Cat Shout For Joy

Dedication

For 99, a fine, bossy tomcat, and for Joanne, who allowed him to leave this earth with dignity, allowed him not to suffer

Epigraph

For the cat is cryptic,

And close to strange things

That men cannot see.

H. P. Lovecraft, “The Cats of Ulthar”

Prologue

Evening drew down quicker than the old woman liked. She hurried up the wooded hill with her grocery bags; she wanted to be in the house before dark. She didn’t like living alone since her nephew and his wife moved out, and this evening she had lingered too long chatting with a friend at the village market. Around her now there was only silence; nothing stirred on the narrow, shadowed street or in the overgrown yards.

Suddenly she was struck from behind, a hard blow across her shoulders that knocked her sprawling. Pain shocked through her, her hands ground into asphalt where she tried to catch herself; grocery bags flew from her arms, apples bounced away, cans of soup and beans rolled into the gutter. Flailing, trying to right herself, she heard racing footsteps, soft-soled shoes running, and then silence; a dark figure vanished among the dusky trees, blending with the shadows and then gone.

Terrified, she slowly got to her feet, nearly falling again when she put weight on her throbbing leg. She found a tissue in her pocket and wiped at the blood, staring up and down the darkening street and into the neighbors’ yards: tangled trees and bushes, no one there that she could see, no one to threaten her now. And no one to help her. Nervously she studied the unlit houses and empty driveways. Every window was black, folks not home yet from work. A few part-time summer cottages still closed up since winter. She shivered, weak and shaken, cold with shock at the cruel prank.

What else could it be but a prank? She hadn’t been robbed: her purse still hung from her arm, the leather scarred in long scratches where she’d fallen. She’d read about an earlier attack or two, had seen news clips on TV, had thought they were flukes, that such a thing wouldn’t happen again, not in their cozy village. Surely not in this quiet neighborhood, though she was always careful. She wanted to get home. Wanted to be safe inside her own house where she could call the police. Still frightened but growing angry now, she picked up what groceries she could find and hurried uphill toward her own empty house.

1

Spring fog,” Joe Grey said, shivering, lifting a wet paw and licking irritably at his sleek fur. “May is supposed to be sunny, warm.” Though the gray tomcat knew better, he knew as well as Dulcie that Molena Point weather, this time of year, was always unpredictable. The morning fog, in fact, pleased him well enough; the shielding mist was perfect for the hunt as they prowled the jagged rooftops. Their quarry wasn’t pigeons or roof rats but human prey, their attention on the village streets below, on the narrow, fog-shrouded sidewalks. The cozy shops were still closed this early in the morning, the wares in their windows indistinct behind the shifting mist. Here, the hint of a doorway, the vague outline of a cypress or pine; there the corner of a window ledge, a half-seen pot of flowers. Only an occasional pedestrian passed, bundled up against the chill, wool scarf tucked into a down jacket, a warm cap pulled low; each passed into the damp haze and was gone again, the streets empty once more.

In the pearly light, trotting up and down from peak to peak, Dulcie gleamed rich with dark stripes; but the gray tomcat seemed nearly lost in the gloom. Only his white paws and the white stripe down his nose shone out flashing as he dropped from a gable into a hollow between overlapping roofs. Together they slipped along the edge of the shingles, peering over, scanning one street and then the next, their noses and ears nearly frozen. Their warm breakfast of pancakes and eggs seemed a very long time past.

On the fog-wet streets the tires of an occasional vehicle hushed by, then again silence. They watched a lone woman leave her motel, strolling idly, wrapped in a heavy sweater, looking in the shop windows, watched until she disappeared inside a steamy café; the few tourists who had remained after the weekend, maybe hoping for better weather, would still be abed or drinking coffee beside a warm fire. Or the hardiest ones already off running the beach, smug and righteous in their exertion, sweating despite the chill.

But as the cats prowled the roofs alert for the human predator, their moods were deeply mixed. Their urgency to spot the assailant, to pass his description to the cops and help put an end to this cruelty, ran crosswise to their distaste at having to witness such an attack, the brutal terrorizing of innocent citizens, most of them frail or elderly. What was his purpose? The victims were never robbed. This wanton cruelty was the dark side of humanity that the cats hated—the flip side to the love and kindness with which their own human friends embraced them.

But another sadness filled the cats as well. A distress that had nothing to do with the street prowler, one that no amount of their own effort could change. A mourning filled them for the old yellow tomcat: Misto was failing; his debilitating illness would soon take him.

His pain had begun suddenly, the cancer progressing rapidly. Already this morning, just at dawn, Joe and Dulcie had sat with him as he drifted in and out of sleep; as, off in the kitchen of the Firetti cottage, Mary washed up the breakfast dishes, and Dr. John Firetti was across the garden seeing overnight patients in his veterinary clinic. Quietly the cats had tried to ease Misto, to love him. They had left him only when Misto himself hissed and sent them away. Tucked up among the pillows in the big double bed, the fragile yellow tom wanted simply to nap. Joe and Dulcie had gone, looking back wistfully. They were not as resigned to his fate as was Misto himself. He was weak and tired, yet he seemed quite content, facing these last days of his long and adventurous life.

“You can’t change what is,” he had told them. “You can do nothing about my illness. I’m lucky to be among those I love. I’m happy to end up here, where I was born, after my life’s long journey. This life,” he’d said, “this life is not the end.” He’d yawned and pawed at the pillows. “I have known more lives than this one, and I will know more yet to come.

“But right now,” he’d said, flipping his thin tail, “now I need sleep. Go, my dears,” he’d said, extending a gentle paw. “Come back when I’m rested, when the pain meds have kicked in for the day.”

As Joe and Dulcie turned away, Misto had given Dulcie a secret and conspiratorial smile. Joe, catching his look, continued even now to puzzle over it, though he had asked no question. He’d trotted away beside Dulcie in silence as the old yellow tomcat rolled over and started to snore.

Joe had waited for Dulcie to explain, yet she’d said nothing. What secret was this? What could be so urgent that his lady would keep it from him? While Misto’s malaise left both cats steeped in sadness, Dulcie had shared her deepest conscience, her most private thoughts, only with the old yellow tom.

Earlier that morning before Joe arrived at Misto’s cottage, when Dulcie and the old cat were alone together, he’d given her a deep, steady look. “Life and death hang in balance, now, Dulcie. My life is ending. But you alone guard new lives.”

How could he know that? She had looked at him, shocked, her green eyes wide.

But then she smiled. Of course Misto would know her most private secret. How often did the old cat know what was in another cat’s mind, what lay hidden in the past or even ahead, in the future. How often did Misto divine secrets Dulcie could never dream.

“As the end of my days draws near,” he’d said, “three bright new lives have begun for you, my dear. Oh, yes,” he’d said, twitching a whisker. “Three dear little lives snuggled safe and warm inyour most secret world. And,” Misto had said, studying her, “you have not yet told Joe Grey.”

She had told no one. Except her human housemate, because how could she not tell Wilma, when Dulcie threw up her breakfast every morning?

But yet Misto knew, with those same powers that let him remember ages long past and let him see into the future. “Three kittens, three tiny mites,” he’d said, “snuggled within, secret and warm and happy.” And he had known more than that about her unborn kits; he had said, with a faint and ragged purr, “Three strong babies waiting eagerly to be born, two boy kits, and a calico girl.

“And,” he had told her, “there is an amazement about the calico kitten. She . . .” But he began to yawn, and before he could continue, the old cat had drifted into sleep, as was often the way since his illness. Maybe it was the medication sending him dozing, or maybe he thought he had said enough. Dulcie only knew that now, prowling the roofs in the cold fog, she fidgeted with unanswered questions. What had Misto started to tell her? What about her girl kitten, whatamazement?

And, though she longed to tell Joe Grey about the kittens, still she didn’t know how to tell him. What would Joe say when he learned that new little lives waited within the dark of her sheltering body? Would he want kittens, this tomcat whose very existence was committed to the exciting dangers of tracking human criminals? To the uncertainties of helping the law, of apprehending evil? Would fatherhood hold him back from what he was born to do? Would rallying around helpless babies, while burning to chase after human scum, only make him restless and cross? Joe Grey was not an ordinary tomcat to casually father a litter and then disappear. Would the innate commitment, the very responsibilities of kittens, his kittens, only distress him?

And, she wondered, if she told Joe about the kittens now, would that news make Misto’s impending death seem even more cruel by comparison? As if the inestimable powers of the universe meant to take Misto’s life in exchange for the three new lives soon to be?

She knew that made no sense. But would such an idea strike Joe, as he grieved for their dying friend? Would such thoughts make him turn away from her joyous secret?

Or was the intention of the greater powers not to exchange life for life, but instead to fill the emptiness, once their friend had departed? To bring new happiness into their world through these young, fledgling spirits?

No matter how she pondered the question, she didn’t know how to tell Joe. And she didn’t knowwhen to tell him. Now, as they watched the foggy streets, still she kept her own counsel; though she was amused that Joe hadn’t already guessed, by the look of her.

She liked to think she was still svelte and sleek, that no one would see her condition. But when at home she posed before Wilma’s full-length mirror, looking at herself sideways, she could see the gentle curve of the babies that waited safe beneath her tabby-striped fur.

Well, she was just as fast as ever at the hunt. Or nearly as fast. Maybe it took a little more effort to outrun a rat and take him down; maybe she was a bit slow keeping up with Joe, was too often the last to rise after resting in the grassy fields. So far Joe had said nothing about the changes. He was either being polite or was too occupied with the crimes that had beset the village and with Misto’s illness to think much about a lazy partner.

And, Dulcie worried, what would happen to Misto’s spirit when he’d left them? Would the old cat step into a new life, as he said would happen? Into the bright realm where, he told them, all souls journeyed after this world? Were Misto’s tales of multiple lives true or were his stories of a long and varied past, before this life, only fabrications, the yellow tom’s imaginative fancies?

Yet what he’d told them of those past lives was linked to facts in the present, to photographs of a long-ago child Misto had known, to the cache of hidden money the cats had found, to so much that was very real, that they could do no less than believe him. But now, as the old cat grew thinner and his life faded, now when Misto asked for his son, Pan, they knew he was reaching his last days. The old cat was weak, indeed, if he had forgotten that just a few days earlier, before Misto grew ill, Pan had left the village. That the red tom would already be too far away from Molena Point for anyone to ever find him—Pan and tortoiseshell Kit were off on an adventure of which they had only dreamed; they had set out for a world where perhaps no sensible feline would venture. They wandered, now, on a journey they would not have begun had they guessed that Pan’s father soon would die.

If, when they departed, Misto had already divined his own illness, he didn’t tell Pan. He had wanted them to pursue their journey free and happy, perhaps the greatest adventure, in this world, that any cat could know.

But then later Misto, caught in the haze of pain medication, would forget they were away, traveling, and would ask for Pan. And then, remembering, the old cat would drop his ears, embarrassed. But then he would look at Dulcie and remember she was expecting kittens and the old cat would smile. In illness, his moods and the clarity of his thinking swung alarmingly, frightening Dulcie, and saddening Joe Grey.

Now on the foggy rooftops Joe and Dulcie dropped down from a high peak to a shingled slope, moving on toward Ocean Avenue, toward the village’s main street. Pausing sometimes, they looked idly into the second-floor windows of scattered penthouses where residents had left their shades up. Folks glancing out while showering or brushing their teeth knew there was nobody up on the roofs to see them—only gliding seagulls, and a pair of prowling cats peering in. They had no idea how their morning rituals amused the two feline observers. But at last the pair moved on, watching the streets and listening—and suddenly they leaped to the roof’s edge.

Paws in the roof gutter, they cocked their ears to a sound barely heard. They caught an elusive aroma drifting on the mist. Every sense alert, they stood seeking through the fog, keen to spot the attacker, hoping they might alert some unwary would-be victim.

But it was only a dowdy woman walking her three leashed beagles, only the hush of her footsteps and of their paws and the faint jingling of their collars.

So far neither the cats nor the cops had any clue to the street prowler. He left footprints that the police photographed or picked up electronically or captured in casts, but they had nothing to match them to. They’d detained no suspect, had found no matching footprints from another crime scene, no shoes tossed into a Dumpster, yet the prints at each attack were different.

Even more puzzling to the cats, the attacker left no scent for them to follow. Always some mélange of competing smells got in their way: diesel exhaust, the heavy aroma of fresh bread and cakes from a nearby bakery, the stink of marigolds crushed underfoot, the overlying exhaust of a vanished car in which the guy might have fled. “Maybe,” Joe had said bitterly, “he can levitate like some would-be comic-book hero.”

Whether the assaults exploded out of cruelty or were born of some unknown reason, or were a sick prank with no real purpose at all, no one yet knew. Nor had the attacker left a clue at any scene, no dropped possession, not even trace evidence of hairs or fabric particles, no lost button; the perp seemed as ghostly as if, indeed, he had materialized from some phantom life.

Nor was there ever a loiterer nearby to be questioned as a witness. With each incident, the cats’ frustration grew apace with that of the detectives, the patience of both sets of sleuths wearing thin. The cats’ usual pleasure at offering Molena Point PD a telling clue, the officers’ stoic reception of mysteriously proffered information, all came to nothing. There was no information. Meanwhile lone senior citizens were being injured and frightened. Those older folks who had not been attacked, but who read the local paper, listened to the news, and gossiped among their friends, grew more wary and angry. One of the victims had been in a wheelchair, two walking with canes, folks out to take care of a few errands, get a little air. Each one was knocked down, wheelchair or cane cast aside. And the perp was gone, vanished, leaving the victim to the mercy of whoever might happen along and find them; but none of the marks was robbed.

When the assaults first began, MPPD had put on extra patrols: more squad cars cruising, officers on foot dressed in street clothes. Vacation leaves were postponed, overtime was increased. Of the seven who were accosted, one lady was a ninety-two-year-old music teacher living in a retirement home. A frail, retired banker, Ogden Welder, was fatally injured, the assailant gone before anyone heard his cries; Welder died in the hospital two days later.

No arrests and no witnesses. Only when someone heard shouts for help and arrived to find a frail person, frightened and angry, sprawled on the cement among spilled packages, was anyone aware of the crime. As more officers of MPPD worked the streets, their response to drug crimes, traffic accidents, shoplifting, and domestics demanded additional personnel that Max Harper didn’t have. Like every police department in the state they were understaffed, their budget stretched too thin for adequate overtime. There was plenty of city money for beautification and tourism promotion, but never enough for law enforcement—money for the politicians, but not enough to protect those who voted them in. Max Harper’s men and women grew ever more frustrated.

At the first assault, the cats’ anger had flared. At the second one, on a lone, helpless citizen, their rage revved high. Slipping into Molena Point PD they had lounged in Chief Harper’s bookcase, innocently reading field reports over his shoulder—though there hadn’t been much that they didn’t already know, that they hadn’t read in the paper, heard on the news, or heard from Joe’s housemate. Clyde Damen had grown up with Max Harper. Often over dinner or playing poker Max shared information that he knew—or thought he knew—would never go any farther than the Damens’ kitchen table. There, as the cards were shuffled and poker chips tossed into the pot, no one paid attention to the gray tomcat and maybe Dulcie, too, curled up in the easy chair quietly napping. Who would notice the twitch of an ear, the flip of a tail at some interesting new detail of the street crimes? Joe Grey’s own housemates were as secretive, regarding the tomcat’s spying, as was Joe himself.

Now, at the edge of the roof, the cats alerted again at the sudden swish of tires approaching down the fog-wet street. They watched an unmarked white van slip into view, but it was maybe only the delivery truck of some small company bringing produce or bakery goods to one of the restaurants. Farther on, a lone runner trotted by heading for the beach; there were always runners, lean men or women, tanned and seemingly carefree. Soon, from the shore, a dog barked. A flock of gulls rose screaming, and then silence again; when they heard nothing more they lay down at the roof’s edge and had a leisurely wash.

“I wish,” Dulcie said, “Kit and Pan were home. Surveillance would be easier with four of us. Besides, I miss them,” she said, giving Joe a green-eyed look.

“Just wish them home safe,” Joe said crossly. He didn’t approve of the flighty tortoiseshell and the red tomcat chasing off into a world that Joe himself could hardly believe in, a world Kit called magical. Except he had to believe there was such a place, when their human friend Kate Osborne had gone there. Kate told startling tales, and had brought back enough jewels and artifacts to convince even Joe himself—and to make him even more nervous thinking of Kit and Pan venturing down into those vast caverns beneath the earth. They had been gone only a few days, and still the thought of that journey made his fur crawl.

That land had fascinated tortoiseshell Kit even when she was very young, listening to a band of feral cats tell their stories. Only later when she was older had thoughts of those hidden caverns begun to frighten her. But Pan had no fear; he had traveled the length of California and Oregon on his own, a hobo cat, staying out of danger. Now, learning of the Netherworld, he had burned to see that farthest, most enticing realm of all.

Kit, half longing to go and half afraid, had given in, to please him. And, because her two human housemates had longed to be off on their own adventure. Lucinda and Pedric would never have followed their own dream, of an Alaska cruise, if it meant leaving their beloved companion alone at home. The little speaking cat was their treasure beyond all other joys. Kit knew that. She knew Alaska beckoned to her two housemates. But only if she herself journeyed away from Molina Point would her old couple feel free to take the leisurely, small-ship cruise they longed for. Lucinda and Pedric weren’t getting any younger. “If you don’t go now,” she’d told them, perhaps with more honesty than finesse, “you may never go at all.”

Kit had given Lucinda a soft purr. “Ryan’s father and his new wife are keen to go with you—it will be an easier trip with another couple. Mike and Lindsey are quiet and steady, and—”

“And they are younger and stronger than we are,” Lucinda said, laughing. “You needn’t say it, they’ll take good care of us. They’ll be good companions to investigate the little ports and scattered villages.”

Kit smiled, and nosed at Lucinda. “You will take your adventure, and Pan and I will take ours. That is what life is about. And then,” she said, purring, “we’ll be home together again. Oh, my! To tell each other all the wonders we saw!”

It was just a few days ago that they had said their teary good-byes. That Lucinda and Pedric, Mike and Lindsey boarded their plane for Vancouver—and Kit and Pan crossed the village up into the hills and joined the waiting group of feral, speaking cats who had lingered, waiting for them. Waiting to set out together down into the Netherworld; and none of the speaking cats, not even Pan himself, had any notion that Pan’s father would soon lie ill.

Now, this foggy morning, Joe and Dulcie, left without enough cat power for efficient surveillance, were about to separate, each to watch the streets alone, when a siren’s whoop and the wail of the medics’ van brought them sharply alert. As the roar of the engines headed fast for Ocean Avenue, they glimpsed the van and two squad cars make a skidding turn onto the divided main street and vanish beyond the buildings. The cats marked where the sound of the engines died, heard vehicle doors flung open and men running, and they fled over the roofs toward the action.

2

Old Merle Rodin said later, it was his wristwatch that put him in the hospital. His wife wasn’t home at the time. He was alone, dressed in old denim pants, a faded denim shirt and suspenders, working in his shop when he tore his watchband on the corner of the vise. The soft leather was worn ragged anyway and had been ready to tear. And then, as he was cleaning up from painting the wooden chairs, he spilled turpentine on the band and he knew the wet leather would tear worse. He didn’t want to lose the watch, it was the only kind he could read anymore, the new ones were all dots and squiggles. This was a good, reliable Swiss Army with big black numbers so a person could tell the time. Big dial, plain and no-nonsense. He left the watch loose on his wrist, finished cleaning up the workbench, got in his car and drove the few blocks into the village to get the band replaced.

He parked in a handicapped spot in front of the Village Inn. He eased out, pulled his crutches out, locked the car, and swung along the narrow walk that led behind the hotel to the little courtyard, to the row of small shops tucked in around a patch of garden, heading for the jeweler’s door. There were miniature courts all over the village with their little, half-hidden vendors. Each retreat was, to a tourist, a new and exciting discovery; that’s one of the reasons visitors came to Molena Point, for this kind of special charm.

He didn’t like his reflection flicking along the fog-dim windows. His white beard and crutches, his hobbling walk made him look older than he was; some days he felt old, but he didn’t like to see it.

The village was nearly deserted this early, the stores not open yet, and the streets so foggy. The few early tourists would still be holed up, and most of the locals, too. But the jeweler was always there early working on the books, cleaning up, puttering around; even if he kept the door locked, he’d let you in if he knew you.

The newspaper warned folks not to go into empty courtyards and alleys alone, since the attacks began. But this court was safe enough, being right by the hotel. The paper claimed the cops didn’t have a lead yet to the source of the crimes—and the Molena Point cops were good at what they did. Too bad, nice little village like this, so much crime suddenly. Maybe he was getting old. He didn’t like the changes he was seeing in the world, didn’t like what the world had become.

Moving on into the courtyard, walking slowly, he placed his crutches carefully on the uneven bricks so not to stumble on the edge of a flower bed and tip over into the cyclamens. Their array of red and pink flowers had bloomed all winter among their intricately patterned leaves. They would die back soon now, once summer was on them. Sure enough, there were lights on in the jewelry store. He was heading across the court, for the glass door, when he was hit from behind. His crutches flew out from under him. He spun around, striking out at the attacker. He hit a glancing blow with his left fist and fell sprawling, his arm twisted under him. His legs twisted, too, tangled in the crutches. A violent pain dizzied him where his head was struck.

He didn’t know how long he’d lain there, the wind knocked out of him, when he heard the siren, a blurred, faraway sound as if he were half asleep. One whoop, then silence. Then a tangle of voices, and people kneeling around him, putting machines on him to take his blood pressure, his pulse. A man wiping at his forehead with something cold and stinging. Uniformed medics lifting him onto a stretcher, covering him with a blanket, really careful of his arm, lifting it gently. He didn’t try to move it, he knew it was broken. He didn’t know, until later in the hospital, that he’d lost his watch.

He didn’t know, and never would know, how the Swiss Army watch was found, that two cats found it lying in the flower bed deep beneath the cyclamens.

Joe Grey and Dulcie discovered the watch long after Merle Rodin had been lifted into the medics’ van and driven away, after the cops had finished their search of the scene and the crowd had dispersed. Merle wasn’t there to see the gray tomcat and his tabby lady slip down a vine from the hotel roof and trot across the courtyard to where he had lain; to see a discerning tabby nose and a gray and white nose sniffing among the cyclamens, twitching at the smell of turpentine that the cops, with their inferior sense of smell, had missed. Merle didn’t see a soft tabby paw reach down among the leaves to investigate the wristwatch or see Dulcie sniff at it again. He didn’t see the two cats slip out of the courtyard leaving the watch where it lay, the cats galloping fast up the street, noses to the faint breeze following the turp-scented air where the attacker had fled.

Fog held the stink of turpentine low against the sidewalk. But as Joe and Dulcie raced after the scent that had transferred to the mugger when Merle struck out at him, the smell vanished. It ended at the curb, replaced by the smell of exhaust as if the attacker had stepped into a car and sped away.

The street was empty. No car moved now in either direction. But then as the fog shifted, the heady smell of sandalwood drowned all other scents. The cats slid into the shadows as the proprietor of the oriental rug shop passed them, sandalwood aftershave drifting back to them as he paused to unlock his store. As he disappeared inside, Dulcie sniffed again at the curb.

“There’s not only exhaust,” she said, looking up at Joe. She watched as he, too, sniffed again at the concrete.

“Oil,” he said, his yellow eyes brightening, “bicycle oil. Maybe he didn’t get away in a car.” He sniffed again, breathing deeply, his whiskers twitching. “But still a hint of the turpentine, too. Maybe we can catch him.” Noses to the pavement like a pair of tracking hounds, they raced away, ran out along the street swerving past parked cars, glad there was hardly any traffic, that they needn’t dodge moving wheels.

The smells they followed continued for three blocks but then suddenly the turp and oil were gone, vanished in the wake of a noisy street sweeper, its huge roller-brushes sucking away every leaf, every scrap of paper, and every errant smell. Its roar drove instinctive fear through the cats: every fiber of their beings trembled, fearful the hungry juggernaut would crush them if they drew close. They might be wiser than most cats, they might be brave when facing a human killer, but this monster reached down into their darkest, ancient instincts, terrifying them both.

Only when the sweeper had passed did they relax. They followed it, sniffing along its wake, but no scent remained. The giant spinning brushes had destroyed the trail. And the perp himself was long gone. A faint sea wind began to tease them, and to stir and thin the fog. Soon all they could smell was salty iodine, a hint of dead fish, and the pine and cypress trees that sheltered the narrow streets. Glancing at each other, the cats were of one thought.

Leaping up the nearest oak, they headed for Molena Point PD. By this time, Chief Harper would have information on the victim: driver’s license, other identification from the man’s billfold, maybe a hospital report on his condition. Maybe the responding officer’s field notes were already on Max’s desk. Off they raced over tiles and shingles, Joe’s mind fully on the assaults. But as the gray tomcat tried to understand the perp’s motive, Dulcie lagged behind, feeling tired again suddenly, feeling awkward and heavy.

She didn’t like to think that as her pregnancy advanced, she would become truly clumsy, that she wouldn’t be able to keep up with Joe. Who needed a fat, slow partner trying to do detective work? This frustration, plus having lost the trail of the attacker, plus her underlying distress over Misto, left the little tabby padding slowly and disconsolately across the tiled roof of the courthouse.

Ahead on the roof of the PD, Joe had stopped. He stood looking back at her, puzzled by her slow approach, his lady who usually ran circles around him. It was just as she joined him that a woman came out the door of the police station below, her high heels tapping. She didn’t notice her scarf slip off her shoulder to fall among the bushes, a pink scarf hidden now beneath the bottlebrush blooms. Dulcie froze, watching.

The pale pink gauze excited her, brought her sharply alert, stirred in her a possessive greed she hadn’t felt since she was a very young cat. Her longing for that soft, beautiful garment filled her suddenly with a keen, claw-snatching desire. She wanted that scarf. Her passion surged anew from her long-ago thieving days. The pink scarf was hers; the woman had carelessly lost it and now it was meant for her. Her passion returned for the silk stockings she had stolen, the satin teddies she had lifted from neighbors’ bedrooms, slipping out through an open window, the lovely cashmere sweaters she had dragged home and hidden when she was very young—had hidden until Wilma found them, until her embarrassed and amused human housemate had called the neighbors and given them back their treasures. The disappearance of each item, which Dulcie had so cleverly stolen, had broken the little cat’s heart.

Now, awash in her early passion for possession, she flashed past Joe and down the oak and into the bushes. Creeping under the dense and leafy shelter, she snatched the scarf, pawed it into a little bundle in her mouth, and ran, through the bushes and away. She paused only when the tap of high heels returned down the walk. Dropping the scarf, she reared up to look.

Peering over the bottlebrush blooms she watched the woman searching, watched her look all around and then turn back into the station as if to ask if she’d lost the scarf there. Gripping the soft scarf again, Dulcie hurried away beneath the leafy shelter. She stopped only when, glancing out toward the street, she saw a wheelchair coming down the sidewalk beyond the parking lot, a middle-aged woman gliding along turning the wheels with her hands; clearly she was being followed.

She was lean and tanned, her brown hair in a ponytail threaded through the back of a golf cap. She wore cargo pants, the fabric folded neatly beneath a long steel brace on her left leg. Dulcie could see the corner of a blue shopping bag pushed, bulging, into the back pocket of the wheelchair. Four strides behind the woman, a boy in ragged jeans walked silently, the hood of his heavy black sweatshirt pulled up around his face. He moved slowly, keeping his distance and looking in the other direction, but certainly he was following her.

Could this be the mugger, this kid? Dulcie couldn’t see enough of him to tell his age, but his walk was easy, like a boy. She sniffed, but at this distance she caught no turpentine scent, no smell of bicycle oil.

Was he waiting until the wheelchair had passed the PD and was in a more deserted part of the village before he attacked?

But again, why? What was his purpose? The attacker never stole anything; he shoved, pushed someone over, and ran. None of this made sense. A shout stopped the boy in his tracks, and stopped the woman. A shout from atop the roof, shocking Dulcie.

“Look out, you’re being followed. You, boy . . . Get away from her!” Joe’s voice. Oh, he wouldn’t cry out in public, he wouldn’t chance being seen!

She couldn’t see above her, she was too near the building; but Joe would already be gone, safely hidden.

As the boy stood looking, the wheelchair-bound woman spun to face him. When she started after him, the boy ran. He was fast, disappearing in the traffic, dodging cars. She was fast, too, but she stopped at the curb. Two pedestrians had turned to stare, but their attention was on the woman. A bus went by; when it passed, the boy was gone. The two portly tourists, dressed in red sweatshirts, watched the woman for a long moment as she headed away down the street; they talked softly between themselves, then they, too, turned away—and Dulcie’s thieving passion had cooled. Joe Grey’s shout had sharply upset her. It took a lot for a speaking cat to expose himself like that, a lot of nerve even to whisper, in public. Leaving the scarf beneath the bushes, she slipped out into the parking lot where she could see the roof above.

From that distance, rearing up, she could see that the roof was empty. She thought Joe would be behind that tangle of heat vents, of weathered gray pipes and metal boxes that rose up against the clearing sky. She waited, crouching at the edge of the bottlebrush until Joe appeared, slipping out from the galvanized jungle, and came leaping down the oak tree. Dulcie joined him. She would return the scarf later, to the PD, would leave it for the clerk to find. Maybe the woman had left a phone number in case someone discovered it. Guilt touched her only a little; her surge of greed had been deeply therapeutic. She felt like herself again, her passion to steal, her wild dash dragging that soft and silken prize, had left her refreshed and wide awake and like her old, wild self once more—no longer just a pregnant cat growing heavy and lethargic. She was her bright, kitten-self again. Her joy burned young and rash, she was a whole cat once more: thief cat when the mood took her, mother cat, cop cat. She was all together now; she felt strong again, and complete.

Beside her, Joe Grey was frowning. If he was annoyed or amused at her thieving, he said nothing. “Should we report that guy? Head for your house, and call the chief?”

“What are we going to report? He didn’t attack the woman. Maybe she’ll report it, maybe she’ll call in.”

“But we saw him. A kid . . .”

“What did we see, Joe? Dark clothes, a black hoodie, and he was gone. We don’t know if he would have attacked her. He was so bundled up, we don’t know if that was a kid. Maybe a small adult.”

Dulcie sat watching him, her tail twitching. “Let’s wait, see if she makes the call. If we call in on something so vague . . . that doesn’t help the department’s confidence in us. They have enough questions about our phone calls, we don’t need to make one that’s so . . . uncertain.” She looked at him steadily, her green eyes wide.

Joe Grey flicked an ear. He knew she was right. Every tip they offered the PD, like every bit of evidence, needed to be solid. Not just a quick glimpse of someone’s back, when they couldn’t identify him and didn’t know what he meant to do.

They lingered in the bushes until two officers left the station through the heavy glass door. Slipping in past their heels, the two cats swerved to the right through prisonlike bars into the shadows of the holding cell.

This was not their usual mode of entry. Ordinarily they would stroll into MPPD as brazen as a pair of two-bit lawyers come to bail out a scuzzy client. But today, crouching beneath the bunk that hung from chains in the wall, wrinkling their noses at the stink of stale booze and stale sweat from generations of detainees, they peered warily toward the reception counter.

They would not be greeted today with joy and petting and a little snack from their favorite clerk. No homemade cookies or fried chicken, no hugs and sweet words from blond, pillow-soft Mabel Farthy. Mabel was in the hospital’s rehab, recovering from back surgery. The cats missed her and they worried over her, as did all the department. And they knew, too, that if this sour-faced substitute clerk caught them in the station again she’d pitch a fit, would summon an officer to throw them out—though the officer would only smile, would listen to her complaint, but then would go about his own business, leaving the cats to do as they liked. And Evijean wouldn’t snatch them up herself; she was too afraid of long claws and sharp teeth.

3

The lobby of Molena Point PD featured the one holding cell just to the right of the glass doors as you entered. Here a drunk could be temporarily confined or prisoners held for a short period while waiting to be booked. Beyond the holding cell was an austere seating area: seven folding metal chairs, no coffee table strewn with magazines, no potted plants to cheer the nervous visitor. Civilians waited here for their appointment with an officer or detective, perhaps to offer information, to identify stolen items, to pore through a gallery of mug shots, or to file a bad-tempered complaint against some unruly neighbor. To the left of the waiting area ran the long reception desk on which, over the years, Joe and Dulcie had enjoyed Mabel Farthy’s gentle petting and ear rubs, her one-sided conversations and, most of all, her homemade treats. Mabel liked to cook; she often brought a freshly baked cake or cookies for the officers, and always the cats got their share. Mable could laugh and hold her own with the men she worked with; everyone loved her. Her replacement, Evijean Simpson, didn’t know how to smile.

Evijean didn’t bring treats for man or beast, she had no rapport with even the kindest officers, and certainly she had no fellow feeling for a cat. She didn’t want stray animals, as she described Joe and Dulcie, to be slipping in contaminating the station with fleas and cat fur.

Evijean was so short that, from the cats’ angle on the floor of the holding cell, she was barely visible behind the tall counter. They could see little more than the top of her head, her pale hair pulled back in a bun with ragged ends sticking out. She seemed hardly a presence at all as she moved about among the state-of-the-art radios and electronics. The cats watched until she turned away to stack papers into the copier; then they slid out through the cell bars, made a fast dash to the base of the counter below her line of sight. From there, a stealthy creep down the hall to the half-open door of the chief’s office, where they crouched listening.

At first they heard only Max’s voice, but then Charlie laughed. Comfortable husband-and-wife talk followed, implying no one else was present. Pushing inside, they saw the two were not alone.

Max Harper was in uniform this morning, not his usual lean western shirt and jeans. He sat at his desk alternately going through a stack of files and entering information on the computer. Charlie sat at one end of the leather couch texting on her phone, though such electronic preoccupation was not Charlie’s habit. Her kinky red hair was freshly brushed, smoothed back in a ponytail. Her jeans and pink sweatshirt smelled of fresh hay and clean horses. She wore dangly gold earrings this morning, and had changed her work boots for a pair of handsome leather sandals, which meant that she and Max were probably headed out to lunch.

Detective Dallas Garza occupied one of the leather chairs, reading a report, his tweed sports coat thrown over the other chair, his polo shirt open at the collar. His smooth, tan face was clean-shaven, his short black hair neatly trimmed. He glanced up at Joe and Dulcie, his dark Latino eyes amused, as usual, at how the cats made themselves at home. Only occasionally did Dallas watch them with an uncertain frown.

Though no one in the department knew the cats could speak, they all knew, well, the phone voices of their phantom snitches. Max and the detectives had learned to trust implicitly those anonymous called-in tips; they took the information and ran with it, put that intelligence to good use. No one imagined the informants were their sleek, four-pawed visitors, the department’s favorite freeloaders.

So far, the relationship between officers and cats was comfortable and efficient. During the cats’ anonymous messages, no officer in the department cross-examined the caller or asked his name. They’d learned to trust the information they were given. If the cats dragged a stolen clue to the station and left it, with a phone call to alert that it was at the back door or inside a squad car, there were no questions. “Found” evidence, useful Visa bills, or a “lost” cell phone? The detectives used what they got and then generated their own follow-up investigation, digging out background facts that would stand in court.

If ever in the future the cats were careless and were caught in the act, discovered talking on the phone, Joe didn’t want to think about the consequences. Their well-oiled and effective deception would be down the tubes, the work they loved destroyed in one careless moment. A cop was all about facts; his thinking was no-nonsense and meticulous. Clues, hints, anonymous tips, a good detective might put those together in new and creative combinations and come up with the missing piece. But no cop believed the impossible.

Hopping on the couch beside Charlie, Dulcie stretched out across her lap. Joe looked up into Charlie’s lean, freckled face; Charlie always had a happy look even when life, for the moment, took an ugly turn. She petted them both, her green eyes amused at their private secret. She didn’t glance up when Max’s phone buzzed, but continued to stroke Dulcie and Joe. She did look when Max said sharply, “When? What time? Put Davis on.”

He listened, scribbling notes on a printout that he’d inserted in a yellow pad. “You have his belongings? Davis, is his wife there? Stay with her, and see her home. See that she has someone with her.” He listened again, then, “I’ll talk with the coroner.”

He hung up, looked over at Dallas. “Merle Rodin’s dead. Cerebral contusion, from the blow he took. You want to go on over, finish up the paperwork while Davis takes care of the wife, gets her statement, makes sure she has friends or family around her?” This part of police work was never pleasant. They did what they could, to ease the pain that nothing could ease.

The Latino detective rose and pulled on his jacket. He gave Charlie a brief hug, and left the office, and Max looked across at Charlie, filling her in. “Lab has the brick that may have hit Rodin. A brick from the border of the flower bed, with what looks like bloodstains. Dr. Alder says there are particles embedded in the scalp that could be the same material.” Now it was the coroner’s and the lab’s job. Charlie’s hand was tense, poised on Joe Grey’s shoulder.

She said, “He could have fallen on it? Or that street scum picked it up and hit him? That poor old man.” Charlie was stoic about most village crime, or appeared to be. The cats knew she often concealed her distress from Max—he had problems enough without worrying about her, too. He didn’t need a distraught wife. But these senseless attacks on frail citizens had left her enraged, feeling helpless—as frustrated as the department when the attacks continued and they had no viable clue yet, to give them a lead.

“The blood type on the brick,” Max said, “matches Rodin’s. But it will take a while for the DNA.” The lab in Salinas was always backed up. Max turned off his computer and rose. The cats waited until he and Charlie left for a quick lunch, then they hit the chief’s desk.

Pawing through the stack of files, Dulcie took the corner of Max’s yellow pad in her teeth, pulled it out from under the folders, and opened it with her claws.

Beneath pages of notes was a printed list of the seven attacks, with Max’s penciled notes in the margins. The victims’ individual files, with additional information, would be kept secure on the computer. This page needed no securing; most of this—until the attack on Rodin—had already been in the local paper, on local radio or TV. There had been seven previous victims including one death when banker Ogden Welder died in the hospital. Merle Rodin was the eighth mark, and the second to die. Max’s new notation gave the hour, location, and date. Cause of death would wait for the coroner’s report.

One interesting fact, new to the cats, was that three of the victims had only recently moved to the village from San Francisco; and that one had been vacationing there, taking a week off from his job at San Francisco General Hospital as a physician’s assistant.

“So, San Francisco vectors in,” Dulcie said. She cut a look at Joe, knowing what his take would be. Joe didn’t believe in coincidence. If you dug long enough you could usually claw out a connection. The tabby gazed hungrily at Max’s computer, thinking of the victims’ files. With cool speculation, she reached a paw.

Joe stopped her with a quick swipe of claws. “If Evijean barges in here, finds us alone before the lit screen, you want to guess what would happen?”

Dulcie smiled a crooked smile, but she jumped down. They’d have to wait until Max or one of the detectives was into the program, some moment when they could lie on the desk idly washing their paws as they shared departmental information.

Or wait until one or two officers stopped by Joe’s house after his shift, maybe for a few hands of poker with Max and Clyde. Max would talk freely in the Damen household, as would Ryan’s Uncle Dallas. Dulcie looked at Joe. “How long do we wait for a poker game?”

Joe shrugged, he wasn’t hopeful.

Dulcie said, “Talk to Ryan, she’ll get something going.” This wouldn’t be the first time Ryan would conduct behind-the-scene assistance—she was deceptively casual when she eased Clyde into an unplanned poker night for Joe’s benefit: Joe’s dark-haired, blue-eyed housemate did love a conspiracy.

But now, “I don’t know,” Joe said. “As hard as she’s working, and the cranky mood she’s in, I’m not sure she’s up for a poker night. Tekla Bleak, that woman with the remodel, she’s driving Ryan crazy. New complaints every day, foolish and arbitrary changes. Ryan comes home at night as snarly as a possum in a trap.”

They were quiet as two officers came down the hall. When they’d passed on by, Joe dropped from the desk and peered out toward the lobby. No sign of Evijean—maybe she was sitting at her desk, hidden by the counter. They made a dash for the front door as Officer Brennan came in herding a young man before him, unwashed and smelling of whiskey.

Slipping out the door behind them through the miasma of alcohol, they scrambled up the oak tree. They sat on the tile roof only a moment before they headed across the roofs again, moving south and east in the direction of John Firetti’s veterinary clinic. Despite their preoccupation with the attacks, their strongest urge was to sit with Misto. While we can still be with him, Dulcie thought sadly.

Below them along the narrow streets the traffic was heavier now. The fog was thinning, the shops were open, and a few tourists had left their motels, looking up at the sky hoping for sunshine. The smell of coffee and sweet confections rose from the little bakeries, the smell of late bacon and eggs from the small cafés, from clusters of tables in street-side patios. The cats were passing above a tree-shaded court when they stopped, looking down, watching two strangers below. A woman with a cane was limping through the patio toward one of the shops. Behind her a short, older man had turned into the courtyard, walking without sound following the woman, his eyes intently on her; she seemed unaware of him.

4

Looking down from the roof, engulfed in the smells of café breakfasts, Joe and Dulcie watched the woman in tight black workout clothes limp along toward the back shops of the little courtyard, watched the man following her. Her cane was one of those folding aluminum models. Her face and arms were sun-wrinkled, her calves pale between her cutoffs and black socks. She wore sturdy black walking shoes and a black fanny pack strapped low at her side. She glanced uneasily now at the small, thin man behind her, a grizzle-haired fellow wearing a boy-sized leather jacket and jeans. He moved easily, like a boy. He slowed when the woman slowed and pretended to look in a store window. As she limped along she watched his moving reflections. Turning suddenly, she headed toward a small toy store that was just opening.

The cats could see the owner inside pulling up the shades, a tall, bald man in a pale blue sport shirt. As soon as he unlocked the door the woman stepped inside. The two spoke for a few moments, then she moved deep into the shop. The owner stepped out into the courtyard, stood facing the man with a forbidding look. Everyone in the village, it seemed, was on edge over the assaults. The ragged fellow stared back at him, turned away and headed for the street. Neither had spoken. The cats heard, from somewhere behind the shop, a door open and close as if perhaps the woman had slipped out the back, to the side street or an alley.

Within the store, the shopkeeper had picked up the phone. The cats, watching him, watching his gestures, felt certain he was calling the police, giving the man’s description. He glanced out once to see which way the stalker had gone—as Joe and Dulcie turned to follow the little man from above. A few parking places down, he approached a white Toyota pickup. Slipping in, starting the engine, he pulled out into traffic between a UPS van and a pair of wandering pedestrians. The cats saw, behind him, the shopkeeper run from the patio and step into the street, stopping traffic, watching the pickup pull away with a hard, intent look as if he were committing the license to memory.

“He’ll call that in, too,” Dulcie said, smiling, flicking her whiskers.

But the cats had memorized the number as well. “If that was the same person as at the courthouse,” Dulcie said doubtfully, “that we thought was a boy, then somewhere he changed jackets, maybe left the black hoodie in the Toyota.”

“Why not?” Joe said. “Or maybe not the same guy. Maybe he thought to take advantage of the attacks. Snatch a few bucks and lay the crime on the real bully.”

“So even if the real thug’s never caught,” she said, “the crime’s laid on him, and this fellow goes free.”

“He’ll be caught,” Joe said calmly. “A matter of time. Time and stealth.” The tomcat never doubted that between cat-power and the cops, they’d catch the right man. “We’ll call the department from Misto’s house,” he said, hurrying along.

“But the shopkeeper got the number, he’ll be calling right now.”

“Maybe. Or maybe he got it wrong, couldn’t see it all.” Joe didn’t like to depend on chance when it came to humans. “We’ll tell Harper about that kid, too, there in front of the PD following the woman in the wheelchair. If I hadn’t shouted . . .”

Dulcie stopped, gave him a long, steady look. “This time, Joe, let’s leave it. We don’t know that either one was going to attack. We didn’t see an assault.”

His yellow eyes narrowed, his ears went flat. “We saw two stalkers . . . We—”

“Wait, Joe. Wait until we have something certain. We don’t want—we can’t afford to make niggling little tips that could turn out to be nothing.”

His scowl deepened; his claws dug into the shingles.

“We can’t shake their confidence in us, we don’t want them wondering, every time we call, if thistip is worth pursuing.” She nosed at him gently. “Leave the calls for the big stuff. The important information that we know they can run with. Don’t throw it away on conjectures.”

Joe turned and trotted away from her, over a low, shingled peak, toward Ocean Avenue. He badly wanted to get to a phone. He didn’t like to admit that maybe, just maybe, Dulcie might be right.

She caught up with him quickly, nosing at him so he wouldn’t be cross. But she stopped abruptly, peering over the edge of the roof at a plump couple in matching red sweatshirts: the couple from in front of the PD, the woman’s unruly hair tangled around her jowly face. Joe had a sharp recall of the red-sweatered couple turning to stare at the would-be victim, then moving quickly away as if they didn’t want to be seen.

When the portly couple turned into the low-walled patio of the Ocean Café, Dulcie followed them. Joe wanted to move on to a phone.

“Just for a minute,” she said. “I want . . . there’s something about those two.” With Dulcie so keenly intent, suddenly so focused, Joe put aside the thought of the phone, his own curiosity tweaked, too, and he followed her.

The brick terrace was crowded with small round tables draped in red, blue, or green cloths. As soon as the couple in red was seated, the cats backed down a stone pine, dropped down inside the wall and behind a row of potted geraniums.

“From the looks of them,” Dulcie whispered, “they could skip a few breakfasts,” But glancing down at her own tummy bulge, she thought she shouldn’t criticize.

No one was looking as the cats slipped under the table’s blue cloth, avoiding the couple’s canvas-clad feet; avoiding the woman’s floppy carryall that she’d set on the floor, one of those flowered, quilted numbers that tourists couldn’t resist. Crouched in the shadows, they listened to the rustle of their menus and to their discussion of what sounded good—blintzes, omelet, hash browns. The cats licked their whiskers. Dulcie’s appetite lately had been way too demanding, another aspect of her secret that was hard to conceal from Joe Grey.

The click of footsteps and the deep voice of the waiter brought his black shoes gleaming just inches from their noses. The tinkle of ice as he poured water. He offered coffee and poured it, and the couple gave their matching orders: pancakes, eggs, ham, and apple pie. The sound of the server’s shoes clicked away again. The restaurant and patio were crowded, so the staff didn’t linger.

The woman’s voice was grainy and low. “That was her, all right, Howard. She’s colored her hair different, it was blond before, but the same big brown eyes with those little creases, same long face. Same tennis tan,” she said with sarcasm. “She wasn’t in a cast and wheelchair then, but that’s the same woman. Bonnie something, don’t you remember? Even the same gold hair clip and gold earrings, I remember those.”

“So?” Howard said. “How would I remember? I wasn’t there every day, like you. And she has as much right to come down here as we do. Half of San Francisco vacations in Molena Point—even if we do come down partly to see your sister. But that woman—Bonnie, you said?—and that Betty Porter, they have nothing to do with us.”

“But we are connected, Howard. That’s just the point. That Bonnie woman and that Betty Porter. We are connected, that’s what’s scary—scary, when Betty Porter was hurt so bad, Howard.”

“Coincidence,” Howard said gruffly. “An accident. What else could it be?”

They both had harsh, whiskey voices. Maybe the result of advancing age and thickening vocal cords, or maybe they liked their booze as well as a big breakfast.

But it was breakfast that quieted the two. The minute their orders came, all discussion ended; there was silence except for the clatter of knives and forks on plates. The sounds of greedy humans gulping their food made Dulcie feel queasy. Whoever said a cat didn’t get morning sickness, even this late in the game, didn’t know much about felines.

Ignoring her unsteadiness, too curious to be still, the tabby reached out a paw, and with careful claws she drew the floppy purse away from the woman’s foot. With teeth and claws she loosened the drawstring, then gently pulled the bag open.

She peered in, then half crawled in, her head and shoulders down inside the bag. Joe watched the woman in case she reached down for the floppy purse, wondering what he’d do if she did reach.Hurry up, he thought, half annoyed at Dulcie, half amused.

Dulcie backed out from the depths of the carryall, her teeth clamped gently around a fat red billfold, trying not to leave tooth marks. Laying it on the brick paving, she worked the snap loose and pawed it open.

The two cats, ears and whiskers touching, studied the driver’s license: Effie Hoop, clearly incised beside her wide-faced picture. Quickly they memorized the San Francisco address, both wishing they had Kit’s keen, photographic memory.

Dropping the billfold back in the bag, and still with only the sounds of eating from above and no useful conversation, Dulcie and Joe slipped out from under the table, slid behind the geraniums again, and leaped up the patio wall. Landing lightly on the narrow edge, they were about to spring up the stone pine to the roof when they saw Ryan’s truck coming down the street.

The big red king cab swerved in to the curb where a minivan was pulling away. With parking spots at a premium, Ryan was lucky. On the far side, the driver’s door opened. The cats were about to drop off the wall, trot across the sidewalk, and join her when they saw that it wasn’t Ryan. The driver was her new carpenter, Ben Stonewell, apparently running an errand. Yes, the bed of the long pickup was loaded with new kitchen cabinets, all carefully shrouded in plastic and cardboard, the logo of the cabinetmaker stamped on the wrappings. Ben entered the restaurant patio at the far end.

Ben Stonewell was a shy young man, quiet, reclusive, not much of a talker. He’d been in the village less than a year, working for Ryan. He had left a large construction company up the coast because they moved him around so often from job to job, from one city to another. He’d told Ryan he wanted to settle in one place, in a small, friendly town. He liked to hike and run on the beach. He was heading for the takeout counter at the back of the patio when he glanced across to where the red-shirted couple was seated. He paused, startled. He was still for only an instant and then, his face turned away, he moved on quickly.

Probably he was picking up lunch for himself and Ryan’s red-bearded foreman, her uncle Scott Flannery. Usually the men brought their lunches, but once in a while they splurged on burgers and fries. At the counter he paid for a bulging paper bag, pulled his cap low, turned away again from the portly couple. Double-timing back through the patio to the street, he never showed his face to them. He slid into the truck fast, started the engine, and pulled away, heading back to the job.

From atop the wall, Dulcie looked after him, her tail twitching. “What was that about? Why would Ben hide from those two, they’re tourists. How does he know them?” Leaping up the stone pine lashing her tail, she looked back at Joe, her ears flat in a puzzled frown. “This Hoop couple. The woman in the wheelchair. Betty Porter. And now . . . Is Ben Stonewell part of the puzzle? What are we seeing?”

“We’re seeing bit and pieces. Too few pieces.” The tomcat rankled at, but relished, this process of scattered hints slowly coming together, of clues falling one by one into place in ways he hadn’t anticipated. Like cornering a mouse that darted in a hundred directions before it came to ground.

“It will all fit together,” he said confidently. “All of a sudden. So simple we’ll wonder that we didn’t see it right at first.”

He glanced down again at the couple in the patio, then leaped from the wall to the roof and they galloped away across the shingles toward Ocean Avenue, heading for Misto’s cottage.

In order to cross that wide, divided street, they backed down a bougainvillea vine and entered the crosswalk close on the heels of three tourists, young Asian girls leading a fluffy brown dog. The little mutt looked around at the cats, put his nose in the air, and hurried along in disdain. The traffic halted obediently for human pedestrians, whereas drivers might not see a cat or a small dog. On the far curb Joe and Dulcie fled past the little group and up a honeysuckle vine to the roof of a furniture boutique. Only then did the dog start to bark, at the nervy cats.

But now Dulcie, trotting up and down the steep tiles, began to lag behind again. The last up-and-down climbs had been tiring. Joe Grey glanced back at her, his ears flattened in a frown.

She knew she needed to explain. She needed to tell him soon, before he started asking questions. But again unease kept her silent. How would he respond to the thought of kittens?

Joe was not an ordinary street cat to ignore, or even kill, his own young. To Joe Grey, with his wider human view of the world, new babies would be a responsibility. A burden that he might not welcome, this tough tomcat who was all about danger. Whose life bristled with spying on criminals and passing information to the cops. Would he want this tender miracle? Would he want his own affairs disrupted, his own stealthy contribution to police work shoved aside while he sat with helpless babies or taught them to hunt—instead of Joe himself off hunting human scum?

But she had to tell him. She prayed he would be glad. The kittens needed their father; they needed Joe’s down-to-earth view of life, his level-headed and sensible teaching—just as they needed Dulcie’s touch of whimsy, her bit of poetry, even her love of bright silks and cashmere. Their kittens needed both parents, they needed the contrast of two kinds of learning.

Well, she thought. Whatever he says, here goes.

She paused on the roof tiles, looking at Joe. The look in her eyes stopped him, made him turn back. “What?” he said. Suddenly worry shone in the tomcat’s yellow eyes. “What’s wrong?”

“Kittens,” she said. “There will be kittens.”

Joe looked at her blankly. “What kittens? Rescue kittens? The village has plenty of those, Ryan and Charlie have been trapping abandoned kittens—”

“Our kittens,” she said. “Your kittens.”

Joe stared at her. He looked uncertain, he began to feel shaky. His expression turned to panic. He hissed, his ears flat, his paw lifted . . .

But then his whiskers came up, his ears pricked up, his eyes widened. “Kittens?” he said. “Our kittens?” He let out a yowl.

“Kittens! Oh my God.”

He backed away from her, amazed. He leaped away, raced away across the shingled peaks, twice around a brick chimney and back again, a gray dervish streaking . . . He spun twice around Dulcie, his ears and whiskers wild. Around her again and halted, skidding nose to nose with her.

“Kittens?’’

He nuzzled her and washed her face. He stood back and looked her over. “You don’t look like you’re carrying kittens.” He frowned. “Well, maybe you’ve put on an ounce or two but . . . Are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” she said, flicking her whiskers, lashing her tabby tail. “Dr. Firetti says there are kittens.”

Joe couldn’t stop smiling. Strange that he hadn’t noticed a different scent about her. But she always smelled of the garden flowers and the pines—maybe he hadn’t paid attention to subtler smells.

She sat down on the tiles, licking her paw, watching him. He stood silently looking at her, speechless and grinning. When he could talk again he said, “Kittens! They’ll learn to hunt as soon as they can toddle, I’ll bring them mice to learn on. They’ll learn everything they need to know, to hunt, and to defend themselves. And to be the best detectives ever.”

Oh, my. Dulcie hadn’t thought of that.

“They’ll learn to read from police reports,” Joe said, “right there on Max Harper’s desk, learn so cleverly that Harper will never know . . .” On and on he went, happily planning. Dulcie watched him uncertainly, her tough, practical tomcat laying it all out . . . bragging over his clever babies, his rookie-cop babies . . . Oh, my tender little babies, she thought nervously.

But then she thought, Okay. They’ll grow bigger, they’ll grow strong. Kittens grow up, you know. Cop cats, she thought tremulously. Well, I guess I can live with that. I’m pretty good at cop work myself.

But they’ll learn more than what Joe teaches them, she thought stubbornly. They’ll learn about poetry. About literature . . . and so much to know about the ancient past. They’ll learn to dream,Dulcie thought. They’ll learn to dream from me.

5

Misto didn’t spend his waning days in the veterinary clinic, but next door in the Firettis’ cottage, tucked up in John and Mary’s king-size bed among a tangle of soft pillows. Since John had discovered Misto’s fast-growing cancer, which was already too widespread for surgery, he and Mary had kept their beloved companion as comfortable and well tended as any ailing human could ever be.

The Firettis’ bungalow sat back from the side street, down a long stone walk through Mary’s flower garden. The clinic was off to the right, its original two cottages joined now by a glass-domed solarium that had turned the structure into a tall and airy hospital. The rooms of one cottage offered the feline clinic, lobby and office; the other cottage held the surgery and examining rooms. The solarium itself housed the dog hospital and exercise yard. Dr. John Firetti, tall and slim and quiet, had made the clinic a safe and welcoming sanctuary for his treasured patients.

But for John and Mary, their own Misto was the most beloved of all. He had come to them when he was an old cat, returning, after a long journey, to his kittenhood home. The instant love between the three was solid and deep. The Firettis were heartbroken when John did not discover the old cat’s disease early on. They were distraught that Misto had kept his secret as the illness fast progressed, that the old cat had hidden his early pains. Those first days, the yellow tom had shown no weight loss, no loss of appetite, no dullness of eyes or of coat. Certainly he showed no flatness of spirit; he was as lively as ever. Misto had no clue himself until, quite suddenly, he began to feel weak, deeply tired. Then the pain was fierce, and he knew.

For some time, he kept that malaise to himself. When at last he told John that something was wrong, the cancer had spread and was not operable. Indeed, Misto told them, he would not have wanted surgery. The big yellow tom seemed far more at peace with his illness, with the numbering of his last days, than were his human and feline friends.

But now as the end of Misto’s life drew near he had much to speak of. He remembered his earlier deaths more clearly, just as he remembered his earlier lives. He shared bright fragments with John and Mary from times long past and from distant places, the old cat lying before the hearth fire of an evening, telling his exotic tales.

Some days John would carry him over to the clinic, to a comfortable bed on his desk. And when, at dawn, John drove the few blocks to the shore to feed the band of feral cats he cared for, Misto rode with him, tucked up in the front seat in a warm blanket. Misto loved the shore and the roiling sea. Those gleaming waters brought back times living among the fishing wharves on the coast of Oregon; the sight of the sea brought back earlier lives, too: a strange life at the edge of the Aegean Sea; the Welsh and Scottish coasts. But the best was here, on the shore of Molena Point where the yellow tom had been born, this very stretch of shore where John now fed the strays.

Here, as a kitten, Misto had been taken far away from the village by a caring couple. Now in old age after so many adventures he had traveled back again to his first home, to the long white beach and the little dock where the ferals still gathered. Now, even in illness, he was satisfied to be back where he was born. Sometimes John carried him up the rocky coast where the waves crashed wild and where, when the tide was out and the sea sucked away, little pools among the rocks reflected the changing sky; where with a careful paw he could tease small rock crabs and tiny, trapped fishes.

Venturing to the shore with John on his better days, he stayed in the cottage with Mary on bad days, tucked up before the fire, and at night he slept warm between them. The Firettis woke each time Misto woke; they doled out pain medication and brought him cool water, offered custards and warm fish broth; they tried not to show their grieving.

But just as the old, speaking cat had come back to the Firettis on his own, the arrival of Misto’s son Pan, some months later, was a second wonder to John and Mary.

The Firettis had known about speaking cats for many years; John, since he was a boy. They had kept the secret well, but they had longed to share their home with just such a one. Now their family included both Pan and Misto—though the four had had only a short time together before Pan was off on his journey and before Misto began to fail. How deftly the old cat had kept his secret, to give Pan his freedom; and soon now Misto himself would face a new adventure. The yellow tom knew that when his pain grew too severe John would help him sleep, and sleep more deeply until his spirit rose up and he would fly free.

“We will be together again,” he told John and Mary. “We will come round together again, in one life or another, as we are meant to do. This is the way of the universe,” Misto told them. Mary had wiped a tear, cuddling him, and she couldn’t answer.

Now Misto, alone for the moment in the Firettis’ bedroom, was dozing when Joe Grey and Dulcie padded across the big rag rug, slipped up onto the bed, and settled among the pillows beside him. Only slowly did Misto’s ragged ears lift, his whiskers twitch. Only when he was alert again did Dulcie touch a soft paw to Misto’s paw.

“I told him,” she said. “I told Joe about the kittens.”

Misto grinned at Joe Grey. “About time you knew.”

Speaking kittens were rare; speaking, mated couples seldom brought little ones into the world. Joe, still shaken, looked back at Misto and smiled foolishly.

“Now,” Dulcie said, slipping closer to the ailing cat, “now, what else do you have to tell us? What about our girl kitten, that you didn’t tell me earlier when you fell asleep? Now you can tell us both.”

Beside her, Joe Grey went rigid with dismay. He didn’t want to hear predictions. He was proud and happy about the kittens, but he didn’t want Misto to lead Dulcie down some foolish path of what could be, what might be; he didn’t want the old cat planting foolish dreams.

Misto’s voice was weak but filled with pleasure. “Three kittens,” he told Dulcie again. “Two boy kittens, and a calico girl. It is she I have seen in my dreams. A lovely little creature, a beautiful young cat with a charmed spirit. A kitten who is heir to past lives more amazing than you can imagine.

“Your own child, your bright calico baby. Her past lives are set into humankind’s history, her portraits grace man’s ancient art from centuries gone. You will find the antique paintings, the tapestries, the illuminated manuscripts, you will find her image if only you will look.”

He glanced at Joe. “There is no other cat marked like her. She has moved through time with an elegance unique even to our own speaking race, this kitten who will be your child.”

Dulcie’s heart beat fast; she burned to search among the library’s old volumes, to find their own calico child. Yet she was shaken with fear for the treasure she carried, fear at bringing such a one into the world, fearful of the challenge, the responsibility for that precious creature.

“Courtney,” Misto said. “Courtney is her true name. She has carried it through much of time, she would welcome owning that name again.” The old cat laughed. “A name bigger, right now, than the little mite herself. But she will grow big and strong, this kitten who is destined to a life of honor.”

“What honor?” Dulcie whispered, even more stricken. “Oh, my. What destiny?”

But the old tom had dozed off again. As if, when he thought he had said enough, he escaped slyly into an invalid’s sleep. Softly Dulcie moved to the foot of the bed beside Joe, where the gray tomcat sat rigid and uneasy; and strange imaginings filled them both.

It was now, with the two cats so nervous and unsettled, that Dulcie’s housemate found them. Wilma slipped into the room beside John Firetti as the good doctor brought medications for Misto.

Wilma Getz was as tall as the younger doctor. She wore a tie-dyed sweatshirt today, a garment so old it was back in style, its soft reds setting off her gray hair, which was tied at the nape of her neck. John was in his white lab coat, having just come from the clinic. His light brown hair was short and neat, his sunburned forehead peeling, his light brown eyes kind as he greeted Joe and Dulcie. Moving to the dresser, he set down the tray with the syringe and medicine, to be administered when the yellow tom woke. He stood beside Wilma, looking down at the two cats sitting rigid and edgy. They looked deeply at Joe, then at Dulcie.

Dulcie flicked a whisker. “I told him.”

Wilma smiled and stroked Joe Grey. “It will be all right,” she said. “They’ll be fine, strong kittens.” She frowned at Joe. “What? They’ll be healthy kittens, Joe. You’ll be a fine father. What?” she repeated. “You don’t want these sweet babies?”

Joe stared up at her, his conflicted look filled half with joy, half with distress. “Of course I want them! Our kittens! Our little speaking kittens. It’s a miracle. But Misto . . .” he hissed softly. “Does Misto have to make predictions? I don’t need predictions!” Joe said. “I don’t want to hearpredictions.”

Wilma and Dulcie exchanged a look and tried to keep from smiling. Dulcie rubbed her face against Wilma’s hand. “Misto’s prophecies were . . . they frightened us both,” she said softly.

It was then that John interrupted—as if perhaps he didn’t want to hear predictions, either? Or perhaps he wanted only to soothe Dulcie and Joe. “Let’s have a look at you, Dulcie. Let’s see how the kittens are getting on.”

Moving his medical tray to a chair, he cleared the dresser and lifted Dulcie up. She stretched out, looking up at him trustingly, only the tip of her tail moving with a nervous twitch. She loved John Firetti, but even his gentle hands pressing her stomach filled her with unease, an automatic reaction to protect her babies.

But John’s hands were warm and tender on her belly. “Feel here, Wilma. And here . . .” He watched as Wilma’s familiar fingers softly stroked Dulcie’s stomach. “It’s a little late now to feel them properly,” he said, “it was easy when they were smaller. There are three kittens. Come on, Joe. You’ll feel better when you can see for yourself. Maybe you can wipe that scared look off your face.”

Reluctantly Joe leaped to the dresser. He hesitated, then placed a careful paw on Dulcie’s tummy.

“Feel along here,” John told him.

Joe stroked Dulcie as soft as a whisper. As he found the faintest divide between each tiny shape his expression turned from surprise to wonder.

“Three little heartbeats,” Dr. Firetti said, holding the stethoscope against Dulcie, then letting Joe listen. “I’d say about two more weeks, they’ll be ready to face the world.” Scooping Dulcie up again, he handed her to Wilma. “A ride home would be a good thing.”

He looked sternly at the tabby. “You are to stop galloping all over the village. No more running the rooftops. No more racing up and down trees. No climbing. You’ll soon be a mother, Dulcie. You have babies to think about. A little circumspection,” he said. “You are to slow down, take care of the kittens. We don’t want to lose these little treasures.”

Dulcie laid her face against his hand. Of course he was right. No one said pregnancy would be easy; no one said she’d like being a stay-at-home cat, being quiet and calm and doing nothing. Sighing, Dulcie snuggled down in Wilma’s arms. She guessed her theft of the pink scarf had been her last craziness before she accepted a dull and sensible boredom.

Wilma had once told her, “To admit to boredom is to admit to intellectual poverty.”

That remark, at the time, had shamed Dulcie because she’d been bored and restless and didn’t know what to do with herself. Now the thought nudged her again as they headed for the car.

We do have a snug and cozy home, she told herself. I can curl up before a cheerful fire, we can read together, we have music, and we always have nice things to eat. And, she thought, smiling,there’s Wilma’s computer right there on the desk . . . Now, maybe . . . Now, if I must be idle, maybe more poems will come, maybe new poems. Why should my idleness be boring?

As Dulcie and Wilma headed home, Joe raced away across the empty side street into a tangle of cottages, through a maze of gardens, and up a pepper tree to the roofs. Heading home himself, he was still getting used to the idea of kittens, to the fact that soon they would have their own family. His thoughts were all atangle, part of him annoyed at the interruption of his busy and sometimes dangerous life, part of him ashamed at such a thought. But what he felt most was an incredible tenderness for Dulcie and their babies, a fierce desire to protect them. What he wished was that the world was a safer place for their kittens—for all the innocent of the world.

These violent attacks on the frail and elderly seemed far darker, now, a cruel contradiction to what life should be. He didn’t want to think about human evil just now, but he couldn’t stop. Suddenly, passionately, with the amazement of kittens filling his thoughts, Joe Grey wanted no viciousness at all, anywhere in the world.

But that’s the way the world is. This is the balance between innocence and cruelty that Misto talks about.

Still, Joe thought, no one has to like it. No one has to accept the twisted humans who relish their brutal plots, no one has to accept the corruption of the world. I can hate it if I choose. And maybe, he thought, even a cat, once in a while, can do something to push back the dark tide.

6

This wasn’t a game, this was for keeps. It was that very fact that made it the best game of all. Dead is dead, losing is for keeps. Snuffed like a candle, and that was the end of it. Death for the real scum among the decoys and shills they’d set up, and most of those were elderly, they’d chosen those to help mislead the law. So far the actions they’d laid out had gone down just fine. One or two they’d had to back off, but they’d make up for that.

They hadn’t liked moving to Molena Point, but this was where the marks had come. Prissy little place for retired rich people. Or for those who wished they were rich. That’s what most of these people were, the want-to-be rich. Poking around the fancy shops, maxing out their credit cards, gaga over the big prices. Talking about the big-deal social events and wanting to be part of them, that’s what these newcomers were about. Living beyond their means, trying to get a glimpse of the movie stars and big-time executives who lived on their high-toned estates back in the hills.

And in the town itself, little shops all too cute and pretty, sleazy tourists taking in the sights, dragging their fancy dogs on a pink leash. You couldn’t move for tourists and foo-foo mutts with fluffy scarves around their necks, dogs even in the outdoor cafés. Well, but the crowds were part of the game, the crowds were cover, all these strangers from out of town worked right in to confuse the action.

Two people dead now, and before they moved down here two more taken care of in the city. According to the papers, both cases were accidents. Cops didn’t have a clue. Too bad some on the list had moved away. New Hampshire, Georgia, Mexico.

As for these local cops, any town where the chief wore jeans and western shirts, and stray cats wandered in out of the station, had to have hick-town law enforcement despite their fancy money.

No, the game was playing out just fine. Every death, every name they crossed off the list evened the score one more notch. They’d keep on until they had them all, or as many as they could reach. Maybe in time they’d snuff every one of those killers, who themselves so badly deserved to die.

While the unknown bully entertained satisfying thoughts of success and while Joe Grey fumed uselessly at the evils of the world, across the village Dulcie sat in her window in the kitchen, purring and content at last.

Looking out at Wilma’s bright spring flowers, at the rich alstroemerias and the last of the winter cyclamens, she licked her whiskers at the smell of broiling flounder. Tonight they would have their supper in the living room before the fire and then would tuck up together on the couch with a favorite book, maybe one of Loren Eiseley’s that they reread every so often.

Maybe being pregnant wasn’t so bad; maybe she’d better enjoy her leisure while she could. When the kittens came, tiny and helpless, she’d have her paws full. And later when their eyes and ears were open, when they had grown bold and wild, she wouldn’t have a moment of her own.

Yes, now was a moment for herself, to rest, maybe think about the poems that insisted on waking her at night and wouldn’t go away. Even as Wilma dished up their supper, a poem was nudging at Dulcie like a bright glow—though maybe this verse, she thought, amused, was born of a pregnant cat’s ravenous hunger, and that did make her smile.

No thin beggar, never shy

This lady dines quite royally

Fine salami, leftover Brie

Salmon freshly from the sea

She is beautifully obese

Who feasts on kippers and roast geese

But as the poem slowly formed, and as she followed Wilma in by the hearth, she had a sudden flash of something else. Watching Wilma, she saw suddenly the darkly dressed boy, or small man, following Wilma on the street, alone on a foggy morning.

But how foolish. No one was going to attack Wilma, not without sprawling on the concrete themselves, seriously damaged. Wilma Getz might be up in years but she was strong, she was well trained, and she had a carry permit if she wanted to use it. Defensive tactics and firearm training put her in a different category from most of her fellow seniors. Too bad, Dulcie thought,that more seniors have never availed themselves of such skills.

Maybe, in the last few decades, life didn’t seem so dangerous. Maybe, the way some people looked at their lives, only a very special need would lead one to consider such training.

But of course Wilma’s training had come with her profession, in probation and parole. Yet even now that she’s retired, Dulcie thought, those skills are a plus. And any citizen can carry pepper spray or a cane, can learn how to use those simple weapons against a would-be mugger.

She thought about earlier centuries, about the wild young years of the country, when self-protection was the only protection a person had, when there was no nearby law enforcement, when the skill to fight back was an essential way of life.

These trusting humans today, the tabby thought, they need to rev up some anger, they need to substitute complacency for sharp teeth and claws. They need to find a little mean in themselves and learn how to use it.

Joe Grey, heading for home over the rooftops thinking about the kittens and then about the street crimes, wondered again if it was time to call Max. He had nothing to tell the chief but a few vague observations: the smell of turpentine and bike oil after Merle Rodin’s attack. The person following that woman in the wheelchair as if ready to attack her, racing away when Joe Grey himself shouted, then dove out of sight. That couple from San Francisco recognizing the woman, knowing her from the city and distressed to see her there in the village. What was that about? Ben Stonewell not wanting the couple to see him, and Ben, too, was from San Francisco. Wondering what these matters might add up to, well aware of their vagueness, he knew that Dulcie was right. They needed solid facts, needed leads that Harper couldn’t brush off, that wouldn’t make the chief lose faith in the phantom snitch.

Leave it for now, Joe thought. Just leave it. This time, listen to Dulcie.

Leaping from a pine branch to his own shingled roof, he trotted across to look down on the driveway. Ryan’s parking spot was empty, she’d still be at work. No big surprise, she’d been late every night since she started on Tekla Bleak’s renovation.

That Bleak woman was a pain in the tail. Ryan never should have taken on her remodel, particularly with so many sensible, likable clients waiting for Ryan to start on their own houses. Ryan’s innovative design talents, her conscientious attention to construction details and fine materials had generated a long line of eager customers.

The Bleaks hadn’t been in the village more than a few months when they bought the cottage just down the street from the Damens’ house, and because Ryan felt sorry for Sam Bleak, in his wheelchair, she had agreed to work them in soon for the needed renovations, so they could live more comfortably. Meanwhile Sam and Tekla were renting a backyard guesthouse just a few blocks from the center of the village, a cottage so tiny there was hardly room at all for the couple and their teenage son, or so Tekla complained.

Now as Joe looked down at his own driveway, he could smell their supper, lasagna or maybe spaghetti sauce, and he thanked God Clyde could cook. Clyde’s new green Jaguar stood in the open carport, a gleaming collector’s item, the result of a three-way trade Clyde had managed, offering his fine mechanical workmanship on other vehicles, in trade for the Jag. Licking his whiskers at the smell of supper, Joe slipped into his glassed-in cat tower that rose atop the second-floor roof, padded across his tangled pillows, and pushed into the house through his cat door onto a rafter above the master suite. Below him, to his left, was the master bedroom: king-size bed, fireplace, TV, all the amenities. To his right lay Clyde’s small study, and beyond it, Ryan’s large, glass-walled studio. The tops of oaks and pines rose on three sides, forming a leaf-sheltered workplace which, like Joe’s tower, blended with the woods and sky.

Dropping down from the rafter onto Clyde’s desk, hitting a stack of paperwork, he barely managed to avoid a landslide. The entire suite felt empty. Even Clyde’s leather love seat was bare, no little white cat and big silver Weimaraner curled up together. Snowball and Rock would be down in the kitchen licking their chops, waiting hopefully for spaghetti. The two would never admit they were geared for disappointment, that spicy sauces were not on their agenda.

Months ago Ryan had put both animals on a diet of lean cooked beef or chicken, a safe selection of fresh vegetables—and added taurine for Snowball. No treats from the table, none of the human-type food that Joe and Dulcie indulged in. Who could explain to them that speaking cats were different, that they thrived on food that would do inestimable damage to the organs of most animals?

Dr. Firetti was more than careful about regular checkups for the speaking cats, but they always rated A-plus. Who could explain why? Except for John Firetti, the medical profession didn’t know that talking cats existed.

Well, Joe thought, Rock and Snowball felt great on Ryan’s diet; they were sleek, lively, and sassy. Ryan had tried only once to put Joe on the same regimen. He’d raised so much hell that she and Clyde gave him what he wanted—though he knew she was now slipping in a few vegetables. He admitted only to himself that they weren’t bad, a little change of flavor that went down fine.

He wondered if Wilma was preparing similar special fare for Dulcie, to better nourish their babies? How would his lady take to that? Again a thrill of amazement shivered through him, another smile twitched his whiskers as he dropped from desk to floor, galloped down the stairs and into the big family kitchen.

Clyde stood at the stove stirring spicy tomato sauce, his short brown hair neatly trimmed, his tanned face showing only a hint of stubble after a long day at the automotive shop. He was still in his work clothes, pale chinos, Italian loafers, a green polo shirt. He had substituted a navy blue apron for the pretentious white lab coat that he wore at the shop. Clyde catered to expensive foreign models, classic cars, and antiques; he liked to keep an upscale image: medical specialist to your ailing Maserati, the best in tender loving care for your frail old Judkins Brougham. As Joe leaped to the table, Clyde turned from the stove.

“What?” Clyde said, frowning at him. “What’s the silly grin?”

Why was Clyde always so suspicious? “Bad day at the shop?” Joe asked coolly.

“What, Joe? Why are you smiling like that? What have you been up to?”

“Ryan still down at the Bleak job? Why does that woman show up every evening just at quitting time? Doesn’t she know people have lives of their own? Doesn’t she understand the term quitting time?”

“I said, ‘What’s the grin about?’ What gives?”

“Tekla thinks Ryan has nothing better to do than hang around after work to hear her latest complaint.” This remodel, which Ryan had sandwiched in among her larger construction projects, was just four blocks from their own house: a convenient location for Ryan to get to work, handy to run home for lunch. But hard to avoid Tekla Bleak. If Ryan wasn’t right there on that job—among three projects she was currently working on—Tekla would come on down to their house to lay out her complaints.

“Arbitrary, useless complaints,” Joe said angrily. “She makes them up to enrage Ryan.”

“The smile,” Clyde said patiently, stepping to the table, reaching for Joe. “What is the smile about?”

Joe raised extended claws and hissed in Clyde’s face. A few things were none of Clyde’s business; he didn’t need to ask nosy questions.

Clyde looked like he was going to strangle Joe. “What . . . is . . . the . . . smile . . . about? You haven’t stopped grinning since you got home.”

“I am not grinning. The Cheshire cat grins. I do not grin.”

“It’s plastered all over your face. Even when you try to scowl.” Clyde watched him intently. “What? Have you got a line on the mugger?”

“If I had a line on that dirtbag, would I be sitting here on the table listening to your rude hassling? I’d be upstairs on the phone to Max Harper.” Hissing again, he dropped from the table. “I’m going down the street and hurry Ryan along. It’s suppertime and I’m starved.”

“What, hop on her shoulder and tell her dinner’s ready? That should get Tekla’s attention.”

“I don’t need to say anything. My studied glare speaks volumes.” Turning his back he headed upstairs, leaped to the desk, up to the rafter, pushed out through his cat door into his tower. Out its open window onto the roofs and he headed south to the Bleaks’ frame cottage, where, late as it was, he could still hear hammers pounding.

Galloping the four blocks, he leaped onto the roof of the small brown house. White window trim and white picket fence that still needed painting. New, thick roofing shingles under his paws, they smelled new. He crouched above the cracked driveway, looking down at Ryan’s red king cab, parked directly below him.

The truck bed was no longer crowded with new kitchen cabinets; they had been unloaded and would be neatly stored inside the empty rooms. Bellying down on the shingles peering over, he watched Tekla Bleak where she stood on the deep front porch telling Ryan off, her voice loud enough to bring two joggers to a halt, the young men staring as if Ryan might need help, but then moving on, fast.

Tekla was a small, skinny woman, her short brown hair awry, her long, baggy blouse draped over slim black tights. Her black running shoes were sleek and expensive.

“My husband,” Tekla snapped, glancing down at Sam in his wheelchair where he waited patiently at the bottom of the steps, “can hardly maneuver his chair through that narrow gate. And you will have to do something about this ramp, you can see it’s way too flimsy for a wheelchair. If it gives way, if Sam falls . . .” Tekla stepped closer to Ryan, her stance threatening. Ryan looked at her coolly.

Ryan’s dark, short hair was spattered with sawdust, as were her neatly fitting jeans and her white T-shirt. She dangled a Skilsaw from one hand, where she’d been cutting a porch rail. “I have not yet torn out the gate,” she said patiently. “You can see we have only begun on the new rail.” She did not point out that Sam had no trouble at all with the gate, that his wheelchair slid right on through.

“And,” she said, “the new wooden ramp is sturdy enough for an army. Concrete supports in five places. Sam has been up and down it every day and it’s given him no trouble. You wanted wood, Tekla. Not concrete, as I suggested.” Looking over Tekla’s head, Ryan gave Sam a wink. The poor man never got in a word.

His eyes grew bright at Ryan’s smile, though he listened meekly enough to his wife’s haranguing. Joe thought it pointless for Tekla to make a fuss over Sam’s comfort when, inside the house, adaptations for his wheelchair were minimal, at best. One bathroom and a small bedroom had been retrofitted for him, but most of the renovation was concentrated on fancy countertops, fancy basins and faucets. Ego appeal, not efficiency for a challenged resident. Even the bright new kitchen was not being adapted for a wheelchair; the counters were all standard height, not even a low, easy island where Sam might fix himself a snack, as Ryan had forcefully suggested.

How simple it would have been to design the job with prime attention to Sam’s comfort. Whatever complaints Tekla had now were irrelevant to the main purpose of the project, and the woman’s arguments were wearing Ryan thin. Demands that they tear out brand-new work, put in different light fixtures though these had just been installed, replace the new kitchen hardware because Tekla had changed her mind. The arbitrary reversals were at Tekla’s expense, that was in the contract, but the extra time and labor had Ryan and her workmen increasingly frustrated. Even her foreman, big, red-bearded Scott Flannery, who was usually calm and reined in, was about at the end of his temper.

Ryan’s nature was much the same as her uncle’s; it didn’t take much for their Scots-Irish blood to flare up. So far she and Scotty had been circumspect with Tekla, trying not to upset Sam; everyone felt sorry for Sam Bleak. Everyone but his wife.

It was Ryan’s young carpenter, Ben Stonewell, who pointedly stayed away from Tekla, avoiding trouble. Joe could see how much the woman upset him. Now, after Ben’s evasive behavior in the restaurant patio when he didn’t want to be seen by the Hoop couple, Joe had to wonder if there was more about Ben than he was seeing. He hoped not, he liked the shy young man.

Only Billy Young seemed immune to Tekla’s shrill complaints. Ryan’s thirteen-year-old apprentice seemed more amused than angered. Joe had seen Billy, more than once, turn away, hiding a little smile at the storm of Tekla’s raving. Joe watched Billy now as the boy put away the shovels and a pick from where he’d been digging a new water line. The tall boy looked older than thirteen, his brown hair trimmed short and neat, his thin face, high cheekbones, and black eyes hinting at his trace of Native American blood.

Finished cleaning up, Billy wheeled his bike from beside the garage and moved on up the drive to the street to wait for Charlie Harper. This evening, even Billy had had enough of Tekla.

The chief’s wife often picked Billy up after work, when she came down from the ranch on an errand. Charlie and Max Harper had been Billy’s guardians since his grandma died; they hadn’t wanted to see him go into foster care. Max usually dropped Billy at work in the morning, throwing his bike in the back of his pickup. The bike got him to school for early afternoon classes; then he was back at work again, on the school’s part-time apprenticeship arrangement. Now, as Tekla raised her voice louder, Billy wheeled his bike farther away, up the street. She was insisting on different flooring, when the new floor was already down in three of the six rooms.

“This is not what I ordered,” Tekla shouted.

“This,” Ryan said, “is exactly what you selected.”

“It is not. You’re lying! You’re a liar!” Tekla snapped. “You got this cheap stuff at some discount sale!” Her accusation made every hair on Joe’s body bristle. Crouched as he was on the roof, he found it hard not to leap straight down on Tekla’s head.

“I don’t lie,” Ryan said softly, her green eyes steady. “You cosigned for the flooring yourself.” She picked up a square of the sleek golden wood where a pile of scraps had been tossed on the porch; she showed Tekla where it was stamped on the back: “Same manufacturer, same style number, same color: antique oak.”

“I don’t believe you. Where is the order?”

Ryan pulled both the order and the delivery bill from her pocket. She held them so Tekla could look, but she didn’t hand them over.

Tekla said no more. Joe dropped down onto the truck hood trying to keep his angry claws from scratching Ryan’s red paint. He longed to dig them into Tekla. Ryan was beautiful and kind and Joe loved her; but Tekla’s harangues sent her home every night with a headache, in a cranky mood that cut through both Joe and Clyde, that cowed Rock and sent the little white cat to a far corner—until Ryan got herself under control. Until she did her best to smile, and the household turned sunny once more. Now when Ryan glanced up at Joe, he laid his ears back and licked his whiskers, telling her, Screw the woman. I’m hungry, it’s suppertime! Dump Tekla and let’s move it! His tomcat scowl said it all.

Ryan tried hard not to laugh. Tekla looked at her strangely, but at last she turned away and wheeled Sam to their van. Sliding open the side door, she pulled down the ramp and helped him in. Joe watched her fold the wheelchair and secure it beside him. Tekla might be small in stature, but she was strong; and she seemed to take adequate care of Sam—adequate physical care, anyway, if you could discount her spirit-bruising sarcasm. Their son, Arnold, was kinder to Sam than Tekla was. At least he acted kinder when he stopped by after school; he seemed far closer to his father than he was to Tekla.

Though somehow even Arnold gave Joe the twitches. As nice as the kid could be to Sam, there was something hard inside him. Something about Arnold Bleak that mirrored, exactly, the deep-down enmity of his mother.

Joe watched the van pull away, watched Ben head up the street for his small coupe, patting his coat pocket as he always did to make sure his phone was there and the little spiral-bound notebook that contained his building measurements and notes. Watching Ben, Joe edged from the hood of the king cab around through its open window and dropped to the front seat. At once Ryan joined him, slipping in through the driver’s door, leaving Billy to wait for Charlie, leaving Scotty to lock up.

“How do you stand her?” Joe said as she started the engine. “You could break the contract.”

She looked at Joe, frustrated. “With Sam in a wheelchair, they need this remodel. At least he’ll have a convenient bath and bedroom. They have to be cramped in that little place they’re renting.” Her patience sounded kind and forgiving, but when again she glanced at Joe, angry tears filled her eyes. Ryan, who never cried. Who was usually high-spirited and in charge of a situation. “If she could just be civil,” she said. “If she could just try . . .”

On the seat Joe snuggled closer and laid a soft paw on her arm. “You know she does it on purpose, you know she likes hurting people. Don’t let that scum get to you with her power trip, you’re better than to listen to her.” Looking up, his eyes held Ryan’s. “She won’t take you down, you have more style, more everything. You can laugh at her.”

Driving, Ryan smiled, and wiped at her tears. They were a block from home when she pulled over to the curb and gathered Joe up in her arms. Burying her face in his fur, she was silent for a long time, dampening his gray coat with her tears, needing a little time-out, needing Joe as she tried to get herself under control.

But suddenly she began to laugh. She laughed against Joe, she held him tighter, then held him away, laughing in his face, her teary green eyes bright with amusement. “You’re right, tomcat. I can growl at her just as good as you can,” and she hugged him harder. “If Sam can’t silence Tekla, if he won’t silence her, then maybe I will.” She stroked and hugged him. “Why not? I can unsheathe my claws just as well as you can.”

7

Tears still dampened Ryan’s cheeks as she pulled into the drive—but she was still smiling, cuddling Joe close on her lap. Above them, bright reflections from the lowering sun flashed across her upstairs studio windows. She and Joe sat a moment enjoying the sight of their comfortably remodeled house, Ryan scratching Joe Grey’s ears as she shook off the last of her anger. “Guess we have it pretty good, don’t we, tomcat?”

Joe gave her a nudging purr. “Guess we do, now that you’ve added a little pizzazz to the old cottage. And to the family,” he said, grinning. “Now that you’ve civilized Clyde,” and that did make her laugh.

The Damen house had started out some fifty years earlier as a one-story weekend bungalow. It was now a spacious two stories with more air and light, and a touch of Spanish flavor. It still amused Joe that the renovation was what had pushed the romance into high gear as Ryan and her crew worked on the remodel and Clyde often worked with them. What better way to get to know a person than working side by side, exhibiting your worst temper when you hit your thumb with a hammer, as Clyde was inclined to do, or when the wrong materials were delivered, nudging Ryan’s temper. What better way to know someone than when a project turned out exactly right and they could share that glow of pleasure. As the couple learned each other’s moods, as they began to see the truth of what each one was about, the romance bloomed.

Now, gathering Joe up in her arms and swinging out of the truck, Ryan hurried inside. Setting him down in the hall, she didn’t go into the kitchen to kiss Clyde as she usually would, but headed upstairs to wash away the last of her tears. Joe heard the bathroom door slam as he followed the smell of spaghetti into the kitchen; then soon he heard the shower pounding.

“In a temper again,” Clyde said, moving around the big table laying out napkins and silverware. “What does Tekla want now? Gold-plated doorstops?”

“Wants to rip out the new floors,” Joe said, leaping up to the kitchen counter. “Said that floor wasn’t the one she ordered.”

Clyde snorted. “What did Ryan say?”

“Ryan showed her a floor scrap with the name and color number on it, showed her a copy of the order Tekla had signed. Why does Sam Bleak stay with that woman? Even in a wheelchair he’d be better off alone. You’re setting four places.”

“Just Scotty and Ben.” Ryan’s uncle Scott was a bachelor and was often there for dinner. Young Ben Stonewell was single, too. The thin, twenty-something carpenter, who was new to the village, was so quiet, so withdrawn and shy, that Ryan was inclined to mother him.

Clyde said, “It would be pretty hard for Sam to get along alone in a wheelchair. He needs someone.”

“He has Arnold.”

“Arnold’s what? Maybe fourteen? And the kid’s . . . he’s kind enough to Sam, but there’s something about him. The kid makes me uneasy.”

Joe twitched a whisker. “With Tekla for a mother, no wonder. I don’t get too friendly with him, I doubt he likes cats very much. He makes my fur twitch.”

They heard Ryan descending the stairs. She came into the kitchen, her temper washed away, looking softer in a pink velvet jumpsuit and smelling of lavender soap—no longer smelling of anger. Her short, dark hair curled around her face, from the steamy shower. “Sam and Tekla have no one but Arnold,” she said. “No other family that I know of. Both Sam and the kid need Tekla, and they sure need to have this house finished. If she’d just stop bugging us and let us get on with it.”

Clyde moved away from the stove and took her in his arms. She melted against him, nuzzling into his shoulder. “Tekla’s a lot less caustic,” she said, “when Arnold’s around. Is she ashamed to pitch such a fit in front of their son?”

“I’d be ashamed,” Clyde said. He stroked her hair, then turned back to the stove, where the water for pasta had begun to boil. He eased in the dry spaghetti, then opened two cans of beer, handing one to Ryan. He stood watching the pot, ready to turn it down when it boiled. At the sink Ryan washed tomatoes and began cutting up salad greens. Joe moved down the counter away from her splashes and then sailed across to the table. He hoped he wouldn’t have to move again when their guests arrived. After all, it was only Scotty and Ben. At the other end of the long kitchen, the big silver Weimaraner and little white Snowball watched the proceedings with nose-twitching interest, though their own bowls of supper had already been licked clean. As Joe settled down between the place mats, Clyde turned from the stove to fix him with a piercing look.

“Okay. Now Ryan’s home. Now we’re all together. Let’s hear it.”

Joe looked up at him blankly. Ryan turned, watching them.

Clyde sipped his beer, his gaze never leaving Joe. “You were grinning when you got home this afternoon, grinning until you left again. You’re scowling now, after a half hour with Tekla. But that smug look is still there, underneath. Come on, Joe. Spill it.”

Ryan looked closely at Joe. She reached out one slender finger and tipped up his chin, studying his wide yellow eyes. “I didn’t notice, down at the Bleaks’ or in the truck, I was too caught up in . . . too damn mad. You do look a bit smug,” she said. “What, Joe? What is that look?”

Joe Grey sighed.

He told himself he was blessed to have Ryan and Clyde, to have a loving family. That he was blessed he hadn’t remained a homeless stray in the San Francisco alleys. That he was more than fortunate that Clyde had rescued him, back when he was a starving kitten. Told himself he was lucky beyond dreams that Clyde had married Ryan Flannery.

But there were times when they didn’t have to be so damned nosy. He lay between the place mats staring back at his housemates’ stern and unblinking assessment, the two of them waiting for him to explain that inner joyousness that he couldn’t seem to hide or quell: two stern humans banded together in silent interrogation, as hard-nosed stubborn as a pair of old-time detectives. If Clydethought he had a secret, Ryan knew he did. Her green eyes saw too deeply into his wily cat soul.

He wanted to share his and Dulcie’s news. He was eager to tell them about the kittens and see their excitement. But he felt embarrassed that he was so excited. And he dreaded the fuss they’d make. They’d start worrying over Dulcie; they’d caution him to take care of her when he and she were out running the roofs and streets. They’d tell him not to let her climb trees, just as John Firetti had told Dulcie herself. They’d go on and on, he could only half imagine their concern.

But he had to say something. The two were still staring. There was no getting out of this. Besides, Dulcie was already starting to show, if you looked carefully. Pretty quick now, her condition would be too obvious to hide. Then everyone would start asking questions. If he or Dulcie didn’t break the news, Clyde and Ryan, or Charlie, would start to interrogate Wilma, whom Dulcie had so far sworn to secrecy.

Well, hell, he thought, fighting his prideful embarrassment, and he laid it out for them using Dulcie’s own words. “Kittens,” he said, “there’ll be kittens.”

Clyde stared.

“We’re going to have kittens,” Joe said slowly.

Ryan’s eyes widened and she began to smile. Clyde’s expression was numb. Dulcie and Joe had been together a long time, with no sign of ever expecting babies. Kittens born to speaking cats were a rare occurrence. The idea still amazed Joe himself, still left him only half believing. “Dulcie is with kittens,” he repeated, watching Clyde.

But Ryan flew around the table and grabbed Joe up in her arms. “Kittens! Oh, Joe. How manykittens? Do you know how many? Has she seen Dr. Firetti? When are they due? How soon? Has she told Wilma? Wilma hasn’t said a word . . . Oh!” She kissed the top of Joe’s head, then kissed his nose. Beneath his fur, Joe had to be blushing. “Oh, kittens,” she said. “Little speaking kittens . . .”

Snug in her arms, Joe didn’t point out that there was no guarantee their babies would speak. Ryan and Clyde knew that, if they’d thought about it. John Firetti had told them, long ago, that the gift of speech didn’t always happen, that sometimes the talent was not passed on, that it did not appear at all. Just as, once in a great while, a little speaking kitten would be born to an ordinary, nonverbal litter.

A recessive gene? An anomaly surfacing out of nowhere? Joe found the tangle of genetic paths daunting; he didn’t comprehend the math of it at all, or the implications. He wondered if anyone understood this particular scientific puzzle. How could geneticists study and understand a creature they didn’t know existed? No more than a handful of people in the world could know there even were literate, verbal cats.

Most people, Joe thought, wouldn’t believe in talking cats if one shouted obscenities at them.

Those few who knew the speaking cats and loved them kept their secret well, to protect the cats themselves; to shield them from human exploitation in a world where any creature rare and different was open to human greed.

Settling deeper into Ryan’s arms, Joe worried that the babies might not be able to speak. Dismayed, he looked solemnly at Clyde and then up into Ryan’s green eyes, so tender now as she fussed over him. But Clyde was saying, “Kittens! My God, Joe. If they’re half as stubborn and hardheaded as you . . .”

“Or if they’re half as smart and decisive as Joe,” Ryan said, “and as clever and sweet as Dulcie . . . oh, a baby shower, Joe! We’ll have a shower for Dulcie—little kitten toys, a soft new cat bed. Baby books, little kitty primers to—”

Joe drew back in her arms and pressed a paw to her lips. “You’re not having a baby shower!” Ryan never gushed, he was shocked at her gushing. “Dulcie’s not having a foo-foo baby partylike some . . . some giddy . . . human mother.”

“Why not?” she said, hugging him. “Little toy mice, some pretty little blankets . . .” She was never like this, his steady, sensible housemate, the woman he counted on for a calm and balanced view of the world when Clyde might be off the wall. The tomcat’s voice was sharper than he intended.

“We don’t want a baby shower!” he hissed at her. “Don’t you think you should ask Dulcie if—”

A loud explosion stopped him, then a deafening metallic clatter as the top blew off the cook pot. Clyde and Ryan spun around, Ryan hugging Joe tighter, backing away from the stove, where a geyser of steam blasted toward the ceiling. Pasta was boiling over in a white cascade of froth, bubbling over the sides of the pot and across the stovetop and burbling down into the burners. The metal lid spun rattling across the floor. Clyde dove for the pot and pulled it off the burner. At the same moment a series of loud thuds rattled the front door and a deep voice echoed through the intercom. “Supper ready?”

8

Ryan held Joe forcefully over her shoulder, having grabbed him away from the geyser of steaming water as she hurried to the living room to let Scotty in—leaving Clyde to deal with the erupting pot. Reaching for the door, she tossed Joe on the mantel among the tangle of photographs. He hissed at her and settled down to collect himself, to ease his jangled nerves. Washing his paws, he listened to Clyde in the kitchen swearing and banging pots.

Chaos was nothing new in the Damen household. Joe should be used to calamities. But deep in his feline nature burned that ancient instinct for self-preservation, that fight-or-flight inborn shock at loud noises, every fiber geared to slash or race away until he’d sorted out the cause of the trouble.

Reflex response, he thought, and where would a cat be without that instant reaction? As he sat on the mantel calming himself, in the open doorway Scotty gave Ryan a big bear hug, happy to see her though they’d worked together all day. Her uncle’s voice was so deep and comforting that soon Joe’s fear reflexes had eased. He began to purr, and then to smile as he saw again the lid of the spaghetti pot blow off, and Rock and Snowball streak out through the dog door to the safety of the backyard.

Stretching out among the small, framed photos, he was washing his shoulder when the phone rang. He heard Clyde answer, but not until he realized the call was from Kit’s traveling housemates did he drop to the rug, beat it to the kitchen, and land on the table, to listen.

Clyde had pushed the boiling pot off the burner and opened the windows to clear out the steam. The trash can was filled with sopping paper towels sticky with starchy water. Was this the end of their supper? Was the spaghetti ruined? Joe eyed the mess with dismay. He wasn’t about to choke down a serving of cat kibble.

But no, there on the stove the spaghetti itself was piled in a colander glistening with olive oil, balanced atop a deep bowl. And the covered pot of tomato sauce looked tame enough, nothing bubbling out, nothing running over the side. As Clyde talked on the phone he wiped the last of the sticky gray liquid off the stove. “Lucinda,” he mouthed at Joe, silent because Scotty was headed through to the kitchen. “It’s Lucinda.”

Clyde’s words didn’t cheer Joe. If the Greenlaws had arrived home before Kit and Pan returned from their own journey, if the older couple found them still absent they’d be beside themselves. But then, listening to Clyde, Joe realized that Lucinda and Pedric were in Anchorage. They were talking about the shops and a native arts museum, Clyde asking questions to avoid the subject of Kit as Scotty and Ryan entered. “ . . . yes, they are, Lucinda. Kate says the new garden plants are fine, she checked the watering system yesterday.”

Lucinda, aware that someone had come in, talked for only a few minutes more, then ended the call. Did Clyde’s “Yes, they are, Lucinda . . .” answer her most urgent question, tell her that Kit and Pan were still away? Had she hung up burdened by that news?

“Lucinda,” Clyde said to Ryan and Scotty. “They’re in Anchorage.” He looked at Ryan. “Your dad and Lindsey have gone on to the Kenai River for a day or two of early salmon fishing. Lucinda wasn’t sure whether they’d be coming home together or separately, she wasn’t sure which flight they’d take.” The travelers hadn’t been gone long, but it seemed to Joe like forever. He hoped Kit and Pan would be home before the Greenlaws; even this short parting had been hard for the older couple, and surely was hard for Kit, too. The three had never been parted since the amazement of their finding one another just a few years ago up on Hellhag Hill. The frightened tortoiseshell kitten, a lonely stray, hadn’t ever imagined she would discover humans she could speak with, humans she could trust to keep her secret, humans she could love and who would love her as she had never dreamed.

As for Lucinda and Pedric, long immersed in the Celtic myths that told of speaking cats, to imagine encountering such an astounding creature in real life was beyond their dreams. Such a longing was only whimsy, fanciful thinking; they hadn’t dared suppose that a speaking cat would appear before them there on those green hills, wanting to share their picnic—to share their lives. A chance meeting born perhaps of a deep and inherent need within the two humans and within Kit herself. Their close bond now had made it hard indeed for the three of them to part. They’ll be together soon, Joe told himself hopefully, nothing bad will happen.

At the kitchen table Scotty took his usual place, absently petting Joe where the tomcat lay sprawled across the place mat, his paw on Scotty’s spoon. Scotty was never annoyed at Joe’s boldness but only amused; he nodded thanks as Ryan handed him a can of beer and a frosty mug.

“Ben will be along,” Scotty said. “He stopped by his place to feed his rescues.” They had all been pleased when young Ben Stonewell, even in his tiny rented room, had taken in three rescue cats, giving them safe temporary quarters until real homes could be found. Scotty laid a sheaf of drawings on the table. “I swung by Kate’s to pick these up—the changes she’d like for the outdoor shelter rooms.”

Joe watched Scotty with interest. His mention of Kate brought a vulnerable look to the Scotsman: he glanced down shyly, seemed suddenly off center, making Joe Grey smile.

Blond, beautiful Kate Osborne, their good friend who understood the speaking cats so well, had at last succeeded in buying the old Pamillon estate. The acreage and crumbling mansion had languished for generations in the hills above Molena Point, caught up in a tangle of legal disputes. Kate’s attorney had finally wound a legal path through the mire of too many heirs, too many overlapping trusts and wills. Now the property was through escrow, Kate and Ryan had all the building permits, the plans had been approved by a hard-nosed county inspector, and they had begun construction of a fine new cat shelter. It rose just south of the fallen mansion with a low hill in between. Ryan’s larger crew of carpenters was working up there, Ryan dividing her time between several jobs, but always happy to get away from the Bleak renovation.

The shelter project was part of CatFriends, their volunteer rescue group. The refuge was a special dream of Kate’s, to care for abandoned cats. Kate had lived in the village before she left her philandering husband. It was here in Molena Point that she discovered her own strange relationship to the speaking cats. She had, while investigating that connection, found her way down the hidden tunnels beneath San Francisco’s streets into the Netherworld, where Kit and Pan now traveled. Though Kit and Pan’s route had taken them, not from the city’s tunnels, but from here in the village beneath the estate itself, down a cavern discovered by the band of speaking, feral cats who made their home among the Pamillon ruins.

Kate, at the moment, was living in Lucinda and Pedric’s downstairs apartment looking after their house and garden while they were away—watching for Kit and Pan’s return, just as she waited eagerly for Lucinda and Pedric to arrive home again, safe.

“She was working on two more drawings,” Scotty offered. “She said she’d drop them by later.” Again Scotty had that off-center look that made Joe and Ryan glance at each other.

“She wants to add two more outdoor group rooms,” Scotty said, opening up the folded plans. “For the ferals that want to see outdoors, cats who get upset being shut inside.” The plan was, the ferals would be neutered, given their shots, and turned loose again into the colonies where they had been trapped. That way, the whole colony was healthier, the cats wouldn’t reproduce but could live happy, productive lives hunting the rats and mice and destructive ground squirrels that bedeviled the village cottages. CatFriends’ volunteers were currently feeding three such colonies, supplementing their rodent diet and seeing to it that they had plenty of fresh water.

The rescue group’s plan for the shelter had begun at the time the economy faltered so badly that many homes and cottages were foreclosed and families moved hastily away, searching for new jobs, cruelly abandoning their pets to fend for themselves or find new owners. Members of CatFriends had patiently trapped the lost, frightened animals and found temporary foster homes for them until the shelter could be built. There would be roomy cages and two big group rooms for the cats who got along well together. Rescued dogs went to the SPCA, which had larger facilities for them.

A lot of thought had gone into CatFriends’ shelter. Their group meetings included Charlie Harper, Ryan’s glamorous sister Hanni Coon, Ryan and Kate, and five other members. Joe and Dulcie had sat in on a few gatherings at the Damens’—had sat in, finding it hard not to offer their own opinions. How could humans design a cat shelter without consulting an expert? Sometimes they even wanted to argue with Kate.

Joe had been amused when Scotty started attending the meetings. Scott Flannery was not a cat person and was not inclined to women’s groups. But then Ryan’s shy, quiet carpenter Ben Stonewell had joined. Ben was interested in the rescue operation. Scotty was more interested in Kate; he would come to the meetings with Ben but leave with her, “for a walk on the beach,” he would say, or, “a nightcap in the village.”

Scotty was Ryan’s father’s brother. Detective Dallas Garza was her mother’s brother. The two men had moved in with Mike Flannery after the children’s mother died, when the three girls were very young. Together the men had raised them, adjusting work schedules to be sure someone was at home for them, teaching them not only to cook but to do household repairs, to carpenter, to carefully handle and care for a firearm, and to help train Dallas’s bird dogs. Dallas and Ryan’s beautiful sister Hanni were good hunting partners.

But it was Scotty who stirred Ryan’s interest in construction, teaching her the more intricate use of carpentry tools and the basics of strong construction, years before she went on to art school to study design.

Now, at the sink tossing salad, Ryan turned at a knock on the front door, and went to let Ben in. The young carpenter hadn’t used the intercom; he was wary of that simple device, though he was comfortable enough with the high-powered carpentry equipment.

The thin, pale young man entered the kitchen shyly. He looked freshly scrubbed; he wore his brown hair shoulder length, but it was clean and neat. He always seemed pleased by the big family kitchen, the homey room with its flowered overstuffed chair and bookshelf at the far end, by the resident animals looking up smiling at him, by the warm sense of family. He was more outgoing with the two cats and the big Weimaraner than with humans. At the sight of Ben, Rock left the braided throw rug and came to lean against the young carpenter’s knee. Ben had changed from his work clothes to tan slacks, a brown polo shirt open at the collar, and loafers. Ryan pulled out a chair for him and fetched him a beer. He looked up at Clyde. “Smells good,” he said. “Real good,” and he grinned more openly. “Can I help?”

Clyde shook his head. “All under control.” The rescued pasta draining in the colander seemed none the worse for boiling over—there was enough spaghetti for a small army. The Damens always made extra. Leftovers went in the freezer for a handy future meal. That is, what leftovers Joe Grey didn’t get into during a midnight foray. Joe had learned, when he was very young, to open the refrigerator, though he was not as agile as Dulcie. The Damens’ refrigerator, as well as Wilma’s and the Greenlaws’, had emergency interior handles; these were Clyde’s invention, built at the automotive shop by one of his mechanics.

Scotty set the salad on the table, and Clyde dished up the spaghetti. Joe leaped off the table to the end of the kitchen counter where Clyde had set Joe’s own plate. He could never understand why Clyde thought he deserved a smaller plate than everyone else. Though he was amused by its pattern of fat cats. Ryan said it might encourage Joe to watch his waistline. In fact, looking at those prancing, greedy kitties only made him eat faster.

They were all seated, Ryan serving the salad, when Scotty said, “Kate told me . . . she saw another assault this evening.”

Everyone paused, Clyde’s beer mug half raised.

“When I got to the apartment she was just home from the PD, from filing the report. She was still mad, upset that she hadn’t caught the guy. She said he ran like hell, and Kate’s pretty fast herself.”

Clyde said, “She got a look at him?”

“Not much, just his back. He slid into an alley. She wasn’t that far behind, but when she got there he was gone, not a trace.”

Scotty sprinkled cheese on his spaghetti. “Slim guy, Kate said. Thin and small. Dressed in black, black cap with earflaps. Could have been a kid, or not. She was coming out of the drugstore when she saw him half a block away, saw him knock a woman down. When he saw Kate he spun away and ran. She grabbed her phone, got a blurred picture of his back, just a smear of the dark figure careening around the corner. She called 911, then chased him. When she lost him she turned back to help the woman. Officer Brennan was already there, and the medics.

“Kate said the woman didn’t seem hurt too bad. While they were taking care of her, Kate went on into the station, gave her statement to Detective Davis, and they copied the photo from her cell phone.

“They’ll enhance the picture,” Scotty continued, “but I doubt they’ll get much. The woman told Brennan she was all right, she didn’t want to go to the hospital. She went into the station with him, gave her own statement, and he took her home.” Scotty laid a copy of the photograph on the table.

Joe, leaping to the table pretending to sniff at Ryan’s spaghetti, got a good look at the picture, but it didn’t offer much, just a dark, blurred figure running, very like the hooded figure who ran when Joe shouted from the roof of the PD.

“What does this guy want?” Scotty said. “These attacks seemed no more than cruel pranks—until the murder. And then the second death, that could be either murder or unintentional manslaughter. None of it makes sense. Everyone in the department’s edgy.”

Joe knew that. He was more than uneasy himself.

At Scotty’s first mention of the attack Ben looked uncomfortable. “If people were half as decent as animals,” he said, “were as kind as animals, the whole world would be at peace.”

No it wouldn’t, Joe thought. Watching Ben, the tomcat found it hard to keep his mouth shut. He wanted to point out that predatory animals weren’t so decent, that wolves, coyotes, jungle cats, were all cruel killers, that was the way God made them. Wolves, for instance, began eating their prey before the poor animals were dead; a wolf would pull half-born calves from their mothers, or would mortally wound valuable young heifers and not even bother to eat them. They would leave their prey slowly dying and move on to kill the next little calf, as they taught their cubs how to hunt. He wanted to say that it was only the victims of the wolves and coyotes that were without cruelty.

And, Joe thought, only half ashamed, even a mouse might not die quickly in the jaws of a hunting cat. The tomcat’s own dual nature sometimes left him conflicted; he really didn’t like to analyze such matters—and now he could make no reply to set Ben straight. His opinion was locked in silence.

He realized he was scowling only when Ryan gave him a faint shake of the head, a look that said,Back off, cool it, Joe. You’re too interested. Suck up whatever you want to say. Get out of Ben’s face with that angry and superior stare.

Embarrassed, Joe turned from Ryan, leaped from the table to the kitchen counter once more, and licked clean the last of his spaghetti.

Only when Ben talked about his rescue cats did his eyes brighten. He launched into an amused and loving description of his three charges, of how well they got along together and how all three slept with him at night. Maybe, Joe thought, if Ben finds a larger apartment he might keep the three homeless cats. Ryan said his apartment was so small there was hardly room for the bed, a tiny refrigerator, and a hot plate. The little basement room and bath huddled beneath a tall old house that overlooked a shallow canyon east of the village. Ryan had described, to Clyde and Joe, the rough concrete walls, the decrepit metal windows on the two daylight sides of the corner room. She said Ben had lined up the two spacious cat cages before the windows, further darkening the little apartment but giving the cats light and morning sun. Ben’s landlord rented out rooms in the house above, but people were seldom home. No one seemed to care that Ben kept cats. Joe expected he’d find a better place soon. He’d only moved down from San Francisco less than a year ago.

Well, Joe thought, the Bleak job will finish soon and Ben will be working full-time to finish the shelter; he’ll like that better. Though Joe did wonder why Ben was so uncomfortable around Tekla, more upset at her harassment than seemed warranted.

Well, who could blame him? Joe avoided the woman, too. Now, watching Ben, the tomcat had no idea that by the next morning his idyllic picture of the young man would have changed radically—and that Joe himself would be thrown into the middle of the tangle.

9

That blonde that spotted the attack had nearly messed them up, she ran faster than you’d expect, almost got a good look and ruined it all. A hasty retreat and no harm done, but way too close—left a person shaking with nervous sweat.

But that was the only time there was trouble. All in all, every new assault was a blast. Shadowing the victims, learning their habits, learning the paths they took among the village stores, knowing where they lived and where they shopped. Watching the places they worked, where they ate if they ate out. Pausing in a doorway, waiting, silent in the shadows, that was the best part. The sudden hit—slip up with no sound, one good shove and it was done. See them fall scared and struggling and you were gone before they got a glimpse. A fast attack, then gone. How easy was that?