws on the back of the front seat, looking up the dark freeway, watching the SUV they followed. There was not much traffic at this hour—until they heard sirens behind them and saw flashing lights and Clyde pulled over into the right lane, out of the way. Two police cars passed them fast, rounding a curve where, ahead, emergency lights flashed from a fire engine and from rescue units. Two trucks were turned over, blocking both lanes. An officer was putting up barriers and red lanterns as a cop with a flashlight flagged Clyde down; he parked on the shoulder.

A bright yellow pickup was rolled over, a blue and white bakery van half on top of it, one wheel still spinning. On the side of the road just ahead, the dark brown SUV stood parked, with a long dent down the left side. The left front door had been pried open or maybe sprung open at what appeared to be a sideswipe. The black-haired, muscled driver was leaning halfway out, trying to pull himself free. A CHP officer stood with a gun on the man. At last the big man, grabbing the roof, hoisted himself up and out. As he tried to stand erect, leaning on the door, the three cats exploded out behind him—they fled under the car away from the freeway, across the dirt shoulder and up the grassy hill to vanish among the oaks.

While two sheriff’s deputies shackled Randall, Ryan was out of the Jaguar chasing Joe and Dulcie and Courtney, Kit beside her, Rock and Pan racing ahead. Climbing the rough ground in the dark, trying to avoid protruding roots, Ryan called to the cats, “It’s all right, you can come down! Come down, kitties. Come down, Joe! Come here to me!” She knelt, waiting for them.

Slowly the three cats came out from among the trees. Even Joe Grey looked haggard, staying close to little Courtney, who was still shivering. Clyde and Wilma climbed up to kneel in the tall grass beside Ryan. Wilma picked up Dulcie and Courtney and held them close in her arms. Clyde hid his frown as Joe Grey clung to his shoulder, the tomcat’s face pressed against Clyde’s morning stubble, Joe’s sudden need for him bringing tears to Clyde’s eyes. Kit leaped to Wilma’s lap and began to wash Courtney. Rock, rearing up, licked the three escapees and sniffed them all over, picking up the scents of their journey in a strange car. No one scolded them for their wild expedition and for getting themselves trapped—but Wilma looked accusingly into Joe Grey’s yellow eyes.

Joe had gotten Dulcie and Courtney into this mess. She was thankful that at least the boy kittens were away at the Firettis’ and safe. But Joe, she thought, smiling just a little, he was only being his macho self; he was only trying to catch a killer. “Did they get the Bewick book?” she asked him.

“In the back,” Joe said, looking down the hill toward the SUV, where an MPPD officer was handcuffing Egan. “Maybe I can slip in and get it … It’s heavy as hell. If you …”

“Leave it there,” Wilma said. “It could be evidence, proof that Egan stole, as well as broke in.”

“But you paid a lot for that book.”

“It’s more secure at the PD. If he knows where it is, and if he’s released, he’d have a hard time trying to break into the department’s evidence room.”

Two MPPD vehicles were pulled up behind the brown Toyota. The cats went silent as McFarland and Crowley left the other officers, came across the road, and started up the hill to them. The humans rose, holding cats, wondering how they were going to explain having the five cats out here in the small hours of the morning during a car chase.

Rock, delighted to see his cop friends, trotted up to lick their hands, distracting Jimmie long enough for Clyde to say, “We’re headed for the shelter. Kate called, she’s been staying up there until she gets a live-in caretaker. She sounded scared, and that’s not like Kate. Sounded like she desperately wanted some backup, she said something was going on down at the Nestor place—men she’d never seen before, moving expensive cars out of that old barn. What would Voletta Nestor be doing with a bunch of fancy cars?” Clyde knew he was talking too much. “Kate said she called you?”

“She did,” Jimmie said. “We’re headed up there, backup behind us and roadblocks ahead. But what are you doing with your cats out here in the middle of the night? That is Joe Grey? Why … ?”

“The damn-fool tomcat,” Clyde said. “They leaped out of the SUV. I don’t know what happened, the driver must have left the window down, somewhere in town; maybe there’s food in there.”

McFarland just looked at him.

“I don’t know where they are half the time—but to see them jump out of that car … One of these is Joe’s kitten. Wilma was worried sick.” Clyde started down the hill. The cats watched young Jimmie McFarland, wishing he weren’t so nosy. And, walking down the hill, McFarland watched Clyde. He was silent for a long while, keeping pace with Clyde. “I guess,” he said at last, “unless something more turns up, we don’t need to bother the chief with the cat story. I don’t see how it affects the case.”

Down on the road, Officer Crowley was helping Randall, in leg irons and handcuffs, into the back of an MPPD squad car, pressing his head down so he wouldn’t crack his skull. Crowley’s big, bony hands handled Randall like a rag doll. On the other side of the seat, Egan was already confined. He looked across at Wilma so sadly that she approached the car. He said, through the cracked-open window, “I wanted to talk to you. When I was watching you? It was because I wanted to ask you something.”

She looked at him and said nothing.

“About my father,” he said. “You knew my father.”

“What’s your name—your real name?”

“Egan. Egan Borden. Randall, here, he’s my stepfather. I took his name, Borden.” He looked over at Randall. “You hurtin’ pretty bad?”

“Nah,” Randall growled. “Hitch in my side is all.”

Wilma looked at Egan. “What was your family name, who was your father?”

“My father was Calvin Alderson. He got the chair for murder, you helped send him there. I know he was executed for murder but that’s about all I know. A social worker told me that much, when I was older. They think he killed my mother, too.”

“What was your mother’s name?”

“Um … Marie. Marie Alderson.” Wilma watched him, knowing he was lying, and, again, she was silent. If this young man was Rick Alderson, he was seven years old when his father went to prison, he’d remember quite a bit about Calvin. And why lie about his mother’s name? But how could he be Rick when the fingerprints didn’t match? She was filled with questions—questions she couldn’t ask here, with officers listening. She wanted a proper interview with this man, maybe a recording—and so would Max.

She was convinced Randall was Barbara’s and Langston’s killer, but was his stepson—Rick or whoever this was—a part of that murder? “You’ll be in Molena Point jail,” she said. “We can talk there.” She turned away, walked over to the Jaguar, slid into the back between the cats and Rock. In the front seat, Ryan and Clyde were quietly talking.

McFarland, stepping over to the driver’s window, put a hand on Clyde’s shoulder. “CHP has cleared a path around the wreck, there against the hill. Wait until our units are through.” He scowled at Clyde. “Though I’d rather you turned around and went home. We don’t know what we have, up at Voletta’s.”

“Kate sounded pretty worked up,” Clyde said. “Sounded scared.” He didn’t mention that Scotty was there; their personal life was their business. He guessed Kate was frightened, if even tall, capable Scott Flannery wasn’t enough backup. “Whatever’s happening,” he told McFarland, “Kate asked us to come, and that’s where we’re headed.”

McFarland sighed. “Take the main road to the shelter, up above Voletta’s road. Stay off her place, and keep out of sight. Stay at the shelter with Kate, stay out of the way, Clyde.” No more was said about the two prisoners who were headed for jail. And McFarland said not another word about hitchhiking felines.

20

The five cats sat on the desk in the shelter office, their noses pressed to the window, watching the spotlighted farmyard below. The old place had once been a farm. The house, and the barn half hidden by eucalyptus woods, showed little change from their distant past except for the absence of crops and useful livestock. A once productive piece of land now dry and sour. Overhead the night sky had turned from black to the color of wet ashes. The cats’ tails were splayed out on the desk behind them, Dulcie’s striped tabby tail very still; Courtney’s orange, black, and white appendage twitching with interest; tortoiseshell Kit’s broad, fluffy flag flipping with her usual excitement. Pan’s orange-striped tail was curled around him, Pan himself rigid and predatory—as was Joe Grey as he joined them.

Across the way, Clyde and Ryan, Kate and Scotty, and Wilma stood in the shadows of the mansion’s open walls watching the cars lined up on the weedy gravel yard, the men and Lena milling around as if waiting for someone, perhaps waiting for more drivers.

Beside the desk Rock reared up, paws on the windowsill, wanting badly to bark; Dulcie had already silenced him twice, receiving that reluctant, I’m bigger than you look. Now Joe shut him up—Rock knew to mind Joe Grey.

“Where’s the PD?” Kit said. “Where’s McFarland? Where’s Dallas, and the chief?” They had thought the law would be there by now, would already have these men surrounded, would be shackling them, locking them in squad cars. There wasn’t a cop in sight. “If they get those cars away, if they head up the coast …”

“Not to worry,” Joe said, twitching a whisker. “Dallas just called Clyde. There won’t be any cops, they’re letting them go.”

“Letting them go?” They all stared at him. “They can’t let them go,” Dulcie said. “With all those cars … They can’t just …”

Kit’s yellow eyes blazed. “Why would … What is Dallas thinking, what did he say?”

“They’re not coming here,” Joe said. “They’ll tail the cars as they turn onto the freeway. He has eight men following for backup, in four unmarked cars, those older, used cars with police radios. They’ll follow them, with two sheriff’s backups way behind and three CHP units up ahead. They’ll see where they take the cars—chop shop, dealer, who knows? They’ll let them pull in and get on with their business, then nail them. Maybe I could just slip into one of the—”

“No you don’t,” Dulcie said, her ears back, her dagger paw lifted. “I’ve had enough scares for tonight.”

“I didn’t say you’d be …”

She just looked at him, her green eyes blazing.

Joe didn’t like that she was scared for him. But then he thought, maybe he did like it, maybe he liked that fierce female caring—maybe she was thinking about the kittens, about the safety of their father. Below them, the entourage, apparently deciding Egan and Randall weren’t going to show, began pulling out. Two of the five men who had arrived earlier were pulling the trailers with clamped-on hitches behind their stolen cars, the trailers loaded up with a Lexus and a Porsche, both nearly new. Leading the entourage was a short, fat man in a black Audi. Eight cars, and each would bring a nice piece of cash—and two more cars that should be following, left behind in the barn. Bringing up the rear, Lena drove her old white Ford station wagon. This would be their return vehicle, once they’d dumped the stolen cars. “I’m surprised,” Pan said caustically, “that Voletta isn’t driving.”

“I’m surprised,” Joe said, “that old woman allows this. She has to be part of it. From what Ryan and Kate say, she’s cranky as hell, but no one thought of her as a crook.”

“And sweet little Lena,” Dulcie said, “with her little-girl voice. Was she using this place, or letting them use it, before she ever moved in with her aunt? That Randall Borden is her husband, then? The dark-haired man headed for jail? You heard Egan.” She looked at him, scowling. “This is where Egan and Randall were headed, they’re the two missing drivers.”

“Just a cozy family business,” Joe said, smiling.

Lena had shut the barn door where the two cars remained, had left them in a dark corner next to the tired-looking stack of baled hay. There wasn’t much else now in the big, hollow building. A few hanging tools, shovels, two ladders propped against a blank wall, a cardboard box on the floor, pushed back into the empty space where the trailers had stood. As the cars left Voletta’s property, one could follow their parade by the faint reflections of lights up the trees, and the fine layer of dust rising against the slowly lightening sky.

The cats watched from the window as their human friends left the mansion, heading back for the shelter, Scotty and Kate lagging behind. When Scotty leaned over and kissed Kate on the forehead, the cats smiled. Courtney cocked her head with interest.

“I wouldn’t speak of kisses,” Dulcie told her. “They’re very shy about this new relationship. New,” she said, “but maybe thinking of marriage? We’ll know in time.” Oh my, Dulcie thought, how much I have to teach our kittens. Courtney didn’t ask questions, she only grew more thoughtful; behind that solemn little face, was she seeing fleeting visions of weddings from lives past, was she putting incidents together?

The entourage of stolen cars was gone a long time, but Scotty’s phone didn’t buzz, there was no word from Dallas. Kate and Wilma made breakfast in the tiny kitchen, scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast—just about the last scrap of food in the apartment, and the last of the coffee. No one wanted the remainder of the store-bought cookies. “When the shelter volunteers get here,” Kate said, “I’ll make a grocery run.” They sat crowded around the tiny table, the five humans comfortable on the two kitchen chairs, the desk chair, and two wooden boxes. The cats had the desk to themselves, their plates laid out on newspapers. Rock lay in the doorway sighing because he never got human food, because he hadn’t been allowed to bark and protect the property, because he felt ignored. When they’d finished breakfast and Wilma had done up the dishes, still there was no word from Dallas; Dulcie fell soundly asleep on Kate’s bed, tired from a long night. Kit and Pan went off up the hills to hunt. Joe Grey, waiting for the call, began restlessly to pace, passing back and forth where Courtney lay deeply asleep on the desk. Before the call finally came, three unlikely events stirred the morning.

Young Courtney pretended to nap until everyone was off on their own business, Clyde walking Rock, Wilma helping Kate and the volunteers, her mama sound asleep in the bedroom. When Joe Grey quit pacing and left the shelter to be near Scotty and his phone, Courtney opened her eyes, leaped to the floor, and eased the outer door open with stubborn paws. Slipping out, pulling the door closed behind her, she was off on her own adventure. She could hear Scotty and Ryan and their two carpenters at work, could see Joe sitting atop Scotty’s truck. She could see Clyde far up the hills taking Rock for a run. Quietly she headed through the tall grass behind the Pamillon mansion, into its tangled gardens, fallen stone walls, its vine-invaded rooms, into the magical places where the feral cats lived.

Crossing the grassy berm she kept glancing back, but she was quite alone. She prowled the little courtyard where, Kit had said, Wilma and Charlie had dug up that valuable book, the book that Wilma had later burned. She knew nothing of the exact location and circumstances of that amazing find. It was the courtyard with its shadowy, overgrown bushes, walled on three sides by the old house, that drew her, a tangled garden mysterious and appealing, that smelled of the feral cats.

Leaping onto a boulder facing the patio, she sat as tall and straight as a small princess, looking into the old garden with its masses of roses and vines. In that fairy-tale world she watched for the feral, speaking cats, praying they would come out, praying they would be curious and acknowledge her.

She had waited a long time when a pale tabby appeared quite suddenly from the bushes beside the house. He leaped to a windowsill, his cream coat blending with the light stone. That was Sage, she knew from Kit’s description. Kit and Sage had almost been lovers, had almost become a pair—until Kit rejected him. Oh my, she thought, such a handsome cat. Farther along the wall Willow appeared, her bleached calico fur, too, matching the colors of the rock-walled house. Both cats watched Courtney, not with hissing confrontation, but with a look of amazement; both gave her ear gestures of greeting and a flicking of tails.

Should she come down off the boulder and approach them, or would they come to her? She felt shy and then bold. She was filled with awe at these cats who must know so much more than she of the history of their own race, more than Kit or her parents had ever told her. Willow approached first.

Willow knew, watching her, that this kitten had a secret. Whether the kitten herself knew, was another matter. A secret larger, even, than her heritage of speech. She is the image of the young queen, Willow thought, the once queen. And Sage was thinking the same.

The two cats came close through the grass, approaching the stone where she sat. She shivered at their look of intensity. They reared up and sniffed noses with her, they purred for her. They looked carefully at her markings of orange and black laid artfully across her white patches, they looked a long time at her three black bracelets.

“Joe Grey and Dulcie’s child,” Willow said. She said no more. Whatever she was thinking, Courtney was silenced by the wonder she saw in Willow’s eyes.

Willow was thinking of the Netherworld where she and Sage had traveled with the band of ferals, the hidden land that was part of the speaking cats’ past—and that was part of this kitten’s heritage. Though Willow would never tell her—that was for her parents to reveal, if they even knew. Much more of the speaking cats’ history, and thus Courtney’s history, lay in times and countries far more distant than the caves below this coast, lay in medieval lands in ancient times.

But, Willow thought, Kit and Pan know about the lower world, they have seen the old, old pictures there of a cat who looks like Courtney—pictures, Kit says, the same as the paintings and tapestries in books in the village library. Has Courtney seen those pictures? As young as she is, does she remember anything of those long-ago lives?

Sitting on the rock with Courtney, Willow licked the kitten’s ears, as she had mothered so many of the feral clowder. Then she and Sage led the young cat among the ruins, showed her secret dens and hiding places. But at last when they heard someone shout from below and heard a car take off, Courtney, frightened and expecting a scolding, streaked for Kate’s apartment, where she was supposed to be asleep.

21

The morning was growing bright and warm as Joe Grey slipped into the cavernous barn, but inside it was cool and dim. The vast space was high ceilinged and hollow, its distant rafters festooned with cobwebs as dirty gray as rotting lace curtains. The noise from within intrigued and puzzled him: a clawing, tearing sound.

Slipping into the shadows, he froze in place.

Across the barn was the giant of all rats. A monster rat chewing and clawing at a cardboard box, making so much noise it didn’t hear him, so preoccupied it didn’t see him in the darkness beside the door.

The box stood near the pile of baled hay, some of the bales so blackened with age they were unfit to feed any animal. But what matter, when Voletta let her donkey and goats graze on the neighbors’ gardens? The two stolen cars that remained were parked beside the hay, half hidden against the barn wall—a big gray Lincoln Town Car and a tiny black Mini Cooper left over from last night when Egan and Randall hadn’t shown up to drive. Beside the cardboard box, bubble wrap and white Styrofoam packing spilled out, littering the floor.

Was this the box from the BMW? Had the men tossed it aside thinking it was worthless? Joe could see where it had been slit open then taped closed again by human hands. Now the rat had opened it once more and was at it tooth and claw.

The rat himself looked almost as big as the Lincoln, Joe had never seen such a beast—bigger and heavier than Joe’s nearly grown kittens and looked a thousand times tougher. Where it had torn away one side of the box, scattering the wrappings, tiny white flecks shone on the dirt all around, like fallen stars, and led in a path under the Lincoln. What was in its simple mind? Nest making? Was it making a nest in the Lincoln? With its back to Joe, busily clawing and chewing, it still didn’t know it was watched—didn’t know it was stalked until Joe Grey, slipping up behind him, leaped on his back, dug all his claws in, and bit hard into his throat, expecting the beast to gurgle and fight for breath.

Lightning fast the rat flipped Joe over. Now it was on top and somehow, despite Joe’s teeth in its throat, it managed to grab Joe’s face. Its teeth were like razors. Joe bit deeper. The rat choked and tried to squeal. Joe raked him in the belly, and bit harder. They flipped again, now Joe was on top and then on the bottom—blood was flying when something grabbed the rat. It screamed once and went still and limp.

Someone pulled the rat’s teeth gently from Joe’s face, pulled the rat away. Clyde. Clyde knelt beside him, his handkerchief stanching the blood, his own face white with shock. Rock, his mouth bloody, picked the rat up again where Clyde had dropped it, stood with it in his mouth once more like any good retriever, his ears up, his short tail wagging. How can a dog smile with a dead rat in its mouth? Shakily Joe stood up, put his face up so Clyde could clean it more easily. How could he let a rat get the best of him? He was ashamed and embarrassed and mad. “How bad is it?” Would he be marred for life? Or maybe infected with some horrifying and incurable disease? Joe and Dulcie never listened when Clyde warned them about the foolishness of hunting rats.

“It’s not bad,” Clyde lied. “Just bloody, must have hit a vein.” Reaching in his pocket for his phone, he called Ryan. “Bring the Jag down to the barn. Can you leave your work? We need to go to the vet. It’s not serious, but … Bring soap and water and towels from the shelter. And a heavy plastic bag.”

Ryan didn’t ask questions. “On my way,” she said, feeling shaky. Quickly she collected what he wanted from the little dispensary by the office and jumped in the Jaguar. Within minutes she was pulling the barn door wider to brighten the dim space.

They cleaned Joe up as best they could. Ryan dampened a washcloth from the water bottle she’d brought, squeezed on soap from a dispenser and washed Joe’s torn face, then bound the wound with gauze. “Thank God they’ve had their rabies shots.” She scowled up at Rock. The big dog still held his prize, wanting her to praise him. Instead she said, “Give.” She had to say it twice before he dropped it on the ground. She wet a clean towel, soaped it, washed Rock’s face then opened his mouth and washed it out, the poor dog backing away, gagging.

When they were finished, Ryan dropped the towels in the bag. She laid one towel over the rat, lifted it into the bag, tied the bag shut and handed it to Clyde. She started to pick Joe up but, “Now that I’m bundled up like a mummy,” the tomcat mumbled, hardly able to speak, “take a look in that box.”

Carefully Ryan pulled the wrappings back, revealing a delicate saucer and cup. There was a whole set, each piece secured separately in bubble wrap and packed among Styrofoam crumbles. One cup was broken, where the rat had knocked it from the box. When she held a piece up, it was so thin that light shone through around the hand-painted decorations: acanthus leaves, flowers, and in the center a little fox laughing at her. She held several pieces for Joe to see. “It’s not china,” she said, “it’s porcelain, worth ever so much more.” Gently she turned over a saucer. “Worcester, 1770.” She studied the delicate tea set, then unholstered her phone and called Kate.

“Could you and Wilma come down, and bring a big, strong box, like a big cat food carton? Better drive down, this will be cumbersome to carry. We think Joe found the box from the stolen BMW.

“It contains old, delicate porcelain. I’d like to leave it packed, but put its box into the larger box. I think we’ll leave the torn wrappings, and the little white flecks of Styrofoam, for Max or Dallas to deal with. The box will be safe in the house until he picks it up.”

While they talked, Clyde had wrapped a towel around Joe’s head where he was bleeding through the gauze, had gotten the tomcat settled in the car. Ryan grabbed the bag with the rat in it, signaled Rock to get in the back. They took off for Dr. Firetti’s just as Kate and Wilma pulled up; Ryan held Joe close as she phoned ahead to the clinic.

Kneeling by the box, Kate looked at the broken cup, then unwrapped an equally delicate saucer with three hunting dogs spaced around the circle among the floral design. She unwrapped a cup, then another. She looked at each then secured it again in its bubble wrap. One cup showed a long-legged bird, maybe an egret. The next, a prancing horse. The third cup featured a cat. Kate drew her breath, her green eyes widening. The cat was a calico. A perfect image of Courtney, the exact same markings, three soft calico ovals saddling her back above a white belly. The white and calico patterns on her face were the same—as were the three dark bracelets around her right front leg. She held the cup for a long moment, wishing Dulcie were there to see—but maybe not so good for Courtney to see? How much self-glorification did the kitten need, to play on her ego?

Yet the delicate painting was there, as were the paintings and tapestries they had found in the library’s reference books and that Kit had already shown to Courtney. Kate rewrapped the frail cups and saucers, including the broken cup, and packed it all back in the ripped-open box—a handmade treasure nearly three hundred years old, and, apparently, the thieves hadn’t a clue.

The way Clyde was driving, it didn’t take long and they were pulling up before the two-cottage complex with its high glass dome. A tech met them, hurried them through the reception room past waiting clients into a large convalescent area where most patrons were not allowed.

Their entry brought two yowls from an open cage. The first yowl sounded suspiciously like “Pa …” but quickly turned into “Pa … meoowww.” No one noticed Striker’s slip in language but John Firetti. As the kittens dropped from their open cage, Striker landing deftly on three paws, John took Joe from Ryan and settled him on the examining table; Buffin and Striker leaped up wanting to be all over Joe until John pulled them away.

“Wait until I examine him,” he scolded. “This isn’t for kittens. Look how patient Rock is, lying in the corner. What’s gotten into this family? A torn paw. And now this,” he said, removing Joe’s bloody bandage, seeing the misery in Joe’s eyes—misery not only because he hurt, but for letting a stupid rat nearly do him in.

Ryan had given the bagged rat to the technician; the middle-aged blonde already had instructions to pack it on ice, call a courier, and get it to the county lab at once.

“Usually the lab doesn’t test a rat for rabies,” John said. “Rats don’t get rabies.” This made Joe, and Ryan and Clyde, go limp with relief. “They can get it,” John added, “but their bodies kill the virus almost at once. This rat would have had to be in a fight directly before Rock killed him.”

“I only saw the one rat,” Joe said, “and he was busy tearing up papers, looked like he’d been at it a long time, dragging them under a big car. Not another animal in sight.”

“Making a nest,” John said. “Likely inside the engine. Some driver will suffer for that. Bats and skunks are the real danger for rabies.” He looked seriously at Joe. “You and Rock have your shots regularly. But even so, you’ll have to be confined for two days, until the report comes back. If it’s negative, you’re free to go home.”

At the word “confinement,” Joe stiffened.

“State law,” John said.

Joe knew that. It wasn’t John Firetti’s fault. Even so, he was rigid with anger as the good doctor worked on his wounds. John gave him a mild shot for the pain, cleaned out the deep bites, and put in three stitches, smearing the area with something that stunk. Joe watched John swab out Rock’s mouth and examine it for wounds. He gave them both antibiotic shots. The needles stung, Joe could feel it as much for Rock as for himself. John gave them each a loving pat, and the ordeal was over—this part of the ordeal.

But now, the cages. He and Rock would be in cages. Joe couldn’t even touch his two kittens who crouched at the end of the table, he couldn’t properly greet them, couldn’t even lick their faces, and how fair was that? Now Joe and Rock were the jailbirds, and Buffin and Striker could go home.

John hugged both Joe and Rock before he shut them in their cages—but he spent more time holding the kittens. Looking sad, he picked up the phone and called Mary. “The kittens are going home.”

Almost at once they heard the cottage door slam. She must have run across the garden; she burst into the room still in her apron, her shoulder-length brown hair in a tangle. She took the two kittens from John, cuddling them in her arms.

“They’ve been sleeping with us every night,” she said. “The kittens and little Lolly. She didn’t do so well at home, they brought her back for a while. I didn’t tell them I thought Buffin was helping to heal her.” Mary glanced toward the cage the kittens had occupied; the tiny brown poodle lay there shivering, watching Buffin longingly.

“Pancreatitis,” Mary said. “We’re flushing her with more liquids and giving her all she will drink, and of course an IV. But Buffin has been the real wonder.

“We don’t know how he does it, he just lies close to her when she looks like she’s hurting, and almost at once she grows more comfortable. You can see it in her eyes, in the way she relaxes. At night, in bed with us, Buffin wakes us when she’s about to throw up so we can put a towel under her and then give her more liquids. But now,” Mary said, “look at her. She knows Buffin’s leaving.”

“Can’t I stay?” Buffin said, looking up at Ryan and Clyde. “Just a few days? She hurts so bad. I don’t know how, I just know I help her. I can feel the change in her.”

“Could the kittens both stay?” Ryan said. “We could quarantine Joe and Rock at home, keep them away from Snowball, that would be easy.”

John said, “Snowball is due for her yearly exam and boosters. You could bring her in. If only Joe and Rock are at home, can you keep them away from other people, keep them confined in the house? It’s such a slim chance that the test will be positive.” He gave Joe Grey a hard look. “Would you promise to stay inside, away from other animals, away from Dulcie and Courtney?”

“I promise,” Joe said hastily, but with mixed feelings. Shut in the house for two days, hardly knowing what was going on in the world around him? Well hell, what choice did he have? Better that than a kennel.

Striker was just as dismayed. He wanted to be home, he wanted to run free, he wanted to wrestle with Courtney and, big tomcat that he was, he missed his mama—but he guessed he’d miss Buffin more, leaving him alone with just little Lolly. And he knew he’d miss the Firettis.

“I’ll stay,” Striker said. And as Joe Grey and Rock left the clinic, Rock prancing beside Clyde like a thief released from jail, and Joe resting in Ryan’s arms, Striker settled down in the big cage beside his brother and Lolly. And, Striker thought, I can run in the Firettis’ house at night, Mary and John don’t care. I can climb the furniture, leap on the bed—if I’m careful of my paw.

Riding home in the Jaguar, Joe Grey, warm in Ryan’s arms, was unusually silent. She frowned down at him. “It’s only two days. If we leave you alone in the house, Joe, you will do as the doctor told you?” He looked up at her innocently. They were just approaching home when Clyde’s phone buzzed. He clicked on the speaker so Joe could hear.

Dallas said, “We got our car thieves, all but one. It was some dustup. Two of their men were shot, but none of ours. Those two are in the infirmary in Salinas, the others in county jail. We lost Lena Borden—you did see her leave there with the cars?”

“We all saw her,” Clyde said. “Dark clothes, dark cap, but definitely Lena. Driving her old white Ford.”

“The Ford was there in the wreckers’ lot,” Dallas said, “with the other cars. She either ran from the scene when we showed, or had someone pick her up. We’re keeping Egan here, on charges of break and enter and theft. We’ll interrogate Randall, see what we can get out of him, then send him on over to county.

“We drove and hauled the stolen cars back here,” Dallas said. “They’re in our lockup.” This was a fenced, securely roofed compound behind the station next to where the police cars parked. Its gate was kept locked and the area furnished with surveillance cameras.

“It’ll take a while,” the detective said, “to collect evidence from the vehicles, and for the insurance adjusters to look them over, before their owners claim them.”

Joe could tell Dallas wasn’t in a good mood. Maybe because Lena had evaded them. Maybe, Joe wondered, Lena was more involved than anyone thought. How could she have escaped among all those cops? Who had picked her up? Clyde didn’t have time to ask anything more before the phone went dead.

At home, Joe and Rock were shut in the house. Ryan put Snowball in her carrier, to go to Dr. Firetti. Giving Joe a stern look, she phoned her father to come and check on the animals while she dropped the little white cat at the clinic, so Clyde could go on to work and she could return to her crew. This enraged Joe, that she had to call her dad to babysit, that she didn’t trust him. But luck was with him. When she couldn’t get her dad, she tried Lindsey. “We’re in Bodega Bay,” Lindsey said. “We …”

“It’s all right,” Ryan said. “I’ll work it out.” They talked a moment and Ryan hung up, looking deep into Joe’s eyes, “Rock can get out into his yard and so can you. But you can get over the wall. He can’t. You can also get out through your tower. I love you, Joe, and usually I trust you—though there have been times. If I leave you in the house, will you promise to do as I say, as John Firetti says? It could save a lot of trouble later. Rabies is a scary thing to deal with.”

Joe gave her as innocent a look as he could muster. He didn’t point out that his tower and the roof itself were both integral parts of their house. He promised himself that he’d stay to the physical body of their residence, the structural entity. And didn’t that include the roof?

What he’d really like to do was slip into her truck, ride back to the Pamillon estate, and have another look at the contents of that box. Courtney’s picture on the porcelain cup had shaken him considerably, combined with the pictures like her in so many library books. Those ancient tapestries and paintings and porcelain relics did not sit well with Joe Grey.

22

Kate approached Voletta’s house feeling silly with her little plate of store-bought cookies. But manners were manners. Voletta was a Pamillon, who knew what the old woman had once been used to in the way of neighborly visits?

Though the kitchen and living room were around at the back, facing the big yard, Kate chose the more formal front door, which was seldom used. She had started across the wide porch when she paused.

It was late morning but the blinds in all three bedrooms were drawn tight. If Voletta had company, besides Lena, were they still asleep after a busy night? Who would have slept here but someone connected to the thefts? She shivered, hoping they were all in jail.

There were no cars in the front yard, Lena and Voletta parked in back. Turning, she headed around to the kitchen. Yes, the lights were on in those windows, and she could smell coffee. Of course the big yard was empty, only Voletta’s old truck—and a blue Ford hatchback parked close to the back door. She knocked, hoping the lame little gift of stale cookies would give her an excuse to be invited in, not just stand awkwardly in the door and be sent rudely away.

She waited, then knocked again. She wanted to know how long those men had been using Voletta’s barn to store their hoard, concealing the stolen cars and, when the cops eased off in their search, moving them out again, at night. And how long had Voletta’s niece been involved? Lena visited Voletta every few weeks but Kate couldn’t remember whether those times coincided with the Molena Point car thefts. She hadn’t been staying up here at night, then, not until the shelter was finished and she moved the cats in. No one but Voletta had been here at night to know what went on. Even the feral cats, in the small hours, would have been up the hills hunting.

As Kate rounded the house she didn’t see Dulcie and Pan and Kit slip along behind her through the tall grass, didn’t see them pad silently up to the front porch. Kate was already at the back of the house when tortoiseshell Kit swung hopefully on the front latch, was thrilled to find the door unlocked and, kicking softly, swung it open. The three cats disappeared inside, pushing it not quite closed behind them. Already Dulcie missed Joe, off at home, in quarantine. She’d had the whole story from Kate.

The cats crouched in a small entry beneath a narrow table against one wall. A hall led left and right to the bedrooms and bath. All three bedroom doors were cracked open, the doors of the two end rooms at right angles to the hall. Kit and Pan watched Dulcie slip ahead into the living room and behind the couch where she could see into the kitchen.

At the back of the house Kate had to knock a third time before she heard footsteps. When Voletta opened the door Kate tried, awkwardly, to hand her the cookies. “I came to see how you’re feeling, after your trip to the hospital. To see if there’s anything I can do, any errands?”

“Lena’s here now,” Voletta said sourly, blocking the slightly open door. “We don’t eat cookies.” Kate could smell cinnamon rolls as well as coffee, could see three cups on the kitchen table. “Whatever you want,” Voletta said, “I’m busy.”

Kate slipped her foot against the door. “I thought maybe Ryan’s carpenters might help with the broken window, or anything else that was damaged. That was a terrible storm.”

“Ryan. That’s that woman carpenter?”

Kate nodded.

“Pretty nice truck she drives. Must be full of all kinds of tools, those locked cabinets along the sides, that locked lid on the truck bed. Well, a carpenter makes good money. We’ll do the repairs ourselves.” She yawned, and pushed the door forward in Kate’s face.

Kate shoved the door in gently with her foot as she faked a matching yawn. “You didn’t get much sleep, either?” she said, smiling kindly. “With all those lights down in the yard?”

“What lights?”

“I don’t know,” Kate said. “I woke around three, I saw lights reflected from down here. I thought your porch lights were on, but they seemed very bright. I thought about getting up to look but I guess I fell back asleep.”

“Lena turned the lights on when she got home. Their car was acting up, they were trying to fix it. Her son’s car, he’s visiting.” Voletta looked at her for a long moment, kicked Kate’s foot out of the way, and slammed the door.

Her son? Kate turned away and headed home with her plate of cookies. She didn’t know Lena had a son.

Dulcie, behind the couch, crept to the end where she could see better into the kitchen, could see the old woman more clearly. She, too, was surprised to hear of a son. She retreated a few steps when she heard voices from the living room, Lena’s voice, and a man. They moved to the kitchen, sat down at the table, Lena reaching for the coffeepot, filling their half-empty cups. But when the man appeared, a chill gripped Dulcie.

Egan! Egan Borden! … Egan Alderson, he’d said.

But Egan was arrested late last night. He should be in jail, not here in Voletta’s kitchen. Why had Max Harper let him go? Or had he broken out?

He was freshly shaved, his blond hair slicked back, and had changed clothes, a cream shirt and tan chinos. Watching him, she had to willfully stop her tail from lashing. Why had Harper released him?

Lena had driven off with those men last night, but when the rest were rounded up, she had disappeared. Had Egan somehow talked his way out of jail and raced north, to pick her up?

Or, Dulcie thought, startled, could this be Rick Alderson? In and out of prison, evading police inquiries, and now suddenly appearing out of nowhere? Oh, but that isn’t possible.

Last night Dulcie had had plenty of time to study Egan. No other man could look so exactly like him. Long, slim face, long thin nose, blond hair. Egan’s square shoulders thrust forward on his thin frame. Of course this was Egan but why was he out of jail? She wished Joe were there. Sometimes Joe Grey, fierce and predatory, was keener in what he observed than she was. Is this Rick Alderson, out of prison in Texas and secretly making his way here? But how can that be? Egan said Calvin Alderson was his father. The police think his mother is dead—but Voletta said this man, Egan, was Lena’s son.

Behind Dulcie, Kit and Pan had tunneled along under the couch to crowd against her peering into the kitchen. Lena and Egan sat guzzling coffee while Voletta laid bacon on a grill, broke eggs into a bowl. The two cats were as shocked as Dulcie, they had all seen Egan locked in a squad car, handcuffs, leg irons, the works, along with his stepfather—Randall mad as a stuck pig.

Now, before the bacon began to cook, Egan rose to open a loaf of bread. As he passed close to the living room they got a good scent of him. They looked at each other, ears back, tails twitching. This man wasn’t Egan, he didn’t smell like Egan though he looked more like him than a twin. Soon they crept away to the far end of the couch where they could talk softly.

“This,” Kit whispered so faintly they could hardly hear her, “this has to be Rick Alderson. He was waiting for Lena last night and gave her a ride away from the cops? And Egan is still in jail? Rick’s been here, been part of the gang all along? And what do we do now?”

Pan’s yellow eyes glowed. “What would Joe Grey do?”

Kit and Dulcie looked at him.

The red tom smiled. “Joe would go straight for the connection, for why those two look alike. Calvin Alderson had only one son when he was sent to prison, and the cops think he’d killed the wife as well as her lover.”

Pan turned away; Kit followed him up the hall to prowl the bedrooms. This man had to have some identification, maybe a billfold left on the dresser. Dulcie returned to watching the thieves.

In the corner bedroom Pan made a flehmen face; the clothes tossed about stunk of Randall Borden and Lena.

The middle room smelled of the young man they were sure was Rick Alderson. The room was painted tan, furnished with twin beds, old mahogany headboards, and a dresser that might have been there fifty years. And, again, decorated with strewn-about clothes, jeans, shirts, shorts, and smelly socks. When they heard a cell phone ring from the kitchen, heard Rick answer then chair legs scrape and his footsteps coming, they slipped under the bed.

Rick sat down on the bed, his cell phone to his ear. “Okay, I’m alone.” He listened, then, “What the hell, Randall!” Silence, then, “They’ll be after you like fleas on a dog. Where are you?” The cats could hear only one side of the conversation until he said, “We’re breaking up, my battery’s about dead, I’ll call you back on the house phone.”

Rising, he listened to the voices from the kitchen then sat down again, dialing the phone on the nightstand. When his back was to them, Kit and Pan slipped out of the room and past the bathroom into the farthest bedroom. This was Voletta’s room, her scent, the austere furnishings old and dark but the room neat and tidy, only a pink robe lying across a chair. Leaping to the nightstand, Kit slipped the phone’s headpiece off, lowered it silently to the tabletop. They crowded side by side, listening.

“… walked right out of that small-town jail,” Randall was saying, a smile in his gruff voice. “I told you my stomach hurt. I made it seem worse, like maybe appendicitis. That shook up the rookie on guard, he came right on in, the dummy. I knocked him out, took his keys and gun, locked him in and beat it out of there, out the back gate to the street. Tourists everywhere, I just fell in among them—they hadn’t made me change clothes because I was headed for county jail as soon as they interrogated me. They’d took my belt, though. And my phone and billfold.”

“Where are you calling from?”

“Woman working in her yard, back among some cottages. She left the front door unlocked. Don’t worry, I can see her from the window, she didn’t hear the phone ring, I put a pillow over it. I saw her husband leave, there’s not another sound in the house.”

“Oh hell, Randall. Get out of there.”

“Can you come get me?”

“Where? You can’t stay there.”

“It’ll take me a while through these fenced backyards—they’re bound to have patrols out. I can hide safe in that …” Footsteps were coming, Lena’s steps. Quickly they slipped the phone back on its cradle and dove under Voletta’s bed. At the other end of the hall, Rick was saying, “Hell, you can’t go there. That’s the first …” A pause, then, “That’s a damned stupid idea. But all right—though it could put us in a hell of a mess.”

He listened again, then, “I said, all right. Now get the hell out of that house before someone comes in.”

Above the cats, Lena was searching the drawers of Voletta’s nightstand. She rummaged until she found a bottle of pills, maybe Voletta’s pain medication. Turning to the mirror, she fussed with her hair, using Voletta’s brush before she returned to the kitchen.

In the other room, Rick had apparently hung up the phone. When the cats could hear him changing clothes, Kit beat it to the living room, leaving Pan slipping down the hall and under the hall table to watch him. Was Egan still in jail, had Randall just left him there?

Kit, crowded under the couch against Dulcie, wondered if, the next time someone cleaned house—and it could sure use it—they would puzzle over cat hairs mixed with the dust bunnies.

Rick came into the kitchen jangling his keys, Lena following him. “Going to pick up Randall.”

“Pick him up?” Voletta said. “He’s out of jail? How come they let him out?”

“He broke out,” Rick said, laughing. “Knocked out the guard. He left Egan locked up.”

Rick laid his keys on the table, picked up his cup to swallow down the last sip of coffee. Fast as a viper Lena grabbed the keys. “I’m going with you.” She spun around, headed for the bedroom, perhaps for her purse.

He snatched at her, hit her a glancing blow. “You’re staying here.” She hit him, pulled away, and raced to their corner bedroom.

In the hall, Pan crept out from beneath the table far enough to see her pull on a leather jacket and open the dresser drawer. She found a clean handkerchief, used it to lift out a revolver. She used a corner of the cloth to open the cylinder and check the load then wrapped the gun and slipped it in her jacket pocket. She fished through a lower drawer beneath silk undergarments, dropped some small item in her left pocket, stuffed her cell phone in on top. She raced for the kitchen, flung out the door leaving it open behind her, jumped in the car just as Rick put it in gear. Voletta watched them, not interfering, sour and expressionless.

When Lena ran for the kitchen, passing the couch a few feet from Dulcie’s and Kit’s noses, Dulcie lay quietly watching her. She didn’t want to follow and get tangled in this, she’d had enough of being trapped in cars. But Kit and Pan, their heads filled with Rick’s phone conversation, sped for the front door they’d left cracked open, leaped up the vine beside the porch, were across the roof to the back just as Lena raced out. All the car windows were open against the warm morning. Kit crouched to leap through behind Rick’s head into the backseat. There in the shadows they’d never be noticed, they could find where Randall was hiding, they could find a phone and call in, they could—

Sharp teeth in the nape of her neck jerked her away from the roof’s edge, Pan’s growl low and angry. Shouldering her down, he pressed her so firmly to the shingles that she couldn’t move, even when he let go his bite.

“What were you thinking?” he growled. “There’ve been enough wild car rides. What did you mean to do? You have no idea where they’re going.”

“I … but I …” She scowled at him, her yellow eyes blazing—and she exploded out of his grip, attacking him, biting him; they were into an angry scuffle, snarling and kicking. Kit had never dreamed they’d fight like this, she loved Pan. But now, raking him with her hind paws, she broke away and headed again for the edge of the roof—just as the blue Ford took off speeding across the big yard and onto the narrow road.

They were gone.

Neither Kit nor Pan knew where, they had no idea where the killer would be hiding.

Rick drove, scowling. “Your aunt—could she guess where we’re headed? Sure as hell she’ll call the cops.”

“Why would she call the cops? She’s as guilty as we are. And how could she guess? She didn’t hear anything, you never said where he is.”

“She calls the cops, it’ll be the last thing she does.”

She stared at him. “Don’t be such an ass. You’re in a vicious mood.”

He looked at her with surprise. “What the hell’s with you?”

“Tired, Rick. You’re getting as mean and rude as your father was—or as mean as Randall. Why did I marry someone so like Cal Alderson? I’m tired of Randall’s sarcasm. I’m tired of his cheap womanizing, of his coming home with another woman’s stink on him. I’m tired of him making me a part of this heist business. I’m tired of having to get up in the middle of the night and drive hot cars all over hell, my belly twisting for fear the cops will tail us. Tell the truth, I’m tired of Randall! I told him it was better to move the cars one at a time, not head out of there with a whole line of cars lit up like some damned parade. Now look at the mess he’s in—that we’re all in.”

“I think the cops were tipped,” Rick said. “Someone ratted on us.” He gave her a look cold as ice.

She said nothing.

“You tip the cops, Ma?”

“No, I didn’t tip the cops. Go to hell.” Then, smiling, “But I thought about it.”

“Maybe it was your aunt. After I came out from Texas and joined up with Randall … Well, hell, she never did like me. And why does she think Egan hung the moon, for crissake?”

Lena was silent, sudden tears running down. Her brown hair was mussed, her face pale but blotched with red. She felt carefully in her purse for a tissue but didn’t find one.

“As mad as you are at Randall,” Rick said, “I’m surprised you didn’t try to call the law.”

“How could I have? You wouldn’t wait for me, you didn’t say where he was. And Voletta wouldn’t, even if she knew where he’s going.”

But there was someone to call the law. As the blue Ford headed for the village, Kit and Pan streaked up to the ruins where Ryan’s truck was parked. Digging out the old cell phone that Ryan kept there—the phone with no GPS and no ID—they called the department. They had no destination, but they had the car’s description and part of the license number.

23

Joe’s quarantine grew boring pretty fast, he felt like a parolee under home confinement. It was a wonder he didn’t have an electronic leg bracelet to keep track of where he was, to make sure he didn’t stray. As for Rock, even with Joe for company he never liked being left for long without humans. Now, with his little white cat gone too, his little napping buddy, he was miserable and brooding, morosely pacing the house. If Joe started up to his tower, Rock would bark up a storm. The tomcat, dropping down again to the bedroom, pounced on Rock and teased him until at last the big dog gave chase: they ran up and down stairs, leaped over chairs, played tag until both were panting and the living room furnishings and rug were awry. Only then, when Joe had worn Rock out, when the silver dog climbed into Joe’s chair for a nap, did Joe Grey head for his rooftop aerie.

Clyde had agreed that the tower was part of the house, so was also quarantine territory. He wouldn’t agree to the roof itself, but Joe reasoned that of course roof and house were all one structure. Padding on through his tower into the sunshine that warmed the shingles, he stretched and yawned. He rolled on his back, he snoozed for a few moments in the sun; but then he sat up, and considered.

No one had ever said exactly where the roof ended. With the line of roofs on their block all so close, and joined by tree branches reaching across lacing them together, no one had ever drawn a line to show where that vast, shingled territory ceased to be a single entity. If one could move so easily from one patch of shingles to the next over heavy, tangled branches, then in sensible feline logic the roof ended at the next cross street.

Off he trotted, filled with his virtuous decision that he was still in the quarantine area. At the side street where the roofs ended he crouched, looking down. Of course he would go no farther.

Two blocks away stood Barbara Conley’s house, yellow crime tape still surrounding the property. He was watching it idly when he saw, in the high attic window, a shadow move, a figure looking out.

There was no police car parked nearby, no car in front or in the drive—and no one should be there but the cops, the house was off-limits. Curious, he abandoned all thoughts of his quarantine in favor of expediency. Whatever was going on was more important than the unlikely danger that he’d bite someone and give them rabies.

Crossing the streets on overhanging branches, soon he crouched in the rain gutter just across the street from Barbara’s house. Directly below, only scattered cars were parked, though usually the curb was bumper to bumper. A blue Ford cruised slowly by, heading west toward the seashore, the driver slowing to gawk at the crime tape. The driver … Joe came to full attention.

Egan Borden. Long thin face, pale blond hair, a thrust of his broad slanted shoulders against the side window—but Egan was in jail. Joe had seen him shackled and shoved into a squad car. The man drove on to the next intersection, made a U-turn, came back and parked just below Joe, headed in the direction of the freeway. Now Joe could see his passenger, a thin middle-aged woman with medium-length brown hair. Lena? He had seen her around Voletta Nestor’s place when he rode up to the ruins with Ryan; he had heard Ryan describe her, not flatteringly. Their voices were sharp with argument. Straining to hear, he almost lost his footing, almost fell off the gutter.

Backing away, forgetting about quarantine promises, he slipped down a stone pine that grew against the end of the house. There he crouched in the bushes beside the car not three feet from Lena’s open window. When Egan started to get out, she reached a hand to stop him.

“Stay here, Rick. For once, will you do it my way!”

Rick? This was Rick Alderson? The executed guy’s kid who might be in jail or might not, who might have warrants out for him or might not? Rearing up to get a better look, still Joe couldn’t see much of him. Where had he come from? What was he doing in Molena Point? And who the hell was Egan?

“I told him I’d park around the corner,” Rick said. “He can see out the side window. What do you mean to do?”

“Just stay in the car and watch for Randall, we don’t know if he’s even here yet. How dumb can he get, breaking out of jail? What a stupid place to hide, right under the cops’ noses. Stay here and watch for street patrol. I’ll see if he’s in there.”

“When he sees the car, he’ll come out. What’s taking him so long? If someone sees you go in there, if you blow his cover, he’ll be mad as hell.”

“I told you, the way Randall’s treated me, I don’t give a damn. I don’t feel the same about him anymore, I hate his guts. It’s you who wanted to rescue him.”

“He’s my father—my stepfather! He didn’t always treat you this way. And he always treated me decent. Why were you so hot to come along, when you hate him?”

She leaned over, looked through the windshield at the upper story of the frame house, up at the attic window high in the peak. Did she see the faint movement there, a disappearing shadow beyond the dirty glass? She had her hand on the door handle.

“How you going to get in? If he has the key from under the back porch …”

“I have the front-door key—I think that’s what this is. Randall took it off his key ring, the morning after the murder. Took it off and hid it. What else could it be but Barbara Conley’s key? He wanted to get rid of it before the cops found it on him.”

“What else do you have in your purse? Is that Randall’s gun, wrapped in that handkerchief?”

“You’re a nosy bastard. Yes, it’s Randall’s gun. I know enough about you, Rick, that the cops don’t know, you’d better mind your own business.”

He raised his hand to slap her; he seemed to have no more love for his mother than she for him, had no compunction against hitting her. But then, what kind of mother was she? She had run off and left him there that night, a seven-year-old kid in the midst of a grisly murder. She had run away and never tried to help him.

Lena got out, slid the wrapped gun into her right pocket. The tomcat followed her among the tree shadows as she headed across the street. She stepped up on the narrow porch, tried the key, and unlocked the door. She stood in the open door listening, looking around the living room. In that instant Joe Grey was behind her and inside, slipping beyond a wicker chest. The house had that empty, musty, unoccupied smell.

“Randall?” she whispered softly and moved on in, leaving the door on the latch. Again, a louder whisper. “Randall?”

No answer.

She began to prowl the rooms, her footsteps echoing faintly, her hand in her pocket on the gun. Joe could see into the kitchen, and into the hall where there would be bedrooms. If she found Randall, what did she mean to do? Hadn’t they come to rescue him, to get him away from the cops? Then why the gun? Would she shoot a cop, would she put herself in that jeopardy to save a husband she’d grown to hate?

Having covered all the rooms, she opened the door of the hall closet. There wasn’t much there, a few coats thrown to the floor. She knelt, examined the floor, brushed at something that looked like dirt or sawdust, then looked up.

A string hung from the ceiling, with a metal washer knotted at the end. She used both hands to pull open the trapdoor, its mechanism lowering a folding wooden ladder.

“Randall?”

A moan echoed from the hollow attic. Quickly she climbed—as Joe Grey slipped into the closet behind the pile of coats.

“Randall? Come on, the car’s waiting.”

A long silence, then another moan. Joe heard her move across the attic, imagined her ducking under its beams. He could see enough of its low ceiling to wonder how much head room Randall had, up there. When he heard another groan, Joe abandoned common sense, scrambled up the ladder and crouched among the shadows. The long dim space was lighted only by a tiny window at each end.

Randall lay on the dusty wooden floor, his knees pulled up, his arms wrapped around himself, his face, even in shadow, pale and twisted. It was strange to see the heavy, muscled man huddled on the floor, helpless. Lena knelt beside him, her expression unreadable. “What is it? What’s wrong? Were you shot?” She leaned down, looking for blood, her expression half of concern and half of cold satisfaction.

“Not shot,” he mumbled. “The pain … Can you get me down the steps? Something’s bad wrong. I think I need a doctor … someone that won’t call the cops.”

She reached in the pocket where she’d had the key. Joe saw her phone light up, saw her press a single button. When Randall realized she was calling 911 he tried to get up, tried to grab the phone. “I said a doctor, not the cops!” He fell back clutching his belly, letting out an animal-like cry. She stood looking down at him, dropped the phone in her pocket, and removed the wrapped revolver. Cradling it, she looked steadily at Randall, her expression ice-cold.

“Where’s the book, Randall?”

“Cops have it,” he groaned.

“Well, that was smart. That’s a one-of-a-kind edition. When a collector sees what’s in it, it’s worth more than a few hundred thousand. That information, if it’s true …”

From a few blocks away, a medics’ siren screamed—and from the street below they heard a car take off, moving fast. Lena, ducking under the rafters, raced to the little window to peer out.

“Gone! The damned bastard took off on me!” Spinning around she paused again over Randall, the revolver pointed directly at him. “You sure the cops have the book?”

“They have the whole damn car. Book was … right there in the back.” Again a groan, and he pulled up his legs to ease his belly. Outside, the sirens screamed to a halt. Joe watched Lena unwrap the revolver not touching the metal, keeping only the grip wrapped. She stood a moment, the gun pointed at him, a hungry look on her face.

At last she knelt, moved his hands from his belly, rolled him on his side making him cry out with pain, and slipped the gun in his pocket. She eased the handkerchief out and stuffed it in her own pocket, and she fled down the ladder into the shadowed closet. Left the ladder down for the cops to see, and ran out the back door. Joe could hear her outside crashing through the bushes. Would she vanish, to lose herself in the village? Or did she think Rick would wait for her, farther up the block? Fat chance, the tomcat thought.

But he was wrong. As the cop cars and medics pulled in, Joe was out the back door behind Lena, chasing her through the neighbors’ yards to the next street where he heard a horn toot softly.

There stood the blue Ford, its passenger door open. Lena swung in, they took off fast onto a narrow side street to disappear among the crowded cottages. She hadn’t, in her rage, shot Randall as Joe had guessed she would. Maybe she thought, whatever his pain was, it would do him in. And if he didn’t die, she had left the gun to entrap him, certain proof he’d shot Barbara and Langston.

Was part of her hatred, her disgust for Randall, a mirror reflection of twenty years gone, when her first husband shot her own lover? Frowning over her mixed signals of hatred and maybe regret, Joe sped up a pine to the roofs trying to see which way they were headed, but they were already long gone. Spinning around he raced for home, for a phone, to get the cops on the Ford’s tail. Both passengers were wanted: Lena for helping highjack cars, Rick with at least one warrant out on him, and both of them for helping a killer escape. Fleeing across to his own line of roofs, Joe looked back once to see Max Harper and Detective Garza arrive in a squad car, parking beside the medical van. He didn’t wait to see the medics ease Randall down the attic steps on a stretcher, to see Dallas, wearing gloves, frisk Randall, bag the revolver and hand it to Max—but he could imagine the scene. Racing across the roofs for home, Joe didn’t see Clyde’s truck coming down the street behind him.

24

Clyde, heading home to check on the quarantined animals—not that they would get into trouble, he thought wryly—found patrol cars and the medics’ van blocking the street at Barbara Conley’s corner house. Turning, he went around the block and swung onto his own street again—as a flash of movement across the roofs made him slow, a streak of gray racing for home, white paws flashing, and a hot anger struck Clyde. This was Joe’s idea of quarantine? Not only his tower but a whole block of rooftops and how much farther? What happened to the tomcat’s solemn promise? Whatever was going on at Barbara’s house, that’s where he’d been. Damn cat heard a siren, he took off across the village like a fire horse to a three-alarm blaze. Had he been inside that house, as well, watching, hiding from the cops? What was going on?

Joe had never before broken a promise, that Clyde knew of. He wanted to honk the horn and shout at the racing little liar. Instead, as Joe swerved into his tower, Clyde pulled quietly into the drive. Getting out, he didn’t click the car door shut, he made no sound. Quick and silent, he unlocked the front door, slipped in, pulled off his shoes, and in stocking feet, headed for the stairs. He paused at the bottom, listening. There was silence for a moment, then—who was he talking to? Had he dialed the dispatcher? But why? The cops were already there.

“… Yes,” Joe was saying, “in the attic with him. She called you from there, then she ran out the back.” … Silence, then, “Blue Ford hatchback, Rick Alderson driving. Yes, Rick Alderson. Don’t you have Egan in the lockup? You do have a warrant for Rick?” Another silence, Joe gave the license number, then he must have hung up, Clyde heard him drop to the floor.

By the time Clyde reached the top of the stairs the gray tomcat was curled up on the love seat with Rock, lying against Rock’s chest appearing to be sound asleep, the gray dog’s paws wrapped around him. Clyde stood looking down at them. Rock was asleep, snoring slightly, maybe worn out with playing, because the living room was a shambles. The Weimaraner probably hadn’t stirred when Joe Grey slipped in between his big paws.

Clyde pulled the desk chair around, sat down facing the two animals, fixing his gaze on Joe, staring at him intently.

Joe, feigning sleep, could feel Clyde’s gaze sharp as a laser beam. He daren’t even slit an eye open; the minute he stirred a whisker he’d get a dressing-down that would be the grandfather of all lectures.

But what had he done wrong? His promise was that he’d stay in the house, not go through Rock’s door in the patio; they’d agreed that he could go into his tower. So he had pushed a little in his own mind, for purposes of clarification, reasoning that the roof was part of the house. So what was the big deal? And, where had Clyde seen him? Not racing across the neighbors’ roofs, he hoped. Or worse, coming out of Barbara’s house.

Could he help it if, when one thing led to another, he found himself past his own block and into the extended crime scene? Joe ignored the word “deception.” This was simply good detecting.

When Clyde, admiring the faking ability of the gray tomcat, could stand it no longer he picked Joe up from Rock’s protecting forearms and held him dangling, scowling angrily into Joe’s startled yellow eyes.

“What happened to the quarantine promise?”

“We agreed that the tower was part of our house, so I figured the roof was, too. I said I’d keep away from other cats.”

“How did our roof, Joe, turn into three full blocks of rooftops? You want to explain how that could happen?”

“You are so picky. They’re all laced together with tree branches. Where do you draw the line? And that rat … You know there’s little chance that rat had rabies. A rabid rat would have been nervous and probably would have attacked us all, it wouldn’t have been busy tearing up boxes. It was only a female rat making a nest.”

He looked intently at Clyde. “This was urgent. This was … if I hadn’t called the department they wouldn’t know what kind of car they were driving. Those two are wanted … Rick Alderson for grand theft auto, and Lena … I don’t know what that charge will be.”

Clyde was silent a long moment. “Rick Alderson?”

“Would you mind not dangling me?”

Clyde, despite his anger, gathered Joe over his shoulder, cradling him in a more comfortable position. “So you sneaked into the crime scene. But where did Rick come from? And who called the medics? Who was hurt? What happened in there?”

“Randall Borden. He was in the attic. He apparently escaped from jail. He’s sick, I don’t know what’s wrong. Lena found him, called the meds then she got the hell out. Rick was waiting, in a blue Ford. Bear in mind, Clyde, the police have warrants for both Rick and Lena.”

“You said that. But where did Rick come from?”

“I haven’t a clue. He was just there. Lena called him Rick. When I looked closely I could see a little difference between him and Egan, a tiny difference to the shape of their noses and ears. I think they’re headed for Voletta’s place. We need to get Courtney and Dulcie, and Kit and Pan away from there. At least the boys are safe with the Firettis. We need to get Wilma and Kate out, I don’t feel good about this. Those people are … I thought Lena was going to shoot Randall, going to shoot her own husband.”

The tomcat scratched his ear. “I don’t know why they’d bother the cats, but … their interest in the Bewick book with pages about speaking cats … and Voletta’s interest in the feral cats … I want my family away from there. I want them home, and Kit and Pan, too.”

Clyde picked up the phone and called Ryan. Briefly he gave her the picture. “You have time to bring the cats down, or shall I come up?”

“I’ll bring them now—as soon as we round them up, as soon as we find Courtney.” Joe imagined Ryan on the jobsite, pulling off her cap from her dark, mussed hair, hastily putting her tools away. How long would it take to round up the cats? They’d all come to her … all but Courtney, who, at times, had surprisingly selective hearing.

But the cats were all together, crouched on a bed of boulders high above the ruins. Courtney sat straight and wide-eyed among the circle of ferals, joined by Dulcie and Kit and Pan. A little breeze stirred their whiskers and stirred the tall grass. They sat fascinated as the ferals took turns telling tales. The ancient Celtic and Irish and Scottish myths, the Welsh legends. Kit had told Courtney a few of these but they both liked hearing them again, they liked best the way pale-calico Willow told them. Nine ferals were there, some of them having returned only recently from the underearth lands of the Netherworld.

It was the tales of the Netherworld that Dulcie really didn’t want Courtney to hear just yet, but that was hard to prevent. Already Kit had told the kitten enough about that land where Kit and Pan had ventured, that realm of mythical beasts, and of powers that had destroyed many parts of its kingdoms. One could hardly stop Kit from telling the stories around the fire at Kit’s own house, or at Wilma’s house, with Courtney ever demanding to hear more. (Striker and Buffin preferred sagas of the Irish wars.) Dulcie didn’t want Courtney’s head filled, yet, with the Netherworld, to which the strong-minded calico might decide to slip away alone and wander down into its deep tunnels, to see its marvels for herself.

But before the tales began, Dulcie had asked Willow about the lights at Voletta’s and the gathered cars.

“It’s the first time we’ve seen them,” Willow said, “we watched them pull out, but we didn’t see them come in. That must have been the night of the terrible wind, we were deep in a cellar, out of the blow, sleeping warm and cozy. We couldn’t have seen the cars drive in, and in that storm we couldn’t have heard them.”

“But had you seen them before?” Dulcie said. “Maybe weeks ago?”

“No. We’d see a car or two pull into the woods behind the barn, but never a whole fleet of them. Not going into the barn or coming out. Those few we saw parked back in the woods were lovers, the way young people do.”

“They could have put a lot of cars back in the trees,” Sage said. “That night maybe they put them in the barn to keep them from being dented and scratched with falling branches, there were trees down all over.”

Kate found them there, the cats so immersed in the stories they had ignored her searching calls, ignored Ryan’s calls farther up the hills. They were gathered among the boulders, and for a few moments she crouched nearby, enjoying the stories, too. But there was another event tangled in that moment, a glimpse that shocked and thrilled Kate. Watching Courtney, Kate started suddenly when she saw movement in the deep shadows of a crumbled doorway, a tall shape that disappeared at once beyond the door’s darkness, a tall figure, as she had seen that night standing at the office window looking out.

Had Scotty been standing there listening to the cats’ stories? Listening to them speak, and had slipped away when she saw him? A thrill of amazement filled Kate, a joy that brought tears—or had she not seen him at all, was it only the breeze stirring the vines that grew up the side of the house?

If Scotty knew about the cats, why hadn’t he told her? She almost ran to find him. But no, it couldn’t have been Scotty. Why would he not tell her? Shivering, she remained crouched in the grass not looking in that direction, pretending to have seen nothing.

It was here that Ryan found Kate and the cats. She waited for a tale to end, then told the Molena Point cats that Clyde wanted them at home, that he felt Rick Alderson might be a danger to them—and that the ferals should stay away from him, too. She bundled up Kit and Pan, Pan shining golden against her dark hair. Kate settled Dulcie and Courtney on her shoulders, and they returned to the shelter to find Wilma.

When Wilma and the four cats had headed home in Ryan’s king cab, Kate turned back to the rocky meadow. She approached the back of the mansion where she thought Scotty had stood.

She paused and stepped back.

Scotty sat on a boulder, his back to her but in plain sight, talking with Willow, the faded calico comfortable on the smooth rock next to him, one paw on Scotty’s knee. Willow was saying, “Kate has known for ever so long, for many years. But how could she agree to marry you, when she thought you didn’t know? When she would, for all your lives, have to keep the secret?”

“But—” Scotty began.

“But what?” said Willow. “You only found out by accident, when you were moving those boards. When we weren’t careful, and you heard us talking.” The matronly cat looked hard at him. She had the look of the leader she was, queen of the feral band, a cat who had reprimanded and coddled generations of kittens and perhaps a human or two. “I think,” Willow said, “it’s time you two had a talk.” She patted Scotty’s knee with a soft paw, sprang from the boulder lithe and quick, and bounded away, losing herself among the walls of the old house, leaving Scotty and Kate alone.

Scotty looked at her, and took her hand, and for some time, neither spoke. A little breeze blew the tall, wild grass against the rocks. Scotty took her in his arms. If a feral cat or two watched from among the fallen walls, neither Kate nor Scotty minded.

“So now,” Scotty said, “so now that you know my secret—was this your secret, all along?”

“It was,” she said shakily.

“And now,” he said, “now that all is clear between us, will you marry me?”

She couldn’t answer, she could only nod against him, and try to wipe away her tears.

25

The four cats rode crowded on Wilma’s lap, spilling across the front seat as Ryan’s king cab headed for the highway. Dulcie and Kit dreaming of the old tales, Courtney with lingering visions of the Netherworld. Pan stretched out between the girl cats and Ryan, and who knew what he was dreaming?

“You can take us to my house,” Wilma said. “Egan’s in jail, and Randall’s in the hospital, there’s no one to bother us.” She smiled. “No reason to toss my place again, anyway. They got the book, or think they did. They know the police have it.”

“Rick and Lena aren’t in jail,” Ryan said.

Wilma was silent.

“Lena isn’t stable,” Ryan said, “but she’s clever. She might guess there was another volume, might wonder if that one was a substitute, if you still have the valuable copy. Who knows, at auction, what the original would have been worth? And if she knows the whole story, she might come after …” She glanced down at the tangle of cats. Dulcie and Kit stared up at her, wary and silent.

“No one knows if she’ll break in,” Ryan said “no one knows what she’ll do—she knows she could never catch the feral cats. And Rick, he has a long, ugly record—while they’re both still free, you’re coming home with us.”

“But what about your quarantine?” Kit said.

“Joe and Rock can stay in my studio, it’s nice and light and there’s a soft couch to share. The isolation will be over by tomorrow night, the two of them will be free. Striker and Buffin can come home, Joe and Dulcie can cuddle their kittens. Maybe, by that time, Lena and Rick will be locked up, instead of our poor animals.”

With Wilma and the cats settled in, Ryan didn’t go back up the hills to work. She thawed a pot of bean soup for dinner and made corn bread—while the four cats galloped upstairs to rub against the glass door of her study. And Joe Grey, inside, did the same, his nose and whiskers pressed against the cold door, as close as he could get to Dulcie and Courtney, to his calico child and his lady. Rock paced the length of the studio restlessly, more interested in getting out than in the cats’ familial concerns. When Clyde got home Rock barked up a storm until Clyde put a leash and muzzle on the Weimaraner and took him for a long run.

When Lucinda and Pedric Greenlaw came down to get Kit and Pan, of course they stayed for supper, for Ryan’s good comfort food and to catch up on the tangle of events. They were sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea as Clyde and Rock came storming in the back gate to the patio. Clyde brushed sand from the silver dog and wiped the sand from his feet. He fed Rock in the patio then took him upstairs to his prison. He sent the four cats down to the kitchen, knowing very well the two inmates didn’t have rabies, but obedient to John’s instructions. Pan, leaping to the table with the lady cats, had started to tell about Kate’s visit to Voletta when Kit jumped in with her usual monologue. “… and that wasn’t Egan, it was Rick Alderson with the long record and Voletta pretended she never heard them moving all those cars that night and didn’t see lights but how could she not, she’s a mean woman, I don’t like her even if she was hurt when the window broke, I don’t even like the way she smells and—”

“Slow down!” Dulcie and Pan hissed.

“And then Lena’s husband Randall called Rick and said he broke out of jail and we couldn’t hear all the conversation because Lena came in and we had to hang up the phone and hide and when they drove off to get him I wanted to jump in the car but they were too fast and Pan grabbed me and bit me hard and they were gone before I could leap off the roof and then we couldn’t call the cops because we didn’t know where they were going and …”

“Kit …” Ryan said, scooping up the tortoiseshell, snuggling Kit against her. Kit looked up at Ryan innocently, yellow eyes wide.

“They’re gone now,” Ryan said, holding Kit tight. “Long gone. Joe found them and he did call 911. Maybe the cops have them by now. Oh, Kit, do settle down.”

Clyde was silent, taking it all in, putting the pieces together from Joe’s story and Kit’s. Only when Ryan put supper on the table, steaming bowls of bean soup, cooler bowls for the cats, big slices of corn bread all around, was Kit wordless, settling greedily in to her feast.

It was after supper, when they’d gathered around a warm fire, that Ryan thought again about Kate and Scotty up at the mansion—about Scotty standing in the shadows listening to the cats’ ancient tales. She wondered what had happened after she left. Surely all the cats had seen him, but no one said a word, not even talkative Kit. Ryan started to say, “I wonder if —” when Kit interrupted.

“Now Scotty knows about us,” she said as if she had read Ryan’s thoughts, “and Kate knows that he knows and there won’t be any secrets between them now and I think they’ll get married.”

They all looked at her. She had to tell that tale, too, about sitting among the boulders with the ferals hearing the old stories—she ran on until Dulcie hushed her. Courtney wished her daddy were there with them so he could hear all Kit had to tell—but then, maybe it was better that he didn’t hear. She didn’t look at her mother, she knew Dulcie didn’t like her listening to tales of the Netherworld that so thrilled her. Dulcie didn’t like hearing that Courtney’s own pictures were there in that underground world, as Willow had told, antique paintings of a long-ago cat who looked exactly like Courtney—those visions too sharply stirred Courtney’s dreams of that magical land.

When the living room fire had burned nearly to coals, the Greenlaws rose to leave, Pan happy to be going home with Kit. As much as he loved the Firettis, he hadn’t meant to move in with them forever, only long enough to comfort them in their loss over Misto. But how could he tell when that was? John and Mary would grieve for Misto forever, they all would. But now, at least for a few days, the Firettis had Buffin and Striker to ease them, while Pan himself hunted with Kit and lounged in the tree house.

It wasn’t long until the Damens’ lights went out, until they were all asleep, Rock and Joe in the upstairs studio, Wilma tucked up in the guest room with Dulcie and Courtney. The cats slept lightly, their ears at alert. There was no attempt at a breakin with Egan in jail and with Randall under guard in a hospital bed, probably hooked up to plastic tubes and with a uniformed guard at his door. And, hopefully, Lena and Rick on their way to jail, though they had had no word from Dallas or Max Harper.

At three that afternoon, the call came. Not from Max, but from John Firetti.

Clyde was just home from work. When he answered the phone, John nearly shouted in his ear, “Negative, Clyde! The test was negative! No rabies! Joe and Rock are free, you can let them run. My God, this waiting has been hell. Shall I bring the boys and Snowball home?” he asked hesitantly.

“I’ll come,” Clyde said. “I’m on my way.”

But the conversation, when Clyde arrived at the clinic, was not at all what he’d expected. They stood in the recovery room, Striker, freed from his cage, racing the length of the room round and round on three legs, working off an endless burst of energy—while Buffin remained curled up close to the fluffy little dog. Watching Buffin and Lolly, Clyde felt a hollowness in the pit of his stomach at separating them.

John seemed to have trouble putting his words together. This was the first time Clyde had ever seen John Firetti shy and uncertain. They were both watching Lolly and the buff kitten pressed lovingly together.

“I think our little dog is going to make it,” John said. “We’ve done everything we can for her. It’s Buffin who has kept her comfortable without heavy drugs. The minute he hops in her cage and curls up beside her she sighs, you can see her muscles ease as the pain subsides, as she relaxes against him.

“I don’t know how he does it,” John said. “It’s a quite amazing talent, it’s the kind of healing that scientists have argued about for centuries. And here it is, in this young, half-grown kitten.”

Clyde moved closer to the cage, looking in at Buffin then glancing at John. “Would you like him to stay for a while longer?”

“I would indeed …” John began. “Until she’s completely healed.”

“Yes,” Buffin told Clyde, his blue eyes pleading. “I want to do that. She’s better but there’s still some pain, she still needs comforting.” The big kitten looked up intently at Clyde. “Is this what I was born for? To help other animals, to help them heal?”

“To help heal,” John said, nodding. “To give solace. Everyone is born for some special reason, some special good.” He sighed. “But so many never find it.”

Clyde smiled. “Wilma told me once, everyone is born about something, some passion or talent that will guide his or her life. If he doesn’t have such a longing, or never discovers and uses it, he is only a shell, empty, to be filled with something ugly instead.”

Buffin looked from John to Clyde. “May I stay, then? For a little while? Maybe …” he said, looking up at the doctor, “maybe John and Mary need me, too?”

“We need you very much,” John said, reaching into the open cage to stroke Buffin.

“And maybe they need me,” Striker said, jumping up into the cage, rearing up to touch his nose to Clyde’s, then placing a paw on John Firetti’s shoulder. “And Pan can be home with Kit, in the tree house.”

So it was that only Snowball went home to Rock and Joe, the little white cat kittenish with delight to be back with her big dog to snuggle and protect her. So it was that Wilma and Dulcie and Courtney were at home—without Courtney’s brothers—and Dulcie’s heart was heavy. Her two boys had left the nest, had left so much sooner than she had ever imagined.

Wilma said, “It won’t be long and they’ll be home again. It’s no different than human children off to camp.”

Dulcie wasn’t sure it was the same. Buffin and Striker might be home again for a while. But this sudden parting was the first of many, of a long voyage for her children as they started out on their own. They would be back, might be in and out of the house, but they would never again be homebound kittens needing only this one shelter, needing only her and Joe, needing only this one safe place in their lives. Now, already, they were heading out into the bigger world.

Though maybe, she thought, maybe Striker with his predatory nature might decide to join her and Joe in their own pursuits, might hunger for secret investigation, hunger to stalk the bad guys who preyed on the world. That would comfort her, and would make Joe Grey more than happy.

And Courtney? Dulcie nuzzled her calico kitten. She knew where Courtney’s dreams lay, where perhaps an ancient fate waited. Courtney’s longings frightened Dulcie, but she knew she couldn’t change them. This young lady had been born knowing images of distant times, and of times perhaps yet to come. Dulcie and Joe could only love her and keep her close when she was willing—or could only love her from a distance when she was far away.

But that day hadn’t come yet. Now, Dulcie would treasure the time they had with their kittens and not dwell needlessly on the future.

26

When Ryan opened the studio door and released Joe and Rock from their glass-walled prison they burst through Clyde’s study and raced down the stairs, Rock leaping over Joe, dog and cat circling through the house upsetting furniture again, then pounding into the kitchen looking pitifully up at Ryan as if they had been on starvation rations for weeks. Trying not to laugh, she gave Rock a big hug, as Joe Grey leaped to the table.

“So where’s supper?” said the tomcat. There was no food in sight, nothing but scattered sections of the morning paper.

“It’s a little early. It’s not like you haven’t been eating, I’ve waited on you hand and foot, treats from the deli, the works.”

Joe stared at her unblinking, his yellow eyes intent, one white paw lifted, whether in supplication or threat wasn’t clear. Ryan turned away, amused, and fixed a plate for him of cold steak and sardines. She fed Rock his usual homemade vegetable and chicken stew with slices of steak on top. Joe ate standing on the open paper reading the latest details of the local car heists; eight cars had been examined and photographed for evidence and returned to their owners. All the thieves were behind bars, either in the village jail or in county lockup. All except Randall Borden, in the surgery wing of the village hospital. One woman was on her own recognizance as a person of interest. That could be Voletta. The paper was tight as hell with its information. He wasn’t going to learn anything more until he hit the station.

Quickly swallowing the last sardine, he dropped from the table and took off for MPPD, not even waiting for Clyde and the kittens to get home. He was up the stairs, up on his rafter, and out through his tower racing across the rooftops.

He entered the department on the heels of tall, thin Officer Blake and Detective Juana Davis, both in uniform, holstered weapons, radios, phones, nightsticks, Tasers, the works. When Blake turned into the conference room, Joe stepped up to walk beside Juana as casually as would another officer. She looked down at him, her black eyes laughing.

They got a laugh, as well, when Joe marched into Max Harper’s office beside her. “You two working the streets together?” Max said; then, “How was San Francisco?”

“Foggy,” Juana said. “The three days did me good, nice hotel, breakfast in bed, shopping.” She sat down at the other end of the leather couch from Detective Garza. As Joe strolled in, Dallas gave him that look that always made the tomcat uneasy. That what are you up to? gaze that Joe could never quite decipher, that he didn’t want to decipher. The detective was dressed in a tweed sport coat and jeans. His half of the couch was scattered with files and an electronic notebook.

Ignoring the softer furniture, Joe leaped to the chief’s desk and past him into the bookcase, purring at Max’s familiar scent of fresh hay and clean horses, at his comfortable jeans and frontier shirt. Only a police chief with Harper’s reputation, and maybe in a small town like Molena Point, could get away with the casual clothes and western boots that he preferred.

Making himself comfortable between two piles of reports, Joe scanned the papers on the chief’s desk and the notes on his clipboard. A list of the stolen cars, check marks as to whether they had been recovered (including the two that had been left behind in the old barn). There were check marks indicating whether each car had yet been gone over for prints and other evidence and whether it had been returned to its owners.

Max was saying, “Barbara Conley dated Robert Teague, too. My guess is, Randall saw them together. When, maybe weeks ago, they left Teague’s BMW parked on the street, Randall had the equipment to hack into the electronic security, including the garage door opener. Then, the night that Teague got back from the city, the night of the heists, Randall opened the garage door, cranked the car, and drove off neat as you please.”

“With that box of porcelain in the back,” Davis said. “You think Randall even knew it was there? Think he knew what was in it? Didn’t Teague say the porcelain was worth over thirty thousand?” She was quiet a moment, then, “You’re not looking at Teague in connection with Barbara’s murder?”

Max shook his head. “We’ve got the gun that killed her and Prince, got the report from ballistics. It was in Randall’s pocket when they brought him out of the attic. Question is, between the time he was arrested, then escaped to Barbara’s house and crawled up in the attic, where did he have the gun stashed? It wasn’t on him or on Egan when we hauled them out of Randall’s car and locked them up.”

Dallas said, “Possible he hid it in the attic after the murder, before we knew that house was connected to the car heists. The fingerprints were smeared like there’d been a cloth wrapped around it, but we got some clear ones. What makes me mad is losing the young girl who called that the BMW was there. She wasn’t one of our snitches, I know their voices too well.”

She was my daughter, Joe Grey thought smugly, hiding his smile.

“But the guy who called later, after Randall escaped from jail,” Max said, “we know him all right. Randall didn’t have a phone but he contacted Lena somehow. She’s there to pick him up, then finds he’s too sick to move, even with a partner to help her—sure as hell Rick was in the car, waiting. She calls the medics.

“Then we get our snitch’s call about the Ford, driver, and a passenger. Less than three minutes we have five cars on the street and freeway, plus a couple of sheriff’s units, but not a sign of them.”

Dallas said, “How does the snitch do that? He had to be there in the house with them. Did he follow Lena there? Or follow Randall?” The detective shook his head. “Pretty quick moves. This stuff gives me the creeps. And,” he said, “he knew who Rick Alderson was, he knew both Rick and Egan.”

Dallas was silent, looking at the chief and Juana, knowing they didn’t have any more answers than he did. No one glanced at the tomcat snoring on the shelf behind Max, no one had a notion that their snitch was listening right there beside them.

“Then,” Dallas said, “we get that call from the woman who works over at the drama center.”

“I haven’t heard this part,” Juana said. “Only what McFarland told me on the phone, then my phone cut out. Borden escaped, to the embarrassment of Officer Bonner,” she said, grinning. “You got a call on Randall, the medics haul him out of the attic, and he’s in surgery for appendicitis. Very nice. He goes to emergency and the state pays for it. But what’s with the woman from the drama center?”

“She was parked in that big lot behind the classrooms,” Dallas said. “Came back to get a sweater from her car, saw this guy crouched down between two parked cars removing a license plate. She drew back, watched him replace it with another. Removed California plates, bolted on plates from Washington State, the front plate dented.”

“So,” Max said, “our men are already out on the highway while they’re still in the village changing plates. The traffic was heavy, a lot of trucks—somehow the Ford slipped in between the big rigs. Even our patrol unit parked by the high school missed them, and that sure as hell made me feel lame.

“But then,” Max said, “you’ll like this part. Two CHP units are still patrolling up Highway One along near the Pamillon land, near Voletta Nestor’s place. They knew, from Randall, that he and Lena had been staying there. They turn on up the narrow road, pull around behind that dense eucalyptus stand—and there’s the Ford jammed in among the trees, almost invisible. Dented Washington plates. Lena and the driver were gone.

“Well, our guys ease around behind the barn; the barn doors are open and here comes barreling out a gray Lincoln Town Car. They radio ahead for the units on the freeway and they take off after it. That road, dirt and gravel, is rough as hell. Lincoln is scorching toward the freeway as two more of our units pull in, damn near hit the Lincoln. Our guys swerve into the dirt embankment—at the same moment, the Lincoln coughs a couple of times, bucks to a stop, and just sits there. Stalled on that narrow dirt road. Brennan said the driver looked like Egan Borden. He’s cranking and grinding, but can’t get a rumble out of the Lincoln. Lena’s crouched down in the front seat, and now they’re surrounded by cops. Officers pull them out, secure him in a squad car, lock Lena in another unit, leg irons, the works. Called a tow truck to haul the two cars in.”

“How could it be Egan?” Juana said. “He’s already locked … Oh! Rick Alderson!”

Max nodded. “Both Egan Borden and Rick Alderson are in the jail. No release, no bail. Lena’s in the women’s cell. She can go on home if she can make bail, so she can take care of her aunt—but only with the condition of home confinement for both her and Voletta.”

Juana rose to make fresh coffee. “So what made the car stop?”

“The box of porcelain you were wondering about? Thieves had put it in the barn with the missing Lincoln and Mini Cooper, just dumped it on the floor like they thought it was worth nothing.”

Max leaned back, smiling. “While it was in the barn a mouse or rat got into it, pulled out the stuffing and dragged that under the Lincoln. It was building a nest under the hood. I’d say a rat, the way it had chewed the car’s electrical wires. So bad that, coming down that rough road, the last bit of wire broke and that’s all it took, the car stopped cold and we had them.”

Juana doubled over laughing. Dallas and the chief sat smiling. As the coffee started to gurgle, Joe Grey curled up tighter to hide his own grin. That rat, he thought, even if she is dead now, even if she did get me and Rock locked up, she ought to get some of the credit for rounding up the last of those no-goods.

27

Kate and Scotty’s small, casual wedding was held at the Damens’ house late Sunday afternoon. But hours before the ceremony, the happy couple was honored with a secret gathering behind the Pamillon mansion. The time was early dawn, the sun’s first orange glow edging the eastern hills, shining into the ancient courtyard where Courtney had first met the feral band. Where Kate had discovered Scotty watching the speaking cats, listening to their tales and in that moment the restraint between the two lovers vanished.

Sunrise glowed on the big boulder where pale Willow sat, the bleached calico leader of the feral band. Feral cats and the little group of four village cats and two kittens gathered before her. Only young Buffin was absent, he would not leave his small patient even for such an important event. Ryan and Clyde, Wilma and Charlie, the Firettis, and the Greenlaws stood close behind the feline celebrants.

Kate and Scotty knelt at the foot of the boulder, so as to be face-to-face with Willow. For a long moment she looked silently at the quiet couple, gentle and thoughtful. She touched her nose to their cheeks in a simple feline benediction, a rare endearment of friendship for humans to receive from the cat community. She put a paw on Scotty’s shoulder, placed her other paw on Kate’s hand. The words she spoke seemed to join their two spirits more closely and to join them securely to the cat family.

May the stars shine bright above you,

May the sun warm you,

And the world hold you softly.

May your thoughts and needs be as one,

For all time,

Your joys and conquests as one,

In this world and forever.

Then all the cats gathered around closer, clowder cats and village cats leaping up on the boulder, purring and caressing and nosing at the couple, rubbing their faces against them. So the Pamillon cats celebrated their acceptance of two people they had come to love, these feral cats who, for long generations, had feared and avoided humans. Now they and their human friends shared a long moment of joyful bonding. But then as the sun rose higher and the golden light spread, the ferals slipped away. They purred a good-bye, offered a last nuzzle, and they were gone. Suddenly the glade was empty, not a clowder cat to be seen.

Kate and Scotty stood a moment, holding hands, then the little party of humans and village cats headed back across the grassy berm to the shelter, the warmth of the ceremony a part of them now as it always would be.

They were in the apartment, the four cats and two kittens on the desk, Kate and Ryan and Wilma making breakfast, when Dulcie said, “Look, where’s Voletta going? How can she drive with her leg all bound up and her stitches still healing?”

In the yard below, Voletta’s dirt-covered pickup was heading across the big yard for the road, Voletta’s tangle of white hair blowing where the window was down. They all watched, cats and humans, until, at a turn in the road the truck disappeared, hidden by eucalyptus trees.

“She’s going to bail Lena out,” Joe said.

Everyone looked at him.

“I guess she made bail, after they arrested her with Rick.”

“Where,” Dulcie said, “would Voletta get enough money for bail?”

“Bail bondsman,” Joe said. “He can meet Voletta at the station, she gives him ten percent of whatever the bail is, and Lena walks. You can bet that old woman isn’t destitute.”

“No, she isn’t,” Kate said. “When I kept raising the offer on the house and land, she didn’t blink an eye. Refused it cool as you please. She’s a Pamillon. As little as the family thinks of her, I’ll bet there’s a trust fund, a nice yearly income.”

“That may be,” Wilma said, “but I’ve seen her in the village carrying that old shopping bag, moving among the aisles of some small shop in a way that made me wonder.”

“Rich people shoplift, too,” Dulcie said. She and Joe had seen Voletta in the village, slipping along between the counters with her shopping bag. They had never pursued the matter, maybe because Voletta looked so alone and poor—though it was not in their predatory nature to be that forgiving.

Whatever the case, long before the volunteers had arrived at the shelter for duty, Voletta’s dirt-encrusted truck came lumbering home, Lena driving. A white Prius followed them, a shiny, new model. It pulled up in front of the house, to park beside Voletta’s truck. A small, bespectacled driver stepped out. He was neat as a pin, dressed in a pale gray suit and gray tie; he stood waiting for Lena and Voletta. The older woman was slow and stiff getting out of the passenger’s seat and into the walker that Lena pulled out of the truck bed.

“Probation officer,” Scotty said, “come to check out where she lives, to look at the living conditions.”

“How do you …?” Kate began.

“I talked with Max, when he called about that box of porcelain. Lena will be on probation, under home confinement. He said Voletta needs someone to care for her until her leg heals.”

“That means Lena can’t go anywhere,” Kate said.

“She can if she calls in—grocery, drugstore, essential trips. I guess, for a while, she’ll be driving Voletta where she needs to go, like to the doctor. Max said he let her out, in part, to take care of the old woman.” Scotty looked at Joe, wondering how much Joe Grey already knew, hanging around MPPD.

Kate said, “She was well enough to drive to the station to bail Lena out.”

Scotty smiled. “Maybe she was embarrassed to ask us, or didn’t want us into her business. You can tell it didn’t do her any good, the way she’s limping, going up the steps.” Scotty sipped his coffee. “I don’t think the department knows, yet, exactly how involved Lena was in the car heists. But Randall is her husband. Max thinks Randall may have run the show.”

Kate looked again at the little, neat man entering the front door behind Voletta and Lena. “Will he be nosing around up here, too, getting in our way?”

Scotty laughed. “He’s not an out-for-blood building inspector, just a county PO doing his job. I guess we’ll see him around every few weeks—until we find a caretaker and move into a place of our own.”

“Well, at least we have the Wilsons to stay for a couple of nights,” Kate said. “They’re a nice couple. I called Ryan’s dad, hoping he and Lindsey would volunteer.” She shook her head. “They’re off on another fishing trip, up in Oregon. Took Rock with them again. I think they mean to kidnap that good dog.”

“I wouldn’t blame them,” Scotty said.

“They were sorry to miss the wedding. They sent their love to us both. But poor Rock will miss a good party, he’ll miss snatching treats. A party does set him off, trying to greet everyone at once and to work them for handouts.”

Scotty put his arm around her. “Just a two-night honeymoon. But we’ll take a longer trip later. The Bahamas? Alaska? And,” he said softly, “our whole life will be a honeymoon.” Kate had never guessed, the years she’d known Scotty as a quiet, no-nonsense friend, a rough-hewn kind of guy, how romantic he could be.

The Damens’ driveway and the street were solid with cars. Clyde’s Jaguar and Ryan’s red king cab were trapped in the carport, three rows of cars behind them. Joe, looking down from the roof, thought the scene resembled another gathering of stolen vehicles—except that he knew most of these cars and, cozied in among them, a number of friendly black-and-whites lent a different interpretation. As did the open front door with talk and laughter spilling out and the good smells of the buffet supper. It was the aroma of food that drew Joe from the roof through his tower and onto the rafter, down to Clyde’s desk, scattering papers, and down the stairs—where Dulcie and Kit and Pan were already working the room. Striker and Courtney sat obediently on the mantel, sniffing at the good smells.

Casually Joe finessed a hand-offered snack here, then crab salad on a paper plate, a slice of chicken. A stack of small paper plates stood on the coffee table. The Greenlaws were there, and Wilma, and Max and Charlie; the four senior ladies had arrived, and a dozen officers including detectives Davis and Ray, both with cameras to take wedding pictures. John and Mary Firetti came in, Mary carrying Buffin on her shoulder.

“We won’t stay too long,” she told Ryan, “but Buffin’s little dog is better.” She watched John pick up Striker from the mantel, to have a look at his paw. Striker and Courtney had been restricted there to avoid being stepped on, and to stay away from human food. John insisted on a limited diet until, as the kittens grew older, he was sure that human treats were as agreeable to them as to the older cats.

Now, taking Striker into the guest room, John removed the weed-covered, damp wrappings from his paw, examined the stitches, applied a salve and a clean white bandage. That was better, Striker thought. His paw had felt damp and grainy. When they returned to the living room, everyone was headed for the patio. The minister had arrived. Tall, bent Reverend Samuel, in his dark suit, stood before the barbecue, which was covered with a fresh white sheet and pots of white daisies. The walled brick terrace was crowded with folding chairs. When John and Mary, carrying the three kittens, took seats beneath the young maple tree, immediately the kittens climbed up its branches to join Dulcie and Kit and Pan for a fine view down on the wedding party. One could hardly see Joe Grey on the roof above, peering over the edge, beneath the maple’s foliage.

The music was the same collection of folk tunes that Charlie had selected for Ryan and Clyde’s wedding, happy Irish music. Quietly the bride and groom took their places before the reverend. Scotty’s brother-in-law, Dallas, stood next to the groom, as best man. Ryan, as matron of honor, did not lead Kate to her place but stood beside her, her pale brown shift setting off Kate’s rich cream suit that shone softly with her blond hair. Scotty wore a pale tweed sport coat and light slacks. Clyde, who would give the bride away, wore tan slacks and a light linen sport coat. Yes, Joe thought, Clyde should give the bride away when, at one time, he came near to marrying Kate himself. And it had been the same with Charlie. Joe had been sure that she and Clyde were headed for wedding bells—until Max stepped in, until he and Charlie were suddenly head-over-heels, had set the wedding date, and before you could shake a paw, the deed was done. Joe had been sorry about that, he loved Charlie. But Max and Charlie were a better match—and now he was mighty glad that Clyde had waited for Ryan.

In the years Joe had known Clyde, he’d had more women than a stray tomcat. It was luck when he met Ryan Flannery, when she remodeled their house and they started dating. Clyde didn’t know that Joe had used every wile he knew, to charm Ryan. Maybe Clyde and Ryan’s romance would have happened without his help, maybe not.

Ryan had been clever enough to discover, on her own, that Joe could talk. She had been wise not to go to Clyde with her discovery, but to discuss the matter directly with Joe. None of your “kitty, kitty, can you speak to me” foolishness. She just came right out with it, person to person—though Joe had remained shy and startled for some time. But Ryan was a true gem. She could not only cook, she could fix the roof and the plumbing, she had rebuilt their poky cottage into a handsome home. She had built Joe’s tower and, best of all, she knew how to handle Clyde.

The minister had begun his short reading. He was blessing this union that was for all time, then soon was asking Scotty if he took this woman to love, to honor and cherish. He was asking Kate the same when Joe, from up on the roof, heard the sound of metal scraping on metal, a harsh grating that came from the carport below him.

He couldn’t see under the carport from this angle. Trotting across the shingles to the front of the house, he looked beneath the shelter that jutted out in front of the garage. A person with tangled white hair was at work on the far side of Ryan’s red king cab, she was at the lockboxes that ran along the side of the truck. Voletta! What was she doing? He watched, unbelieving, as she worked away at one of the compartments. When he looked up for an instant, looked down the block to the side street, there was Voletta’s muddy blue pickup parked along the curb.

Moving across the carport roof, where he could see her better, he watched her remove Ryan’s newest, most expensive Skilsaw from a lockbox and slip it into a canvas carryall. She had all the locker doors on her side open, she had hauled out all kinds of tools, the two other carryalls were already full.

Stealthily Joe slipped into the neighbors’ pepper tree. Mad as hell, he eased down above the truck, leaped to its roof just inches from Voletta’s face snarling and growling and raising threatening claws. Voletta yipped and flew backward against the carport wall, her cry choking her, Joe slashing out at her, keening and yowling, his gray coat standing stiff, his yellow eyes fierce with rage. He slashed out again with a roaring scream but he daren’t bloody her, he didn’t want quarantine again. He struck so close that her hands flew up to protect her face; and suddenly behind Joe, Pan came racing.

The red tom sailed onto the truck growling like a tiger. Joe could see now that Voletta had wrenched and bent most of the cabinet doors open rather than trying to unlock them. The old woman, white hair flying, slapped at them with a leather carpenter’s apron, trying to drive them away—and over the roof came the other cats, all in attack mode. Kit, in the lead, crouched to leap. Behind them, the wedding party streamed out.

Joe hissed at Kit to stop her, thinking of the trouble a wound would cause. Dulcie was slashing hard at the woman, but then, thinking the same, she drew back. The three kittens crowded the roof behind them, all wanting to jump Voletta. It was then that Ryan came running, grabbed Voletta, grabbed a box of drills from her hand—it was then that Joe saw the bride and groom. They stood a little apart on the sidewalk, Scotty’s arm around Kate. He was grinning, but Kate was laughing so hard, leaning against him, that Joe wondered if she could stop laughing. He did see, looking carefully, that the ring was on her finger, that the ceremony had not been interrupted, that among all the furor and cat screams, Kate Osborne had become, officially, Mrs. Scott Flannery. He envisioned Scotty placing the ring on her finger and kissing her while, from the carport, bloodcurdling feline challenges cut through the soft Irish music; and Joe Grey, himself, had a hard time trying not to laugh.