1. CAT ON THE EDGE

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The murder of Samuel Beckwhite in the alley behind Jolly’s Delicatessen was observed by no human witness. Only the gray tomcat saw Beckwhite fall, the big man’s heavy body crumpling, his round, close-trimmed head crushed from the blow of a shiny steel wrench. At the bright swing of the weapon and the thud of breaking bone, the cat stiffened with alarm and backed deeper into the shadows, a sleek silver ripple in the dark.

The attack on Beckwhite came without warning. The two men entered the brick-paved alley, walking side by side beneath the dim light of a decorative lamp affixed to the brick wall beside the window of a small shop. The men were talking softly, in a friendly manner. The cat looked up at them carelessly from beside the concealed garbage can, where he was feasting on smoked salmon. The men exchanged no harsh word; Joe caught no scent of anger or distress before the smaller man struck Beckwhite.

Though the evening sky was already dark, the shops along the alley were still open, their doors softly lit by the two wrought-iron wall sconces, one at either end of the short lane. The stained glass door of the tiny tearoom reflected the lamplight in round, gleaming patterns of blue and red. The narrow, leaded glass doors leading to the antique shop and the art gallery glinted with interior lights warped into circular designs against the darkness. The closed door to the bistro presented a solid blue face, but there were lights within behind its small, leaded windows, and the easy beat of a forties love song could be heard. The golf shop lights reflected out around the edges of its half-closed shutters, and the shopkeeper could be glimpsed deep within, toting up figures, preparing to close up and go home. The soft thud of the wrench could not have reached him; he did not look up. There was no sound from the alley to alert anyone to the murder which had just occurred within that peaceful lane.

Between each pair of shop doors stood a large ceramic pot planted with a flowering oleander tree. The pink-and-white blossoms shone waxen in the dim light. All Molena Point’s alleys were small, inviting oases designed to welcome both villagers and tourists. At the near end of the lane, where the tomcat was eating, one ordinary, unremarkable wooden door shut away the kitchen of the delicatessen. The busy front door was around the corner. The trellis, and the sweet-scented jasmine vine which climbed it, concealed behind its lower foliage the delicatessen’s two garbage cans, and now concealed, as well, the astonished cat.

Here in the alley, Jolly’s employees received deliveries and brought out their discreetly wrapped trash to discard, carefully saving back the nicest delicacies, which they put down on soggy paper plates for the village cats.

The cats of Molena Point were not strays-most were blessed with comfortable homes-but every cat in the village knew Jolly’s and partook greedily of its rich offerings of leftover broiled chicken, pastrami, a spoonful of salmon salad from an abandoned plate, a sliver of brie or Camembert, or the scraps from a roast beef sandwich from which mustard must be scraped away with a fastidious paw. Joe ate well at home, sharing his master’s supper, but Jolly’s menu ran more to his tastes and less to fried onions, fried potatoes, and hamburger, and he had only to chase off an occasional contender. He had, at this time in his life, no aversion to eating after humans. And he liked George Jolly; the soft, round old man in his white clothes and white apron would come out sometimes and watch the cats eating, and smile and talk to them. If George Jolly had been in the alley at that moment, the murder very likely would not have occurred. The two men would have walked on through. Though the killer might simply have waited for his next opportunity; it was not a crime of sudden passion.

There was nothing Joe could have done to prevent Beckwhite’s murder even if he had so desired, the action coming down too fast. As the men talked softly, strolling along, the shorter man, with no change of tone or expression, no shifting of pace, suddenly produced the chrome wrench in a whirl of motion describing a bright arc. His swinging weapon hit Beckwhite so hard that Joe heard Beckwhite’s skull crack. Beckwhite collapsed to the brick paving, limp as an empty rat skin.

At the far end of the alley, behind the last oleander tree, a shadow moved, then was still, or was gone, impossible to know; but neither the killer nor the crouching tomcat saw it-their attention was on the deed at hand.

No question that the victim was dead or swiftly dying. Joe could sense his death, could smell it. The sharp grip of death shivered through him like a sudden winter chill.

Joe knew who the dead man was. Samuel Beckwhite owned the local auto agency, and he was Joe’s master’s business associate, the two shared a large, handsome establishment at the upper end of the village. Joe had at first supposed the other man was a customer for one of Beckwhite’s mint condition BMWs or Mercedeses, or maybe he worked for Beckwhite and the two were taking a shortcut back to the car agency. He found the smaller man offensive, his walk unnaturally silent, his voice and accent too soft, too artful.

But then, there weren’t that many humans Joe liked, nothing to cause alarm; until he saw the bright wrench swing up. Swiftly the deed was done. Beckwhite fell and lay still. The damp breath of the sea and of eucalyptus trees scented the alley, mixed with the perfume of the jasmine vines. Above the love song’s soft,nostalgic melody an occasional hush of tires could be heard on some nearby street; and Joe could hear the sea crashing six blocks away, against the rocky cliffs. The evening had turned chill.

Behind Joe, beyond the alley, the small seaside village was quiet and unheeding. It was a charming, unpretentious town, its shops sheltered by broad old oak trees. The shops mingled easily among a few bed-and-breakfast establishments and private cottages and between the newer, larger structures of the library, and of the courthouse and police station. Many of the stores and galleries, in fact, occupied remodeled cottages dating from a time when Molena Point was a mere speck on the map, a tiny seaside retreat. Now its residential area climbed the hills crowding ever higher up into California’s dry, rugged coastal range.

And the lights scattered across the hills picked out the half-hidden rooftops of new homes among the masses of pines and oaks. The larger homes were downplayed, well hidden among the trees. The population of Molena Point was divided between artists and writers, tourists, and a handful of famous names, many of whom were connected with the film industry centered 350 miles south; though Molena Point itself had little in common with Hollywood. It was a slow, easy environ, where doors were often left unlocked, and violent crime was uncommon.

At the moment of the murder, the tomcat was aware of no traffic on the two adjoining streets, and no foot traffic on the sidewalks which passed the alley. Across the herringbone-patterned brick the body was not touched by lamplight, but lay in a deep patch of darkness, shadowed by an oleander tree and by a jutting wall. During the murder and directly afterward no one entered any shop door and no one left. Only Joe saw the killer: he was a thin, stooped man, maybe five-ten, though it was hard to tell a human’s height from Joe’s low vantage point. He was round-shouldered, and dressed in a plain, dark sweatshirt, dark jeans, and dark running shoes. He stood looking down at his victim, then suddenly looked up, straight at Joe.

He looked puzzled.

Staring at the cat, his expression shifted to startled recognition, then to cold fear.

And suddenly rage sliced across his face and he lunged at Joe, swinging his weapon.

Joe spun around, but the trellis blocked his escape. Hissing, he backed along the wall of the building until his rear pressed against the door to the delicatessen. But now he was blocked by a large, potted tree. When the killer swung the metal bar he dodged again, feinting and ducking, praying the door behind him would open, praying to escape inside the deli among friendly, white-trousered legs.

The door remained closed. And the man stood straddle-legged before him weaving and dodging, blocking his escape. Joe’s fear turned him cold and weak. The man lunged to grab him, and Joe struck out fiercely, but his claws missed the thin, pale face. The killer lunged again and snatched at him, and his hands were on him. Joe clawed and fought, felt flesh tear, and he twisted away and dived between the garbage cans and the wall.

The man closed in, swinging the wrench. Joe leaped over the cans and over his flashing arm and fled from the alley to the street, streaking across the sidewalk and into the street directly in front of a cruising police car. Brakes squealed. He twisted and leaped away to safety beneath a parked car.

He crouched in blackness beside a tire that reeked of dog pee, and stared out at the street, where the police had pulled to a stop.

The officers shone a flashlight beam into the alley, its moving glow flashing eerily across potted trees and jutting doorways; but the light did not reach deep enough to pick out the murdered man. Beckwhite’s dark-suited body lay indistinguishable from the shadows, his white shirt seeming no more than a twist of discarded newspaper.

Beyond Beckwhite, against a dark wall, the killer stood frozen, his face averted and hidden by his lank hair, his own dark clothing blending with the brick.

The police, expecting no trouble in the quiet village, doused their flashlights and moved on, perhaps laughing at the cat that had run through their headlights, nearly getting himself creamed.

The instant they had gone the killer was after him. The man knelt to look under the car, then circled it as if to drive him out. In a minute he’d kneel again, and reach under.

Joe thought about it for only a second. He could stay here, dodging back and forth under the car as the thin man circled him; or he could run.

He fled. If this man would kill a human, he wouldn’t hesitate to knock off a cat.

The question was, why? He was only a cat. What did the man think? That he would run to the police with what he had seen? But, racing away through the dark streets, fleeing for his life, he didn’t wonder long; he concentrated on the problem at hand. In this block there was nowhere to hide-the shops were joined tight together. There was no escape between. The man’s footsteps thundered behind him: he was fast, dodging and swerving as Joe swerved.

Panicked, Joe slid around the corner and dived under a wooden porch, the first shelter he could think of, and through a hole in the foundation.

He knew the house well; he had a sometime lady love here. The old house had found new life as an antique shop. The dark earth underneath, in the low crawl space, was cold beneath his paws and smelled sour, heavy with mildew and cat pee.

As he raced away from the hole, cobwebs hanging from the sagging floor timbers clung to his ears and whiskers. He felt them pull away, sticky and clinging. He sped through, dodging the furnace and the gas and water pipes and hanging electrical wires, toward an opening at the back.

Before he burst out into the backyard he turned to look behind him.

The small rectangular hole he had come through was blocked. No light shone in from the street, only the dark bulk of the killer reaching in, his arm and shoulder filling the little space. Joe could hear scraping as if he was trying to climb through.

So come on, buster. Crawl on in here. Get yourself trapped under these timbers and pipes, so I can rake you good.

But on second thought, he fled.Why push it? Get the hell away from the guy.

Only faintly ashamed at his cowardice he streaked away, out through the hole at the back into the antique shop’s backyard. He heard the man running, coming around through the side yard.

The small, scruffy backyard was empty. Bolting for the sidewalk, he careened along the side street, his ears twitching back, listening behind him. When he heard the man running, he swarmed up a rose trellis that climbed the wall of Julia’s French Pancakes, onto the sloped shingled roof.

He could hear, below, the killer coming along the sidewalk. He crouched at the edge, looking down, trying to keep his weight off the rusty roof gutter.

The dark figure was searching for him under a line of azalea bushes growing in the parking strip between the sidewalk and the street. Joe backed away from the edge and trotted away over the rooftops.

Over Julia’s, then across the top of the bookstore, then the Nugent Gallery and across the roof of an import place that always smelled of straw and spices-though its roof smelled only of tar. At the end of the row, at another side street, he dropped onto the thick limb of an oak so old and huge that the sidewalk had been built to curve around it, dangerously narrowing the street at that point. The tree covered the entire street to the other side, and was a favorite aerial crossing for the village cats. He’d had some pleasant rendezvous there.

He crossed the street within the branches and leaped up to the next line of roofs. Trotting to the end, listening, he heard only silence now. No running footsteps, only the hush of a lone car passing.

When he was certain the killer had gone he came down warily from the roof of Molena Point Cleaners, clinging among a bougainvillea vine. Dropping to the ground, he galloped two blocks east, then turned back south in the direction of home. Zigzagging through a dozen backyards and across two streets, he could hear nothing following now.

But fear still clutched at his belly, fear not of the immediate pursuit-he’d lost the guy-but fear of an even more frightening nature. Fear of something far more terrifying than being chased through the night-dark streets by a man swinging a wrench; though in fact, his last glimpse of the killer had shown him no weapon; probably the guy had dropped it in his pocket, against the moment it would be needed to smash one small tomcat.

Just before he reached Ocean Avenue, which divided the village with its wide, tree-shaded median, he swarmed up into the high, concealing branches of a eucalyptus that hung over the ice-cream shop. If the killer was following, walking softly, Joe didn’t want to lead him right to his own house.

He crouched among the foliage trying to understand what was happening. Why had the killer chased him? He was only a cat. Why would the man think a cat could tell anyone who had killed Beckwhite?

Though the fact was, Joe could easily finger the killer. He could, in fact, in any number of creative ways, give the police a detailed description of the man.

But the killer could not know this. No way could he know. How could the thin, hunched man know that he, Joe Grey, could bear witness to the murder?

He sat shivering on the branches, so upset he didn’t even wash.

And he was not only scared and puzzled, but his mind was filled with other strange thoughts, as well. With decidedly disturbing and uncatlike responses to the immediate events.

For one thing, besides fear for his own gray hide, of which he was very fond, he was feeling remorse for the dead man. And that was unfeline and stupid.

Why should he care that Beckwhite was dead? He hadn’t even known the man. It was hypocrisy of the highest degree to pretend that he felt sorry for Samuel Beckwhite.

But yet he did feel sorry, a dark little cloud of mourning hovered over him, sentimental and totally without basis. He felt sick at the brutality of the premeditated killing.

The murder he had witnessed had been twisted and sick. It had nothing in common with the way a cat killed.

Cats killed for food or to keep their skills honed. Mother cats killed to teach their young to hunt. Cats did not kill with the cold deliberation he had just witnessed. That thin, tunnel-eyed man had killed as casually as if he were culminating a financial transaction-paying his lunch bill or buying a newspaper. And it was Joe’s very analysis of the event that alarmed him.

He backed down from the tree and headed home thinking heavy thoughts; crossing the grassy median then padding along the dark sidewalk warily watching the shadows, his whole being was tainted with a philosophical distress belonging, rightfully, only to humans.

Perusal of the human mind was not a feline concern. Cats didn’tthinkabout human perversion. Catsfelthuman depravity. They knew that human lust and dark human hatred existed, and they accepted those aberrations. Cats did not analyze those warped human conditions. Cats left the philosophizing to men.

Yet all the time he had been fleeing from the killer, a part of him had been trying to analyze the man. Trying to guess at the man’s motives. Trying to figure out his intentions not only at chasing him, but his purpose in killing Beckwhite. Trying to unravel the mystery that had transformed that thin human face into a killer’s mask.

What did he care what drove the man to kill? He wasn’t connected to this man’s problem, and he didn’t want to be. And inside him, alarms were going off. These thoughts were new and terrifying. A gut level signal was warning him that he was in the throes of mental and emotional change. A new facet of himself had awakened, new concerns were surfacing.

The transformation had been coming on him for some weeks, but it had not been stirred violently alive, not until tonight. Now, some foreign presence within him had come alert. And it was clawing to get out, to break free.

He ran the last two blocks caught in a distressing tangle of fears and wanting nothing more complicated than his warm, safe bed, wanted to curl up safe on the blanket next to Clyde, protected by his human housemate.

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The gray cat woke suddenly from deep sleep, curled on his master’s bed. Something had waked him, a noise foreign to the usual house noises. He twitched an ear, trying to come alert.

The violent screeching came again, jerking him up to full attention, propelling him to his feet, his claws digging into the blanket, his senses slapped into high gear by the splintering, wrenching sound.What the hell is going on?Ears flattened, his stub tail tucked low, he stared around the dim bedroom, a growl rumbling deep in his throat. The splintering cacophony had driven every hair along his spine straight up, stiff as the bristles on a hairbrush. Standing rigid on the double bed next to his human companion, he tried to get a fix on the sound.

Beside him, Clyde turned over, heat radiating from his body like a furnace. His snores rose a decibel, to effectively drown the next scraping of metal on wood.

That’s what the sound was, metal on wood. As if a window were being pried open. Joe sniffed the chill air, trying to scent the intruder, but Clyde’s breath was such a powerful decoction of red wine and raw onions that he couldn’t have smelled a convention of sweaty joggers if they had crowded into the bedroom. He moved away from Clyde’s warm shoulder, listening intently. He wasn’t sure whether the noise had come from right there in the room or from another part of the house.

He felt outrage that a burglar would bother them. This was a small, peaceful village, and a quiet street. They had never had a breakin, not since they’d moved there. This wasn’t, after all, the mean streets of south San Francisco. But at contemplation of an invader in the house, a cold fear held him, far more chilling than wariness of a normal burglar.

Shivering and puzzled, he studied the dim bedroom, the hulking shapes of dresser, of the TV, of Clyde’s clothes flung over the chair limp as a used Halloween costume discarded after the big event. Clyde’s shoes protruded from the shadow beneath the chair, and beside them one smelly sock.

Nothing seemed unfamiliar in the bedroom. Warily Joe crept across the covers and hunched over the side of the bed, staring under.

The shadows beneath the bedsprings were empty, nothing there but a few dust balls like the ghosts of long-deceased mice. He backed up onto the bed again and licked a paw, scanning the room’s corners, its darkest reaches, staring into the open closet, at the dim tangle of Clyde’s clothes.

No shadow seemed unaccounted for. On the dark bedroom walls, three pale rectangles shone, the mirror gleaming silver, the two window shades gathering artificial light from without, from the streetlamp up at the corner. And the dim glow of the shades was struck across with the shadows of twisted branches, from the oak tree that sheltered the bedroom. Suddenly, within the tree, a mockingbird began to babble, its tuneless gurgles blending with Clyde’s snores.

He could hear nothing, now, but snores and the damned bird. What was it with mockingbirds? What went through their tiny minds? The creature was as tuneless as a baboon practicing the violin.

But the mockingbird wouldn’t be sitting in that tree trying to sing, if someone were out there under the bedroom windows.

Maybe the scraping noise had come from the backyard. Or maybe from the front of the house; maybe up beyond the front porch a stranger hugged the perimeter of the house, trying to force his way in, to pry open a living room window, or the front door.

Joe leaped to the floor, the shock of his weight keening through his soft pads and up his legs, jolting the muscles of his shoulders.

He was a big cat, heavy, his silver-gray coat gleaming dense and short, sleek as gray velvet over hard muscle. Tense, flattening his ears and whiskers tight to his head, he prowled the room, listening through the walls. Moving through the dark room, his gray parts blended into the shadows so the white marks on his chest and paws and the white triangle on his nose seemed to move disconnected.

He was not a handsome cat. The strip of white down his nose made his yellow eyes seem too close together, gave him a permanent frown.

The splintering, wrenching noise did not come again. Could he have dreamed that sound, only imagined it?

Certainly he had imagined some strange things lately, so strange that he had begun to think some feline disease was slowly rotting his brain.

Maybe he’d had a nightmare caused by bad food. That had happened once when he got hold of a sick gopher; he’d had wild, impossible dreams.

He tried to remember what he had eaten yesterday. He’d had a hasty mouse after supper, but that shouldn’t do it, he’d eaten it an hour after his usual cat food. If it was going to make him sick, it would have done so long before now. Anyway, the mouse had gone down delightfully. He’d killed a starling around noon yesterday, but he’d spit out the beak and feet. Starlings never made him sick. Preoccupied with his physical assessment, he didn’t realize he was keening deep in his throat until Clyde woke, swearing.

“For Christ sake, Joe, stop it! It’s too damned early to be horny! Go back to sleep!” Only then was Joe aware of his own harsh, rough-edged crying.

Silenced, he listened again for the dry, quick report of breaking wood. He really should check the house. The dogs couldn’t do it, they were shut in the kitchen. The two old dogs had spent their nights in the kitchen ever since Barney started peeing on the front door. And both dogs slept like rocks, lifeless as the products of a taxidermist’s art. Someone was breaking into the house and the damned dogs hadn’t the presence of mind to wake up and bark. Both were big dogs, a scruffy golden and an overweight Lab, both could have routed a prowler with their barking alone if they’d made half an effort.

Absently he licked a whisker. He considered himself the epitome of tough tomcats, yet now he felt strangely reluctant to leave the safety of the bedroom. Shivers of fear coursed up his rigid back, and his paws had begun to sweat.

Trying to get hold of himself, he cocked an ear toward the closed door. Hearing no creak in the hall, he approached the door warily, and pawed it open. Crouching, he slunk down the dark hall, his whiskers tingling with apprehension.

He stared into the bathroom, looking nervously past the shower door into the tiled cubicle. When he found it empty, he slipped on down the hall along the dog-scented carpet toward the spare bedroom.

That room was at the back, without the streetlight to brighten its interior. The shades were up. He could see no movement beyond the black glass. He jumped on the desk, pressed his face against a cold pane of glass, and looked out.

He could see no one in the backyard. He could hear no sound, now, from anywhere in the house. Yet still he could not stop his skin from rippling in long, chilling shivers.

Terror had plagued him ever since that night in the alley when he saw Samuel Beckwhite murdered. He could not escape these constant replays of that bright arc swinging up, the dull thud of shattering bone. That moment of violence had altered his every thought, his every reaction. Sometimes he wondered if he was going bonkers, tipping over the edge. And it was far more than his witness to Beckwhite’s death, and his subsequent pursuit, that had transformed him.

The weirdness started before that. He was, and had been for some weeks, experiencing a strange identity change. He was totally out of touch with the normal cat world. His initial amazement when he realized he could understand human speech had been almost more than he could handle.

Nothing that life could serve up could equal the shock of that first moment when human speech became clear. When Clyde said in a low, controlled voice,“If you don’t take that mouse outside, Joe, you are going to find yourself warming a cat coffin with the lid nailed down.”

He had understood each individual word. He had taken the mouse outdoors, so upset at his sudden cognitive ability that he turned the squirming morsel loose, let it go free to scamper away.

He had stood on the porch shivering with astonishment at his sudden understanding of human speech.

A normal, ordinary cat knows the call to meals, he knows and tolerates his master’s sharp commands such asGet off the table!andStop that damned clawing!Any cat with a home knows the love words, the baby talk. But words such as those are recognized partly through tone of voice, partly through frequent repetition. No cat is able to decode every human word, or to comprehend abstract human meaning.

But he, Joe Grey, was able to do exactly that. Was suddenly able to absorb each subtle implication, to sort out all the intricacies of human innuendo. From that moment, when Clyde shouted at him about the mouse, he had understood every word between Clyde and his poker-playing buddies or his girlfriends; he was highly amused by Clyde’s tangled telephone conversations when he tried to keep each woman ignorant of his involvement with the others. Though he didn’t know what women saw in Clyde.

Clyde Damen was thirty-eight, of medium height, with straight black hair and thick shoulders. He had been married once, but he didn’t talk about it. Joe hadn’t known him then. Clyde had no great beauty or charm that Joe could see, yet there were always women cooking dinner for him, bringing over steaks or casseroles, snuggling up on the couch with the lights low and a CD playing something soft and throbbing.

Since Joe began to understand every intimate word between Clyde and his lady friends, their visits had been both embarrassing and boring. Usually, he left the house.

Human speech would be fine if it did not run to such crass inanities. For instance, he understood the TV news, knew the economy was in bad shape, knew that the president had recalled his ambassadors to half a dozen Eastern countries, but why all the fuss? The basic moves were little different than the eternal manipulations of two tomcats, or of cat and mouse. So what was the big deal? Did they have to go on about it? Well, maybe he didn’t have the right frame of reference.

And in the daytime, prowling the bushes or sleeping in the neighbors’ flower beds, every pair of gossiping housewives pelted his brain with unwanted gossip and inane opinions. And the neighborhood men, working on their cars or digging crabgrass were just as annoying. These conversations were no longer just noise; now he was a suddenly a captive audience, drawn topaying unwilling attention. The human world had, in short, intruded into his world, distracting him from hunting and frustrating his leisure hours with trivia.

Face it, he was no longer a normal cat, his time divided between satisfying bouts of fighting, mating, eating, sleeping, and bullying his housemates, both feline and canine, and bullying Clyde. He was jumpy and off his feed; he had lost all heart for bullying and almost for lovemaking.

Beyond the spare room windows, out in the dark backyard, nothing moved. And the room itself could conceal no one-it held only the seldom-used guest bed with boxes of canned dog food underneath, and Clyde’s weight lifting equipment and his messy desk.

He moved away from the distressing scene of Clyde’s bachelor decor and crept on down the hall to the dining alcove, passing the kitchen door. Surely the dogs would wake if someone were breaking into the kitchen. Or at least the three other cats would wake and make a fuss, subsequently waking the dogs. Then, heading for the living room, he heardthe scraping again.

Itwas coming from the front windows. Someone was outside the windows trying to get inside. Enraged, forgetting fear, he crept across the worn faux-Persian rug, keeping low, stalking the sound. The shades were up, the draperies open-Clyde seldom bothered to pull them unless he had female guests.

Beyond the windows, dawn was beginning to touch the night sky, its first thin light seeping down between pale clouds. He leaped to the sill, to look out.

A face looked back. A human face, inches from his face. He was so startled he backed away and fell off the narrow ledge.

Landing clumsily, he looked up at the glass. The thin, pale face remained, grinning with high amusement. Joe stood staring, his whiskers trembling, his paws growing slick with sweat. It was the man, the same man. Beckwhite’s killer.

He could smell freshly cut wood; and beneath the window shone a raw scar where a screwdriver, or a hand drill, perhaps, had pierced through.

Realizing the man would soon have the window open, he spun around and made for the kitchen. Leaping at the closed door he yowled and scratched until Barney, the golden, woke bellowing, then Rube began to boom. Their combined warning shook the house.

But there was no sound from the bedroom; likely Clyde hadn’t even stopped snoring.

And then, at a break in the dogs’ barking he heard a car start. He raced to the front window, and leaped up.

A dark car was pulling away without lights. It spun a U, slowed going past the house, then moved out fast, and was gone. Far down the block it switched on its headlights, flashing suddenly onto the tree trunks and bushes as it swept past.

The street lay quiet. The killer was gone.

Up and down the street, the neighbors’ windows were all dark. The oak trees stood black against the slowly fading sky. Joe sat down in the middle of the worn rug, where the threads were showing, and licked at an imagined flea.

But it wasn’t a flea, it was an involuntary twitch generated by fear. He was nervous as a mouse in a tin pail.

This was just too much. This attempted breakin was the last dog hair in the milk bowl. His digression from normal cat had left him a bundle of raw feelings anyway. Now, this confrontation was more than he wanted to deal with. More than he knew how to deal with.

Needing human company, he jumped down from the sill and returned to the bedroom, to Clyde.

And, of course, Clyde had slept through it all. He was still snoring, relentless and loud as a chain saw. Joe wanted to crawl under the covers and snuggle in safety next to Clyde’s warm, bare shoulder.

But he couldn’t cower in bed, protected by his master. That was the behavior of a scared kitten, not of a grown tomcat. Tomcats in their prime were not supposed to be afraid. He hunched down on the Sarouk rug beside the bed.

This rug was the real thing. Small, hand-knotted, and expensive. It had been a gift from one of Clyde’s more serious lady friends. It offered a most satisfying texture in which to knead his claws.

He kneaded with a vengeance, working off fear and frustration, digging and pulling, trying to think what to do.

Beckwhite’s killer had taken the trouble to find him, either by driving the village streets until he spotted him, or maybe checking with the local vet to see who owned a gray cat. Why? Did he think a cat was going to testify in court? His interest paralyzed Joe.

He watched an anemic dawn creep across the closed blinds, turning them the color of a brown paper bag; then suddenly the clouds parted, the sun’s first rays burned against the shades, their golden blaze spilling underneath, picking out Clyde’s jeans and sweatshirt, turning the worn Sarouk rug as red as the bloody entrails of a jackrabbit. The mockingbird tried again to sing, all grating sharps and flats.

He had told Clyde nothing of his problems. His housemate had no hint of his amazing verbal skills. So Clyde could know nothing about his witnessing the murder. And Clyde, preoccupied with that same murder, distressed by the loss of his business associate, had hardly noticed Joe’s confusion.

When Joe had first realized he could understand human speech, he convinced himself that all cats had the same talent. That the ability was simply unused, that cats ignored human speech as too distracting.

But he knew better.

And then, when he realized that he could speak as well, he was so unnerved that he hid in a hole in the basement wall, cowering within the cold, hard concrete concavity, shivering with alarm.

He did not come out in answer to Clyde’s shouts from upstairs, not even to Clyde’s supper call. When Clyde found him and tried to haul him out, he lacerated Clyde’s hand.

Afterward, he was ashamed. But he hadn’t come out. He remained in the hole in the concrete for a full night and day. Clyde, always considerate, had left food and water for him on the floor below, but Joe didn’t touch it.

When at last he did come out, and slaked his thirst before going upstairs, he had convinced himself this was a good thing, that he would be the envy of all other cats. A veritable feline king. He had talked himself from a gripping horror into a huge ego trip.

He immediately sought out his feline housemates, and tried his new talent, speaking to the other cats in human words, keeping his voice soft and his phrases tender.

“Come on, Snow Ball, come give us a little snuggle. Come on, Fluffy, come share the kibble, come have a little snack with a friend.”

They were not amused. Their eyes grew huge and horrified; their hair stood up, their tails stiffened with alarm, and they hissed and ran from him.

When he tried talking to his current lady love, the results were disastrous. She slashed his nose, ran up a tree onto a roof, and had not come near him since.

She had taken up with an unspeakably scruffy orange tomcat.

No cat he encountered could comprehend the simplest sentence of human speech. Other cats knew only,Come, Kitty,andSupper’s On.They understood human tone-anger, love, human voice inflection, human body language. Nothing more. When he spoke to them they responded either by running away or attacking. After several fights, he gave up.

And, of course, he didn’t try talking to the household dogs. What would a dog know? Then last Sunday he discovered that not only could he understand and speak the language, he could read.

All his life he had been staring at cat food cans, pacing around them waiting for someone to fetch a can opener. But on Sunday morning, as he clawed open the cupboard and knocked a can out and watched it fall to the floor, then jumped down and stood over it yowling for Clyde, the words on the label began to make sense.

St. Martin’s fresh ocean salmon,he had read.This product prepared especially for the household cat.

Clyde was incredibly slow on Sunday mornings, lingering over the papers unwashed and unshaven. Joe had waited impatiently, mewling and reading the recipe for his breakfast,Fish parts, wheat flour, sardine oil,and so on. Nothing wrong with fish innards.

Realizing that he was reading, alarmed and shaken with delayed shock, he had raised his voice louder in a panic of demand until Clyde came to open the can.

In a frenzy of hunger, needing sustenance for spirit and soul, he had devoured the contents in three huge gulps. Afterward, as Clyde held him, not knowing what was wrong but stroking him, trying to calm him, he had belched fish redolently into Clyde’s face but he had not, definitely not, spoken any human word of apology.

Then soon after breakfast he had begun to experiment, stalking the newspaper and reading at random. The political columns didn’t interest him much, but the advice column was a laugh. Who, except humans, could drum up such complicated intrigue over the simple question of sex? He had glanced over the obituaries and society page without interest, then abandoned the newspaper as unworthy of a feline.

On the couch he found the program from a play, and this was mildly interesting. Then in the bedroom he discovered a collection of steamy personal letters tucked into a half-open drawer. This was more like it. He clawed them out and spent a good hour poring over the contents, grinning.

Now in the brightening bedroom he watched intently the swiftly flitting shadows of birds in the tree outside, leaping from branch to branch. So simple to think only like a cat hungering after bird flesh, and not one beset with human complications.

But that simple distraction no longer worked. The birds seemed distant and frivolous. As frivolous as he had once thought words printed on paper were, silly and pointless. When he was a kitten, seeing Clyde stare at a printed page, he had felt ignored and indignant. Clyde’s inattention had made him crazy.

Though, of course, that view had changed quickly enough when he realized there was something magic in those little marks, something that would cause Clyde to talk endlessly to him, supplying long, comforting intervals of soothing human voice.

He paced the bedroom thinking about the hours he had spent curled up beside Clyde as Clyde read aloud from a great variety of novels.

How amusing that neither he nor Clyde had understood that, as Joe listened and stared down at those little black marks, he was learning things no cat ought to know.

But though he considered his sudden ability to read a feline breakthrough, even that was not the most alarming aspect of this new and puzzling life. The distressing part was, he not only had talents like a human, he was thinking like a human.

For several mornings he had awakened planning his day, wondering if it would rain and spoil the bird hunting but drive the moles out into the open, wondering whether the blackbirds were still feeding on the pyracanthas behind the house. Blackbirds got rolling drunk on the fermented pyracantha berries and were ridiculously easy marks. He would wake wondering if the cute little Abyssinian female down the street was in season yet and if her owners would let her out.

Cats didn’t plan their day. Cats just went out and did cat things. But not him. He woke in the big double bed beside Clyde carefully laying out his day like some grotty old banker marking his office calendar.

Take, for instance, this very moment. Any normal cat would be caught up in the immediacy of winging bird shadows, clawing open the door to get out. Instead he was crouched on the bed analyzing his thoughts in a manner abhorrent to feline nature.

He wondered what would happen if he spoke to Clyde about this. What would Clyde do? Could Clyde help? Maybe try to explain the phenomenon?

Sure. In a pig’s eye.

If Clyde knew he was sharing his house with a talking cat, he’d likely throw him out, tell him that if he could talk, it was time he quit freeloading. Tell him to go join a circus.

He had lived with Clyde for four years, since Clyde found and rescued him when he was lying fevered and sick in a rain gutter.

Clyde Damen was an auto mechanic, he had the most prestigious shop in Molena Point, working exclusively on foreign cars, ministering to Molena Point’s BMWs and Rollses. He rented his huge shop space from the Beckwhite Foreign Car Agency. He liked rodeos, football, baseball, and liked to watch newsclips of long-ago boxing events; Joe Louis was his hero-he collected Louis memorabilia. On the nights he didn’t date or play poker, he read: thrillers, mysteries, and some remarkable books that didn’t seem to fit his character. He told his girlfriends that he could write a really clever mystery if only he had the time. Joe’s opinion was that Clyde didn’t have the discipline for writing, that he had the curiosity and the wild twist of mind, but not the patience. Being a writer seemed to Joe a matter of taking things apart and putting them back together in new ways. Any cat could understand that kind of thinking. Clyde had the talent; but he just couldn’t sit still long enough to be a writer. If you wanted mouse for supper, you had to stick to the mouse hole.

Joe smiled. He might criticize Clyde, but the truth was that he owed his life to Clyde. Born behind a row of overflowing garbage cans, the first of a litter of five kittens, Joe had learned early to fight for what he needed, to challenge what he feared, and to outsmart what he couldn’t defeat. He had tolerated the alley just long enough to learn to get along in the world, then had inflicted himself forcefully on the first family he encountered, following two ragged children up three flights of tenement stairs. There he subdued the children’s bulldog, then charmed the animal until it became his champion. It was in this home that his tail had been broken when the drunken master, coming in from a poker game, stepped on him in the middle of the night.

He left that place fast, and for good. Within days, his tail was infected. It throbbed, and it wept pus and smelled bad. He took refuge in a sewer opening, but he was soon too sick to find food. Burning with fever, he was unable even to creep out to search for water. He was soon dangerously dehydrated, confused, and disoriented. Late one afternoon, he awakened from fevered sleep to feel hands on him. He was too weak even to fight. Hot and aching, he felt himself lifted and carried. He heard the man muttering, but only much later did he identify Clyde’s muttering as baby talk.

Clyde had put him in a car. He’d never been in a car but he recognized the stink of gasoline and tires and was horrified. That was his first car ride and his first visit to a veterinarian. Lying on a hard metal table he had felt himself prodded and manipulated, then felt the sharp prick of a needle in his rump. Soon he dropped into blackness as deep as a sewer excavation.

He knew nothing more until he woke in a cardboard box, lying on something soft that smelled of the same man. The room was pleasantly warm, and smelled of dogs and of frying steak, too, like the restaurant near his home alley. He was so weak he couldn’t even get out of the box. It was when he turned to lick the pain in his tail that he discovered he had no tail.

His tail was gone. He had only a one inch stump.

But he could stillfeelthe whole tail. And it hurt like hell. He had stared unbelieving at the raw stump, at his maimed, ugly backside.

For weeks the loss of his tail had badly screwed up his balance, to say nothing of his dignity. But, though the vet had amputated his tail, Clyde had not permitted the man to castrate him, for which Joe was eternally grateful.

When he had gained back some strength and gotten used to going without his tail he began to feel at home with Clyde. He liked Clyde’s bachelor ways, and he sure didn’t miss his last, drunken master or the noisy children. He soon set Clyde’s household to rights, compelling the other three cats to obedience and subduing, then making friends with, the dogs. He had thought that this home with Clyde was his final, permanent home.

Now, that was not to be. Everything in him said: Get out. Run. He knew the man would return. And after murdering a human, what was the life of a cat?

Very likely, if he remained in this house, the killer would harm not only him. If Clyde tried to protect him, he would attack Clyde. What difference was one more blow to the head, after the first?

He washed his paws and face, smoothed his whiskers. But as he headed for the living room and his cat door, he was trembling. Though he felt goaded into flight, he felt trapped, too, by the world which lay beyond his own familiar realm, by the huge and complicated human world.

Crouched before the plastic rectangle of his cat door, he tried to prepare his thoughts for departure. For loneliness, and perhaps for death. Maybe this flight would be his last adventure, the culmination of a short and eventful feline career.

As the sun crept up above the neighbors’ houses, and the translucent plastic of his door turned pale, Joe pushed it open and peered out.

Seeing no one in the yard, he thrust his head and shoulders out into the cool morning and looked along the house to the right, studying the bushes, then looked to his left. When he felt that all was clear he came out, did another quick scan of the street, and took off running.

3 [????????: pic_4.jpg]

The brindle cat was a thief, a charming, insouciant little thief quicker and more agile than any human criminal. She enjoyed, far more than any human burglar, her carefully selected prizes-she liked to fondle and sniff the silk nighties she stole from neighboring houses, and she would rub her face for hours against a purloined cashmere sweater. Among the modest, tree-sheltered cottages of the hillside Molena Point neighborhood where Dulcie lived, she was known affectionately as the cat burglar.

She was a petite little cat, a dark brown tabby, her swirled stripes streaked with a soft peach shade, the two colors forming patterns as rich as silk batik. Her pale muzzle and ears were tinted a delicate tone of peach, her soft belly and paws were peach. She was a charmer, an artfully colored little beauty.

She was a young cat, too, and sprightly as a young girl. She had an impish, upturned pink smile, when her white whiskers would stand up like signal flags. Her green eyes were so intelligent that tourists wandering the village would often stop to stare down at her, puzzled and arrested by the questioning tilt of her head and her bright green, inquiring glance.

Dulcie belonged, as much as a cat can belong, to Wilma Getz, a spinster of middle years, a retired probation officer currently employed by the Molena Point Library. Wilma was constantly amused by Dulcie’s thieving. Sometimes, rising early to enjoy a cup of coffee before an early walk along the sea cliffs or up the beach, Wilma would, standing at the window sipping her coffee, see Dulcie coming across the yard dragging behind her a pink bra or a dark lace nightie, the little cat pulling the garment resolutely through the dew-soaked flowers. Then in a moment Dulcie would come pushing in through her cat door, dragging her prize.

Inside the kitchen she would drop the pretty garment, nose at it, and smile up at Wilma with delight.

Who could scold her?

Usually Wilma was able to return the stolen items to their rightful owners, digging out a necktie or a bikini top from beneath her couch or from under the claw-footed bathtub. She was far more lenient with Dulcie than she had ever been with her former clients. Never had she overlooked a parolee’s or probationer’s theft.

Wilma Getz was a tall, lean woman, with long gray hair she kept bound back in a ponytail. Her collection of silver and gold hair clips were of great interest to Dulcie; her jewelry box was an area for the cat’s eager and delighted exploration. Wilma had been with Federal Probation until her retirement at fifty-five, an enforced retirement because of hazardous duty. She had been known among her caseload as hard-assed, an officer to pay attention to, or to be avoided.

Now that she had moved into a gentler life, with no more parolees to worry over, she could indulge her softer instincts. Could be far more lenient with her one remaining custodial charge, her loving and thieving small cat.

How could anyone scold the innocent young cat for her miscreant ways? Dulcie was so excited, so thrilled with each new acquisition, hugging and rolling on the soft, bright prize. What harm did she do? She was never malicious-her thefts grew from her pure delight in the stolen object.

Wilma kept a big wooden box on her covered back porch, and there she placed Dulcie’s trophies so the neighbors could retrieve them at their convenience. Wilma Getz’s back porch was known as the repository for all small, cat-sized lost items.

Because a steep hill rose behind the house, Wilma’s cottage had been designed so both the back and front porches faced the street. Access to the back door was easy, the neighbors had only to come across the south end of the front yard on the winding stone path, step up under the wide roof into the deep back porch, and there root among Dulcie’s treasures to retrieve their stolen garments.

Dulcie loved that box. She liked to curl up in the box among the silk and satin and the occasional finds of velvet. There, lounging on her silken contraband, she could watch the neighborhood, could see everything that went on, dogfights, ball games, the comings and goings of all the humans in her world. She did not seem to mind when a neighbor came searching for her own possessions. Dulcie would purr happily while the neighbor rummaged among the purloined sweaters and nighties, and she usually got a nice pet and a scratch behind the ears before the lady went away carrying her treasure. And before long she would find a new item to replace the one retrieved.

Dulcie knew how to get into every house in the neighborhood. She could claw open a window left ajar, could claw open a back screen door. She could leap to snatch and turn a doorknob. Molena Point was quiet, well policed; the village houses were often left unlocked in the daytime.

Dulcie, once she had gained entry to her chosen mark, would head for the bedrooms. There she would lift a pretty sweater she found lying on a chair, a slipper, a baby bootie, whatever took her fancy. With delicate paws she would remove a silk stocking from a bathroom rod where it had been hung to dry, carry it gently home, and hide it beneath the bed, where she could lie with her face on the silken gauze, purring. One young neighbor wore black satin mules that were a favorite. Dulcie took them and Wilma gave them back, but in over two dozen exchanges Dulcie never left a tooth mark on the satin. Once she entered the Jameson house at dinnertime and snatched a linen napkin from the lap of five-year-old Julie; she raced out brandishing the napkin like a flag, with the five Jamison children screaming after her in delighted pursuit.

When she stole the pink cashmere sweater that ten-year-old Nancy Coleman had bought by laboriously saving her allowance, Dulcie didn’t know how Nancy suffered. Dulcie was a cat-she had no comprehension of the world of finance.

Though deep within, she sensed that taking the possessions of another was wrong. Every young cat learns quickly about territory by being slapped by larger, stronger cats. Territory should be respected. And Dulcie knew thatthingswere territory, too.

But she stole anyway, with the same impish delight with which she would have taken another cat’s bed. Stealing was a game. She stole smiling, her pink mouth curved up, her green eyes shining, her brindle tail twitching with pleasure. She once brought home a designer teddy trimmed with gold lame and sequins. But Wilma took that away from her and returned it, wet around the edges from Dulcie’s licking. Another time she stole a crocheted doll dressed in red leggings. She still had the doll, hidden in a dark corner of the service porch. She liked to hold it between her paws, purring.

She was quick to leap through an open car window, too, taking whatever treasure caught her fancy, audiotapes, baby rattles, driving gloves. She was so secretive about her thefts that the neighbors seldom saw her take an item. Though an early riser like Wilma might spot Dulcie dragging something pretty across the dewy lawns, perhaps a silver spoon left on a backyard picnic table, once a small porcelain cup with bright flowers glazed on it; she got the cup all the way home unbroken and hid it under the footed bathtub. From this crevice Wilma resurrected, as well, the watch for which she had mourned for a year-and had railed at Dulcie with untypical anger.

But she could not stay mad at Dulcie. The little cat was entirely joyful in her acquisitions, so happy with them, and sprightly as a little elf. When scolded she would cock her head and smile. Wilma sometimes brought home little treats for her, a lavender sachet, a lace handkerchief, items she knew would delight Dulcie. When Dulcie saw there was a gift she would sit up on her haunches, waving her paws and reaching, her pink mouth curved up with pleasure, her green eyes so intelligent that Wilma wondered sometimes if Dulcie could be different from other cats. The rapport between them was deep, loving, and comfortable. Wilma thought,If I were rich, I would give her diamonds. Dulcie would wear diamonds.In the six-block area where Dulcie had established her territory, the little cat was laughed at and loved, and certainly no one would harm her.

Beyond the hill where Wilma’s house snuggled among oak trees and other cottages, stretched an undeveloped expanse of steep bluff that looked down on the sea. To humans this was an open, wind-tossed field. To the village cats it was a jungle, the heavy grass waving high above. Within the tall grass roamed a wealth of field mice, moles, grasshoppers, and small snakes. There Dulcie hunted. Or sometimes she simply sat concealed in the blowing grass, looking out toward the sea and listening to the pounding of the great mysterious water. The rhythmic thunder of the surf seemed to Dulcie like a loud purr or a steady heartbeat, and she would imagine herself a kitten again, snuggling secure in the thunder of her mother’s purr. To Dulcie the sea was rich and wise. It was there, sitting concealed in the rye grass late one afternoon, absorbing the sun’s warmth, that Dulcie realized she was watched.

A man watched her. She could smell his scent on the wind, sour and strangely nervous, a predatory smell like that of a hunting animal. She rose slowly to look above the grass, flinching with apprehension.

He stood above her up the cliff, where the sidewalk cut along: a lean, pale, shaggy man staring down directly at her, his muddy eyes chill and predatory. He watched her as intently as a crazed dog will stare. And in his eyes she glimpsed a brazen familiarity. She sensed that he could see deep inside her, could see her secret self. She crouched, immobile and rigid.

Dulcie had never been hurt-she had grown up with Wilma from the time she left her mother. No one had ever been mean to her, but she knew about cruelty and hurt. She had seen neighborhood animals hurt. She had once seen some boys beat a dog. She had seen out-of-town children kill a cat. Now she smelled the same scent, smelled the man’s lust, and she knew beyond doubt that he would harm her.

Half of her wanted to run, half wanted to remain still, clinging to the earth as a baby animal will cling to avoid detection.

When she was hunched down deep in the grass, she couldn’t see him. And she could hear no movement above the wind and the pounding sea, could hear no hush of footsteps approaching.

Yet she sensed that he drew closer. Her heart seemed to knock against the bones of her chest, drowning whatever sound might come to her.

When she could stand her apprehension no longer, again she rose up on her hind legs to look.

He was almost on her. He lunged, reaching. She spun away and ran. He came pounding behind her, she could hear the grass swishing against his pant legs, could feel the earth shake beneath his running feet. She sped along the edge of the cliff, terrified that if he couldn’t grab her, he would kick her over the edge. Running, panting, she glanced down that fifty-foot drop, and her terror fuzzed her vision so not even the ground was clear. Her sucking breath burned in deep shudders.

4 [????????: pic_5.jpg]

Joe trotted fast up the wooded hills, up between scattered houses through their lush, overgrown gardens, and up across fields of tall, wild grass. He didn’t think he was followed. But he didn’t pause, either, until he stood high on a ridge among a forest of Scotch broom and rhododendron bushes. There, slipping in among their thin, tangled trunks, he thought he was safe, that no one would find him.

From the shadowed bushes he could see far down the slopes. Down beyond the tops of massed trees and roofs gleamed the sea, its bright surf spewing up white foam.

He had come up on a long green shoulder of land which rose abruptly above a broad valley to the south of the village. He was headed toward the wild upper slopes, toward scattered, newer houses and a few rich estates. Up beyond those, beyond the last houses, rose the wild, dry mountains of the California coastal range. High above him, the deep blue sky was alive with wheeling clouds; their shadows raced past him across the dropping hills.

He moved on again, upward, streaking up a grassy hill through running shadows.

But fear ran with him, too. He had to pause repeatedly and look behind him down the hills, afraid that he was followed, searching for that thin, hunched figure.

And, already he missed his home.

Gripped by an uncharacteristic attack of homesickness, he crawled deep into a stand of tall grass and lay with chin on paws, caught in a heavy depression quite unlike himself.

He was bitterly lonely, he felt totally cut off from the world.

He had been forced to abandon his warm, comfortable home, his neighborhood territory, his entourage of warm and adoring females. Forced to abandon everything that gave his life meaning. He’d forsaken Clyde’s comforting care, Clyde’s rude, good-natured teasing, as well as the small circle of household animal friends, the dull-minded but faithful dogs, the other cats, who, terrified of his new talents, had been remarkably obedient to his wishes. The cats now backed away groveling when he took the best morsels from their food plates. They were perfectly willing to sleep in a little cluster, allowing him to stretch out full length on their bed for an occasional nap. He was more than top cat, he was exotic and inexplicable. It seemed a shame to abandon all that fun.

But he was no longer one of the group, either.

He was separated from his own species by an abysmal void. He was not only torn away from his home and his family, he was, as well, a veritable alien in the cat world.

He couldn’t even share his misery with another like himself.

There was no other.

Congealed by gloom, he crouched among the grasses, still and rigid, his white paws pressing into the earth, his eyes closed, a small bundle of cold despair.

Not since he was a half-grown kitten had he found himself totally alone.

And as a kitten he hadn’t given a damn. What had he cared for loneliness? He’d stormed out of the cheap apartment where his tail got broken and to hell with human companionship. To hell with any companionship. He’d wanted only to be out of there. He had stalked away to challenge the world, unwise and untried, but brave as hell.

Now he was a totally different cat. That courageous youngster was gone. He was no longer a brash and nervy challenger; he was frightened and shaky, half-crazed with uncertainty. Totally unlike himself.

But soon a small voice nudged him. A deep disgust at his own cowardice.

He sat up, his ears back, his eyes blazing.What kind of idiocy is this? What’s the matter with me? Beaten? Uncertain? What the hell!

The only thing wrong with him, he was hungry. He needed food. He hadn’t eaten a thing since that mouse last night. His cowardly terrors would vanish the minute he took in some fuel.

A good feed, plus the satisfying ritual of the hunt, that was all he needed.

He reared up, scanning the tangled hillside.

All up and down the hill there was movement in the grass, where little invisible creatures were hopping and pecking and fluttering. Fixing on a half-seen sparrow that dabbled unaware, he crouched and began a measured stalk, his lips drawn back, his teeth chattering softly, his ears flat to his head.

Within seconds he had caught the unwary bird and torn it apart. He consumed it with satisfying greed, spitting out beak and feathers and feet. By the time he had caught and eaten a blackbird, he began to feel better.

When at last he was filled with the rich, lean meat, he was himself again, the blood leaping through his veins hot and predatory. His cathood restored, he drank from a puddle, looked around at the bright world, pricked his ears, lifted his short stub tail, and trotted on up the hill.

At the crest stood a broad oak hanging over a weathered cottage. Joe studied the branches for another cat. When he saw none, he took possession. Leaping up the trunk, he dug in, and climbed on up to the first good limb. It was level, broad, and perfect.

He seldom napped on the open ground. It wasn’t smart, in the wild hills, to nap where a dog could surprise him.

In the yard below, a broken tricycle lay rusting among a patch of ragged daisies. He could hear a child laughing inside the house.

From high in the oak he could see down the receding hills of Molena Point, the grid of half-hidden streets, the courthouse tower, the shops half-obscured by the oaks and eucalyptus. Beyond the village, the sea rolled against the cliffs in a long line of breakers, crashing up and sucking back in a rhythm as measured as his own purr.

Up here, he was king of all he could see. He could live up here, looking down like a god on the village, gorging royally on birds and squirrels, on endless meals of chipmunks and fat mice. If he was destined to life alone, this was the place to live it. Here he could be as strange and different as he pleased, and there was no one to care. He was his own cat, in a rich and fecund Eden.

The main street of the village, running inland from the beach, was clearly visible, with its green, parklike divider and broad, golden-leafed eucalyptus trees marching up its center. To the left of the median, the cottage rooftops snuggled close together. He couldn’t quite see his own roof, but he could see his street. All was homey and familiar.

Perched up here, he was poised between two worlds. The village and hills were a cat’s paradise. But behind him to the east, where the mountains of the coastal range lifted against the sky, that was not his world. Those forbidding, rocky cliffs presented a realm far more bloody and cruel. He really didn’t care to become an hors d’oeuvre for the coyotes and pumas that hunted those mountains.

At least he had the sense to know the difference. Yawning, he stretched out along the branch, full and content. And he slept.

The crackling of dry grass woke him. He thought immediately of a prowling puma. Something heavy moved below him at the base of the oak tree, and he shook away the sleep, staring down between the leaves.

Dogs. Only dogs. Ugly and predatory, but just dogs. The five stupid canines circled his tree, ranging through the tall grass, nosing and huffing as they picked out his scent. Two were huge, brown shaggy beasts. One was a misshapen boxer, one a weasel-faced black bitch. The smallest, a spotted terrier, looked up and saw him and began to yap.

The boxer stared up, and let out a bellow that bent Joe’s eardrums.

In an instant all five were barking and clawing at the trunk. He eyed them with disgust and considered dropping down on their tender noses.

But not even he was fool enough to take on five dogs at once, four of them the size of small ponies. He thought for a minute, glancing toward the cottage.

He saw no movement behind the cottage windows, no sign that anyone was looking out. When he was certain that he was unobserved he slipped out along the branch nearly to its tip. The dogs went crazy, roaring and leaping.

At the end of the branch, Joe paused. The dogs bellowed and jumped. He opened his mouth in a broad cat smile.

“Go home!” he yelled. “Get the hell out of here!”

The effect was memorable. The dogs jerked to attention, staring around for the human source.

“Get out! Get the hell home!”

They stared up at him. They backed away crouching, their ears and tails low, their lips pulled back in rictuses of fear.

“Go on, you mangy mother-licking retards! Get yourselves home!”

They turned as one and ran careening in a tight, frightened pack. Skidding and sliding, they disappeared down the hill.

He smiled, licked his whiskers, and stretched. Whatever the source of his unusual talent, it had its upside. Yawning, he washed a paw, then curled up on the branch again and went back to sleep.

When he woke at dawn, the world was drowned beneath a sea of fog. The hills were gone, all of Molena Point had vanished. He gazed out over the white surface at scattered treetops rising up in dark, shaggy islands.

He was hungry, and he was stiff. The tree branch, though safely off the ground, was not as kind to the body as a well-appointed double bed with its clean sheets and soft blankets and the warmth of Clyde next to him.

Clyde would be waking now. He’d feel around on the bed for him. He’d call him. When he realized there was no tomcat nearby, that he’d been gone all night, he’d stagger out to the front porch to call him, shouting across the sleeping neighborhood-as he had undoubtedly done several times during the night.

When no cat appeared, he would swear, pull on some clothes and, unwashed and unshaven, gulp a cup of coffee and go to look for him.

Joe had awakened twice during the night, the first time because he nearly fell off the branch. He had started to roll over, and only the jolt of the tree limb under his shoulder had jerked him fully alert. The second time he woke, the fog was rolling in, hiding the stars. He could not remember his dream, except that eyes watched him.

He shook his whiskers, washed his face and ears, and inspected his claws. He licked his stub tail then backed down the tree to hunt. It was while hunting that he figured out, in a flash of inspiration, how to keep Clyde from worrying.

Stalking the fog-shrouded bushes, he scented a wharf rat and tracked it. But though he was careful, he came on the rat unexpectedly. It was waiting for him, rearing up, its little red eyes blazing. He got only a glimpse as it leaped into his face.

They met tooth to tooth in midair. Before he could claw it away it had bit and raked him. It tore his cheeks and nose, just missed his eyes. He ripped it off, biting and clawing and at last got it by the throat and killed it.

He ate the rat, then licked the blood from his wounds, grimacing at the bitter, ratty aftertaste. Rats were never sweet like bird or mouse. He drooled cleansing cat spit onto his paws and cleaned blood from his face, and cleaned the wounds the little beast had inflicted. And he thought longingly of canned tuna, of the luxury of eating prepared tuna from his own plate, on his own chair at the kitchen table beside Clyde.

Boy, have I gotten soft.

But face it, he missed the little luxuries of a cozy home.

Maybe he missed home so sharply because he’d been driven out against his will. If he’d simply left for a ramble of a few days, the matter would be totally different. Choice was the thing. The freedom to choose when he wanted to leave and to choose when he wanted to return home.

Suddenly he wanted his own chair by the window, the chair which he had rendered over his four-year tenure into a frayed and comfortable nest overlaid with escaped feather stuffing and with a fine patina of his own gray-and-white fur. He wanted the comforting smells of home, too, the smell of Clyde’s morning coffee, of frying hamburger, the ever-present smell of dog and of onions and beer. He even missed the smell of Clyde’s feet.

Right now, this minute, Clyde was out searching for him, muttering,‘Damn cat. Damned useless cat,’ walking the neighborhood yelling his name, asking the neighbors.

When he didn’t show up, Clyde would phone the pound or go over there. That was what he did when the white kitten was lost, and that was where Clyde found her, locked in a cage; Clyde brought her home mumbling baby talk, and fed her on steak for a week.

He felt bad that Clyde was worrying. He valued Clyde. He and Clyde were buddies. He was the only cat of the household that Clyde allowed in bed, the only cat who ate his dinner on a chair next to Clyde’s chair. He and Clyde were pals. He knew how to get a laugh out of Clyde, and Clyde knew how to get a smile out of him. He didn’t like to worry Clyde-Clyde fretted over his animals. They were all the family he had.

He wanted to go home. And he couldn’t. He was alone with this and he would remain alone.

Until-when?

Until he got rid of his pursuer.

A rising wind parted his fur and nipped at his ears, and began to tear apart the fog, lifting and shredding it. One thing he could do-he could set Clyde’s mind at ease. He just needed to figure how to let Clyde know he was all right. Reassure Clyde, let him know he was safe and not to worry.

Well, so he’d phone Clyde.

The idea exploded like a light bulb blazing on, as in the funny papers. A light bulb over the cat’s head. He’d call Clyde. Tell Clyde he was doing okay.

Fired with inspiration, he moved away from the gnawed rat bones and stood up on his hind legs, stretching up tall to study the scattered hillside houses. All he needed was a phone. Slip into a nearby house through an open window or claw a hole in the screen, find a phone, and call Clyde. Why not?

Sure, and what if he was discovered, and the window slammed shut by an irate homeowner, trapping him inside? Trapped among strangers.

He looked down the hills, through the last thin wisps of fog, at the toy-sized village far below, at its shops crowded along the main street. Shops with phones, shops sparsely staffed this early in the morning, shops with wide, frequently opened doors through which to escape.

It might seem like walking back into the jaws of the dilemma. But he’d feel easier in those public places with plenty of foot traffic going in and out, plenty of hurrying feet which he could race past, to freedom.

He set off at a gallop down the hills. Streaking down through tangled yards and across narrow little streets, he swarmed away from several roaming dogs, and narrowly avoided colliding with a delivery truck. He soon hit Ocean Avenue.

The sidewalk was wet from the fog, the air sharp with the scent of eucalyptus from the long double row of big trees marching down the grassy, parklike center between the eastbound and westbound lanes. Trotting down the sidewalk, he wondered if he could handle a phone, if he could manage to punch in the numbers.

The doors of the shops were just being unlocked, the shopkeepers looking out through the glass, jangling their keys. A young man in jeans ran past as if he were late for work. And Joe hurried along himself, watching warily for the killer. And watching for Clyde. Just his luck if Clyde decided to have breakfast in the village and saw him.

He could never explain why he couldn’t come home. Clyde would snatch him up and carry him home forcefully, or try to. And while the thought of home was more than appealing, he was convinced that home was now a death trap.

In front of the little market, the greengrocer was arranging apples in a bin, the scent of apples sharp and sweet, mixed with the smell of celery. The scent from the fish market was sweeter. But he didn’t go near; he headed straight for the pharmacy.

Approaching the doorway, he dodged a departing woman, who pounded along in a pair of red high heels. He could see the druggist way at the back, behind a glass partition, filling orders. The shop was empty, no customers now. And he knew from listening to Clyde that old Sid worked alone, that the old druggist had solitary ways.

He could see the telephone up on the soda fountain, near the door. He trotted on in and slipped behind the counter, stood concealed within the dim space. Glancing down its length, he could still see white-haired Sid back there, intent on his little bottles. He was filling them from big bottles, sending a stream of pills rattling through a funnel. The old man was short, thick-limbed, and Joe knew that his hearing wasn’t keen. There were village jokes about Sid’s fanciful translations of what he thought he had heard. The doctors of Molena Point never ordered a prescription by phone; always their messages were written, committed illegibly to little white slips of paper.

On a shelf beneath the counter, wedged between a box of bills and a pair of Sid’s white oxfords, he found the telephone book. He clawed it out, broke its fall with his shoulder to dull the sound, and let it slide to the floor.

It took him a long time to fork the pages open to the D’s, then to find the right page for Damen. He felt stupid because he didn’t know the alphabet. But at last he found Clyde Damen, and, with the number firmly in mind, he jumped up onto the counter.

Gripping the cord in his teeth, he lifted the receiver off the hook and laid it silently on the pale marble surface. The phone’s push buttons were a cinch, once he figured out how to squinch his paw real small. Crouching with his ear to the receiver he listened to the phone ring.

It rang a long time. This was Saturday, Clyde always slept late on Saturdays. Or maybe he was in the shower. Or maybe he had a sleepover date. When a woman spent the night, Clyde made Joe endure the indignity of sleeping in the kitchen.

On the twelfth ring, when Clyde answered, panic hit him. What was he going to say? He couldn’t do this, this was insane. He didn’t know what to say.

“Hello?” Clyde shouted again. “Who is this? Speak up!”

Joe couldn’t speak, couldn’t even croak, his throat was dry as feathers.

“Who is this?” Clyde yelled. “Say something or hang up, it’s too early for games!”

“It’s me,” Joe said, swallowing. “It’s Joe Grey.”

He was certain that the minute he spoke, the pharmacist would hear him, but at the back of the store the old man didn’t look up. He could hear Clyde breathing.

“It’s me. It’s Joe-it’s really me. I thought I’d better tell you why I left, yesterday morning.”

No response.

“I thought you’d want to know I’m all right. I thought maybe you’d be worried, looking for me.”

Clyde shouted so loud that Joe hissed and backed up, his ear ringing.“What kind of sick joke is this! Who the hell is this? What the hell have you done to my cat!”

“Iamyour cat,” Joe said softly. “It’s me. It’s Joe. The tomcat who put three permanent scars on Rube’s nose and tore a patch of hair out of Barney’s muzzle that grew in black instead of brown. It’s me, Bedtime Buddy. Rakish Ruckster,” he said, repeating Clyde’s stupid pet names.“Favorite Feline.”

Through the receiver, he heard Clyde swallow. This was a blast.“Listen,” Joe said, “do you remember yesterday morning when I was wiggling around under the covers, then I got down and I was sort of mumbling to myself? Do you remember what you said?”

Clyde’s breathing was clearly audible.

“You said, ‘For Christ sake, Joe, stop it! It’s too damned early to be horny!’ Then you went back to sleep, and the window shades were getting light.”

There was a very long silence. Joe watched the pharmacist. The old man had heard nothing. His gray hair caught the light as he bent over his work wiping up the counters. At the other end of the phone, Clyde seemed to revive himself.“How-how did you know? Who the hell is this! How did you??” Then, after another very long silence Clyde said, “What-what is your favorite breakfast?”

“Cream and Wheaties with chopped liver,” Joe said, grinning. “No one,” he said, “no one could know that but me, buddy.”

“Who was-who was my date two weeks ago Friday?”

“Eleanor Hoffman,” Joe said. “Blond. Blue eyes. Little gold lace dress short enough to show her underpants, and a giggle like a steam train. I don’t need to tell you, Clyde, I don’t like that woman. She woke me up at three in the morning singing her insipid songs. It sickens me to watch you in the shower washing her back.”

The silence threatened to stretch into Monday. Then Clyde said,“If it’s really you, where the hell are you? I’ll come get you.”

Joe licked a bit of rat fur off his lip.

“Well, where? And why the hell did you leave! How come you can use the phone and you never told me?How come you can talk? How come you never told me you can talk?“There was another silence, then, “Christ. This can’t be happening. And isn’t this house good enough for you? Just because you can talk, you think you’re some kind of celebrity?”

“I can’t come home. Someone is following me.”

“What? What do you mean, following you? Who would be following you? What’s going on? Where the hell are you?”

“I-Trust me,” Joe said. “When I get this sorted out, I’ll be home.”

He licked his paw.“I want to come home,” he said in an uncharacteristic moment of sentimentality. “I guess I miss you.”

A movement caught his eye. The pharmacist had started up the aisle beside the candy counter.“Gotta go,” Joe hissed. “I’m okay-be in touch.” He leaped from the counter leaving the receiver off the hook and fled through the open door. Old Sid saw him and shouted. “Scat! Scat! Get out of here!”

He sped across the street directly into the path of a pickup full of firewood. He managed to dodge it, feeling the heat of its wheels. He gained the curb, panting. Leaping across the sidewalk to the grass, he turned east, moving fast up the tree-shaded median.

Within minutes of talking with Clyde he was out of the village again, headed up into the hills, still tense with fear but grinning with amusement.

5 [????????: pic_6.jpg]

Dulcie raced along the top of the cliff nearly swept off by the wind, wind pushed and shoved at her pressing her toward the fifty-foot drop. Far below her the sea heaved and crashed; and the man running behind her drew closer, forcing her toward the edge. In another instant he’d reach her and kick her over, down the jagged rocks. She was blinded by flashes of sunlight and by the swift shadows of racing clouds. Along the cliff’s ragged edge, she couldn’t be sure where the land fell away beneath her flying paws. The man was nearly on her; suddenly he kicked out at her.

She dodged, twisting away, leaped over his foot, and dived into a tangle of heavy weeds.

Crouching within the frail shelter, she stared out between the brittle stems.

But as he lunged at her she spun away again, fleeing away through the grass forest, heading for the street. Heading back toward houses and sidewalks where there might be people, where she might find shelter. Leaping across the sidewalk into the street, she didn’t see the car. Brakes screamed, a horn blared. She dodged into the path of a truck coming in the other direction, and felt its heat as she skinned to the far curb.

The man had careened away to dodge the truck. She flashed across a lawn toward a line of bushes beside a tall yellow house. Diving into the shrubbery, she felt her heart pounding like the heart of a terrified mouse when she caught it, fast, too fast.

And again the man was on her as she plunged into the bushes; he snatched her by the tail, jerking her painfully off her feet. She flipped over yowling and dug in her claws, raking and biting his arm.

He dropped her, swearing. She twisted away tasting his blood. Racing along the perimeter of the house beside a row of basement windows, she stopped and doubled back.

One window was ajar a few inches. She flung herself at the glass. The hinged pane gave. She leaped into black, empty space.

She dropped half a story, landing hard on a concrete floor. The fall jarred her legs and shoulders and bruised her tender paws. Crouching, she turned to stare up at the window.

He knelt above her, peering in. She fled into the cellar’s black depths, into the farthest corner, and hunched down, panting as he reached through.

His pale hand groped. He pushed the window wide, and swung his legs through. As he prepared to jump down, she ran blindly; and rammed her shoulder into a sharp corner.

Pain took her breath and made her eyes water. Dizzied, sucking in air, she saw that the corner belonged to a stairway. As he landed on the concrete behind her, she leaped away up the steps.

High above her, the basement door stood ajar. She careened up and through as he hit the stairs, her frantic paws slipping on the bare wood.

She stood in a hall. To her left, sunlight blazed through the glass of the front door. But the entry was too light, too open. As she swung away toward the next flight, the basement door slammed behind her. He had blocked her retreat. Running, she hit the next flight of stairs.

The pale tweed carpet was thick, and gave good traction. Her claws dug in, sent her flying up two flights, then three. The stairs slowed him. She could hear his labored breathing.

At the top of the third flight a door barred her way. The stairs ended. A high little window in the door was filled with blue sky.

She leaped at the knob, grabbed it in scrabbling paws, but it wouldn’t turn. She swung and kicked, but thought it was locked. He was on the flight below her. She jumped higher, against the glass, and could see a flat roof stretching away.

He exploded up the last flight and lunged for her. She flew at his face raking and biting, kicking, clawing. He grabbed her trying to pull her loose. She bit him harder and jumped free, fled past him as he clutched at his face.

She hit the steps halfway down, flew down the treads hardly touching them. Down and down, with the man crashing down behind her, the thud of his weight as he hit each step seemed to shake the whole house. At the bottom she swerved past the closed basement door into the bright entry.

A parlor opened on her left, and she glimpsed wicker furniture, splashes of green. To her right, tall double doors were closed. She could hear kitchen sounds beyond, could hear pots and dishes rattling.

The front door had no knob, but a latch one would press, and a long brass handle below it. She was crouched to leap for the latch when she heard children laughing, pounding up onto the porch. The door flung open.

She careened out between their legs amidst surprised shouting, felt little hands on her back, then she was through, diving into sunlight, then into shadow beneath a parked car.

She heard him shout at the children, heard him running, watched his feet approach the car. She ran again, doubling back between the yellow house and a white one, and scrambled over a fence.

She dropped from the fence into a tiny yard full of scattered toys abandoned among the rough grass. Behind her, he came over the top of the fence sucking for breath. She glimpsed his eyes, pale brown and glistening with rage. His face was red with his efforts, and bleeding. She streaked away over a second fence and through another yard, taking heart from the wounds she had inflicted. On she ran through uncounted fenced yards, not looking back. She heard him for a while running, and then silence.

She slipped under a porch and looked out.

She thought he was gone. She heard nothing. The yard before her remained empty, its deep flowerbeds and neat lawn tranquil and blessedly vacant beneath the warm sun. She was nearly done for, panting and heaving. Cats were made for short spurts, for the quick chase. Long endurance was a dog’s style. When she was sure she had lost him, when he did not appear from around the side of the green frame house, she trotted quickly away toward home. Longing for home, for the safety of home, her ears turning back to catch any small sound behind her.

Soon she was on her own street-she could see her own house, its pale gray stone rising so welcoming and solid from Wilma’s lush English garden. Once she was inside those walls, nothing could reach her. She fled the last block mewling, passed the front porch, and flew up the back steps and in through her cat door.

Wilma was in the kitchen. She stared down at Dulcie, and grabbed her up, holding her close, stroking her. Dulcie trembled so hard she couldn’t even purr, could only shiver against the thin old woman.

Frowning, Wilma stepped to the window and stood looking out at the street.

“There’s nothing out there,” she said, staring down at Dulcie, puzzled. “Was it a dog? Did a dog chase you? I’ve never seen you so afraid.” She set Dulcie on the kitchen table and examined her, feeling along her body and her legs looking for wounds. When Wilma’s probing fingers touched bruises, Dulcie winced. She examined each hurt more carefully, gently feeling for broken bones.

“I don’t think anything’s broken.” She said at last. She looked at the dried blood on Dulcie’s paws, then pressed so Dulcie’s claws were bared. She grinned at the amount of blood. “Looks like you got in some licks of your own, my dear.”

She carried Dulcie into the living room, to the couch, and wrapped the blue afghan around her, cuddling and stroking her.

Under Wilma’s tender ministrations, Dulcie began to relax. This was so nice, so safe and comforting. She was home. Wilma loved her. She nosed into Wilma’s warm hand, and a purr started deep inside her, the same deep, reverberating thunder she’d experienced as a kitten when she was totally protected and loved.

Purring, curling down wrapped in the soft wool, she didn’t stir as Wilma left her and returned to the kitchen. She heard Wilma open the refrigerator, and soon she could smell milk warming.

Wilma brought the bowl to the couch and held it as Dulcie lapped. She’d been terribly thirsty. She gulped the milk down, nearly choking. The afghan was so warm around her, the milk so heartening.

When the bowl was empty she closed her eyes. Her paws and tail felt heavy but her body seemed weightless, as if she were floating.

She slept.

For some time after the little cat slept, Wilma sat beside her puzzling over what might have happened. She had found no open wound, no bite mark, no real indication of a cat fight. She didn’t understand what those strange, hurt places were on Dulcie’s body, little areas tender as bruises.

Whatever had happened, Dulcie had certainly bloodied something. She hoped she did a good job on the creature.

The little cat was no slouch in a fight. Dulcie could hold her own with most dogs. And she wasn’t always on the defensive, either. She had been known to provoke other female cats unmercifully.

This little tabby was tough. Beneath that sweet smile, Dulcie was tough as army boots. Before she was a year old she had established in her six-block territory a realm of personal safety where no dog or cat dared challenge her. No, whatever chased her today must have been a stranger to the neighborhood.

When she was convinced that Dulcie was all right, Wilma left the little cat sleeping and went to get dressed. This was concert night. Tickets for the short season of the village concert were sold out months ahead, and tonight was a special appearance of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra presenting Schoenberg. She chose a full, flowered skirt and a hand-knit top, the first dress-up clothes she’d had on in weeks. As she opened her jewelry box and selected a cloisonne clip to hold back her gray hair, she half expected Dulcie to hear the small squeak of the lid opening, and come trotting in. The little cat loved to paw through her collection of barrettes; bright jewelry fascinated her asmuch as did pretty, soft clothes.

She heard no sound from the living room, and when she looked in, Dulcie was deeply asleep, out like a light. As she left the house, she thought of locking the cat door, of keeping Dulcie inside. But the idea of a gas leak or of fire, with Dulcie shut inside, sickened her.

If whatever had chased her was still out there, Dulcie would know it. She’d stay in. Or she would go only onto the back porch, where she could see the street but slip quickly away, back into the house.

She drew the draperies in the living room and dining room, and in the kitchen she pulled the curtains, wondering why she was taking such care. Whatever had been after Dulcie wasn’t going to be looking in the windows. Half the time she left the curtains open at night, as did her neighbors. She’d gotten spoiled, living in Molena Point. Spoiled and soft. In the other towns where she had lived, she had always covered the windows at night.

She opened a can of salmon, Dulcie’s favorite, and emptied it into Dulcie’s clean blue bowl. But she didn’t leave it in the kitchen; she hated to smell up the house with fish. She set it out on the porch, just outside Dulcie’s cat door, where she would find it when she woke.

She went on out the back door, locking it behind her, and along a little stone patch to the attached carport.

Backing out of the drive she looked carefully around the yard and along the street for strange animals. Heading down the hill toward the village, she watched the sidewalks, but she saw nothing unusual, no strange dogs. Only one man out walking, a thin, stooped figure walking away from her. She didn’t recognize him, at least not from the back, but the village was full of tourists.

Dulcie woke three hours after Wilma left. She knew at once that the house was empty by the quality of total silence, the air congealed into absolute stillness, a dead response to her seeking senses which occurred only in an empty house.

She prowled the rooms for a while, looking up warily at the windows. Wilma had drawn the draperies before she left. Usually she forgot. Twice Dulcie leaped up under the draperies, crouching on the sill to look out.

Each time she looked, beyond the cold glass the dark street was empty. And within the shadows of Wilma’s front garden, no one was standing half-hidden. No one standing against the dark trunks of the oak trees; and the flower beds and stone walks were undisturbed by any intruder.

Of the houses across the street, three were dark, and five had lights on. At the Ramirez house the porch light burned as if the young couple was expecting company. The Ramirez’s were one of her favorite families. Nancy Ramirez wore the prettiest silk nighties; and usually she left the back door unlocked.

She jumped down from beneath the draperies and warily approached her cat door.

The carport light shone in through the plastic. She sniffed the cold evening air that seeped in around the free-swinging door. She couldn’t smell the man, but she did smell salmon. Wilma had left her a nice bowl of salmon. Ravenous, she pushed out onto the porch.

She studied the yard and street briefly, then dived for a bite of the nice red fish.

A rank smell stopped her. She stared at the dark, rich salmon, and backed away. It smelled bitter.

The salmon smelled of death. Of poison. Her nice supper had been poisoned. She stood staring around the dark yard, sick with anger.

She knew about poison. The neighbor’s collie died last summer after eating a dead rat. Dulcie had approached the body of the unmoving dog where it lay sprawled across the lawn of the neighbor’s house. The time was dawn, the sky was hardly light. She was the first one to find the dog; it would be another hour before the family rose and discovered him there.

She had stood beside the rigid beast, shocked. She had never seen a big animal dead, only birds and mice. He was so still, his body so unlike the dog she had known. Empty. Horrifyingly still and empty.

She had liked that collie; he was always kind, he never chased her. Shivering, she had crept closer to the unmoving beast. She didn’t have to stretch forward to touch him, to know that he was dead, to know the hard, stiff, dry condition of what remained.

His spirit was gone. His tan-and-white body was nothing but a heap of fur. The sweet spirit of the collie had fled.

She had crept closer at last, and smelled the collie’s face, sniffed at his mouth.

He smelled bitter. A foreign, metallic bitterness.

Exactly like her salmon. She could taste the smell.

The thin, hunched man had done this. Had poisoned her supper.

A growl rumbled deep in her throat. She hissed at her supper bowl, then put her shoulder against it. Pushing, she shoved it across the porch and over into the pansies.

Jumping down, she dug a hole and pushed the bowl in-her dear blue bowl, that she loved.

She buried the bowl and the salmon deep, pawing flowers and earth over the mess, stamping the dirt down with hard, angry slaps.

Finished, she scented along the steps and soon found the man’s sour smell. She followed it. Ears back, tail jerking with rage, she tracked him across the garden through a low bed of leafy ajuga and along the sidewalk. Above her across the dark sky, clouds had rolled in to hide the moon. Following his trail, thinking about the poison, and thinking about his flying feet hazing her along the cliff, she flinched at every shadow.

Trotting up sidewalks and through gardens, she studied all the black concavities in the neighbors’ dark yards, but she saw no unfamiliar shape, only the black silhouettes of bushes and trees. But his scent was there, on the sidewalk. She followed it for two blocks before she lost it among car smells and the reek of dog pee. And even after the trail had vanished she pushed on.

She didn’t know what she meant to do if she found him. Sure, go for his throat. But her rage wouldn’t let her rest. Her poisoned salmon was the last straw.

Near to midnight, when at last her anger had cooled, when she calmed, and admitted the odds, when only her fear remained, she crept into the bushes to hide and rest.This is really not smart, to be out here alone,she thought. Not when he was probably lurking somewhere near, or would soon return to make sure she was dead.

She rested fitfully, startling at every tiny breeze. And when, half an hour later, she heard Wilma’s car pass on the street she rose eagerly and started home.

She was three blocks away when she heard Wilma pull into the drive, then heard the back door open and close. Then in a moment the front door opened, and Wilma was calling her. She let out a little responsive mewl, burst out of the bushes, and ran eagerly.

But as she passed a line of parked cars, she smelled him. She veered away, but he appeared from beside a carport, slipping out into the night. She ran.

Wilma called her again as she bolted away through the bushes-away from the man, but away from Wilma, too. Away from home.

She could not go home. Why had she thought she could go home?

He knew where she lived. Neither she nor Wilma would be safe. As he gave chase again, she streaked straight uphill between close-set cottages, flashing up across the narrow village streets wondering if she must run forever. Heading higher, for the wild hills, she prayed she could lose him for good on the tangled, overgrown slopes.

6 [????????: pic_7.jpg]

Clyde sat on the edge of his bed staring at the receiver of the telephone he held in his shaking hand. He felt as if he’d taken a blow to the midsection. The voice of the caller reverberated as if from some unseen dimension, replaying back to him an impossible message.

It’s me. It’s Joe Grey?Ithought you’d be worried.?I amyour cat. Bedtime Buddy. Favorite Feline? Cream and Wheaties with chopped liver? I don’t like that woman. It sickens me to watch you in the shower washing her back?

Some joke. Some twisted, sick joke.

Who had that been? Whose voice was that? Which one of his idiot friends? Who had the talent to pull off that kind of phone call? To make it sound so much like Joe Cat, and to tell him that personal stuff. Whoknewthat personal stuff? Who did he know who could pull that off, and not break up laughing?

He dropped the phone on the bed and stood up, looking around the dim bedroom. The rush of adrenaline generated by the phone call was making his stomach flip.

The drawn shades were awash with sunlight, bright rays creeping in around the edges.

He turned, stared at the phone. Maybe the phone hadn’t rung at all. Maybe he’d dreamed that it was ringing. Probably he’d dreamed the whole damned conversation.

That was it. He’d dreamed that the phone rang, and he snatched it up in his sleep. He’d dreamed he was talking to Joe. That had to be the explanation. The only logical explanation. It couldn’t have been one of his friends; no one else knew the things the caller had told him.

And no one-no one in the world could know exactly what he had shouted at Joe yesterday morning when Joe was pacing and muttering.For Christ sake, Joe, stop it! It’s too damned early to be horny!No one in the world could mimic the exact, irritated sound of his own voice at that precise moment, his own angry, half-asleep growl.

It had been a dream, a figment conjured out of his own warped mind.

For a minute there he’d really bought it. He could still hear the caller’s voice, so familiar, rasping and coolly amused, its harsh tone exactly like Joe Cat’s insulting yowl.

He got up, staring at the phone, then picked up the receiver and dropped it back in its cradle.

But the next instant he snatched it up again and threw it on the rumpled bed. He didn’t want it to ring. He wasn’t answering any more phone calls. The receiver buzzed for a moment, then a taped female voice told him to hang up and dial again.

“I didn’t dial!” he shouted at the taped voice. “And you can go to hell!”

He had to have some coffee. And he’d better get in the shower, get dressed for work.

It took him several minutes to realize that this was Saturday and his day off, that he’d still be asleep if Joe hadn’t called.

If Joe hadn’t?

He’d better get hold of himself.

Cats did not make phone calls.

Cats did not speak human words.

Cats communicated with body language. Cats said things with angry glares, with tail lashings and butt wiggles. They let you know how they felt by squinching their ears down or poking you with a paw. By hissing at you, or flipping their tail and stalking away. That was cat talk. Cats did not speak the English language.

He stood scratching his stubbled chin, knowing in his gut that the phone call hadn’t been a dream. Knowing that the ringing of the phonehadwaked him. Remembering the sunlight slashing beneath the shade into his eyes as he rolled over and grabbed the phone. Hearing that rasping voice.

The morning sun beat relentlessly against the window shades, thrusting its bright fingers more powerfully underneath like some nosy neighbor. His face itched; he hated it when his face itched. Staring at the demanding sunlight, imagining the bright day beyond the blinds, he got an unwanted mental picture of Joe stretched out in the sunshine somewhere, maybe beside someone’s pool, talking over the poolside phone.

He flipped up a window shade, causing the stiff fabric to spin dangerously on its roller. He stood at the window, staring out at the street praying he would see Joe come strolling down the sidewalk.

And knowing he wouldn’t.

Where the hell was the cat?

He needed coffee. He needed to talk to someone. He needed to see if the rest of the animals were different this morning.

What was he going to find in the kitchen? A tangle of chattering dogs and cats complaining about the quality of their breakfast? Bitching because he was late getting up?

He shuffled down the hall in his shorts; as he opened the kitchen door, a barrage of leaping canines hit him. The two warm, whining dogs pummeled and pushed. The cats yowled and wound around his bare ankles, tickling with their twining, furry greeting.

Neither the cats nor the dogs spoke a word. All remained satisfyingly mute. He petted Rube gratefully. The black Lab smiled up at him, then bent to lick his toes. Barney pushed against them both, growling as he competed for attention.

He scratched the dogs until they calmed down, then picked up all three cats, cuddling them in a huge hug, letting them rub their faces against his bristly cheeks.

When the cats began staring down from his arms at the counters, looking for some sign of breakfast, he put them down again on the floor. Stepping over the furry tangle, he filled the coffeepot with water and got the can of coffee from the cupboard. But he was still so upset by the phone call he spilled half the coffee grounds, then lost count of how many scoops. He ended up dumping it all back in the can and starting over.

That call was the perfect end to a rotten week. First the breakin at the shop, when his automotive tools were stolen along with a collection of shop gauges that would be hard to replace. The senseless burglary enraged and puzzled him. The thief could just as easily have entered the main showroom instead of the shop, could have broken the lock on the big showroom overhead doors and driven off with several million dollars’ worth of new, and vintage, foreign cars.

Why, with that fortune sitting in the showroom, had he chosen to burgle the shop?

Then three mornings later, Max Harper had shown up at the agency just before opening time, and that was when the real nightmare began.

The police chief had pulled his patrol car into the covered drive between the showroom and the shop. Harper’s thin, lined face had been more than ordinarily glum.

He’d known Max Harper since they were in high school; they had done some ranch work together, summers, and had rodeoed together, riding the bulls. Harper had joined the police force after four years at San Jose State. He’d married while still in college; his wife, Millie, had been in the criminaljustice program at San Jose, too, and had gone into law enforcement. She died two years ago, of a brain hemorrhage. The pain of her death was still raw for Harper. You could see it hidden behind his natural wariness.

Harper didn’t get out of the squad car, but sat behind the wheel frowning at him. “Beckwhite won’t be in this morning.”

“So? How come you’re relaying the message?” But he’d felt a chill begin. “What happened?”

Harper reached into his uniform pocket for a pack of cigarettes, and shook one out, and gave him a level look.“Beckwhite’s dead. He was killed last night.” Harper watched him carefully, at the same time seeing every movement within the shop where three mechanics were laying out tools preparing for their morning’s work.

His first thought, a trite reaction, was that Beckwhite couldn’t be dead, that he’d seen Beckwhite only yesterday. No, any minute now Beckwhite would come strolling into the shop from the showroom, carrying a paper cup of coffee from the machine, his close-cropped military haircut catching a gleam from the overhead lights, his grin self-satisfied even at this early hour. No, Samuel Beckwhite wasn’t dead.

“George Jolly found his body this morning, in the alley behind the deli. He’d been hit on the head, his skull cracked.” Harper struck a match and cupped his hand around the flame, though there was no wind. He blew smoke out through the opposite window. “No sign of anything that Beckwhite could have hit his head against. And it was too hard a blow for that. The coroner’s looking at it. He’s been dead since eight or nine last night.”

It had taken him a while to respond.“Has-has someone told his wife? Told Sheril?”

Harper nodded.“I went on up there.” He got a funny look on his face, but said nothing more.

The shock of Beckwhite’s death had left the agency staff confused, had thrown the conduct of day-to-day business into chaos. The murder had been all over the papers, local and San Francisco.

And the murder, for various reasons, had left him feeling uneasy. That unease was heightened considerably when, yesterday morning as he was looking for Joe Cat, he discovered that someone had tried to break into the house through the living room window.

When he saw the splintered wood, he had barged outdoors in his shorts and found a larger hole on that side, ragged and broken as if gouged by a tire iron or by a large screwdriver.

He had hurried back inside, staring around the living room. Nothing was gone-TV and VCR were there, CD player, all the electronic equipment. And then, because Joe Cat wasn’t nearby yowling for his breakfast, he grew concerned for all the animals. He headed for the kitchen; but when he flung open the kitchen door, the dogs were rarin’ to go, charging past him straight for the living room. Leaping at the window, roaring and snarling, they had put on an amazing surge of adrenaline for two fat old farts.

The window was so freshly splintered that it still smelled like new lumber. He had found no other damage to the outside of the house, and no sign that anyone had gotten inside. When he checked the study, nothing was amiss. The one item that concerned him was still on the desk, the small notebook lay in plain sight beside his checkbook. He had stuffed it under some papers, intending to hide it later.

The attempted burglary, just after Beckwhite’s death, had disturbed him enough to make him load the.38 snub nose he kept for traveling, and slip it into his night table. He could not help equating the burglary in some way with Beckwhite’s murder.

He’d known Samuel Beckwhite for six years; they were business associates though he did not work for Beckwhite. He rented the big repair shop portion of the agency in exchange for maintenance and repair on the agency’s foreign cars, and he serviced the vehicles belonging to the agency’s regular customers. A friend from his high school days, Jimmie Osborne, had brought him and Beckwhite together originally, suggesting the business arrangement. Jimmie was agency manager; he had worked for Beckwhite since a year after Jimmie and Kate were married.

He never could figure out why Kate had married Jimmie. Golden-haired Kate Anderson had been some catch for sour, humorless Jimmie Osborne.

Standing in the kitchen waiting for the coffee water to suck up into the machine, he finally realized he hadn’t turned on the coffeemaker. He flipped the switch, the red light came on, and the machine gasped a pneumatic wheeze. He yawned and adjusted his binding shorts. He hadn’t slept well. Every little noise had brought him up listening for the scrape of claws or the slap of the cat door.

And of course the early phone call jerking him from sleep, and that rasping voice, hadn’t helped.

Iamyour cat? It’s me, Joe Grey.

Forget it. Get your mind off it.

He removed the glass carafe and poured a cup of coffee, but the machine hadn’t quite finished. In insolent defiance at his meddling it dribbled coffee down onto the heating unit. The animals kept pushing at him, wanting breakfast.

He wondered who would eventually take over at the shop, or if Beckwhite’s would be sold.

Jimmie Osborne was next in command, though Sheril Beckwhite, of course, was the new owner. Since Beckwhite’s death, the office was chaotic. No one seemed able to carry on efficiently. There were endless glitches in the paperwork, unnecessary rewriting of sales contracts. And the relationship between Sheril and Jimmie didn’t add to agency morale. Who could have confidence in Jimmie’s managerial functions when they were conducted mostly in bed?

Everyone knew about the affair. He’d wondered whether Beckwhite had known. He felt sure that Kate didn’t know. Kate wouldn’t dream that Jimmie would cheat on her.

He wouldn’t have remained friends with Jimmie, except for Kate. He and Jimmie had had little in common, even in high school. But he enjoyed Kate, saw things in Kate that Jimmie didn’t see or didn’t care to see. She was wry and funny, and he liked her comfortable empathy for animals. She really loved his two old dogs and the cats, and she shared with him a kind of warped, animal-centered humor that bored Jimmie. He and Kate always had a good time together, while Jimmie yawned.

He would never overstep the bonds of friendship with the Osbornes, he had never touched Kate. But she was beautiful and fun to be with, and without Jimmie their relationship might have evolved into a good deal more.

It surprised him sometimes that Jimmie put up with their evenings together, with their potluck barbecues and casual spaghetti dinners; and with the animals, particularly the cats. Jimmie said he was allergic to animals, but he never sneezed. The animals avoided him, though, all but Joe Cat.

Joe always went straight to Osborne the minute they arrived, rubbing against his pant legs, methodically covering Jimmie’s freshly cleaned slacks with gray and white hairs. And Joe liked to sit on the couch beside Jimmie. He would remain close as Jimmie fidgeted. But before Jimmie got up the nerve to shove him off he would leap on the coffee table, deliberately spilling Jimmie’s drink.

Cats loved to do that stuff-they found high amusement in tormenting those who disliked or feared them. And Kate watched Joe’s pranks with a little secret laugh. Though she would never deliberately hurt Jimmie.

Given Kate’s beauty and charm and her obvious enjoyment of life, he thought it incredible that Jimmie would pursue this affair with Sheril Beckwhite. Some men couldn’t deal comfortably with the blessings of a beautiful wife; they had to find a cheap standin, someone flawed to make them look better by comparison.

He had known about the affair for months. He’d been surprised when Jimmie called him four times this week, looking for Kate, saying she hadn’t been home. He was surprised that Jimmie would care enough to call anyone. He hoped Kate had finally left Jimmie, and not just gone down to Santa Barbara as she sometimes did, to get away.

Kate deserved better than Jimmie Osborne, her blond good looks and blithe spirit and her bright outlook were wasted on Jimmie. He thought sometimes that Kate’s perceptive, almost fey qualities frightened Jimmie.

He refilled his coffee cup, letting his thoughts return to the subject he’d been avoiding, playing over again in his mind this morning’s phone call. Ican’t come home. Someone is following me? Trust me. When I get this sorted out, I’ll be home. Iamyour cat? I guess I miss you.

The dogs pushed against his bare legs, demanding breakfast. He pummeled them absently, letting them chew on his hand, then opened the cupboard and lifted out assorted cans. If Joe Cat were here he’d be up on the counter clawing open the cupboard himself, yowling and raking cans onto the floor, his bomb raid narrowly missing his companions, though they knew to stand out of the way.

The shaky feeling started again.

He needed to talk to someone.

Someone who wouldn’t say he was nuts, who wouldn’t laugh at him.

When the dogs had finished scarfing up Kennel Ration and began to slobber on him, smearing dog food down his legs, he pushed them outside into the backyard. The three cats looked up at the open door, but continued to eat.

The only person besides Kate who would listen to his crazy story about the phone call and not fall over laughing was Wilma.

He’d known Wilma Getz since he was eight, when her parents moved next door, up on Harley Street. She was in graduate school at USC, having returned to college after breaking off a bad marriage. She’d stayed with her folks during vacations while she interned in various law enforcement agencies. A tall, slim, stunning blond, she was his first love, her warm smile and her easy ways sending his eight-year-old libido into a wild juvenile spin.

Even then, when he was eight, Wilma had always had time to listen to him, always had time for a game of catch or to toss a few baskets in his driveway. Over the years, she had never lost her ability to listen and to ease him.

Wilma’s passion for law enforcement had taken her from USC to State Parole, then to Federal Probation and Parole in San Francisco, and then to Denver. She had retired from the Denver office five years ago. Returning to Molena Point, she had gone to work in the understaffed village library, where her thorough, almost picky approach to a problem was put to good use as a reference assistant.

He had to talk with Wilma. There was no one else who, upon hearing his description of that phone call and the reasons why the caller couldn’t have been any of his friends, wouldn’t suggest an appointment with a local shrink.

He poured the last of the coffee and carried his cup into the bedroom. He phoned the library to see if Wilma was free for lunch, but she’d taken the day off. When he called the house, there was no answer. Annoyed, he decided to run by. Maybe she was only out walking. He hung up the phone, tossed his shorts in the laundry bag, and got in the shower.

7 [????????: pic_8.jpg]

At the foot of the Molena Point pier ran a boardwalk. The strip of muddy shore beneath it was never touched by sunlight. In that damp gloomy world under the pilings sour smelling puddles oozed, their surfaces scummed with green algae, their murky depths half-concealing empty, rusted beer cans and the sheen of broken wine bottles. A few boulders rose from the damp sand, and between these were strewn additional cans, fish bones, and sodden cigarette butts.

In the half dark between the puddles, the wet sand was crisscrossed with the pawprints of an occasional dog or with human prints, barefoot or with embossed rubber patterns. But the preponderance of prints were cat tracks.

Despite the damp, inhospitable environ, Molena Point’s few stray cats considered the roofed shadows their own. They moved from the area only when forced out by children or dogs, or by desperate lovers with nowhere else to find privacy. Then, routed from their home, the cats crouched in the bushes at the edge of the beach, waiting patiently to return.

The area stank of dead fish and of cat. The cat colony was small, and these few thin beasts were the only strays in the village. They were fed weekly by one or two elderly villagers, but they made their meals primarily on fish offal carelessly thrown down from the dock above as village fishermen cleaned their catch.

None among the strays had the courage to cross the beach and make its way up the village streets to see what better fare, or perhaps a better life, might be available.

None of the lean, starving cats had any notion of the elegant repasts offered in the alley behind George Jolly’s Deli. The mangy felines fought constantly over their meager fish scraps, and over the weekly, dry cat food. Sometimes a boy brought food, too, a skinny kid on a bike. He left not only cat kibble, but traps, placing several metal cages under the boardwalk, simple wire boxes with oneway doors leading in, but no way to get out. The cats were understandably wary of the arrangement.

But when all other food had been eaten, when they were desperate with hunger, one or two among them would chance the encounter, slinking in after the food. Caught there, the cat would eat his fill and then, unable to get out, would crouch in misery, though somewhat appeased by a full belly. Hours later the boy would return and take both cat and trap away with him.

The other cats didn’t notice that one or several of their number had disappeared, nor would they have cared. They fought over breeding rights, fought for no reason, fought constantly for the best damp, cold niche between the boulders, in which to sleep or rest.

In a dark concavity between the bank and a wet piling hunched a cat so filthy she looked like old, used scrub rags. For uncounted days she had hidden beneath the boardwalk, sleeping on the mud, drinking sour rainwater, fighting the other cats for fish scraps and for a place to rest. She had no knowledge of how she had come there. Her pale, dirty coat and tail were matted with mud, and her fur was marked with strange rusty streaks, as if she had been crawling though the rusty drainage pipes which emerged at intervals along the shore, spilling gutter water into the sea. She didn’t seem to care that she was dirty; she made no effort to wash herself. She avoided the other cats as best she could, and she stayed away from the gridded indentations in the sand, where the metal cages had stood, because the sand there smelled strange. Crouching alone, shivering, she huddled among the boulders hungry and confused.

This cat had no imprinted memories as would a normal cat, no recollection of an earlier life. No sense of where she had been before she came here. No reference of past, familiar smells or of remembered physical sensations. She did not remember ever being petted, had no memory of either stroking or of pain.

A cat’s memory is built on shapes and sounds and scents, on the swift movement of prey, on images which speak directly to her senses. Cold stone beneath the paws, wet grass tickling the nose. A warm soft blanket beneath kneading claws. Hot concrete warming a supine body, hot tarry rooftops to roll on.Soft words, soft hands stroking, or cruel hands. Memory of a screaming voice, of rocks thrown at her; of the shouting and abuses of small boys. Memories of hunting: the swift dive of a bird on the wind, the warm taste of mouse.

This cat’s memory held nothing. No lingering feline imprint of place or of experience. If she had a past, it was gone.

But she had retained one puzzling fragment: a recollection of sounds so alarming that when they assaulted her in half sleep she woke shivering and quaking. Sounds as unwanted as broken glass puncturing her paw, and she could not escape them. Within her confused memory, human voices spoke.

This was not the incomprehensible shouting of tourists on the walk above, or the softer voices of the village fishermen as they sat idly in the sun. These were words occurring inside her head, and they were spoken directlytoher, as if she should understand.

The sensation was terrifying. But yet the voices touched something deep within her. When they spoke, some presence tried to stir. She was riven by fear, but she was nudged by something more, by a sharp anticipation.

But each time the voices spoke, her terror won the battle. Each time they spoke, whispering, beguiling her, she hissed and dropped her ears and tried to back away. Shaken by spasms of fear, she fled into the darkest shadows, where the ground rose to meet the wooden walk.

But she could not escape. The voices were relentless, as bold as the thin, wild cats which hazed her.

Thus without joy she remained beneath the damp walk, fighting her small, incomprehensible battles. Thus she might remain for the rest of her life unless the voices could reach her.

8 [????????: pic_9.jpg]

Joe lay atop the marble posterior of a naked lady, one of a trio of pale nymphs caught in eternal frolic in the center of a plashing fountain. The figure he had chosen leaned over to splash herself, providing him with a long, sun-warmed resting place quite protected from the bouncing spray. From her sleek, sun-warmed body, he had an unbroken view in all directions.

Surrounding the fountain was a half acre of private lawn sheltered on three sides by an eight-foot stone wall over which, at intervals, cup of gold vines were trained. On the fourth side of the smooth green stood a three-storied Tudor mansion. The handsome structure was steep-roofed, with four stone chimneys, and had heavy oak half-timbers set at the corners between the creamy walls. Joe could see inside through a set of deep French windows, a sitting room furnished with soft blue velvet settees arranged on a pale oriental rug. On the creamy walls hung bright California landscapes framed in gold.

The midmorning sun beat down on the smooth marble, creating a little oasis of heat. Stretched out across the lady’s smooth rump, he felt his short tail flick with lazy contentment. He yawned. The beauty of this arrangement was that, even if he napped, and even with the noise of the gently falling water, he would certainly be alerted to anyone coming over the wall.

If Beckwhite’s killer came looking for him, a possibility extremely doubtful, the only other way in was up the drive at the far side of the house, or through the house itself. He had found, in this delightful setting, the perfect hideout.

And to cap it off, he’d never lived so well. He had landed in the lap of true luxury. He was so full of breakfast that he belched.

He had dined royally this morning courtesy of the elderly, round-faced housekeeper of the estate. She had served him leftover broiled salmon, a bowl of thick cream, and a selection of soggy canapes that included chopped goose liver and black caviar. Breakfast had been as fine a meal as he had ever been offered by George Jolly. Certainly it was far beyond the canned cat food that some people thought of as a suitable breakfast.

He had taken his repast on the side patio of the mansion, a wide stone expanse with a view of the eastern mountains. As he enjoyed his leisurely meal, the old woman pottered about nearby, watering her geraniums and singing little snatches of Irish ballads. She was a skinny little thing with a face like a ferret, but with a kindness for cats and with a sunny disposition.

Given the quality of the cuisine and the friendliness of the housekeeper and her husband, and the safety which the high stone wall afforded, the temptation to stay there was powerful. There was nothing to stop him from moving right in, establishing headquarters.

He could hear, at this moment, from around the side of the house, the voices of the housekeeper and her husband; the husband seemed to be the caretaker. They sounded relaxed and happy. Despite the elegant leftovers, they appeared to be the only humans in residence at the moment, and that suited him just fine.

Last night, when the housekeeper discovered him in the garden, she had seemed delighted with his company.

He had, growing tired of mice and birds, approached the back door, where he could smell a beef roast cooking. He trotted up the stone steps and stood looking in through the glass door, into a spacious kitchen and breakfast room. The breakfast room was done up in hand-painted tiles and flowered chintz, very bright and homey. His first mewl brought the old woman’s glance from where she was setting the table.

She had opened the door wide.“It’s a kitty. A stray kitty. Henry, come look.” And she had invited him right on in.

The husband was a small man with a huge brown mustache and huge hands. To be stroked by those hands was like being petted by a catcher’s mitt.

She did not offer Joe food until she had put supper on the table and she and Henry had sat down.

As she served the plates, she fixed a plate for him, too, much as Clyde would do at supper. Only this meal was out of Clyde’s league. She put the plate on the floor beside the table.

That meal had been just as fine as this morning’s breakfast, a slice of rare prime rib cut small and served warm and bloody, and mashed potatoes and gravy, all artfully arranged on a cracked, hand-painted porcelain plate. And for desert a dollop of rum custard.

A few days of this, and he’d be so fat he wouldn’t be able to run from a one-legged turtle, let alone from Beckwhite’s killer.

And yet despite the couple’s eager goodwill, or perhaps because of excessive goodwill, their attentions had left him with a cloying discomfort. They had been so friendly that by the end of the evening, when he demanded to go out, he had felt pushed, felt leaned on. They had let him out with worried little flutterings about whether he would return, and the woman had put a cushion for him outside on a chair.

He ignored the cushion and slept on the marble lady. She held the day’s heat until long after midnight.

But he dreamed that he was shut in a cage. And now as he lolled atop the fountain with little droplets of cool water bursting up around him, he began to feel watched. He felt a sudden powerful need to glance up toward the windows of the house. And he found himself flinching at every flick of a winging bird, startling at every blowing leaf, jumpy as a toad on hot pavement.

He stared down at the burbling fountain, blinking in the sun’s bouncing reflections, trying to shake off his unease.

But he couldn’t shake it, couldn’t lose the feeling that those two well-meaning folks would soon get pushy, try to keep him inside by the hearth whether he wanted to stay or not. Try to turn him into a tame little lapcat.

He would like at least one more gourmet meal before he left the premises, but he wasn’t going to chance it. It was time to go. Time to cut out. He leaped from the lady’s marble rump straight across the pool, through the fountain’s spray. Landing on the lip of the pool, he hit the grass running.

Streaking up the cup of gold vine and over the wall, he sailed down in one big jump, hit the woods running free, he was out of there. The leaves crackled and shook beneath his speeding paws, he charged at fallen logs and leaped them, drunk with freedom and speed.

But then, belting along through the woods, he began to think about Clyde. About how he missed Clyde.

He began to think about Clyde and the murder weapon.

Until that moment he had managed to ignore the possible connection of the killer’s bright wrench to Clyde. But truth was, that weapon that killed Beckwhite had looked exactly like the new torque wrench Clyde had purchased only a month before.

The package had come to the house via UPS, had been waiting for Clyde when he got home from work. The wrench was handmade, by a craftsman in England. It might, Joe had thought, not be any more efficient than a plain, manufactured wrench, but to Clyde it was cast in gold.

And now, with the wrench stolen among an array of automotive tools, and undoubtedly with Clyde’s fingerprints all over it, Joe could only wonder if the whole robbery had been for the express purpose of acquiring a suitably incriminating weapon; to wonder if Clyde was the patsy. If, when the missing weapon was found, Clyde might be taking his meals behind bars. Between the night of the murder, and the night when the killer tried to break into their house looking for a gray tomcat, the newspapers had been full of the murder. The weapon, ‘Possibly a piece of metal, perhaps a length of pipe,’ had not thus far been found.

None of it made any sense. But if he knew why the killer might want to frame Clyde, maybe he could piece together the scenario, maybe things would begin to add up.

One thing sure, if thatwasClyde’s wrench that killed Beckwhite, the cops mustn’t find it.

He tried to remember if the killer had worn gloves to prevent smearing Clyde’s prints, but he could not. He’d been too concerned with saving his own hide.

He broke out of the woods on the crest of the hill, stood staring down at the village. Somehow, he was going to find that wrench.

Studying the roofs half-hidden among the trees, he tried to find his own dark-roofed, white Cape Cod. To find a little glimpse of home. The time was midmorning, and it was Sunday. Clyde would be schlepping around the house unwashed and stubbly, probably still in his Jockey shorts, drinking coffee and reading the sports page. Barney and Rube and the three cats would be napping, either on their two-tiered bunk beds in the laundry or lounging in the sunny backyard.

He was scanning the village, trying to find home, when he glanced down and saw, among the low bushes, a caterpillar spinning its cocoon. Watching it, he was soon fascinated with how the wooly worm’s body accordioned so the stiff hairs of its pelt shot left then right. Amazing how skillfully it spun its continuous thread from some wonderful machine in its innards. Excitement touched him, keen interest. He found himself observing the little worm in a disconcertingly unfeline manner.

He studied intently, details he had never before fixed on. Watching the little beast at work, he was caught in an unaccustomed fever of discovery.

Any normal cat would bat the furry worm and tease it, play with it, crush it, maybe taste it. Though caterpillars were incredibly bitter. But here he was, fascinated by the caterpillar’s amazing skill. Its remarkable talent of spinning held him spellbound.

On and on it worked, spitting forth yards of silk, maybe miles of thin thread. The small animal humbled him.

And he realized, with one of those instant, earth-shaking revelations, that this amazing little creature was far too cleverly conceived to have come into the world by accident.

This creature had evolved by some logical and amazing plan. Joe was observing one small portion of some vast and intricate design.

Right before his eyes he was watching a miracle. Nothing less than a boundless and immoderate creativity could account for the complex and efficient little beast working away beneath his nose.

He hunched closer, absorbing every detail.

And this productive little being was only one minute individual in a huge and astonishing array of creatures. He couldn’t even conceive of how many beasts there were in the world, each with its own unique skills and talents. He trembled at the wisdom that had made caterpillars and cats, made dogs, birds, and lizards, made the whole gigantic world. It had taken a huge and astonishing intellect to conceive this endless array, an intelligence steeped in some vast mystery.

And I am part of it,he thought.Imay be strange and singular, but in some way I am part of the incredible puzzle.Then he smiled, amused by his own unaccustomed intellectual excitement.

Your normal cat would be bored silly with such philosophical conjecture. Your normal cat would stalk off in disgust. A normal cat did not study small creatures with the wonder of discovery, but with an eye to the kill and to a full stomach. A normal cat majored in battle techniques and killing, not philosophy. A normal cat was concerned with the destruction of his prey, not with its meaning and origin.

But face it, he wasn’t normal.

Life had been simpler when he hadn’t had such involving thoughts; but it hadn’t been as much fun. He liked his new ability to link ideas together-the possibilities held him drunk with power.

Only after some time did he shake himself and pay attention to his growling stomach. His inner discourse had left him famished; the mental exercise seemed as enervating as a five-mile run. Studying the hillside for fresh meat, he fixed on a nearby squirrel dabbling among the dead grass.

The squirrel watched him sideways, beady-eyed, shaking its tail in an irresistible flirt. The beast was fat beneath its fur; it obviously spent most of its time gobbling acorns from the abundant oak trees that shaded the hillside. The little beast’s swift, jerking movements spoke to every fiber of Joe’s cat spirit, drawing him into a crouching stalk.

But at his charge the little monster ran up a tree, leaped to the next tree, and was gone, leaving him empty-pawed and embarrassed.

He ought to know better than to chase squirrels. They always pulled that trick; flirt and scuttle around, luring a cat close, and then poof, up a tree and gone. And if a cat was fool enough to climb after it, the squirrel simply jumped to another tree. Or it fled high into the thin tiny branches that would break beneath a cat’s weight, leaving the cat mewling with frustration.

Abandoning all thought of squirrel, he watched the grass for low-darting birds. When he spotted a towhee scratching in the leaves, he crept toward it, silent and quick.

But then, in pursuit of the towhee, he crossed the fresh trail of a rabbit. At once he forgot the trusting orange-and-black bird and set off after the succulent beast, tracking it uphill.

He didn’t get rabbit at home; the neighborhood was too civilized. His hunting at home ran to birds, bad-tempered moles, and house mice.

The rabbit’s fresh scent led him through the tall grass to the edge of a ravine and down, into a stand of massed oak trees. Among the dark trunks lay a heap of branches and leaves where a gigantic old oak had fallen, a grandfather among trees, its prone limbs as big around as the crooked legs of elephants in some exotic TV special.

Silently he slipped down following the trail. Very likely the little beast had dug his den beneath the dense tangles of dead leaves and massed branches.

Yes, the scent led right on in. He pressed into the dark jungle of dead twigs and dry leaves, squinching his eyes nearly shut to avoid getting jabbed.

Something stirred ahead, in the blackness. He froze.

Something was there besides rabbit, something intently watching him. Something far bolder than a rabbit. And whatever it was didn’t mean to back off.

As he strained to see, two eyes appeared, catching the light, blazing like green fire.

Joe held his ground, scenting deeply, his nose and whiskers twitching as he tried to identify the creature, but he could smell only the rotting oak limbs and dead leaves.

The twigs and leaves crackled, and a small branch broke as the creature surged forward. Quickly he backed out where he had room to fight. He waited, crouched, his ears flat, his teeth bared in a cold grin.

The dry leaves rustled and shook and were thrust aside, and among the leaves appeared a small, triangular nose. Joe shivered, but now his trembling was not from fear. The green eyes slitted with amusement. He caught her scent now, delectable as sun-warmed clover.

She shouldered aside a branch and slipped out into the sunlight. Her eyes caressed him. Her little pink mouth curved up in a smile. She moved so near to him that he trembled.

She was delicately made, her dark tabby stripes rich as mink, swirled with pale tan and peach, her nose and ears tinted pale peach. She tilted her head, her look intelligent and challenging, filled with a keen curiosity.

Joe touched his nose to hers, breathing in her scent. Her warmth radiated through him like a hearthfire, and he matched his purr to hers. He longed to speak to her and knew that she would run or would swat him. He wanted to whisper love words to her, but dare not frighten her. He could only stare, purring inanely.

9 [????????: pic_10.jpg]

Sunlight turned the little cat’s ears translucent, as pink and delicate as seashells. Her green eyes laughed. But her look challenged him, too. She stared at him intently, with a deep curiosity. Her gaze turned him weak, made him want to hunt for her, want to bring her exotic and succulent birds. He imagined capturing for hercanaries and parakeets and white doves. He promised himself he would remain mute for the rest of his life if she would linger. He would never speak another human word, would do nothing to alarm her if only she would smile upon him.

Above them, clouds cut across the sun, sending shadows racing over them. In the suddenly diminished light the little cat’s pupils grew huge and black, the bright green receding to thin jade rings. Then the shadows fled past, and sunlight ran in a river over her rich fur. Her eyes were bright emeralds again, wide and seductive. Her whiskers brushed his cheek, sending a charge through him as violent as the time he bit into the electrical wire. She was a small cat, delicate and fine-boned. She did not take her gaze from his, but she lifted one soft, peach-tinted paw. Her gesture imprisoned him. She cocked her head, her eyes questioning him so brightly that he couldn’t breathe. Her pink mouth turned up in a smile of secret delight. He wanted to lick her delicate pink ears and nibble them.

But how nervous she was, her ears twitching forward and back at every stir of air, her body turning restlessly toward each innocuous rustle of small lizard or insect. And when a bird burst out of the bushes, she started and crouched ready to bolt away.

“No!” he cried. “Wait?”

He froze, horrified.

He couldn’t look at her. He had done the unspeakable. He had given away his terrible affliction. In a second she would run from him. Or she would hiss and strike him, claw him. He turned away, ashamed. He’d blown it. He had irreparably, stupidly blown it.

But she didn’t run. And she didn’t move away. When he dared to look, her gaze was filled with amazement.

She didn’t act like any other cat to whom he had spoken. Her eyes were wide and puzzled; but were bright with excitement, too. Her pink mouth was open. A soft panting trembled her throat. “What are you?” she said softly.

Joe’s world reeled. He gaped. His heart seemed to stop beating.

“What are you?” she whispered. “What are we, that you can speak and I can understand?”

He was drowning with pure, insane joy. He pressed so close to her he could feel her heart beating against his heart. She sniffed his shoulder and mewled, her cry so soft it made his skin ripple.“What are we?” she said gently. “What are we, that is like no other?”

Still he couldn’t reply. He could only stare at her.

She said,“You were there in the alley that night, you saw that man die. I saw you-you ran from him.” Her green eyes narrowed. “He tried to kill you, he chased you. I wanted to help, but I was afraid. I thought about you-afterward. I prayed you were all right.”

She had thought about him? His world tilted and spun.

“That man,” she said, hissing softly, “that man did not kill for food. He did not kill as a cat kills. Nor did he kill to protect himself. He killed,” she said, “not out of passion. He killed coldly. Not even a snake kills so coldly.”

“You were there. You saw him.”

“Yes, I saw him. And when he turned, he saw me. But he chased you-he couldn’t chase us both.” She laid her paw softly on his paw. “How can he know about us? But he must know, why else would he chase us, and follow us?”

“He’s chased you? Followed you?”

“Yes. How does he know about us? How can he know that we could tell what we saw? Oh yes, he’s followed me. He terrifies me. He almost caught me out on the cliff in the wind. He would have pushed me over. The smell of him makes me retch.”

“But,“she said, purring, “now we are not alone. Now, neither of us is alone.

“Now,” she said, laughing, showing sharp white teeth, “now, maybe that man should beware.”

Joe’s purr shook him, reverberating uneven and wild. She made him feel as no other cat ever had. She made him feel not so much riven with lust, as turned inside out with joy. She smiled again and nuzzled him, her green eyes caressing him. And delicately she licked his whiskers. Life, all in an instant, had exploded from mere pleasure and excitement into a world of insane delight. Nothing that ever happened, from this instant forward, could mar this one delirious and perfect moment.

10 [????????: pic_11.jpg]

Kate Osborne had no memory of entering the dim, smelly alley. She had no idea where she was, she had never seen this place. There were no alleys like this in Molena Point, alleys garbage-strewn and as filthy as some Los Angeles slum.

A dirty brick building walled the alley on three sides. It was built in a U shape to nearly enclose the short, narrow strip of trash-strewn concrete in which she was trapped. At the far end, a solid wood fence blocked the only opening, its gate securely closed. She had no memory of pushing in through that heavy, latched gate though it seemed the only way in; unless she had climbed out into the alley through one of the closed, dirty windows.

None of the first floor windows looked as if it had been opened since the building was erected. The small, dirty, first floor panes were shielded by an assortment of Venetian and louvered blinds as might belong to various cheap business offices. The dirty windows above-there were three stories-looked equally immovable. Behind their limp, graying curtains, she guessed would be small, threadbare apartments.

She stood in long shadow, as if the sun were low, but she couldn’t tell whether the time was early morning or late afternoon. Around her bare, dirty feet were piled heaps of trash, overflowing from five lidless, dented garbage cans. Smelly food containers, dirty wadded papers, rotting vegetables. The stink was terrible.

She felt disheveled, dirty. Her mouth tasted sour, and she felt as if she had just waked from a terribly deep sleep and from a dream that she did not want to remember.

She was breathing raggedly, as if she had been running. Her poor hands were filthy, and she had two broken nails: filthy nails, black underneath.

A faint scent of ripe fish clung around her, but of course that was from the garbage; the smell made her gag.

She was not in the habit of being filthy. She must look like a tramp. She could work in the garden all day and not get dirty. She prided herself on her neatness, on her clear skin and her well-cut, simple clothes, on the sleek trim of her blond hair. Now when she touched her neat, pale bob it was tangled into a mess.

Her jeans were stained with what looked like rust, and quantities of damp sand clung to them. The long sleeves of her cream silk shirt were smeared with rust, too, and with black mud. She felt so hot and sticky. She never let herself get like this. Never. Even her toenails were black with grime; and her lips were dry and chapped.

Her last memory was of home. Of feeling clean and well groomed, comfortable. She had been working in the kitchen, canning applesauce in her sunny, pale yellow kitchen, listening to old Dorsey tunes which had been reissued on CD-music recorded long before she was born, but music she loved. The cooking apples had smelled so good, laced with sugar and cinnamon. Their bubbling aroma, and the steam from the sterilizer had filled the kitchen like a warm, delicious fog. It was perhaps an old-fashioned thing to do, to put up applesauce. She and Jimmie had bought a bushel of winesaps up in Santa Cruz, coming back from a weekend in the city. She loved San Francisco. They always had a good time, but she’d been glad to be home again, tending to the simple chore of canning. It made her feel productive and useful, and the domestic endeavor always pleased Jimmie.

She could not remember sealing the lids or setting the jars to cool. She didn’t remember anything after standing at the stove stirring the warm, cinnamon-scented apples.

She felt in her pocket for her house key, but found nothing, not even a tissue. She wouldn’t have come out without her key even if she left the house unlocked-she had locked herself out too many times. She could not remember leaving the house. Why would she leave, when she was canning?

Somewhere, at the very back of her mind beyond what she could reach-or was willing to reach-a terrifying shadow waited to make itself known. She could feel the thrust of some chilling, unwanted knowledge. Something so shocking she didn’t dare to know. She pushed the presence away, stood frightened and shivering and alone, staring at the dirty brick wall.

Something she dare not remember waited crouched and silent, at the very edge of conscious knowledge.

She studied the building more closely. In a way, it looked familiar. There was a dark brick building like this south of the village, near the old mission, a bit of ugliness left over from Molena Point’s less affluent days. The space was rented, she thought, for small business offices. And probably there would be cheap apartments above.

She thought it was called the Davidson Building, but she had never been in it, certainly had never been behind it; she had no reason to come to such a place.

She was not in the habit of wandering into this part of the village. There was nothing down here but the mission, where she and Jimmie took their tourist friends, but it could be reached more easily by using Highway One. Besides the mission there was only a scattering of the uglier establishments necessary to a small town but kept apart, welding or the dry cleaning plant, various repair shops, warehouses, truck storage. The bus station was down here, and the train station. She did not frequent those places. Jimmie would be the first to tell her she had no business in that part of town.

Iam Kate Osborne. I am the wife of Jimmie Osborne. Jimmie is the Beckwhite Agency manager and its top salesman. My husband is very wellrespected in Molena Point. He is a member of the city council and he has been with Beckwhite’s for ten years. We have been married for nine years and three weeks. We live at 27 Kirkman, seven blocks above the village, in a yellow two-bedroom cottage that cost Jimmie $450,000 four years ago during a slack time in the real estate market, and would cost twice that today. We shop for our clothes at Lord& Taylor. Our house is beautifully decorated, just the way I always dreamed I would make my home, and we have a nice circle of friends, all professionals, all excellent contacts.

All, she thought, but one friend for laughs, one disreputable bachelor who was anything but upwardly mobile.

Clyde had begun as Jimmie’s friend, but ended up closer to her. She was more comfortable with Clyde than with any of the couples she and Jimmie cultivated and, strangely, was more comfortable in Clyde’s ragtag house than in her own.

She had made their house beautiful for Jimmie. Unwilling to hire a decorator, wanting it to be totally hers, she had hunted a long time for the perfect soft, cream-colored leather couches, for the handwoven fabric on Jimmie’s imported lounge chair. She had hunted many galleries and decorator’s showrooms to find the five handmade, signed Timmerman rugs for the living room. The sleek Boughman dining room furniture had come straight from the factory. Her signed Kaganoff place settings, arranged perfectly in the pecan china cabinet, had come from the potter himself.

Strange that she could see the bright rooms so clearly, but when she tried to call forth Jimmie’s face it was smeared and uncertain, almost like the face of a stranger.

She needed Jimmie. Right now, at this minute. She needed someone to help her. She was so shaky, felt far more disconnected from the world than when she woke sometimes in the small hours disoriented and terrified. As if she had been out of bed, out of the house. But of course she had dreamed that. Waking, she cowered away from Jimmie, frightened that she would wake him, frightened that he would see her so distraught.

Once when she woke up just before dawn, cold with fear for no reason, she had been shocked at the taste of blood in her mouth, so sharp and metallic a taste that she ran into the bathroom gagging-a taste as if she had eaten something unspeakably vile-and had thrown up into the commode.

Her only escape from those nighttime terrors, as well as from her recurring sense of confinement, was to walk the hills high above the village, to wander the steep winding lanes. Buffeted by the wind, standing in the cold, thrusting wind looking out at the sea and sky and the wide sweep of hills falling away below her, she could ease away those vague, invasive moments.

Alone among the hills she would feel peace descend, a quiet calm. Alone on the hills, she could be herself. And sometimes, up there on the hills, a delight filled her so intense it turned her wild-not a sexual wildness, but a longing to run, a strange and powerful urgency to leap away racing in the wind, free as some animal, wild and primitive, alive.

She could never explain those moments to Jimmie. The two times that she had tried, he was enraged. The second time, he slapped her. Almost as if he feared her joyous feelings, feared her happy, solitary rambles. As if he feared, most of all, her sense of freedom.

Had she been walking the hills when she found her way here into this alley? But why would she come here? There was nothing uplifting or exciting here. And why couldn’t she remember?

Hesitantly she approached the gate, trying to avoid broken glass and filth beneath her bare feet.

With cold, clumsy fingers she lifted the latch and pushed the gate open.

The narrow street was flanked by eucalyptus trees; their scent, and the rattle of their leaves in the sea breeze tended, at once, to ease her anxiety.

To her left above the trees, and quite close, rose the tan stucco tower of the old mission. And she could smell bread baking; she turned, and recognized up the street the blue roof of Hoffman’s Bakery. Yes, she was south of the village. She was on Valley Street, five blocks from the beach, but clear across the village from home.

She left the alley nervously, afraid she would be seen ragged and filthy. But, burning to get home, soon was running, and to hell with what people thought.

Just before Tarver Street she swerved to avoid a man leaving Mullen’s Laundry. He stepped directly in front of her, and when she tried to go around he blocked her and grabbed her arm. She tried to jerk away; she started to shout for help, then thought she recognized him. He waited expectantly, as if she should know him.

Yes, it was Lee Wark, she knew him from the agency. Wark was a freelance car buyer-he furnished the agency with many of its used foreign cars.

What did he want with her? She tried to back away, but he held her arm tightly. His eyes frightened her. She wanted to cry out, but she couldn’t seem to speak. When he didn’t loose his grip she went limp, and stood relaxed, watching him, waiting for the moment she could jerk away and run.

He was wearing a tan windbreaker and a tan print shirt. His clothes were respectable enough, but his slouched shoulders dragged wrinkles into the jacket, making it hang like a rag. His long rough hair, and the thick, skin-colored salve he had on his face, made him look dirty. She felt trapped by his eyes, light brown eyes, small and unpleasant, no hint of human warmth. Still he hadn’t spoken. She felt so cold, felt strange. She didn’t understand what was happening. He had begun to whisper, words she couldn’t make out, perhaps a foreign language, maybe his native Welsh. His unintelligable words terrified her; she jerked away, kicking at him. He grabbed her again. She hithim in the face and twisted, broke away and ran.

He shouted, pounding after her. She prayed for a shop to duck into, but she was beside a tall, solid fence. She bolted for the shops ahead, but Wark grabbed her from behind, spinning her around to face him.

His voice was so low she had to strain to hear. But now she wanted to hear, suddenly she needed to hear, she longed to hear every whispered word. His words made a rhyme, soft and foreign and musical, words flowing all together. Sweet, so sweet, like music. His hands were huge. Immense hands jerking her up, dangling her off the ground. He was a giant swinging her in the air, throwing her soft furry body like a toy. She tried to scream and heard a cat screaming. She dug her claws into Wark’s arm and leaped into his face, clawing and biting, wild with rage, hungry for the taste of his blood, relishing the feel of his tender flesh tearing under her claws.

He struck her. She fell twisting, hit the sidewalk on four paws running, dodging pedestrians’ feet, running from him. Her vision filled with shoes and pant legs. She skidded past the wheels of parked cars and beneath bushes, then across a street. Huge cars exploded toward her; tires squealed as she fled between them.

The village she sped through was both familiar and totally foreign. She saw streets and buildings she recognized. But mostly she saw the bottoms of windows just above her, the thresholds of doors, saw feet and wheels and skirt bottoms. She dodged between potted trees, seeing little more than the pots, leaped beneath newspaper racks. The smells from the pavement were sharp, smells of people, of dogs. The sidewalks were so hard under her paws; every crack and pebble telegraphed itself through her body by way of her flying paws. She heard her pursuer pounding behind her. But his footsteps grew fainter.

When she at last reached home, she had lost him. Or he had simply stopped following. She didn’t think until later that Wark already knew where she lived, that he had stopped by the house several times on business, once to consult Jimmie about a restored MG that Wark had bought for the agency.

Wark knew where she lived. He could find her any time.

Shivering, she crawled beneath the rhododendron bushes that edged the front lawn, the bushes she had so painstakingly planted, digging the deep holes herself, working in the peat moss and manure. Jimmie hated yard work.

Beneath her flowering bushes she lay licking the pain in her side where Wark had hit her. Slowly her breathing eased. She lifted an exploring paw and touched her long whiskers. What a strange, electrical sensation that made, the charge racing all through her. Her whiskers were little, stiff antennae sending intricate alarm messages through her entire body.

She flexed her claws, liking the feel of that, and she was amused to see Wark’s blood on them. Casually she licked it off.

How sharp were the smells in the garden, the spicy geranium, the bitter scent of the lantana growing along the sidewalk. Her ears flicked forward, then back, catching each hint of sound. She could hear clearly the sharp, bright, tin whistle call of a wren several blocks away. She could hear the loud rustle of a lizard across the yard, one that had got itself trapped in a discarded candy wrapper.

Each sound was many-layered, not flat and muffled as it had come to her as a woman. Even the breeze had far more tones than she had ever imagined, as did the pounding waves on the distant shore.

For the first time in her life, her senses were totally alive, as if she had just awakened from some somnambulant half-life. As she rose to prowl the garden, her pads telegraphed every turn of earth, every degree of warmth or chill or dampness. Wandering, she stared over her shoulder at her lashing tail, and she liked the feel of that, too. Tail lashing seemed as sexy and liberating as dancing.

She should have been terror-stricken at her transformation, should be screaming with horror, trying to escape the thing she had become. Instead she felt only delight.

For the first time in her life she was free. This keen-sensed, sharp-clawed, soft-furred and perfect creature was an entity all to herself.

She didn’t need Jimmie. She didn’t need any human companionship. She didn’t need money or clothes or even a roof. She could hunt for her supper, sleep where she chose. She had no doubt of her hunting powers, at the movement of each bird she could feel her blood surge, feel her body and claws tense.

She had no need, now, of anything human. She was absolutely perfect, and free.

11 [????????: pic_12.jpg]

Night closed quickly around the Molena Point Library. From within, the bare black glass reflected walls of books; and striking through the reflections, shone the branches of oak trees which stood guard outside the Spanish-style building, big twisted trees sheltering the patio and the street.

In the library’s reference room, Wilma turned off the computer and began to collect the scattered machine copies which were strewn across the table. Beside her, Clyde tamped a stack of papers to align the edges. They had been at their research, through the computers and books, since midmorning. Clyde now knew more about cats than he had wanted to know. The new knowledge was sharply unsettling.

Early that morning when he arrived at Wilma’s house, she had just come in from looking for Dulcie, from wandering the streets and walking the shore calling the little tabby cat. He had set out with her again, working their way through the village, searching for both cats. Not until they returned to Wilma’s kitchen to brew a pot of coffee, did he tell her about Joe’s phone call.

Of course he had expected her to accuse him of a bad joke. But he had to talk about it, get it out. He had to bounce that unnerving call off someone: the rasping voice, the mysterious and knowledgeable presence of a supposedly feline communicator. What he badly needed was a dose of Wilma’s sympathy and understanding. Maybe a dose of her more liberal outlook.

From the time he was eight, her supporting slant on the world had helped sort out his often confused views. His parents had been good and steady; but Wilma had supplied that extra something, had offered slants that sometimes were beyond the realm of parental conservatism. Wilma was able to see life with a rough, commonsense humor.

This morning, sitting in her bright kitchen, fortified with coffee and a slice of her homemade lemon cake, he had told her about Joe Grey’s call, expecting-waiting warily for-the wisecracks.

But she did not accuse him of a bad joke. In fact, her reaction had been remarkable.

Wilma had reminded him that catswerestrange.“That,” she said, grinning at him, “is the very nature of cats.”

“Hey, this is beyond strange. This is impossible.”

Wilma shrugged, pushed back a strand of hair that lay tangled over her shoulder.“Cats’ strange habits and strange perceptions, that’s part of their charm. Read any cat magazine, look at the letters they receive from readers. Cats are admired for their peculiar behavior, their sometimes almost-human behavior.”

She had recounted a dozen stories about the strange deportment of individual cats. She told him about a cat who would lie beside the telephone recorder and punch the button to hear the little message his mistress had left. She told him about a cat who liked to unravel balls of yarn, and while doing so would weave the yarn around chair legs, back and forth into intricate and sophisticated patterns.

“That,” Clyde said, “is not a normal cat.”

“With cats, what’s normal? You’ve read about cats who have wakened the family during a fire. And about the cats in San Francisco that alerted their households before the 1906 quake.”

“But that’s?”

“Of course a cat can feel the temblors long before people can. But, Clyde, it takes more than a dumb beast to want to alert his family. And what about the cat attack on a prowler? I read about that just a few months ago. Scratched the man so badly he ran out of the house, didn’t steal a thing. And the cat that saved a baby from strangling by summoning the child’s mother.

“They’re all documented. As much as any report by a cat owner can be documented.” She cut another slice of lemon cake for him, and filled his coffee cup.

“Look,” he said, “this isn’t just unusual behavior. Not like those examples. It’s?”

“Impossible,” she said, and shrugged. “What we need is more information. Before you think you’ve gone over the edge, let’s see what we can find out.”

He had not expected this reaction. He should have. Wilma was never one to let popular conceptions influence her.“And,” she said, “if Joe Cat did phone you, if you aren’t the butt of some joke-which of course is entirely possible-then maybe Joe’s not alone.”

“Not alone?”

“Why would he be the only cat with such talents?” “Are you thinking of Dulcie? But she?” “I don’t know what I’m thinking. Let’s go over to the library, see what we can learn. You’re not going to find Joe until he wants to be found.” “But Dulcie hasn’t come home, either.”“Let’s go, Clyde. I worry about that cat too much. She’s good at taking care of herself.” She finished her coffee and cake, and rose.

Within ten minutes they were settled in the library reference room, and into the computer, pulling up references to cats in history, cats in folklore, cats in mythology. Within an hour they had begun to find unsettling references, tucked into more mundane material.

And then from the veterinary school at Davis they found several references to strange behavior in the feline.

Accessing the Internet, they printed out the pages. Wilma copied entries, as well, which were not strange in themselves but which might add to the overall picture. She was intrigued by articles on the building of the Panama Canal, when crates of alley cats had been imported by freighter to fight the overwhelming wharf rat population. She found similar references about the importation of stray cats to San Francisco during the gold rush, to control the rat infestation along the wharves. A local folklore of amazing cat stories had grown up, intertwined with gold rush tales.

Their research formed a disturbing fabric. Wilma was fascinated, as if their discoveries answered some urgent question of her own. He didn’t realize the library was closing until the overhead lights began to go off, throwing the corners into darkness. “I thought they stayed open until nine.”

“It is nine.” She gave him an exhausted and satisfied smile, and began to collect their scattered copies. “I need a beer, I feel-shaky.”

“I need three beers and a hamburger.”

She brushed a fleck of computer paper from her sweatshirt.“Let’s run by my place first. Just-to see if Dulcie’s come home.”

They retrieved Clyde’s car from the library parking lot and swung by both houses. Neither Joe nor Dulcie had come home. Clyde fed his animals, and let them out for a few minutes, then they headed for Marlin’s Grill. Driving slowly along the lit village streets past the few shops and galleries still open, past planters of flowers blooming beneath the reaching oaks, they watched for the two cats. Through the open car windows, the sea wind was damp and cool. They were quiet as they parked in front of Marlin’s.

The grill’s plain wood storefront made a stark contrast to the glittering glass and chrome high-tech gallery on its right, and to the used-brick building on the left, with its deep, flowered entry patio and exclusive decorator studio.

Marlin’s Grill had no potted plants framing its door. No fresh, modern persona. It was dismally dated. Just a plain pine, 1950s exterior. And the interior was equally uninspired.

Marlin’s was the product of a time when knotty pine paneling, inside and out, was big. The present management had seen no reason to change what had once been popular. Marlin’s was possibly the only business establishment in Molena Point that was not regularly refurbished to a bright, exciting new interior. But who needed to redecorate, when the hamburgers were the best in town and the seven varieties of draft the best you could get anywhere on the coast.

Over the years, Marlin’s yellow wood walls had darkened to the color of dead oak leaves. The leather upholstered booths were worn and cracked, but were deep, comfortable, and private. Clyde and Wilma sat at the back, away from the few other customers. They ordered an English dark draft, and rare burgers with onions and Roquefort.

When the Latin waiter had brought their beer and gone away, Wilma said,“Just before we left the library, when I went back to my office, Nina Lockhart told me that someone else has been interested in the material on cats.”

“Oh? But not the kind of material we dug out.”

“Exactly the same material. The same references.”

Clyde watched her uneasily.

She said,“I remember the man, he came in late last week. I remember Nina helping him.” She sipped her beer. “Nina pulled up the same entries we used. She brought him the same books.” She set down her glass. “She plugged into the Internet, helped him copy the same pages we copied. I was working in a carrel across the room. I remember him because he seemed uncomfortable and hurried.”

The soft overhead light brightened her steel-colored hair and the silver clip that held it.“He didn’t notice me until around midmorning. But then, when he looked up and saw me, he looked shocked. Looked as if he knew me. He stared at me hard, then snatched up his copies and left.”

Wilma sipped her beer.“He didn’t finish copying the references Nina had set out, he just left.”

“Who was he? Do you know him?”

“I’ve seen him around the village. I don’t know who he is.”

“He couldn’t be an old parolee?”

“No.” She laughed. “That man was never on my caseload.”

“Did he check out books? His name would?”

“He didn’t check out anything, just made copies. He didn’t tell Nina his name, and he’s not a regular patron. A thin man, tall and quite stooped. Light brown, straight hair down to his shoulders, muddy-looking eyes. Some kind of scars on his face and hands, covered over with flesh-colored makeup. Nina said it looked disgusting. He wore a tan windbreaker, tan cotton sport shirt, dirty white running shoes. Nina said he had a British accent. I could hear a little of it from where I sat. Lyrical-I’d say maybe Welsh-a poetic lilt. Charming, but amusing in such a dour man.”

Clyde had set down his beer.“That was Lee Wark.”

She waited.

“He’s Welsh, been over here about ten years. A freelance used car agent. He deals with us, picks up special models for us across the country. Are you sure it was cats he was researching?”

“Of course it was cats. I told you, the same references we were using. What else do you know about him?”

“Not much. I think he grew up in a small fishing village on the Welsh coast. I get the impression his family didn’t have much, that they were dirt-poor.”

“Welsh,” she said, making circles with her beer glass on the table. “The Welsh are raised on the old folktales, on Selkies, Bogey Beasts, the shapeshifting hounds.”

The waiter brought their hamburgers. His English wasn’t too good, he had trouble understanding that Clyde wanted mustard. He returned with catsup, Tabasco, steak sauce, and mustard, and seemed pleased with himself that he had covered all possibilities.

Clyde spread a thin layer of hot mustard on his French hamburger roll.“This is weird. Why the hell does Wark want to know about cats?”

Wilma shrugged,“I don’t like coincidences. If Wark’s connected with the agency, maybe I can learn something about him, some reason for him to be interested in cats, from Bernine Sage.”

“I didn’t know you and Bernine were friendly.”

“We’re not close friends, but she’s useful. You’ve forgotten, we worked together in San Francisco.”

He remembered then. Bernine had been a secretary in the U.S. Probation Office the five years Wilma was there. He wasn’t fond of Bernine. She had been Beckwhite’s secretary, and was the agency’s head bookkeeper, a striking redhead who always dressed to the teeth, smart orange outfits, pale pink blazers. She was a woman who used the truth as it suited her, bending it for maximum advantage. At one time, Bernine had had a thing with Lee Wark. They had lived together during his swings through Molena Point.

Wilma finished her fries, drained her beer, and handed the briefcase across the table. They paid the bill and headed for her place, Clyde driving slowly, watching the streets. When he dropped her off, even before he pulled out of the drive he heard her calling Dulcie. His last view as he drove away was Wilma’s thin figure in jeans and sweatshirt, standing alone in her yard calling her lost cat.

At home he dropped the briefcase on the couch and yelled for Joe. No response. He hadn’t really expected any. He petted the dogs and the three cats, talked to them and gave them a snack. While the animals ate their treats he straightened their beds in the laundry room.

He had removed the door between the laundry and the kitchen, and had installed a narrow, two-bunk bed against the wall between where the washer and dryer stood and the corner. The dogs had the bottom mattress. The cats had the top; they could jump up onto the dryer, then onto their bunk, enjoying a private aerie that the dogs couldn’t reach.

Both beds were covered with fitted sheets which could be easily laundered, and each bed had several cotton quilts that could be pawed into any required configuration. Finished with bed making, he popped a beer and went out to the backyard.

He called Joe, certain that the tomcat wasn’t anywhere near. The stars looked very low, very large. The sea wind was soft; the distant surf pounded and hushed. The sound was steady, reassuring. He sat down on the back steps and thought about Joe Cat. He thought about the old Welsh tales, about cats which were more than cats.

He sat for a while staring at nothing, then drained his beer and went back in the house.

The three cats lay upon their bunk, the white cat’s paw and muzzle draped over the side, looking down at him and purring. Rube and Barney were in their lower bed lying on their backs, all legs up, in a tangle of quilt. He rubbed their stomachs and said good-night, then poured a brandy and took Wilma’s briefcase to bed.

Half-reluctantly, half-fascinated, he sat in bed sipping brandy and reading again the results of their search. Reading about hillside doors into unknown caverns, about strangers appearing suddenly in a small, isolated village. About the sudden appearance of dozens of cats in a little Italian town, as if from nowhere. He read about hidden doors into Egyptian tombs built for the exclusive use of cats. Doors to where? Why would a live cat need a door in a tomb?

Twice he got up, pulled on a robe he seldom wore, and stood in the open front door calling Joe. Three times he picked up the phone and listened for the dial tone to be sure it was working. When he fell asleep, with the light on, he slept badly.

12 [????????: pic_13.jpg]

Kate gave a final lick to her paws and rolled over on the lawn in front of her house, letting her clean feet flop in the air above her, the fur bright now, and soft, a pale creamy shade.

The rest of her was still filthy. She couldn’t bear to lick off all that dirt. She had clawed the worst of the caked mud from her tail but it still looked like a dirty rope. She rolled back and forth, trying to rub dirt off on the grass, then rose and checked the street for any sign of Lee Wark.

There was no one on the shady street. Beneath the oaks, only two cars were parked, both belonging to neighbors. When she was sure Wark hadn’t followed her, she got up, stretched, and trotted around the side of the house and down the little walk between her flower beds. How strange that the yellow and orange flowers of her gazanias reached to her chin, and her irises towered above her.

Leaping to the back porch, she jumped up the screen door, snatching at the latch. She pulled and kicked until she had forced the screen open, and slid in between the screen and the solid door; the screen hit her hard on the backside.

Trapped between screen and door, she leaped again, gripping the knob between her paws, swinging boldly until it turned.

She was in, dropping down to the cool floor of her own bright kitchen.

The room seemed huge. The skylight rose incredibly high. Far above her, through its curved plastic, the late afternoon sun sent slanting shadows down her pale oak cabinets and yellow walls. Time to start dinner.

The thought hit her with a knee jerk reaction.

She lashed her tail, amused. From now on, Jimmie was fixing his own dinner.

But she guessed he had been fixing his meals-the kitchen stank of dirty dishes. She wondered how long she’d been gone.

Didn’t he know how to rinse a dish, how to open the dishwasher? The floor tiles needed scrubbing, too. They were incredibly sticky. She sniffed at a spot of catsup near the refrigerator, and at a smear of jam. Every stain was magnified, both in smell and by her close proximity. People who owned cats ought to think how a dirty house looks to someone ten inches tall.

She had an unbroken view of the undersides of cabinets, and of the dust under the refrigerator. Far back beneath the stove lay the handle of a broken cup; she remembered throwing that cup in a fit of temper.

She had been alone. She hadn’t thrown it at Jimmie, though he had been the cause of her rage. She seldom let him see her anger, seldom let him know how he hurt her.

But that was past. Now, he could go torment some other woman.

When she leaped to the counter, her paws stuck in something he had spilled. It smelled like pickle juice. The sink was piled with dirty dishes. She stepped over egg-caked plates and pawed at the faucet handle until it released a drip of cold water. Hadn’t he cooked anything but eggs? Maybe his cholesterol would do him in, and good riddance. She was thinking not at all like Kate Osborne.

Being a cat was more than liberating, it was salvation, a lovely reprieve.

She licked at the thin stream of running water until her thirst was slaked, then sniffed at her canning kettle, which Jimmie had dumped in the sink with dried applesauce clinging. There was no sign of the golden jars of applesauce that should be standing on the counter. She wondered if she’d already put them away. Or if Jimmie, in a fit of rage because she was gone, had thrown them out.

Well if he had, there was nothing she could do about it. Besides, cats didn’t eat applesauce. Or, she supposed they didn’t.

Though at the moment, it didn’t sound bad. She was very hungry-she didn’t know when she’d last eaten, but it felt like weeks. She wondered what she might have devoured beneath the wharf.

She pawed the bread box open but it was empty. She eyed the refrigerator, but gave that up. She certainly wasn’t going to lick up dried egg from Jimmie’s abandoned plates.

She leaped down, crossed the kitchen, and went to inspect the living room, amused by the wobbly feel of the thick Timmerman rugs under her paws. Their softness made her want to claw, but she didn’t claw those lovely pieces. She scratched deep into the little Peruvian throw rug she kept before the front door to catch dirt. Raking long, sensual pulls at its center, she luxuriated in the delicious stretch of muscles down her legs and shoulders, the delightful stretch along her back.

She wandered the rooms aimlessly, looking up at the undersides of the furniture, and jumping up onto tables and onto the desk. She slid on her belly into the space beneath the couch, rolled over, and clawed a length of black dust cloth from the springs, then wondered why she’d done that.

In the center of the living room, on the slick oak floor, she chased her tail, spinning in circles, crashing into the rugs, giddy and laughing. She longed to race into the bedroom and stare into the mirror.

And she was terrified to look.

The idea of facing her own mirror and seeing it nearly blank, of looking into the glass where she combed her hair and put on lipstick, and seeing only a small cat looking back at her, was more than she could handle.

She delayed as long as she could, dawdling through the rooms, pawing at a loose fringe on the guest room rug, playing with a wadded-up scrap of paper Jimmie had dropped in the hall. But at last she padded into the bedroom and gathered herself, both in body and in mind, and leaped up onto the dresser facing her silver-framed mirror.

An incredibly ugly alley cat stared back at her.

Her color was the dirty gray of filthy scrub rags. Her fur was caked with dirt, her tail, that poor thin appendage looked, despite her efforts, like something that should be dropped in the trash. She was just a grimy cat skin stretched over thin, pitiful bones.

Standing on her dresser between her pretty, cut glass perfume bottle and her enameled powder box, a wailing mewl of rage escaped her. Sickened by the sight of herself, she began vehemently to wash, gagging at the taste of her dirty fur. She had to get the grime off, even if it made her throw up.

Licking, she could taste ancient fish on herself, and mud, and who knew what else. This was terrible, how did cats stand this?

But soon under her enraged washing her fur began to brighten, to grow lighter. A pretty creaminess began to appear, like the fur on her paws. And as her freshly washed fur began to dry, it began to fluff.

And she started to like the feel of licking, the feel of sucking away all the dirt. A surprising saliva came into her mouth, an aromatic spit that flowed sweet and cleansing, slicking into her fur and wiping away the filth, fluffing and brightening. Soon she was washing with a vengeance; she got so energetic about it that she nearly shoved her nice perfume bottle off the dresser.

As she removed the dirt she discovered little wounds, some quite sore, hidden beneath her fur, as if she had been fighting. Vaguely she remembered cat fights, brawling tangles, a lot of screaming and yowling. And for what? A rotten fish head or a patch of wet earth on which to curl up shivering.

Licking and salivating, drawing her tongue in long satisfying strokes, she was growing whiter. She had established a nice rhythm, pulling her barbed tongue down her sides and along her legs. Carefully and lovingly she groomed, attending to her pale, creamy chest, to her little, pink-skinned tummy, spitting on a paw to wash her face. It took a long time to get all her face and ears and the back of her head clean. The mirror was a great help, allowing her to check for missed spots. How could a cat wash properly without a mirror?

When she was satisfied with her face she reluctantly tended to her tail and to her hind parts, though she avoided certain areas. To lick herself there would take some getting used to.

It took a long time to clean herself up, but at last every inch shone creamy and fluffed. Staring into the glass at herself, she purred and posed. She turned around, gazing over her shoulder, vamping. She was the color of rich cream, her fur dense and short, as thick and soft as ermine. And her creamy coat was marbled all through with fascinating orange streaks, she had never seen a cat like herself. She looked as delicious as an exotic desert, like a rich vanilla mousse with orange marmalade folded in.

She was a big cat, rounded and voluptuous. The tip of her nose was shell pink, matching the translucent insides of her pink ears. Her eyes were huge and golden. When she opened them wide they were like twin moons.

Her creamy tail was fluffy now, and was delightfully ringed with orange, as if she wore wide golden tail bracelets. And when she smiled at herself, thinking giddily of the Cheshire cat, her teeth were very sharp, very white, as businesslike as her long, curving claws. How nice to flex her claws, to admire their sharp, curving blades. To think about them cutting deep into Lee Wark’s soft flesh.

She grew nearly drunk with admiring herself and with considering the possibilities of this new body. What stopped this delightful adulation was that she stared at the bedside clock and realized it was after six, that Jimmie would be home. She was standing on the dresser twitching the end of her tail, wondering what to do, when she heard his car in the drive.

As she listened to the back door open and heard him cross the kitchen, she wondered what would happen if he found a cat in the house.

What would he do if he found himself alone in the house with a cat? If he were stalked through his own house by a snarling, predatory cat? She licked a whisker, playing over a variety of scenes.

But she had seen him throw rocks at dogs in the yard and smile when he hurt them. And once he had hit a cat on the highway but hadn’t stopped-she had been unable to make him stop. She had come home weeping, had driven back there alone; she had searched for hours, until it grew dark, but she couldn’t find it.

He was coming down the hall. His approaching footsteps sent a sudden terror through her. Chilled, she leaped off the dresser and dived under the bed.

Crouching deep under, in the faintly dusty dark, she watched his black oxfords move past the bed, heard him drop his keys on the dresser. In a moment he would dump his clothes on the chair, then get into the shower. She startled when he called her name.“Kate? Kate, are you here?”

Shocked, alarmed, she backed deeper under. Her backside hit the wall with a thump. Oh, God, had he heard her?

But it was only a soft thud. She stiffened when again he shouted.

“Kate! Are you home?”

But he was only calling the Kate he knew, as he called her every night. When he received no answer, he grunted with annoyance.

He hadn’t taken off his clothes, hadn’t gone into the shower. He sat down on the bed, creaking the springs, and she heard him pick up the phone. She listened with interest as he called the Blakes to see if they had any news of her. His effort made her feel better, as if maybe he did care.

He called the Harmons, the Owens, the Hanovers asking if they’d seen her yet. She didn’t know whether to feel ashamed at the concern she was causing him, or to enjoy his distress. She listened with interest as he called Clyde.

He told Clyde she still hadn’t come home, and then he sympathized thinly with Clyde’s own plight, which seemed to be that Clyde’s cat was missing. Jimmie said that after all it was a tomcat, what did Clyde expect? The cat would come home when it couldn’t screw anymore. He reminded Clyde that he, Jimmie, was missing hiswife,not a cat. Clyde must have said something rude, because Jimmie snapped, “Maybe, but I doubt that!” and he hung up, banging the phone.

He made one more call.

Why would he call Sheril Beckwhite? She sat up straighter, hitting her head on the bedsprings.

But of course he would call Sheril, she was so recently widowed, she needed all the friends she could get. When Samuel was killed, everyone at the shop had rallied around to help her. Jimmie would be calling to help out in some way, do one of the little kindnesses. The fact that he was being extraordinarily thoughtful regarding Sheril did strike her. Jimmie didn’t ordinarily go to any particular trouble over people.

But after all, Sheril had been his boss’s wife.

When Sheril answered, Jimmie’s voice was not that of a helpful friend. It was soft and intimate. Kate felt her claws reaching and retracting, felt her tail whipping against the carpet.

He told Sheril he would just get some fresh clothes and drop off his laundry, then he’d be over, that he’d pick up a couple of steaks and a bottle of brut.

Steaks? Brut? She didn’t know whether to leap out and claw him, or to fall over laughing. Cheap Sheril Beckwhite and dull, unimaginative Jimmie. That should be an exciting evening.

But how degrading that he had betrayed her with Sheril, of all the women they knew. Why Sheril? How perfectly ego-destroying.

Though in truth, she realized, she didn’t give a damn. She wondered how long he’d been seeing Sheril. She was embarrassed that she hadn’t guessed. Not a clue. How many people knew? How many people were laughing because she didn’t know?

She wondered what Sheril was like in bed.

Maybe Sheril did things she didn’t do, things that would shock Jimmie if she did them. The bitch syndrome. The good girl, bad girl syndrome. She had to stop her tail from lashing and thumping against the carpet; he was going to hear her.

She waited quietly until Jimmie had left the house-with his clean clothes and his laundry in two paper bags. Really classy. Then, frightened but resolute, she stood in the middle of the bedroom repeating the words Wark had whispered. She hardly thought it strange that she remembered them so clearly, they seemed seared in her head, as natural as, it seemed, was her ability to speak them. She didn’t think, she just did it.

A sick feeling exploded inside her, a sick dizziness. But then a feeling of elation swept her, reeling and giddy; and she was tall again. Her hands shook. For a moment it was hard to walk, hard to remember how to move on two feet. It was very hard to turn and look into the mirror.

When she did look, Kate was there looking back at her, tall and blond, the Kate she knew. How strange that she was cleaner; though her clothes were still a mess. She stood looking for some time, glad to see herself again.

It did occur to her to wonder which being she liked best. But what matter? She evidently had control of both. Talk about liberating.

She turned away from the mirror, and assembled her toothbrush and some makeup and toiletries. She packed panties and bras, a couple of blouses, a robe, stuffing everything into her overnighter. She tucked in an extra checkbook from her own account, then opened Jimmie’s dresser and removed the stack of twenties and hundreds he kept for emergencies. She put the bills in her purse on the dresser.

She showered and washed her hair, gave it a few quick swipes with the blower and shook it into place. She put on fresh jeans and a clean shirt, and a decent pair of sandals. In the study she retrieved their savings book.

The balance was forty thousand and some change. She would stop at the bank and clean out the account before he found the book missing, open an account in her name alone. More than half of it was money her mother had left her. She figured she deserved the other half. She was straightening the pile of bank statements she had disturbed, when she uncovered, behind them, several small folders held together with a rubber band.

She removed them, frowning, and slipped off the rubber band. They looked like bankbooks, but she and Jimmie had no other accounts, just the one.

They were bankbooks. She opened one, then the next. All were on foreign accounts, two in the Bahamas, one in Curacao, two in Panama. None was in Jimmie’s name, but in the names of companies unfamiliar to her. The balances were all in the six figures, the largest for eight hundred thousand, none for less than three hundred thousand.

These had to belong to someone else. Why would Jimmie have them? Who would he be keeping bankbooks for? Her hands shook so hard she dropped the books. She knelt to pick them up, knelt on the rug staring dumbly at the evidence of accounts worth over two million dollars.

Maybe they were Beckwhite’s. But why would Jimmie have Beckwhite’s bankbooks, and after he was dead?

She thought of taking them with her, showing them to an attorney, or at least to Clyde. She started to put them in her pocket, but a coldness filled her.

If these were Beckwhite’s bankbooks, what did that mean? And even if they were not Beckwhite’s, if they were Jimmie’s accounts, still, he was into something frightening.

She put them back in the drawer, and straightened the drawer, making sure everything was as she had found it. The bank statements had been facing with the cut edges of the envelopes to the back. The bankbooks had been facedown. Spines to the right? Or the left?

She was growing more shaken as the possibilities behind those huge accounts presented themselves.

She put their savings book back, too, just as she had found it. She didn’t want him to know she’d been in this drawer; she’d rather do without the forty thousand.

She had meant to take her car, but she didn’t want him to know she’d been home. She was, suddenly, afraid of Jimmie. She closed the drawer and left the room quickly.

In the bedroom she opened her purse and snatched out the twenties and hundreds, put them back in his dresser drawer. When she looked out the bedroom window to the backyard, she saw that the neighbors were setting up their barbecue. The afternoon had grown gray with cloud, heralding an early dark. In the Jenson yard, four tiki torches burned, and a crowd of kids had gathered. There were more than a dozen children in the yard. One of the Jenson kids must be having a birthday. She watched Joan Jenson spread a paper tablecloth over the long picnic table, watched the two Jenson boys weight down the corners with rocks. Well she wasn’t going out that way in the form of Kate, not when Jimmie had alerted the whole neighborhood that she was missing. And when she looked out the front, there were cars pulling up in front of the Jensons’. She’d have to leave as the cat.

She stuffed her checkbook and keys in the pocket of her jeans. If her clothes had stayed with her, surviving the change, then whatever she put in her pockets might survive, too. She had no idea if there were rules to this alarming new life. She hid her purse and her packed bag on the shelf of her closet, behind some boxes. And she changed to cat with a haste that left no time to enjoy the strange rush it gave her.

The little cream-colored cat slipped out the back door, praying that the children wouldn’t see her. Those boys were death on cats.

To leave without money or her car was going to present endless problems. But she couldn’t shake the idea of getting out unseen. She wanted to leave no trail for Jimmie; not until she knew what was going on. Not until she knew where those bank accounts came from.

She fled around the side of the house and into a flower bed. She was crouched between some clumps of daylilies, looking out, scanning the street when a noise startled her.

Before she could run, Wark was on her, he had appeared out of nowhere. He grabbed her by the legs, squeezing with excruciating pain, and swung her high, then down toward the concrete. She fought, twisting, trying to reach him with her claws. A shout from the street put him off-balance.

But again he swung her.

This time she got a paw free and raked him. There was another shout, and she hit the concrete in a jarring explosion that dropped her into blackness.

The cat lay on the cement walk unmoving. Wark shoved her with his foot, pushing her under the bushes. Then, goaded by the shout, he ran, pounding away through the gloom that had gathered beneath the overhanging oaks.

Halfway down the block he swung into a black BMW and burned rubber, screeching away into the darkening evening.

13 [????????: pic_14.jpg]

Joe watched Dulcie remove every trace of fur from their freshly killed squirrel before she touched the rich, dark meat. He had watched her do this at each meal, remove feathers, claws, beaks; he had never seen a cat so fastidious. The squirrel was big and fat and it had fought hard, leaving a long bloody gash down Dulcie’s leg. They had caught it by working together, by driving it away from all available trees.

He was impressed by Dulcie’s bold hunting style. She was quick and fearless, and she could catch a bird on the wing, leaping to snatch it from the wind. He had seen her outrun a big rabbit, too, and bring it down screaming though the animal outweighed her. The rabbit had raked her badly. It hurt him to see her beautiful tabby coat torn and bloodied, hurt him to know how those gashes stung and throbbed. He had licked her wounds at intervals all night to ease the pain, and to prevent fever. She was so beautiful, so delicate. And so puzzling.

At first light yesterday morning he had watched her steal a child’s blue sweater from a deserted porch. Waking, he had watched amazed as she dragged the sweater deep into the bushes.

Following her, he found her in a little clearing arranging the sweater, kneading and patting it. She was so engrossed she didn’t hear as he brushed softly in through the foliage. When she had shaped the sweater to her liking she curled up on it and rolled onto her back, her head ducked down, her paws limply curled above her belly. Her purrs rumbled.

But when she glanced up and saw him she looked startled and embarrassed. And when he asked her what was so great about the sweater and why she had taken it, she clutched the blue wool with her claws and stared at him, hurt. He felt ashamed. Her need was a private thing, a preoccupation he should not have spied on and really didn’t understand.

“It’s so soft,” she said, by way of explanation. “So soft and pretty, and it’s the very color of a robin’s egg. Can’t you imagine wearing it, all soft wool against your bare skin?”

“I don’t have bare skin,” he said uneasily. What was this? What was she dreaming? What did she imagine?

“Don’t you ever wonder, Joe, what that would be like? To be a human person?”

She had to be kidding.“No way. I may talk like a human and sometimes think like a human, but I’m a cat. I’m a fine and well-adjusted tomcat.”

“But wouldn’t you??”

“No. I wouldn’t. I can just imagine it. Repairing the roof, mowing the lawn. Having to deal with car registration and income taxes. With traffic tickets and lawsuits and fixing the leaky plumbing.” He shook his head. “No way would I be a human.”

“But think about concerts and nice restaurants and beautiful clothes and jewelry. About being? I don’t know. Driving a nice car, running up to San Francisco for the weekend.” She stared at him, hurt.

When he didn’t capitulate, didn’t say it would be nice, she returned her attention to the blue sweater.

He hadn’t meant to hurt her. In truth, her intense pleasure in the wooly sweater touched him, made him feel tender and protective. Made him very aware of her soft vulnerability. Made him smile, too. This was the same cat who had told him, late last night as they snuggled in the branches of an oak tree, how she had set out enraged to stalk the man who tried to poison her. The same cat who could explode into a hot chase after a wood rat, all claws and muscle, and nothing soft or helpless about her.

But yet the mystery was there, like another dimension behind her green eyes. And when she stood looking down the hills at the little village snuggled beside the wide sea, he knew she was not thinking cat thoughts. She was thinking of the tangle of human life; of the shoppers hurrying along the streets, the swiftly moving cars, the sounds of music and of human voices; of the richness of a world foreign to them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

POLICE SEARCH FOR MISSING WEAPON

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I don’t know. Maybe he’s afraid.”

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

“Blackmail?”

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

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

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

14 [????????: pic_15.jpg]

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

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

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

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

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

Crouching, he lifted it gently from beneath the bushes.

It looked dead.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She shifted her bottom on the cold brick paving.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How the hell do I know?”

He pictured with amusement Clyde’s infrequent household repairs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The wrench gave, it slid down a few inches.

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

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

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

“You okay?” he said at last.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why wasshehere? She wasn’t a stray.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The phone rang and rang.

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

Maybe he had company, maybe he was not alone.

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

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

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

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

“And the wrench?” Osborne said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I be workin’ on it.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You haven’t so far.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Should we call the police? You could?”

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

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

He smiled.“I was thinking the same.”

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

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

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

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

She didn’t move.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She stared at him.

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

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

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

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

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

“He’s gone, of course.”

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

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

“That he what?”

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

“How do you mean, in touch?”

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

“Been in touch how, Clyde?”

“The phone, damn it! You knew that.”

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

Joe Grey had phoned him.

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

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

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

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

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

“For Christ sake, Kate.”

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

He just looked at her.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Can I come in?”

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

“Please, Clyde.”

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

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

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

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

He remained mute.

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

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

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

He didn’t seem surprised.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Thanks for leaving me some.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He flattened his ears, hissing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“But I? “

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She swerved away from her companion and slipped inside.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wilma smiled.“You were bored with him?”

“Sometimes.”

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

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

“And Wark ships the cars to you?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wilma just looked at her.

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

“Strange, how?”

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

“I would if I could, Bernine.”

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

“Ideas like what?”

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

“Try me.”

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

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

“He? It was the cats.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How about Beckwhite? Did they get along?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The yellow one?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Does the agency sell those cars?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How do you know so much?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Sheril. That’s Sheril Beckwhite.”

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

“Where’s he going? What’s in there?”

“Come on,” Joe said.

“But it’s?”

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

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

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

She laughed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What’s he doing?” Dulcie breathed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hiding seemed so cowardly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Shewalked out onyou,lover.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Quickly she changed to Kate.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’d rather give them to you.”

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

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

“At home? Is he sick?”

“He’s-not alone.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“And get blown to confetti.”

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

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

Nothing, nothing had ever sounded so good.

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

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

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

“Is he gone?” Dulcie breathed.

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

“Short lives,” she said shakily.

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

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

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

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

They approached the opening and looked over.

The office was empty.

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

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

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

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

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

“What the hell’s going on, Joe?”

Joe swallowed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Not a soul. Just my cat.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What, the motor numbers?”

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

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

Harper shrugged.“She told me.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Clyde held her and patted her head.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kate said,“Did you feel nothing?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“So?” She waited, puzzled.

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

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

She was quiet for a long time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. CAT UNDER FIRE

1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The mouse froze.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But Dulcie didn’t see it that way.

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

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

He did not consider, in his assessment, that they had, together, already investigated one murder this summer and had helped police nail the killer. That case had been different.

Down the hills, wind scudded the grass in long waves, rolling as the sea. Above him, riding the wind, the nighthawk dived suddenly, skimming straight at him swift as a crashing aircraft. He didn’t duck from the bird, though another breed of hawk would have sent him scooting for cover. At the last instant it banked away, sucking up insects-the poor bird could eat nothing but bugs. Joe smiled. God had, in his wisdom, designed some mighty strange creatures.

As he turned, looking down the hill again, he started, then smiled.There she is.She came streaking up across a patch of lawn, a swift shadow so lithe and free she made his heart leap. He avidly watched her every move as she fled up across a narrow street and disappeared into the tall grass above, watched the grass ripple upward, stirred by her invisible flight.

She burst out of the grass high up the hill, racing up across a last flower bed, then an empty street, and into a tangle of weeds, steeply up, a dark bullet of speed. Halfway up the hill she stopped. Reared up. Stood looking up the hill searching for him. His heart trembled.

She saw him. She stood a minute on her hind legs, her front paws curved softly against her belly, then she sped up again, racing and leaping. When again she vanished, the grass tops heaved and swayed, as if shaken by a whirlwind.

She exploded out of the grass inches from his nose. She leaned into him warm and purring, tense from running, her heart pounding against him, her green eyes caressing him. She was all fire, switching her tail, licking his face. For weeks she’d been like this, a bundle of passion, her tempest generated not by love, though he knew she loved him, but by her fevered involvement with the murder, by the compulsion of purpose that blazed in her green eyes, and in her unexpected bouts of quick temper.

He liked her all keyed up, bright and vibrant, but she worried him. She visited the jail too regularly, listened too intently to Rob Lake, had become totally obsessed. Life had just begun to settle down after he and Dulcie solved Samuel Beckwhite’s murder, and now Janet’s death had thrown her into high gear all over again. The passion of her involvements tumbled and shook him like a dog shaking a rabbit. He was beginning to wonder if life with Dulcie would ever be anything but chaotic. He did not consider-did not choose to remember-hisown intensity, once his own curiosity was aroused.

And Dulcie was possessed not only with the murder itself, but with trying to discover, as well, what made humans kill so wantonly.

Premeditated murder was quite beyond the normal feline experience. A coldly planned killing was totally different from the way a cat killed. Such destruction had nothing to do with hunger or survival or with practice training, or even with instinct. From a cat’s view, Janet’s death had been pointless. Insane. And Dulcie kept trying to understand, in one huge gulp, such human folly. Searching for answers scholars have been seeking for centuries.

Who could tell her that this was a task, for one small cat, as impossible as a gnat swallowing the sun?

But he couldn’t stay angry with her, she was his love, his gamin, green-eyed charmer. Now, as she snuggled close, her gaze melting him, he licked the soft peach-tinted fur on her darkly striped face, licked her ears. She lifted a pale silken paw and smiled at him, then flopped down to roll in the grass, flirting.

But the next minute she leaped away again, feinting a run. As he raced after her, she paused to look back, wild-eyed, then ran again, light and swift as a bird in the wind. He chased her up the hill, careening up through the blowing grass, then crashing through a forest of Scotch broom, up toward the crest of the hills, climbing until at last they collapsed, panting, so high they could see nothing above them, and lay stretched close together, Dulcie limp and warm and silken.

“Needed to run,” she said. “To get the kinks out. I got so cramped yesterday, crouched on that ledge above the courtroom, I thought I’d pitch a fit.”

So don’t stay there all day,he thought, but didn’t say it.

“And then I kept going to sleep during the boring parts-in spite of those pigeons cooing and blathering all around me. And those attorneys aren’t much better, dull as the drone of bees. That prosecuting attorney can put you right to sleep.”

“You didn’t have to waste all day there.” He could never keep his mouth shut.

She lifted her head, her eyes widening.“I left an hour before they recessed. Don’t you want to know what’s happening?” She gave him a steady, green-eyed gaze, then rubbed her face against him. “Lake didn’t kill her, Joe. I swear he didn’t. We can’t let them convict Rob Lake.”

“You have no reason to be so sure. You’re not?”

“There’s not one shred of hard evidence. I told you this is how it would be-all circumstantial. That Detective Marritt didn’t do a solid investigation, and he really isn’t making a good case.”

She flicked an ear.“But what can you expect? Captain Harper never wanted to hire Marritt. Marritt’s nothing but a political appointee. I bet Harper didn’t want to put him on this case; I bet the mayor had something to do with that. Marritt’s so officious in court.”

She saw she wasn’t getting through. “Anyway, why are court trials so damnably slow? Every little legal glitch, and a million rules.”

“They’re slow, and have rules, because they’re thorough.” He looked irritably past her down the hill. “They’re slow because they go by facts and logical procedures, and not by intuition.”

She hissed at him and lashed her tail.“You might just try to keep an open mind.”

He did not reply.

But at last she relaxed, yawning in his face, putting aside their differences-for the moment. Lying close together, warm upon the breast of the hill, they watched the village begin to waken. A few cottage lights had flicked on, and now, all over the village, as if a hundred alarms had gone off at once, little patches of lights began to blaze out. Above them, the sky grew pale, and soon the lifting wind carried the scent of coffee, then of frying sausages. They heard a child’s distant laugh, and a dog barked.

And as dawn lightened the hills, a tangle of dark clouds began to sweep in from the sea, racing toward the north, probably carrying rain. Maybe it would blow on past, drench San Francisco instead of the village. Dulcie said,“Rob will be waking now, his breakfast tray will be shoved in under the bars.”

Joe sighed.

“He needs me,” she said stubbornly. “He talks to me like he doesn’t have another friend in the world.” She licked the tip of her tail. “And maybe it’s easier for him to talk to a mute animal?” She smiled slyly. “Well, he thinks I’m mute. And why would he lie to a cat? As far as Rob Lake knows, he could tell me anything, and I wouldn’t understand, couldn’t repeat it.”

Joe said nothing. Dulcie had an answer for everything. There was no diverting her. She was into the case of Janet Jeannot’s murder with all four paws. Earlier this summer, when they’d searched for clues to Samuel Beckwhite’s killer, they couldn’t help being involved; their own lives were threatened. They’d both seen Beckwhite struck down, had heard the thud of the wrench against his head, had seen Beckwhitefall. They had seen the assailant clearly. And the killer, somehow, had known they could inform the police. From the moment the man saw them, he knew they could finger him, and if he could have caught them, he would have snuffed them both.

They had set out to solve the Beckwhite case because their own lives were at stake, but Janet Jeannot’s murder was different.

Dulcie stared at him deeply, her dark pupils slowly constricting to reveal emerald green as the dawn light increased.“Don’t you want to see the real killer caught? You liked Janet; Clyde used to date Janet. You can’t want her murderer to go free, gloating all the rest of his life while she lies dead.”

She nuzzled his face, licked his ear.“The first witness this morning is Janet’s neighbor, that Elisa Trest. I really do want to hear what she’ll say. Come on, Joe. Come on to the courthouse with me.”

He just looked at her.

She sighed and started down the hill, pushing through the tall grass.

No point in trying to talk sense to her, she was going to do as she pleased. Grumbling, he trotted down beside her keeping pace, half-angry, half-amused.

But halfway down the first slope, she said,“There’s a strange dog down there; I forgot. I don’t see it now, but it followed me earlier, a huge dog.”

“I didn’t see any dog when I came up. Except the boxer and the golden, those two cream puffs.” Those dogs were no threat-they’d chase a cat for sport but were terrified of claws. If no other cats taught the village dogs proper manners, he and Dulcie did. They’d had some interesting chasesover these hills. Though a smart cat never let snapping teeth get too close. Even a playful dog, when excited, could turn innocent play into a killing bite. One mouthful of cat, and a harmless canine could become a killer, tearing and rending before he knew what happened.

“It was a big brown mutt,” she said. “It stayed away from me, behind the bushes, but it watched and followed me. Well, it’s probably harmless. After Mrs. Trest testifies I’m going up to Janet’s burned studio again, and this time I mean to get inside even if it is boarded up.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Why not? Who knows what I’ll find.”

“Come on, Dulcie. You watched the police sort and sift and photograph. We’ve been up there enough, across that burn. That’s the last place I want to spend the day.” The burned hills were hell on the paws, and the rank fumes stung their noses and eyes. And of course there was no game up there among the ashes; the creatures that didn’t die in the fire, that had escaped, would not return to that barren waste.

The fire had cut a half-mile swath through the lush green hillside, and had burned seven homes to the ground, leaving only two houses untouched. Dead, black trees stood bare against the sky, and the stink of burning was everywhere. The thought of padding through a half mile of cinders, broken glass, and sharp, twisted metal, did not appeal.

But the thought of Dulcie’s going up there alone was less acceptable. He glanced at her sideways. “Come by the house for me. But you’d better hope we find something to make it worth the trip.”

She gave him a sweet smile, and they moved on down through the tangled gardens, between comfortable little cottages, down across winding, residential streets. They crossed the narrow park that ran above Highway One where the road burrowed through its eight-block tunnel, then turned south two blocks to the wide green strip that divided Ocean Avenue. The parklike median marked the center of the village, running tree-shaded and cool along between the village shops toward the beach. Trotting down the springy, soft turf, they rustled through fallen leaves, scattering them with quick paws.

The shops weren’t open yet, but Joe and Dulcie could smell raw meat from the butcher’s, could smell fresh bread and cinnamon buns from the bakery. They basked in the aroma of fresh fish, where a truck was unloading cardboard boxes of halibut and salmon. The workmen saw them looking and hissed at them to chasethem away. The cats hissed back and turned their tails. They didn’t pause until they reached Joe’s street.

There they touched noses, and Dulcie rubbed her face against his.“I’ll come by later,” she said, her green eyes catching the light. He watched her trot away toward the jail and courthouse, moving lightly as a little dancer, her tail waving, her curving stripes flashing dark and rich against the pale walls of the galleries and shops.

Glancing across at the bookstore, he could see the clock in its window. Seven-thirty. She’d go to the jail first, climb the big oak tree to the third-floor windowsill, and lie looking in at Rob Lake, maybe share his breakfast-he liked to feed her little bits of sausage and egg through the wide-mesh barrier. She’d hang around listening to him play on her sympathy until court convened at nine.

Turning away to his left, toward home, he raced across the grassy median to the northbound lane, gauged the slow-moving cars, and leaped across between them.

At least if Dulcie had to solve puzzles, the murder of Janet Jeannot was better than agonizing over the mystery of their own pasts. They’d done enough of that this summer. Their sudden onslaught of uncatlike thoughts, and their ability to speak human words had been a shocker. When Joe had first experienced his new and alarming talent, he had tried to remain cool and laidback. Scared as he was, he’d attempted to handle the matter with some restraint. But not Dulcie. She had exploded into her new life with wild eagerness, embracing her sudden new talents with hot feline passion. Wanting to learn everything about the world all at once, trying to make sense of the entire universe, she’d just about driven him crazy. Even watching TV had become a challenge as she soaked up information

Ever since she had been a kitten, Dulcie had watched TV with her elderly housemate. Curled cozily on Wilma Getz’s lap, she had basked in the music and motion of the programs, and in the incomprehensible but fascinating voices. Then suddenly this summer, when she had begun to understand human words, she’d fixed her attention on the programs, eagerly lapping up the smallest detail. Sitting rigid on Wilma’s lap, like a little furry scholar, she had soaked up the daunting new experiences and ideas as if, her entire life, she had been waiting for this moment to learn and discover.

Good thing Wilma has some taste in what she watches.Though even Dulcie had better sense than to shape her total view of the world from TV.

Leaving Ocean behind him, Joe sped down the sidewalk the three blocks to his own front yard, to the small white Cape Cod that he shared with his own human housemate. Joe and Clyde’s cottage, snuggled comfortably beneath the sheltering oaks, was a somewhat decrepit structure, mossy around the foundation, and with a green-tinged, mossy roof, the shingles loose where a reaching branch had been at them. Clyde grumbled hugely about having to replace a few shingles, though he wouldn’t dream of trimming the trees. Nor did he do much else to pretty up the property, except mow the ragged grass. But the worn old place was home, cozy and safe.

Clyde Damen was thirty-eight, once married, before Joe’s time. He was stocky and dark-haired. He liked professional boxing, liked all competitive sports. He worked out with weights regularly, an activity which he performed with much grunting in the spare bedroom, lying sandwiched between his battered desk and the guest bed. He loved his beer and hiswomen; though he had grown far more selective, these last couple of years, in choosing the latter. Joe never could figure what women saw in Clyde, but they were always there, laughing, drinking beer with him, cooking his suppers.

Clyde had rescued Joe from the gutter as a half-grown kitten, where he lay fevered from a broken, infected tail. That was in San Francisco, and not in the best section of the city. One might say that Joe had been born on the wrong side of Market Street. Clyde had been driving up Mission when he saw Joe lying in the gutter. He said later Joe had looked like a bit of trash, and then like maybe a dead rat, but something had made him stop short, squealing his brakes.

Getting out, he had crouched over Joe, had touched him tentatively, then carefully examined him for broken bones.

When he found only the tail broken, he had gathered Joe up and taken him to the vet, then home to his small Sutter Street apartment. There Clyde had cared for him like a baby, had doctored him, spoonfed him, and given him pills, talking baby talk to him. They had not been parted since.

They had moved from San Francisco to Molena Point a year later, and it was in the village, back in the summer, that Joe’s strange metamorphosis occurred. Clyde had been surprisingly stoic about the matter.

Trotting across the ragged grass that Clyde euphemistically called a lawn, Joe leaped up the concrete steps and slid in through his cat door, wincing, as he always did, when the plastic flap dropped against his backIf humans can go to the moon, can’t they invent a more comfortable cat door? What’swithhuman priorities?

He crossed the living room, passing the dining room that Clyde seldom used. The instant he pawed open the kitchen door, the menagerie hit him like a kamikaze attack, thetwobig dogs pranced around, stepping on his toes, slobbering in his face, the three cats preening and pushing at him, inanely waving their tails.

The scent of fresh coffee filled the kitchen, and he could hear Clyde in the shower. Fending off the friendly, stupid dogs, he leaped up to the kitchen table. The old Lab and the elderly golden stood on their hind legs, staring at him, then at last resumed their pacing, waiting for Clyde to come out and fix their breakfasts. The three cats wound around the table legs, mewling as if Joe himself might open their cat food. The cats had treated him with great deference since the change in his life.

He gave them a patronizing stare and turned his back. They knew they weren’t allowed on the table. And, while they didn’t often mind Clyde, they minded him. The poor things never had figured out why, suddenly, he was so alarmingly different, but they respected that difference.Well hell, I hardly know, myself, what’s happened to me and Dulcie.

All he and Dulcie knew was that their species seemed to go very far back into history, into Egypt and into the medieval Celtic villages. Clyde and Wilma had done enough research to turn up some spectacular and unsettling implications. In the Molena Point Library, they had found references to Irish burial mounds with doors opening down into them, doors carved with pictures of cats. Had found, in Egyptian and Celtic and Italian history, tales of people vanishing and cats suddenly appearing instead, tales that made Joe’s whiskers bristle with unease.

He liked his new talents fine; he didn’t need to go into some elusive background. He was what he was. A talking cat. Brighter than many humans, clever and talented. He didn’t need all the hyperbole.

But Dulcie seemed fascinated that somewhere there were others like themselves, and she was intrigued by the further talents that they might yet discover in themselves-matters on which he would rather not speculate.

Now, atop the kitchen table, he sat down on the morning paper, reading quickly. The whole front page was given over to Rob Lake’s trial. There might be famine, flood, and war in the rest of the world, millions dying, but you’d never see it in the Molena PointGazette,not until this trial was resolved and Rob Lake was either convicted or released.

DAY THREE. AMES CALLS FOR DELAY. EVIDENCE SHAKY.

So the evidence was shaky. So, big deal. Couldn’t the local reporters find anything else to write about?

But,he thought uneasily,what if Dulcie’s right? What if Lake didn’t kill Janet? Could be, if Dulcie keeps poking around looking for the real killer, she’s going to get herself hurt.

Despite Dulcie’s human perceptions, she was still a cat, small and delicate, heartbreakingly vulnerable. If she made too many waves, if she exhibited her strange talents too openly, she could end up in deep trouble.

Already one man in Molena Point had realized they weren’t normal cats and had tried to kill them. And maybe other people knew.

Worrying about Dulcie, wishing she’d come to her senses, he sighed and stretched full-length across the newspaper.So who can reason with her? She’s going to keep on pressing until someone hurts her-or until she solves the damned murder.

2 [????????: pic_3.jpg]

The Molena Point jail stood across a narrow alley from the police department and courthouse. Its ancient brick structure was well past its prime but solid as the proverbial brick outhouse, and Police Captain Harper fought each attempt to condemn the jail and tear it down. Its proximity to the station was convenient for new bookings and court case confinements, so his officers did not have to transport prisoners to and from the county lockup. The property, however, in the center of the village, was so valuable for commercial purposes that every year there was a battle. So far, Harper had prevailed. The back of the jail faced the police parking lot behind the station, and was shaded by a gnarled oak, its branches caressing the barred jailhouse windows.

Three stories above the alley, Dulcie crouched in the knotted, twisted tree, gazing intently across empty space to the window of Rob Lake’s cell. On the brick windowsill two dozen pigeons strutted, dirtying the bars, eyeing her, and cooing inanely in their conviction that no cat could reach them across empty space.Peabrains. Can’t they remember I’ve leaped that chasm every day for a week?

Gathering herself, fixing her attention on the narrow brick sill, she tightened down, flexed her haunches, lashed her tail, and sailed across. Pigeons exploded away loud as a clap of thunder.

Moving along the sill between pigeon droppings, she pressed against the bars and wire mesh. The high degree of security amused her. Max Harper took no chances with his prisoners. Below her in the dim cell, Rob sat hunched on his unmade bunk, his head in his hands, unaware of her. Hadn’t even glanced up at the explosion of pigeon wings. He’d made no effort to clean himself up for the day, his brown hair was rumpled from sleep, his face stubbly, his prison blues wrinkled. His bedsheet and dingy blanket were in a tangle, his pillow fallen to the floor.

He was a young man, nice enough looking, though his soft face was perhaps a bit weak, a bit sullen. Maybe his very weakness drew her, stirred her pity-my maternal instincts, Joe says-and kept her coming back. He always seemed so happy to see her, as if she was perhaps the only visitor he had, besides his attorney.

And who could warm to that attorney? Deonne Baron might be a good defense lawyer, but she was abrupt and cold, and spoke with a harsh, precise voice that gave Dulcie a cat-sized headache. She could hardly bear to listen to Baron in court, had developed a deep, snarling dislike of the woman.

Now, she stared down into the cell at Rob’s bent head, and mewled softly.

He looked up and grinned. The desolation, which showed for only an instant, left his face. He rose and came to the window, reaching up to press his fingers through the wire mesh and pet her.“Glad you’re here, cat. I was getting the sweats real bad; the walls were closing in.” He looked her over, reached a finger to rub her ear. “I don’t know why, cat, but you always make me feel better. Somehow you take away the trapped feeling.”

He frowned, scratched his stubbled cheek.“Another day in court. More endless testimony. And for what? They all think I killed her.”

He looked at her deeply.“Why do you come here, cat? I’m sure glad you do, but hell, I don’t even feed you, except a few scraps, sometimes. And I can’t really pet you very well through all this metal. What brings you here, kitty? My sweet jailhouse smell?” He pressed his hand harder against the wire, seeking her warmth. She pressed back, rubbing her face against the cold wire, then winding back and forth on the narrow ledge, looking in at him inquiringly. Usually an inquiring look would get him to talk; this was how she had gotten him to tell her how he felt about Janet. He had sworn to her that he didn’tkill Janet. And why would he lie to a cat?

Joe said maybe Rob was a pathological liar, maybe he’d rather lie than tell the truth, even to a cat, that maybe he lied to himself, too. Or maybe he liked to practice his lies on her, polishing them for his next court appearance.

But Joe was wrong. Rob Lake did not kill Janet.

She knew he felt trapped, trapped in the tiny cell, and trapped most of all by a legal system that should have protected him. Rob seemed, as the trial progressed, to grow more and more despondent. As if the whole world was against him, as if he didn’t have a chance. And when he talked about Janet, Dulcie knew he had loved her, that he couldn’t have hurt her.

Janet’s death had shaken the whole village. The young artist had been such a bright part of Molena Point life, and so beautiful, her long pale hair, her slim build and easy stride, her cheerful, unassuming presence. She didn’t fuss over her looks-she never wore makeup, and she usually dressed in old, worn jeans, which often had a welding burn or a paint stain. Of all their local artists, Molena Point had loved Janet best, and had loved her paintings best. Her big, splashy interpretations of the wind-driven rocky coves, her tiny cottages tucked between the huge and windy hills, were subjects which, treated by a lesser painter, would have been trite, but to which Janet brought a powerful vibrancy and magic. Dulcie had been deeply touched by her work. The transition Janet accomplished, turning an ordinary bit of the world into something new and wondrous, seemed to mirror exactly the transition in Dulcie’s own life-from ordinary cat self into a world exploding with vistas and possibilities she’d never before guessed at.

She missed Janet, missed seeing her around the village, missed her casual visits to Wilma’s when she would pop by for a cup of coffee and a few minutes of comfortable talk. The day of the fire, after Janet’s body had been taken away, Dulcie came home and crept under the couch into the quiet dark and curled down into a little ball, her nose pressed to her flank, her tail tight around herself. No one but Wilma or Joe could understand how a cat could grieve for a human.

The night before Janet was killed, she had driven home alone from a long weekend in San Francisco, from the opening of the de Young Museum Annual, where she had accepted first prize for oils and second prize for sculpture. That was a heady night for any artist, to receive two top awards in one major show. That was Sunday night. She had left the reception around ten, driving south along the coast, the only direct route, arriving home near midnight. She had pulled the van into her hillside garage-studio, and in a few minutes, a neighbor said, her lights came on in her downstairs apartment. Half an hour later the lights went out, as if she had gone to bed.

She rose early Monday morning as was her habit-she was up by five. A neighbor leaving for his job on the Baytowne wharves saw her lights. She must have dressed, gone directly upstairs, and made coffee in the studio as she usually did. The newspaper said she was under a tight schedule, finishing up the last small touches on a metal sculpture commission to be delivered that week. The county fire investigators weren’t sure whether, when she turned on her oxygen gauge, the tank exploded, or whether fire broke out first and caused the tank’s explosion. She was hit in the head by flying metal.

The Molena Point police found a liberal smearing of oil on Janet’s oxygen gauge and in the lines. Oil which, when the tank was turned on, could have caused the explosion. But that wasn’t what killed her.

Traces of aspirin were found in her blood, and Janet was deathly allergic to the medication; even a small dose would have dangerously slowed her breathing. The police had found traces of aspirin in the metal of the melted coffeemaker. The combination of aspirin and smoke inhalation had been sufficient to end Janet’s life. And perhaps the explosion of her van had prevented her dazed escape.

Normally she did not weld with her van inside the studio complex, but she only had to do a little touch-up to the sculpture. When flames reached the van’s gas tank the resulting explosion turned the fire into an inferno that leveled her studio and swept on across the hills. Fanned by the early-morning wind, it burned a wide swath of the residential hills, igniting a half-mile corridor of trees and houses to the south, but leaving Janet’s apartment below the studio’s concrete slab nearly untouched. The evidence soon pointed to Rob Lake. His old Chevy Suburban was seen in the drive just before the fire and his prints were recovered from the scene. Dulcie watched him now as he paced the cell, returning to her, reaching up again, then moving away. He could not be still.

Janet had broken up with Rob nearly a year before she died. They were not on good terms. They had parted when Lake began a professional relationship with Janet’s ex-husband.

Onetime art critic Kendrick Mahl, now a gallery owner, had made a big name of Lake, though Lake’s work wasn’t much. Village gossip had it that Mahl took Lake into his stable to spite Janet. And who could blame Lake for jumping at the chance? Mahl was a big name in California art circles.

Mahl promoted one-man shows for Lake, pressed for articles in art publications, ran full-page, full-color ads in those same journals. Until the murder, Lake had been well on his way to becoming a big name. Now, except for the attention of sensation seekers, Lake’s career was on hold. Rob Lake’s world had shrunk overnight to the size of his jail cell.

Lake didn’t have a solid alibi for the night Janet died. There was no witness to his movements once he left San Francisco. After the reception at the de Young, he had parried with friends. He returned home to Molena Point about 4 A.M. and went to bed. Two witnesses testified that he left San Francisco shortly after two in the morning. Lake had had keys to Janet’s studio from the days when they were dating, as well as keys to her four-year-old Chevy van. He testified that for sentimental reasons he hadn’t returned them, that he kept them in his dresser drawer.

But Janet’s agent, Sicily Aronson, also had a set of keys, to both the studio and the van. And so had Kendrick Mahl at one time. Mahl, in court testimony, said he’d given them back and that he hadn’t made copies.

Rob stroked Dulcie through the wire.“You know, cat, I never had pets. I always laughed at people with pets. I thought it was stupid, dogs fawning and whining, that having an animal was just a big bother.

“I figured cats were totally aloof, that cats just used a person. But you’re not like that.”

He looked at her intently.“I give you nothing, I can’t even pet you properly, and still you come to see me. Why?”

Dulcie purred.

“Sometimes, cat, I don’t think even my attorney gives a damn. I wish? But what the hell. Maybe all attorneys are like that.” He was silent for a few moments, his gaze boyish and innocent. “Maybe if I could paint in here, if they’d let me have paints and some canvas, maybe I could relax.” He pressed both hands against the mesh, his palms flat.

“But what good would it be to paint? Truth is, I’m not sure if I want to go on painting when I-if I get out of here.”

She gave him a surprised look, then quickly she nibbled at her paw.

He studied her, frowning.“I’m not like Janet; I’m not a passionate painter like Janet was.” He grinned at the word. “But it’s true. Janet painted because she had to, she was driven to paint. But me-I never had that kind of passion.

“And ever since she died, cat, I really don’t give a damn.”

He leaned his forehead against the concrete.“I envied her talent, cat. But you know I couldn’t have killed her.” He looked up at her searchingly. “I hope you know it. I guess you’re the only one who does know it.” He looked sheepish suddenly, then he laughed.

“I’ve really lost it, telling my troubles to a cat. But, I don’t know?” He frowned, shook his head. “I feel like you really do care. Like you know I didn’t kill her.”

She purred louder, wishing she could speak to him, could comfort him.

That would really tear it-send Joe into complete orbit.

“Even when Mahl took me into his gallery, cat, when he made me a part of that exclusive stable, I knew I wasn’t in the same league as Janet.

“Right from the start, I knew that Mahl did it to hurt her. I was ashamed of that,” he said softly. “But not ashamed enough to stop him. I let him do it, and I didn’t complain, I didn’t have the guts. All I wanted was to be famous.”

Lake turned away again to pace the cell, then whirled to Dulcie so suddenly she started and nearly fell off the narrow ledge.

“I wasn’t ashamed enough to stop,” he shouted. “Not ashamed enough to turn away from one big ego trip.”

She stared at him until he calmed down. This guy could, without too much effort, become a real basket case.

“If I hadn’t let Mahl build me into a big name, hadn’t let him use me to hurt her, maybe she’d still be alive. Maybe we would never have broken up, maybe we’d still be together.” He sat down on the rumpled bunk, looked up at Dulcie.

“Maybe we would have been together that night, and I might have prevented what happened.” He stared up at her bleakly. “I didn’t kill her, cat. But maybe it’s my fault she died.”

Dulcie was stricken with pity for him, but she was irritated, too. Right from the start he had stirred every ounce of her sympathy, yet his total lack of hope enraged her. He seemed to have given up already. Sometimes he was so negative she wondered why she bothered.

Maybe shewassuffering from misguided mothering instincts, but one thing she knew for sure-Lake was innocent. He was in there because of Marritt’s sloppy investigation. Captain Harper wouldn’t keep Marritt on the force for a minute if the mayor and city council hadn’t threatened Harper’s own job. She thought Harper was biding his time, waiting for a good way to dump Marritt, one the city couldn’t argue with.

And as for the prosecuting attorney, what could you say? The county attorney wanted a conviction.

But it was her dreams that had really convinced her of Rob’s innocence. Three times she had dreamed of Janet’s white cat, and he was trying to tell her something, show her something important.

Before the fire she and Joe had occasionally seen the white cat as they hunted the hills, and had glimpsed him leaping out through Janet’s studio window, which the artist had kept open for him. They didn’t see him often, and Dulcie thought he must have spent a lot of time in the house, sleeping. He was not a young cat.

After the fire, crews of villagers and SPCA volunteers had searched the hills for all the missing animals. They had found most of the dogs and cats, but they had found no trace of Janet’s cat. Joe said he probably died in the fire; but no remains were found. It was a terrible thing to die in a fire; Dulcie was sickened to imagine such a death.

It was a week after the fire when she began to dream of the white cat. He was a longhaired torn, very elegant, with deep blue eyes. Her dreams were so clear that she could see the rabies tag fixed to his blue collar, and the small brass plate with Janet’s name. In each dream he wanted her to follow him, he would turn looking back at her, giving a switch of his tail and a flick of his ears. But each time, when she tried to follow, she woke.

Rob stood looking out into the hall through his barred door, then returned to the window.“The police are going up to Janet’s this morning; they’re going to look for her diary. God knows what’s in it, cat. God knows what she said about me.”

She stared at him, puzzled, galvanized with interest. She’d heard nothing about a diary.

“Late yesterday a witness testified about the diary. That skinny old lady who said she saw my Suburban at Janet’s the morning she was killed. She testified again, told the court that Janet had a diary.”

The witness was Elisa Trest. Dulcie had thought Elisa wasn’t going on the stand until this morning. If she’d known that, she would have stayed later yesterday afternoon.

“That Trest woman used to clean for Janet. I remember her up there poking around. Dried-up, nosy old biddy. She couldn’t have seen my car. Why would she lie about it? She’s saying Janet kept her diary on the shelf in the bedroom, but I never saw it. If there was a diary, I bet the old woman read every word, the way her face turned pink.”

He sighed.“After we broke up, and I went with Mahl, I can imagine what Janet must have written about me. Well, it’s out of my hands. But if the cops find it, that could mean another delay. Sometimes I think the delays are worse than a conviction; it’s the delays that drain you, drag you down.

“But what do you care?” he said crossly. “What would a dumb cat care?”

Dulcie blinked.

He was like this sometimes, sweet and needing one minute, and angry the next. Well, the young man hurt; and he was afraid. And she was the only one available to yell at. She narrowed her eyes, thinking about the diary, wondering if such evidence would help Rob or would strengthen the case against him. Wondering, if Detective Marritt found the journal, what he would do. And if Deonne Baron got hold of the diary, if she thought it would win the case, she was the kind of woman who would spread Janet’s personal life all over the papers. Ms. Baron didn’t care about Rob, Dulcie was convinced of that, but she was boldly aggressive about winning.

Dulcie lashed her tail, dunking. She wanted to see Janet’s journal; she wanted a look at it before the police found it.

She turned, looking down into the police parking area. The officers’ private cars were damp with overnight dew, the windshields fogged over. The shift hadn’t changed. It wasn’t yet eight o’clock, when the day watch came on, when Marritt would arrive at work and maybe head right up to Janet’s to look for the diary.

She gave Rob a long look and left him, leaping across the three-story drop into the oak tree, scattering pigeons. Clinging to the branches, digging her claws deep into the rough bark, she backed down and took off, running.

3 [????????: pic_4.jpg]

A slash of morning sun careened across the kitchen table, warming Joe’s fur where he lay sprawled on the morning paper. Below him Barney, the golden, and Rube, the Lab, fussed and paced waiting for their breakfasts. The cats had settled down, hunched, hungry, pretending patience. He glanced across through the wide window above the kitchen sink. A hummingbird flitted at the glass, then was gone. The neighborhood rooftops gleamed with slanting light as the sun lifted above the hills and far mountains. When he heard Clyde coming down the hall he stretched out more fully across the sports page, though he had already pretty much trashed it with his muddy feet, leaving long, satisfying streaks of soil and wet grass that obliterated portions of the text.

Clyde pushed open the kitchen door, carrying his empty coffee mug and a clean white lab coat. The dogs leaped at him, whining, and the three cats wound around his ankles, preening and purring. He dropped the lab coat over the back of a chair and knelt, hugging and baby talking the fawning beasts as if he hadn’t seen them in months. Dressed in faded jeans and a red polo shirt, he was well scrubbed, freshly shaven, his cheeks still faintly damp. His black hair, handsomely blow-dried, would within an hour be wild as a squirrel’s first try at nest building. Rising from his kneeling position, he straightened the pristine lab coat until it hung without a wrinkle. The starched white coat was a gross affectation-it would look fine on a doctor. Clyde had taken to wearing these garments only recently: Clyde Damen, Physician of Foreign Engines, resident M.D. to Molena Point’s ailing Rolls Royces and Mercedeses. He even had the damned coats commercially laundered and starched.

Clyde acknowledged Joe with a soft shove to the shoulder and stood studying Joe’s sprawled form draped across the sports page. “You have mud on your paws. Can’t you wash before you come in the house? And why the hell do you always have to lie on the sports page? What’s wrong with the editorials? You’ve left half the yard on it.”

“Why should I lie on the editorials? You don’t read the editorials. Your life would be incredibly dull without my little homey touches.”

“My breakfast table would be cleaner, too.” Clyde gave him a long look and set about opening cans of dog food and cat food and boxes of kibble. He filled five separate bowls, setting them down on the linoleum far enough apart to maintain a semblance of peace among the three cats and two dogs, to avoid unnecessary snapping. As the beasts ate, he propped open the door to the backyard so they could have a run when they were finished. He filled his coffee cup, pulled a box of cereal from the cupboard, dumped some into a bowl, and poured on milk Every morning, watching him do this, Joe wondered what would happen if he absently dumped in dog kibble. But hey, add a little sugar, who would know? Clyde set the bowl on the table. “What do you want to eat?”

“Thanks, I’ve had breakfast.”

“I can imagine. Blood and intestines.” He sucked at his coffee, reaching for the front page. ” ‘Baron’s call for delay denied.’ Damned lawyers would string it out forever.” He looked up at Joe. “I suppose Dulcie’s down there again this morning. Tell me why she’s so determined. Where did she get this fixation that Lake’s innocent?”

Joe sighed and rolled over, then sat up irritably, biting at a flea.“It’s her dreams,” he said uneasily. “Those dreams about Janet’s white cat. I told you, she’s convinced the cat is still alive, that he’s trying to tell her something.” He licked a whisker. “I wish those searchers had found the cat either dead or alive, then maybe she wouldn’t be dreaming about him.”

“The white cat’s dead. He’s dead or he’d have gone home-what’s left of home. The neighbors would have seen him.”

Joe preferred to think the cat was alive, that Dulcie was at least dreaming of a live cat and not a ghost.

The white cat’s picture had been in the papers, as reporters dredged up every detail of Janet’s life. If anyone in Molena Point had seen him, they would have taken him in, or notified the animal shelter, or called theGazette.

“I find it interesting.” Joe said, “that Janet’s sister Beverly didn’t make a fuss about the cat, that she didn’t go out herself to look for him.”

“The cat’s dead,” Clyde repeated.

“Maybe,” Joe said uncomfortably.

“Dulcie’s lost her head over this. Look at the evidence. Lake’s Suburban was seen that morning in Janet’s driveway-who could mistake that old heap. And after Janet and Lake broke up, Lake was so vindictive that Janet refused to talk to him. Don’t you think that made him mad? These days, people kill for less.”

Joe snorted.“If you murdered every woman you broke up with, Molena Point would be half-empty.” He licked mud off his leg. “Anyway, the car is circumstantial. The witness only said it looked like Lake’s Suburban-there are plenty of those old Chevys around. It was still dark, how much could she see?”

Clyde spooned more sugar onto his cereal.“Anyway the grand jury had to think there was sufficient evidence to indict Lake. They don’t take a man to trial for nothing.”

Joe shrugged.“Grand jury thinks he could be guilty. Dulcie swears he’s not. What am I supposed to say to her? She won’t listen.”

“Just because she’s gotten friendly with Lake, hanging out in his cell-just because Lake is a cat lover?”

“She doesn’t go into the jail. She watches from his window,” he said, hissing. He might be critical of Dulcie, but when Clyde started trashing her he got angry. “She doesn’t think he’s a cat lover; she just thinks he’s innocent. And it’s not only from listening to Lake,” he said defensively. “It’s from other stuff she’s heard.”

“Like what?”

Joe shrugged.“Like there might be another witness, who hasn’t come forward.”

“Who said?”

“Talk around the village.”

“Well of course that’s reliable. Village gossip is always?”

“Maybe it’s not gossip. Maybe there’s something to it. You can pick up a lot of information hanging around the restaurants and shops.”

Clyde stopped eating.“What, exactly, do you mean by hanging around? Is that like the morning I caught you two cadging scraps under the table at Mollie’s?” He fixed Joe with a hard look. “Have you two been in the shops again? Sneaking around into the restaurants? Don’t you know there’s a health law?”

“Dulcie and I are healthy. We won’t catch anything.”

Clyde sighed.“You two are lucky you live in Molena Point. Anywhere else, the shopkeepers would call the pound.”

“Give it a rest. I’ve heard it a million times. ‘Molena Point residents are good to you, you ought to return their thoughtfulness, try to act decent, remember your manners. Molena Point is cat heaven. You two don’t know how lucky you are.’ You tell me that every time I complain about any little thing. ‘You live anywhere else, Joe, you wouldn’t have half the freedom or half the perks.’”

“You better believe it. And you’d better stay out of the cafes.”

“I thought we were talking about the trial.”

“We were talking about the trial.” Clyde’s voice had risen. “And doesn’t it mean anything to Dulcie that of the four suspects, Lake is the one the police arrested and charged with murder? And are you forgetting that Lake had a key to Janet’s place?”

Joe licked a spill of milk from the table.“So he had a key. Kendrick Mahl had a key. And so did Sicily. Anyway, Janet had to be killed by someone who knew about welding equipment, and Kendrick Mahl gets the vote for that. Mahl has to know about gas welding-he handles the work of four metal sculptors.”

“That doesn’t make him a welder. And Mahl was questioned and released.”

“Besides,” Joe said, “everyone knows he hated Janet.” It was common knowledge in the village that Mahl had never forgiven Janet for leaving him. “And what about sister Beverly? From the way people-including you-describe her, she sounds like a real piece of work. She didn’t waste any love on Janet.” Joe twitched an ear, flicked a whisker. “No, I wouldn’t rule out Beverly.”

“That doesn’t make sense. If sister Beverly killed her, she wouldn’t burn Janet’s paintings. BeverlyinheritedJanet’s work. Would have been over a million bucks’ worth. Why would she set fire to a fortune?

“And why,” Clyde continued, “would Sicily Aronson kill her? She made a bundle of money as Janet’s agent. Now, with Janet dead, that’s dried up. She’ll sell the last few paintings, probably for huge prices, but that will finish it.”

He looked at Joe bleakly.“Not only Janet, but most of her work is gone. Everything she hoped-that she cared about, gone.

“She said-told me once, if she never had children, at least her work would live after her. That generations down the line, maybe something of what she saw and loved might still have meaning for someone.”

Joe said nothing. He’d seen villagers slip into the Aronson Gallery to spend a few minutes looking at Janet’s paintings as if that pleasure turned a simple shopping trip into a special morning. He had seen villagers wave to Janet on the street and turn away smiling deeply, as if they were warmed just by the sight of her. Janet’s death had generated such intense anger in the village that for a while the county had considered moving the trial to a more neutral town.

Before Lake was indicted, Detective Marritt and the Molena Point police and the county investigators had spent weeks sifting the ashes and debris of her burned studio, sorting and photographing bits of burned cloth, sorting through pieces of blackened metal and wood, bagging the charred debris for the county lab.

And the police had gone over Janet’s apartment just as carefully. Sheltered beneath the concrete slab floor of the studio, the apartment had been left untouched by the fire. The police had fingerprinted, photographed, taken lint samples from every inch of Janet’s home.

Clyde added more cereal to his bowl, and more milk.“Just suppose for a minute that Lakedidn’tkill her.”

“So, suppose.”

“So the killer’s still free, Joe.” Clyde gave him a long look. “So, is he going to take kindly to Dulcie snooping around looking for new evidence?”

Joe smirked.“I’m not sure I understand you. You’re saying Janet’s killer is going to be afraid of a kitty cat?”

Clyde didn’t say a word. They both knew what he was thinking. At last Joe cut the bravado, his expression sobered. “You think someone besides you and Wilma knows about Dulcie and me-the way Lee Wark knew?”

“Wark was after you and Dulcie like a butcher after a side of beef. So why not someone else?”

“But Wark was a fluke. A Welshman who grew up knowing some pretty strange history. That won’t happen again. How many Welshmen can there be in Molena Point.”

Clyde rose and refilled his coffee mug.“I’m only saying, you and Dulcie keep nosing around, and there’s going to be trouble.”

My sentiments exactly,Joe thought. But he wasn’t taking sides against Dulcie. Shrugging, he began to clean his claws, stretching them wide and licking between, scattering dirt on the table.

“Do you always have to wash when you don’t want to listen! Face it, Joe. Ever since you two got involved in Samuel Beckwhite’s murder, you think you’re some kind of detectives-feline Sam Spades.” He sat down, digging fiercely at his cereal. “Don’t you understand that cats don’t solve murders, that cats?”

Joe leaped from the table to the kitchen sink, turning his back, staring sullenly out the window.“Who solved Beckwhite’s murder? Who led the police to the auto agency, to where the money was hidden?”

“The police came because gunshots were reported.”

“Sure gunshots were reported.” He spun around staring at Clyde. “That nut nearly killed me and Dulcie before the cops got there. And who do you think saw Wark and Osborne change the VIN plates on the stolen cars? Who do you think saw them take the money out of the cars and stash it? Who made sure the cops found it?”

“All I’m saying is, you and Dulcie are?”

Joe flexed his claws, fixing Clyde with a narrow yellow gaze, his ears flat to his head.

Clyde sucked up coffee.“I know you two broke the Beckwhite murder, but that doesn’t mean you need to spend the rest of your lives trying to solve murders that are already-that are? Why can’t you just be happy? Why can’t you two just enjoy life and leave this alone?” He got up and rinsed out his cereal bowl, brushing against Joe. “I understand why you and Dulcie were interested in Beckwhite-you saw Wark kill him. But this? Neither you nor Dulcie has any direct interest in Janet’s murder.”

Joe had said exactly the same thing to Dulcie, but he didn’t like Clyde saying it. “Dulcie knew her just as well as I did. Dulcie was fond of Janet, and she loved Janet’s work. That painting Janet traded to Wilma-Dulcie lies on the couch for hours, sprawled on her back, staring up at that painting.”

Clyde set his bowl to drain on the counter.“The point is, if Lake didn’t kill her, and if you two keep prodding at this, the real killer is going to find you just the way Wark did.”

Joe examined his back claws.

“Oh hell. It’s no good talking to you. Wait until Dulcie gets caught sneaking into the courtroom, and then see?”

“She doesn’t sneak into the courtroom. She listens from the ledge-that ledge that runs along under the clerestory windows. It’s October, Clyde. Balmy. All the windows are open. All she has to do is skin up one of the oak trees behind the courthouse and there she is, exclusive box seat.” He grinned. “Box seat she has to share with about a hundred pigeons. The first day, it took her two hours to clean the pigeon crap off her paws and her behind. She said it tasted gross.”

“Didn’t you help her?”

Joe stared at him coldly.“I’m not licking pigeon crap off her. Now she carries a hand towel up with her, to sit on.”

“That’s cute. And when someone sees her going back there into the alley carrying a hand towel, what then? Sees her climb up the tree carrying the towel in her teeth, or sitting on the ledge on the damned towel. Don’t you think they might wonder?”

“Cats do strange things. Everyone knows cats are weird. Read the cat magazines, they’re full of stuff like that. Anyway, Dulcie says the trial is a farce. If she believed before that Lake was innocent, the shaky testimony has really convinced her.” He lay down on the cool white tile of the countertop and patted at the tiny, intermittent drops of water falling from the leaky tap.

Clyde scowled at him and reached across him to turn off the tap. The dripping stopped.“What shaky evidence?”

“Lake’s fingerprints in Janet’s bedroom, for one thing.” He lifted his head, staring at Clyde. “The guy lived with her for six months. Of course his prints were all over. Don’t you suppose the prints of every woman you ever dated are plastered all over your bedroom?”

“I don’t go to bed with them all.”

“Name one.”

“I didn’t go to bed with Janet. I dated her but we never?”

“Only because she wouldn’t.”

Clyde sighed.“You’re off the subject. When Dulcie didn’t even know Lake, until after the murder, why is she so hot to help him?”

Female passions-feline passions-dreams of white cats-who knows what runs Dulcie?“You ever hear of justice? Of wanting to see justice done?”

“Come off it.”

Joe smoothed the fur on his chest with a rough tongue.“She thinks Lake was set up. She thinks the evidence was planted, that Lake’s car was driven to the scene by someone else.”

“Don’t you think the cops checked that? Detective Marritt?”

“You know what Captain Harper thinks of Marritt. And sure they checked it out. That’s the point-they don’t have any proof it was Lake’s car, don’t even have a plate number.” He sat up, admiring his muddy pawprints on the clean tile. “All the witness said was, it was an old, dark Suburban like Lake’s. What could that old woman see, with her lousy eyesight?”

But as he watched Clyde, he was ashamed of arguing. He knew perfectly well that much of Clyde’s irritation came from his pain over Janet. He seldom saw Clyde hurting; it was a new experience. He told himself he ought to be gender. Clyde and Janet had been good friends. They had dated heavily for a while, then had remained friends afterward, casual and comfortable.

Feeling contrite, he rubbed his ear against Clyde’s hand, filled with an unaccustomed sympathy and tenderness. “Janet was special,” he said quietly, pressing his face against Clyde’s knuckles. “She was a special lady.”

They were silent for a moment, Clyde absently scratching Joe’s head, both of them thinking about Janet.

At first, after Joe learned he could speak, he’d been uncomfortable about being petted. He and Clyde were equals now. He found himself weighing their relationship in a new light, and he hadn’t been sure about this petting business. But then he’d decided.It’s okay; a little closeness is okay.

Clyde had been shy about petting him, too. As if petting was no longer proper. But they were still pals, weren’t they? Still human and cat, still crusty old bachelor housemates.

The faint sound of scratching from the front door brought him to sudden alert. He ducked out from under Clyde’s hand, giving him a wide stare. “Gotta go.” He leaped off the counter and trotted out through the living room.

Through the translucent cat door, he could see Dulcie’s dark shadow pacing, could see her impatience in every quick line of her body. He pushed under the limber plastic, hating the feel of it.If I live to be a hundred, I won’t get used to that stupid door sliding down my spine.

Before he was completely through, Dulcie pressed close to him, purring. Her green eyes were so huge they made him shiver. Every time he looked at her he fell deeper into joy. Just to be near her, just to know they were together, that was all he wanted from life.“What are you doing here so early? Has Elisa Trest already testified?”

She was strung tight, so wired, she couldn’t be still. She wound around him, pacing, fidgeting.

“There’s a diary, Joe. A journal. Janet kept a journal.” She pressed against him, all green-eyed eagerness. “Mrs. Trest testified yesterday afternoon after I left. She said Janet kept a diary-Rob told me. The police are going up there this morning to look for it.” She switched her tail impatiently, shifting from paw to paw.

He just stared at her.

“Well come on, before the police get there.” And she whirled away, leaping down the steps.

“Hold it.” He sat down on the porch, immobile as a stone. “You plan to snatch evidence out from under the cops’ noses?”

“Just to have a look at it,” she said innocently. “We don’t have totakeit.”

Joe sighed.“Clyde’s right. You’re going to get into trouble. Besides, they’ve already searched her apartment. Why would?”

“Come on, Joe. Hurry.” She spun around and ran, racing away up the sidewalk, her peach-colored paws hitting just the high spots, flashing above the concrete.

He remained sitting, looking after her.The lady’s nuts. No way we can reach Janet’s place before the cops do.

Or maybe she meant to go right on in, sniff out clues between the cops feet.

The fact that they had already pulled that kind of stuff, after the Beckwhite murder, didn’t seem to matter. The fact that they had been right there under Captain Harper’s boots, so much in the way that Harper had given them more than one puzzled look, didn’t faze her.

Dulcie, you’re crazy if you think we’re going to push into the middle of another police investigation.

She stopped, up at the corner, looking back. He made no move to follow. Impatiently she raced back, leaped up the steps, and licked his nose.“We could just go up and see. If the police are there, we’ll leave. Imagine it, imagine if Rob Lake is convicted and even put to death, and he’s innocent and we could have helped and we didn’t. Then how would you feel?”

Joe looked at her for a long moment, then laughed.“Oh, what the hell.” He rose and followed her. “Who says we can’t outsmart a few cops?”

And they ran, their paws pounding the pavement. Careening against her, he wished she wasn’t so persuasive, so damned impetuous and stormy.

And he loved her stormy ways.

4 [????????: pic_5.jpg]

Clyde stood at the living room window watching the cats gallop away toward Ocean Avenue. He had to laugh at Joe’s short tail, at his sturdy rear loping up and down in strong, muscular rhythm. Beside him, Dulcie ran as light as a low-flying bird. He watched them worriedly. Their swift departure did not telegraph a casual, “let’s go hunt.” Crossing Ocean, zigzagging insanely between cars, they nearly made his heart stop.

When they were safely across, into the tree-shaded median, they turned north. Running through the lacy tree shadows, they were headed straight for the hills. And where else would they be going in such a hurry but to Janet’s, to the burned remains of her studio. There was nothing else up in that direction to cause this degree of excitement. When they set out together simply to hunt, they stalked along, carefully looking around them, absorbing scents and sounds, working up slowly, he supposed, to the required intensity of concentration. But now they were all fire, scorching away toward the hills like two little rockets.

They’d been up at Janet’s before, returning with cinders on their coats and secretive but dissatisfied looks on their sly little faces.

Stepping out onto the porch, he watched them race out of sight, wishing they’d leave this alone.

So what was he going to do, follow them? Fetch them home?

Life had been simpler when Joe was just an ordinary tomcat, when Joe Grey had nothing to say but a demanding meow. When he had nothing on his mind but killing birds and screwing every female cat in Molena Point. Sometimes Clyde longed mightily for those days, when he had at least some control over the gray tomcat.

Now, face it, Joe and Dulcie were no longer little dough-headed beasties to be bossed and subjugated. Nor were they children to be guided and directed toward some faraway future when they could function on their own.

These two were already functioning in what, for them, was an entirely normal manner. The two cats were adult members of their own peculiar race: thinking creatures with free wills-though he didn’t dare dwell on the historical convergences that had produced those two devious felines. The power of their heritage clung around the cats, the breath of dead civilizations shadowed them like phantom reflections, darkly. If he let himself think about it, he got shaky. When he dwelled too long onthe subject, he experienced unsettling dreams and night sweats.

Whatever the cats’ alarming background, the fact was that now he had little jurisdiction over Joe Grey. He could argue with Joe, but he was awed by the tomcat, too, and he was obliged to leave Joe pretty much to his own decisions.

And the tomcat, wallowing in his new powers, had grown far more hardheaded than ever he was before.

Joe Grey’s own theory about his sudden new abilities was that the trauma of seeing Samuel Beckwhite murdered had triggered the change. That the shock had stirred his latent condition-much as shock might bring on latent diabetes, or propel a patient with high blood pressure to a stroke.

Whatever the cause, Joe’s new persona was unsettling for them both. Clyde had to admit, Joe had had a lot to deal with, a lot to learn. He supposed the tomcat was still getting it sorted out. And as for himself, living with a talking cat demanded all the understanding a man could muster.

Wilma said much the same. That sometimes she wished Dulcie would just go back to her earlier vices of stealing the neighbors’ clothes. Wilma had been used to Dulcie slipping in through the neighbors’ windows, turning the knobs of their unlocked doors, trotting through neighbors’ houses dragging away stockings, bed jackets, silk teddies.

He had known Wilma since he was eight, when she moved next door, a tall beautiful blond who soon was the object of his first pre-adolescent crush. She broke his heart each time she left to return to graduate school. She had not only been his first love, but his friend. She was fun, she was tolerant and good-natured, a gorgeous young woman who knew how to throw a baseball and when to keep her mouth shut.

Wilma was gray-haired now, and wrinkled, but she was still slim, a lithe and active woman. They had remained friends even after she finished her graduate degree, never losing touch, through his failed marriage and through Wilma’s career as a parole officer, first in San Francisco, and then in Denver. She had retired, from the Denver office of Federal Probation five years ago. When she returned to Molena Point shortly after, they celebrated her retirement with dinner at the Windborne, lobster and champagne, sitting at awindow table looking down the cliffs to the rolling sea.

Now, standing on his porch staring up the street where the cats had disappeared, he realized he was late for work. Maybe he’d go in at noon. How long since he’d given himself a half day off? He didn’t have anything special this morning. In memory he could hear Janet saying, “Let the men run it for a day. Why bother with the headache of your own business if you can’t play hooky?” She had loved to goad him into taking time off, though it meant that she had to abandon her own heavy schedule of sculpture commissions. Locking her studio, she had acted as if she were playing hooky. They would pick up a picnic basket at the deli and drive down to Otter Point, spend the day walking the sea cliffs, laughing, acting silly, getting sunburned.

He sat down on the steps, cold suddenly, hollow and used up. He saw Janet laughing at him, her blue eyes so alive, saw her standing on the wet black rocks of Otter Point, her pale hair whipping in the wind, saw the waves crashing up. Saw her at a little table at Mindy’s, the candlelight sending shifting shadows across her golden hair, across her thin face and bare throat and shoulders in a low-cut summer dress.

He saw her burned studio, saw the fire trucks and police cars crowding the upper street behind the house and the street below.

Saw the tarp covering her body among the smoldering ashes.

They had started dating shortly after she left Kendrick Mahl. She was twenty-seven, slim, blond, with a devilish smile that drew him. They had hiked, gone to movies, gone swimming, spent days at the aquarium, driven up to the city just to go to the zoo. They both liked the outdoors, and Janet loved animals. But there the mutual interests ended. Janet’s life lay in the world of art, a world that meant little to him.

He loved her paintings, but he had no interest in the art world, in the tangle of exhibits and awards and reviews, in the gallery gossip that occupied Janet. And she had no use for sports or for cars. She rated cars by how many paintings or how many tons of metal a vehicle could haul. Even though she was an artist, she had no interest in the skill that went into the design and manufacture of a fine Bughatti, an antique Rolls. He had taken her to one car show, and no more. She said she didn’t have time to spend her day gawking at machine-made sex symbols. That was the only time they had fought. He didn’t know why they had, over such a small thing.

During the months they had gone out she was dating several men, but she was committed to none. After they stopped dating they had dinner now and then, in between several heady romances for each of them. Janet had spent life as eagerly as if joy came in endless supply.

And maybe it did, if you knew how to look for it.

Or maybe, if you spent joy so brazenly, you died early. The thought shamed him. But the sense of waste, the knowledge of a vibrant life gone so suddenly, by someone’s deliberate hand, the knowledge that Janet was no longer a part of the world, had left him perplexed, strangely weakened.

The morning of the fire he had waked at five-thirty, hearing sirens screaming. The room was filled with sweeps of red light and with the heavy rumbling of the village’s four big fire trucks thundering up toward the hills. He had run for the kitchen to look out the back, had stood at the kitchen window watching the trucks’ spiraling red lights sweeping up the hills, had seen the hills ablaze exactly where Janet’s house stood, had seen the fire trucks converge, followed by an ambulance. He watched for a moment as the wind-fanned flames spread, licking at the dry hills, leaping toward the scattered houses, fingering roofs and walls. He heard the distant crack of a tree exploding, all this in an instant, and then he ran to the bedroom and pulled on pants and shoes and a sweatshirt.

He had propped the back door open, fearing for the animals, not wanting them to be trapped if the fire spread this far. He didn’t know where Joe was. He knew the tomcat hunted up in those hills. He had grabbed a shovel from the carport and was just getting in the car when he saw Joe on the roof of their own house, watching the fire. He had wanted to tell Joe to stay away from the hills. But his motherly admonitions wouldonly enrage the tomcat, goad him to do just the opposite. He had turned away, headed away up into the burning hills toward Janet’s.

He had worked all morning in a line of volunteers, cutting breaks to keep the fire from spreading; trying not to think. When at nightfall he returned home, he was filled with despair, unable to stop seeing Janet covered by the police tarp.

He got up from the steps and went back in the house. Maybe he’d go on to work. Snatching up his lab coat, he let the animals in, kneeling to stroke them, giving the old dogs a hug.

But then in the car he didn’t turn up Ocean toward the automotive shop; he drove on across the divided street, on through the village. This was Wilma’s late day at the library, she didn’t go in until one. Maybe she had the coffeepot on; maybe she was baking something. He was possessed by a sudden muzzy domestic craving, a yearning for company, for a warm, safe kitchen and the smells of something good cooking, yearning for the warm security he had known in his childhood.

He stopped at the cleaners and the grocers, the drugstore, took his time with his errands, then headed up San Carlos between the little cafes and galleries, between houses and shops pleasantly mixed, along with inconspicuous motels, all shaded by eucalyptus trees and sprawling oaks. The morning air was cool, smelled of the sea. The sidewalks were busy with people walking to work, jogging, walking their dogs. A few tourists were out, their walk more hesitant as they browsed, their clothes tourist-bright. The locals lived in jeans and faded sweatshirts, or, if business required, in easy, muted sport clothes.

He told himself he hadn’t seen Wilma all week, that it would be nice to visit for a few minutes, but, watching for her stone house beneath its steeply peaked roof, he watched more intently the sidewalk in front, looking for a green van and a flash of red hair.

Wilma’s niece had arrived from San Francisco three weeks ago, another disenchanted art school graduate who had found that she couldn’t make a living at her chosen profession. Charlie had given herself two years to try, he had to hand her that. When she’d finally had enough she launched herself, noholds barred, into a hardheaded new venture.

Charleston Getz was an interesting mix, tall and lean like Wilma, but with big square hands, big joints despite her slim build. She wore no makeup-her redhead’s delicate complexion and prominent bone structure didn’t seem to require additional coloring. Her red hair, wild as a bird’s nest, became her. He couldn’t picture Charlie dressed up, had never seen her in anything but jeans.

But she knew how to behave in a nice restaurant. And, more to the point, she knew how to work. The day she arrived in Molena Point she had filed for a business permit and had bought a used van with most of her savings. By the end of the week she’d had business cards printed, had put an ad in the paper, and hired two employees. CHARLIE’s FIX-IT, CLEAN-IT was off to a running start, and now three weeks later she had completed two jobs and taken on two more. It was just a small start, but she’d thrown herself wholeheartedly into a viable venture. The village badly needed the kinds of services she was providing.

It took, usually, about two years to get a business off the ground and established, turn it into a paying operation. But he thought Charlie would do fine. She liked the work, liked grubbing around spiffing up other people’s houses and property, liked bringing beauty to something dull and faded.

Turning down Wilma’s street, his spirits lifted. The van was there, the old green Chevy sitting at the curb. He parked behind it, smiling at the sight of Charlie’s Levi-clad legs sticking out from underneath beside six cans of motor oil, a funnel, and a wad of dirty rags. Looked like the van was already giving her trouble. He hoped she wasn’t dating him because he was a good mechanic. He swung out of the car, studying her dirty tennis shoes and her bony, bare ankles.

5 [????????: pic_6.jpg]

Where Charlie’s ancient van stood two feet from the curb, Charlie’s thin, denim-clad legs protruded from beneath, her feet in the dirty tennis shoes pressed against the curb to brace her as she worked. The six unopened cans of motor oil that stood on the curb beside a pile of clean rags were of a local discount brand, and the oil was fifty weight in deference to the vehicle’s worn and floppy rings, oil thick enough to give those ragged rings something they could carry. Anything thinner would run right on through without ever touching the pistons. Clyde stood on the curb studying Charlie’s bare, greasy ankles. He could smell coffee from the kitchen, and when he turned, Wilma waved at him from the kitchen window, framed by a tangle of red bougainvillea, which climbed the stone cottage wall, fingering toward the steeply peaked roof.

The cottage’s angled dormers and bay windows gave it an intimate, cozy ambience. Because the house was tucked against a hill at the back, both the front and rear porches opened to the front garden, the porch leading to the kitchen set deep beneath the steep roof, the front porch sheltered by its own dormer.The house was surrounded not by lawn but by a lush English garden of varied textures and shades, deep green ajuga, pale gray dusty miller, orange gazanias. Wilma had taught him the names hoping he might be inspired to improve his own landscaping, but so far, it hadn’t taken. He didn’t like getting down on his hands and knees, didn’t like grubbing in the dirt.

A muffled four-letter word exploded from beneath the van, and Charlie’s legs changed position as she eased herself partially out, one hand groping for the rags.

He snatched up a rag and dropped it in her fingers.“Spill oil in your eye?” Kneeling beside the vehicle, he peered under.

She lifted her head from the asphalt, the rag pressed to her face. Beside her stood a bucket into which dripped heavy, sludgy motor oil.“Why aren’t you at work? Run out of customers? They find out you’re ripping them off?”

“I thought you had an appointment with Beverly Jeannot.”

“I have. Thirty minutes to get up there.” She took the rag away, selected a relatively clean corner, and dabbed at her eye again. “I didn’t have to do this now, but the oil was way down, and I didn’t want to add-oh you know.”

“No, I don’t know. All my cars run on thirty weight and are clean as a whistle. How’s the Harder job going?”

“I have my two people working up there.” She tossed out the oily rag, narrowly missing his face. “Thought I’d wash this heap, but I won’t have time.”

“What difference? Is clean rust better?”

Under the van she watched the last drops of oil ooze down into the bucket. Replacing the plug into the oil pan, she slid out from under, pulling the bucket with her. Kneeling on the curb, she opened a can of oil, stuck the spout in, then rose and inserted the spout beneath the open hood into the engine’s oil receptacle.

“Better get a hustle on. Beverly Jeannot doesn’t like the help to be late.”

“Plenty of time. She’s formidable, isn’t she? How do you know her? I thought she lived in Seattle-came down just to settle the estate.”

“I don’t know her, I know of her. From what Janet told me.”

She removed the can, punched another, and set it to emptying into the van’s hungry maw.

“Like a suggestion?”

She looked up, her wild red hair catching the light, bright as if it could shoot sparks.

“Ride up to the shop with me, and take that old ‘61 Mercedes. It looks better than this thing, and it needs the exercise.”

“You’re being patronizing.”

“Not at all. This is entirely in the interest of free enterprise-it will help your image. Beverly Jeannot’s a prime snob. And I don’t drive that car enough.”

“And what’s the tariff? How much?”

“You’re so suspicious. It really needs driving. Scout’s honor, no strings. Not even dinner-unless you do the asking.” He watched her open the third can of oil, admiring her slim legs and her slim, denim-clad posterior. He liked Charlie, liked her bony face and her fierce green eyes, liked her unruly attitude. He was at one with her general distrust of the world; they were alike in that.

But beneath her brazen, redheaded shell she was amazingly tender and gentle. He’d seen her with the cats, kind and understanding, seen her playing with a shy neighborhood pup who usually didn’t trust strangers.

Charlie had had a heavy crisis in her life when she realized she had wasted four years on a college degree that wouldn’t help her make a living. He thought she was handling it all right. She would, when she met with Beverly Jeannot this morning up at Janet’s burned studio, give Beverly a bid on the cleanup, the work to begin as soon as the police had released the premises. He thought that removing the burned debris, alone, would be a big job.

As she turned, he brushed dry leaves off the back of her sweatshirt.“There’s a lot to do up there, cleaning up the burn rubble.”

“I wouldn’t bid on the job if I couldn’t do it,” she said irritably. Then she softened. “I’m going to have to hustle. All I have is Mavity Flowers, and James Stamps.” She removed the last oil can and slammed the hood. “I wish I could get a better fix on Stamps. But he’ll do until I can get someone I trust.”

“Mavity, of course, is a whiz.”

“Mavity has some years on her, but she’s a hard worker. She’ll do just fine on the cleaning, and maybe the painting. It’s the other stuff, the repairs, that she can’t handle. That’s my work.” She picked up the oil cans. “Beverly’s in a big hurry, wants the work done pronto, soon as the house is released.” She tossed the empty cans in a barrel inside the van. The Chevy’s bleached and oxidizing green paint was cracked, dimpled with small rusty dents. The accordioned front fender was shedding paint, rust spreading underneath.

She looked the vehicle over as if really seeing it for the first time, stood comparing it with Clyde’s gleaming red 1938 Packard Twelve. “You serious about the Mercedes?”

“Sure I’m serious.”

She grinned.“I’ll just wash and change. Come on in, Wilma’s in the kitchen.”

He followed her in, wondering why Beverly Jeannot was in such a hurry to have the fire debris cleaned up. Maybe she needed the money. He’d heard that she meant to rebuild the upstairs and put the house on the market. He thought she could make just as much profit by selling the building in its present condition, with just a good cleanup. Let the buyer design a new structure to suit himself. He went on into the kitchen and sat downat the table, where Wilma stood beating egg whites, whipping the mixture to a white froth.

“Angel cake,” she said.

He waited for the automatic coffeemaker to stop dripping and poured himself a cup. From the kitchen he could see through the dining room into the living room, where Janet’s landscape dominated the fireplace wall, a big, splashy oil of the village and treetops as seen from higher up the hills, lots of red rooftops and rich greens.

Wilma had paid for the painting in part by designing and planting Janet’s hillside garden-she’d had some huge decorative boulders hauled in, and planted daylilies, poppies, ice plant, perennials she said were drought-resistant. She had done the garden the same week Janet moved in.

The house had suited Janet exactly. She had designed and had it built for the way she wanted to live. The big studio-garage space upstairs was connected to the upper, back street by a short drive. The studio was big enough for both a painting area and a welding shop, the east wall fitted with floor-to-ceiling storage racks for paintings and a few pieces of sculpture. And there was room to pull her van in, to load up work for exhibits. Wilma had admired Janet’s planning and had loved the downstairs apartment. Both stories looked down over the village hills. The area Wilma had landscaped was below the house, between the apartment and the lower street.

He watched Wilma select an angel cake pan and pour in the batter.“Why don’t you buy Janet’s place? You’ve always liked it. It would be just right for you and Dulcie. You could build a great rental upstairs, where the studio was.”

She looked at him, surprised.“I’ve thought about it.” She set the cake in the oven. “But I’d feel too uncomfortable, living in the house where she died.”

She poured coffee for herself, and sat down.“And it’s too far from the village, I like being close to work.” Wilma’s cottage was only a few blocks from the library, where, since her retirement, she had served as a reference assistant. “I like being near the shops and galleries, I like walking down a few blocks for breakfast or dinner when I take the notion, and I like being near the shore.

“If I lived up there, it would be a mile climb home after work. Face it, the time will come when I couldn’t even do that uphill mile.”

“That’ll never happen.” He rose and refilled his coffee cup. He didn’t like to think about Wilma getting old, she was all the family he had. His mother had died of cancer eight years ago, his father was killed a year later in a wreck on the Santa Ana Freeway. He and Wilma were as close as brother and sister, always there for each other.

“Even though I still work out, and walk a lot, that climb up to Janet’s can be a real artery buster.

“Besides, I enjoy my garden. Janet’s hillside doesn’t suit me. That was a landscape challenge, a minimum-care project, not a garden to potter around in. No, this place fits me better.” She grinned. “It took me too long to dig out all that lawn, put in the flower beds. Now I want to enjoy it-I can potter around when I feel like it, leave it alone when I choose. I about wore out my knees planting ground cover and laying the stone walks.

“And Dulcie loves the garden. You know how she rolls among the flowers.” She set a plate of warm chocolate cookies on the table. “I miss her, when she’s not here for our midmorning snack. Lately, she’s taken to eating a small piece of cake and a bowl of milk at midmorning-when she’s home at that time of day.

“But this morning, she was gone when I got up. I wish I didn’t worry so about her.”

He restrained himself from eating half a dozen cookies at one gulp.“She came poking at Joe’s cat door around nine. Looked like they were headed for Janet’s.”

“I wish she’d just torment the neighborhood dogs the way she used to. Spend her time stealing, and enjoy life.” She gave him that puzzled look he had seen too often lately.

“But who can talk to cats? No matter how bizarre those two are, they’re still feline. Still just as stubborn, still have the same maddening feline attitude.”

He belched delicately.

She sampled a cookie.“Beverly Jeannot is meeting Charlie up at Janet’s. If she finds those two in the apartment?”

“They’ll stay out of her way. Do them good to get booted out. Though I doubt they can get in-Harper boarded up the burned door with plywood.”

“You don’t think Beverly would hurt them?”

The idea surprised him and he thought about it.“I don’t think she’d hurt an animal. And with Charlie there, she won’t.”

“Well, if the cats want to? “

They heard Charlie coming down the hall.

Wilma rose uneasily, turned her back, and busied herself at the stove. She had to be more careful. It was hard enough dealing with her own feelings about Dulcie’s new talents. But having a houseguest, even if Charlie was her niece, didn’t help. She’d barely recovered from the shock of Dulcie’s eloquence when Charlie arrived. With Charlie in the house, she was terrified she’d say something to Dulcie and that Dulcie, in her boundless enthusiasm, would shoot back a sharp observation, come right out with it.

She’d talked to Dulcie ever since she’d brought her home as a small kitten. Cats were to talk to. She’d always talked to her cats. When Dulcie’s replies had been a rub against her ankle, a purr, and a soft mewl, life was simple. But the first time Dulcie answered back in words, both their worlds had changed.

Now, of course, their conversations were hardly remarkable. Just relaxed remarks between friends.

Does the vacuum cleaner really bother you??

Only when it jerks me out of a sound sleep; if you’ll wake me up before you start it, that will help? I do love the scent of lavender in the sheets? Is there any more of that lovely canned albacore??

Do you want to watchLassie??

No, Wilma. We both knowLassieis stupid?

You are a cat of impeccable taste. How about aMagnumrerun?? Oh, I would much rather watchMagnum.And could we have a little snack of sardines??

Charlie swept into the kitchen, dressed in fresh jeans and a pale yellow sweatshirt. She had tied back her hair with a yellow scarf, the curly red tendrils already escaping around her face, the effect fresh and electric. Snatching up a handful of cookies, she hugged Wilma and punched Clyde’s shoulder to move him along.

Wilma stood at the kitchen window watching as they drove away in the Packard.

She had to be more careful around Charlie. In spite of her wariness, she had caught Charlie several times studying Dulcie too intently.

She told herself that was only the gaze of the artist. Charlie did have an artist’s disturbing way of staring at a person or an animal as she memorized line and shadow, as she absorbed the bone structure and muscle, committing to memory some rhythm of line.

She hoped that was all Charlie was seeing when she studied Dulcie. She hoped Charlie wasn’t observing something about the little tabby cat that would best go unnoticed.

6 [????????: pic_7.jpg]

The cats careened uphill streaking through blowing grass, racing against time. Tangles of heavy stems whipped above their heads wild as a storming sea. Racing blindly up, the wind deafened them. Then, gaining the hill’s crest, they paused to look back.

Far down the falling land, the houses were toy-sized, and along the winding streets they still saw no police unit heading up from the village. They could not, from this vantage, see up across the black, burned hills to the streets that flanked Janet’s house, to see if a police unit was already parked there. The buffeting wind tore at their fur, and they hunched down, flattening their ears against its onslaught.

But suddenly, below, something moved in the grass, a huge dark shape slipping upward, a quick, heavy animal shouldering closer. The wind picked up its scent as it lunged into a run.

They spun around, exploded apart, leaped away in opposite directions-the dog couldn’t chase them both.

He chased Dulcie. She could feel the beast’s heat on her backside, could hear it snapping at her hindquarters. She thought it had her, when she heard it yelp. She dodged to look, saw Joe riding its neck-he had doubled back. The dog bellowed with pain and rage, twisted to grab him, and she flew at its head, clawed its ears, clinging to its face, digging in. It ran blindly, bucking. They rode it uphill, twisting, and she could smell its blood.

Riding the beast, she began to laugh, heard Joe laughing, felt the dog tremble beneath them confused, terrified. It had never heard a cat laugh.

When it couldn’t shake them and couldn’t grab them, it bolted into a tangle of broom, trying to scrape them off. The rough branches tore at them, they were scraped and slapped by branches, hanging onto the beast, hunching low, ears down, eyes squeezed shut.

“Now!” Joe shouted.

They leaped clear, down through tangles of dark thorny limbs dense as basket weave. The dog thrashed after them, snapping branches, lunging, sniffing. They crouched below the dark tangles, creeping away, pulsing like the terrified rabbits they hunted. Listening.

He thrashed in circles, searching.

They fled away through the thorny forest, then again they went to ground, straining to hear, to feel his vibrations coursing beneath them through the earth. Maybe he would scent them and follow, maybe not. They dared not go into the open. Dulcie, hiding and frightened, knew he was the dog that had followed her down among the houses. He was the hunter now, and she the prey, and she didn’t like the feeling.

He was quiet a long time, only a little hush of movement, as if he were trying to lick his wounds.

They heard him move again, hesitantly. They dared not rear up to look.

Then, poised to run, they heard him crashing away.

He was leaving. Joe reared up, watching, then laughed, dropped down, and strolled out of the bushes, lay down on the grass, grinned at her.“You raked him good.”

“So did you.” She stood up on her hind legs, to see the dog amble away downhill, making for the houses below, where, perhaps, he could find a friendlier world.

They lay down in the windy sun.“We should have stayed on his back,” Joe said. “He would have carried us clear up to Janet’s.”

She spit out dog hair.“I smell like a dog, and I taste like a dog.”

Far below, the dog had stopped in the yard of a scruffy gray house with a leaning picket fence. An added-on room jutted from the back, with a small, dirty window beneath the sloped roof.

The mutt lifted its leg against the picket fence, then began to twist in circles, trying to lick its wounded back while pawing at its face. But after a while it gave up, wandered to the curb, and leaped into the bed of an old black pickup.

That truck had been in the neighborhood for some time. Several weeks ago they had watched a thin, unkempt man moving into the back room, carrying in two scruffy suitcases and several paper bags. They had watched him, inside the lit room, moving around as if he was unpacking. They had not, then, seen the dog.

“Maybe it was in the cab of the truck,” Joe said. “Or already in the room.” He looked at her worriedly. “The mutt ought to be chained.” He licked her ear. “That beast running loose really screws up the hunting.”

“Maybe he’ll lie low for a while, after the raking we gave him.”

“Sure he will-about as long as it takes the blood to dry.”

She smiled, rolled over in the warm sun. But a little ripple of fear touched her, thinking of the white cat somewhere among the hills, maybe hurt. If that dog found him?

She had dreamed about him again last night, but she hadn’t told Joe-the dreams upset him. Joe Grey might be a big bruiser tomcat who could whip ten times his weight in bulldogs, but some things did scare him. The idea of prophetic dreams was a scenario he did not like to contemplate. When it came to spiritual matters, the tomcat grew defiant and short-tempered.

But her dreams were so real, every smell so intense, every sound so sharply defined. In the first dreams, when the white cat trotted away, wanting her to follow, he had vanished before she could follow. But in one dream, he stood on the surface of the sea. It was a painted sea, blue and green paint, and he had sunk into the painted waves, and the paint faded to white canvas so nothing remained but canvas.

And in her dream last night she had seen him wandering through twilight, walking with his head down as if burdened by a great sadness. He stepped delicately, lifting each paw hesitantly and with care, stepping among tangles of small white bones: the white cat walked among animal bones, little animal skulls.

But again when she tried to follow, he vanished.

He had been so real; he had even smelled stridently male. She longed to tell Joe the dream, but now, heading uphill again, running beside him, she still said nothing. Soon they had left the healthy wild grass and padded across burned grass, across the black waste, crossing the path of the fire, crossing its stink.

This was the shortest way to Janet’s, but they trod with care through the gritty charcoal, watching for sharp fragments, for protruding nails and torn, ragged metal, for broken glass to cut an unwary paw. Skirting around fallen, burned walls, they crept beneath fire-gnawed timbers that stood like gigantic black ribs, angling overthem.

A child’s bedroom wall rose alone, like the remains of some dismantled stage set, its pink kangaroo wallpaper darkened from smoke. A baby crib stood broken, one rail crushed, its paint deeply scorched, blistered into a mass of brown bubbles. A sodden couch smelled of mildew, its springs and cotton stuffing spilling out. A burned license plate lay atop a heap of broken dishes and twisted silverware, a warped metal sink leaned against a bent and blackened car wheel. They trotted between melted cookpots lying whitened and twisted, between blobs of glass melted into bubbling new forms like artifacts from alien worlds.

The smell of wet ashes clung in their mouths and to their fur. They stopped frequently to clean their paws, to lick away the grit embedded in their tender skin and stuck between their claws. A cat’s pads are delicate sensors in their own right, an important adjunct to his ears and eyes. His pads relay urgent messages of sharp or soft, of hot or cold. The feel of grit was as unwelcome as sand in one’s eyes.

Higher up the hill, black trees stood naked, reaching to the sky in mute plea. And one lone, blackened chimney thrust up, an old solitary sentinel. The fire, after burning the top floor of Janet’s house, had careened southward, leveling nearly all the dwellings within its half-mile swath.

But above Janet’s burned house, on up the hill, the blaze had missed eight houses. They marched prim and untouched along the rising hill, along their narrow street. And, strangely, nearer to Janet’s two houses had been spared, one up the hill behind her burned studio, one across the side street. And though Janet’s studio was gone, flattened to ashes, the apartment beneath stood nearly untouched, held safe beneath the concrete slab which formed its roof, which had formed the studio floor. From the blackened slab rose three black girders, twisted against the clouds.

The garden below the house was largely undamaged, though its lush greens were dulled by ashes. The daylilies were blooming, their orange and yellow blossoms brilliant against the burn.

The front of Janet’s apartment was all glass, the five huge windows dirtied by smoke, but unbroken. Behind the smoky glass, long white shutters had been closed across four of the windows, effectively blocking the view of the interior. The last wide window, down at the end, was uncovered-almost as if someone was there, as if someone had not been able to bear closing the house entirely. The sight of that window made Dulcie shiver-as if some presence within wanted sunshine, wanted to look out at the hills for a little while, look out at the village nestled below.

There was no police car parked below the apartment, and none above on the street behind, or in the drive which led to the studio slab. The little side street was empty, too, beyond the blackened vacant lot. There was no car at all parked along the side street before that untouched house. Strange that that ancient brown dwelling, among all the newer houses, would be left standing.

Steps ran up the hill. Halfway up, Janet’s deck gave access to the front door. The cats avoided the steps, where charcoal and rubble had lodged. Trotting uphill they stirred clouds of ashes. Their eyes and noses were already gritty with ash, their coats thick with ash, Dulcie’s stripes dulled, Joe’s white markings nearly as dark ashis coat. If they needed a disguise, they had it ready-made.

A fallen, burned oak tree lay across the entry deck. The front door was covered by plywood nailed across, affixed with yellow police notices warning against entry. They could see, beneath the plywood, the remains of the door, hanging ragged and charred. Dulcie dug at it, rasping deep into the burned wood, ripping away flakes and chunks of wood. She was nearly through when Joe hissed.

“Someone’s watching-the house across the street.”

She drew back tried to look like she was searching for mice. Glancing across the empty lot she could see within the lone house a woman peering out, the lace curtain pulled aside, her face nearly flattened against the glass.

“Hope she gets an eyeful.” Dulcie waited until the woman drew back and disappeared before she dug again, tearing at the charred wood. She had made a hole nearly two inches wide when a patrol car came up the side street.

The cats backed away as it parked directly below. Slipping up the hill to the concrete roof, they crouched at its edge among heaps of ashes, watching a lone officer emerge. Detective Marritt came quickly up the steps, carrying a crowbar and a hammer, his tightly lined face seeming far older than his shock of yellow hair and his lean, muscular body.

Metal screeched against wood as he pulled nails and pried away the barrier. Leaning the two sheets of plywood against the house, he unlocked the burned door, disappeared inside. Dulcie moved to follow, but Joe nipped her shoulder.

She turned back, her green eyes blazing.“What? Come on, can’t you?”

“You’re not going to push right in under his feet.”

“Why not? He won’t know what we’re doing.”

“Wait until he’s finished.”

“We can’t. We won’t know if he finds the diary. If he puts it in his pocket?” She started down the hill again, but Joe moved swiftly, blocking her, shouldering her into a heap of ashes and rubble.

She hissed and swatted him, but still he drove her back, snarling, his yellow glare fierce. She subsided unwillingly, ears back, tail lashing.

“The cops saw too much of us, Dulcie, when Beckwhite was killed. Captain Harper has too many questions.”

“So?”

“Think about it. We’ve already made Harper plenty nervous. He’s a cop, he’s not given to believing weird stuff. This stuff upsets him. You force yourself on him, and you blow your cover.”

She turned her back on him, lay down in the ashes at the edge of the roof, looking over the metal roof gutter watching the door below, sulking.

Joe growled softly“We can’t find out anything if every time we show our faces around the police, they smell trouble and boot us out.”

She sighed.

He lay down beside her.“We do fine when they don’t know we’re snooping. Don’t push it.”

She said nothing. She was not in a mood to admit he was right.

“We make Harper nervous, Dulcie. Give the man some slack.” He moved closer, licked her ear. And they lay side by side, watching for Marritt to come out and waiting for their own turn to search the house. Hoping, if the diary was there, that Marritt came through in his typical sloppy style and missed it.

7 [????????: pic_8.jpg]

The cats could hear from the apartment below a series of thumps, as if Detective Marritt was opening and closing cupboard doors. They heard crockery clash-perhaps he was moving dinner plates, looking behind them-then a metallic crash as if he’d dropped the saucepans. Dulcie smiled. “He’s really good at this, very smooth.” She shifted impatiently from paw to paw, then rose and began to pace, her ears swiveling with nerves.

“Settle down. He’ll be gone soon.” “If he finds the diary, we’ll never see it.” “It’ll make a bulge in his pocket. So what’s the alternative, go down there, snatch it out of his hand?”

She cut her eyes at him.“If I were alone, I’d charm him until he laid it down to pet me, then grab it and run like hell.”

She shook herself, scattering ashes. Curving round, she tried to lick ashes off her coat, but that was like eating out of the fireplace. She spit out flecks of ashes and cinder. Beyond the heaps of ashes that had been raked up by the police, the charred garage door lay across the drive. The police had hauled away the remains of Janet’s van.

“I wonder if her diary will have anything about the museum opening,” Dulcie said softly. “I wonder if she wrote in it that night when she got home from San Francisco. It would be interesting to know her version of the weekend, after the testimony her friend Jeanne Kale gave.”

Janet’s friend from San Francisco had testified that Janet arrived in the city around seven Saturday morning, checked into the St. Francis, leaving her van in the underground garage, and the two women had breakfast in the hotel dining room.

“Imagine,” Dulcie said, “breakfast at the St. Francis. White tablecloths, cut glass bowls, lovely things to eat, maybe French pancakes. And to have a beautiful hotel room all to yourself, with a view of the city. Probably a turn-down at night, with chocolates on the pillow.”

He nuzzled her neck.“Maybe someday we’ll figure out how to do that.”

She opened her mouth in a wide cat laugh.“Sure we will. And figure out how to go to the moon.”

Ms. Kale told the court that she and Janet had shopped all day Saturday, using public transportation, had ridden the cable car out to Fisherman’s Wharf for lunch. “Cracked crab,” Dulcie said, “or maybe lobster Thermidor.” Her pink tongue licked delicately.

“I get the feeling your major interest here, is in the gourmet aspects of the case.”

“Doesn’t hurt to dream. They must have had a lovely weekend.”

Late in the afternoon the two women had stopped at an art supply store, where Janet bought oil paints, four rolls of linen canvas, and a large supply of stretcher bars. She had had the supplies delivered to the St. Francis, where she gave a bellman her car keys, directing him to put the supplies in her van, in the underground garage. That night, Jeanne said, Janet had dinner with Jeanne and her husband and with the couple for whom Janet was doing a huge sculpture of leaping fish, the sculpture she had meant to finish the morning she died. They had eaten at an East Indian restaurant on Grant, walking from the hotel, taking a cab back to the St. Francis afterward.

Nancy and Tim Duncan had been friends of Janet and Kendrick Mahl before the divorce. Over dinner they talked primarily about the sculpture; Janet meant to deliver it to San Francisco early the following week. The Duncans owned a popular San Francisco restaurant, for which the ten-foot sculpture was commissioned. Janet had not taken her van from the parking garage that night, as far as Jeanne knew. After dinner she said she was tired, and had gone directly to her room.

Jeanne said that she and Janet spent Sunday sketching around San Francisco. Sunday night was the opening at the de Young, and Janet had dinner with three artist friends, not Jeanne. Jeanne had given their names. She said that Janet and her friends went directly from dinner to the de Young, in one car. There Janet received her two awards. They stayed at the reception until about ten, then drove back to the St. Francis. Janet changed clothes and checked out, put her suitcase in the van, and headed back to Molena Point. Jeanne said she saw Janet just before she left. That part of Jeanne’s testimony was corroborated by the bell captain and several hotel employees. There was nothing in any of the testimonies to implicate Jeanne, or to imply that Janet had been worried about any aspect of her personal life, or that she was afraid to return home.

Dulcie tried again to wash off the ashes, but gave it up. The sounds from below were faint now-they could hear only an occasional thud, as if Marritt had retreated to the far end of the house.“We could slip in now, he’d never see us.”

“Cops see everything.”

“He’s not a cop, he’s a fraud. He shouldn’t?”

“He’s a cop. Good or bad. Cool it until he leaves.”

She moved away among the burned rubble, pawing irritably at the ashes, nosing at pieces of burned wood and twisted metal. The police had gone over every inch of the site, had bagged every scrap that looked promising, even straining some of it through cheesecloth. They had taken Janet’s burned welding tanks and gauges, Dulcie supposed those went to the police lab, too. TheGazettesaid the Molena Point police used the county lab for most of their work. The police had taken prints from the sculpture of leaping fish before Janet’s agent took the piece away for safekeeping; it had been badly warped by the fire. The police photographer had shot at least a dozen rolls of film, must have recorded everything bigger than a cat hair.

Warily, she approached the hole in the center of the rubble-strewn slab, where the stairwell led down to the apartment. The steps, beneath fallen ashes and debris, were charred and eaten away, and the upper portions of the concrete wall were black. The lower part of the stair was relatively untouched, the door at the bottom hardly smoke-stained. She had investigated down there days before, finding nothing of interest. Now as she turned away, something sharp jabbed into her paw, causing a quick, burning pain. Mewling, she shook her hurt foot.

A blackened thumbtack protruded from her pad, with a bit of burned canvas clinging, the tack stuck so deep that when she pulled it out with her teeth, blood oozed.

She licked her pad, staring down at the tack and at the half-inch strip of blackened canvas, at all that was left of one of Janet’s paintings, a pitiful fragment of burned metal and cloth. Dropping it, she crept back to Joe, to press forlornly against him, mourning Janet.

This summer, when she became aware for the first time of the riches of the human world, of music, painting, drama, and then when she discovered the Aronson Gallery, she had been so intrigued that she trotted right on in, and there were Janet’s landscapes, a dozen huge works as exciting as the canvas that hung in Wilma’s living room.

There had been only a few patrons in the gallery, and they were fully occupied looking at the exhibit and talking with Sicily, so no one noticed her. She prowled among the maze of angled walls, keeping out of sight, staring up at Janet’s rich, windy scenes. She was thus occupied when a patron saw her. “Look at the little cat, why the cat’s an art lover?” And the gallery had filled with rude laughter as others turned to stare. She had fled, frightened and embarrassed.

She didn’t go into the gallery again for a long time, but she would slip up onto the low windowsill and lie looking in, pretending to be napping, but fascinated with the rich paintings. Strange, they gave her the same high as did the bright silks and velvets that she liked to steal. Until this summer, stealing had been her only indulgence; she’d had no notion that anything else in the world would so excite her.

She wasn’t the only cat who stole; Wilma had saved a whole sheaf of clippings about thieving cats. Some cats stole objects inside their own homes-fountain pens, hair clasps-but others stole from the neighbors just as she did. Their owners said that stealing was a sign of intelligence. Maybe-all she knew was that from kittenhood she lovedthings,and she stole them. Before she was six months old she had taught herself to leap up at a clothesline and slap off the clothespins, taking the brightest, silkiest garment, had taught herself to open the neighbors’ unlocked screen doors, and she could turn almost any door knob. Once inside a house she headed directly for the master bedroom-unless there was a teenage daughter, then that room got top billing. Oh, the satin nighties and silk stockings and little lacy bras. Carrying her treasures home, she hid them beneath the furniture, where she could lie on them, purring. When Wilma found and returned the purloined items Dulcie felt incredibly sad, but she hadn’t let Wilma know that.

Joe nudged her.“He’s leaving. He doesn’t have the diary. Not a lump in that tight uniform.” Marritt’s jacket and trousers fitted him as snugly as a second skin.

Bang, bang, bang.The concrete vibrated under their paws as Marritt nailed up the plywood. The moment he was gone they fled down the hill and clawed their way underneath, ripping off hunks of the burned door, widening the hole Dulcie had started. She slipped under, flicking her tail through in a hurry though there was no one to grab her; her sense of helplessness at leaving her tail vulnerable was basic and powerful. Joe’s short stub was not a problem.

Despite the bright sun outside, most of the room was dark. Blazing stripes of sunlight shone through the closed shutters, sharply illuminating a frosting of dust and ashes which coated the Mexican tile floor. The large living room must have been handsome before smoke and drenching water dirtied the white couch and white leather chairs, the white walls and white rugs. The floor was cold beneath their paws, but when Joe stepped onto a thick rug expecting a warm respite, he backed off fast; the rug was soaked with sour, stale water.

Marritt’s footprints were everywhere incised into the dust, back and forth across the kitchen, and between the couch and chairs, as if he must have searched for the journal beneath the upholstered cushions. Six rectangles of clean white wall shone where Janet’s paintings had been removed after the fire, the bare picture hooks clinging like dark grasshoppers.

The newspaper had said the paintings were being restored, that Janet’s agent had taken them. Joe wasn’t into the art scene, but he knew the monetary value of Janet’s work. According to the Molena PointGazetteeach of the forty-six paintings destroyed by fire was worth twenty to thirty thousand dollars. That added up to a nice, easy million.

He watched Dulcie sniff at the sodden chairs and couch, then leap to the counters of the open kitchen cube to paw at the cupboard doors. On the kitchen floor stood a bowl of cat kibble and a bowl of water, both scummed over with ashes and dust. Surely they hadn’t been touched since the fire. And how could they be, unless Janet had had a cat door.

The stairwell door, just beyond the kitchen, had been boarded up though it did not seem burned. From beneath it came the smell of wet ashes, and a chill breeze sucked down. Beyond the stairwell, the door on the far wall was closed but not boarded over. Marritt’s intrusive footprints led to it, ripe with his scent, a combination of shoe polish and cigarette smoke. The crack beneath the door was bright with sunlight. The smell from within was not of ashes but of a woman’s delicate perfume. Dulcie sniffed deeply at the bright space, then leaped up, grasping the knob between her paws. Swinging, scrabbling with her hind feet against the molding, she turned the knob, kicked against the doorframe. The door swung in. They were struck in the face by glaring sunlight, blinding them.

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The cats narrowed their eyes, bombarded by sunlight. Sun blazed through treetops and bounced off burnished clouds. They stood at the edge of a terrace high above the hills, a tile expanse furnished with white wicker chairs, white wicker desk? a bed? bookcases?

Their eyes adjusted, their response focused, they saw clearly. They stood not on a terrace but on the threshold of Janet’s bedroom, its two glass walls filled with trees and sky. To the left of the wide corner windows Janet’s bed was tucked cozily into a wall of books. The white sheets had been tossed back in a tangle, the brightly flowered quilt lay half on the floor, as if Janet had just stepped away from the bed, had perhaps gone into the kitchen to make coffee; the sense of her presence was powerful. Her blue sweatshirt lay tossed across the wicker chair with a pair of jeans and a red windbreaker; beneath the chair lay a pair of jogging shoes leaning one atop the other, her white socks tucked neatly inside. Dulcie sniffed at the clothes of the dead woman and shivered; these would be the clothes she wore driving home from San Francisco that night after the opening at the de Young. The next morning she would have put on welding clothes, old scorched jeans, heavy leather boots, clothes that an accidental welding burn wouldn’t hurt.

Three big white rugs softened the expanse of tile, thick and inviting and quite dry; the cats’ paws sank deep, inscribing sooty prints. Dulcie sat down to clean her pink pads, but Joe stood, absorbing the warmth of the room, heat from the sun pressing in through the glass, absorbing the powerful sense of the dead woman. The feel of her presence was so strong he felt his fur tingle.

Beneath the white wicker desk was a tennis ball, and clinging to the desk legs and to the legs of the chair were fine white cat hairs. As Joe scented the tomcat, an involuntary growl rose in his throat; but it was an old scent, flat and faded.

He leaped to the bed, onto the rumpled sheets, leaving sooty pawprints, then belatedly he licked clean his own pads. The sun-warmed sheets smelled of human female, and of Janet’s light perfume. He flopped down and rolled, purring.

The bookshelves above the bed had been recessed into the wall. The bottom shelf, at bed level, was bare. When he reared up to study the books, he could see the names of writers that Clyde liked to read, Cussler, Koontz, Steinbeck, Tolkien, Pasternak, an interesting mix. Half a dozen scrapbooks and photo albums were sandwiched between these, but he saw nothing that looked like a diary-unless Janet had made her journal in one of the big albums. As he clawed one down, Dulcie leaped up beside him.

“Strange that there’s no nightstand. Where did she keep her night cream? Her facial tissues and clock? And Wilma keeps a bowl of mints by the bed. They’re nice late at night.”

Pawing open the album, they found newspaper clippings neatly taped to the pages, reviews of Janet’s work and articles about awards she had won. Many had her picture, fuzzed and grainy, taken beside a painting or a piece of sculpture. There was a quarter-page article from theL. A. Timesabout Janet’s top award in the Los Angeles Museum Annual, and anotherTimesarticle gave her a big spread for a one-woman show at the Biltmore. Northern California papers supplied clippings about an award at the Richmond Annual, and the San Francisco papers listed awards in Reno, San Diego, Sacramento. There seemed to be clippings for all the major exhibits, as well as for Janet’s one-woman shows, many at the major museums.

“She’s done-she did all right,” Joe said. “It wasn’t easy. She put herself through school working as a welder in San Francisco, lived in a cheap room in the commercial district. That’s a rough part of the city. I was born in an alley just off Mission. That’s where I got my tail broken, that’s where Clyde found me.

“She didn’t have any furniture at first, just an easel, and she slept on a mattress on the floor. She kept everything in cardboard boxes.”

“How do you know all this?”

“From napping in the living room while she and Clyde drank beer and listened to Clyde’s collection of old forties records.” Joe grinned. “She liked the big bands as much as Clyde does.” He’d loved those nights, just the three of them. He’d been comfortable with Janet, and, long beforehe’d discovered his super-cat talents, he had shared with Janet and Clyde a cat’s normal pleasure in music. That heady forties beat seemed to get right under his skin, right in to where the purrs started.

“She was the only woman he ever dated who didn’t pitch a fit about Clyde keeping my ratty, clawed-up chair in the living room. Janet called it a work of art.” The covering of his personal chair, he had long ago shredded to ribbons. The chair was his alone: no cat, no dog, no human had better mess with it.

After graduation Janet had moved to Molena Point, to another cheap room, had picked up welding jobs around the docks to support herself. Every penny went into paint and canvas, into oxygen and acetylene for her sculpture, and into sheets of milled steel. She had taken her work to every juried show in the state, and in only two years she was picked up by the Aronson Gallery.

She had lived better then, had bought some used furniture and a used van. She had been in Molena Point less than a year when she started dating Kendrick Mahl. Mahl was the art critic for theSan Francisco Chroniclethen; he kept a weekend place in Molena Point. When they married, Janet moved in there, but she kept her old room for studio space. After the wedding, Mahl’s reviews of her work were favorable but understandably restrained. After the divorce he called her paintings cheap trash. Months after she left Mahl, she started dating Clyde. Joe thought she’d needed that comfortable relationship.

He clawed down a second album, this one was filled with eight-by-ten glossies, publicity photos of Janet and of her work. In the first shot she stood turned away from a splashy landscape, a painting of the rocky sea cliff as seen from the level of the white, crashing waves. At the very top of the painting, just a hint of rooftops shone against a thin strip of sky. Janet stood before the painting looking directly at the camera, her grin mischievous, her hands paint-stained, her smock streaked with paint; her eyes were fixed directly on them, filled with power and life.

Shivering, Dulcie wrapped her tail close around herself and sat looking at the room where Janet had lived. Where Janet had waked that Monday morning with no idea that, within an hour, she would be dead.

Dead,Dulcie thought,and with nothing else afterward?Ever since Janet died, that question had troubled her.

They found in this album dated photographs of Janet’s recent paintings, and at the back was a picture of the white cat, an eight-by-ten color shot. He sat on a blue backdrop, a carefully chosen fabric the color of his blue eyes and blue collar. His fur was long, well groomed, his tail a huge fluffed plume. His expression was intelligent and watchful, but imperious, too, coolly demanding.

There were shots of the white cat with Janet, one where he sat in her lap, and one where he lay across her shoulder, his eyes slitted half-closed.

“Canhe still be alive? Maybe he’s hurt. Is that why I dream of him, because he needs our help?”

“The volunteers looked everywhere, Dulcie. There must have been twenty people combing the hills. Don’t you think if he were alive, they would have found him? Don’t you think that, even hurt, he would have tried to come home?”

“Maybe he’s too badly hurt. Or maybe he did come home, maybe he found the studio gone, flattened, nothing but ashes-and Janet gone, no fresh scent of her. He would have been terrified. He might have just gone away again, frightened and confused. The fire itself must have been terrible for him. Maybe he was afraid even to come near the house.”

“No matter how scared, if he were hungry, he’d go to the neighbors, at least to cadge a meal.”

“There’s some reason I dream of him.” She gave him a clear green look. “The dreams have some purpose. They have to come from somewhere, not just from my own head. Before I dreamed of him, I didn’t even know what he looked like, except from seeing him blocks away. I didn’t know his eyes were blue, I didn’t know that he wore a blue collar with a brass tag.” She looked at him a long time. “Where did those bits of knowledge come from?”

“Maybe you saw his collar some time, saw him close up and don’t remember.”

“I didn’t. Iwouldremember.”

But he didn’t answer, and she let it drop. Maybe there was something in the male genes that wouldn’t let him think about such mysteries.

The rest of the album contained snapshots of Janet at a picnic, and at a party, and several shots of her beside an overweight, overdressed woman.“Beverly,” Dulcie said. “That has to be her sister Beverly-she’s just the way Wilma described her. Looks like an overfed pug dog.”

There were three shots of Janet in a wet suit beside a rocky shore, then pictures of a baseball game, where Janet stood tanned and grinning, ready to pitch, and there was a shot of her at bat.

They went through all the albums, pulling them off the shelves until the big, leather-bound books covered the rumpled bed. They found no diary. Dulcie prowled beneath the bed, under the fallen sheets and comforter, then searched the bookshelves again, thrusting her nose behind the disarranged books. When, balancing on the bottom shelf, she felt it shift beneath her paws she dropped down and dug at it.

They worried at the shelf, wiggling and clawing until it moved, then slid back.

The space beneath contained a box of tissues, face cream, a jar of hand cream, two small sketch pads, pencils, pens, and a small folding clock. Half-hidden beneath the jumble lay a small, leather-bound book.

Dulcie touched it with a hesitant paw. The scent of leather was mixed with Janet’s scent. She took it in her teeth, dragged it out, dropped it on the bed. Gently she pawed it open.

The cats glanced at each other and smiled. This was it, this was Janet’s diary.

Janet’s handwriting was small and neat. She had written as much as she could on each page, leaving only thin margins, squeezing the lines close together as if she had felt frugal about the space, as if she had wanted to make the journal last over as many years as possible.

The last half of the diary was empty.

She had begun the journal during art school days, but had made only occasional entries then, mostly random notes of scenes she wanted to paint?Corner Jones and Lombard, white Victorian towering behind shops? The top of Chestnut Street when the storm sky is low and dark, and the East Bay seems so close you could touch it? The light against Russian Hill when clouds break the sun. Who can put that light on canvas?

She had made brief notes about her move to Molena Point, and some memos as to moving costs. There was a page of notes about apartment hunting, then a lapse of time. Then later, during her stormy marriage to Kendrick Mahl, the entries were long and painful, a montage of hurts from Mahl, his sarcasm about her work-and his involvement with other women, the details meant for no one else’s eyes, as Janet set down her painful disappointment in Mahl, and then at last her resolve to leave him. Her notes about the divorce were raw and ugly, filled with her growing hatred.

Joe hadn’t thought of Janet as one to hold on to hurts, but she had held on, clinging to her anger, and who could blame her? Kendrick Mahl was a vindictive man, hurtful and cold. Joe had no reason not to believe Janet; he thought Janet didn’t lie easily. She had not talked to Clyde much about Mahl.

The journal entries were all tangled together, her personal life, her painting notes, brief reminders of when and where each painting was hung and if it had received an award, all the fragments of her life jumbled into one entity like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. In the occasional stilted notes about her sister Beverly, it was apparent that the two sisters did not get along. A year before Janet’s death, Beverly had wanted to open a gallery and take Janet’s work from Sicily, a proposal Janet had rejected. The entry reflected her anger with bold, dark handwriting. Not even when she was the most hurt by Mahl had she written in this little book with such obvious rage.

“How can they be sisters?” Dulcie said. “There’s no love, there’s no closeness at all between them.” She stared at Joe with widening eyes. “I had three sisters and two brothers, and I never saw them again after Wilma took me away.”

“And you’re sorry she took you?”

She licked her whiskers.“If Wilma hadn’t taken me, I probably would have died. I was the runt, they kept pushing me away from the milk. I didn’t know what it felt like to be really, beautifully full of supper until I went to live with Wilma.

“But I do wonder what it would have been like to have someone to play with, when I was little.”

“Maybe that’s why you steal. You had a maladjusted kittenhood.”

She gave him a gentle swat, and returned to Janet’s diary. Scattered through the journal were brief passages that did not seem to be painting notes but were simply written for pleasure, little pleasing word pictures, a drift of clouds over the darkening hills, the sea heaving green against the rocks, vignettes more detailed than her painting notes. The entries where Janet broke off with Rob Lake were written shortly after Mahl became Rob’s agent.

Anyone’s head would be turned, Kendrick was the most powerful critic in Northern California before he left theChronicleto open his own gallery. He can make Rob’s reputation, or prevent Rob from ever getting anywhere. Of course Rob’s being used. Can’t he see that? Or is he so eager that he doesn’t care, that our relationship means nothing? I can’t see him anymore, not when he belongs to Kendrick, I can’t be comfortable with him now.

Joe withheld comment. His remarks about Rob Lake only angered Dulcie. She would have to admit in her own time that Lake wasn’t as pure as she’d imagined.

Near the end of the journal was a note about a Mrs. Blankenship, who seemed to be a neighbor. Janet described her as a harmless old dear who had nothing to do but watch other people from her bedroom window.

She has sent word by her daughter that she doesn’t like me welding so near their house, that it isn’t safe, and that the flashing light bothers her. I’ve put up heavy shutters in the studio, and started pulling my kitchen shade, too. Poor old woman doesn’t have anything else to do with her time. Maybe she should get a dog.

“That’s the woman we saw staring out the window across the street,” Dulcie said. “It’s the only house that looks right over to the studio.” The houses on the street above were higher, farther away, and positioned so that probably no one cared what Janet did. But the house across the side street had a clear view. “I wonder,” she said softly, “what that old woman saw, the morning of the fire. There hasn’t been any witness named Blankenship.”

“It was five in the morning. Why would an old woman be looking out her window at five in the morning?”

“Old people don’t sleep well, they’re up at all hours. Wilma wakes up in the middle of the night and reads. I have to burrow under the covers.”

Her green eyes widened.“Maybe I can find out; maybe I can hang out there for a while. Play up to the old lady.”

“Why not? You could do that. Get her to confide in you-tell her you’re a talking cat, that you’d like to interview her. Like to ask her a few questions. Maybe you could borrow a press card, say you work for theGazette.”

“I could play lost kitty. Hungry lost kitty. Little old ladies are suckers for that stuff.”

Silently he looked at her.

“It’s worth a try. What harm?”

“That old woman might hate cats. Maybe she poisons cats.”

“If she hates cats, I’ll leave. If she puts poison out, I won’t eat it. Do you think I can’t smell poison?”

“Sometimes, Dulcie?” But he sighed. What was the use?

She smiled and returned to the journal.“Why does Janet say this about Sicily Aronson, that Sicily is admirably calculating? What does she??”

A sudden noise from the street startled them, the sound of a car door opening. They sprang to the window, looking down at the street.

A black Cadillac had parked at the curb. The driver’s door was open, and, as they watched, a large woman began to extricate herself from beneath the steering wheel. Dulcie’s eyes widened. “Beverly. That’s Beverly Jeannot, has to be. Why would she come up here?”

“Why not? It’s her house now. You know Janet left her the house.”

“But the police tape is still up. I thought no one was supposed to come inside. I wonder if Captain Harper knows she’s up here.”

“Dulcie, it’s her house. Don’t you think she has a right to come in?”

Behind the Cadillac a pale cream Mercedes of antique vintage pulled up. Dulcie stared, her tail twitching with surprise. They could see the driver’s red hair massed like a flame. “Where did Charlie get a pretty car like that? She can hardly afford a cup of coffee.”

“That’s Clyde’s old Mercedes, the one he rebuilt. He must have loaned it to her. Maybe her old bus died. It wouldn’t take much.”

Charlie swung out of the Mercedes as Beverly emerged from the Cadillac. Beverly Jeannot was an overstuffed, soft-looking woman with large jowls, a wide stubby nose, and short brown hair set into such perfect marcel waves she might just have come from a 1920s beauty salon.

She was done up in something long and floating and color coordinated, all in shades of pink and burgundy, with high-heeled burgundy shoes and a natty little burgundy handbag. Her overdone outfit made a sharp contrast to Charlie’s skinny jeans and faded yellow sweatshirt. The two women were as different as a jelly donut and a gnawed chicken bone. Charlie carried a clipboard, a claw hammer, and a wrecking bar.

As the mismatched pair started up the hill, moving out of sight along the far side of the house, Dulcie stared at the books scattered on the bed. There was no way to get them back on the shelves-that would take forever. She leaped to the bed, pawed the cubbyhole closed, and nosed Janet’s diary to the floor; leaping down she pushed it under the bed. They slid under behind it, dragging it deeper beneath the fallen sheets as footsteps rang on the entry deck. They could hear the soft mumble of voices, then a wrenching screech as Charlie began to pull nails, releasing the boarded-over front door.

There were two thuds as Charlie leaned the plywood sheets against the house, then the soft, metallic click of the lock turning.

As Beverly Jeannot’s high heels struck across the living room tiles, the cats backed into the far corner, pulling Janet’s diary with them, shoving it under a fold of quilt. And, tucked warm beneath the quilt beside the leather-bound book, Joe found himself listening intently, surprised at his own sharp curiosity.

For the first time since Janet’s death, his interest in her killer was intense, predatory. Determined. Now, suddenly, he meant to find out who killed Janet.

Maybe it was his immediate, instinctive dislike of Beverly Jeannot.

Or maybe his concern grew from the strong sense of Janet surrounding them, her scent, her pictures, her words-her deepest feelings shared.

9 [????????: pic_10.jpg]

Beverly stepped up onto Janet’s deck, pulling her skirts around her, staying well away from the fallen, burned oak tree that had smashed half the deck and the rail. Looking helplessly at the plywood that had been nailed over the front door, she waited for Charlie to provide access.

Hiding an irritated smile, Charlie began to pull nails, wondering what Beverly would do if she had to get into Janet’s apartment without assistance. She hoped she could work for this woman without, somewhere along the way, losing control of her temper. Their first meeting, three days before, had been strained.

Because she didn’t yet have an office in which to talk with Beverly, she’d suggested meeting for coffee at the Bakery. Beverly kept the appointment, but let her know right off that meeting in a public restaurant was not the way in which she liked to conduct business. Charlie didn’t know how much privacy Beverly required to discuss repair and janitorial services. Beverly had looked a mile down her nose at the little tables on the Bakery’s charming covered porch; though when their tea was served she tied right into the pastries, devouring the apricot crescent rolls greedily.

Charlie pulled the last nails, slipped the two sheets of plywood out from under the police tape, and leaned them against the house. She didn’t have to like Beverly Jeannot in order to work for her, and this was the biggest cleaning and repair job she’d bid on. Following Beverly up along the side of the house from the street below, she had hastily assessed the exterior damage. The smoke-stained siding would need pressure scrubbing, and that would mean covering the windows. She’d have to rent a pressure washer. It was too early on in the game to buy one-that would put her in debt for a year. The pump alone ran around eleven hundred, and the spray washer was probably more. A total of two to three thousand bucks.

Her profit from this job would go a long way toward paying for that kind of equipment-if she didn’t lose her temper and blow it. Though it was more than Beverly’s attitude that made her uncomfortable about this bid. She wasn’t looking forward to cleaning the house where Janet Jeannot had been killed so brutally. She’d been a fan of Janet’s, had admired Janet’s work for years. She wasn’t sure how she was going to feel, working there, where Janet had been murdered.

But that was childish, she was being childish. She couldn’t help Janet; she couldn’t change anything.

When she was still in art school, she had sometimes seen Janet at a gallery opening or a museum reception among a group of well-known painters. She had never had the nerve to approach the artist. Why should Janet Jeannot care that some gangling art student idolized her work?

But now she wished she had spoken to her. She hadn’t learned until she moved to Molena Point three weeks ago, what a down-to-earth person Janet had been. Maybe a word of admiration, even from an art student, would have meant a little something.

Of course when she told Beverly, over coffee that day, how much she had admired Janet, she received only a haughty sniff. As if a common cleaning and repair person couldn’t possibly distinguish an exciting painting from the Sunday comics. Now, following Beverly inside, she wondered if Beverly herself had appreciated Janet’s work. Stepping over the burned threshold, Beverly gathered her skirts around her giving a little disgusted huff at the sour smell.

What did she expect, attar of lilies? There’d been a fire there: the white walls, the white rugs and furniture were dark from smoke, the rooms smelled of smoke and dampness, and strongly of mildew. There were drip lines running down the smoke-darkened paint where water had leaked in from the fire hoses.

“I will want all the food removed from the cupboards, and that cat stuff thrown out.” Beverly directed her glance to the dusty water and food bowls on the floor by the kitchen sink. “She kept a cat, but I suppose it’s dead or has found somewhere else to live.

“I want you to clean the refrigerator thoroughly, and pack up all the dishes and cookware. Those will go to the Goodwill-there’s nothing here worth keeping. I want the house completely emptied except for the rugs and furniture. You will see to having those properly cleaned, so that I can sell them.” Beverly stood waiting, as if to be sure that Charlie understood.

Charlie dutifully noted the details on the pad inserted in her clipboard, then picked up the wet throw rugs and carried them out to the deck. Wringing them out, she hung them over the undamaged portion of rail. She’d drop them off later for cleaning-a good professional would do a better job than she ever could with a rented steam cleaner. Straightening the rugs, looking down the hill, she admired the view. Maybe someday she’d have a place like this. She wondered where the cat was, the one that belonged to the dusty water and food bowls. That would be the white cat that Wilma had helped to search for. Wilma thought the poor thing had died in the fire; they’d found no sign of him.

She stood in the big living room for a few moments, assessing the smoke-stained walls. They’d need a heavy scrubbing before she painted. The floors would be fine with a good mopping; nothing could hurt that Mexican clay tile.

“I’m in here,” Beverly called imperiously.

Out of sight, Charlie stuck out her tongue, then moved obediently toward the bedroom.

This room was huge, too, and so bright it took her breath. It would make a wonderful studio. She’d kill for that view down the hills. Beverly stood beside the unmade bed, shuffling through a tangle of scrapbooks scattered across the rumpled sheets. The sheets were streaked with black dirt, too, and when she looked more closely she realized they were pawprints.

So Janet’s cat had survived, had been in the house-or some cat had. Must have slipped in through the charred hole under the front door. Beverly seemed not to see the prints or was ignoring them, caring nothing about the cat.

Before she left, Charlie thought, she’d put out fresh water, food if she could find any, maybe leave the bowls under the entry deck where Beverly wouldn’t notice.

“I’ll want her clothes boxed up for charity. She had no valuable jewelry, only junk. Please look through the closet and dresser now, so you will know how many containers you will require. I will want a complete and detailed list for tax purposes.” Beverly flipped through each album, left themin an untidy pile, and turned to inspecting the bookshelves, moving books and glancing behind them. It occurred to Charlie to wonder if Beverly Jeannot really ought to be in there. Maybe she hadn’t any more right to be in this house than the general public, until the police cordon was removed andthe trial was finished.

Opening the dresser drawers, she found them half-empty. Not as if Janet’s clothes had been removed, rather as if Janet hadn’t had much, as if perhaps the artist saw no need for an abundance of clothing. Her few jeans and sweatshirts lay neatly folded. There was one nice sweater, in a plastic storage bag, a dozen pairs of socks, two pairs of panty hose. Janet had worn plain cotton panties. She didn’t seem overly fond of brassieres-she had only one.

Beverly, preoccupied and intent, moved from the bookshelves to the desk, opening drawers, shuffling through the contents. Charlie watched her, then checked the closet It was half-empty, too. Janet must have unpacked from her San Francisco trip before she went to bed. There was a small, empty suitcase on the top shelf beside a folded garment bag. The clothes on the chair must be what she took off that night, as if she’d been too tired to put them away. The closet contained a wide, transparent storage bag with three dress-up outfits: a beige silk suit, a print dress, and a gold, low-cut cocktail dress. Two more pairs of jeans hung neatly beside a second windbreaker and some cotton shirts. This completed the wardrobe. She heard Beverly pick up the phone and punch in a number, listened to her asking for Police Captain Harper.

She could imagine how that imperious tone would go over if she used it on Harper.

She had met Max Harper only once, but she knew enough about him from Clyde to know the dry, lean man didn’t tolerate being patronized. What cop did? Listening, she returned to the dresser and pretended to inventory jeans and sweatshirts.

Beverly must have pull, in spite of her rudeness, because within seconds she had Harper on the line.

Though likely it wasn’t pull at all but Beverly’s connection to Janet. For all she knew, Beverly herself might be suspect in some way.

“Captain Harper, the man you sent up here to search this house has left an unacceptable mess. I can’t imagine why he would do this-he has pulled nearly all the books off the shelves for no apparent reason, has, in fact, trashed the entire bedroom.”

Charlie didn’t see anything trashed. She could imagine the chief of police raising an amused eyebrow, puffing away on a cigarette while Beverly ranted.

“What do you mean, I’m not allowed in the house? This is my house now. Have you forgotten that Janet left the house to me? Surely your police rules apply simply to the general public. I don’t?”

Abruptly Beverly stopped talking, was quiet for some minutes, then,“Captain Harper, I came up here on legitimate business. I would remind you that I don’t live in Molena Point, and that my time here is limited. I came up here to assess the interior damage and to arrange for much-needed repairs-once you have released the premises. I’m sure you know that much of the damage was caused by your police officers and city firemen. I am, in fact, facing monumental cleaning and repair costs, thanks to you city workers.”

There was another long silence, then Beverly gave a sharp huff of exasperation and hung up, banging the receiver. Charlie pretended to be absorbed in noting the number of moving boxes she’d want. She paced off the size of the rooms in preparation for ordering paint, then went down to the Mercedes to retrieve a box of paint chips from her canvas tote. Beverly wanted a perfect match to the existing white walls. This seemed a needless expense, to have the paint specially mixed, whenthe woman was going to sell the house. Particularly when she was in such a hurry.

But what does a simple cleaning person know?

Returning from the car, she looked up at the house with a stab of longing, dreaming how it would be to have that lovely apartment. The studio above could be rebuilt, with plenty of space for tool storage and building supplies, maybe room left over for a small rental.

Sure, just whip out the checkbook and plunk down half a million or maybe more, and it’s mine.Molena Point property was incredibly expensive.

Back in the house again, she sorted through paint chips,India Ivory, Rich Almond, Pagan White, Winter Snow, Narcissus.She chosePale Bone,matching it to a little patch of wall down behind the couch that seemed to have escaped smoke damage.

But when she checked the color with Beverly, Beverly huffed and had to try a dozen samples. She returned to thePale Boneas if she had just discovered it. In a few minutes she was back in the bedroom. Charlie could hear her still rummaging, heard her open the closet door, heard the hangers slide, heard her unzip the suitcase, zip it up again. Whatever the woman was looking for, she hadn’t found it yet.

Well at least the police knew she was there. If Harper didn’t want her nosing around, he’d send a squad car.

In the kitchen cupboard she found a supply of cat kibble and a dozen small cans of gourmet cat food. Reluctant to move the bowls on the floor and generate questions, she dug out an aluminum pie tin and a chipped china bowl. Filling the bowl with water, she carried it all outside, poured kibble into the pie tin, placed it and the kibble box and bowl of water just under the deck. She could see, down the hill, the house she was now working on, just a few blocks south. She could run up to this house easily to replenish the food and water. If the cat did come back, she could see if it was hurt and take care of it.

Returning to the bedroom, she startled Beverly. The woman turned abruptly from the empty bookshelves. Having pulled off all the remaining books, she looked cross and frustrated.

“When you get Janet’s clothes packed, get them off at once to the Junior League or the Goodwill, then take these albums and scrapbooks to her agent. It is the Aronson Gallery, on San Carlos.”

Charlie nodded and held her tongue.

“Any of Janet’s sketches, or sketchbooks-or any journals, are to be given to me. Pack them carefully in a large, suitably flat box. Don’t fold the sketches, please. Anything drawn or written by Janet’s hand must come to me. Bring them to my motel. Don’t leave them in the house while you are working.

“The bedding and towels can go with the clothes and kitchen things. In short, everything to charity except albums, scrapbooks, diaries, or journals, and any remaining artwork. And of course the rugs and furniture, which I will sell.”

For a woman whose sister had died so recently, and so horribly, Beverly Jeannot was maintaining a remarkable strength of spirit. Charlie pretended to take notes, but they weren’t needed. Beverly’s sharp instructions had etched themselves on each individual brain cell.

“You understand that you cannot start any work until the police legally remove the barrier,” Beverly said. “I have no idea how long this trial will take. Once it ends, beginning the day it ends, when the premises are released, I want the work started immediately and done with dispatch. The living room cleaned and painted, the outside of the house scrubbed, the windows washed. The remains of the studio fire must be removed and the area swept clean so the builders can start, and the entire yard must be cleaned and raked.” She looked Charlie over. “How long will that require? I hope nomore than two or three days. Can you assure me that you have sufficient crew to handle the job expeditiously? If you cannot, I would like to know at once.”

“My crews will be on the job the moment the police allow us to enter. I’ll do the bid this evening, fax it to your motel. Will that be satisfactory?”

No other repair and cleaning service would put their jobs on hold in this way-a customer waited his turn. She wouldn’t make this arrangement either, to be available at any time without notice, if she wasn’t just getting started.

She hadn’t told Beverly how short a time she’d been in business, and Beverly hadn’t asked. She reminded herself again that she had better not lose her sense of humor. She prayed that she’d be able to find additional help for the job. One fifty-year-old, addle-brained cleaning lady and one male handyman of questionable skills were not going to cut it.

Under the bed, the cats glanced at each other. There was only one place Beverly hadn’t searched. Her footsteps tapping across the tile were bold and solid.

She stopped beside the bed, her shoes inches from Dulcie’s nose. Thick ankles in thick, pale stockings, burgundy high heels with wide straps across the instep. The springs squeaked and one burgundy foot disappeared upward, then the other, as Beverly climbed to kneel on the bed.

She had already pulled all the books out. Now a dry, sliding sound suggested that she was running her hand down the wall, maybe pressing along the moving shelf beneath which Janet had kept her tissues and clock and the missing journal. The springs complained as she shifted her weight.

They heard the movable panel rattle. Heard her suck in her breath, heard the shelf slide open.

They listened to her rummaging among the contents, but soon she closed the little niche again and eased herself down and off the bed.

When Beverly began to pull the sheets off, Dulcie snatched the diary in her teeth and they slipped out behind her, staying between the comforter and the wall. As she tugged at the bedding, jerking sheets and comforter onto the rug, they fled, streaking for the closet.

They peered out, ready to run again.

But she didn’t turn, hadn’t seen them. They watched her shake the bedclothes, drop them on the rug, then roll the bed away from the wall. As she searched behind it, her posterior bulged in the plum-colored skirt. At last she straightened up, brushed dust from her suit, and returned empty-handed to the living room.

The cats did not leave their shelter until they heard the front door close, heard the lock slide home, heard Charlie nailing up the plywood.

When an engine started down below they left the closet, trotted to the window, and watched Beverly drive away. Charlie left directly behind her, the Mercedes softly purring.

The apartment was still again, empty.

Crouching together on the rug with the diary lying between them, they pawed it open to the last pages.

Here were entries about the de Young opening, notes which Janet must have made only days before she died.Ironic that Kendrick is on the museum board which is giving me two awards. A jury with Kendrick on it wouldn’t even have hung my work, so I guess he didn’t have any say in the matter, it’s the jury that decides, bless them.

She had tucked a clipping between the pages, a group photo of the board, taken a week before the opening. She had drawn beside Mahl’s picture an owl that looked so like Mahl, Dulcie rolled over laughing. The dowdy bird had Mahl’s hunched shoulders, Mahl’s beaklike nose. Its eyes closely resembled Mahl’s round, rimless glasses.

In the photo Mahl had his suit coat off and was holding a piece of clay sculpture, his white shirt cuff revealing, where it had pulled back, an expensive-looking watch, heavy and ostentatious.

Joe stared at it.“What kind of man would wear a watch decorated with cupids and those heavy wings sticking out. Pretty pretentious, for someone who’s supposed to have the tastes of an artist.”

“Where did you learn about the tastes of an artist?”

“Not from Clyde, you can bet.”

The last entry in Janet’s diary had been made the night before she died, a oneline comment which perhaps she had written just before she went to sleep.

Lovely night at the de Young. Two awards. Euphoria. All perfect. Except K. was there.

Behind that page she had tucked a newspaper review of the exhibit, her hotel bill, a charge slip for gas, and a plain slip of paper with some numbers jotted on it.

“Could be the van’s mileage,” Joe said. “For her tax records. Mileage when she left, and again when she got home.” Janet had crossed out the beginning mileage and penciled in a new one, two hundred miles larger.

“Guess she wrote the original number wrong, then corrected it-put a three hundred where she should have had a five.”

“She must have been in a hurry,” Dulcie said. “What should we do with the diary? We can’t let Beverly-or the police-come back and find it.”

“We have to get it to the police, Dulcie. It could be evidence.”

“But there are personal things in here. She wouldn’t want this read in court.”

“We don’t have any choice, if it’s evidence. And there are things in here about Rob Lake.”

She laid a soft paw on the pages, on Janet’s small, neat handwriting. “Would they read it out loud in court? If the papers get hold of this, they’ll print everything-all the things she said about Mahl.” She licked her chest, smoothing her fur. “Janet wouldn’t want this made public, plastered all over the newspaper.”

“It belongs with the police. Max Harper won’t let the papers have it.”

“Detective Marritt would, behind Harper’s back.”

“You think Harper would let anything happen behind his back?”

“Marritt messed up the investigation, didn’t he?”

Joe sighed.“You’re not really sure of that. We’ll hide it for tonight, until we decide what to do.” He rose and headed for the kitchen.

Pawing open the lower cupboard doors, he prowled among the pans until he found a supply of plastic grocery bags rolled neatly and stuffed in an empty coffee can.

Within minutes they had bagged the diary to protect it from the damp and rain, and had dragged it outside and hidden it beneath the deck, pushing it deeper under than the bowls which Charlie had left for the white cat.

“That was nice of her,” Dulcie said. “I guessCharliebelieves in the white cat.”

“I didn’t say I don’t believe in him. I just think he’s-Oh, what the hell. Maybe he’ll show up and eat the damned kibble.”

She gave him a long green stare, but then she snuggled close.“Come on, let’s go con that old Mrs. Blankenship, see what we can find out.”

10 [????????: pic_11.jpg]

“Suck in your stomach, try to look hungry.” “I am sucking it in, I can hardly breathe.” She let her ears go limp and forlorn, let her tail droop until it dragged the ground.

“Yeah. That’s better, that’s pitiful. You really look like hell.”

“Thanks so much.”

“A starving stray, not a friend in the world.”

The plan was, she’d approach the old woman alone as this was definitely a one-cat job. One starving, pitiful little kitty could turn the hardest heart, while two cats tramping the neighborhood would give the impression of mutual support, of perhaps greater hunting options. A pair of cats could never achieve the same high degree of helplessness and neglect, elicit the same pity.

“She’s still watching,” Joe said, peering out at the old woman. “And even if she didn’t see us come into the bushes, she’s already seen us together, up at Janet’s house. She knows you’re not alone. I don’t think this is going to work.”

“It’ll work.” Dulcie studied Mrs. Blankenship. The soft, elderly woman looked a perfect mark, like some old grandmother there behind the curtain, her nose pressed to the glass. “But before I go into my half-starved act, we need a little drama, a little pathos. How about a cat fight? Before you nip out of here, how about you beat the stuffings out of me.”

Joe smiled.“A screaming frenzy of a fight.”

“Exactly. Poor little kitty torn apart by the big ugly bully.”

“So who’s ugly!” He lit into her, kicking and clawing, knocking her out onto the lawn. She screamed, yowled. He was all over her, they rolled clear of the bushes tearing at each other, raking and kicking, tearing divots from the grass-but not a bit of fur flew. They didn’t lay a claw on each other. Dulcie’s screams were loud enough to have drowned out all the fire engines in Molena Point, her voice ululating in crescendos of terror and rage.

Mrs. Blankenship’s troubled face remained pressed against the glass for only an instant, then the old woman’s window banged open. “Stop it! Stop it! Leave her alone!”

They gave it a few more licks for good measure, then Dulcie escaped into the bushes. The old woman yelled again, and Joe fled, hissing and snarling.

He paused behind a rhododendron bush out of sight.I’m pretty good at this acting stuff, a regular Robert Redford-or maybe Charles Branson.He pictured himself bashing skulls, leaping atop runaway cars.

Mrs. Blankenship had opened the screen and was leaning out, beckoning to Dulcie.“Kitty? Oh you poor, poor kitty.” She reached out as if Dulcie would come to her outstretched hand. She was dressed in a flowered bathrobe, her gray hair confined beneath a thick, old-fashioned net.

Dulcie crept out from her shelter, staring up.

“Come on, kitty. Oh you poor, pretty kitty.”

Dulcie mewled pitifully, her voice unsteady and weak.

“Oh, you poor little thing. Come on, kitty. Are you hurt? Did the bad tomcat hurt you?”

At least,Joe thought,the woman knows how to tell a tomcat. Broad shoulders, thick neck. It doesn’t take a look at your private parts, necessarily, to know you’re a stud.He watched Dulcie creep across the lawn, walking slowly, managing to limp. Shyly, warily, she approached the window. This cat was no slouch, either, as an actor-she could play Scarlett to his Rhett.

“Oh, you poor, poor kitty. Come on up here to Mama. Can you jump? Are you hurt too bad, or can you jump up?” The old woman tapped on the sill with a shaky finger.

But Dulcie lay down on the grass, trying for the wan, coy effect. Lying upside down, widening her green eyes with longing, she let her little peach-colored paws fold over her poor empty tummy.

Yes, that did it. Mrs. Blankenship leaned farther, her lumpy bosom pressed down over the sill. Her body in the flowered robe was round and soft, the robe bleached out from numerous washings, baggy and wrinkled. Her eyes were a faded brown. And her hair was not gray, but the color of old, dried summer grass.

“Oh, you poor, sweet little girl. That terrible tomcat. Come on, sweet kitty. Come on, dear. I’ll take care of you.”

Dulcie remained shy and frightened.

“I can’t come out to get you, dear, Frances will see me, she’ll have a fit.” Her face wrinkled up, petulant and cross. “She doesn’t like animals-doesn’t like much of anything. Come on, kitty, you’ll have to come up on the sill-if you’re not too hurt to jump. Oh, dear?”

Dulcie played coy for another few minutes, wondering about this Frances, thinking maybe she ought to cut out of there while she had the chance. But at last she rose haltingly and approached the window.

“Come on, poor baby. Poor sweet baby, I won’t hurt you.”

She stood looking up, then gathered herself both in spirit and in body, and leaped, exploding onto the sill, their faces inches from each other.

“Come on, pretty kitty. Come and let me see. Did that old tomcat hurt you?” Old Mrs. Blankenship’s wrinkles were covered with a thick layer of powder. Her brown eyes were faded. She had fuzz on her face and little hairs in her ears.

Standing on the sill halfway in through the window, Dulcie let the old woman stroke her. Mrs. Blankenship’s hands were very fat, very wrinkled, laced with thick, dark veins like little wriggly garden snakes. But they were surprisingly strong-looking hands.

And the lady did know how to stroke a cat. She rubbed gently behind Dulcie’s ears, then held out her fingers so Dulcie could rub her whiskers against them. Next came a nice massage down the back, her strong hands rubbing in all the right places. With this, Dulcie abandoned her shyness, purred extravagantly, and padded right on in over the sill and onto the dressing table, stepping carefully to avoid the clutter of little china animals, small framed photographs, medicine bottles, and half-empty juice glasses. She could hardly find room to set a paw. She just hoped she was doing the right thing. Hoped this old lady didn’t turn out to be some kind of serial cat killer.

The table had been dusted without moving anything, so that around each little china dog and pill bottle shone a thick circle of grime. The stuffy, too-warm room smelled of Vicks VapoRub. Mrs. Blankenship did not close the window. The old lady seemed to understand that a cat with an escape route open behind her was far braver than a cat locked suddenly in a strange house. Dulcie smiled, giving her a dazzling green gaze and another loud purr.

“That’s it, pretty kitty. Come on, sweet kitty.” The old woman patted her lap by way of invitation. As Dulcie oozed down off the dressing table onto that ample resting place, Mrs. Blankenship’s round wrinkled face broke into a smile of delight. “Did that old tomcat hurt you? Let me see, kitty. Let me have a look.”

Dulcie lay limp and cooperative as the old woman examined her, her fingers exploring carefully for battle wounds inflicted by the tomcat, her mumbles of endearment meaningless and soothing, words which she had perhaps employed one time or another with countless other cats.

“I can’t find a scratch, kitty. Not a sign of blood.” She looked so puzzled that when she touched Dulcie’s shoulder, Dulcie deliberately flinched.

She examined Dulcie’s shoulder, but, “Nope, no blood. Maybe a bruise or two. Otherwise, you look just fine, kitty. I think you were only scared.” She settled back comfortably, with Dulcie curled in her lap, Dulcie taking care to keep her claws in. Mrs. Blankenship petted her, and dozed, and woke to mumble, thendozed again, seeming truly content to have a little cat in her lap.

But after some time in the hot room, pressed against Mrs. Blankenship’s round stomach, Dulcie began to pant. The room was not only hot, but the smell of Vicks made her nauseous. Maybe she should have encouraged Joe do the spying.

Not that he had volunteered.

Mrs. Blankenship’s sweet talk and little snoozes were interrupted only when a younger, dark-haired woman entered the room carrying a neatly folded stack of clean towels and sheets.

She stopped in the middle of the room, stared at Dulcie, stared at the open screen.“Oh, Mama. Not a cat. You haven’t brought a cat in here.”

“It’s hurt, Frances. And starving. Go get it something to eat.”

“Mama, this is a stray. Why would you let a stray cat in the house? It’ll be full of fleas. It could have rabies, ringworm, anything. Why did you let it inside?”

“Where else would I bring a hurt and starving cat but inside? The poor thing needs food. Go get it some of that steak from last night.”

“It doesn’t look starving. It looks like a mangy freeloader.”

Dulcie lifted a soft paw, gave Frances an innocent smile, her green eyes demure. The woman stared back at her with no change of expression.

Well the same to you, lady. Go stuff it.

Frances Blankenship was sleekly groomed, her short dark hair perfectly coiffed. She was dressed in tailored white pants and a pink silk blouse, and pale lizard pumps, probably Gucci’s, over sheer hose. Dulcie let her gaze travel down the woman’s length, and up again to that smooth, unsmiling face. Very sleek. But not likable. This was a woman who would throw a sick cat out in the freezing rain and laugh about it.

“Go get the steak, Frances.”

Sighing, Frances went. Dulcie watched her retreat, wondering what power the old woman had over that cold piece of work?

She could hear Frances in the kitchen, heard the refrigerator open, then athunk, thunk,as of a knife on a cutting board. In a few minutes Frances returned carrying a small portion of cold steak cut up on a paper napkin. Dulcie hoped she hadn’t seen fit to lace it with oven cleaner or some equally caustic substance. Frances put the little paper with its offering down on the floor, stood studying Dulcie with a new degree of interest.

“Give me the napkin, Frances. I’ll feed her. Couldn’t you have managed a plate?”

Frances passed over the napkin. Dulcie, in the old woman’s lap, sniffed at the meat but could smell only the rare steak and the scent of what was probably Frances’s hand cream.

Mama held out a little piece of good red steak.

Here goes nothing.Dulcie snatched it from her fingers as if she were truly starving. And as she wolfed the meat, Frances watched her with what Dulcie now read as a definite increase of attention.

The steak was lovely, nice and red in the middle. Obviously the Blankenships had a good butcher; probably the same meat market Wilma frequented, the small butcher shop up on Ocean. The little repast could only have been improved by privacy. She didn’t mind the old woman’s presence as she ate, but Frances’s intent stare made her nervous. When she had finished eating, Frances wadded the napkin, threw it in the wastebasket, and looked down benevolently at Dulcie. “I guess you can keep the cat, Mama. If it makes you happy.”

Dulcie watched her warily.

But maybe Frances was only considering what a nice diversion a cat would afford. If Frances was Mama’s only caregiver, maybe she was thinking that if Mama had a cat to entertain her, Frances herself could enjoy more freedom. Hoping that was the answer, Dulcie settled back again, against Mrs. Blankenship’s stomach.

She remained in the Blankenship household for four days, missed four days of the trial, and endured increasing claustrophobia in the hot, crowded dwelling. Four days can go by in a blink or they can drag interminably. She soon learned that Frances was Mrs. Blankenship’s daughter-in-law. The first thing she learned about the old woman’s son, Varnie, when he came shouldering in from work the first night, was that he did not like cats.

Varnie Blankenship was a short, square man, sandy-haired, with peculiarly dry, pale skin reminiscent of old yellowed newsprint. He worked at the nearby harbor, at a pleasure boat rental, tending the small craft. He arrived home smelling of grease, sweat, and gasoline.

Varnie was fond of a large, heavy supper. Frances cooked his meals, but she ate little. During the time Dulcie was in residence, Varnie read no books. He read only the daily newspaper, then folded it up into a small packet and stuffed it in the magazine stand. His spare time was taken up with television, with some activity which he performed out in the garage, and with submissively dusting his mother’s curio collection, his broad hands clumsy but patient.

The entire house was crammed full of bookcases and little shelves and tables, and every surface, shelf, and tabletop and cabinet top were crowded with china animals and other assorted knickknacks. The china shop atmosphere did not fit Frances, and certainly it didn’t fit Varnie. Yet Varnie seemed resigned to caring for the clutter, moving among his mother’s curios and dusting away like an uneasy and oversized servant. Maybe Frances and Varnie had moved in with his mother, not the other way around. Maybe the old woman had willed the house to them, provided they cared for her collection. Who knew? Maybe Varnie’s subservience was generated by some propensity in the old woman to abrupt changes of mind.

Whatever the Blankenship family arrangement, the crowded house made Dulcie feel increasingly trapped. She didn’t dare jump up onto any surface for fear of sending hundreds of little beasties shattering to the floor; she padded around the rooms as earthbound as any dog. She was unable even to rub her face against a table leg for fear of tipping it, of knocking down an armload of china and porcelain curiosin a huge landslide. The rooms were a fireman’s nightmare, and a mouse hunter’s paradise. There were a thousand places for mice to hide, and their scent was heavy and fresh.

But she didn’t dare. Who could chase a mouse in this maze without incurring major damage?Good thing Joe isn’t here, he’d lose patience and send the entire clutter crashing.

In the evenings, moving warily among the crowded rooms, trying to eavesdrop but stay out of Varnie’s way, listening to their every conversation and idle remark, she heard nothing about Janet, nothing about the murder or the fire. And so far, the old woman’s monologues were confined to baby talk. It would be really too bad if she’d gone to all this trouble for nothing.

But Mama did spend all day at her window, as Dulcie had guessed. And she did wake up well before dawn, often to draw on her robe and return to her window, to her unrewarding vigil over the neighborhood. It seemed to Dulcie a very good chance that the old woman had seen something that morning, the morning of the fire.It’s worth a try, worth a few more days of suffocation.

Varnie talked very little on any subject, except to say that he didn’t want a cat in the kitchen when he was eating, and didn’t want a cat in the living room while he was watching the news. And Varnie was inclined to throw things: cushions, his slippers, the hard, folded-up newspaper. She decided, if she was going to pull this off, she’d better leave Varnie alone and hang out with the old lady.

But she did follow Varnie out to the garage, on that first night, before he started throwing things. He had an old truck out there that he was working on, doing something to the engine. The truck and the garage smelled strongly of stale fish, and there were fishing poles slung across the rafters. She wanted to jump up on the fender and see what he was doing, and see if she could make friends. She approached him. He looked down at her. She rolled over on the garage floor, smiling up at him.

He reached down to pet her. For a moment she thought she’d made a conquest.

Then she saw the look in his eyes.

She flipped over and backed away.

Since that moment she had kept her distance. She investigated the unfamiliar parts of the house secretly, slipping behind tables and crouching in the dark corners and beneath the beds, ignoring the smell of mice. She was still convinced that it was Mama who would spill something of interest, but she was resolved to miss nothing from any source.

Though when she crept under Varnie’s easy chair to listen, or into the conjugal bedroom, she remained tense and wary. She had the distinct impression that Varnie wouldn’t hesitate to snuff a little cat-and that Frances would enjoy watching. She was in this house strictly under the sponsorship of Mama-and for whatever selfish reason Frances might entertain. She was there to find out what Mama knew, and she’d hang in there until she had an answer.

But in the end, it wasn’t Mama who supplied the telling clue. As it turned out, Dulcie would have learned nothing if it hadn’t been for Varnie and his love of beer and stud poker.

11 [????????: pic_12.jpg]

ART DEALER ON STAND

Defense attorney Deonne Baron today called three additional witnesses in the murder of artist Janet Jeannot. The first to take the stand was art dealer Sicily Aronson, owner of Molena Point’s Aronson Gallery, and victim Janet Jeannot’s agent? Aronson testified that there had been bitterness between Ms. Jeannot and the accused, Rob Lake. Under detailed questioning she told the court that Ms. Jeannot was not happy over Mr. Lake’s gallery association with her ex-husband KendrickMahl. Ms. Aronson also told the court that since Janet Jeannot’s death, and the destruction of most of the artist’s work in the fire that burned her studio, the remaining canvases have doubled in price. The Aronson Gallery?

Wilma scanned the lead story with mild interest, standing in her front garden. TheGazettearticles were getting tedious. Much of this story was a rehashing of Janet’s personal life, which the reporters seemed to find fascinating; newspaper reporters were not conditioned to let the dead rest, not as long as there was any hint of story to be milked from a tragedy. She folded the evening paper again, tucked it under her arm, and bent to pluck some spent bloomsfrom the daylilies. A cool little breeze played through the oak tree, rattling the leaves. Above her, above the neighbors’ rooftops, the sky flamed red, so blazing a sunset that she considered hurrying the five blocks to the shore to enjoy its full effect spreading like fire over the sea. But shehad dinner cooking, and she’d pulled that trick before, turning the stove low, nipping down to the beach for a few moments-and returning home to find her supper burned.

She wished Dulcie was home. She grew upset when the little cat was gone for more than a night and a day. Even with Clyde’s reassurances that the cats were all right, Dulcie’s absence was unsettling. Clyde would say little, only that they were perfectly safe. Turning from the daylilies she headed for the house, moved on through the kitchen, where she’d left the noodles boiling, and into the dining room to have another look at the drawings Charlie had left propped on the buffet.

She’d discovered them when she got home from work, had stood looking at the little exhibit, amazed. She’d had no idea that Charlie was drawing Dulcie, and she’d had no idea, no hint that Charlie could draw animals with such power. Until that moment she’d thought of Charlie’s artistic effortsas mediocre, dull and unremarkable. The work which she had watched over the years consisted mostly of uninspired landscapes bland as porridge, studies so lacking in passion that she was convinced an art career was not the best use of Charlie’s talents. She had felt a deep relief when Charlie gaveup on making a living in the field of either fine or commercial art. Had felt that Charlie, in making a break from the art world, could at last throw herself into something which would fit her far better.

But these drawings were totally different, very skilled and sure, it was obvious that Charlie loved doing animals; strange that she’d never seen anything like this before. Always it was the landscapes or Charlie’s hackneyed commercial assignments from class. But these showed real caring-the work was bold and commanding, revealing true delight in her feline subject.

The three portraits of Dulcie were life-size, done in a combination of charcoal and rust red Conte crayon on rough white paper. They brought Dulcie fully alive; the little cat shone out at her as insouciant and as filled with deviltry as Dulcie herself. In one drawing she lay stretched full-length, looking up and smiling, her dark, curving stripes gleaming, her expression bright and eager. In the second study she was leaping at a moth, her action so liquid and swift that Wilma could feel the weightless pull of Dulcie’s long, powerful muscles. The third drawing had caught Dulcie poised on the edge of the bookshelf ready to leap down, her four feet together, her eyes wild with play.

This work was, in fact, stronger and far more knowledgeable than any animal drawings Wilma could remember. The cat’s muscle and bone structure were well understood and clearly defined beneath her sleek fur, the little cat’s liquid movement balanced and true. There was nothing cute about this cat, nothing sentimental. These studies created for the viewer a living and complicated animal.

Leonardo da Vinci said the smallest feline is a masterpiece. These drawings certainly reflected that reverence. She couldn’t wait for Dulcie to see these.

To an ordinary cat, such drawings would read simply as paper with dark smudges smelling of charcoal and fixative. A drawing would communicate nothing alive to the ordinary feline, no smell of cat, no warmth or movement. A normal cat had no capacity to understand graphic images.

An ordinary cat could recognize animal life on TV primarily by sounds, such as barking, or birdsong, and by the uniqueness of movement: feline action sleek and lithe and deeply familiar, birds fluttering and hopping. Action was what most cats saw. She had no doubt about this, Dulcie had told her this was so.

But Dulcie would see every detail of these drawings of herself, and she would be thrilled.

Returning to the kitchen, dropping the eveningGazetteon the table, she turned to finishing up her dinner preparations. Her cheerful blue-and-white kitchen was warm from the oven, and smelled of the garlic and herbs and wine with which she’d basted the well-browned pot roast. Removing the noodles from the stove, she drained them in a colander then pulled the roaster from the oven, releasing a cloud of deliriously scented steam. She basted the roast, put the lid back, put the noodles in a bowl and buttered them, set them on the back of the stove to keep warm. It was nice having company; she was pleased to have Charlie staying with her. She deeply enjoyed her solitude, but a change was delightful, and Charlie was just about all the family she had since her younger brother, Charlie’s father, had died. There were a couple of second cousins on the East Coast but they seldom were in touch. Her niece was the closest thing she had to a child of her own, and she valued Charlie.

She laid silverware and napkins on the table, meaning to set them around later. Beyond the window the sunset had deepened to a shade as vivid as the red bougainvillea which clung outside the diamond panes, the red so penetrating it stained the blue tile counter to a ruddy glow, sent a rosy sheen over the blue-and-white floral wallpaper. She set out the salt and pepper, then returned to the dining room for another look. She couldn’t leave the drawings alone. Now, suddenly, it seemed to her a great waste for Charlie to be starting a cleaning and repair business. Why had she hidden such work?

Charlie had mentioned once there wasn’t any money in drawing animals, and maybe she was right. Certainly animal drawings weren’t big in juried shows; one would have to build a reputation in some other way than Janet had done. Charlie said Janet was truly talented, and that she herself was not. Wilma wondered how much of that came from the narrow view of the particular art school she had attended.

She returned to the kitchen, moving restlessly. She was tearing up endive and spinach leaves for a salad when Charlie’s van pulled up at the curb, parking up toward the neighbors’ to leave room behind. The red sky was darkening, streaked with gray, the wild kind of sky Dulcie loved. She tried to put away her worries about Dulcie; it did no good to worry. Clyde had said, on the phone, that the cats were fine.

So where are they?

At Janet’s. Joe is at Janet’s.

Then where is Dulcie?

She’s nearby-gathering some information, Joe said.

What does that mean? Snooping somewhere? She can’t? Those cats can’t?

Joe says not to worry, and what good does it do to worry? He’d let me know if anything-if they?

She had hung up, shaken, and no wiser.

She shook the salad dressing, fussed with the salad. Standing at the window, she watched Charlie come up the walk dragging, looking hot and irritable.

Charlie dropped her jacket in the entry and came on through the dining room into the kitchen, slumped into a chair. Her red hair was damp with sweat, curling around her face, her limp, sweaty shirt was streaked with white paint and rust.

“Not a good day,” Wilma said tentatively.

Charlie reached for a leaf of spinach to nibble.“Not too bad. Mavity got a lot done. She’s a good worker, and a dear person.” Mavity Flowers was an old school friend of Wilma’s. She had gone to work cleaning houses when the small pension left by her husband began to dwindle under rising prices. She’d be in fair financial shape if she’d sell her Molena Point cottage and move to a less expensive area, but Mavity loved Molena Point. She would rather stay in the village and scrub for a living.

Charlie rose and got two beers from the refrigerator.

“Cold glasses in the freezer,” Wilma said. “I guess Mavity can be a bit vague at times.”

“Aren’t we all?” Charlie fetched two iced glasses, opened the bottles, and poured the dark brew down the frosted sides with care. “Mavity works right along, she doesn’t grouse, and she doesn’t stop every five minutes for a smoke the way Stamps does. I don’t think James Stamps will be with me long.”

Charlie had hired Stamps from an ad she’d put in the paper. He hadn’t been in Molena Point for more than a week or two. He told Charlie he’d moved to the coast because Salinas was too dry. He was renting a room somewhere up in the hills, near to the house Charlie was cleaning, the Hansen house; she was getting it ready for new owners.

“I got all the little repairs done. Replaced the cabinet door hinges in the kitchen, fixed the leak in the garage roof. Fixed the gate latches.” She sighed and settled back, taking a long swallow of beer. “Mavity and I painted the bedroom, and Stamps picked up the shelving units for the closets.”

“Sounds like more than a full day.”

“I had to tell Stamps twice, no smoking in the house. He said, ‘What difference? They won’t be moving in for a week.’ I told him that stink stays in a house forever. But how can he smell anything when he reeks of smoke himself.”

“Did he do any work besides picking up the shelving?”

“Under my prodding. Got the front yard cleaned up, the lawn trimmed, and the new flowers planted. But my God, I have to tell him everything. Mix the manure and conditioner in before you plant, James. Treat the flowers tenderly, don’t jam them in the ground.

“It’s not that Stamps is dumb,” Charlie continued. “He’s bright enough, but he doesn’t keep his mind on the job. Who knows where his thoughts are. The cleaning and repair business is definitely not James Stamps’s line of work.”

Charlie glanced idly at the paper.“One day I’ll find the right people. Meantime I keep on baby-sitting him. I had to tell him twice to tie up his dog. It sleeps in his truck; I guess the people he rents from don’t want it in his room. I don’t blame them, the beast is a monster. I didn’t want it tramping around in the clean house, getting dog hairs stuck in the fresh paint.”

“I thought you loved dogs.”

“I can hardly wait to get a dog. A big dog. But not a beast like Stamps’s mutt. I want a nice, clean, well-mannered animal. That creature won’t mind, and it’s mean.” She grinned. “At least Stamps didn’t eat lunch with Mavity and me, that was a pleasure. It was real nice to be rid of him.

“But then he was twenty minutes late getting back, and when I made him work the extra twenty, he got mad.” She finished her beer and got up. “I’m heading for the shower; I smell like a locker room.”

Wilma hadn’t mentioned the drawings. She wanted to wait for Clyde-and wait until Charlie had cleaned up and didn’t feel so hot and irritable. Charlie could be testy-if she was in a bad mood, anything you said could be taken wrong. Patiently, sipping her beer, she sat reading the rest of the lead article and a second, longer story.

Ms. Aronson was unable to produce witnesses to her whereabouts the early morning of Ms. Jeannot’s death. She claimed that she was alone in her Molena Point condominium. Neighbors testified that lights were on that morning in her living room and bedroom, but no witness saw her white Dodge van parked on the street. Ms. Aronson told the court she had parked on a side street, that there had been no empty parking places in front of her building.

She testified that she did not leave her apartment until nearly7A.M., when police phoned to notify her that Janet’s studio had burned and that Janet had died in the fire. She said she dressed and drove directly to Ms. Jeannot’s studio. Under questioning, Ms. Aronson admitted that she had a set of keys for Jeannot’s studio and apartment. She claimed that Jeannot had given them to her so she could pick upand deliver work for exhibitions.

The second witness was Jeannot’s sister, Beverly Jeannot, who also admitted to having a set of keys. Police said that onthe day Janet was murdered they were not able to reach Ms. Jeannot at her home in Seattle until noon, though they made several attempts by phone to notify her of her sister’s death. Ms. Jeannot claimed shehad not been feeling well, and that she had unplugged her phone the night before. She said she slept until 11:45 the morning of the fire, that once she was notified she booked the next flight to San Francisco, with a commuter connection to Molena Point. She arrived in the village at three that afternoon.

Scheduled to testify later in the week is San Francisco art agent and former critic Kendrick Mahl, a name of national stature. Mahl is Janet Jeannot’s ex-husband and is also the representing art agent for the accused. A partial transcript of today’s court proceedings follows.

Wilma was scanning the transcript when Clyde knocked at the back door and pushed on in. He was well scrubbed, his dark hair neatly combed. He smelled faintly of Royal Lime, a nonsweet scent from Bermuda that Wilma liked, though she detested the heavy and too-sweet scents that most men applied. He was wearing a new shirt. The store creases spoiled only slightly the fresh look of the red madras plaid. He got a beer from the refrigerator and pulled out a chair, scowling at the headlines.“Don’t they have anything else to write about?”

“Good color on you. Don’t sit down. Go in the dining room.”

“What? Are we eating formal?”

“Just go.”

He gave her a puzzled look and swung away into the dining room, carrying his beer.

He was silent for a long time, she could hear the soft scuff of his loafers as he moved about the room, as if he were viewing the work from different angles and from a distance. When he returned to the kitchen he was grinning.“I thought, from the way you talked and from what Charlie said, that her work was really bad, that art school was a waste of time.”

“It was a bust,” Charlie said, coming in. She was dressed in a pale blue T-shirt with SAVE THE MALES stenciled across the front, and clean, faded jeans and sandals. She had blow-dried her sweaty hair and it blazed around her face as wild as the vanished sunset. “I should have gone to businessschool. Or maybe engineering, I’ve always been good at math. I’m sorry I didn’t do that, maybe civil engineering. It was a big waste of time, that four years in art school. Big waste of my folks’ money.”

Clyde shook his head.“Those drawings are strong. They’re damned good.”

Charlie shrugged.“I enjoy doing animals, but it’s nothing that will make me a living.”

Clyde raised an eyebrow.“Don’t put yourself down. Who told you that?”

“The fine arts department. My drawings-any animal drawings-are way too commercial, they have no real meaning. Just a waste of time.”

“But you took commercial art, too,” Clyde said. “You got a BS in both. So what did the commercial people say?”

Charlie gave him a twisted, humorless smile.“That there is no market for animal sketches, that this is not commercial art. That you have to use the computer, have to understand how to sell, have sales knowledge and a strong sense of layout. Have to be a real professional, understand the real world of advertising, bring yourself up into theelectronic age. That this-drawing animals-is hobby work”

“Rubbish,” Clyde said.

“Trouble is, I don’t give a damn about commercial work.” She got another beer from the refrigerator and picked up the silver flatware that Wilma had dropped in the center of the table. As she folded the paper napkins neatly in half, she gave Clyde a long look. “They know what they’re talking about. I can draw for my own pleasure, but as for making a living, right now my best bet is CHARLIE’S FIX-IT, CLEAN-IT. And I like that just fine.” She tossed back her hair and grinned. “I’m my own boss, no one telling me what to do.” Reaching across the table, she arranged the silver at their three places and set the napkins around. At Clyde’s angry look, she laughed. “My illustration instructor said I can draw kitties as a hobby.”

“Who the hell do they think they are?”

“They,” Wilma said, “are our rarefied and venerable art critics, those specially anointed among us with the intelligence to understand true art.”

Clyde made a rude noise.

Wilma studied Charlie.“I’ll admit I didn’t like your landscapes. But these-these are strong. More than strong, they’re knowledgeable, very sure. Do you have more?”

“Some horses,” Charlie said. “Lots of cats, all my friends in San Francisco had cats. A dog or two.”

“Did you bring them with you?”

“They’re in the storage locker with my cleaning stuff and tools.”

“Will you bring them home?” Wilma said patiently. “I’d like to see them all.”

Charlie shrugged and nodded.“The sketches of Dulcie are yours, if you want them.”

“You bet I want them. Dulcie will be? is immortalized,” Wilma stumbled. She caught Clyde’s eye, and felt her face heating. “I’ll take them down right away, to be framed.” She rose and began to fuss at the sink, her back to Charlie, and hastily began final preparations for dinner, again checking the roast, making sure the noodles were still warm.

She was going to have to be more careful what she said to Charlie, and in front of Charlie.

And, she’d have to get those drawings out of the house before Dulcie saw them. The little cat could be as careless as she. If Dulcie came on those drawings unprepared, she would be so pleased she’d very likely forget herself, let out a cry of astonishment and delight that, if Charlie heard her, would be difficult to explain.

12 [????????: pic_13.jpg]

It was poker night at the Blankenships’. Frances served an early supper of canned spaghetti and a limp salad, then hustled Mama off to bed. Returning to the kitchen, she made a stack of baloney and salami sandwiches, wiped the counters, and dutifully removed from the round kitchen table its collection of animal-shaped salt and peppershakers, pig-shaped sugar bowl, the cream pitcher made in the image of a cow, and the potted fern. Varnie slapped a new unopened deck of cards and a rack of poker chips on the table, and checked the refrigerator to assess once again his stock of cold beer. Dulcie watched the preparations from a dark little space between the end of the stove and the kitchen wall.

But, crouching in the shadows, she was tempted to nip out the open laundry window or return to Mama’s room before the kitchen filled up with boisterous jokes and cigarette smoke. She expected Frances would retire to her own secluded part of the house, to the pristine little lair at the back, which Dulcie had investigated just this morning.

When Frances had made a quick trip into the village for groceries, Dulcie had been able for the first time to inspect closely Frances’s small office. Heretofore she had only looked in from the hall. Certainly the room was off-limits to both Mama and Varnie; neither seemed welcome there. This morning she had slipped in quickly, padding across the bare wood floor, staring up at the unadorned white walls. The plain white desk wasbare, except for Frances’s computer. White desk chair, white worktable, low white file cabinets. No clutter anywhere. She could see nothing on any surface, certainly no china beastie or tatty fern plants. Leaping up onto the desk she paced its bare surface, brushing by the computer. And she couldnot resist the slick surface, it was perfect for tail chasing-she’d spun, snatching at her tail, whirling until she fell over the side, landing hard on the oak floor.

She tested the white leather typing chair, found it soft and inviting, and then atop the white filing cabinets she had investigated the copier. It was very like Wilma’s copier at the library. Next to it stood a state-of-the art white telephone with answering machine and fax.

A fax still unnerved her. Though she had watched the library’s fax, she couldn’t get used to it spitting out pages suddenly without any apparent human inputas if the messages were generated by nothing living.

But she had felt that way about the telephone, at first, shivering with fear. As Joe pushed the headset off, punched in a number, and talked into the little perforated speaker, she had deeply distrusted the disembodied voice which answered him.

She felt easier with a copier. She had played with Wilma’s copier, and that machine seemed to her more direct. You pressed a paw into the sand and created a pawprint. You put a page in the copier and got a copy. No invisible, offstage presences.

Even computers seemed more straightforward. You punch in CAT, you get CAT on the screen. She considered a computer to be a glorified typewriter-until you got into modems. Then the ghosts returned.

Frances had a modem; Dulcie had watched her from the doorway and knew that she received many pages via modem. These she edited, making changes, putting in appropriate punctuation, then sent the material away again to some mysterious, unnamed destination.

Mama, complaining that Frances neglected her for the computer, said Frances typed some kind of medical report. Mama had even less notion than Dulcie herself about the workings of a modem. And Dulcie had no idea whether Frances did this work to help support the household or to get away from the old woman. Maybe both. Whatever the reason, she spent a good part of the day in there. And who could blame her. Anything to get away from the oppressive clutter in the rest of the house-there was nowhere to go in this house that didn’t make Dulcie herself feel trapped.

Last night, her second as a secret agent, in the old woman’s lap she had waked in a panic of confinement, kicking and fighting, trying to free herself. In her dream, dark walls pressed in at her, threatening to crush her. She was with the white cat, pushing along beside him between damp, muddy walls that pressed in too close and dark, she was wild with fear; she woke with the old woman’s hands pressing against her, trying to calm her. “Kitty? Oh, dear, what a dream you must have had. Were you chasing mice-or was a bad dog chasing you?”

She had leaped off the old woman’s lap and raced away, totally frustrated.

She’d been with the Blankenships three days, waiting for some pearl of information about Janet’s murder, and all she got was bad dreams and cuddled to death by Mama and yelled at by Varnie.

She’d made herself as accommodating to Mama as she could, obligingly eating string beans and mashed potatoes and even Jell-O, whatever the old woman saved from her own meals. She should feel flattered that Mrs. Blankenship put aside part of her supper despite Varnie’s sarcastic comments.

Now, even the dark little space between the stove and wall was beginning to get to her, to give her the jitters. It was cramped, too warm, and smelled of grease. Peering out, she watched Varnie open a beer, stand looking out the window, then prowl the kitchen, opening cupboards, maybe looking for additional snacks. She longed to be with Joe out on the cool hills, running free. The brightest moments in her day were when she leaped to Mama’s window and looked across the street. If Joe was sitting in Janet’s window watching for her, immediately she felt free again and loved, didn’t feel like a prisoner anymore.

This morning when he saw her, he had stood up against the glass, his mouth open in a toothy laugh, then disappeared. In a moment he came slipping out beneath the burned door, grinned at her, and, assured that she was safe, trotted away up the hill to hunt, cocky and self-possessed. She had looked after him feeling painfully lonely. She didn’t remind herself that this little visit with the Blankenships had been her own idea. And she’d been tempted to go hunt with him; there was nothing to prevent her. The first night, Frances had propped open a window in the laundry and slid back the screen, leaving a six-inch opening through which she could come and go. Frances hadn’t done it out of thoughtfulness but was saving herself the trouble of letting the cat in and out, or of cleaning up a sand box.

But if she went to hunt with Joe, began nipping back and forth between the two houses, the old lady was going to get curious. And she would find it harder, each time, to return. No, she had come for information. She’d stay until she got it. When she went outdoors she remained close to the house, returning quickly. But by the third night she was ready to pitch a fit of boredom, wanted to claw the furniture and climb the drapes.

Yesterday, when she looked out Mama’s window, she’d seen Charlie’s van parked below Janet’s, and seen Charlie kneeling beside the porch checking the cat bowls. Strangely, that made her lonely, too.

The crackle of cellophane and cardboard echoed in the kitchen as Varnie opened chips and pretzels. He snatched up a handful and began to munch. She stiffened at the sound of footsteps on the back porch, then loud knocking. As Varnie headed for the door, she heard a dog bark.

She knew that bellowing. She slipped out from behind the stove and leaped to the counter, pressing against the window to look. Behind her, the two men’s voices thundered in jocular greeting. Staring into the night, she couldn’t see the dog, but she could smell him. It was the beast that had chased her and Joe, the dog with a mouth like a bear trap.

Looking across the street to Janet’s, she couldn’t see Joe at the window-the black glass was unbroken by the tomcat’s white markings. She prayed he hadn’t been outside when the dog came, prayed that he was safe.

“Get the hell down from there.” Varnie shoved her, knocked her off the counter, and she hit the linoleum with a thud, jarring all four paws. “Frances, get this cat out of here.”

She ran, fled into the hall. But when he turned his back she eased into the kitchen again and hid behind the stove. She didn’t want to miss anything. Varnie might talk more to his friends man he did to Mama or Frances.

The two men popped open beers and sat at the table spraddle-legged, eating pretzels, obviously waiting for the rest of the group. She studied the newcomer with interest. Varnie called him Stamps. There was a James Stamps who worked for Charlie, and this guy fit Charlie’s description, thin face, thin, round shoulders. Long sleazy brown hair and little, scraggly brown beard. Long, limp hands. And the same whiny voice that Charlie had mimicked.

The same sullen attitude, too. When he began to talk about his boss, he was not complimentary. Belching, stretching out his long skinny legs, he chomped a handful of pretzels.“Don’t know how long I can keep that job.”

“What’s so hard about it? It’s a dumb-head job. You didn’t blow it already?”

“Didn’t blow it. Don’t know how long I can stand that woman. Pick, pick, pick at a man. Redheaded women are so damn pushy, and who wants to work for a woman. This one is hard-nosed like you wouldn’t believe-worse than my parole officer, and that guy is a real hard-ass.”

Stamps aimed a belch into his beer can; it echoed hollowly.“Never saw a woman didn’t have a thing about getting to work right on the damn minute. And you don’t dare think about leaving early. You come back from lunch two minutes late, they want you to work overtime-for straight pay. Make up every friggin’ minute.”

Behind the stove, Dulcie smiled. Too bad she couldn’t repeat Stamps’s remarks to Charlie. Soon Stamps began talking about the trial.

“That art agent, the one that testified this morning. That’s another hard-assed woman. She had a set of keys to that place, did you know that? Had keys to the woman’s van, too.” Stamps settled back, tilting his chair, crossing his legs. “Made herself look bad, talking about those keys. But she don’t know nothing. And the dead woman’s sister, that Beverly Jeannot, they had her on the stand.”

“So?”

“So there’s a lot of action there, all these people testifying. We better get on with it.”

“I told you, James. Cool it. We get greedy now, we end up with mud on our faces.”

“But that just don’t make sense. Why would??”

The dog began to bark. Roaring deep and wildly agitated, it sounded like something had disturbed it. She felt her fur stand up, her heart quicken. Where was Joe?

Stamps rose, swearing, and went outside. She wanted to bolt out behind him, but then she heard him scolding the beast. It sounded like it was still there on the porch. Stamps muttered something angry, then a low growl cut the night, followed by a surprised yelp. She was bunched to bolt through the open door when Stamps returned.

“Tied him to the porch rail. Don’t know what he saw. Nothing out there now. He don’t like that rope; he snapped at me.” Stamps laughed.

Dulcie settled back against the faintly warm stove.

Varnie said,“Should’ve tied him up the other time. Damn dog barking was what woke the old woman. Frances is still trying to make her go to the cops, and who can shut Frances up?”

“That’s one more reason to get what we can, before those two women spill to the cops. Get it and get out. If we wait?”

“I said, no. You keep pushing, James, and you’ll blow it.”

Stamps ducked his head, cleared his throat, and took a swig of beer.“What about the other?”

“That’s all right. You still casing?”

“I don’t see why I have to make notes. I can remember that stuff.”

“Make the notes. You can’t remember your own name. Only way to get our timing right so we can hit all seven places the same morning. No one pays attention to the street in the morning, they’re too busy getting to work, getting their kids on the bus, but we got to have the timing right or we blow it. Piece of cake, if you keep good notes. Let me see the list.”

“It’s back in the room.”

“Very smart. So someone goes in there-the landlord.”

“They got no business in my room, I pay my rent. And those jerks wouldn’t know what that paper is-but I got it all down, times people leave for work, everything. It’s a damn bore, walking the dog there every morning.”

“Just keep doing it, James. And make sure you keep your mouth shut when Ed and Melvin get here.”

“What the hell. You think I? “

The dog barked again, then screamed a high yip-as if he had been scratched. This time when Stamps pushed open the door Dulcie streaked out past him. Pausing in the shadows, she couldn’t see Joe. But the dog was on the porch, it had got its rope wrapped around the post and around its ear-must pinch like hell. Stamps stood in the doorway, looking disgusted and yelling. And before she could slip back inside he turned away, slamming the door nearly in her face. She leaped back The dog wasn’t four feet from her, and, without warning, it lunged at her. She flew off the porch, running, terrified he’d break the rope.

She hit the street-and the dog hit the end of the rope. But he was jerked back-the rope held. He fought and roared as she bolted across, straight for Janet’s door.

She met Joe coming out. He grinned and licked her ear.“I thought he had you. That’s the dog that chased us, I can smell him clear over here.”

“It’s James Stamps’s dog, the Stamps who works for Charlie. He’s the one who rented that room down the hill, the room behind the gray house.”

He glanced down the hill.“Interesting. What are they doing in there?”

“Big poker night.”

“What did you find out from the old lady? Come on in, supper’s on.” He slid in under the door, and she followed. This was lovely, just the two of them. She’d missed him.

Inside, he grinned down at her from atop the kitchen counter. Leaping up beside him, she regarded his supper layout with amazement. He had a regular feast prepared.“Is this all for you?”

“It was until you got here. You don’t think I’m entertaining other ladies?”

She didn’t smell another cat in the house, only Joe. “You got the refrigerator open.”

“Just practicing what you taught me,” he said modestly. “Front paws in the handle, hind feet against the counter. Quick push, andvoila!Sorry, the Brie is gone. It was a bit old, it made me belch.”

He had found half a brick of Cheddar cheese and a tub of sour cream, rather ripe but still edible. Toothmarks dented the plastic where he’d pulled the lid off. He had unearthed a pack of stale crackers, too. Beside it lay a warm, freshly killed chipmunk.

They dined.

Chewing off a hunk of Cheddar, Dulcie dipped it in the sour cream.“Has Beverly been back? Or the police?”

“No one. The night you left I brought Janet’s diary in, read it again, then put it back. I thought maybe we’d missed something, some clue, but I guess not. Slept on her bed, that comforter’s nice and warm.”

“No sign of the white cat?”

“None. And what did you find out? What’s with the old woman? I’ve been watching Varnie come and go; he’s a real piece of work. I looked in their garage window. That old truck smells like a warehouse full of stale fish. What’s he doing to it?”

She shrugged.“Some kind of repairs. Varnie and this James Stamps-I’m wondering if they killed Janet.”

He stared at her.

“They’re into something. Somehow it has to do with the murder.” She licked sour cream from her whiskers. “They mean to make money from it, whatever it is. Varnie said, ‘If we get greedy now, we end up with mud on our faces.’ And Stamps said they should get all they can before Varnie’smother spills to the cops. I told you she knows something.”

She pushed a morsel of chipmunk onto a cracker.“And they’re into something else, too. Stamps is keeping a list, I think of when people are home and when they leave for work”

“Planning burglaries?”

“Sounds like it. Early-morning burglaries. Varnie said, ‘Hit and clear out.’”

“You think the burglaries, if that’s what they’re doing, are connected to Janet’s murder?”

“I don’t know. Those two seem to me like a couple of small-time hoods, just snatching at opportunities. I’m not sure they’re the kind to have killed Janet.”

They shared out the last of the chipmunk, Dulcie eating delicately.“I want to see Stamps’s list.” But she could see he was not receptive to the idea.

“If they’re planning burglaries, the police need to know.”

“But we don’t knowwhen,or where. What good is it to tell the police and not give them any facts? If we could get Stamps’s list?” But she could see he was not receptive to the idea.

“Anyway,” she said, “now I know Mama did see something, and that she’s afraid to testify. Frances is trying to get her to testify. And Varnie’s afraid she will.”

“If Varnie did kill Janet, why would Frances want his mother to testify against him?”

“Who knows what Frances wants? There’s more to Frances Blankenship than is apparent.”

She licked her paws and whiskers.“Frances and the old lady have midmorning coffee in the kitchen. They talk more then, when Varnie’s away at work.” She licked blood and cracker crumbs from the counter. “Most of their talk is about relatives, they have more cousins than the pound has dogs. But maybe I’ll get lucky-hear something.” She gave him a long look. “I’m getting stir-crazy over there.”

“Maybe I can help.”

“How?” Her eyes widened at his sly leer. “What are you thinking?”

“I’ll have to work it out. Just be ready.” He twitched an ear.

“How can I be ready, if I don’t know what you’re up to?”

“Don’t miss morning coffee,” he said softly.

She gave him a puzzled look.“I’d better go, before they untie the monster.”

Joe trotted across the tile counter and looked out the kitchen window.“He’s still on the front porch, sitting under the light. I can see the rope. Stupid thing has himself wrapped up again.”

She trotted over to look. The dog was a black lump, huddled miserably against the porch rail.“Let him rot.” She gave Joe a long, loving look. “Thanks for the supper. It sure was better than Mama’s leftover carrots.”

“Take care.” He licked her ear. “I’ll be watching. Don’t forget, morning coffee.”

She gave him a whisker kiss, jumped down, and slid out beneath the door. She was back at the Blankenships’ and through the laundry window before the dog knew she had passed. When belatedly he scented her, he fought his shortened rope, roaring. Inside, she dropped to the laundry room floor. Padding toward the kitchen, she paused in the shadows of the hall.

In her absence two more poker players had arrived, the room stank of cigarettes and beer and reverberated with loud voices. Hurrying on past, she headed for the old woman’s room. She’d hear no more secrets now.

Another night in this house didn’t thrill her, but maybe, if Joe did have a plan, tomorrow she’d hit pay dirt.

13 [????????: pic_14.jpg]

As Frances opened the back door, airing the kitchen of stale beer and cigarette smoke, Dulcie trotted out to crouch on the threshold. Sniffing the fresh morning air, she was just getting comfortable when Frances nudged her with her an impatient toe.“Go on out, cat. You’re in the way.” She hunkered down, gluing herself to the floor, then leaped over Frances’s offending foot, back into the kitchen. She had no intention of going out; she wasn’t going to miss a lick this morning. Whatever plot Joe had hatched for Mama and Frances’s coffee hour, she meant to be right there, cat on the spot.

Impatiently Frances returned to the table, fussing around, restoring the salt and pepper shakers and potted fern, the pig sugar bowl and cow-shaped cream pitcher to their rightful places, her movements abrupt, sharply agitated. Maybe her anger was the result of Varnie’s loud poker party. Dulcie watched her with interest.

Last night, as Dulcie crouched behind the stove listening to Varnie and Stamps, Frances had been listening, too. Dulcie had been so intent on the conversation, she’d hardly paid attention, thinking that Frances was just passing.

But she hadn’t been passing, she’d been standing in the hall, very still. Then, in a moment, she had turned away again, back to her office.

Now, as Mama came wandering into the kitchen, shuffling along in her soft slippers, Frances poured the coffee and set the pot on the table beside a plate of day-old cookies. Mama sighed and settled into her chair. The room had begun to smell of baking, the hot, peachy scent of turnovers from the oven soon overpowering the barroom stench. Dulcie sniffed appreciatively and leaped up to Mama’s lap, prepared for a little snack. Whoever said cats didn’t like sweets didn’t know much.

Curled up against Mama’s fat tummy, watching Mama nibble a cookie, she shuttered her eyes against the likely event of spilled crumbs. Interesting that Frances seemed to have no compunction about loading the old lady up on sugar and fat-but maybe Frances had her reasons.

She curled into a little ball, hoping Mama wouldn’t spill hot coffee. Mama herself seemed irritable this morning. She nibbled her cookie, sipped her coffee, but said little. Dulcie was drifting into sleep when Frances said, “Mama, you’re going to have to make up your mind.”

“About what?”

“You know about what; about what I told you at breakfast.”

Dulcie was wide-awake. Shehadmissed something when she went out earlier.

“I have made up my mind. Made it up long ago.”

“Mama, all you’ve done is avoid the issue. You know the right thing to do.”

“Not going to the police.”

“You have to go, Mama. You know the police think someone is withholding evidence. They’ll search until they find out who.”

“Nonsense. Where would they get such an idea?”

“It was on the local news, I told you. The seven o’clock news.”

Mama sat up straighter, jamming Dulcie against the edge of the table, forcing her to change position.“You’re making that up.”

“They think one of the neighbors saw something that weekend-didn’t report it.”

“What would make them think such a thing?”

“I don’t know, Mama. I don’t know how the police get their information.”

“This is rubbish.” Mama stiffened. “Or else you told them,” Mama said warily.

The timer made a small ding, and Frances rose. Standing at the warm stove, she removed the baking sheet of bubbling turnovers, placing two on a plate for her motherin-law, totally unconcerned that she was feeding Mama enough calories to keep a young hippo. She took one for herself, setting the rest by the window to cool. Dulcie wondered if that rich smell of baking would waft across the street to Joe. Frances sat down again and refilled their cups. She cut a small bite of turnover, taking it on her fork.“If the police think you saw something and withheld evidence, they’re going to make trouble.”

Mama tried to eat a turnover with her fingers, but it was too hot. She kept juggling it from one hand to the other. At last she broke it in two, dribbling hot peach down Dulcie’s ear.

Dulcie licked her paw and swiped at her scorched ear. The hazards of investigative work. Hungrily she licked her paw, making Mama smile. Mama blew on the half turnover, broke off a small piece, and held it for Dulcie to nibble.

“Mama, don’t feed the cat and then handle your own food-you don’t what diseases it has.”

Ignoring Frances, Mama broke off a bite for herself with the same hand, gobbled it greedily, and offered the last crumb to Dulcie.

“Mama, you never listen. About hygiene, about that cat-about the police?”

“Varnie says I don’t need to go to the police. Varnie says I don’t need to go through such indignity at my age, going down to that police station and being cross-examined and then up in front of everyone in that courtroom. I’m too old and frail to get up in front of all those people; my badheart would never stand it.”

“It will be far worse for your heart, Mama, if the police arrest you.”

“Why would they arrest me?”

Frances sighed.“For withholding evidence,” she said patiently.

The old woman snorted, scattering crumbs.

“They put people in jail every day for less than that, Mama. It won’t help your bad heart if they put you in jail.”

“Put an old woman with heart trouble in jail? Don’t be silly. Varnie wouldn’t let them do that.”

“Varnie can’t?”

The ringing phone startled them. Mama gave a little jump, unsettling Dulcie so she nearly scratched Mama as she tried to hang on. Hastily she retracted her claws, watched Frances reach to the counter, pick up the phone and set it on the table.

“Blankenship residence.” Her voice was cool, impersonal.

She listened a moment, frowning, then put her hand over the mouthpiece, looked at Mama for a long moment. She started to hand Mama the phone, then seemed to change her mind.

Speaking into the phone again, her voice was pure ice.“Mrs. Blankenship isn’t feeling well. I’ll speak with her. May she return your call?”

She reached for a pad and pencil, and jotted down a number. She repeated it back, then hung up. She looked helplessly at Mama.

“It was an attorney, Mama. I told you this would happen. He’s connected with the trial, and he wants to talk with you.”

“I don’t know any attorneys. I don’t have to talk with anyone.”

“You will if he gets a subpoena; you won’t have any choice.”

“Call him back,” Mama told her. “Tell him I’m too sick. He can’t get a subpoena for a sick old woman.”

“You want to tell him that, here’s the phone.” Frances pushed it across the table.

“You have to tell him, Frances. I’m not calling anyone. Who is this lawyer-what’s his name? What business does he have calling me?”

Dulcie could feel her paws gripping at Mama’s leg.

“I don’t know anything about him, Mama. His name is Grey-Joseph Grey. Grey, Stern, and Starbuck. I don’t recognize the firm, but that doesn’t mean anything. He? “

Dulcie’s claws went in before she could stop herself; Mama yelped and shoved her to the floor.

She crawled contritely under the table, trying not to laugh. Attorney Joseph Grey. Grey, Stern, and Starbuck. She wanted to roll over screaming with laughter.

“J never heard of him,” Mama said. “You’re making all this up. Why would you lie to an old woman?”

Frances rose and came around the table to stand beside Mama’s chair, putting her arm around Mrs. Blankenship’s shoulders. “I wouldn’t make up that phone call, Mama.” She looked pale, her thin face was drawn. “I told you, you should have gone to the police.”

Mama just looked at her.

Dulcie sat under the table grinning. Joseph Grey, Attorney at Law. Joseph Grey, Feline Jurisprudence. She could just picture Joe sitting in the window over at Janet’s, laughing his head off.

Frances pulled out a chair and sat down close to Mama.“We have to call him back, Mama. We have no choice.”

As Dulcie leaped up into Mama’s lap, Mama began to cry, her soft flesh shaking. Oh, this was too bad. This was really too bad. The poor old thing was coming all apart. Gazing up at the frightened old face, she reached up a soft paw and patted the old lady’s cheek.

Mrs. Blankenship clutched her close, hugging her, squeezing her hard, burying her face in Dulcie’s fur. “I don’t know what to do, Frances. Tell him I’m not here. Call him back and tell him I’m in the hospital.”

“He knows you’re not in the hospital. You have to talk to him, Mama.”

“Anyway, it’s too late now. They’ve already put that young man on trial,” Mama said. “How could it make any difference what I say? No, it’s too late for that.”

“No, Mama. That’s just the point. If Rob Lake is innocent, you could save him. Hadn’t you thought that you might save his life?”

Frances rose, fetched the pan of turnovers from beside the window, and shoved them across the table where Mama could reach them.“Without you, Mama, Rob Lake could be sentenced to death. If he’s innocent, Mama, his death would be your fault.”

“But that white van the night before the fire could have belonged to anyone. I don’t know that it was Janet’s. Maybe if I told the police, that would just confuse everyone.”

“The police will sort that out. That’s their job. You can’t choose what the court should know, Mama, and what it shouldn’t be told.”

Frances sipped her coffee.“Trust me, Mama. The sooner you go to the police, the gentler the court will be with you. Just tell this Mr. Grey what you saw. Tell him you’re not sure the van was Janet’s. Tell him what time it was-2:00 A.M. Saturday night when the van pulled into her garage and shut the door. Two-thirty when it left again.”

“He’ll want to come up here, want me to sign papers. Want me to go to court. I told you, Frances, my heart won’t stand that.”

“I’ll explain to him, Mama, that with your heart so bad you’re afraid to testify. I’m sure they’ll make special arrangements.”

Dulcie was so wired she couldn’t keep still. She started to fidget, then began to wash, trying to calm herself. She might get annoyed at Joe sometimes, might call him an unimaginative tomcat, but this-this was a stroke of genius.

Mama reached for a turnover and crumbled it between her fat fingers.“I wish that young woman had never moved over there; I knew she’d cause trouble. Who in their right mind would build a welding shop in a residential neighborhood, and right on top of their own house? The city should never have allowed it. All that fire flashing around, it’s no wonder? And that bang, bang, bang of gunfire going on for hours. Probably one of those indoor target things. Why would a young woman want one of those things. I don’t?”

“It wasn’t gunfire, Mama. I told you, it was just a staple gun. One of those big commercial staple guns. You know she used it to stretch her canvases. You know what she said, that putting in thumbtacks made her thumbs ache for days. Please, Mama, I’ve got to return this attorney’s call.”

“You’ve got a stapler right in there on your desk, Frances. It don’t sound like that. You know I’m right. That crazy artist set the whole hillside on fire. I always knew she’d do that. Burn up the whole neighborhood. If not for my prayers to save this house, we would have burned up, too.”

“Oh, Mama, she didn’t?”

“Anyway, you don’t need to argue. I won’t do it. I don’t want to be a part of it.”

“But Mama, don’t you see? Youarea part of it. If you don’t testify, they could convict the wrong person.”

Dulcie crouched, very still. The morning was full of surprises.

A staple gun.

Janet had stapled her canvases. She hadn’t used thumbtacks.

Then what was that thumbtack that had gotten stuck in her paw? That thumbtack with the burned wood and blackened canvas sticking to it? What were all those thumbtacks scattered among the ashes? There were hundreds of them, many with scraps of canvas clinging. Hundreds of fragments of paintings?

She caught her breath. Mama stared down at her. She pretended to scratch at a flea. Those tacks were not from Janet’s paintings they were from someone else’s canvases.

Those were not Janet’s paintings that had burned. Janet’s paintings had not been in the studio when it burned.

“It wouldn’t hurt your heart, Mama, just to talk to Joseph Grey. If I call him back, won’t you just speak to him? He could take your deposition right here. And even if you did have to go to court, they’d make it easy for you. A special car, probably a limo with a driver. Get you right in and right out, not make you wait. I’ll bet it wouldn’t take forty-five minutes. We could stop for ice cream afterward.”

“Don’t you patronize me, young lady. Besides, someone else must have seen her van besides me. Why don’t they go to the police?”

“It was two in the morning, Mama.”

“It was Saturday night. Young people stay up late.”

“Our neighbors aren’t that young, Mama. At two in the morning they’re asleep.”

“Yes, and no one cares if an old sick woman can’t sleep. No one cares about an old woman sitting alone in the night-except to get information out of her.” She stroked Dulcie so hard that static sparks flew, alarming them both. “Call him back,” Mama said. “Tell him I won’t.”

But when Frances tried, she had the wrong number. It was not an attorney’s office, and no one had ever heard of Joseph Grey.

Frances looked totally puzzled.“I know I wrote it down right. You heard me, I repeated it back to him.” Frances was not the kind of woman to record a phone number wrong. As she dialed again, Dulcie jumped down, trotted into the laundry room, and leaped to the open window.

And she was out of there. Racing across the yard straight for Janet’s house. She could see Joe in Janet’s window: Felis at Law Joseph Grey, his ears sharply forward, his white markings bright behind the glass, his mouth open in a toothy cat laugh.

14 [????????: pic_15.jpg]

The cats fled down the black, burned hills, down into the tall green grass careening together, exploding apart, wild with their sudden freedom. Four days hanging around the Blankenships’ had left them stir-crazy, dangerously close to the insane release people called a cat fit. Flying down, dropping steeply down, they collapsed at last, rolling and laughing beneath the wide blue sky. Dulcie leaped at a butterfly, at insects that keened and rustled around them in the blowing grass; racing in circles she terrorized a thousand minute little presences singing their tiny songs and munching on their bits of greenery, sent them scurrying or crushed them. “I wonder if Mama gave in-if she let Frances call the police.” She grinned. “I wonder if Frances tried again to phone Attorney Joseph Grey.”

She stood switching her tail.“If that was Janet’s van that Mama saw, the Saturday night before the fire, what was she doing? She drove up to San Francisco that morning. Why would she come home again in the middle of the night, load up her own paintings? Take them where? If there’d been a show, her agent would have said.”

She looked at him intently.“Those weren’t Janet’s paintings burned in the fire, so whose paintings were they?”

“Could Janet have hidden her own paintings, to collect the insurance?”

“Janet wouldn’t do that. And there wasn’t any insurance.” She lay down, thinking.

“Of course there would be insurance,” he said. “Those paintings were worth?”

Dulcie twitched her ear.“Janet didn’t insure her work.”

“That’s crazy. Why wouldn’t she? How do you know that?”

“Insurance on paintings is horribly expensive. She told Wilma it costs nearly as much as the price of the work. The rates were so high she decided against it, said she tried three insurance agents and they all gave the same high rates. Wilma says a lot of artists don’t insure.”

“But Wilma?”

“Wilma has that one painting insured, with a rider on her homeowner’s. That’s a lot different.”

She was quiet a moment, then flipped over and sat up, her eyes widening.“Sicily Aronson has a white van. Don’t you remember? She parks it behind the gallery beside the loading door.”

“So Sicily took the paintings, at two in the morning? Killed Janet and took her paintings, to sell? Come on, Dulcie. Why would she kill Janet? Janet was her best painter, her meal ticket.”

“Maybe Janet planned to leave her. Maybe they had a falling-out. If Janet took all her work away?”

“You’ve been seeing too many TV movies. If Sicily tried to sell those paintings, if they came on the market, Max Harper would have her behind bars in a second.

“And Beverly wouldn’t take them, she inherited Janet’s paintings.” He licked his paw. “And if there wasn’t any insurance, Beverly had nothing to gain.” He nibbled his shoulder, pursuing a flea. Even with the amazing changes in his life, he still couldn’t shake the fleas. And he hated flea spray.

“Maybe,” she said, “Sicily could sell them easier than Beverly. If she did, she’d keep all the money, not have to split with Beverly. With Janet dead, and with so many paintings supposedly destroyed, each canvas is worth a bundle.”

“Whoever has them could sell them. Beverly. Sicily. Kendrick Mahl.”

“But Mahl had witnesses to everything he did in San Francisco.”

Mahl had gone out to dinner with friends both Saturday and Sunday nights, leaving his car in the hotel parking garage. Mahl lived in Marin County across the Golden Gate Bridge. He had driven into the city Saturday afternoon and checked into the St. Francis; the hotel was full of artists and critics. In the city he had taken cabs or ridden with friends.

Dulcie scowled.“I guess anyone could have rented a van. When we know who was in that van, we’ll know who killed her. I’ll bet Detective Marritt didn’t take one thumbtack, one scrap of the burned paintings as evidence.”

“Or maybe Marritt took thumbtacks but didn’t bother to find out how Janet stretched her canvases. You’d think someone would have told him. Wouldn’t Sicily?”

“Unless she didn’t want the police to know.” Dulcie examined her claws. “It’ll take a lot of phoning, calling all the rental places, to find who rented a white van that night.”

“Dulcie, the police will check out the rental places, as soon as they know about the van, and about the missing paintings.”

“Where would someone hide that many paintings?” she said speculatively.

He sat up, staring at her.“You thinkwe’regoing to look for those canvases? You thinkwe’regoing to find two million dollars’ worth of paintings? Those paintings could be anywhere, a private home, an apartment, another gallery? What do you plan to do, go tooling up and down the coast maybe in your BMW, searching through warehouses?”

She smiled sweetly, cutting her eyes at him.“We could try Sicily’s gallery.”

“Sure, Sicily’s going to have those big canvases right there under the cops’ noses. And don’t you think Captain Harper deserves to know that the paintings are gone, that they weren’t burned?”

“It would take only a few minutes, just nip into the gallery and have a look. If we find them, we’ll be giving Captain Harper not just a tip, but the whole big, damning story.” She grinned. “Not just a sniff of the rabbit but the whole delicious cottontail.” Her eyes gleamed green as jewels. “We can slip in through the front door just before Sicily closes, stay out of sight until she locks up.”

His eyes gleamed with the challenge. But his better judgment-some latent natural wariness-made his belly twitch.“If we do that and get caught, I hope it’s the cops and not Sicily.”

“Why ever not? She wouldn’t know what we’re doing. And Sicily likes cats.”

He couldn’t, in his wildest imagination, picture Sicily Aronson liking cats. The woman put him off totally. With her dangling bracelets and jiggling earrings and tangles of clanking chains and necklaces and her blowing, layered clothes, she was like a walking boutique. Dulcie practically drooled over the expensive fabrics Sicily wore, the imported hand-dyed prints, the layers of hand-painted cottons drooping over her long, handwoven skirts. Her handmade sandals or tall slim boots smelled of the animals they came from; and her dark hair, bound up in intricate twists secured with strands of silver or jewels, was just too much. She did not look like Molena Point; she looked like San Francisco’s bordello district, like some leftover from Sally Stanford days, when that madam was the toast of the city.

And the fact that Sicily could amortize interest in her head, so Clyde had told him, and could accurately compute every possible tax writeoff while making light banter or a sales pitch, made her all the more formidable.

“She only dresses like that for PR. It’s part of the gallery image.” She reached a soft paw to him. “She’s really nice. If she catches us in the gallery, she’ll probably treat us to a late supper.”

“Sure she will. Braised rat poison.”

She looked at him, amused.“I’ve been in the gallery a lot lately, and she’s been nice to me.” And suddenly she looked stricken. “Oh dear. I guess? I hope we don’t find the paintings there, I hope she didn’t do it. I was thinking only of proving Rob innocent. But she has been kind to me.”

“I didn’t know you went in there.”

“I’ve done it for weeks, sometimes at noon when court breaks for lunch, just to listen.”

“You suspected her?”

“No, I just wanted to find out what I could. After all, she is Janet’s agent.”

“So what did you learn?”

“Nothing.” She licked her paw. “Except she’s a sucker for cats. But I guess most people in the art world like cats. Last week she fed me little sandwiches left over from an opening, and twice she’s shared her lunch with me; and she folded a handwoven wool scarf on her desk for me to nap on.”

“With that kind of treatment, Wilma may lose her housemate.”

Dulcie smiled.“Not a chance. Anyway, if Sicily catches us in the gallery, just roll over, curl your paws sweetly, and smile.”

“Sure I will. And nail her with twenty sharp ones when she reaches down to grab me.”

She turned away, snorting with disgust.

But in a moment, she said,“I wish we knew what to do about Janet’s journal.”

“It’s evidence, Dulcie. We have to tell the police where to find it. We’ve been over this.”

She sighed.

He moved close against her, licking her ear.“The diary is Captain Harper’s business.”

“But her diary is so private, it’s all that’s left to speak for her-except her paintings.” She looked at him bleakly. “Why did that terrible thing have to happen? Why did she have to die?”

“At least Janet left her work. That’s more than most people leave behind them-something to bring pleasure to others.”

“I guess,” she said, touching her paw to his, half-amused. Joe did have his tender side, when it suited him. “I guess that’s better than poor Mrs. Blankenship. She won’t leave the world anything but a house full of china beasties.”

Earlier, when she and Joe departed Janet’s house, slipping away in the shadows so Mama wouldn’t see them, she had looked back across the street and seen Mama sitting at her window eagerly waiting for her.

“It was cruel to make her think I loved her, then to leave. Now she’ll be more lonely than ever.”

Joe brushed his whiskers against hers.“You could get her a cat. An ordinary little cat who would love her. A kitten maybe.”

“Yes,” she said, brightening. “A little cat that will stay with her.” Her mouth curved with pleasure. “A sweet little cat. Yes, maybe a kitten. Or maybe the white cat. He’ll need a home when we find him.”

He did not reply. In his opinion, the white cat was long dead-except, if he was dead, then what were these strange dreams? Did the dreams arise, as he hoped, only from Dulcie’s active imagination?

They headed down again watching the hills for Stamps’s dog. The wild rye and oats on the open slopes was so tall and thick that the animal could easily crouch unseen. They did not see it on the streets below, among the gardens and cottages, did not see it near the gray house, or around the old black pickup. Dulcie studied the ragged house with narrowed eyes, and a little smile curved her pink mouth.

“What?” he said.

“Looks to me like Stamps’s window is open.”

He said nothing. As they drew near where the pickup was parked, they saw the dog, a shadow among shadows, asleep in the truck bed.

But even as they looked, the beast came awake and sat up and shook himself. Staring up the hill, he either saw them or smelled them, and he suddenly exploded, leaping from the truck straight up the hill?

? and was jerked to a stop by a chain attached to the bumper.

The cats relaxed, their hearts pounding. The dog fought the chain, rattling and jerking the truck, lunging so violently they thought he’d tear off the bumper and come clanging after them.

But the chain held. The bumper didn’t give; it seemed to be solidly bolted. “Come on,” Dulcie said, “he can’t get loose. If we can get in, get the list, we can be out again before the beast stops bellowing.”

“What makes you think he isn’t home? His truck’s there. And why would he leave the list?”

“He left it the other night. And he’ll be at work. Charlie told him if he took any more time off, he was through.”

“Why would he leave the truck and dog?”

“She told him to lose the dog. She hates that dog. Maybe he had nowhere else to leave it but tied to the truck. He can walk to the job, it’s only a few blocks. Look at the window, Joe. It’s cracked open. What more do you want? It’s a first-class invitation.”

Joe grinned.“Sometimes, Dulcie?”

“It won’t take a minute. Snatch up the list and out again, home in time for breakfast.”

He stood, studying the house, then took off running, a gray streak. They fled past the truck and the dog, straight for Stamps’s open window.

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

The back lawn of the decrepit old house was brown and moth-eaten. Two dented garbage cans leaned against the step beside the sunken, unpainted picket fence. The cats, slipping along through the weeds beside the added-on wing, crouched below Stamps’s window, then reared up to look.

They could see no movement beyond the black screen and dirty glass, only the warped reflection of hills and trees. Leaping to the sill, they pressed their faces against the wire mesh, looking in.

“No one,” Joe said.

“He can’t be known for his housekeeping. What a mess.”

The bed was unmade, sheets drooping off a stained mattress. Stamps had left most of his clothes discarded in little piles across the floor. One could imagine him undressing at night dropping garments where he stood, stepping away from them. The open closet revealed only two hanging shirts and a lone shoe. A bath towel hung over the doorknob. The stink beneath the double-hung window was of stale cigarette smoke, dog, and Stamps’s laundry. Probably Stamps had sneaked the dog inside when the landlord wasn’t looking. The dog himself, behind them on the street, rattled and clanged and bellowed, his pea-sized brain fixated on dreams of cat flesh. The window screen was securely latched.

Tensing her claws into little knives, Dulcie ripped down the screen, efficiently opening a twelve-inch gash. Joe pushed through the hole and shouldered the window higher, and they slipped through, leaping from the sill to the back of an upholstered chair. Its ragged, greasy cover smelled of hair oil. One could imagine him sitting there all evening, smoking and drinking beer among the heaps of clothes. Dulcie made a rude face, ears down, eyes crossed.“Can’t he even drive to the laundromat?”

An open bag of potato chips stood on the floor beside a muddy boot. Wrinkled jeans and Tshirts hung out of an open dresser drawer, and the top of the dresser was a tangle of junk. Joe, leaping up, met his reflection charging at him from within the dusty glass.

The refuse dumped on the dresser must have come from Stamps’s pockets, emptied out each night over a long period. He could envision the pile growing until it overwhelmed the dresser, cascaded to the floor, and eventually filled the room. He nosed among half-empty matchbooks, odd nails and screws, a broken pocketknife, dirty handkerchiefs, two crushed beer cans, a rusty hinge, bits of paper, a folding beer opener, a broken shoelace, and a scattering of coins. He pawed open each folded paper, but most were gas receipts, or store receipts, or hastily scribbled nearly illegible lists for hardware supplies and plumbing supplies. At the bottom of the pile lay several wrinkled fast-food bags and flattened, nearly empty packs of cigarettes.

“Why would he leave the list in this mess? What’s in the nightstand?”

She stepped around a full ashtray wrinkling her nose.“Greasy baseball cap, a sock with a hole in it. Three candy bars, some half-empty cigarette packs, a paperback book with no cover. Lurid stuff. Just what you’d expect from Stamps.”

She jumped down to nose beneath the mattress. She was pawing the sheets away when Joe said softly,“Come look.” He stood poised very still, staring at a wrinkled white paper. She leaped up beside him.

Beneath the nails and coins, beneath the tangle of gas receipts and McDonald’s bags and wadded paper napkins, lay Stamps’s list. Joe smoothed the wrinkled paper and fold marks where he had pawed it open. They crouched side by side, reading Stamps’s nearly illegible script.

He had recorded the addresses of the targeted houses, how many people lived in each, the times of normal departure for each individual, and whether they left the house walking or by car. The list might be messy and hard to read, but Stamps’s information was admirably detailed. He noted the make and model of each car in each household, noted whether the car was kept in the garage or on the street. He recorded whether there were children to be gotten off to school, underlining the fact that the school bus stopped at the corner of Ridgeview and Valley, at five after eight. He identified any regular cleaning or gardening services, and what days they would appear, and he noted whether there were barking dogs in residence at each address. He had listed what kinds of door locks, what kinds of windows, and whether there was any indication of an alarm system.

“Nice,” Joe said. “Messy but very complete.” He shook dust from his whiskers. “Too bad we can’t take it with us.”

She got that stubborn look.

“Dulcie, if he finds it missing, they’ll scrap their plan or change it. We’ll have to memorize it; we can each take half.”

“We really need a copy for Captain Harper, not just another anonymous phone call. Don’t you get the feeling that telephone tips make Harper nervous?”

“Of course they make him nervous. They drive him nuts. They have also supplied him with some very valuable information. And we don’t have any choice. What’re you going to do, type up a copy?”

“Even better. We’ll take it up to Frances’s office, it’s only a few blocks. Run it through her copier and return the original, put it back under the junk.”

“And of course Frances will invite us right on in to use her copier. After all, look at the comfort you’ve given Mama.”

She hissed at him and cuffed his ear.“You can distract her. Fall out of a tree or something. While she’s busy watching you, I’ll nip inside through the laundry window, it won’t take a minute. Her copier’s pretty much like Wilma’s.”

“She’s sure to have left the window open, thinking you’ll be back.”

“Of course she’s left the window open. Mama’s probably fit to be tied, waiting for me. It’s nearly noon, and I’ve been gone since ten-thirty. I’m always there for lunch, so she’ll be nattering at Frances to make sure the window’s open.”

He just looked at her.“Dulcie, sometimes?”

She gave him a sweet smile and nuzzled his cheek. Nosing the list closed along its folds, she took it carefully in her teeth, leaped to the chair, and slid out through the partially open window. Joe followed, keeping an eye on the dog. They scorched past him as he bellowed and streaked away up the hill.

“Maybe he’ll hang himself on the chain.”

He glanced at her.“You’re drooling on the list.”

She cut her eyes at him and sped faster. It was impossible, carrying the paper in her mouth, not to drool on it. She held her head up, sucked in her spit, but despite her efforts, by the time they neared the Blankenships’ the paper was soaked. She was thankful Stamps had written in pencil and not water-soluble ink. The Blankenships’ brown frame house stood above them plain and homely. They approached from the side yard, where the spreading fig tree sheltered the back porch.

At the tree they parted, and, as Dulcie slipped around to the laundry room window, Joe swarmed up into the branches. Situating himself as high among the sticky fig leaves as he could, he looked down between them, straight into the kitchen window. He could see Mama sitting at the cluttered table, sipping coffee. Frances stood at the counter, and she seemed to be making lunch. He could smell canned vegetable soup. He could hear them talking, but their voices were just mumbles; he could not make out the thrust of the conversation. Clinging among the twiggy little branches, he took a deep breath.

Filling his lungs so full of air he felt like a bagpipe, he let it out in a yowling bellow. His screams hit the quiet street loud as a siren. He hadn’t sung like this since adolescence, when he fought over lady cats in the San Francisco alleys. He sang and squalled and warbled inventive improvisations. He was really belting it out, giving it his full range, when Frances burst out the kitchen door.

She stared up at him, incredulous, and tried to shake the tree, then looked for something to throw. Joe yowled louder. She snatched up a clod of garden earth, heaved it straight at him. She had pretty good aim-the dirt spattered against the branch inches from him. He ducked but continued to scream. The next instant the back door swung open, and old Mrs. Blankenship pushed out, waddling down the steps in her robe.

“Oh, poor kitty. My poor kitty, my kitty’s up there. Oh, Frances, she?”

When Mama saw that it wasn’t her kitty, she sat down on the steps, made herself comfortable. As if prepared to watch a good show. She seemed highly entertained by Frances’s rage, and it occurred to Joe that Frances might have reached her limit with stray cats.

Frances heaved another clod.“Shut up, you stupid beast. Shut up, or I’m getting Varnie’s shotgun.”

“He’s frightened, Frances. The poor thing can’t get down.”

“Mama, the cat can get down when it wants down.”

“Then why would he be crying like that? He’s terrified.”

Joe tried to look frightened, warbling another chorus of off-key wails but watching Frances warily.Come on,Dulcie, get on with it. I’ll have to skin out of here damn fast if Frances goes for a gun.In order to hold her attention, he pretended to lose his balance. When he nearly fell the old woman yelped. But Frances smiled, and threw another clod.

The moment Joe began to yowl, Dulcie leaped in through the laundry window. Streaking down the hall for Frances’s office, she sailed to the top of the file cabinet and hit the on switch of the copier.

She hoped it wasn’t out of paper, she didn’t think she could manage a ream of paper. She was greatly cheered when the machine’s sweet hum filled the room and no panic lights came on. How long did it take to warm up? Seemed like the ready light would never turn green.

But at last the little bulb flashed. She lifted the lid, laid the list inside, and smoothed it with her paw.

Lowering the lid, she pressed the copy button and prayed a beseeching cat prayer.

The machine hummed louder. The copy light ran along under the lid. In a moment the fresh copy eased out into the bin, and she slid it out with a careful paw. Joe was still singing, his cries muffled by the house walls. She thought she heard Frances shout.

Stamps’s handwriting looked better on the copy than in the original. The oily stains and the wrinkles had not reproduced. She retrieved his own list from inside the machine and managed to fold the clean sheet of paper with it, using teeth and claws.

Joe’s cries rose higher, bold and reassuring. She patted the little packet flat, gripped it firmly between her teeth, and switched off the machine.

Trotting back down the hall, she was almost to the laundry when she heard footsteps hit the back porch and the door open. She started to swerve into the bathroom, but there would be no way out. That window was seldom opened. She bolted down the hall for the laundry as Frances’s footsteps crossed the kitchen.

Frances loomed in the doorway, saw her.“The cat? What’s it got?” She ran, tried to grab Dulcie. “Something in its mouth?” The look on her face was incredulous.

Dulcie sailed to the sill and out.

“Damn cat’s taken something?”

She dropped to the side yard, crunching dry leaves as Frances shouted and banged down the window. Scorching away from the house, Dulcie prayed Joe would see her and follow, but as she hit the curb and dived beneath a neighbor’s parked car, he was still yowling.

16 [????????: pic_17.jpg]

Late-afternoon sun slanted into the Damen backyard, warming the chaise lounge, and warming Joe where he slept sprawled across its soft cushions. He did not feel the gentle breeze that caressed his fur. He was so deep under that the termcatnapcould not apply-he slept like the dead, limp as a child’s stuffed toy. He didn’t hear the leaves blowing in the oak trees, didn’t hear the occasional car passing along the street out in front. Didn’t hear the raucous screaming above him where, atop the fence, six cow birds danced, trying to taunt him. Had he been lightly napping, he would have jerked awake at the first arrogant squawk and leaped up in pointless attack simply for the fun of seeing the stupid birds scatter. But his adventures of the morning, breaking into Stamps’s room and his creative concert in the Blankenship fig tree, had left him wrung out. Only if one were to lean close and hear his soft snores, would one detect any sign of life.

He had parted from Dulcie at Ocean Avenue, had stood in the shade of the grassy median watching her trot brightly away toward the courthouse, carrying the photocopy of Stamps’s list, the white paper clutched in her teeth as if she were some dotty mother cat carrying a prize kitten; and she’d headed straight for the Molena Point Police Station.

He had to trust she’d get the list to Harper without being seen. When he questioned her, she hadn’t been specific.

“There are cops all over, Dulcie. How are you going to do that?”

“Play it by ear,” she’d mumbled, smiling around the paper, and trotted away.

And Stamps would never know the list had left his room. What were a few little dents in the paper? Who would imagine toothmarks? Certainly by the time Stamps got home from work the list would be dry, Dulcie’s spit evaporated.

And once Dulcie had delivered Stamps’s game plan to the authorities, she’d be off for a delightful day of court proceedings.

For himself, a nap had seemed far more inviting. Arriving home famished, he had pushed into the kitchen, waking the assorted pets, had knocked the box of cat kibble from the cupboard, and wolfed the contents. He’d gone out again through the front-there was no cat door from the kitchen; Clyde controlled the other cats’ access to the outdoors. Two of the cats were ancient and ought to be kept inside. And the young white female was too cowardly to fend for herself.

And in the backyard, moderately fortified with his dry snack, he had slept until 4 P.M.

He’d awakened hungry again, starved. Slipping back into the house, he had phoned Jolly’s. When, twenty minutes later, Jolly’s delivery van pulled up in front, he allowed time for the boy to set his order on the porch as he had directed and to drive away. There was no problem about paying-he hadput it on Clyde’s charge. When the coast was clear he slipped out, checked for nosy neighbors, then dragged the white paper bag around the side yard to the back and up onto the chaise.

Feasting royally, he had left the wrappers scattered around the chaise and gone back to sleep, his stomach distended, his belch loud and satisfied.

But now, suddenly, he was rudely awakened by someone poking him.

He jerked up, startled, then subsided.

Through slitted eyes he took in pant legs, Clyde’s reaching hand. He turned over and squeezed his eyes closed.

Clyde poked again, harder. Joe opened one eye, growling softly. Around them, the shadows were lengthening, the sunlight had softened, its long patches of brilliance lower and gender. The cool breeze that rustled the trees above him smelled of evening. Joe observed his housemate irritably.

Clyde was not only home from work, he had showered and changed. He was wearing a new, soft blue jogging suit. A velvet jogging suit. And brand-new Nikes. Joe opened both eyes, studying him with interest.

Clyde poked again, a real jab. Joe snatched the offending fingers and bit down hard.

Clyde jerked his hand, which was a mistake.“Christ, Joe! Let go of me! I was only petting. What’s the matter with you?”

He dropped the offending fingers.“You weren’t petting, you were prodding.”

“I was only trying to see if you’re all right. You were totally limp. You looked dead, like some old fur piece rejected by the Goodwill.”

Joe glared.

“I merely wanted to know if you’d like some salmon for dinner.” He examined his fingers. “When was your last rabies shot?”

“How the hell should I know? It’s your job to keep track of that stuff. Of course I want salmon for dinner.”

Clyde studied his wounded appendages, searching for blood.

“I hardly broke the skin. I could have taken the damned fingers off if I’d wanted.”

Clyde sighed.

“You jerked me out of an extremely deep sleep. A healing, restful sleep. A much-needed sleep.” He slurped on his paw and massaged his violated belly. “In case you’ve forgotten, cats need more sleep than humans, cats need a higher-quality sleep. Cats?”

“Can it, Joe. I said I was sorry. I didn’t come out here for a lecture.” Clyde’s gaze wandered to the deli wrappers scattered beneath the chaise. He knelt and picked up several and sniffed them. “I see you won’t want the salmon, that you’ve already had dinner.”

“A midafternoon snack. I said yes, I want salmon.”

Clyde sat down on the end of the chaise, nearly tipping it though Joe occupied three-fourths of the pad.“This was a midafternoon snack? I wonder, Joe, if you’ve glanced, recently, at my deli bill.”

Joe stared at him, his yellow eyes wide.

“Ever since you learned how to use the phone, my bill at Jolly’s has been unbelievable. It takes a large part of my personal earnings just to? “

“Come on, Clyde. A little roast beef once in a while, a few crackers.”

Clyde picked up a wrapper.“What is this black smear? Could this be caviar?” He raised his eyes to Joe. “Imported caviar? The beluga, maybe?” He examined a second crumpled sheet of paper. “And these little flecks of pink. These wouldn’t be the salmon-Jolly’s best smoked Canadian salmon?”

“They were having a special.” Joe licked his whiskers. “You really ought to try the smoked salmon; Jolly just got it in from Seattle.”

Clyde picked up yet another wrapper and sniffed the faint, creamy smears.“And is this that Brie from France?”

“George Jolly does keep a very nice Brie. Smear it on a soft French bread, it’s perfection. They say Brie is good with fresh fruit, but I prefer?”

Clyde looked at Joe intently.“Doesn’t Jolly’s deliveryman wonder, when he brings this stuff and no one answers the door? What do you tell him when you call?”

“I tell him to leave it on the porch. What else would I tell him? To shove it through the cat door? I can manage that myself. Though this evening I carried it around here, it’s so nice and sunny. I had a delightful snack.”

“That, as far as I’m concerned, was your supper.”

“You might call it high tea.”

“And where’s Dulcie? How come you didn’t share with her? She loves smoked salmon and Brie.”

“She planned to spend the afternoon at the courthouse. She said she was going home afterward, for some quality time with Wilma. Dulcie is a very dutiful cat.”

Clyde wadded up the deli wrappers.“You were taking a nap pretty early in the day, so I presume you’re planning a big night.”

Joe shrugged.“Maybe an early hunt, nothing elaborate.” He had no intention of sharing his plans for the evening. This proposed break-and-enter into the Aronson Gallery was none of Clyde’s business. It would only upset him. He looked Clyde over with interest. “And what about you? Looks like you have big plans. Is that a new jogging suit? And new Nikes? They have to be, they’re still clean. And you just had a haircut. What gives? You going walking with Charleston?”

Clyde stared.

Joe bent this head and licked his hind paw.“Simple deduction,” he said modestly. “I know that Charlie likes to walk; Dulcie says she’s learning the lay of the village, learning the names of the streets. And you told me yourself, she doesn’t like fancy restaurants and doesn’t hang out in bars. And a movie date is so juvenile. Ergo, you’re going walking, and then for dinner either to the Fish Market or the Bakery.”

“I don’t know why I bother to plan anything about my life. I could just ask you what I’m going to do for the day. It would be so much easier.”

Joe lifted a white paw, extended his claws, and began to clean between them.

Clyde glanced at his watch and rose. In a few minutes Joe could hear him in the kitchen opening cans, could hear the two old dogs’ nails scrabbling on the kitchen floor in Pavlovian response to the growl of the can opener, and the three cats begin to mewl. Annoyed by the fuss, Joe rose, leaped to the top of the fence and up into the eucalyptus tree. There he tucked down into a favorite hollow formed by three converging branches and tried to go back to sleep.

But within minutes of his getting settled and drifting off, the back door burst open and a tangle of dogs and cats poured out into the falling evening. The dumb beasts began to play, driven by inane, friendly barking and snarls and an occasional feline hiss. Joe climbed higher.

He wasn’t to meet Dulcie until eight-thirty, but he needed to be fresh. It would take some quick maneuvering to slip into the gallery unseen just before it closed, find an adequate hiding place, and remain concealed until Sicily locked up and went home. He had a bad feeling about tonight. But Dulcie wasn’t going to rest until they took that gallery apart looking for Janet’s paintings.

He supposed if they didn’t find them, she’d want to search Sicily’s apartment next, and who knew where else.

What they should do, of course, was inform the police. Let Captain Harper know about the missing paintings-make one simple, anonymous phone call so Harper could start looking for them.

But try to tell Dulcie that. She’d got her claws into this and was determined to do it her way, to come up with the killer unaided, like some ego-driven movie detective.

Yet he knew he was being unfair. The excitement of the hunt stirred his own blood. And he knew Dulcie was driven not so much by ego, as by her powerful hunting instincts and an overwhelming feline curiosity. Her tenacity in tracking the killer was as natural to her as stalking an elusive rabbit.

But now, of course, one crime wasn’t enough, now she’d honed in, as well, on Stamps’s early-morning burglary scheme.

Harper should be delighted. Why pay all those cops, when he has us?

But, to be honest, his own curiosity nudged him just as sharply. And what the hell? Breaking into Stamps’s place had been a gas. He liked nosing around other folks’ turf.

Anyway what choice did he have? What else could he do when Dulcie flashed those big green eyes at him, and extended her soft little paw? Might as well relax and enjoy an evening of burglary. What harm-what could go wrong? What could happen?

17 [????????: pic_18.jpg]

High above the alley, as Dulcie crouched to leap, the oak branch shivered beneath her tensed paws. She gathered herself, staring across to the narrow brick sill of the courthouse window. She sprang suddenly, flying across-hit the sill, scattering pigeons, driving them up in an explosion of thundering wings.

But even as she clung, steadying herself by pressing against the glass, they circled back, dropping down again into the oak, the bravest ones returning to the ledge to strut and eye her sideways with simpleminded bravado. If she hadn’t been otherwise engaged, she would have had one for a little snack.

Hunched on the narrow sill, she peered down into the courtroom, wondering why the windows were closed, why the room below was dark. No lights burned, the long rows of mahogany benches were empty, the jury box abandoned, the judge’s big leather chair deserted, the shadowed courtroom as lifeless as a time capsule sealed away to be opened a thousand years hence. Surely they hadn’t concluded the case. Visions of Rob Lake being pronounced guilty and sentenced filled her with panic.

But it was too soon for a verdict, there were still witnesses to be called. There had been no time for a summing up, not nearly enough time for the jury to deliberate. Puzzled, she turned away, leaped back into the oak tree, sending the mindless birds scattering.

She sat among the branches, licking pigeon soil from her paws. In her haste she’d forgotten the hand towel, had left it stuffed high in the tree among the smallest twigs. She had to know why court was closed.

Maybe theGazettewas out early. Maybe it would tell her. Sometimes, when there was an unusual event, the evening edition hit the streets around midday. She gave her paws a last disgusted lick, backed down the rough trunk, and headed for the post office, where the nearest paper rack stood chained to a lamppost.

At least she had delivered the list, had deposited her copy of Stamps’s itinerary safely at police headquarters. She hoped it was safe. She’d thought of faxing it to Captain Harper, a safe and direct route, but she’d have to use the library fax when no one was watching, a feat nearly impossible. Besides, the fax still unnerved her.

The Molena Point Police Station occupied the southern wing of the courthouse just across the alley from the jail, from Rob Lake’s cell. The station’s main entrance opened onto Lincoln Street. A second door, inside the police squad room, opened directly into the courthouse. At the back of the building a third entrance, a locked metal door, led to the police parking lot.

She had arrived long after the change of shift. The fenced parking lot was full of officers’ personal cars and a few squad cars, but there was no one about, no officer passing through the lot, no pedestrian in sight at that moment. The brick wall of the jail, across the alley, was blank except for very high windows. No prisoner could see out. Certain that no one was watching, she had tucked the list under the metal door, praying that some officer, coming out, wouldn’t let it blow away.

Now, leaving the courthouse, she glanced down the alley to the back of the station, looking for the little white folded paper. She couldn’t see it beneath the door. Maybe Harper already had it. She had started over to take a look when a squad car pulled in.

Hurrying on by, she left the court building heading for the post office news rack. Trotting around to Dolores Street, she sprinted north a block, galloping up the warm sidewalk. The day smelled of green gardens and the sea; the shop windows were bright with their expensive wares; the gallery windows brilliant with an assortment of painting styles. Next to the post office, the Swiss House smelled of sweet rolls and freshly brewed coffee. Pink petunias bloomed beside its door, in ceramic pots. She sniffed at the flowers as she passed, approaching the news rack.

But the rack was empty-no early paper. Strange that the court postponement hadn’t generated enough excitement for theGazetteto make an extra effort. And even if, at home, she were to push the buttons on the TV, there’d be no news this time of day, only the soaps, every channel busy with degrading human melodramas written by disturbed mental patients.

But at least at home there would be something nice to eat while she waited for the paper. Wilma always left a plate for her in the refrigerator. She hadn’t had a bite since breakfast with Mama, a disgusting mess of oatmeal, and then that nibble of peach turnover-more peach on her ear than in her stomach. Breaking into a run, swerving around pedestrians, she nearly collided with an old man and an elderly dog wandering along in the sunshine; then, turning the corner, she was almost creamed by a fast-moving bike. She jumped back just in time as its rider swerved, shouting at her. But soon she turned up her own stone walk between Wilma’s flower beds. Slipping in through her cat door, she made a round of the house to be sure she was alone. Charlie could be unusually quiet sometimes, not a whisper of sound, not a vibe of her presence.

No one home, the rooms were still and empty. But trotting back through the dining room she caught the scent of Charlie’s drawing materials. Maybe she’d left her sketch box on the table.

In the kitchen, crouched on the counter, the instant she forced the refrigerator open she smelled fresh crab. Leaping down before the door could shut, she snatched the plastic plate in her teeth, set it on the little rug.

Beneath the clear wrap, the soft plastic plate held a generous portion of fresh white crabmeat arranged beside a small cheese biscuit of her favorite brand, and an ounce of Jolly’s special vegetable aspic, heavy on asparagus just the way she liked it. For desert Wilma had included a small plastic cup of Jolly’s homemade egg custard. She ate slowly, enjoying each small bite, puzzling over why Judge Wesley would have recessed court.

Maybe Mama Blankenshiphadgone to the police, maybe the recess was until they could arrange for her testimony. Maybe what Mama told the police had been important enough to put a whole new face on the trial. Musing over that possibility, she finished her main course, licked her plate clean, and licked the last morsel of crab off her whiskers. As she started on her custard, she knew she had to call Captain Harper, that she wouldn’t rest until she was sure he had the list. Why was she so shy of the phone? It couldn’t be that hard. Just knock the phone off its cradle and punch in the number.

Finishing her custard, she headed for the living room, for the phone. But crossing the dining room she was aware once more of the scent that didn’t belong in that room, the sketching smell-charcoal, eraser crumbs, fixative.

Wilma’s guest room had taken on Charlie’s personality, overflowing with Charlie’s personal tastes and passions, her sketch pads, her easel, her hinged oak sketch box, and a larger oak painting box. Drawings stood propped against the furniture and the walls, stacks of art books crowded every surface and were stacked on the floor. This clutter was a product of Charlie’s deep interests, very different from the dead, dormant clutter of the Blankenship house. Charlie Getz might have left the art world to make a living, but her heart hadn’t left it.

Now in the dining room, smelling Charlie’s drawings, Dulcie reared up to sniff at the buffet, then leaped up.

Landing on the polished surface she slammed hard into a large drawing, nearly knocked it off where it leaned against the wall. Backing away, she paused, balanced on the edge of the buffet.

There were three drawings. Her heart raced. They were ofher.Life-size portraits so bold and real that she seemed ready to step right off the page.

The studies were done with charcoal on white paper, and neatly matted with pebbly white board. When had Charlie done these? She hadn’t seen Charlie drawing her. She leaped away to the dining table to get a longer view. Looking across at the drawings, she could almost be looking into a mirror, except that these reflections were far more exciting than any mirror image. Charlie’s flattery made her giddy. Her tail began to lash, her skin rippled with excitement.

She’d had no notion Charlie was drawing her. And who had known Charlie could draw like this?What is Charlie doing cleaning houses and grubbing out roof gutters, with this kind of talent?

She did a little tail chase on the dining room table, spinning in circles, and for a moment she let ego swamp her, she imagined these images of herself hanging in galleries or museums, saw herself in those full-color glossy art magazines, the kind the library displayed on a special rack. She saw newspaper reviews of Charlie’s work in which the beauty of Charlie’s feline model was remarked upon. But then, amused at her own vanity, she jumped down and headed for the living room. Her mind was still filled with Charlie’s powerful art work, but she had to take care of unfinished business.

Leaping to Wilma’s desk, she attacked the phone. Joe did this stuff all the time. Lifting a paw, she knocked the headset off.

The little buzz unnerved her. She backed away, then approached again and punched in the police number. But as she waited for the dispatcher to answer she grew shaky, her paws began to sweat. She was about to press the disconnect when a crisp female voice answered, a voice obviously used to quick response.

Her own voice was so unsteady she could hardly ask for Harper. She waited, shivering, for him to come on the line. She waited a long time; he wasn’t coming. She’d sounded too strange to the dispatcher; maybe the woman drought her call was some kind of hoax. She was easing away to leap off the desk, abandon the phone, when Harper answered.

When she explained to him about the list which she had tucked under the back door, Harper said he already had it. She told Harper the list had been made by James Stamps, under the direction of Varnie Blankenship, and she gave both men’s addresses, not by street number, which she hadn’t even thought to look at, but by the street names and by descriptions of the two houses, the ugly brown Blankenship house, and the old gray cottage with the addition at the back.

She told Harper that Stamps walked his dog every morning, watching when people left for work, when children left for school. She said she didn’t know when the two men planned the burglaries, that she knew no more than was on the list. Except that Stamps was on parole. This interested Harper considerably. He asked whether it was state or federal parole, but she didn’t know. He asked if she was a friend of Stamps, and how she had gotten her information. She panicked then, reached out her paw ready to press the disconnect button.

But after a moment, she said,“I can’t tell you that. Only that they’re planning seven burglaries, Captain Harper. I thought-I supposed you’d need witnesses, maybe a stakeout.”

She’d watched enough TV to know that if Harper didn’t have eyewitnesses, or serial numbers for the stolen items, his men couldn’t search Stamps’s room and Varnie’s house. Even if the stolen items were there, she didn’t think the police could get inside without probable cause.

She knew it was expecting a lot to imagine that Harper would set up a stakeout every morning until the burglaries were committed, that he would do that guided only by the word of an unfamiliar informant. Her heart was thudding, she was afraid she’d blown this. “Those are expensive homes, up there. It would be terrible, all of them broken into in one morning. I don’t know what vehicle they’ll use, but maybe the old truck in Varnie’s garage. It would carry a lot.” She was so shaky she didn’t wait for him to respond. In a suddenpanic she pressed the disconnect and sat staring at the headset as the dial tone resumed.

Then, embarrassed, she leaped to the couch and curled up tight on her blue afghan.Iblew it. Absolutely blew it. Harper won’t pay any attention. I didn’t half convince him.She thought about what she could have said differently. Thought about calling him back She did nothing; she only huddled miserably, disappointed in herself.

How was she going to tell Joe that she had failed, that she hadn’t convinced Harper, that she couldn’t even use the phone without panicking?

She wasn’t like this when she hunted; Joe said she was fearless. It was that disembodied voice coming through the wire that put her off. Feeling stupid and inept, she squeezed her eyes closed and tucked her nose under her paw.

She slept deeply, and soon the dream pulled her in, spun her away into that world where the white cat waited.

He stood high above her on the crest of the hills. He beckoned, flicking his tail. And this time he didn’t vanish; he turned and trotted away, and she followed. High up the hills, where the grass blew wild, he turned again to face her, his blue eyes burning bright as summer sky. Above him rose three miniature hills. Two were rounded, the third was sliced off along one side, sharp as if a knife had cut down through it. The white cat stood imperiously before it, his eyes glowing with a fierce light.

But as she approached him, a damp chill crept beneath her paws. She was suddenly in darkness, felt cold mud oozing beneath her paws, sour-smelling. They were in a cave or tunnel-blackness closed around them, and a heavy weight pressed in.

A thud jerked her from sleep. She leaped up in terror that the walls had collapsed on her.

But the dark walls were gone, and she was in her own living room, standing on her own blue afghan.

Glancing up at the windows, at the change of light, she realized she had slept for hours. She yawned, made a halfhearted attempt to wash. She felt lost, groggy. It was hard to wake fully. She thought the noise she’d heard might have been the eveningGazettehitting the curb.

Trying to collect herself, she trotted into the kitchen.

Pushing under the plastic flap of her cat door, she saw the paper out on the curb. Trotting down the steps, fetching theGazettefrom among the flowers, she dragged it back, bumping up the short stair, and pulled it endwise through her cat door. And why would any neighbor find her actions strange? She had always carried things home, had stolen clothes from everyone in the neighborhood at one time or another, had stolen not only from their houses but from their porches and their clotheslines and their open cars.

Dragging the paper into the living room, onto the thick rag rug, she nosed it open to the front page. She read quickly; her tail began to lash.

SURPRISE WITNESS IN LAKE TRIAL

Observers predict that new evidence which has come to light in the trial of Rob Lake may be so important that Judge Wesley will call a new trial. A new and unidentified witness is scheduled to testify this week. Neither defense attorney Deonne Baron nor the county attorney would release the witness’s name. Neither would speculate as to the nature of the impending testimony. Ms. Baron was not available for comment?

Dulcie rolled over, laughing.Mama did it, that old lady did it. Mama really came through-even if she was scared into testifying by the sudden interference of attorney Joe Grey.

She wondered if Joe had seen the paper.

The article speculated endlessly about the identity of the new witness, and recapped old facts just to make copy. A blurred photo of Rob Lake and a larger picture of Janet took up half the page.

Maybe I blew it with Harper, but we pulled this off. And maybe-maybe Mama’s testimony can free Rob.

And maybe after tonight there would be more evidence, maybe there would be forty-six of Janet’s paintings for evidence.

Carefully she folded the paper, carried it back through the kitchen, and pushed it out her cat door. She didn’t want Charlie to come home before Wilma and wonder how the evening paper got in the house. Quickly dragging it across the garden, she left it at the curb, then slipped back inside, and cuddled up again on her afghan. She’d just have another little nap, then go to meet Joe.Mama did it. Hope she doesn’t change her mind, get cold feet at the last minute.And she closed her eyes, smiling.

18 [????????: pic_19.jpg]

Moonlight touched Jolly’s alley; a little breeze fingered between the small shops, stirring leafy shadows; the potted trees shivered; the glow from a wrought-iron lamp mingled with moonlight washing across the many-paned shop windows, brightening the rainbow colors of a stained-glass door. The brick paving was warm beneath the cats’ hurrying paws.

Intent on their destination, neither cat spoke. Dulcie was all nerves. Joe was edgy with a need to run-to climb-to fight. They found it hard to stay focused, their spirits, their cat souls, wanted to be elsewhere. This was not a good night for measured discipline. The windy moonlight pulled at them, sought mightily to draw them away. They were filled with ancient hungers, with the moon’s wild power, with mysteries surfacing from a vanished past.

Just as the hills above them, so ordinary in daylight, changed under the moon to dangerous veldts and tangled black jungles, so the cats’ souls were changed. Ancient yearnings rode with them, drawing them like addicts toward lost times where medieval shadows fled.

Dulcie glanced at Joe and shuttered her eyes, trying to keep her thoughts on their mission. Slowing her pace, she padded demurely beside him. Leaving the alley, turning up the sidewalk, they put on civilized faces. Bland, kitty faces. With effort they returned to the domestic, became simple wandering pets, idle, dawdling.

Curving gently around planters and benches, duly sniffing at the shop walls, they stopped to investigate a bit of paper dropped at the curb. They scented mindlessly along a row of flowerpots. They meandered, working their way aimlessly in the direction of the Aronson Gallery, pretending vague inattention-but watching intently the gallery’s broad bay windows and glass door. The Aronson, occupying a quarter square block, was the most prestigious of Molena Point’s fifty galleries.

At the curb opposite the wide, low windows, Joe nosed at one of four huge ceramic pots planted with pink flowering oleander trees. Leaping up, he stretched out on the warm, potted earth; below him, Dulcie rolled on the sidewalk, both cats feigning empty-minded boredom as they studied the brightly lit interior, a montage of angled white walls and jagged, multicolored reflections more familiar to Dulcie than to Joe. A medley of colliding surfaces as intricate as the interior of a kaleidoscope, its maze of short, angled walls provided dozens of pristine white recesses flowing from one to another. Each niche accommodated a single painting, much as a jeweler displays one perfect emerald or ruby on a bed of velvet. The viewer could see each canvas or watercolor in isolation, yet had only to turn, perhaps take a step, to be immersed in the next offering. The snowy spaces blended so smoothly that gallery patrons seemed to wander in an open and airy world, surprised at each turn by a new and bright vista.

Now from deep within, three figures moved, approaching the front, their progress broken into crooked shadows. They seemed to be the gallery’s only occupants. Sicily floated theatrically toward the door, her loose, drifting garments almost ethereal beside the staid figures of the couple who accompanied her. The middle-aged man was nicely attired in a raw silk sport coat and pale slacks, the thin woman elegant in a sleek black cocktail suit, her shining black hair pinned into a chignon, her huge silver earrings dangling and flashing in the gleam of gallery lights. The three paused in the open doorway, stood discussing painting prices. The cats listened and watched narrowly, pretending to nap, but tensed for the moment when back would be turned, and they could dart inside. The couple seemed undeterred by the cash sums Sicily was mentioning, money enough to keep the entire cat population of Molena Point in gourmet abundance for the next century. One of the paintings they were discussing was Janet’s, a canvas the cats couldsee inside on the gallery wall, a painting of dark, rainswept hills.

But at last the man and woman stepped onto the street, and as Sicily turned back into the gallery the cats streaked through behind her. Racing for the shadows, they crouched between the zigzag walls. Looking out, they could just see Sicily as she moved away toward the back, unaware of intruders. Above them in the alcove hung a stark painting of a tilting San Francisco street, a work too austere for Dulcie’s tastes, and seeming to Joe hard and ugly.

And now, though Dulcie knew the gallery well, confusion touched her. As she peered away among the alcoves, searching for a better place to hide, she was riven with uncertainty. The gallery spaces seemed different tonight, the vibrant colors of the paintings seeming to shatter and converge in strange new convolutions beneath the dizzying lights.

They heard Sicily pick up the phone and punch in a number, listened to her arrange late dinner reservations for four at the Windborne, Molena Point’s most luxurious restaurant. This distracted Dulcie. She was able to calm herself with visions of a lovely, leisurely meal at a linen appointed table, waited on by liveried servers as she gazed down through the glass wall to the rolling sea below. Dreaming, she began to relax.

And at last she licked her paw and smoothed her whiskers, preparing for the night’s work.

As they crouched in the shadows, Sicily returned to the front wearing a wrap, an African-looking shawl thrown over her shoulders, and jingling her keys. She swept past them, carrying a briefcase and a string handbag, pausing at the door to turn out the lights.

The gallery dimmed to a soft glow from the streetlamps. Through the open door a cool breeze fingered in, then abated as Sicily pulled the door closed.

She locked the door with her key and swept away down the street; in a moment they saw her white van go by, and realized they had passed it a block away.

She was gone; the gallery was theirs. They came out from the shadows to prowl the pale recesses, studying each canvas, each glassed and matted watercolor, searching for Janet’s work, but by the time they reached the back of the gallery they had found only five of her paintings. And none of these was new; Dulcie had seen them all in the gallery, long before the fire. In the dim light, the life and color of the work was nearly lost. Only the strong dark and light patterns remained, as if the paintings had turned into photographs of themselves.

Deep in the interior, beyond Sicily’s desk, four closed doors were half-hidden among the oblique walls. They pawed each open. One led to a rest room smelling powerfully of Pine Sol, one to a closet with a red sweater dangling among a row of empty hangers. The third door opened on a cleaning closet: broom, mop, various cleaning chemicals in assorted spray bottles. The fourth door, to the storeroom, was open, as if perhaps Sicily left it ajar for air circulation.

And at the very back a fifth door, a broad, metal-sheathed loading door leading to the alley, was sealed by a bar and a padlock. Uneasily, Joe looked up at it.

This door was impassable. And Sicily had locked the front door with a key. There was no other way out of the gallery. The realization that they were trapped made him feel as helpless as when, as a kitten, he’d been chased into San Francisco’s dead-end alleys by packs of roaming dogs or by nasty little street boys.

He shivered as they slipped into the storeroom.“You said there were no windows?”

“None. If we can throw the light, it won’t be seen. The switch is there?” She peered up, then pawed the door closed behind them, so light wouldn’t be seen from the street.

Joe paced, tightening muscles, staring up. He leaped.

On his third try, scaling up the wall, his paw hit the switch. The lights blazed, three sets of long fluorescent bulbs burning in a white, blinding glow.

Four rows of open racks marched away, bins made of slats to allow for air circulation, and filled with standing paintings. But Joe, shut in, felt his paws grow damp. His brain kept playing the same theme. No way out of the storeroom except this one door. No way to escape the gallery. And this storeroom was like a coffin. In his heart, he was four months old again, cowering away from attacking boys, clawing up restraining walls.

He turned away, so Dulcie wouldn’t see his fear.

Hey, get a grip. This is not the behavior of a macho tomcat.But his paws were really sweaty, and he was beginning to pant.

He got himself in hand sufficiently to move with Dulcie up one corridor and down the next, looking at each canvas, searching for Janet’s work. They couldn’t move the big canvases out of the racks, but each group of paintings leaned against a slatted divider. As Joe pulled a painting back, Dulcie could slip in between, take a look. Their paws were soon abraded, scraped nearly raw by the rough linen canvas and cut where the rawends of picture wire had nicked them. They found only four of Janet’s paintings, all without frames, the raw edges stapled. No thumbtacks. Two were of village streets done from some high vantage.

“From the tower of the courthouse,” Dulcie said. “That’s Monte Verde Street below, those red blooming trees and the red roofs. And this other one, that’s the Molena Point Inn. Look, she’s put in a little cat asleep on the inn roof, a little black cat.”

She sighed.“You should come up the tower with me, it’s lovely. Up the outside steps to the second-floor balcony, then along the open corridor and up into the tower.”

Her eyes glowed.“You can pull the tower door open, they don’t lock it. Up the tower stairs to that open place near the top and there you are, a little jump up onto the stone rail, you can see all the town below, see the hills in one direction and the sea in the other. You can?”

“Could we hurry this a bit?” Her description of those seductive open spaces wasn’t helping; he hungered for space and air. “It’s about time for the patrol.”

The Molena Point police not only conducted tight street patrols, but they carried passkeys to most of the shops. Joe had seen, as he prowled the night-dark rooftops, uniformed officers entering restaurants and galleries, perhaps because they heard some noise or saw an unfamiliar light. The department provided a high degree of security for the small village; you wouldn’t find this kind of attention in San Francisco.

When they found no more of Janet’s work, when they had flipped off the light and fought the door open, Joe sat in the middle of the open gallery calming himself, getting himself together again; but only slowly did his heartbeat gear down. Beside him, Dulcie sat dejected. “I was so sure the paintings would be here.”

He washed diligently, soothing his tight muscles and shaky nerves, he’d never felt so edgy. The phrasenervous as a cathad taken on sudden new meaning. “Maybe they’re in a warehouse, maybe one of those around the docks.”

“Possible. There are plenty of warehouses down there. Remember the fuss in the paper about turning them into restaurants and tourist shops? That’s what defeated the last mayor. No one wants Molena Point to be so commercial.” She rubbed her face against his shoulder. “Yes, we can go down to the wharves, take a look Sicily?”

She stopped speaking, her eyes widening.“Or a storage locker.” She stared at him, her eyes black as polished obsidian. “There are storage lockers north of the village. Charlie keeps her tools and ladders there, all her repair and cleaning stuff. Wouldn’t the paintings be safer in a locker than in a warehouse? And at two in the morning, would Sicily go down into that warehouse area alone?”

“If Sicily has them.”

“If they’re in a locker, there should be some kind of receipt. Charlie got a receipt for her locker. I saw it on her dresser, stuck into her checkbook.”

“You just happened to be passing.”

“Actually, I was looking at her art books. She doesn’t care if I prowl.”

Trotting across the gallery, she leaped to Sicily’s desk, began to nose through the papers in an in-box, then through a little basket containing a tangle of small, handwritten notes and postcards.

She clawed open the file drawer. And as she searched, Joe prowled the perimeters of the gallery, nosing along the bay windows, hoping one would open.

When he turned, all he could see of Dulcie were her hindquarters and tail as she peered down inside the files.“Look for a duplicate key, a spare for the front door.”

She raised her head, watching him. His kittenhood must have been terrible. He couldn’t bear to be trapped though he would seldom talk about it.

Sicily’s files were filled with brochures and announcements of one-man exhibits, with newspaper clippings and reviews. Some contained, as well, glossy, full-color offprints of magazine articles featuring the artist’s work. In the front of each file was clipped an inventory listing by title, the medium and size of each painting received by the gallery, the date received, the dates of exhibits entered, and whether the work was accepted or rejected. There were notations of awards won, and of reviews.

The listing also contained the date a painting was sold, the price, and the name and address of the buyer. All the inventories were handwritten in small, neat script. There were three J folders.

Janet’s folder contained a list of her work taken by the gallery, but the dates were all months old. Two-thirds of the works had been sold. Dulcie could find no indication that a large number of paintings had suddenly been added to Sicily’s inventory-unless the dates had been altered. And when she clawed open the smaller desk drawers she found only office supplies-a stapler, pens, blank labels, stationery, and envelopes-and in one drawer, beside boxes of paper clips, a tangle of bracelets and a lipstick.

She was patting some restaurant receipts back into order when suddenly the burglar alarm screamed.

She shot off the desk straight into Joe, the siren vibrating in waves, exploding, shaking them.

Joe pushed her toward the back, into darkness away from the windows. Her fur felt straight out, her heart pounding.

“They’ll send a patrol car,” he said. “I was looking for an escape route and I broke the beam.” They stiffened as police sirens screamed up the street and Dulcie spun around toward the storeroom.

“No,” Joe hissed, “not there. There’s not even a window. Come on-under the desk.”

“But?”

Lights blazed in the street as a squad car slid to the curb. Its doors flew open. Two officers emerged, shining their lights in through the glass, and the cats shrank back beneath the desk.“Keep your face down,” Dulcie whispered. “Your white markings are like neon. Hide your paws.”

Joe ducked his head over his paws, turning himself into a solid gray ball. From the alley behind the gallery, a second siren screamed.

“If they see us,” Dulcie said, “try to look cute.”

“You think this is a joke.”

“Relax. What can they do? If they shine their lights under here, roll over and smile. You’re a gallery cat. Try to look the part.”

“Dulcie, those cops’ll know Sicily doesn’t have gallery cats. When they open the door, run for it.”

“How would they know she doesn’t have cats? And what if they do? So they think we got shut in here accidentally. What else would they think? What are they going to do, arrest us?”

“You left the desk drawer open.”

“Oh?” She tensed to leap up.

He grabbed her, his teeth in the nape of her neck.“They’ll see us.”

She shrugged, her dark eyes wide and amused.“What are you afraid of?” she said softly.

He was ready to fight, to claw any hand that reached for them, but he was scared, too.“They’ll think we’re strays and call the pound.” The pound had cages, locked cages. Having grown up in city alleys, he was far more aware of the terrors of the pound than was Dulcie. Far more wary of the powers of the police. Who could outfight a trained police officer? A cop knew all the tricks, knew to grab you by the tail and the back of the neck, putting you at an extreme disadvantage.

Those two cops were going to get some heavy claws if they tried that trick.

“They won’t hurt us,” she said gently. “We’re not criminals, we’re just little village cats.”

“Village cats don’t get locked in the stores; they have better sense.” He gave her a long look. “Get real, Dulcie. In here, we classify as a nuisance, and a nuisance goes to the pound. You think, at the pound, they allow you to call your attorney?”

He didn’t know what was wrong with him tonight; he was acting like a total wimp. Maybe he was sickening with something. He dug his claws into the carpet, watching the two officers let themselves in the front door, shivering as their spotlights swept the angled walls-and trying to talk sense to himself.

So they see us. Dulcie’s right, no big deal. We’re not strays, we’re respected village cats. People know us. Certainly most of the cops know us.

And if some of the cops knew them too well, so what? Though he had to admit, Captain Harper had enough questions about them already without provoking him further.

Harper was, in fact, too damn suspicious. And when Harper asked questions of Clyde, Clyde got upset. And Clyde lit into him.

No, if we’re going to snoop into police business, play PI and maybe step on a few police toes, then secrecy is our best weapon-our only weapon.

The cops’ lights glanced and paused, illuminating paintings, then running on across the zigzag walls, illuminating a sculpture stand holding a bronze head, flashing across a huge seascape, then onto the desk, blazing inches from their noses.

19 [????????: pic_20.jpg]

Spotlights hit the desk, focusing on the open drawer above Joe and Dulcie, and an officer approached. Black trouser legs and black shoes filled their vision. He smelled of shoe polish and gun oil, stood above them as if looking into the drawer and studying its contents. The cats barely breathed. But Dulcie’s dark eyes were slitted with amusement. She had that devilish look, as if any second she’d trot out from under the desk and wind around the officer’s ankles. Joe glared until she quit grinning and settled back into the blackness of the desk’s cubbyhole.

But at last the officer turned away, directing his beam on across the gallery, the officers’ two lights washing away each shadow, illuminating each niche. And talk about a small world. Lieutenant Brennan and Officer Wendell had been present up at the car agency when Captain Harper found the counterfeit money. The cats, wandering among the officers’ feet, had watched the result of their clandestine efforts with great satisfaction. Brennan was the hefty one. It was hard to tell whether his snug uniform concealed fat or muscle. Wendell was skinny, pale, his narrow face too serious. Joe could not remember ever seeing Wendell smile.

As the officers moved toward the back of the gallery, throwing the desk into darkness, Dulcie shifted her position, easing her tension. At the back, the flashlight beams picked out, one by one, the storeroom door, the three closed doors, the loading door.

But suddenly Brennan’s beam swung around, returned to Janet’s desk, and dropped beneath it. Hit them square in the face. They were pinned in the glare like moths against a window.

Brennan’s gun was drawn. When he saw them he lowered it, laughing. “Cats! Only a couple of cats.”

“Cats, for Christ sake,” Wendell said. “Could cats trip the alarm?”

“It’s at floor level. Anything moving could trip it.” Brennan approached the desk, but still scanning the room, keeping his back to the wall. He knelt, reached under. “Come on out, you two. Come on out of there.” He reached for Joe, gentle but authoritative.

Joe snarled.

Brennan drew his hand back.

“Okay, don’t come out. How did you two get in here-you don’t belong here. Sicily doesn’t have cats.” He rose. “We’ll let them be, maybe they’ll come out on their own.” He started away, then looked back. “You better not have left a mess.”

The two officers checked the padlock on the loading door, opened each of the other doors, then moved into the storeroom. Switching on the lights, they covered each other as they searched the three narrow aisles. Only when they had cleared the premises, had found no human intruder and nothing else that seemed disturbed except for the open desk drawer, did they return to rout the cats. And, of course, the cats were gone.

Crouched in a dark angle of wall near the front, Joe and Dulcie waited, hoping to escape, hoping one of the officers would open the door. But before they could streak away to freedom Brennan’s roving light found them again. Joe snarled into the dazzle. Dulcie gave Brennan an innocent smile, her eyes wide and loving, and raised a soft paw, all sleepy-eyed sweetness. As Brennan knelt to pet her, only Joe saw, only another cat would detect deep within her green gaze, a wicked feline guile.

Behind Brennan, Wendell frowned.“Could those be the two cats from Beckwhite’s? The cats that were hanging around when we found the counterfeit bills?”

“Looks like the same two. That gray one, that looks like Clyde Damen’s cat.”

Wendell nodded.“Maybe they wandered in before Ms. Aronson locked up-or when someone else came in, or left. That stripy one, I’ve seen a cat like that over around the dress shops on Dolores.”

Brennan shrugged.“Go call Sicily Aronson, use the phone on the desk. See if she’ll come down and check the place out before we lock up. Use your handkerchief, don’t smear any prints.” He knelt again and reached for Joe.

Joe raised a bladed paw, but didn’t strike; he studied the officer, considering.

Stupid move, really stupid. Bloody the hand of the law, Bucko, and you’re in big trouble.

He drew back his claws.

Brennan touched Joe’s ear with a gentle, unthreatening finger. He was reaching to stroke Joe’s back when a shout from the street sent the officer spinning around, his hand on his revolver.

The glass door rattled, shook under pounding fists.“What are you doing. That’s my cat!” Clyde beat harder, and Joe thought he’d shatter the glass. “That’s my cat, Brennan! Let me in.”

Brennan rose, unlocked the door, and switched on the gallery lights, illuminating Clyde and Charlie.

“What the hell is this? Put down the damned gun, Brennan. How did my cat-our cats-get in here?”

Joe sat very straight, his ears erect. He was mighty relieved to see Clyde. But he wasn’t going to let him know it. As Clyde moved into the gallery, Charlie stood in the doorway regarding the scene, looking from the officers to the cats with a puzzled, crooked little grin. Caught in a deliberate breaking and entering, Dulcie gave her a wide stare, then began to wash, as if all thisfuss was unspeakably boring.

Clyde scooped Joe up.“How the hell did you get in here?”

Joe regarded him coldly. Clyde clutched him with unnecessary firmness, gave him a deep, penetrating stare, then glared down at Dulcie.“What the hell were you two doing?” But he looked as if he didn’t want to know.

“They set off the alarm,” Brennan said, “there below the glass. Must have got ten shut in by mistake-no harm done.”

Charlie knelt and gathered up Dulcie, cuddling her. Dulcie lay softly against Charlie’s shoulder, cutting her eyes at Joe, highly amused.

Brennan had bolstered his pistol.“Sicily’s on her way down to check the place out” He nodded toward the open desk drawer. “Maybe someone was in here and left-but they must have had a key, no sign of forced entry.”

Clyde stared at the open drawer. He looked at Joe. He said nothing. His eyes said plenty. He took a firmer grip on the nape of Joe’s neck, his fist almost pulsing with anger.

“Sorry they made trouble, Brennan,” he said pleasantly. “Damn cats, always into something.”

But out on the street again, scowling into Joe’s face, he said, “What the hell were you two doing in there? Can’t you stay out of anything. Now what am I going to do with you? Turn you loose, you’ll be right back in there.

“And I didn’t plan to spend the evening baby-sitting a couple of snooping cats. I don’t know why you two can’t stay out of trouble. I don’t see why you can’t behave with some sense.”

Charlie studied Clyde, puzzled.“Aren’t you overreacting, maybe?”

Clyde glared.

She looked at Clyde and Joe, frowning, as if she were missing something.“We can take them over to Wilma’s, shut them in the house, then we can have dinner. I’m starved.”

Shifting Dulcie to a more comfortable position, she set off up the street, glancing back at Clyde.“You can’t expect a cat to think what might happen if he wanders into a shop. How were they to know they couldn’t get out?”

Clyde did not reply. Joe could imagine what he was thinking. Joe had a few things he’d like to say in return. He hated when he had to remain mute. It was grossly unfair for Clyde to read him off when he couldn’t answer back. He dug his claws into Clyde’s shoulder until Clyde drew in his breath.

As Clyde forced his finger under Joe’s pads to release the offending needles, a pale blue Mercedes turned onto the street and the driver waved. Clyde lifted his hand in greeting; just one of his customers. Then he pressed Joe’s pads, rotating the claws inward, releasing Joe’s lethal grip, and shifted Joe away from his shoulder.The tomcat was getting out of hand. It was going to be interesting to hear Joe’s explanation for this little escapade. Of course it had to do with the murder trial, he knew the single-minded compulsion of these two.

Whatever they were doing in the gallery, their adventure hadn’t helped his own evening. Half an hour ago he and Charlie had been walking along holding hands like kids, joking, laughing, discussing where to have dinner. He hadn’t intended to finish off the night playing free taxi to a couple of disaster-prone felines.

Having left his car at Wilma’s, he and Charlie had walked up through the village into the hills as the sun set, had climbed above the last scattered houses toward the eastern mountains gleaming gold in the falling light. High up the face of a steep hill among an outcropping of boulders they sat looking down on the village spread below them, watching the sky slowly darken, watching the cottage lights blink on in sudden bursts of illumination, the village quickly coming alive, preparing for evening. They could smell wood fires; the breeze was cool, their mood peaceful and compliant. Their mellow warmth, which had lastedall the way down the hills again and into the village, was shattered suddenly by sirens. They quickened their pace, curious, heading up the street to where the squad cars had careened by?

They saw the squad car parked in front of the Aronson, spotlights sweeping the dim gallery as they approached. Then they saw the harsh beams of light fix suddenly on the two cats, catching their eyes in a blaze of fire-and Joe and Dulcie looking as guilty as any two human thieves.

He supposed, overreacting, he’d roused Charlie’s curiosity, but it didn’t matter. Charlie was as ignorant of the cats’ true nature as the two officers.

Joe crept up Clyde’s shoulder to a more comfortable position, watched Dulcie cuddling in Charlie’s arms happy as a nesting bird. He kept his claws sheathed, and tentatively he rubbed his face against Clyde’s ear. Clyde ignored him. Clyde sometimes had an unreasonably sour disposition.

Charlie said,“We’ll drop these two off, then grab a quick hamburger. Five o’clock comes early, and tomorrow will be twelve hours or more, without Stamps. When he gets back from his little jaunt, he gets the ax; he’s out of here.”

Dulcie’s head had come up, and, her ears up, she turned on Charlie’s shoulder to stare across at Joe, her eyes wide with interest.

“Settle down,” Charlie said, stroking her. “We’re nearly home.” She looked across to Clyde. “Did you decide what to do with Janet’s diary?”

Both cats jerked to alert. Charlie frowned at Dulcie and shifted her to a more comfortable position. Clyde looked down at Joe, his grip tightening, his eyes narrowing to sudden realization.

Joe looked back innocently.So you found the diary. So now you know bow it got under Janet’s deck. So do you have to look so righteous?

But at least Clyde had the decency to offer some information.“We’ll have to give it to Harper. Good thing you went up to Janet’s after work to leave food for her cat. Good thing the kibble box was ripped and empty, and the bowl shoved on under the deck, or you’d never have seen that plastic package.”

“I still don’t see why someone would hide her diary like that. Why not just steal it? If that’s what they intended, why not take it with them?” She stroked Dulcie absently. “It had to be Stamps’s dog that ate the food. No other dog would leave pawprints that huge.

“Do you suppose Stamps took the diary from the house? But why would he want it? And why leave it there? I’ll be glad when I’m rid of Stamps. He makes me nervous.”

“You need workers pretty bad to be firing Stamps just because he’s taking a day off-and because his dog growls at you.”

“That dog’s growled at Mavity a dozen times. If he bites her, or bites anyone at work, I’m the one who gets sued. What if he bit a client? Stamps encourages that mean streak-he laughs when the dog snarls at me. Mavity’s terrified of it.”

Charlie sighed.“Until today Stamps has been tolerable, but today tore it. To wait until quitting time, then tell me he’s taking tomorrow off, just like that, no warning. No time to find someone else. He didn’t even have the decency to lie to me, to say he felt sick, just all of a sudden he had to run over to Stockton.”

Joe looked across at Dulcie. Her ears were back, her tail lashing, her eyes blazed.

This was it, tomorrow was hit day. Had to be. Burglary day for seven hillside residences. Stamps was taking the day off to tend to his real business. Joe licked a whisker, watching Dulcie. She was clinging tensely to Charlie, totally wired. Charlie looked down, frowning, and began to stroke her.

“What’s the matter, Dulcie? There’s nothing to be afraid of. You weren’t afraid in the gallery, not afraid of the police and their spotlights. Now all of a sudden? What’s gotten into you?”

But Dulcie’s tension wasn’t fear. She was primed. Every muscle twitched, her tail lashed and trembled. The little brindle cat was all nervous energy, set to explode, burning with predatory hunger to nail those two creeps-to see cold justice overtake Stamps and Varnie.

20 [????????: pic_21.jpg]

The cars that were parked along the curb hulked black in the predawn dark. Their bodies were beaded with dew, breathing out an icy breath radiating the night’s chill. Beneath the cats’ paws, the sidewalk was damp and cold. Only an occasional house shone with light. Most of the hillside residents still slept. A thin breeze nipped along the sidewalk, teasing the cats as they hurried upward toward the highest houses. Staying close to the curb, to the parked cars, they were tensed to dodge under if a marauding dog appeared out of the dark. The chill of the vehicles they passed made them shiver, but then, coming alongside a Chevy sedan, they were treated to warmth, sudden and welcome. They looked at each other and grinned. They sniffed at the rearwheel.

The metal was dry, the tire dry, the wheel so warm that when Joe touched his nose to the hubcap he drew back. The car smelled of exhaust and fresh coffee. They reared up, trying to look in.

The dark interior appeared empty, but they caught the faint scent of shaving lotion, too. Moving away into the bushes beside a stucco cottage, looking back, they could observe the Chevy’s windows at a better angle.

Two figures sat within, unmoving silhouettes poised in blackness. Stakeout car. Dulcie smiled and began to purr. Captain Harper had believed her. Harper had acted on her phone call. Just a few feet from them, two of Harper’s officers sat in their unmarked vehicle waiting for Varnie and Stamps to go into action.

They thought the time must be about five-fifty. The first mark would leave his house at six-fifteen. Trotting up across the dew-sodden lawns, soon they could see above them the steeply peaked roof of the first mark, the last house on Cypress, number 3920, a handsome white frame dwelling. Lights were on in what looked like a bedroom and bath, and as they hurried upward lights came on in the kitchen. They could hear a radio playing, an announcer’s voice; it sounded like the morning weather report. The human need for weather reports always amused them. A cat could smell the rain coming, could feel the change of wind. A cat knows immediately when the barometric pressure changes, by the state of his nerves. High pressure, zowie. Low pressure, nap time. The human paucity of senses was really too bad.

Drawing nearer to 3920, they could hear the faint rumble of water pipes as if someone were taking a shower. And they could smell coffee now, then could smell eggs frying and cigarette smoke.

According to Stamps’s list, Tim Hamry would leave the house in about ten minutes, in a white Toyota. His wife, June, should depart five to ten minutes later in an old black Ford sedan. The Hamry’s had no children. They had no dogs, and no electronic alarm system.

The cats entered the yard next door, trotting through a bed of dew-laden chrysanthemums, and skinned up a rose trellis to the roof, where they could observe the impending drama. Lying up along the peak, they commanded an unbroken view of 3920 and the surrounding streets. The narrow lanes were lit faintly by residential streetlights, a soft glow at each corner.

The Hamry’s bathroom light went out, soon they could hear cutlery on plates.

And as Tim and June Hamry enjoyed breakfast, four blocks down the hill a lone figure leading a large dog appeared, walking up toward the Hamry house. Stamps and the monster.

“Why would he bring the dog?” Dulcie said.

“I don’t know. Maybe they use him as a lookout? He barks loud enough.” Joe sat taller on the steep shingles, watching Stamps. “They’re headed right for the stakeout car. That dog will pitch a fit.”

“Oh, no. That will finish it.”

They held their breath.

The dog paused at the stakeout car jerking his lead, sniffing at the Chevy. Stamps swore and pulled him along, but the dog, sniffing at the car, let out a roar loud enough to wake the hillside.

Dulcie moaned. It was over. Stamps would see the cops and take off out of there.

But no, the dog stuck his nose to the sidewalk. He huffed and barked, and took off uphill, jerking Stamps along-following not Harper’s men but their own trail. He was headed straight for the house on which they sat.

Joe almost fell off the roof laughing, clawing at the shingles. They watched the beast jerk Stamps along for half a block before Stamps got him stopped. Then Stamps slapped him and whipped him with the end of the lead. The beast cowered and snapped at him, but he came to heel on a short lead, and Stamps led him across the street, not approaching 3920, but heading for Varnie’s.

No light burned in the brown house. The Blankenship dwelling was dark, but as Stamps approached, the garage door swung open. He moved quickly inside. They heard him speak to the dog, saw it leap into the truck bed. Stamps moved deeper in, toward the front of the truck, out of their sight.

They heard the truck door open and close. A movement in the darkened garage, beside the window, indicated that Varnie was looking up the hill, watching the Hamry house.

The darkened truck waited. The two men would be marking time until the Hamrys left for work. Dulcie yawned and settled more comfortably on the sloping roof. The predawn sky was beginning to gray, black tree branches to appear out of the night. Up beyond the black hills, the taller mountains of the coastal range stood dark against the steely sky.

The garage door of 3920 opened. Tim Hamry appeared, wearing a tan suit and black shoes. He turned away within the lit interior and slid into the white Toyota. They heard the engine start.

He backed out, leaving the garage door open, and headed down the hill, his lights picking out parked cars, flashing across the windows of the stakeout car. Its glass shone blank and empty, as if the officers had ducked down.

Joe studied the faintly lit streets, wondering if there might be a second police unit. Every dark, silent vehicle seemed totally abandoned; he could detect no movement within, no red glow of a cigarette-though no cop would smoke on stakeout. They’d chew, maybe, and spit into a paper cup. The officers would be sipping coffee, hunkered down against the chill, yawning as they watched 3920-and watched Varnie’s dark, open garage. Stakeout must be like any hunt. Wait for the prey to make a move, be sure you had him cornered, then nail him.

From within the Hamry’s lit garage they heard a door close. A woman in a dark suit appeared, slid into the black Ford, and started the engine. She let it idle for a moment, then backed out.

In the drive she left the car running while she went to turn off the light and close the overhead door. Interesting that they didn’t have an electric door. Maybe they had cats-automatic doors were death on cats.

The moment June Hamry drove away, her taillights disappearing down the hill, over at the Blankenships’ Varnie started his engine. He didn’t turn on his headlights. The motor rumbled unevenly, belching white exhaust. He backed out without lights, the truck’s slat sides rattling; its open rear end gaped. In the center of the truck bed, the dog balanced himself heavily, lurching as the truck turned uphill.

Beside the dog reclined four plastic garbage bags, heavily filled, and tied shut.“What’s with the bags?” Dulcie hunched lower against the rough shingles, looking.

The truck moved up the hill. Pausing before 3920, it backed into the Hamry’s drive as bold as if it belonged there, sat idling as, presumably, the two men watched the windows, making certain the house was indeed empty. Varnie had attached a hand-lettered sign to the side of the truck:Save our earth. Help recycle.

Who would suspect a couple of guys donating their time to collect recyclables? Maybe the bags contained beer cans for a touch of authenticity. The quickening morning breeze picked up a breath of old fish. Scanning the street, Joe saw a second stakeout car.

“There, across the street and down three doors. That old station wagon.”

Dulcie looked, wriggling lower against the shingles.“How can you tell? I don’t see a soul.”

“I saw a little movement behind the glass, just a shifting in the shadows.”

Stamps got out of the truck to open the Hamry garage door, and Varnie backed on in. Leaving the garage door open, the two men disappeared inside. The dog remained in the truck bed.

“I’m surprised he’d stay there,” Dulcie said. “Stamps didn’t tie him.”

“Maybe he’s not as useless as we thought.”

They heard a faint click from within the garage, then the sound of a door softly closing. In a moment a faint light swung across the kitchen windows, jiggling and darting, then disappeared.

“Come on,” Dulcie said. “Those windowsills are wide. We can see right in.”

“Hold on a minute. I saw car lights way down the hill, then they went out.”

The sky was paling toward dawn, the houses beginning to take on dimension, the bushes silhouetted stark and black. Down the street within the stakeout car a shadow moved again, then was still. The cats’ paws and ears were freezing. Their early-morning meal of fresh-killed rabbit, which had warmed them nicely for a while, had lost its battle with the chill. And then, glancing down the street below Janet’s house, they saw a third car moving without lights. It parked below her house, beneath a row of eucalyptus trees, under the low-hanging leaves.

They glimpsed something shiny through a back window, then the window went blank, reflecting the tree’s sword-sharp leaves. They could see, within the leafy reflections, only a hint of the driver’s profile. The car had parked just above the second mark, where the officers could look down into the backyard. “Harper’s doing it up fancy,” Joe said. “Three stakeout cars.”

“I can hardly believe he’s done this just on the list and phone call. Maybe it’s because Stamps is on parole.”

“Who knows? Maybe Varnie has a record, too.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me.” She licked a whisker, studying the arrangement of the three cars. “They can see every house on Stamps’s list.”

The burglars would have to move up and down the hill as they followed the homeowners’ individual schedules of departure. By the time they had finished, if the cops let them finish, they would be working in full daylight, in full view of the neighborhood. But what neighbor, seeing Varnie’s signs and perceiving the old truck’s altruistic mission to collect cans and newspapers for recycling, would question its presence?

Now, on the street below Janet’s, the car doors opened without sound. Two officers emerged and started down the hill into the backyard of the second mark. “They’re going to make the arrest down there,” Dulcie said. “After the second burglary.”

“Maybe.”

“Let’s beat it down there. I want to see them nail those two.”

“If they make the arrest here, we’ll miss it. Once they have the evidence here, why would they let Varnie and Stamps trash another house?” Joe said.

“To make a better case? You go down. If we split up, one of us will get to see how it ends.”

He looked at her warily.“Will you stay on the roof, not go nosing around the windows?”

She smiled.

“Come on, Dulcie. It’s stupid to go over there.”

“Promise,” she said sullenly.

He studied her.

“I promise.” She lashed her tail and hissed at him.

He growled, cuffed her lightly, and left the roof, backing down the rose trellis. But she worried him. If she did go over there, and if the police moved in fast, she could get creamed.

But he couldn’t baby-sit her. He sped down the hill across the brightening yards, down past Janet’s. As he neared the second mark he glanced back to where Dulcie crouched. Yes, she had stayed put. He breathed easier. On the peak of the roof she was a small dark lump, a little gargoyle against the paling sky. He moved on, toward the stakeout.

The minute Joe disappeared down past Janet’s, into the yard of the second house, Dulcie crept to the edge of the roof. Crouching with her paws on the gutter, intently she watched the Hamry house, following the swinging glow of the burglars’ flashlight behind the dark windows. The men were taking their time. But why not? They had half an hour before the next house would be empty. Their flitting light was as erratic as a drunken moth. She could imagine them in there pulling open drawers and cupboards, collecting small, valuable items, maybe jewelry or guns or cash.

The shadowed bushes in the Hamry yard would make excellent cover. She was about to swarm down the trellis when she saw, in the bushes at the far side of the Hamry drive, a dark figure crouching. A man knelt there. She hunched lower over the gutter, watching.

His clothes were dark, but when he turned she saw the flash of something shiny. A gun? She watched intently until the gleam came again.

The object was round, very bright. Maybe it was a camera lens, reflecting light from the paling sky. The man half rose, moving forward in a crouch. He must not have made a sound, the dog didn’t turn-the mutt stood in the truck watching the house as if listening to the sounds of his master diligently at work.

From the bushes, the officer would have a perfect camera shot of the truck, and of the inside of the garage as the burglars emerged.

She wondered if this might not be considered entrapment. But Judge Wesley and Judge Sanderson were both old-fashioned jurists, strong-willed and not easily coerced into dismissing for such legal niceties. If a man was guilty, he was guilty.

Watching the photographer, she backed down the trellis, fled across a stretch of open lawn to the Hamry lawn and into the bushes, pausing only a few feet from the crouching officer. She hadn’t made a sound.

From this vantage, she could see deeper inside the garage, could see the door into the house, could hear from within, intermittent soft thuds, as if heavy objects were being moved. She heard Varnie swear softly, then the inner door opened.

The two men came out, Stamps carrying a television set, Varnie clutching a CD player and two speakers. Across the drive, the hidden officer raised his camera.

The photographer followed every move with his lens as the men loaded the truck. The soft click of the shutter was hardly audible above the men’s whispers and above the creaks of the truck springs. They returned to the house for a second TV, a microwave, and for several cardboard boxes and two plastic bags sagging heavy with unidentifiable objects. Watching, she crept out of the bushes.

The dog snarled. Dulcie froze. He came flying off the truck, straight at her.

But he flew past, leaped at the photographer. Knocked him backward, sent the camera flying. Before the officer could roll away, the dog was at his face. The officer beat at him and fought; the dog was all over him, it would kill him. Dulcie launched in a flying leap onto the dog’s back and dug in. Raking and clawing, she grabbed a floppy ear and clamped down.

The dog whirled shaking his head. Loosing the officer, he plunged and bucked, snapping at her. She clung, raking. His teeth gnashed so close she smelled his meaty breath. One more twist and he’d have her. Clawing his face, she leaped away, ran.

Speeding up the hill with the dog behind her, she heard Stamps shout,“Get back here, get the hell back in this truck.”

And Varnie screamed,“Leave the damn dog.”

The dog was gaining.Why did I do that?She fled in panic toward a stand of thick brambles, dived beneath the matted growth.What the hell did I do back there? Beg to be eaten alive. That young cop could have shot the damn dog.

Except the dog had knocked him off-balance, was at his throat, could have severed the jugular before the man drew his gun.

The dog plunged into the brambles behind her. She streaked away beneath the branches, and he crashed behind, breaking through-he couldn’t see her, but he could smell her. She ran, dodging.

The bushes ended.

She crouched, panting, at the edge of the open hill. He was nearly on her, panting, seeking.

There was nothing above her but a vast plain of short grass. No building, no real tree, only a few spindly saplings.

She bolted out and up the hill, racing for her life.

21 [????????: pic_22.jpg]

Her paws hardly touched the ground, skimming over the matted grass. Fear sent her flying uphill. There was no shelter above her, only a few tiny trees, hardly more than tall weeds. And behind her the dog gave a burst of speed, snatching at her tail. She jerked away, the tip of her tail blazing with pain. Scorched by terror, she desperately angled toward the nearest sapling, wondering if it would hold her. Leaping for the thin trunk, she swarmed up.

She was hardly above him when the dog hit the tree, bending it. She clung only inches above his snatching mouth, and the tree snapped back and forth under his weight, the little trunk whipping as if it would break She tried to climb higher but the thin branches bent. The bark was slick, the trunk too small to grip securely. The tree heaved. Its dry pods rattled, and the smell of bruised eucalyptus filled the wind. The dog leaped so high his face exploded at her, teeth snapping inches from her nose, and she could not back away.

She slashed him again, bloodied him good-his muzzle streamed blood, his ear was torn.

But she couldn’t stay here. And if she leaped away, out of the tree, there was nowhere to run. All was open grass. Except, up the hill, maybe fifty feet above her, a drainpipe protruded from the hill. She could see its open end, oozing mud. She couldn’t see inside very far, just the mouth of the drain, the slick-looking mud, the three smaller hills which clustered above it, probably grass-covered leavings of earth from when the drain was dug. The opening was plenty big enough for her, but maybe big enough for the dog as well. If she was caught in there with the dog crowding in behind her? Not a pleasant thought.

But she had no choice. The tree was going to break or bend to the ground under the beast’s lunging weight. Assessing the distance, she scrabbled among the thin branches to get purchase, praying she could hit the hill far enough ahead for a successful fifty-foot sprint.

She crouched, every muscle taut, adrenaline pumping her heart like a jackhammer.

She shot over his head out of the tree, hit the ground running. He was on her, lunging to grab her. She spun and raked his face and rolled clear. Streaking for the pipe, she bolted in inches ahead of him and kept running, didn’t look back, fled deep into the blackness, slipping in the mud, terrified he’d squeeze in behind her.

Deep in, when she didn’t hear him behind her, she turned around in the narrow tunnel to look back.

The end of the pipe was blocked. The dog had his head in and one leg. He was trying to roll his shoulder in.

But he wasn’t going to fit. If he pushed harder, he’d be stuck for sure. Smiling, she trotted back down the pipe toward him.

The sight of her sent him into a frenzy. He fought to push inside, his bloodied mouth slavering, his eyes blazing with rage.

She ran at him, hissing, raked him in the face, brought fresh blood flowing. Uselessly he fought to get at her, as she backed away. She turned, switched her tail at him, and moved deeper into the pipe.

Something was bothering her, a picture in her mind kept nudging for attention, she kept seeing the three mounds above at the base of the larger hill, two of them round, the third hill clipped off sharply, as if sliced straight down by a gigantic ax.

She shivered. Touched by images impossible to understand, she sat down in the mud, staring away into the darkness, seeing the hills from her dream.

Everything was the same, the dark tunnel, the sense of tight walls pressing in, threatening to crush her. Even the slime beneath her was the same, turgid and sour-smelling, just like the mud in her dream.

Drawing a shaky breath, she padded deeper in, drawn on shivering into the darkness.

Moving warily, ears tight against her head, tail low, she crept deep into the confining pipe, pulled in, swept by a powerful chill. And something lay ahead, something waited for her within the tunnel’s black reach.

Far ahead something pale lay in the mud. She could see it now, and she wanted to turn and run.

As she drew closer, trying to understand what she was seeing, the pale form began to take shape. It was absolutely still, a vague scattering in the mud. She smelled death. She drew nearer.

Before her lay a little heap of bones.

Thin little bones, frail fragments.

The little skeleton lay on a mound of silt that had gathered against a stone. The bones were gnawed clean, the legs and ribs disarranged as if rats had been at them. A few hanks of pale fur clung to the shoulder blade. The skull was bare of flesh. The curved cranium, the huge eye sockets, the brief insert of the nose were readily identifiable. Within its mouth the tiny incisors and daggerlike canines were unmistakably feline.

She stretched closer, studying the small, nearly hidden object which lay beneath the cat’s skull attached to its gaping collar.

The collar stood up like a hoop, circling the tiny vertebrae of the dead cat’s frail neck, a collar that had once been blue but was now faded nearly to the color of mud. Attached to it was a small brass plate, the three words engraved on it were smeared over by mud. With a shaking paw, she wiped the mud away. She read the cat’s name, and the name of its owner. Crouching over the skeleton, she studied the other object lying in the slime. As she leaned to look, her whiskers brushed across the cat’s skull.

A wristwatch had been buckled securely around the cat’s collar.

Even through the coating of mud she could see how heavy and ornate it was, could see a portion of the gold case flanked by two gold emblems like the wings of a soaring bird. She sniffed at it and backed away, stood looking at the pitiful remains of the white cat and at the last link in the puzzle of Janet Jeannot’s death.

She shivered, but not with chill. She was hardly aware of the tunnel and the slime and the dog that still fought to crawl in, struggling to snatch her. All her attention, all her amazement, was fixed on the white cat. He had led her here, to the last clue.

And not only had the white cat sought to show her this final evidence; he had, in coming to her in dream, told her far more.

He had reached out to her from beyond a vast barrier. From somewhere beyond death he had spoken to her. When she dreamed of the white cat she had touched an incredible wonder, had sensed for a little while a small part of a dimension closed to ordinary vision. She had glimpsed what lay beyond death.

She was so engrossed she didn’t realize the light in the tunnel had brightened. When she turned to look, the mouth of the culvert was empty. The dog had freed himself and had gone-or he was crouched outside licking blood from his face, waiting for her.

Feeling strong, almost invincible, she headed for the mouth of the tunnel.

Stepping from the pipe, she studied the bushes, the hills falling away below her. She reared up to look above.

The dog was gone.

She sat down just inside the mouth of the pipe, wondering. Strange that he would give up so easily. She cleaned herself up, sleeking her fur, thinking about the white cat. About Janet’s death. And about the wristwatch-Kendrick Mahl’s watch-that ostentatious piece of jewelry which matched exactly the watch in Mahl’s newspaper picture.

How did the watch get fixed to the white cat’s collar? Did Janet put it there, maybe just before she died?

The picture was taken only days before the opening; Mahl had the watch then. Did he lose it the morning of the fire? Was he waiting in the studio when Janet came upstairs? Did he let himself in as she prepared her work, laying out her welding equipment, filling the coffeemaker?

Or had he been there already, perhaps the day before, losing his watch then?

She licked the wounded tip of her tail, removing the congealing blood, smoothing the raw skin where hair had been pulled out-and puzzling over Mahl’s watch. He would not deliberately have left it in Janet’s studio; he had no business there.

Licking her tail, she found that none of her little vertebrae was broken. She was lucky, the way that dog grabbed her, that half her tail wasn’t missing, like poor Joe’s-though he seemed to get along fine with a docked tail, seemed as proud of that short appendage as if he were some kind of fancy retriever, an elegant feline bird dog.

For herself, she would be lost without her tail. She took great pride in that dark, mink-colored, silky, tabby-striped extremity. Before ever she could speak human language, she had talked with her tail as much as with her eyes and her twitching ears. Her repertoire of tail dances could convey a whole world of needs and emotions to a perceptive viewer. She’d detest some debilitating injury to that elegant appurtenance.

Well her dear tail was intact, her wound was only a scratch. It would heal, the hair would grow back.

Mahl killed her,she thought nervously.Janet’s last act on this earth was to buckle Mahl’s watch around Binky’s collar and somehow chase him away, make him run away from the burning building.

She thought about the white cat’s appearing to her in dreams long after he was dead, showing her things she could not know in any other way-extending to her a heady promise. The promise there would be something else, another life after her own small bones had shed their earthly flesh. Promise ofJoy,as Wilma had read to her once,Joy, different from ordinary pleasure. The brightness of another kind of light? from within another dimension.

She rose, stepped out of the pipe to the fresh green grass, sat down in the thin wash of sun fingering down across the hills behind her. Wrapping her tail around herself, she sat looking down the falling hills and up to the mysterious sky, and a deep, pure happiness sang through her, pulsing and shaking her.

It was there that Joe found her, sitting happily in the sun rumbling with purrs.

22 [????????: pic_23.jpg]

Under the hill, deep within the dark and slimy drainpipe, Joe crowded beside Dulcie, looking down at the little pile of bones, the frail skull, the faded collar and its metal plate, the mud-caked watch-Mahl’s watch.

He looked for a long time, said nothing. Then,“Too bad. Really too bad it can’t be used as evidence.”

“Of course it can.” Her green eyes blazed. “Why couldn’t it? Why else would it be on Binky’s collar unless Janet put it there before she died, unless she buckled it on during the fire, chased Binky away when she couldn’t get out herself. It has to prove Mahl set the fire, why else?”

“But Dulcie-

“If Mahl stole the paintings, he could have lost the watch then. He was in a hurry, he didn’t know it was gone.”

“But this is all conjecture.”

“That Monday morning when Janet found the watch, she knew Mahl had been there. She had to wonder what he was doing in her studio, but maybe she saw nothing disturbed. The racks were filled with paintings. Easy not to notice the edges had thumbtacks instead of staples. It was early, she wanted to finish the fish sculpture, was anxious to start work. Maybe she dropped the watch in her pocket, meaning to find out later what Mahl had been doing there.”

“But even if?”

“Let me finish. She made coffee and drank some. As she stood looking at the sculpture, she began reacting to the aspirin that Mahl had put in the pot. She didn’t know what was wrong, maybe she thought she was just sleepy. Maybe she drank some more coffee, trying to wake up. She turned on her tanks to get to work.

“The minute she turned on her oxygen, it exploded. By now she was dizzy and confused. As the fire blazed up, Binky ran to her, frightened.”

“But even if that’s the way it happened, we can’t?”

“She was weak, faint. Maybe she tried to crawl away. Maybe Binky came to her, he must have been terrified, confused by the fire. They clung together.”

“Dulcie?”

“Then she remembered the watch-Mahl had been there, he was responsible for the explosion. She was so dizzy, sick, maybe hurt by the explosion, too. She dug in her pocket, buckled the watch on Binky’s collar. With a last effort she chased Binky away; he fled out the window.”

She paused, searched his face, lifted a paw.“It could have happened that way.”

“But even if it did, we can’t tell that to the police.”

“Why ever not? There’s no reason?”

He laid his white paw on her small, brindle paw.“How does a human informant, talking to Captain Harper on the phone, tell him that the evidence is fifteen feet inside a drainpipe-a pipe no human could get into, or could see into?”

“But I? But we can’t move Binky’s bones and move the watch, we’d destroy evidence.”

She turned to lick her shoulder.“I could say I was walking my poodle, that he stuck his nose in the pipe and I? “

“And you-the human informant-could clearly see fifteen feet back in the dark, could see this little pile of bones.”

“Maybe I had a flashlight.”

“So with your light, you saw the bones. And you deduced from what you saw that this was Janet Jeannot’s cat. That it was wearing the killer’s watch attached to its collar, a watch invisible from the mouth of the pipe.

“With her flashlight, this human informant read the plate on the collar that isn’t visible. So of course she knew it was the skeleton of Janet’s lost cat.

“Don’t you see, Dulcie? There’s no way you can tell Harper this.”

“But we have to tell him. This is the only conclusive evidence that Rob didn’t kill her.”

Joe glanced away toward the mouth of the tunnel. Dulcie’s theory did make sense. What other explanation was there for the presence of the watch buckled around Binky’s collar?

“Maybe,” Dulcie said, “maybe if we could find the missing paintings, Mahl’s fingerprints would be on them. Maybe then we wouldn’t need the watch. But,” she said, “if the watch isn’t important, if it can’t be used for evidence, then why did Binky bring me here?”

He didn’t want to talk about that. The idea of a cat beyond the grave leading them here shook him; such thoughts thrust him head-over-tail into speculations far too unsettling.

Dulcie rose.“Come on, let’s go sit in the sun, I’m sick of the mud and stink and of having to look at poor Binky.”

But at the mouth of the drainpipe she paused, looking out warily.

“No danger,” Joe said, pushing on out. “He’s gone. By now that mutt’s locked in the pound.” He stretched out in the hot grass. “I was hoping one of those cops would shoot the beast, but no such luck.”

“So what happened? Tell me what happened.”

“I just got settled above the second mark, up in that eucalyptus tree beside the stakeout car, when I heard shouting up the hill.

“I could see out through the branches some kind of disturbance, and I figured you were in trouble, or soon would be. I took off for the Hamry house.

“When I got there, Varnie was in the truck, goosing the engine, and Stamps was running up the hill, chasing the dog.

“Varnie took off in the truck-it looked like he was going to leave Stamps to take the rap. But the other two surveillance cars were already moving. They whipped in from both ends of the street to block him. Cops jerked him out of the truck, there was a lot of confusion. They handcuffed him and locked him in a police car, and three cops took off running after Stamps.

“The young photographer was torn up pretty bad, his face and throat bleeding. Two cops were patching him up, trying to stop the bleeding. I didn’t hang around, I caught your scent mixed with the dog’s scent going up the hill, and I took off again.

“All the way up the hill his scent was mixed with yours, and I smelled blood. And then I found the grass all torn up, around that little tree, and the smell of you and the dog and the blood, and I thought the worst.

“I kept running, following his track, then way above me I saw that the cops had cornered Stamps and were cuffing him. There was no sign of the dog.

“I had nearly reached them, trying to stay out of sight, when down they came, forcing Stamps ahead of them and dragging the mutt by its collar. I heard one of them say something about rabies, about locking up the mutt for observation. Of course they’d do that after he mutilated one of their finest.

“There was so much blood on its muzzle I was sure you were dead meat. The higher I got up the hills, the more certain I was.

“But then I came up the next rise and here you were. Sitting in the sun purring like you didn’t have a care.”

She smiled, and licked his face.“So they’re all in the slammer. Varnie. Stamps. The dog.”

He grinned.“You did a number on the mutt.”

She smiled modestly, gave him a speculative look.“Joe, even if we could find the paintings and prove that Mahl took them, that doesn’t prove he killed Janet. Only Mahl’s watch, if Janet’s fingerprints are on it, could?”

“Mahl could say he’d given her the watch, maybe the night of the reception.”

“Why would he give her his watch? He hated Janet.”

Joe sighed.“There’s no point in talking about it, there’s no way we can get that evidence to Harper. Even if we could, what would he tell the court? He just happened to find a dead cat, and this watch was buckled to its collar? He just happened to look up that drainpipe?

“And why, if she was conscious enough to buckle the watch around the cat’s collar, couldn’t she get herself out of the burning studio?”

“You don’t want to see how it might have happened,” she said irritably.

“I’m just looking at it the way the police would, Dulcie. And the way an attorney would. Janet wasn’t trapped under anything heavy, and she had no broken bones. If she could buckle the watch on Binky, why couldn’t she get out-crawl through the window?”

“Don’t forget that when her van exploded, it turned that fire into an inferno.” She licked her paw. “Janet was weak from the aspirin, sick and weak, trying not to faint. Her doctor’s testimony-he said aspirin would make her pass out. She was just able to move her hands, buckle on the watch.”

“Maybe,” he said doubtfully. “But another thing-would Janet be welding, with Binky in the studio? Would she light her torch with her cat so close? His long fur? “

“I’m guessing she usually made him leave before she actually got to work. Maybe she’d taught him to go on outside, out the open window. But that morning he didn’t go out, he was there when the fire started. She was disoriented, maybe didn’t realize he hadn’t gone out until he ran to herafter the explosion.”

She shivered.“Janet sent Binky to safety with the evidence. And Binky-Binky came to me. Now,” she said softly, “now we have to help.”

The morning had grown bright, the sun warm on their backs.“If we can find the paintings,” she said, “then Harper will pay attention to the rest of the evidence.”

Joe just looked at her. She was so hardheaded.“And where are we going to look for the paintings? Don’t you think Mahl would have taken them back to the city that night?”

“He had to be in a hurry, he had only a few hours to get down here, switch paintings, load up Janet’s canvases, stash them somewhere, and get back to San Francisco, to the hotel. San Francisco is huge,” she said. “Would he have time to hide them somewhere in the city? Don’t forget he lives miles north, across the bridge.” She gave him a clear green look. “Maybe it would have been faster to hide them in the village.”

“Sure. Right here in his Molena Point condo.”

Mahl had kept the condo after he and Janet were divorced; he used it on weekends, and had seemed to enjoy running into her in the small village.

“If we can get into the condo,” she said patiently, “maybe we can find some receipt for a warehouse or locker. The receipt for Charlie’s rental locker has the name and the locker number on it. Coast City Lockers, up on Highway One.” She nuzzled his neck. “We could try. We got into the gallery, that wasn’t hard. So we can get into Mahl’s condo.”

Joe looked at her a long time, then rose and prowled up the hill above the buried drainpipe. Pausing on the tallest of the three little hills, he cocked his head, studying the mound and the way it nestled up against the big hill behind.

Below at the mouth of the pipe she sat in the sun watching him, curious-she had no idea what he was up to, but she could almost see the tomcat’s wily mind ticking away, turning over some wild idea.

From the little hill, Joe smiled.“Go up the tunnel, Dulcie. Stand beside Binky and yowl-scream like the devil himself is tickling you.”

“Do what?”

“Sing, baby. Make a ruckus, scream and wailsing like I sang to the Blankenships.”

She cocked her head, let her eyes widen. She smiled. She vanished within the tunnel, running.

And atop the little hill, Joe bellied down, his ear to the earth, listening.

He heard her, her voice louder than he’d imagined. Down there her yowling song echoing along the pipe must be loud enough, even, to wake poor Binky. He followed the sound beyond the little mound, where the earth curved down again, against the larger hill. Pausing to listen, he soon pinpointed her exact location, and there he clawed the grass away, inscribing a large ragged X.

When she joined him, racing up out of the tunnel, he was still picking up little stones from among the grass, carrying them in his teeth to drop them into the X. She helped him, pressing the stones down with her paw deep into the earth, constructing a sturdy hieroglyph.

And then, finished, they headed down the hills to pay an unannounced visit to the weekend apartment of Kendrick Mahl.

23 [????????: pic_24.jpg]

Kendrick Mahl’s apartment occupied the third and highest floor of a casual Mediterranean condominium three blocks above the ocean, on the west side of Molena Point. The complex did not have a locked security door as Joe had envisioned, but was a structure of open, sprawling design, with gardens tucked betweenits rambling wings. Against the pale stucco walls, flowers bloomed all year in blazes of orange and pink and reds, and at occasional junctures, trellises of bougainvillea climbed to the roof, heavy with red blossoms.

Each first-floor unit opened to a terrace, and the glass doors of the upper apartments gave onto walled balconies set about with redwood chairs and potted plants. At one end of Mahl’s veranda, a bougainvillea vine clung to the rail, providing from the ground below a comfortable vertical highway, an access tailored to the use of any inquisitive feline.

Joe and Dulcie, having checked the mailboxes in the open, tiled entry patio, headed for apartment 3C. Two floors straight up from 1C, Mahl’s balcony was an easy climb. There was no one on the surrounding balconies to notice them, no one in the gardens below. The condo compound, this late afternoon, seemed to provide no visible witness.

From high up the vine they could see a small parking area, down between the buildings, surrounded by trees and flowers. But as they dropped down from the vine onto Mahl’s balcony, they drew back. Classical music was playing softly, and the glass door stood wide-open. Deep within the bright living room, Mahl sat at a large, richly carved desk.

He was talking on the phone. They could not hear much of his conversation above the soothing music, something about delivering a painting. He seemed to be trying to arrange a suitable hour for his truck to arrive.

A skylight brightened the room, sending a cascade of sunlight down the white walls and across the whitewashed, polished oak floors. The room’s furnishings were a combination of white leather and chrome set off by several dark, carved antique tables and chests, and half a dozen small potted trees. The pillows tossed on the long white sofa were deep-colored antique weavings. A Khirman rug in soft shades of red and rust graced the sitting area, nicely mirroring the fall of red bougainvillea on the balcony. And on the pristine walls, seven large paintings provided brilliant pools of color. None, of course, was by Janet Jeannot. Nor were any of the works by Rob Lake.

As the cats watched, peering in through the glass, Mahl hung up the phone and bent to some paperwork. In the instant that he turned to pull a file from the desk drawer they slipped in and fled, swift as winging moths, across to a white leather couch and behind it. Crouching in the dark between couch and wall, they looked out, assessing Janet’s ex-husband.

Mahl was dressed in immaculate ivory slacks and a blue silk shirt, but the sleek clothes seemed too fine for his sour, owlish face, for shoulders hunched forward in an owlish manner. The cats grinned at each other, watching him, amused by his big, round, blank glasses. Even Mahl’s nose was too much like a beak; Dulcie found him so humorous she had to hold her breath to keep from laughing aloud. And though Mahl was large and wide-shouldered, he did not look strong. His oversize form seemed put together carelessly, perhaps in haste. One had the impression of a creature that might be nearly hollow inside, of a thin, frail, loosely connected bone structure without strength.

They waited impatiently for Mahl to finish whatever work occupied him. At last he rose and retired to the kitchen; they heard the refrigerator door open and close, the sounds of metal cutlery on a plate. As Dulcie leaped to the desk, Joe slid behind a planter, where he could keep an eye on Mahl. From his leafy cover Joe watched Mahl make a roast beef sandwich, piling on thin, rare slices from a white deli wrapper. The rye bread and beef smelled so good he had to lick drool from his chin. But soon the smell was spoiled by the sharp scent of mustard. He never would get used to humans spreading all that smelly goo on good red meat.

Atop the desk Dulcie pawed through Mahl’s in-box and stacks of papers, looking for some record of a rented locker or warehouse space. Most of the papers were letters, some about painting sales. She scanned them, but did not find them useful. None mentioned any kind of storage facility. None, of course, mentioned Janet’s work. She left a few cat hairs clinging to the papers, but one could not help shedding. Mahl used as paperweights a small bronze bust of a child, a piece of jade as round and large as a goose egg, and a small pair of binoculars. All were hard to move as she perused the papers, all were hard to put back again. She had just moved the binoculars back into position and was fighting open the top desk drawer when Joe hissed.

She leaped off the desk, leaving the drawer open four inches, and slid underneath into the dark kneehole. The desk was a heavy mahogany piece with ball-shaped, carved feet that left a three-inch space beneath the back and sides. If she had to, she could just squeeze under.

Mahl came to the desk, but didn’t sit down. His feet, inches from her face, were clad in soft leather slippers and cream-colored argyle socks below the creamy slacks. He grunted with mild surprise, and she heard him shut the drawer-the drawer she had worked so hard to open. She heard a paper rattle as if he had retrieved something from atop the desk, then he turned away, returned to the kitchen. She heard a chair scrape as if he had sat down at the kitchen table.

Leaping back to the top of the desk, again she worked the drawer open.

But it contained only a few desk supplies-pencils, pens, a plastic box filled with paper clips, a checkbook. She pulled out the checkbook and nosed it open. If Mahl found toothmarks in the leather, how would he know what they were?

Inside, besides the checks and check register, was a long, thin notepad. On the cover of the pad Mahl had written several phone numbers, an address, and on the lower left corner, in faint pencil, the numbers L24 62 97. The sequence looked familiar; this could be a padlock combination. It was the same pattern of numbers as Charlie’s padlock.

Joe would make some comment about her rooting into Charlie’s private possessions, but if Charlie didn’t want cats nosing in her stuff, she should put it away. And Charlie had never rebuked her for jumping on the dresser.

Of course the numbers on Mahl’s notepad could mean anything. There was no name of a locker complex, no number for the locker itself. She repeated the combination to herself twice, and then again. She could hear Mahl rinsing his plate. She searched the other drawers and looked beneath the blotter. She was down again, beneath the desk, searching up underneath in the best detective fashion, when Joe hissed once more, and she heard the soft scuff of Mahl’s slippers. Sliding out under the end of the desk, she crouched behind a white leather chair. The music had increased in volume and intensity, until it was very military. She was not well hidden by the chair’s chrome legs, but it was too late to move. Maybe he wouldn’t look in her direction. Crouching behind the cold, shiny metal, she considered the task ahead.

They’d have to check every locker facility in Molena Point and, once inside, have to try their combination on every lock. And how were they going to turn the dial of every combination lock in every locker complex, when, probably, they couldn’t even reach the stupid locks? She’d never seen a door for humans with a latch she could reach.

Crouching in Mahl’s apartment behind the chrome chair, the task seemed impossible. They had no proof the numbers were a lock combination, and no proof what a locker might contain-maybe nothing more exciting than old worn-out furniture or tax files. How many locker complexes were there on the outskirts of Molena Point? How many lockers in each one?

It would be no use to try phoning the locker complexes, making up some story to get information:This is Kendrick Mahl, I’ve lost the number of my locker, I need to send it to a friend?because certainly Mahl would not have put the locker in his own name.

When Mahl turned away she slipped out from under the chair and slid behind the couch, beside Joe. He lay stretched full-length, half-asleep, as if without a care. She crouched beside him, depressed.

But when the music on the CD player grew stormy, she began to fidget, her thoughts circling. There had to be an easier way to find the locker.

Joe woke and glared at her.“Cool it,” he whispered. “He’s bound to leave sooner or later. Curl up, have a nap. A few hours-then we can take this place apart.” He rolled over, closed his eyes, and went to sleep. She stared at him, unbelieving. Oh, tomcats could be maddening.

But she curled up against him, trying to think of a plan. The music progressed to the more powerful strains of Stravinsky, she knew that one from home. She could still smell that nice roast beef. Why did humans have to spoil everything with mustard?

She listened as Mahl made several phone calls. He ordered a grocery delivery of lettuce, some frozen breakfasts, a case of imported ale, and a loaf of French bread. He called his San Francisco gallery twice and talked to his assistant about some sales and about taxes. He made a date for an early dinner, before the local Art Association meeting.The Firebirdfinished, and Schoenberg’sTransfigured Nightlulled Dulcie into a little nap. The more familiar music eased her, soothed her jittery nerves. At five o’clock, Mahl put on a recording of theNew World Symphony,and went to take a shower. Dulcie could hear the water pounding. She heard, from the bedroom, drawers being pulled out, and hangers sliding in the closet.

The discs had finished when he returned to the living room. He was dressed in dark slacks, a white, turtleneck pullover, and a suede sport coat. And though his clothes were handsome, Mahl still looked like a bad-tempered owl. He turned off the CD player, locked the sliding door to the balcony, and left the apartment. Joe woke as Dulcie raced to the balcony and leaped to unlock the door again, slapping at the latch.

Outside, they jumped to the rail to look down, watched him cross the parking lot, get into a white BMW, and head out. Beyond the parking lot and beyond the red tile roofs of the condo complex, the hills and the mountains were burnished gold in the late-afternoon light. They could not see the ocean, to the west, or the setting sun. But off to their right, beyond the village rooftops, the bay looked like melted gold. Along the bay sprawled the warehouses and wharves.

“Rob’s studio is there,” Dulcie said. “I bet, if Mahl had binoculars, he could see it from right here.”

“And if he could?”

“I don’t know-a funny feeling.” She lay down on the concrete rail, batted at a bougainvillea flower. “Rob got home from San Francisco the morning of the fire around four. That’s what he told the court. He said he partied late, drove home tired, and went to bed.

“But then a phone call woke him around four-thirty. He said he answered and he guessed it was a wrong number, no one was there.”

“What are you getting at?”

She licked her paw.“It would probably have been easy for Mahl to get hold of Rob’s car keys, maybe when Rob was in the gallery unloading paintings. Pick them up, step out for a few minutes, have them copied.”

He waited, ears forward.

“Just assume Mahl did take the paintings. He might even have used Janet’s own van, taken it out of the St. Francis parking garage late Saturday night. Say he drove down to Molena Point, used his key to her studio, loaded up the paintings. Hid them in that locker?”

“If there is a locker.”

She flicked her ears impatiently.“He hid the paintings, drove back to the city, arrived before dawn Sunday morning. Put her car back in the garage?”

“So what did he use for a ticket, to get her van out in the first place?”

“Used his own parking ticket, for the BMW. Then when he drove her van back in Sunday morning, he got another ticket. Used that to take the BMW out, Sunday night.

“But somewhere along the way he realized he’d lost his watch.

“He couldn’t turn around and drive back to Molena Point-it was nearly dawn. He had to be seen having breakfast in the hotel, that was part of his alibi.”

“And then,” Joe said, “it was daylight, he didn’t want to be seen going into Janet’s studio in broad daylight. And that night, Sunday night, was the opening, he had to be seen there.”

Mahl had testified that after the opening he did not return to his home in Mill Valley, but had driven down to the Molena Point condo, intending to meet with two buyers on Monday morning. Both buyers, one a well-known collector, had testified that they did meet with Mahl late that Monday morning.

Dulcie leaped down and began to pace the balcony.“He must have been panicked about the watch. He wanted it back; he didn’t dare let it be found in Janet’s studio.”

She smiled, smoothed her whiskers.“He got here to the condo sometime after midnight. All he could think of was the watch. Maybe he sat here on the balcony, with the binoculars, watching the warehouse area, watching for a light to come on in Rob’s studio.”

“But when a light did come on,” Joe said, “maybe he couldn’t be really sure it was Rob’s studio. So he picked up the phone. That’s what the phone call was.”

“Yes. When Rob answered, Mahl hung up. Got in his car, drove down there, took Rob’s Suburban, and hightailed it up to Janet’s to get his watch.”

Joe nodded.“But Janet was already up, lights were on in the studio, he didn’t dare go in. All he could do was hope the watch would be destroyed in the fire, melted beyond recognition.”

“And when the watch didn’t turn up as part of the evidence, and when no one had testified to seeing him take Rob’s Suburban or return it, he thought he was home free.”

“Right. Except that this is all supposition.”

“It won’t be supposition if we find the paintings,” she said.

Joe sighed.“You’re imagining a lot. Talk about a needle in a haystack.” He scratched a flea, then rose, trotted back inside across the thick oriental rug toward the kitchen. “But first things first. I’m not going to search two or three locker complexes, all those miles of buildings, on an empty stomach.”

In Mahl’s kitchen they polished off half of the remaining roast beef, hoping Mahl would assume that was all he’d left when he made his sandwich. They enjoyed a hunk of Camembert, but left the remains suspiciously ragged. They smoothed it out as best they could with neat little nibbles. They split the last yogurt and hid the empty container in the bottom of the trash can. Who would guess cats had been at the refrigerator? They licked up a few stray cat hairs and then, strengthened, searched the condo.

Looking into the cupboards, the dresser drawers, the closet, and the nightstand, they found nothing of interest. But when Dulcie pulled out a briefcase from behind Mahl’s Ballys, they hit pay dirt.

The closet was neatly arranged. The hanging garments were sorted as to type and color with the help of one of those intricate modular systems designed for optimum space utilization. The white, wire mesh shelves beneath his slacks and suit coats held twelve pairs of perfectly arranged dress shoes and loafers, a leather overnight bag, a pair of golf shoes, and a small metal tool box. In the corner leaning against the wall was an expensive-looking golf bag and a three-foot-long pair of heavy-duty bolt cutters. The briefcase was on the bottom rack behind the shoes. They dragged it out, sliding the shoes aside.

The combination lock wasn’t engaged. The briefcase contained a stack of letters, and a sheaf of paid bills and receipts secured by a rubber band. Dulcie pulled off the elastic with her teeth, and they began to nose through.

“I don’t believe this,” Joe said when, halfway through, they found a receipt from Shorebird Storage, for locker K20. Dulcie said nothing. She only smiled. The locker had been rented four months ago, for an annual fee of twelve hundred dollars.

They put the bills back as they had found them, closed the briefcase, and slid it behind the shoes, straightening the Ballys to perfect symmetry, as Mahl had left them. And within minutes they were down the bougainvillea vine and headed for Highway One, the locker combination firmly engraved on their furtive cat minds.

The golden October evening was deepening, the sky streaked with indigo. As they trotted up Sixth Street, enjoying the warmth of the sidewalk beneath their paws, they sniffed the good village smells of fresh-cut grass, crushed eucalyptus leaves, and the salty, iodine smell of the sea. And at this hour the air was filled, too, with the aromas of suppers cooking in the houses they passed, the scents of baking ham, of hot cheese and beef stew. That snack at Mahl’s had been a nice first course; but who knew if there was anything edible in a concrete locker complex? Who knew how long they’d be occupied? Cats, as Joe had pointed out to Clyde on more than one occasion, needed frequent sustenance.

In an overgrown flower garden they stalked and caught a starling. The bird was tough, not tender and sweet like a robin or a dove, but it was filling. They finished their supper quickly, washed up with a few hasty licks, and trotted on into the deepening evening.

Crossing over the top of Highway One, where it tunneled under Sixth, they turned north. Traveling along through a string of cottage gardens, leaping through flower beds and watching for sudden dogs, Joe looked ahead lustily, his yellow eyes burning. Dulcie, watching him with a sideways glance, had to smile. He was all aggression now, hot for the kill-as if nothing would keep them from Mahl’s locker even if he had to claw through solid wood.

And now they could see, a quarter mile ahead where the highway came up out of the tunnel, the Shorebird Storage Lockers sign, its red neon glowing brighter than fresh blood against the gathering evening.

Their plan was to slip into the complex before it closed, wait inside until the caretaker locked up and went home, until they had Shorebird Lockers to themselves. And Dulcie shivered with anticipation. They could be coming down, tonight, on some heavy stuff. If the paintings were there, this would blow Rob’s trial wide-open. Detective Marritt’s sloppy investigation, his lack of investigation, would be clear for everyone to see.

She would not even consider, now, that they might be disappointed, that the locker might contain something very different from Janet’s paintings, she had put that unworthy idea aside. Dulcie felt success in her bones; she was afire with the same surge of blood, the same deep, sure excitement as when they trotted up into the hills on a fine hunting night-on a night she knew would be laced with some pure, hot victory.

24 [????????: pic_25.jpg]

Shorebird Lockers was a complex of twelve concrete buildings, each a hundred feet long, with wide aisles between. The roofs were of corrugated metal, and a six-foot chain-link fence enclosed the compound, its posts and bottom edge set securely into cement. The facility had all the charm of a concentration camp as seen in some old World War II movie, barren, chill to the spirit, hard to escape.

But there were no prisoners here, this camp was empty of humanity. The only life visible was the two cats trotting quickly up a wide concrete alley beneath the yellow glow cast by security lamps rising at regular intervals from the corners of the buildings. The cats avoided the center of the alley, where metal grids covered a six-inch gutter littered with refuse, scraps of paper, muddy leaves, bobby pins, an occasional lost key. The corrugated metal doors above them reflected their swift shadows flashing through shafts of harsh light. Some of the doors were narrow, some as wide as a double garage. Locker K20 was halfway up the last alley. The time was eight-fifteen. The complex had been closed for fifteen minutes.

Earlier, slipping inside the open gate, they had hidden behind a Dumpster, watching for the caretaker to come out of the office, lock up, and go home. The office occupied the far end of the building nearest the gate, and the lights were still on. They presumed the caretaker’s car was parked beyond the fence on the street, one of several at the curb in front of the adjoining hardware and tool rental stores. Both those shops were closed.

Soon the man appeared, heading for the gate, a small, silver-haired old fellow. They watched him pull the chain-link gate closed from inside, snap the padlock, and turn back into the complex. He made no move to leave. Entering the little office, soon those lights went out and lights at the back came on, in the room behind, accompanied by the sound of a television, the unmistakable canned laughter of a sitcom.

“He’s in for the night,” Dulcie said. “I hadn’t thought he might live here. But maybe the TV will hide whatever noise we make.”

“I’m not planning to make any noise.” He trotted away toward the back, following the numbers.

But when they had located locker K20, in the building nearest the back fence, they found there would be two locks to open.

One communal door led to a group of inner rooms, apparently small lockers sharing an inner hall. The outer door to lockers K17 through K28 was secured with a combination lock. This might be the lock Mahl’s combination opened, or it might not. There was bound to be another lock inside at his individual door. Maybe a keyed lock, maybe another combination. There was also the question of the keyed padlock on the front gate. Mahl, at three in the morning, had to have a key for that. And he would havehad to be very quiet loading and unloading the paintings, with the old man asleep so nearby.

They looked up at the communal padlock, its tiny silver numbers etched into a black circle. Crouching, Dulcie leaped at the heavy lock, clawing at the dial, grasping at it ineffectually with her paws.

She jumped six times and fell back. It would take both paws to turn the dial and would take a steady stance-she couldn’t do it, jumping. She tried balancing on Joe’s back but still she needed both paws and couldn’t stay steady without bracing herself against the door. “Stop shifting around. Can’t you stand still? Can’t you hold your back flatter?”

“My back is not flat. I can’t balance you unless I move around. This isn’t going to work.”

This was totally frustrating. Cats were masters at the art of balancing; any scruffy stray could trot casually along the thinnest fence. But trying to stand on Joe’s back she felt as clumsy as a two-legged dog.

Irritated, she began to pace. Joe hardly noticed her as he stared high above, toward the roof.

“There’s a vent up there.” He crouched. “Maybe I can get through the screen.”

Before she could comment he gave a powerful spring, hit the top of the metal door, clawing, digging into the wood frame. Hanging from the frame, fighting, reaching up, he was just able to hook his claws into the screen of the small, high vent. The screen ripped under his weight, and with one powerful heave he pulled himself in. Hanging in the rectangular hole, half in and half out, his belly over the sill, he kicked again and disappeared inside.

She crouched, wiggled her butt, and sprang after him up the side of the wall-and fell back, her claws screeching down the steel door so loudly she was sure the watchman would hear.

She tried again. And again. At the third leap she caught the bottom of the vent, clawing, scrabbling to hang on. Kicking hard, she pulled herself up through the screen, felt its torn, ragged edges tearing out hanks of fur.

Inside she stood in darkness, perched above the lockers just beneath the metal roof. It was warm against her back, the day’s accumulation of heat still radiating from the metal. The tops of the locker walls formed an open grid stretching away. The only light was from the vent opening behind her and a matching vent maybe forty feet away, at the back. In the locker directly below her, she could make out stacked furniture, tables, chairs, bedsprings, suitcases. Peering along above the walls, she could not see Joe. She didn’t call to him, she mewled softly.

“Come over the walls.” His voice sounded hollow. “The fourth locker.”

She crept along the top of the wall, brushing under cobwebs. The second locker smelled of mildewed clothes and was piled with cardboard boxes. Two bicycles hung on its wall beside several car parts: bumpers, fenders, a hood. The third locker was empty, emitting a chill breath that smelled of concrete. She found it mildly amusing that humans accumulated so many possessions they had to rent lockers to store them-or clutter the house to distraction, like Mama.

But why should she be amused? Was she any different, with her box of stolen sweaters and silk stockings and lacy teddies? Who knew, maybe if she was a human person she might have every closet and dresser crammed full, a compulsive shopper mindlessly dragging home everything that took her fancy.

But then, peering down into the fourth locker, she forgot human foibles, forgot her own acquisitive weakness. Looking, crouching forward, she caught her breath.

The locker was filled with paintings. Not a foot below her marched a row of big canvases, standing upright in a wooden rack.

Oh, the lovely smell of canvas and dried oil paints. Shivering, her heart pounding, she reached down her paw to pat their rough edges.

And the canvas was stapled. She could not feel any thumbtacks.

Then she saw, on the floor beyond the painting rack, Joe’s white face, white chest and paws, the rest of him lost in darkness. “Be careful,” he said, as she bunched to leap down, “there’s some?”

Too late. She landed on something hard that flew from under her, crashing to the floor loud as an explosion.

“Some wooden crates,” Joe finished. “Are you okay?”

“Damn. I’ll bet the guard heard that.”

“Maybe not, with the TV on. His room is clear across the complex. Maybe the crates contain Janet’s sculpture; that one rattled like metal when it fell.” The six wooden crates had no markings, but they were heavy and solid, securely nailed.

She reared up to look at the paintings, then hopped up into the rack between them, looked closely at a big landscape.

Yes, it was Janet’s, a splashy study of the Baytowne wharves, stormy sky, crashing sea. She pushed the painting back, to reveal the next, looked up at blowing white cumulus and red rooftops. She wanted to shout, turn flips. Pushing several more canvases to lean against their mates, she feasted on blowing trees, reflective shop windows, a view uphill of dark roofs against seething cloud, the rich colors dulled in the darkness, but the movement and bold shapes were unmistakably Janet’s.

They counted forty-six paintings.

“Then Stamps and Varnie didn’t take any, they’re all here.” She frowned. “But the way they talked, they must know where the canvases are hidden.”

“Maybe they plan to come back when things die down, maybe with bolt cutters.”

“Why would they think the paintings would still be here? That Mahl-if he wasn’t caught-wouldn’t move them?”

“I don’t know, Dulcie. I guess that’s why Stamps said, ‘Get ours while we can, and get out.’ Mahl had nerve,” he said, “stashing them nearly on top of the murder scene.”

“Maybe he thought this was the last place anyone would look, maybe?”

“Shhh. Listen.” He backed away from the door.

Footsteps approached down the wide alley beyond the communal door.

Metal rattled as the outer door rolled up. They leaped to the top of the crates, to the top of the standing paintings balancing on their edges. They were poised to spring up to the top of the wall when lights blazed on, the bare bulb on the wall of their unit nearly blinding them. And the yellow glare above, washing across the ceiling, told them the lights in all the units had come on, ignited by a master switch.

Footsteps entered the inner corridor, sending them flying to the top of the wall and away toward the back, through light as bright as day.

Below them from the hall the old man shouted,“Come out of there. You’re in the complex illegally.” His voice was raspy, very loud for such a small man. “Come out now, or I call the cops.” He began to pound on doors. “You won’t be arrested if you come out now.”

“How can he think anyone’s here?” Dulcie whispered. “The doors are locked from outside.”

“The empty ones wouldn’t be locked.”

“But?”

They heard him open one of the lockers, then another, heard him rattling padlocks; and warily they moved away again, along the top of the wall.“Let’s get out,” Dulcie said softly.

“Be still. He’ll be gone in a minute. If we go out the vent now?”

“What if he has keys?”

“He can’t see us; he’d have to climb to see us. And what if he did?”

She shivered.

“We’re cats, Dulcie. He’d just chase us out. I’ve never seen you so jumpy.”

She leaned against him.“I’ve never been afraid quite like this. I don’t know why.”

“Nerves,” he said unhelpfully. But then, as they crouched atop the wall, the lights went out and the footsteps headed away again. The outer door rattled as it was pulled down and they heard the padlock snap closed.

Alone again in the warm dark they relaxed, basking in the heat from the roof, feeling their thudding hearts slow, breathing more easily.

“He didn’t waste any time getting out,” Joe said. Stretching, he trotted away around the top of the wall, heading toward the vent. There he waited, listening. Dulcie followed. They heard a light scuffing along the alley as if the old man was shuffling away, but then silence, as if he had stopped.

“He’s up to something,” Joe said.

She moved to look out through the vent, but he pulled her back.

“Now who’s acting nervous?”

“Keep your voice down. He didn’t walk away-unless he took his shoes off.”

“We could go out the back vent.” But suddenly from below came the hush of tires on concrete, the soft rolling sound of a car pulling down between the buildings.

The engine stopped. They heard a second car, then the static of a police radio.

“He called the cops,” Joe said incredulously. “Before he ever came out here, he called the cops.”

“That crash, when I knocked the crate off. He called them then. Who knows how long he was standing out there-who knows what he heard.”

They listened to car doors opening, men’s voices mixed with the harsh radio voices. Again the outer door rattled up, and the overhead lights flared on like a gigantic third degree. Quickly they slipped away along the top of the wall toward the back. They heard the cops enter the little hall, hard shoes on concrete.

“Police. Come out now.”

Doors were flung open as officers checked the empty lockers. Locks rattled. But then at last, silence. A softer voice.“There’s no one in here, sir. The locks and hasps are all in place, nothing looks tampered with. You must have?”

“I heard someone talking. Not my imagination. Maybe they got locked in from outside. Maybe someone’s sleeping in here, got locked in? “

“If there’s anyone trapped here, they’re mighty quiet about it.”

The footfalls receded, the men’s voices became fainter. But the lights remained on, and the officers left the outer door open. The cats listened to a long silence broken only by the rasping crackle of the police radio.

Joe said,“They’re waiting for something. Or planning something.”

Dulcie had started on toward the back when a new sound froze them. The scrape of wood on concrete. Then a little click. They crept up to the front, to look.

Below them in the hall the watchman had set up a wooden stepladder, and an officer was climbing. They backed away and ran, heading for the back vent.

They were crouched by the vent when the officer rose above the wall of the first locker. Tilting his head sideways, pressing his forehead against a rafter, he managed to look over into the first little room, peering down through the six-inch gap.

“This one’s empty, some furniture but nothing to hide under.”

The minute he vanished again, presumably to move the ladder, they clawed a hole in the screen and pressed through. Poised on the sill, they stared down at the concrete walk nine feet below. They leaped together, landed hard, jolting every bone. And they ran, skirting along beside the fence. They were crouched to swarm up the six feet of chain link when Joe stopped and turned back.

“What?” She remained poised to leap.

“Idea,” he said, briefly trotting away around the far end of the building. She followed him, puzzled and excited, toward the alley where the patrol cars were parked. When Joe was silent, some wild plan was unfolding.

He crouched at the corner, listening to the police radio. Carefully he peered around, down the alley toward the patrol cars.

“They’re still inside. Come on.”

She sped beside him toward the two squad cars. The drivers’ doors stood open, maybe to give quick access to the radios. They slipped beneath the first car.

“Keep watch,” he said, and slid up into the driver’s seat, sleek and quick, a vanishing shadow.

She pictured him inside, stepping delicately among the cops’ field books and gloves and radio equipment, then she heard him talking, his voice soft.

But when he pressed the buttontotalk, the voices and static were silent. Those cops would hear him, they’d come charging out. She crouched shivering beneath the car’s open door, ready to hiss at Joe, ready to run like hell.

But the caretaker’s raspy voice filled the air, steady and loud, as he told the three officers some long involved story. No one glanced toward the squad car.

Joe went silent, slid out and from the patrol car, a swift shadow, and they streaked away up the alley. Around the corner they sat down and made themselves comfortable beside the wall, to wait.

The third patrol car parked beside Mahl’s locker. Not ten minutes had passed. They watched Captain Harper emerge. He was not in uniform but dressed in jeans and a Western shirt. Detective Marritt was with him, fully in uniform, his expression sour. As the two men moved inside, the cats approached, slipping down the alley close to the wall, crouching just outside the big open door, to listen.

Harper was puzzled, then angry. He went up the ladder for a look. Which officer had called in? No one had. Well why hadn’t they? Didn’t anyone wonder about those paintings? Didn’t anyone look at them? What was the ladder for, if you didn’t look at what was there? You could see two of the paintings clearly. Didn’t anyone wonder about those big splashy landscapes? Didn’t anyone recognize them?

When Harper sent the watchman to get a pole, the cats crouched under a squad car out of sight. The small, wiry man trotted by, looking half-afraid. He returned quickly, carrying a six-foot length of door molding.

They watched Harper climb the ladder and reach his pole to move the leaning paintings; he would be gently flipping them back one at a time, looking. Soon his voice, always dry, took on a quality of both excitement and rage.

“Didn’t any of you connect this locker to Janet? Did you forget there’s a case in court involving her death? Didn’t you think it strange that so many of her paintings are here?

“Don’t tell me that not one of you three recognized her work, after all the damned fuss and publicity. Didn’t any of you remember the Aronson testimony, that there are only a few of her paintings left?”

Dulcie and Joe glanced at each other. Harper was really steamed.

“Didn’t you think when you saw this stuff that it was worth checking out? What were you doing in here?

“And who called into the station, which one of you?”

None of the three had called.

Harper centered on the caretaker.“Did you use the police radio? Did you call in when you went to get the ladder?”

The old man swore he hadn’t. Harper said if none of them had called, then who did? Why did he have to rely on some anonymous informant, and how the hell did an informant get hold of a police radio? The cats could tell he was itching to get back to the station and get to the bottom of the puzzle.

When Harper began on the watchman, boring in, the cats felt sorry for the old fellow. Little Mr. Lent said the man who had rented the locker was a Leonard Brill, Brill had given a San Francisco address. Mr. Brill was, Lent said, extremely nice and helpful. When the compound had been broken into a few weeks ago and the outer gate padlock cut off, it was Mr. Brill who saved the day, he had happened by shortly after the occurrence.

One of the officers remembered the incident. Lent had put in a call when he had found the lock cut off, but nothing had seemed disturbed inside the complex. They thought the breakin had been an aborted attempt, that perhaps the burglar had run off when the watchman showed up, had never actually gotten inside.

“And then Mr. Brill happened along,” Mr. Lent said. “Just after the officers left. He’d seen the police cars, and wondered if there was trouble.

“Well it was dark, and most of the stores were closed. I didn’t know where I was going to get a lock for the night, and I didn’t want to leave the place open. Mr. Brill had a lock in his car, a brand-new heavy-duty padlock. He said I could use it. I told him I’d return it, soon as I got a new one, but he said, no need. Said he’d bought it for his garage down in Santa Barbara but then he’d changed his mind, had decided to put in a remote door opener. More secure, he said. Said he was always losing keys.” Lent laughed. “I know about losing keys. If I didn’t keep ‘em chained to my belt, I wouldn’t have a key to my name.

“I had to argue with him before he’d let me pay him. But after all, the lock had never been used, it was still sealed in its plastic bubble, still in the hardware store bag with the receipt. So of course I paid him. Management reimbursed me later. Nice man, Mr. Brill, a real gentleman.”

Lent’s description of Brill was large, hunched, and rather owl-like in appearance but handsomely dressed, a fine camel hair sport coat, and a nice car, a red sports coupe of some kind.

“Maybe a rental,” Joe said. This explained the bolt cutters in Mahl’s closet. Explained nicely how, at three in the morning, Mahl was able to get into the complex. No problem, before ever he gave Lent the “new” lock, to carefully open the sealed package, have the key copied, then seal it up again with its keys.

The men stopped talking, the ladder rattled. The cats nipped back up the alley, they were crouched below the chain-link fence when they heard car doors slam, heard the first car start. One big leap and they were up, clinging to the wire. Scrambling over, within seconds they were headed home, Dulcie purring so loud she sounded like a sports car slipping down the street.

“I’m glad her paintings are safe. I told you we’d find them.”

He brushed against her, licked her ear.“Without you, Mahl would have gotten away with it.

“And,” he said, “Rob Lakemighthave burned for Janet’s murder.” And trotting along through the night, Joe grinned.

So Clyde thinks we don’t have any business messing around with a murder case. So we ought to be chasing little mousies or playing with catnip toys.He could hardly wait to say a few words to Clyde.

25 [????????: pic_26.jpg]

Moreno’s Bar and Grill was a small, secluded establishment tucked along one of the village’s less decorative alleys, a narrow lane two blocks above the beach. The carved oak door was softly lit by a pair of stained-glass lanterns, the interior carpet was thick, plain, expensive. The music was nonthreatening, tasteful, and soft. A patron entering Moreno’s felt the stress of the day begin to ease, could feel himself begin to slow, to relax, to recall with deeper appreciation the small and overlooked details of an otherwise unpleasant afternoon. Moreno’s offered fine beers and ale on draft anda deep emotional restorative to soften the rough edges of life.

The interior of Moreno’s was comfortably dim, the walls, paneled in golden oak, were hung with an assortment of etchings and reproductions highlighting the history of California, scenes dating from the time of the first Spanish settlements through the gold rush days. Max Harper sat alone in a booth at the back, sinking comfortably into the soft, quilted leather.

He was not in uniform but dressed in worn Levi’s, plain Western boots, and a dull-colored Western shirt. The old, unpretentious clothes seemed to belong perfectly to Harper’s long, lean frame and dry, weathered face. He smelled of clean, well-kept horses; he had spent a leisurely afternoon riding through the Molena Valley, giving both himself and his buckskin gelding some much needed exercise. He tried to ride twice a week, but that wasn’t always possible. He was smoking his third cigarette and sipping a nonalcoholic O’Doul’s when Clyde swung in through the carved front doors, stopped to speak to the bartender, then made his way to the back As he slid into the booth the waiter appeared behind him, carrying two menus and a Killian’s Red draft.

Harper was not in a hurry to order. He accepted a menu and waved the waiter away with a brief jerk of his head. He had chosen the most secluded booth, and at this early hour there were only five other customers in Moreno’s, three at the bar and a couple of tourists in a booth at the other end of the room. The dinner crowd would be moderate; the bar would begin to fill up around eight.

Clyde sat waiting, fingering his beer mug, watching Max. Despite the bar’s soothing atmosphere, the police chief was wound tight, the lines which webbed his face drawn into a half scowl. His shoulders looked tight, and he kept fidgeting with his cigarette.

Harper eased deeper into the booth, glanced around the nearly empty room out of habit. Normally he wouldn’t share this particular kind of unease with Clyde or with anyone. He sure wouldn’t share this specific distress with another cop. He would have told Millie; they had shared everything. Two cops under one roof lived on shop talk, on angry complaints and on a crude humor geared to emotional survival. But Millie was dead. He didn’t talk easily to anyone else.

He had told Clyde earlier in the day about finding Janet’s paintings in the storage locker up near Highway One. Now he studied Clyde, trying to sort out several nagging thoughts. “I didn’t tell you how we knew the paintings were in the locker.”

Clyde settled back, sipping his beer.“Isn’t there a watchman? Did he find them?”

“Watchman made the first call, asking for a patrol car. He’d heard a noise in one of the lockers, like something heavy fell.

“But it was after the two units arrived, that the second call came in, about the paintings. That call was made from a unit radio.”

Clyde looked puzzled, sipped his beer.

Harper watched him with interest.“Caller told the dispatcher that there were some paintings I ought to see, that they had to do with Janet’s murder. Said I might like to go on over there, take a look for myself. Said the evidence was crucial, that the locker had been rented by Kendrick Mahl.”

He stubbed out his cigarette.“An anonymous call, from a unit radio. There is no way to identify which car the call was made from, dispatcher has no way to tell. I’ve been over this with every man on duty that night.”

He fiddled with his half-empty cigarette pack, tearing off the cellophane.“No one in the department will admit to making the call, and no one left his unit unattended except my men up at the locker, and they were right there, not ten feet away, with the big locker door wide-open. Anyone moved out in the alley, they would have seen him.”

“Sounds like one of your men is lying, that one of your own had to have made the call. Unless there’s some sophisticated electronic tap on the police line?”

“Not likely, in a case like this. What would be the purpose?”

“Could the caretaker have slipped out to the squad cars, and lied about it? But why?”

“The caretaker didn’t make the call. Only time he left my officers was when he went to get a ladder, and I told you, they were watching their cars.” He crumpled the cellophane, dropped it in the ashtray. “After we impounded the paintings we searched the locker complex. Found no one, nothingdisturbed.”

He shook his head.“I trust my people; I don’t believe there’s one of them would lie to me. Except Marritt, and he’s accounted for. And those paintings have blown Marritt’s investigation, so why would he make the call?”

“Well,” Clyde said, “whoever made the call did the department a good turn. And the paintings are safe in the locker?”

“We put new padlocks on the two doors and the gate, cordoned off that part of the complex, and left an officer on duty. It will leave us short, but we’ll keep a guard there until the guard Sicily hired comes on duty, and until the canvases can be moved. Forty-six of Janet’s paintings, worth?”

“Well over a million,” Clyde said. “But weren’t painting fragments found in the fire?”

“Lots of fragments-all with thumbtacks in the stretcher bars. We know, now, that Janet used staples. That’s the kind of investigation we got out of Marritt. He had no clue that Mahl substituted some other artist’s work. Sicily suggested Mahl might have used students’ paintings, bought them cheap at art school sales.”

“But wouldn’t Mahl have known about the thumbtacks? He knew Janet’s work too well to? “

Harper smiled.“When Janet and Mahl were married, Janet stretched her canvases with thumbtacks. It wasn’t until after she left him, when her thumbs began to bother her from pressing in the tacks, that she started stapling her canvases.” He fingered his menu, then laid it down. “But there’s something else.”

Clyde waited, trying to look relaxed, not to telegraph a twinge of unease.

“I told you we found Mahl’s watch, and that it could be conclusive evidence,” Harper said.

“That was when you said we needed to talk. I thought? What about the watch?”

Harper turned his O’Doul’s bottle, making rings on the table. “The prosecuting attorney examined the new evidence this morning. Took a look at the paintings and talked to Sicily about them. Mahl’s prints aren’t on them, surely he used gloves. We sent his watch to the lab, and we’ve had two men searching out photographs of Mahl that show the watch.”

Harper peeled the wet label from his beer bottle.“Late this afternoon, Judge Wesley dismissed charges against Lake.” He spread the label on the table, smoothing it. “And it looks like we might get a confession from Mahl. He’s lost some of his arrogance; he doesn’t like being behind bars, and he’s nervous. Shaky. If he does confess,”Max said, “it’ll be thanks to our informant.”

Clyde kept his hands still, tried to keep his face bland.

“It’s the informant that troubles me,” Harper said. “We don’t get many informants calling in cold, without previous contact. You know it takes time to develop a good snitch, and this woman-I don’t know what to make of her.”

Clyde eased himself deeper into the soft leather of the booth, wishing he were somewhere else.

“She has a quiet voice, but with a strange little tinge of sarcasm.” Harper sipped his beer. “A peculiarly soft way of speaking, and yet that little nudging edge to it.

“Her first calls seemed to have nothing to do with the Lake trial. She called to tell me she’d slipped a list under the station door, and to explain about it. I had the list on my desk when she called.” With his thumbnail he began to press on the wet beer label he’d stuck to the table, pressing at its edges. “It was her list that led us to that burglary up on Cypress.

“We made two arrests, caught them red-handed, impounded a truck full of stolen TVs, videos, some antiques and jewelry, ski equipment, a mink coat.

“The list of residences to be hit was very detailed, showed the times each householder left for work, kind of car, times the kids left for school, time the school bus stops. Right down to if the family kept a dog.

“But no indication of what day the burglaries would come down. She said she didn’t know, suggested I set up a stakeout, was almost bossy about it. She put me off, and I almost tossed the list.” Harper looked uncomfortable, as if the room was too hot.

“But then she called back, later that same night. Gave me the hit date, said she’d just found out.” Harper abandoned the label, lit a cigarette. He had shaped the O’Doul’s label into a long oval with a lump at one end. “That second call came maybe an hour after that fuss up at Sicily’s gallery, the night those cats got locked inside.”

Clyde grinned.“The night my stupid cat got shut in. You saying this woman made the call from the gallery? That the cats got in when she entered?”

“No, I’m not saying that,” Harper snapped. He stubbed out his cigarette and fingered the half-empty pack, then laid it aside, started in on the label again, working at it absently with his thumbnail. “I’m not saying that at all. Simply stating the sequence of events.

“And it was that same day,” he said, “midafternoon, when the new witness turned up. The one who saw the white van in Janet’s drive.”

Clyde watched the beer label taking shape, Harper’s thumb forming a crude, lumpy head.

Harper finished his beer, draining the glass.“You know I don’t believe in coincidence. But the strange thing is-that witness who saw the white van, she turned out to be the mother of one of the burglars.”

Clyde frowned, shook his head as if trying to sort that out. He had to swallow back a belly laugh. Despite Harper’s obvious distress, this was the biggest joke of all time on his good friend. And he couldn’t say a word.

Harper still hadn’t told him about the watch. It was the watch that was really bugging Harper.

“Yesterday the informant called, asked if we’d found Janet’s paintings. She seemed pleased that we had.

“She told me that when we found Kendrick Mahl’s watch, that could wrap up the case. She said it was in a drainpipe up in the hills, that we’d have to dig down and cut through the pipe. She thought if we cut straight down into the pipe, we wouldn’t disturb the evidence, could still photograph it before we moved it. She gave me the location of the marker where we were to dig, a little pile of rocks, up the hill from the mouth of the drain.”

He looked a long time at Clyde.“The drainpipe turned out to be just up beyond the burglarized house, and not fifty yards from where we arrested James Stamps. He’d run up the hill chasing his dog. Dog bit Thompson real bad.”

Harper grinned.“Thompson was crawling around in the bushes taking pictures of these two perps, and the dog jumps him.

“We got Thompson to the hospital, took the dog to the pound for observation. Don’t know what it got mixed up with, but its face was one bloody mess, Thompson didn’t think he did that. Long scratches down the dog’s nose and ear.”

Harper gave the head on the O’Doul’s label two pointed ears, pushed the wet paper again, starting to form a tail. “No one,” he said, “could have known what was in that drain. You couldn’t see a thing from the opening, not even with a flashlight. The watch was maybe fifteen feet back inside.

“But my informant knew. Knew where the watch was, knew whose watch it was. She described the stone marker exactly. Little pile of rocks pressed into the earth in the form of an X, where the grass had been scraped away.”

“Pretty strange,” Clyde said. “Makes you wonder. You don’t think she’s a psychic or something?”

“You know I don’t believe in that stuff. It was some job digging down into the drainpipe, and I didn’t believe for a minute we’d find anything. I thought this would end up a big department joke.”

“Then why did you do it?”

“There’s always that chance. Better to be the butt of a joke than miss something. We dug down seven feet to the metal pipe, then cut through the metal with an acetylene torch, kept the flame small as we could.

“Broke down into the pipe two feet above the skeleton of a dead cat.”

Clyde wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“The cat had a collar around its neck with Janet Jeannot’s name on it.” Harper was very still, looking at Clyde. “Kendrick Mahl’s watch was buckled to the collar.”

Clyde shook his head, did his best to look amazed. He’d had to listen half the night to Joe bragging about the damned watch, and about the paintings.

“We photographed the watch and got it and the skeleton to the lab. Lab found Mahl’s prints on the watch, underneath Janet’s prints.

“We have photographs of Mahl wearing the watch a week before Janet was killed. And a shot of him the night of the museum opening wearing a different watch, a new Rolex.

“We found the store where he bought the Rolex, a place on the other side of San Francisco from the St. Francis, little hole in the wall. They sold it the day of the opening. The customer fit Mahl’s description. He paid cash.” Harper grew still as the waiter brought another round of beers, theround little man moving quietly, leaving quickly.

“After we arrested Mahl we searched his apartment. Found the bolt cutters he used to cut the lock off at the storage complex. Found the keys to Janet’s studio and to her van, under the liner of his overnight bag. And he had a set of keys to Rob’s Suburban. The way we see Mahl’s moves, he had already brought the substitute paintings down to Molena Point, sometime before that weekend, and put them in the locker. On Saturday he checks into the St. Francis and puts his car in the underground parking.

“Saturday night he uses his parking ticket to take out Janet’s van-he knew she was out to dinner with friends, probably had a good idea she’d make an early evening of it. He drives down to the village, gets the fake paintings, switches them for Janet’s, rigs Janet’s oxygen tank, and dropssome aspirin in her coffeemaker. Stashes her paintings in the locker and hightails it back to the city before daylight.

“He puts Janet’s van back in the parking garage, uses that entry ticket later to retrieve his own car. He’d have had to put the van back in the same slot. Probably he pulled his own car into her slot, to reserve it while he was gone. Counted on Janet’s not coming down at some late hour; he knew she didn’t like to party.

“Who knows when he missed his watch? We’re guessing he didn’t miss it until he was back in the city, and then it was too late to turn around and go back. He had to be seen at the St. Francis for breakfast, be seen around town that weekend, and, of course, at the opening Sunday night.

“But when he gets back to Molena Point after the opening late Sunday night he takes Rob’s Suburban while Rob’s asleep, goes to get his watch.”

“But he’s too late,” Clyde said. “Janet’s already up in the studio. And no one saw him switch the paintings, no one saw him around the locker?”

“Caretaker says there were two men nosing around outside the fence a couple of nights earlier. He didn’t see them clearly, didn’t see their car.” Harper opened his menu, looked it over. “There were some pieces of sculpture in the locker with the paintings, probably he’d put them in sometime before. Early work that, Sicily said, Janet hadn’t liked much, that she’d left behind when she split from Mahl and moved out. Maybe Mahl thought they’d be worth something now.”

He closed the menu.“Think I’ll have the filet and fries.”

Clyde grinned. This was Max’s standard order, filet medium rare, fries crisp, no salad. “It’s a weird story, Max. Don’t know what to make of it.”

Max shaped the wet label more carefully, its front paws tucked under, its long tail curved.“Informant sees a watch where it’s impossible to see it. Night watchman hears voices, but no one there. Call comes over a unit radio, and no trace of the caller.

“But we’ve got a positive ID of the handwriting on the locker file card and lifted a nice set of Mahl’s prints from it.”

“Then you’ve wrapped up the case,” Clyde said. “Mahl’s in jail. You have solid evidence. And you told me Marritt is off the case and in a bad light with the mayor.”

“You bet he is.”

“And a new trial pending. Sounds like you’re in good shape.”

“That watchman can’t have heard voices.”

“So if no one was there, was the old man lying?”

“One theory is, he was nosing around the lockers for his own purposes, maybe stealing. That when he looked over the wall into K20-or maybe picked the lock to K20-he realized the paintings were Janet’s and knew he’d better report it to avoid trouble, so he dreamed up the voices routine.

“Good theory.”

“But I don’t buy it. I’ve known old Mr. Lent for years. That old man wouldn’t steal if he was starving. And he was really upset by what he thought was a breakin.

“And there’s the vent,” Harper said. “Vent screen above those lockers was torn.”

“A vent screen?”

“Vent about four inches by eight inches.”

“So what does that mean? He hears voices through the vent and thinks they’re in a locker?” Clyde thought he was getting good at this, at playing dumb-it was little different than lying. Though he didn’t much like that skill in himself.

“First thing the watchman heard was a thud, when he was making his rounds. Said it sounded as if something heavy fell. He’d gone around to where he heard it, was standing beneath the vent listening, when he heard the voices, couldn’t quite make out what they were saying. A man and a woman, hesaid, talking real soft.”

Harper frowned.“That ventLent says the screen wasn’t torn when he inspected the buildings earlier that day. Said he always looks along the roofline under the eaves, checking for any signs of leaks.”

He settled back sipping a fresh O’Doul’s, watching Clyde. “There were hairs clinging to the torn screen. Dark gray hairs, very short. And some white hairs and some pale orange.”

“Whose hair was it?”

“It was cat hair.”

“Cat hair? I thought you were going to say you had a make on someone besides Mahl. Why would a cat go into a storage locker? Mice? Remind me not to store anything up there. And how could a cat-how high was the vent?”

The waiter brought their napkins and silverware, and the condiments, and a complimentary bowl of french friend onions, and took their order. When he had gone, the two men sat quietly, looking at each other.

Max said,“Millie told me once, a couple of years before she died, ‘Don’t fool around with the far-out stuff, Max. It can put you right around the bend.’”

Max’s wife Millie had been a special investigator. She had spent much of her time checking out odd reports, saucer sightings, nutcases, relatives returned from the dead. Once in a while she’d get one that wouldn’t add up, that didn’t seem to be a nutcase, and that upset her.

“That stuff she worked on, it always did give me the creeps.”

A police officer’s training made it hard to deal with the unexplainable. Cops were trained to remember every fact, see and remember every small detail, trained to smell a scam a mile away. A cop was totally fact-oriented, a good officer didn’t go for the crazy stuff. So when the facts added up to the impossible, that could really be upsetting.

Harper wiped beer rings from the table with a paper napkin, wiped away the misshapen O’Doul’s label from the oak surface. “Now I know how she felt. How easy it could be, given certain circumstances, to wander right over the edge.”

“I don’t know anything that would put you over the edge,” Clyde said. “Hell, Max, be happy with what you have, a case wrapped up, solid evidence-take it and enjoy.”

Harper wadded the O’Doul’s label into a little ball and dropped it in the ashtray, watched the waiter approaching with their steaks.

26 [????????: pic_27.jpg]

The county animal pound stunk of dog doo and cat urine and strong disinfectant. Dulcie could smell it long before Wilma carried her inside. The barking and high-keyed yapping, the cacophony which had been triggered by the sound of their car pulling up in front on the gravel drive, deafened her.

The cement block building was located five miles south of Molena Point, isolated among the hills near a water treatment plant. A small patch of lawn surrounded it, neatly clipped. Beyond the lawn rose a tangle of weeds. Dulcie had never been inside an animal pound; it wasn’t an experience she had anticipated with any great joy. But now, riding over Wilma’s shoulder, she let herself be carried inside.

The office was small, the cement block walls painted a nauseating shade of pale green. Once the door was closed, the frenzied barking began to subside. Behind the counter a young, heavy, pear-shaped woman shook back her dark hair, looked at Wilma expectantly, and held out her hands to relieve Wilma of the cat.

Wilma drew back, held Dulcie against her.“I’m not bringing her to you. I’m not giving her to you. We-I want to look at your kittens. I brought her along to see if any of the kittens appeal to her.” Wilma smiled winningly. “If she’s going to have a companion, I want to be sure they’re compatible.”

The young clerk looked amused, as if she were used to patronizing the addle-brained elderly. As she led them back into the feline portion of the facility, the barking exploded again beyond the block wall.

She left them in the cat room among the rows of wire cages, abandoning Wilma to her own devices, but cautioning her that though she could wander at her leisure, she mustn’t open any of the cage doors, and she gave Wilma a stern, proprietary look to make sure she would comply.

The abandoned kittens and cats crouched on cold metal floors, some looking unwell, some dirty, some very thin. But their cages and boxes were clean, and they had food and clean water. Dulcie supposed the sick ones, which were isolated at one end, were being treated. But she didn’t like peering in at the hopeless, mute beasts. She had never been in a cage, she had never had any of the experiences that these strays had encountered, and though she wasn’t particularly proud of the fact, she was grateful. Once, when Joe told her she was a hothouse flower, she had belted him so hard she drew blood.

She knew that the caged kittens were better off here, where they could be fed and cared for, than starving and alone, but it hurt her to see any cat confined. And the only stray cats she was familiar with were those few who lived beneath the beachside boardwalk and wharf, surviving on fish offal from the pier above, and fed by one or two villagers. Those cats were given shots by the local vet, her own Dr. Firreti; the cats were captured, treated, and turned loose again.

As she and Wilma moved along among the cages, she saw no cat like herself and Joe, no cat who brightened unnaturally at her appraising look. Just dear, homeless cats and kittens, mute and frightened.

And though she and Wilma spent an hour at the pound, Wilma talking to the kittens and making a fuss over them, Dulcie found none that suited her. None seemed bold enough, healthy enough, pushy and strong enough for her purpose.

She felt a twisting guilt at leaving the homeless kits, and she knew Wilma would bring one or several home if she wanted, but it was a big job raising kittens, and Wilma did not seem eager to be responsible for another cat. And Dulcie herself hardly knew yet what her own life was about. As they turned away, she prayed the youngsters would find someone to love them. It was not until they had driven back to the village and gone to see Dr. Firreti, that they found the right kitten.

The black-and-white kitten was from a litter of seven that had been left on the clinic doorstep. Too often unwanted animals were dumped on Dr. Firreti. He found homes for a surprising number of orphans.

He had already given this kitten his shots, and the little male was wildly healthy, a big, strong youngster with a black mustache beneath his nose, big floppy paws, a broad head. This was a kitten who would grow into a big, powerful cat, a cat who could hold his own against Varnie Blankenship. By the time Varnie got out of prison, the kitten would be maybe two years old and quite able to stand up for himself.

But the youngster was cuddly and sweet-tempered, too, and when Dulcie licked and snuggled him, he was delightfully huggable. She played with the kit for a long time, teasing him, testing him, learning about him. Her antics amused Dr. Firreti, but he was a tolerant man. He said animals never ceased to amaze him.

When she slapped at the kitten and prodded him, he came right up at her, spitting and snarling, sank in his teeth, showing more than enough spunk to take care of himself in the Blankenship household. She just hoped that when he got older he would remain a lap sitter and not go rampaging off on his own, leaving the old lady lonely. She was surprised at how much she had grown to care for old Mrs. Blankenship.

Leaving Dr. Firreti’s, they drove straight up into the hills toward the Blankenship house. The kitten sat on the seat beside Dulcie, erect and observant, looking up through the windows at the treetops and sky with a wide, delighted gaze, lifting a paw now and then as branches whizzed past.

Wilma parked a block from the brown house and waited in the car while Dulcie directed her charge down the sidewalk beside her. He seemed thrilled with the warm wind and the fresh smells, with the blowing leaves and the tender grass, but he stayed close. Though six months was a silly, defiant age, he minded her very well. He gamboled and pranced, but he didn’t bolt away on his own. She led him up to the shabby brown house, straight to the old woman’s window.

Leaping to the sill she found the window open as if, all this long time, day after day, Mama had continued to wait for her. Inside, Mama sat dozing in her chair.

Dulcie looked down at the kitten, and mewled.

He tried to jump up to her, made a tremendous leap, and fell back. Tried again, then tried to scramble up the wall. After his third fall she jumped down and took him by the nape of his neck.

The kitten was heavy, she hardly made it herself carrying the big youngster. She landed clumsily on the sill to find Mama awake.

Mama’s face registered joy, surprise, confusion. She stared at the kitten with a strange uncertainty.

Dulcie nosed the kitten toward her, urging him on over the sill. He looked up at Dulcie, puzzled, then stepped right on in, waded across the cluttered table, placing his big paws with care among the bottles and china beasties, stood at the edge of the table looking intently into Mama’s face.

Mama scooped him up and cuddled him against her flowered bosom-but she was watching Dulcie.“I missed you, sweet kitty.” She frowned, her pale old eyes looked sad. Holding the kitten, she reached to the table, began absently to rearrange the little china animals. When she looked back at Dulcie, she said, “He wasn’t as strong a son as I’d hoped, my son Varnie.” She shook her head. “He won’t like it in jail. He was real mad when I went to the police, when I did what Frances wanted, what that attorney wanted. Varnie was real mad. And then,” she said sadly, “this other thing happened, and he got arrested.” Mama sighed. “I guess, kitty, that I didn’t do a very good job with Varnie.

“But that young man in jail, he’s free now. That Rob Lake. And he didn’t do anything wrong. Strange how things turn out.” She cuddled and stroked the purring kitten, and looked hard at Dulcie.

“You’re not going to stay, are you, kitty?

“But you’ve brought me a kitten who will-maybe a kitten who needs me?” She looked carefully at Dulcie, then looked into the youngster’s pansy face. “A little black-and-white kitten. Black mustache and blue eyes.” Unceremoniously she turned the kit over on his back and looked between hishind legs.

“Little male cat. Well, that’s fine. He should be a match for Varnie-when Varnie gets out.” Righting the kit, she cuddled him again, looking deep into his eyes. “I’ll call you Chappie. I had a cat once named Chappie-for Charlie Chaplin. Chappie stayed with me for fifteen years. Funny,” she said, looking at Dulcie, “I never did give you a name, did I, kitty?

“Maybe I knew,” she said, and her old voice trembled. “Maybe I knew, all the time, that it was just a visit.

“But Chappie,” she said, stroking him, “Chappie’s come to stay, hasn’t he?” She cocked her head, watching Dulcie. “Strange thing for a little cat to do, to bring me another kitty, someone to take your place.

“But then,” she said, “cats are strange little folk. Aren’t they, sweet kitty?” Reaching across the table, she stroked Dulcie gently.

Dulcie nudged her head beneath Mrs. Blankenship’s hand, and gave her a long, happy purr. She let the old woman pet her for a while, but at last she turned away. Crouched on the windowsill, she gave the old woman one last look, then leaped to the lawn.

And she ran, racing down the street to Wilma’s car and in through the open door.

She did not take her usual place on the seat. She slipped under the steering wheel into Wilma’s lap and stayed there, close, as Wilma drove home.

27 [????????: pic_28.jpg]

Leaving her old van parked in front of the Aronson Gallery, Charlie walked down to Jolly’s Deli to take delivery of the picnic hamper Wilma had ordered earlier in the day. She liked the deli, with its clean, whitewashed and polished woodwork, its tile floors of huge handmade tiles glazed pale as eggshells, its hand-painted tile counters decorated in flower patterns; she loved the smell of the deli, a combination of herbs and spices and baking so delicious it was like a little bit of heaven reaching out into the street, pulling in passersby. The tiny round tables set before the windows were always full as villagers enjoyed Jolly’s imported meats and cheeses, homemade breads and delectable salads.

She liked old George Jolly, too. He was always happy, seeming sublimely satisfied with the world. She imagined him in his old truck making early-morning trips to Salinas to buy the best produce, imagined trips to some exclusive specialty wholesaler for his fine imported meats and cheeses. She wondered if he did all the baking, at perhaps three in the morning, or if he delegated that task to one of his efficient assistants. She knew Jolly did his own roasting of hams and sides of beef, in a large brick room behind the deli kitchen. She wondered if he had grown up consciously striving to live up to the name of Jolly, or if his name was only coincidental. Too bad he couldn’t dish out to others some of his optimism, dish out helpings of cheerfulness as he dished up Greek salad and salmon quiche.

Too bad George Jolly couldn’t sell a pound or two of happiness to Beverly Jeannot. That bad-tempered woman could use it.

Beverly had been at the gallery when Charlie left. She’d seen Beverly come in as she sat at the back, at a card table, preparing a work proposal, bidding for the gallery’s cleaning account. When she looked toward the front windows, Beverly was coming in, pausing for a moment just inside the glass door as if for maximum effect, before making her way to Sicily’s desk.

She was dressed in a pink suit reminiscent of a bowl of strawberry ice cream. Pink shoes. Her hair in perfect marcel waves. Of course Beverly would be coming to the gallery, Sicily was her sales agent now, Sicily would be marketing-for fabulous prices-the last of Janet’s canvases.

Sitting down opposite Sicily, Beverly spied Charlie at the back and beckoned imperiously.

Summoned like a servant, Charlie stood waiting beside the desk while Beverly made herself comfortable, settling securely into her chair, arranging her pink handbag carefully in her lap. She didn’t waste time on social niceties. “Your cleanup work, Miss Getz, still cannot begin. The police have not released the house. I find this delay intolerable. I presume there is no help for it.”

What was she supposed to say? That she’d clean illegally after midnight?

“Now, with this case dismissed and with a second trial pending, I have no idea when the work can start.” She looked Charlie over. “I presume that when the police do give me a release, you still intend to perform the work immediately.”

“Whenever that occurs,” Charlie said. She wanted to tell the woman to stuff her damned job. Beverly didn’t seem to care about the trial itself, or that the man who really murdered Janet would now be punished. Didn’t seem to give a damn that an innocent man had been freed. What an insufferable woman. How could she be Janet’s sister?

“If you will call me, I’ll have my crew there as soon as possible.” Of course she’d given Beverly no hint that her crew had consisted of three people including herself-or that now she’d lost a third of that staff. With James Stamps in jail, she’d have to hustle to find enough help to doa decent job-or any job. What a joke that one person made up a third of her entire work force.

Returning to the back, she had filled in, for Sicily, a multiple-copy work proposal for weekly maintenance of the gallery, number of hours per week she would give Sicily, exactly what that would include; and her weekly fee and what items, such as repairs, would be charged extra. She could hear clearly the conversation at Sicily’s desk

“I am anxious that the paintings be removed from that locker right away. Such a place does not seem suitable. All this impounding is most inconvenient.”

“There are new, heavy-duty locks on the doors and gate,” Sicily said. “And there is a guard on duty. The moment the locker is released, the moment the police give me permission, Janet’s work will be brought here. My storeroom has a metal-shielded door, fire alarms, and frequent police surveillance. I must admit I’m somewhat surprised.”

“Surprised at what?” Beverly said, bristling.

“Surprised and interested that you do not appear to be grieving for your dead sister.”

Charlie hid a smile.

Beverly squared her shoulders, dangerously stretching the pink fabric.“Janet and I were not close, not even as children. When our parents were divorced she went with our father, I with Mother. We did not see each other often after that. Were, in fact, like strangers. I would be hypocritical to pretend more distress than I feel.”

But you were still related,Charlie thought.You were sisters.And she wondered why Janet had left all her assets to Beverly, when they weren’t close. But maybe Janet had felt differently about blood relationships, about family.

“I knew Janet so very little, she was more an acquaintance than a sister. I am deeply sorry she died so horribly, and I do feel eased now that the real killer seems to be in custody. I did not think that Rob Lake person was capable of killing anyone, but it was not up to me to decide.”

Charlie signed the proposal and tore off her copy. Placing the gallery’s copy in a white envelope, she left it at Sicily’s desk, not stopping to disturb the two women, and headed for Jolly’s.

Now, standing at the counter in the bright deli, she accepted the picnic hamper, wondering, amused, if she was going to be able to carry it. The huge wicker basket, covered with a red-and-white-checkered cloth, looked big enough to supply the entire street with supper.

Signing the tab, she exchanged small talk with Mr. Jolly. She had, as she’d passed the alley, seen two cats scoffing up some delicacy from a paper plate-not Dulcie or Joe. It amused and pleased her that Mr. Jolly fed the village cats. Not that the cats of Molena Point were exactly on welfare status. But they must enjoy those special treats; she thought of Jolly’s alley as a sort of feline social club.

Carrying the hamper back to her van, which was parked in front of the gallery, she placed it safely on the floor, where it wouldn’t spill, and headed for Clyde’s house. Driving slowly across Ocean beneath the lacy filtered shade, breathing deeply the aromatic scent of eucalyptus, she realized how at home she felt in Molena Point after only a few weeks; as if she had lived all her life in the small village. Molena Point just suited her, it was big enough and had enough well-to-do residents to provide her with the means for a thriving business, but was also cozy and friendly.

Clyde was waiting for her on the porch, wearing faded jeans and a padded red jacket. The gray tomcat was draped across his shoulder. As she slid out and came around the van, the big cat watched her intently, his yellow eyes wise and appraising.

This was a first for her, taking cats on a picnic. As she fetched out the deli basket and started up the walk, the tomcat fixed on the basket, nose twitching, his gaze riveted. She supposed to a cat the scents were overwhelming.

Clyde took the basket, stashed it in the backseat of his big antique Packard. They didn’t need to discuss which vehicle to take-no one wanted to share her van among the ladders, mops, buckets, and half-empty paint cans. He settled the basket on the floor of the backseat between some folded blankets, the tomcat edging forward off his shoulder.

“Leave the picnic alone, Joe. It’s for later.”

The cat cut his eyes at Clyde with sly humor, and kneaded his claws in Clyde’s shoulder. And as she swung into the passenger’s seat, Clyde tossed Joe in next to her. The cat gave her a wide yellow stare and immediately climbed into her lap.

He turned around three times, getting settled, his hard paws bruising her thighs. She was flattered to be honored with his presence. She’d really expected him to jump in the backseat and tear apart the picnic.

When she stroked him, he smiled and purred like some potentate receiving obeisance from his subjects, his attitude insolent, imperious. This cat, Charlie thought, was very full of himself.

Clyde backed out of the drive, swinging up to Ocean, and turned left. Two blocks farther on he pulled into the ten-minute zone in front of the library. A lacework of light and shadows patterned the sidewalk around them, and painted the library’s white stucco walls. When Wilma came hurrying out she was carrying a green book bag from which protruded two tabby ears-these two people were obsessed with their cats.

As Wilma slid into the backseat, Dulcie rose up inside the bag and peered over the top, her green eyes gleaming, her paws clutching the top of the bag, kneading softly as if with excitement.

Watching her, Charlie felt like she’d not only fallen into a delightful place to live, but maybe into Alice’s wonderland, into a world of smirking cats and what promised to be a mad hatter picnic.

Heading up Ocean to Highway One and turning south, Clyde’s old Packard received interested glances. Both villagers and tourists turned to look at the bright red antique touring car.

They drove down Highway One five miles, looking out at the sea, then headed inland a short distance. Turned right again onto a narrow dirt road that led off through a little woods, a deeply shaded stand of close-set saplings.

Parking in the woods where the road ended, they set off walking, carrying the picnic hamper and blankets. The cats surprised Charlie again by trotting along beside them as obedient as a couple of dogs. On the narrow, leafy path alone in the dim woods, the five of them made a strange little procession. They couldn’t see the ocean, but they pressed ahead eagerly toward its thunder.

The woods ended at a flat green pasture spreading away like a green tabletop. And that velvet field ended abruptly a quarter mile ahead. Nothing beyond but sky and sea. And a gigantic rock thrusting up out of the sea. They could hear the waves crashing against it, wild and rhythmic.

The pasture grass was damp, soaking Charlie’s tennis shoes. The cats raced away, chasing each other, stopping to sniff at rabbit holes. Neither Clyde nor Wilma seemed concerned that they would run away. Charlie had never seen cats who behaved like this. The three of them walked in companionable silence to the edge of the cliff.

Ten feet below, churning breakers foamed against the chimney rock. Directly below them at the foot of the cliff lay a white sand beach tilting down, falling away to a strip of dark, wet sand. Between that strip of sand and the chimney rock seethed a narrow neck of sea, foaming up, sucking back clear as green glass. They descended the cliff and spread the blankets on the warm sand, and the cats immediately settled down on the smaller blanket, expectantly watching the picnic basket.

Tucked into one side of the basket was a good Pinot Blanc and a tray of goose liver canapes. Wilma poured the wine into plastic cups, laid out the canapes. They toasted the sea and each other as the breakers sucked out, lifted, crashed in again wild and foaming.

No one had hinted to Charlie that this picnic was a celebration, but she got the idea that it was. Some secret celebration, not so much a secret from her, perhaps, as simply a very private matter.

But what a strange thought.

Yet there was some odd little mystery here, clinging around Wilma and Clyde and the two cats.

Maybe when she had lived in Molena Point longer she’d learn to understand what it was that they sheltered so carefully. She felt certain it was nothing that would dismay her, she had more a sense of lightness, almost of whimsy. Something that, if she knew, should delight her. Meantime, their silent celebration was nice. She liked knowing people who had secrets.

But the strange thing was, the cats seemed to share in the secret, their eyes were filled with some keen feline satisfaction. Both cats had an after-the-kill look. The kind of look a cat had when he dragged a dead rabbit into the parlor and left it on the rug, the look of the triumphant hunter bestowing a priceless gift.

Puzzled and amused, she helped Wilma unwrap the feast that George Jolly had prepared. In insulated containers, the French bread was still warm from the oven, the large portion of Jolly’s best Puget Sound salmon was admirably chilled. The assorted fruits and the big wedge of Brie were room temperature; and there was a pint of thick fresh cream, with two small plastic bowls.

Wilma fixed the cats’ plates first, with a little bit of everything but the fruit, and Charlie poured cream into the bowls. And the cats feasted, each with that smug smile. And what cat could be more charming than these two? Even when they were smug, Dulcie’s green eyes were laughing, Joe’s yellow eyes gleaming with challenge. What cat could be more mysterious and charming?

3. CAT RAISE THE DEAD

1

Within the dark laundry room she stood to the side of the door’s narrow glass, where she would not be seen from the street, stood looking out into the night. The black sidewalk and the leafy growth across the street in the neighboring yards formed a dense tangle, a vague mosaic fingered by sickly light from the distant streetlamp. Pale leaves shone against porch rails and steps, unfamiliar and strange, and beneath a porch roof hung a mass of vines, twisted into unnatural configurations. Beneath these gleamed the disembodied white markings of the gray cat, where it crouched staring in her direction, predatory and intent, waiting among the black bushes for her to emerge again into the night. She stepped aside, not breathing, moving farther from the glass.

But the cat turned its head, following her movement, its yellow eyes, catching the thin light, blazing like light-struck ice, amber eyes staring into hers. Shivering, sickened, she backed deeper into the shadows of the laundry room, clutching her voluminous black raincoat more tightly around herself, nervously smoothing its lumpy, heavy folds.

She couldn’t guess how much the cat could see in the blackness through the narrow glass; she didn’t know if it could make out the pale oval of her face, the faint halo of gray hair. The rest of her should blend totally into the darkness of the small room, her black-gloved hands, the black coat buttoned to her throat. Even her shoes and stockings were black. She had no real understanding of precisely how well cats could see in the dark, but she imagined this beast’s vision was like some secret laser beam, some infrared device designed for nighttime surveillance.

She could only guess that the cat had followed her here. How else could he have found her? Somehow he had followed the scent of her car along the village streets, then tracked her, once she left the car, perhaps by the smell of the old cemetery on her shoes, where she had walked among the graves earlier in the day? Such skill and intensity in a common beast seemed impossible. But with this animal perhaps nothing was impossible.

Earlier, approaching the house, she hadn’t seen him, and she had watched warily, too, studying the bushes, peering into the late-afternoon shadows, then had slipped in through the unlocked front door quickly. Not until she had finished her stealthy perusal of the house, taking what she wanted, and was prepared to leave again had she seen the beast, waiting out there, crouched in the night-waiting just as, three times before, it had waited. Seeing it, her mouth had gone dry, and she had wanted to turn and run, to escape.

But now the sounds behind her down the hall kept her from fleeing back through the house to the front; she was trapped here. She was terrified that someone would come this way, step from the brightly lit kitchen, down the hall, and into the laundry room, switch on a sudden light. She could hear the little family, gathered in the bright kitchen, preparing supper, the clang of pans and dishes, the parents and the three children bantering back and forth with good-natured barbs.

Stroking her bulky coat, she fingered the hard little lumps of jewelry and the three small antique clocks, the lizard handbag and matching pumps, the roll of twenties and fifties, the miniature painting, all tucked neatly away in the hidden pockets sewn into the lining. She should be on a high of elation-the day had been unusually profitable. She should not be shivering because a cat-a common, stupid beast-waited for her to emerge into the night. Yet she had never felt so helpless.

The cat moved again shifting among the shadows, and for a moment she saw it clearly, its sleek gray coat dark as storm clouds, its white parts stark against the black foliage. It was a big cat, hard-muscled. The white strip down its nose made it seem to be frowning, scowling with angry disapproval. An easy cat to identify; you would not mistake this one. This cat had no tail, just that short, ugly stub. She didn’t know if it was a Manx or if it had gotten detailed in some accident. It should have been beheaded.

It was the kind of big, square beast that might easily tackle a German shepherd and come out the winner, the kind of cat, if you saw it slinking toward you through a dim alley, ready to spring, you would turn away and take an alternate route. And the creature wasn’t a stray-it was too well fed, sleek, and confident, nothing like the thin, dirty strays her friend Wenona used to feed down around the wharf.

She would not in her wildest dreams ever be a person to get friendly with cats; not as Wenona had. Wenona had seemed drawn to cats. It was Wenona who told her about this kind of beast, told her years ago that there were unnatural felines in the world, sentient animals that knew far more of humanity than they should, knew more of human language and of human hungers and human needs than seemed possible. The tales of those creatures even now terrified her.

Now again the cat’s eyes blazed directly at her, its narrow face and hot stare burning into her, shaking her with its strange, unreadable intent. What did it want?

Three times just this last week the cat had tracked her as she approached other houses, had trailed her as she searched for an unlocked door, and had watched her slip inside-had been waiting an hour later when she came out.

The first time she saw it, she assumed it was some neighborhood cat, but days later, when she saw the same distinctively marked tomcat in a totally different neighborhood, following her again, she had thought of Wenona’s stories. Oh, it was the same cat, same narroweyed scowl, same narrow white strip down its face, same steely fur, thick shoulders, and heavy neck, same stub tail. Encountering that too-human gaze, she had gone back into the house she had just left, back through the unlocked front door, hoping that if a neighbor saw her, they’d think her a guest who had forgotten something.

And there, in a stranger’s house, standing at the front window, she had watched the cat pace the sidewalk waiting for her. She had delayed for more than an hour worrying that someone would come home, had used the bathroom twice, cursing her kidneys, and then at last when she looked out and the cat was gone, when she couldn’t see it anywhere, she had hastened away down the street, stricken with nerves, had hurried nervously to her car, scanning every bush and shadow, flung herself into the car, locked the doors, and taken off with a squeal of tires.

But she had not gone back to her room, fearing that the cat could somehow follow her there, she had driven mindlessly down into the village. Parking on Ocean Avenue, she had shed her heavy coat, left it folded on the seat, effectively concealing the sterling flatware, the heavy silver nut bowls and sterling side dishes, gone into a little hole-in-the-wall for a cup of coffee, drunk three cups, nursing them, making them last, all the while longing to be home, longing for the comfort of a closed door and tightly pulled shades, for a quick supper and a hot bath and bed. She stayed in the restaurant a long time before she worked up the nerve to return to her car in the gathering dusk.

And when she reached the white Toyota, there on the dusty hood were pawprints. A trail of big pawprints that had not been there before, prints that led across the hood to the windshield, as if the cat had stood looking in, perhaps studying her black coat.

She had driven away sickened.

Wenona said that if such a cat took an interest in you, it would not be easily discouraged. Wenona’s tales had made the back of her neck prickle; never since Wenona told her those stories had she been able to abide cats.

The third time she saw the cat she was just approaching her mark, a house she was sure was, for the moment, empty. Suddenly the same beast appeared two doors down, leaping to a porch rail, watching her, same deep scowl, far too intelligent. Glimpsing its yellow eyes, she had panicked.

Oh, she had gotten through her usual routine all right, stripped the house of what she could carry, but by the time she left again she was shaking. She had refused to return to her car, had gone brazenly to a neighbor’s house, had rung the bell and asked if she could call a cab, had said her car was stalled.

Now, tonight, she had parked much farther from the neighborhood she had chosen, hoping she could lose the beast.

She didn’t usually work at night. The middle of the day was best, on weekends when people were out in back gardening or were out around the pool, leaving the house open. She was in and out quickly, and no one the wiser until hours later.

But tonight, cruising the neighborhood, she’d seen the husband and wife raking the freshly plowed yard in preparation for reseeding the lawn, and she was pretty sure their three elementary-school children would be at the big middle-school ball game-she paid attention to such matters. Parking several blocks away, she’d hoped a change in her schedule might put the cat off.

But again he’d been waiting.

And the irony was, a cat was her alibi. A lost cat. An alibi that had served her very well.

If, in a stranger’s house, she was apprehended and confronted, as she had been three times in this village, her story was always the same. She’d been traveling with Kitty, Kitty liked to ride loose in the car, she’d had her dear Kitty since he was just a tiny little ball of fluff, he’d always ridden in the car with her, but this time he’d jumped out and run away. He’d be terrified in a strange neighborhood, she lived a long way down the coast, he wouldn’t know where he was, she couldn’t bear to think of him lost in a strange town. The story always worked. People were suckers for a pitiful lostcat. But now?

Now her carefully prepared lie had turned on her, had begun to taunt her.

On each job she changed her“lost” cat’s description just as she varied other details of her operation, but always she played the tearful, lonely woman looking for her lost Kitty; she’d say she’d heard Kitty crying inside the house, that she thought it had slipped in through an open door and was trapped and frightened, so she had gone in to find him. Her story never failed to generate sympathy, and sometimes she was offered a cup of coffee or hot tea, a slice of cake, and a promise of help in looking for Kitty. It amused her greatly to sit in someone’s kitchen drinking their tea and eating their cake, her coat loaded down with her hostess’s jewelry and money and silver flatware.

It was Wenona who gave her the idea of using a lost cat as cover. Years ago Wenona, if she was questioned while shoplifting along Hollywood Boulevard, said she was looking for her lost cat, that it had jumped out of her car. People always believed her; people were such fools. Wenona had a good job but she adored shoplifting, loved finding a little something for nothing. Now Hollywood Boulevard seemed very far away. Oh, she did miss Wenona. They had been closest friends, and, though Wenona was twenty years her senior, age had never seemed to matter.

From beyond the laundry room, footsteps suddenly sounded, coming down the hall, and she stiffened, ready to bolt out into the night.

But it was only one of the children crossing to the bathroom. She heard him pee, heard the toilet flush. Couldn’t people soundproof their bathrooms? So easy to do-the building-supply houses carried a special sheathing board for that purpose. But maybe they didn’t care.

From the kitchen the children’s voices, shrill and querulous, had begun to set her on edge. All that togetherness. The smell of spaghetti sauce cooking, its thick, rich aroma, made her stomach growl. The older girl must be setting the table; she was arguing that the knives went on the left. Her small brother whined about a television movie he wanted to watch. The father scolded irritably, his voice bored and quick.

Earlier, while she was still upstairs in the master bedroom, she had glanced out the window, watching the parents working away, diligently putting in the new lawn beneath the bright outdoor lights as if following a farmer’s almanac instruction to plant only beneath the light of vapor bulbs. People were stupid to try to grow a lawn on a California hillside; there were hardly any lawns in the village. With the increasing shortage of water and California’s frequent droughts, any homeowner with common sense plantedsome hardy, drought-resistant ground cover like ivy or ice plant.

She’d still been upstairs when she heard the tiller stop and, in a few minutes, heard the couple come in, heard them down in the laundry laughing together. They had left their dirty gardening clothes there-the clothes lay in a pile behind her-had come upstairs naked and giggling. She had slipped into the little sewing room down at the end of the hall, had watched them through the crack in the door as they entered the master bedroom, had listened to them showering together, laughing in an excess of merriment.

The three children had come in soon afterward from the ball game-she’d watched from the sewing-room window as they piled out of a van packed with kids. They had come directly upstairs, the older boy grumbling about losing the game. While they were in their rooms and their parents had not yet descended to the kitchen she had come down the stairs, lifted the miniature painting from the wall in the entry, and slid toward the back of the house and into the laundry. She had her hand on the doorknob when, through the half glass of the door, she saw the gray tomcat waiting in the gathering night, his eyes blazing up at her.

She wanted not to be afraid of the cat. She was quite aware that only crazy people had fears such as she was experiencing. Last week, coming out of the Felther house up on Ridgeview, with her inner coat pockets loaded with a lovely set of Rose of Erin sterling and a fine array of serving pieces, when she saw the gray torn watching from atop a black station wagon and she faced him and swore at him, his eyes had flared with rage.

Sentient rage.

The kind of violent anger you see only in human eyes.

She shivered again and touched her coat pocket where the miniature painting rested, wondering why she had lifted it. The primitive picture of a black cat seemed, now, a very bad omen, a symbol of her luck turned awry-as if she were goading fate.

She thought of leaving the painting on top of the washer but decided against doing so. It might give too much away.

She never took large paintings, of course; she took nothing she couldn’t conceal beneath her coat, but she could not resist a miniature. Her fence in San Francisco had some good contacts for stolen art, and the village of Molena Point was famous for its small private collections as well as for its galleries. There was, in fact, a good deal of quiet money in Molena Point, a number of retired movie people, their estates hidden back in the hills, though she avoided these. With a household staff in residence, who knew when you’d bump into an unexpected maid lurking in one of the bedrooms, or come face-to-face with the butler in the master’s study placing cigars in the humidor as in some forties’ movie.

The middle-class houses were better for her purposes, affluent enough to have some nice antiques and silver and jewelry, but not so rich as to include live-in help. And the occasional alarm systems she encountered were usually turned off when people were about the place. Her usual routine was first to slip upstairs into the master bedroom, take care of the jewelry, clean out a purse or billfold left lying on the dresser. She had taught herself well about gems, and could usually tell the real thing.

Looking out through the dark glass, she saw the cat rise suddenly. He flashed her one intent look his stare so insolent that all of Wenona’s lurid stories came back to her. She was, for an instant, almost crippled with fear.

He looked, then moved away into the blackness beneath a neighboring porch, only his white parts still showing, like bits of discarded white paper.

Why was he so persistent? Why did he care about her? Why would a cat-any kind of cat-care what she stole?

So far, the cat seemed the only living presence that had guessed her scam. The Molena PointGazettedidn’t have a clue; its little reports of local burglaries hadn’t printed one word about a woman looking for her lost cat. And, as far as she could tell, the Molena Point cops were equally ignorant. They seemed to have made no connection with her successes up and down the coast-Santa Barbara, San Jose, Ojai, San Luis Obispo, Ventura. Of course the minute the papers blabbed her cat scam she had moved on, checked into a new town, and the furor in the old town quickly died, at least in the press.

She tried to hit each town quickly, work it for just a few weeks, then get out again. Montecito had given her some really nice hauls. She’d chosen its smallest cottages among the extravagant mansions and had made some rare finds. She was amused at herself that she’d saved all her newspaper clippings, like some two-bit actress saving stage reviews-some of them were a real hoot.

But those towns down the coast had been practice runs. Molena Point was the real gem. This village had never been properly worked, and she was enjoying every minute. Or she had been, until the cat showed up.

As she fingered the heavy gold jewelry and stroked the nice fat roll of bills inside her coat, outdoors the gray cat rose again and came out from beneath the porch. And now he didn’t so much as glance at her. He turned away, trotted away purposefully up the side street as if she didn’t exist, moved off toward the front of the house, prancing insolently up the center of the sidewalk under the streetlight, his stub tail wiggling back and forth, his tomcat balls making him walk slightly straddle-legged. And he was gone, not a glance backward.

She had no notion what had taken him away so suddenly. She did not feel relieved, only apprehensive. When he didn’t appear again she let herself out, slipping open the laundry-room door. Listening to the smallest boy’s giggles from the kitchen, she engaged the push-button lock, quietly shut the door behind her, and headed up the street for her car.

But approaching her own car in the black night where she’d parked it beneath a maple tree, the Toyota’s pale, hulking shape seemed suddenly possessed, as if the cat watched from beneath it. She could not approach. Fear of the unnatural cat gripped her. She turned away from her own car and headed downhill toward the village-a coward’s response.

She’d have to get rid of the Toyota. She couldn’t bear that the cat knew this car. Burdened by her heavy coat, she stumped along down toward Ocean Avenue, telling herself she wasn’t fleeing from the cat, that she was going down to Binnie’s Italian for a nice hot supper and a beer, for a plate of Binnie’s good spaghetti, told herself that once she was fortified with spaghetti and a couple of beers she’d enjoy the little climb back up the hill to her waiting car, never mind that the coat weighed a ton. Making her way down toward the village, she fought the urge to look behind her, certain that if she looked, the cat would be there on the dark sidewalk, following her, his white paws and white markings moving like disjointed parts of a puzzle, his yellow eyes intent on her, a beast impossible to believe in-and impossible to escape.

2 [????????: pic_3.jpg]

Early-morning sun slanted into the Damen backyard, illuminating the ragged lawn, picking out each bare patch of earth where busy canine paws had been digging. Sunlight sharply defined the ragged weeds pushing up among straggling rosebushes along the back fence. Warm sunshine washed across the chaise lounge, where the tomcat lay scowling with anger. Having been rudely awakened from a deep and happy dream, he stared irritably at his human housemate.

Clyde Damen had only recently awakened himself, had brought his first cup of coffee out to sip while sitting on the back steps. He was unwashed, his dark hair resembling an untidy squirrel’s nest, his cheeks black with stubble. He wore ancient, frayed jogging shorts above hairy legs, and a ragged, washed-out T-shirt. In the cat’s opinion, he looked like he’d slept in a Dumpster. Joe Grey observed him with disgust. “You want to run that by again?” The cat’s look was incredulous. “You woke me up to tell me what? You want me to do what?” Clyde glared at him.

“I can’t believe you would eventhinksuch a thing,” Joe said. “Maybe, because I was awakened so unkindly, I didn’t hear correctly. What I thought I heard was an amazingly inane suggestion.”

“Come on, Joe. You heard correctly.” Clyde sucked at his coffee. “Why the indignation? What’s wrong with a little charity? I hadn’t thought you’d be so incredibly narrow-minded.” He sipped his brew, sucking loudly, and scratched his hairy knee. “I think it’s a great idea. If you’d try it, you might find the project interesting.”

Joe sighed. He’d had a disappointing night anyway. He didn’t need to be awakened from his much-needed sleep to this kind of stupidity. “Why me? Why lay your idiot idea on me? Let one of the other cats do it. They won’t know they’re being used.”

He’d returned home last night dismayed at his own ineptitude, and now he wasn’t even allowed to sleep out his sulk. He’d been deeply and sweetly down into delightful feline dreams when Clyde came banging out of the house, picked him up, jerking him cruelly from slumber, and laid this incrediblyrude suggestion on him. The next instant, of course, Clyde had yelped and dropped him, blood welling up across the back of his hand.

Joe had immediately curled up again and closed his eyes. Clyde had sat down on the step and stared at his hand, where the blood ran wet and dark. But then, guileless, and with incredible bad manners, Clyde made the suggestion again.

“Bloodied hand serves you right,” Joe said now. He gave Clyde a narrow, amused cat smile. “I don’t come barging into the bedroom waking you out of a sound sleep to tell you how to live your life-not that you couldn’t use a little advice.”

“I only suggested?”

He looked Clyde over coldly.“I can’t believe you’d lay that kind of rude, thoughtless request on me. I thought we were friends. Buddies.”

Joe knew quite well that the idea hadn’t originated with Clyde. And that was what made him really mad.

Cat and human stared at each other as, around them, the morning reeked of sun-warmed grass and rang with birdsong, mostly the off-key blather of a house finch. Joe smoothed his shoulder with a pink tongue. Unlike his human housemate, he was beautifully groomed, his short coat as sleek and gleaming as gray velvet, his muscled shoulders heavy and solid, his handsome white paws, white chest and throat, and the white strip down his nose as pristinely clean as new snow, his eyes as deeply golden as slanted twin moons.

He knew he was a handsome cat, he knew what a mirror was for. He knew that look of adulation in his lady’s green eyes, too. But, thinking of Dulcie at that moment, of her beautiful tabby face and soft, peach-tinted ears, he was filled with her betrayal. Complete betrayal. It was Dulcie who had put Clyde up to this insanity, it was Dulcie and her human housemate, Wilma Getz, who had hatched this plan.

Irritably he flicked an ear toward the off-key cacophony of the house finch. Didn’t those birds know the difference between sharp and flat? He didn’t like to think about Dulcie’s perfidy. Angry, hurt by her betrayal, he kept his gaze on Clyde.

Clyde shook a tangle of dark hair out of his eyes.“Just tell me what’s wrong with the idea. The venture would be charitable. It would be fun, and it would do you good. Help you practice a little kindness, increase your community awareness.”

“What do I need with community awareness?” Joe sighed, enunciating slowly and clearly, his yellow eyes wide with innocent amazement. “Let me get this straight. You want me to join a pat-the-kitty group. You want me to visit an old people’s home. You are asking me to become part of show-and-tell for the doddering elderly.” He regarded Clyde closely. “Are you out of your feeble human mind?”

“Dulcie thinks it’s a good idea.”

“Dulcie thinks it’s a good idea because it was her idea.” Joe dug his claws into the chaise cushion. Sometimes Dulcie lost all sense of proportion. “Do you really think that I’m going to allow a battalion of bedridden old people to prod and poke me, to call me ‘ootsy wootsy kitty,’ and drool all over me?”

“Come on, Joe. You’re making a big deal. If you’d just give it-”

Joe’s look blazed so wild that Clyde stopped speaking and retreated behind a swill of coffee. The cat treated him to an icy smile. “Would yousubmityourself to such amazing indignities? Turn yourself into an object of live-animal therapy?”

Clyde settled back against the steps.“You really are a snob. What makes you think those old folks are so disgusting? You’ll be old someday. A flea-bitten, broken-down bag of cat bones with a dragging belly, and who’s going to be kind to you?”

“You will. Same as you’re kind to those two disreputable old dogs.”

“Of course I’m kind to them, they’re sweet old dogs. But you-when you get old I’ll probably dump you at the animal pound.”

“Or gas me under the exhaust of that junk-heap Packard you insist on driving.”

“That Packard is a collector’s model: it’s worth a bundle of cash, and it’s in prime condition.” Clyde regarded Joe quietly. “Those old people get lonely, Joe. I’m not asking you to dedicate the rest of your life. Just a little kindness, a few hours a week. Some of those old people don’t have any family, no one to visit them, no one to talk to or to care what happens to them.”

Joe washed his left front paw.

“Don’t you read the papers? Animal therapy is the latest thing. If those old people can visit with a warm, healthy animal, hold a cuddly dog or cat on their lap, that kind of relationship can really ease their depression, bring a lot of happiness into their dull lives. There’ve been cases where-”

“Cuddly?You think I’mcuddly?”

Clyde shrugged.“I don’t. But their eyesight isn’t too good. You’re about as cuddly as a dead cactus. But hey, those old folks aren’t choosy. If you could make a few of them happy-”

“What do I care if they’re happy? What possible good can their happiness do me?”

“Just a little charity, Joe. A little love.” Clyde scratched his dark, stubbled chin.

“Love?You want me tolovethem?”

“Can’t you even imagine doing something nice for others? If you’d stop thinking about yourself all the time-and stop playing detective, following that damned cat burglar. That’s another thing. This whole cat burglar bit. I don’t like it that you were eavesdropping on Captain Harper, listening to classified police information.”

“Classified? What’s classified? The burglaries were in the paper. And I wasn’t eavesdropping. You and Harper were playing poker. You’re afraid I’ll get a line on that woman before the cops do. And who knows, maybe I will. Make Harper’s secret undercover surveillance look like a parade down Main Street.”

He washed his right paw.“Who knows, maybe I can pass along a little information to Harper. Would he object to that? He hasn’t objected in the past; I don’t remember any complaints when Dulcie and I solved the Beckwhite murder, or turned up the evidence on Janet Jeannot’s killer.”

Clyde’s dark, sleepy eyes stared into Joe’s slitted yellow ones. “I’m not going to discuss that. You go off on these big ego trips. Like you were the only one who ever solved a murder. And if I tell you that stuff’s dangerous, that you and Dulcie could get yourselves killed or maimed, you go ballistic, pitch a first-class tantrum.”

Clyde stared into his empty coffee cup.“Couldn’t you at least volunteer a couple afternoons a week? If your best friend likes the idea, couldn’t you try? Try giving something back to the community?”

Joe’s eyes widened to full moons. “Give something back to the community? Talk about limp-wristed dogoodism. Why should I give anything to some community? I’m a cat, not a human. What did this village ever-”

“May I point out that Molena Point is an unusually nice place for a cat to live? That you’re lucky to have landed here?” Clyde sucked at his empty cup and moved his position on the step, following the shifting path of the sun. “How many California towns can offer you a veritable cat Eden? Where else are there endless woods and hills and gardens to hunt in, and even the street traffic is in your favor. Molena Point drivers are unbelievably slow and careful. Everyone takes great pains, Joe, not to run over wandering cats. Even the tourists are thoughtful. You want to move back into San Francisco’s alleys, dodging trucks, avoiding hopheads and drunks? You try living in Sacramento or downtown L.A., see how long before you end up as pressed cat meat.”

Joe glared.

“You fell into paradise when you landed in Molena Point. It would seem to me you’d be anxious to pay your dues.”

No comment. The gray tomcat washed his shoulder.

“To say nothing of the free gourmet food you village cats indulge in behind Jolly’s Deli. Where else are you going to be served free caviar, smoked Puget Sound salmon, imported Brie? You may not have noticed, Joe, but between Jolly’s gourmetic freebies and the rabbits and mice you gorge on, you’re getting a sizable paunch.”

“I wouldn’t talk about paunch, the shape you’re in.” Joe looked him over coldly. His stub tail beat so hard against the cushions that Clyde imagined an invisible tail lashing: the tail that was no longer a part of the tomcat’s anatomy.

“Why not give it one visit, just to see what those old people are like?”

“I don’t seeyouvisiting the feeble elderly. And since when are you so concerned about Molena Point’s old folks?”

“If you’ll try just one pet visiting day, I’ll treat you to the best filet in Molena Point, delivered to the house sizzling hot.”

“Not for all the filets in the village will I be crammed into a bus beside a bunch of yapping stink-a-poos scratching and lifting their legs, hauled away to an institution, locked inside rooms that smell like a hospital, rammed by wheelchairs, shoved into the laps of strangers to be poked and prodded, people I never saw before and don’t want to see, people smelling of Vick’s VapoRub and wet panties.” Joe’s eyes burned huge and angry. “Get them a teddy bear. Get them a stuffed cat-one of those cute furry life-size kitties you see on the shelf in the drugstore, but leave yours trulyalone.” He turned his back, curled up in the warm sunshine, and closed his eyes.

But Joe’s reluctance would come to nothing, his stubborn negativism would soon register zero. When soft little Dulcie set her mind to it and turned that sweet green gaze on him, his blustering tomcat resolve would begin to melt. Before another two days had passed, the gray tomcat would find himself enduring with amazing patience the palsied stroking of the old folks’ frail, wrinkled hands-and soon would find himself studying the Casa Capri Retirement Villa with intense interest, trying to understand what was not right within that seemingly gentle, cosseting home for aged villagers.

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The Molena Point Library, deserted at midnight, was so silent that the book-lined walls echoed with Dulcie’s purrs; the little brindle cat lay sprawled on a reference table across a tangle of newspapers. Around her the dim, empty rooms stretched away into mysterious caverns that now belonged to her alone. At night the library’s shadowed sanctuaries were hers; she shared her space with no one.

There was no hustle of hurrying feet, no hasty staff, no too-bright lights, no busy patrons, no swarms of village children herded by their teachers in barely controlled and giggling tangles among the brightly colored books. In the daytime library Dulcie was a social beast, wandering amiably among sneakers and nyloned legs, receiving almost more stroking and admiring words than she could handle. She was, officially, the Molena Point Library Cat, appointed so by all but one of the library staff. Library cats were the latest trend in bibliothecal public relations; in the daytime, Dulcie was Molena Point Library’s official greeter, collector of new patrons, head of PR. The one librarian who disapproved of her was a distinct minority. Her recent attempts to oust Dulcie had met with villagewide resistance. Through petitions and public hearings, Dulcie’s position was now solid and secure. She had seen her own picture in the official newsletter of the Library Cat Society along with pictures of countless other similarly appointed feline dignitaries. She was, in the daytime, a busy social creature.

But at night, she no longer need pretend to dumb ignorance, at night she could do just as she chose, she had only to paw a few selected volumes from the shelves and,voila:she could follow any mystery, travel anywhere, entertain herself with any kind of dream.

Beyond the dark library windows, the village streets were empty. Oak branches twisted black against the moon-washed clouds, their gnarled shadows reaching in across the table and across the pile of open newspapers. Each paper was neatly affixed to a wooden rod by which it could be hung on a rack. Dulcie had, with some difficulty, lifted each from the rack in her teeth and leaped with it to the table, spread it out, taking care not to tear the pages.

Occasionally a light raced across the windows and she listened to a lone car whish down the street. When it had passed, her ears were filled again with the crashing of waves six blocks away against the Molena Point cliffs; and she could hear, from the roof above, a lone oak twig scraping against the overlapping clay tiles of the low, Mediterranean building.

None of the newspapers she had retrieved was a local publication; each had come from one or another California coastal town south of Molena Point. For hours she had studied these, piecing together a history of the cat burglar. Turning the pages with her claws, trying to leave no telltale puncture mark in the soft paper, she found the burglar to be both a puzzle and a grand joke. The woman was completely brazen, walking calmly into unlocked houses in the middle of the day, walking out again loaded down with jewelry, cash, small electronic equipment, and objets d’art. She had robbed some forty residences in a dozen coastal towns. This had to be the same woman who was operating now in Molena Point; though the local paper had made no mention of the cat connection. But Joe Grey was certain of his facts, Joe had a private source of information not open to the general citizen.

Unlike Joe, Dulcie found the woman’s methods highly amusing. To use a cat for cover, and to commit her robberies with such chutzpah, tickled her senses, made her laugh.

Though she was stirred by other emotions, too. Just as the antics of a brazen jay were amusing yet made her lust to kill the creature, so the cat burglar’s brash nerve, while it entertained her, made her long to track and pounce.

Dulcie’s own sharp, predatory lusts were as nothing compared to Joe’s interest. He’d been on the trail of the cat burglar for weeks-he was fascinated by the woman, and with typical tomcat ego he was enraged by a burglar who used a cat as her alibi.

Dulcie rolled over in a shaft of moonlight and batted at a moth that had gotten trapped in the room. It kept coming back to the light, darting mindlessly through the beam. She supposed she ought to put the newspapers back in the rack, but that was hard work. If she left them, Wilma would collect them from the table in the morning and put them away; Wilma always picked up after the late-evening patrons who straggled out leaving a mess when the library closed at nine. Wilma might be gray-haired, but she was a whirlwind when it came to work; she could work circles around these younger librarians.

Dulcie’s housemate walked several miles a day, worked out at the gym once a week, and could still hit the bull’s-eye consistently at the target range, a skill she had acquired in her profession as a parole officer. Wilma’s professional interest in helping others had made her a natural to help with the Pet-a-Pet program.

Day after tomorrow would mark their third visit to the retirement center-though Dulcie hadn’t told Wilma all that she’d learned there. Best to keep some things to herself, at least for now.

There was, within the sedate and ordered Casa Capri, more going on than the little everyday problems of the cosseted elderly. She hadn’t told Wilma the stories she’d heard; she didn’t want to upset her. And she wasn’t telling Joe, either, but for a different reason.

She wanted Joe to join the Pet-a-Pet program out of kindness, not because he couldn’t resist a mystery. If she told him what little old Mae Rose had confided to her, he’d be all over those old folks, be up there like a streak, pawing and snooping around.

No, she wanted him to join Pet-a-Pet out of compassion.

She’d longed to be a part of Pet-a-Pet from the minute she read about it. The half dozen magazine articles she’d found had her hooked-the idea of cat therapists for the elderly and for disturbed children seemed a truly wonderful venture, a way to do some real good in the world.

The trouble with Joe, the only fault he had, was that he didn’t give a damn about doing good. Telling him of the cats she’d read about, who had helped people, had no effect but to make him laugh.

She’d told him about the cat who helped Alzheimer’s patients recover some of their vanished mental capacity ‘through his unconditional love and by spurring fond associations in their minds,’ and Joe scoffed. The therapist cat, Bungee, had a special magic, a real curative power for those old people, but when she told that to Joe, he had collapsed with laughter, rolling against a rooftop chimney, shouting with high amusement.

“I don’t see what’s so funny. The article told how patients who practically never spoke would talk to Bungee, and how several old folks who had to be spoonfed began to feed themselves, and how the agitated ones were calmer if they could pet and stroke Bungee.”

Joe had swatted idly at the roof gutter, dislodging a wad of leaves.“You can’t believe that drivel.”

“Of course I believe it. It was a legitimate magazine article; it had pictures of Bungee with the old people.”

“Hype, Dulcie. Nothing but hype.”

“Hype for what? The cat isn’t running for president.”

“Is he making a movie?”

“Of course he’s not making a movie. Can’t you understand anything about helping those less fortunate? It must be terrifying to grow old, not to have a strong body anymore, not be able to leap or storm up a tree.”

“Since when do humans leap and storm up trees?”

“You know what I mean. Don’t be such a grouch. It must be terrible to feel one’s joints stiffen and have pains and aches and bad digestion.” Her own digestion, as Joe’s, was efficient and diverse. Mice, rats, caviar, lizards, Jolly’s imported cheeses and pastrami, all were enjoyed with equanimity and no tummy trouble. “I just mean, it’s terrible to get old. If we could-”

“So it’s terrible to get old. So are you alone going to save the world?” He opened his mouth in a wide cat laugh. “One small tabby cat-what are you, Bastet the mother goddess? Healer of mankind?”

“Just a few old people,” she had snapped. “And who are you to say I can’t help? What does a mangy tomcat know?”

That ended with claws and teeth and a fur-flying scuffle across the roof. Fighting, they rolled so near the edge that Joe nearly fell to the pavement below. As he hung swinging, and then crawled up again, they’d stared at each other, shocked; then they’d raced away across the roofs, dodging the flue stacks and chimneys.

But no matter how she flirted and teased him, he hadn’t changed his mind about visiting Casa Capri. She felt so frustrated she’d been tempted to tell him Mae Rose’s story. That would get him up there in a minute.

But then he’d be all fake purrs, fake wiggles, snooping around, caring nothing for the old people, caring for nothing but Mae Rose’s little mystery that might, after all, be only a figment of an old woman’s twisted imagination.

Mrs. Rose was a tiny woman, a little miniature human like an oversize doll, the kind of life-size old-lady doll you might see in the Neiman-Marcus windows at Christmas. There was no Neiman-Marcus in Molena Point, but Wilma did her Christmas shopping up in the city, returned home to describe the wonders of the store’s Christmas windows. Dulcie could just imagine Mae Rose in one of those elegant displays, the little old lady sitting in a rocking chair, her bright white hair all wispy and glowing like angel hair on a fancy Christmas tree, her round face with too much pink rouge on her cheeks, her plump littlehands, her twinkling eyes as bright blue as the blue eyes of the finest porcelain doll.

But Mae Rose wasn’t all fluff. Not if you could believe the old lady’s stories about what went on behind the closed doors at Casa Capri.

Dulcie told herself, when she was feeling sensible, that probably the disappearance of certain patients was the old woman’s imagination. Mae Rose said that six patients had vanished, that when a patient had a stroke or became severely ill, sick enough to be transferred from the Care Unit over to Nursing, that was the last anyone ever saw of them. When Mae Rose’s friend Jane Hubble was sent to Nursing, Mae Rose claimed she was not allowed to see Jane anymore. Jane had no family to care that she had vanished or to try to find her. Mae said that none of the six who had disappeared had a family.

As Dulcie lay curled on Mae Rose’s lap, with Mae Rose tucked into her wheelchair, Mae told her about Lillie Merzinger, too, and about Mary Nell Hook, both of whom had gone to Nursing and were not seen again. Mary Nell Hook, who had cancer, was moved to Nursing where she could be on pain medication. Mae said if Mary Nell Hook had died of the cancer, then why didn’t the staff tell them all, and maybe take them in the van to Mary Nell’s funeral.

Mae Rose said Lillie Merzinger had owned a cocktail bar when she was younger, and when she came to Casa Capri she brought her record collection from the forties, that she played the old records in her room, and they all liked to listen. But when Lillie had the heart attack and was taken to Nursing, no one ever heard her music anymore. Well of course Lillie was too sick to play her records. But couldn’t they have played her music for her, over in Nursing?

Dulcie couldn’t point out that there might be reasons for them not to play music in a sick ward, that maybe it would disturb the really ill patients. Sometimes it was all she could do to remain mute. She couldn’t argue with Mae Rose that there might be reasons for not letting everyone go visiting over to Nursing, where people would be disturbed; she couldn’t say anything. All she could do was purr, hold her tongue and purr.

Mae Rose never mentioned her wild tales to Wilma; probably she thought Wilma wouldn’t believe her. The sensible thing to think was that Mae’s stories were only an old lady’s crazy imaginings, tales woven to keep from getting bored.

But try as she might, Dulcie couldn’t leave it at that. She kept wondering how such stories got started in Mae Rose’s mind, from what crumb of truth they might have grown. The stories picked and nipped at her as persistent as a hungry flea nibbling.

Lashing her tail, she stared out through the dark library windows, past the knotted oak branches, where the lifting moon beckoned. Midnight was near-hunting time. She needed no clock-her sense of time was far better than the ticking white clock hanging on the wall above the checkout desk; a cat knew when the mice and rabbits stirred. Leaping down, she trotted through the shadows into Wilma’s office, hurried past Wilma’s desk and out her cat door to the narrow village street.

Moonlight brightened the shop windows and flower boxes and sheltered doorways, sent long shadows stretching out from the potted trees and the tubs of flowers, and from the old oaks that shaded the sidewalks taking up part of the street, narrowing the flow of daytime traffic. Oak branches reached across rooftops and fingered at balconies; and between the knotted limbs the moonlit clouds ran swiftly. The hunting would be fine, the rabbits giddy and silly in the racing light.

She felt giddy herself, felt suddenly moon silly. Felt like rolling and playing.

And, though both cats and rabbits play and dance in the moonlight, that did not prevent her from hungering for rabbit blood. Heading south through the village, she was wild with conflicting emotions-the hunger to hunt, but hunger as well for things she could hardly name. She stopped every few doors to stand upright and stare into a lit shop window.

The little coffee shop kept baked breads and cookies piled in baskets just behind the glass; the scent was heady and sweet. But she stopped for a longer look into the dress shop, admiring a red silk cocktail sheath. For strange and mysterious reasons, the richly draped garment made her little cat heart beat double time.

To the casual viewer Dulcie was only a plain tabby cat. Yet beneath her sleek dark stripes, beneath those neat, peach-tinted ears, fierce yearnings stirred. Longings that had never belonged to an ordinary feline.

Ever since she was a small kitten she had coveted silk stockings, little silky bras, black lace teddies, soft gauzy scarves and the softest cashmere sweaters. By the time she was six months old she had taught herself to claw open any neighbor’s window screen and to leap at a doorknob, swinging and kicking until she had turned it and fought the door open. Wilma’s neighbors for blocks around were used to Dulcie’s thefts. When they missed a silk nightie, or a pair of panty hose which had been hung over the bathroom rack to dry, theyhad only to walk up the block to Wilma’s house, rummage through the wooden box that Wilma kept on her back porch, and retrieve their lost garments. Neighbors, heading for Wilma’s porch to look for stolen undies, often ended up in pleasant little social gatherings.

Now, staring up into the shop window at the red silk dress, Dulcie yearned. She thought about the feel of the silk, and about diamond earrings and about midnight suppers at lovely restaurants. Who knew what strange heritage produced such unfeline dreams? Who knew what lineage made the little cat yearn so desperately, sometimes, to be a human person. She knew there were Celtic tales of strange, unnatural cats, stories so old they were passed down and down before history was ever written; she knew folk stories that made the fur along her back stand stiff with amazement and sometimes with fear.

Fear because she longed so sharply for things a cat did not need, longed so intensely for a life she could never know.

Joe Grey’s talents were just as remarkable as her own, but Joe was quite content to remain a cat, was totally happy to experience human perceptions and human talents but not have to bother with neckties, income tax, or vicious lawsuits.

Leaving the dress shop, she trotted north up the sidewalk to the Aronson Gallery, and there, pressing her nose against the glass, she enjoyed a moment of pure self-indulgence. Studying the three drawings of her that were exhibited in the window, she let her ego fly, allowed her own lovely likeness, gold-framed and more than life-size, to inflate her feline ego, enlarge her self-esteem like a hot balloon threatening to sail away with her; she imagined herself dangling in the sky, unable to return to earth, hoist on her own silly vanity.

The artist’s rendering of her long green eyes was lovely; her peach-tinted paws and her peach-toned ears and little pink nose were a delight. She luxuriated in the sleek lines of her graceful form, in the curving mink brown stripes of her glossy tabby fur, and sighed with pleasure. Who needed red silk cocktail dresses? Charlie Getz had drawn her with such love, had made her so beautiful, she should long for nothing more.

Charlie, Wilma’s niece, had come to visit early last fall, moving into Wilma’s guest room with her paints and drawing pads and with a monumental disappointment in her young life. A disenchanted graduate of a San Francisco art school, Charlie had discovered only after completing her courses that she couldn’t make an adequate living at her chosen major, that she was not cut out for the demands of today’s commercial art and that there seemed little money in a fledgling career as an animal artist.

After a short sulk, she had started a household repair and cleaning business, CHARLIE’S FIX-IT, CLEAN-IT. In Molena Point her services were already in such demand that she was working ten and twelve hours a day and couldn’t hire enough help. She loved her new business, loved the hard work, loved the success of her venture. And she gloated over the growing balance in her bank account. But belatedly, after giving up an art career, she found that the Aronson Gallery wanted her animal sketches. Dulcie knew the gallery well, and it was highly respected.

Just last fall, she and Joe had broken into the Aronson Gallery when they were searching for clues to the murder of Janet Jeannot, one the gallery’s best-known artists. Of course Sicily Aronson knew nothing of their B&E, or of their involvement in solving the crime. Who would suspect a cat of meddling?

Smiling, remembering that night she and Joe had prowled the locked gallery searching for clues, she dropped down from the windowsill and sat a moment on the warm sidewalk, washing her paws, then headed across the village to find Joe.

She made a little detour up Ocean, past the greengrocer’s, sniffing the lingering scent of peaches and melons, then the delicious aromas which seeped through the glass door of the butcher’s, but soon she crossed the westbound lane of Ocean, crossed the wide, tree shaded median and the deserted eastbound lane. Heading up Dolores toward the white cottage which Joe Grey shared with Clyde Damen, she plotted how best to soften up Joe, get him to join Pet-a-Pet. And she kept thinking about Jane Hubble and the other patients, who, Mae Rose said, had disappeared. Probably she was being silly, believing such stories; probably the old people at Casa Capri were just as safe as babes tucked in their beds, the staff kind and unthreatening-except perhaps for the owner of the care home.

Beautiful Adelina Prior, in her lovely designer suits and her creme-de-la-creme coiffure and makeup, seemed, to Dulcie, as out of place at Casa Capri as a tiger among bunny rabbits. Why would a woman who looked like a model want to spend her life running an old people’s home?

Trotting through the inky shadows where large oaks roofed the sidewalk she thought of being trapped in Casa Capri, behind those tightly locked doors-if there was some criminal activity-and her paws began to sweat.

It was one thing to pry into the crimes she and Joe had solved earlier this year, where they could escape through windows and unlocked doors and over rooftops. But to be confined within Casa Capri, where the doors were always bolted, made a chill of fear clamp her ears and whiskers tight to her head, made her cling low to the dark sidewalk, in a wary slink.

But yet she wanted to go there. And she knew, if something was amiss, she’d keep digging at it, clawing at it until the mystery was laid bare.

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In the hills high above the village a miniature world of tiny creatures crept through the grass, vibrating and humming, a community whose members were unaware of any existence but their own, of any needs but their own to kill or be killed, to eat or be eaten. The two cats, poised above this Lilliputian landscape, waited motionless to strike. Around them the grass stems had been pushed aside to carve out little mouse-sized trails, but some of the paths were wide enough for rabbits, too, major lanes winding away, dotted with pungent droppings. One pile of rabbit scat was so fresh that grass blades still shivered from the animal’s swift flight. The cats, leaping to follow, panted with anticipation.

Above them the clouds drew apart, freeing the moon’s light, and the moon itself swam between washes of blowing vapor; the dark hills caught the light, humping between earth and sky like the bodies of sprawled, sleeping beasts.

All night they had worked together stalking cooperatively, not as normal cats hunt but as a pair of lions would hunt, hazing and driving their prey. Dulcie’s eyes burned toward the trembling shadows, her smile was a killer’s smile, her paws were swift. She was not, now, Wilma’s cosseted kitty rolling on stolen silk teddies.

But yet as they hunted, a poetry filled her, and she began to imagine she was Bast, stalking among papyrus thickets, clutching live geese in her teeth. Racing through the grass, she was Bast, hunting beside Egyptian kings, Bast the revered cat goddess, Bast the serpent slayer leaping to the kill?

The rabbit spun and bolted straight at her and beyond her, exploded away, was past before she could strike. She jerked around streaking after it, hot with embarrassment. Joe had flushed the creature nearly into her paws, and she had missed it. It sped away, kicking sand in her face, dodged, zigzagged, showed her only its white fluff tail, and disappeared into a tangle of wild holly. Her nostrils were filled with its fear and with the smell of her own shame.

But then it swerved out again, and she dodged after it. As it doubled back she sprang, snatched it in midair, clamped her teeth deep into its struggling body.

Its scream cut the night as she tasted its blood, its cry was shrill, as terrified as the scream of a murdered woman. It raked her with its hind claws, slashing at her belly. She bit deeper, opening its throat. It jerked and stopped struggling and was still, limp and warm, the life draining from it.

She carried the rabbit back to Joe, and they bent together over the kill. He did not mention her daydreaming inattention. He scarfed his share of the carcass, rending and tearing, flinging the fur away, crunching bone.

“Someday,” she said, “you’re going to choke yourself, gorging. Snuff out your own life, victim to a sliver of rabbit bone.”

“So call 911. What were you dreaming, back there?” He gave her an annoyed male look, and ripped fur and flesh from the bones.

She didn’t answer. He shrugged. The rabbit was succulent and sweet, fattened on garden flowers. Dulcie skinned her half carefully, then stripped morsels of meat from the little bones, eating slowly. Only when the bones were clean, when nothing was left but bones and skull, did they settle in for a wash. Licking themselves, cleaning their faces, then their paws, working carefully in between claws and between their sensitive pads, they at last cleaned each other’s ears. Then, stomachs full, they sat in the moonlight, looking down upon the village, at the moonstruck rooftops beneath the dark oaks and eucalyptus.

Because many of the village shops had once been summer cottages, the entire village was now a tangled mix: shops, cottages, galleries, and motels, crowded together any which way. But where the hills rose above the village, the houses were newer and farther apart, with dry yellow verges between. It was here that the cats hunted. Besides the rabbits and ground squirrels, the mice and birds, there were occasional large and bad-tempered rats. Both cats carried scars from rat fights; and Joe remembered too vividly the rats in San Francisco’s alleys when he was a kitten, rats that had seemed, then, as big and dangerous as Rottweilers.

It was Clyde who had rescued him from those dark alleys. He’d had a piece of luck landing with Clyde and then the two of them moving down here to Molena Point. Though if he ever admitted to Clyde how much he really did like the village, he’d never hear the last of it.

“What are you thinking?”

“That Clyde can be a damned headache.”

She stared at him.“You mean about the Pet-a-Pet program? If Clyde ordered you not to go near Casa Capri, you’d be up there in the shake of a whisker.”

“I wasn’t thinking of? Oh, forget it.”

She looked at him unblinking.

“You’re going to keep at it, aren’t you? Keep nagging until I agree.”

“What did I say?”

“Staring a hole through my head.”

“You could at least try.”

He looked hard at her.

She smiled and licked his ear.

He watched her warily.

“They talk to me, Joe. That little Mrs. Rose, she tells me all kinds of secrets. I feel so sorry for her sometimes.” She didn’t intend to tell him all of Mae Rose’s secret, but she’d like to tweak his curiosity ever so slightly.

He lay down and rolled over, crushing the grass beneath his gray shoulders. Lying upside down staring at the sky, he glanced at her narrowly. There was more to this Casa Capri business than she was saying.

She patted at a blade of grass.“Those old people needsomeoneto tell their secrets to.”

The cry of a nighthawk swept the moonlit sky, itschee chee cheerising and dropping as the bird circled, sucking up mosquitoes and gnats.

She said,“Wilma tells them stories:”

“Tells who stories?”

“The old people. Cat stories. About the Egyptian tombs and cat mummies and Egyptian hunting cats and about?”

He flipped to his feet, staring at her.

“Not about speaking cats,” she said softly. “Just cat stories. She’s always done story hour for the children at the library. This is no different. Both our visits, after the cats and dogs were all settled down in the old people’s laps, when everyone was yawning and cozy, she told stories.

“She told the little milkmaid cat. You know,There was a little cat down Tibb’s Farm, not much more’n a kitten-a little dairy maid with a face so clean as a daisy but she wanted to know too much? And all was elder there and there was a queer wind used to blow there?”

“Boring. Boring as hell. Probably the old people love that stuff.”

But her look iced him right down to his claws.

“And why do they need animals to visit them, if Wilma tells them stories? Isn’t that excitement enough? You don’t want to overtax those old folks.”

She sighed.

“Get her to read that story by Colette, the one where the cat gets pushed off the high-rise balcony, that ought to grab them.”

She shivered and moved closer to him in the tall grass. They were quiet for a while, listening to the nighthawk and to the far pounding of the sea. But, thinking of Casa Capri, she felt like the little milkmaid cat. She wanted to know too much. She was certain, deep in her cat belly, that she was going to find, like the little milkmaid, that there wassummat bad down there.

She could hardly wait.

5 [????????: pic_6.jpg]

Mae Rose had her good days, when she was able to walk slowly out onto the patio, holding on to the back of the chairs, when she could sit out there enjoying the flowers and the warm sun. But there were days when she was so shaky, when she looked back at herself from the mirror white as flour paste.

Those days she felt vague and afraid, those days she was too weak to walk at all, and had to be helped not only from her bed and to get dressed, but even into her wheelchair. Those bad days, a nurse wheeled her into the social room and through it to the dining room and helped to feed her, and she felt 120 years old.

But the times when she woke feeling strong and happy and ready for the day, she felt as good as she had at fifty. Those times she could even sew a little. Of course, she still made the doll clothes-that was nearly all she had left. All her life she’d made doll clothes, even when she was so busy working in wardrobe before the children were born. After the children came she’d left little theater, and that was when she hit on making a business of designing doll wardrobes. James had laughed at her-James had always patronized her-but she’d had a brochure printed up with pictures of her dressed dolls, and she sent carefully stitched samples of her little doll coats and dresses, too. It didn’t take long before she was making enough money from her exclusive toy-store customers to dress herself and their three girls and buy the little extras they wanted. James said she spoiled the children. James thought her impossibly childish just because she loved the little, pretty details of life. If that made her childish, she couldn’t help it. James said she would have fit better in the Victorian era, when a woman could be admired for choosing to deal only with the minute and the pretty.

Well she’d raised three children, and not a lot of help from James. He had died when their oldest, Marisa, was only twelve. It wasn’t her fault that she hadn’t been able to deal with the passions of those children; they were James’s children, born and bred. When they got into their teens, and she was trying to raise them alone, it seemed impossible that the little beasts could be her own. The girls’ puberty had been a terrible time: she had suffered from too many sick headaches during those years.

But the girls all got married off at last, and whatever went on in between she had wiped from memory. Now, of course, all three girls lived so far away that they could seldom visit, two on the East Coast with their husbands, and Marisa in Canada on a farm and already five children of her own to worry over. Now that she didn’t see the girls except every few years, and now that Wenona, her one good friend, was dead these long years, and Jane Hubble wasn’t here anymore, the doll wardrobes were all she had.

She missed Jane. She missed Wenona. Years ago, when Wenona died, before she, Mae, ever came to live here at Casa Capri, she had known she would spend the last years of her life alone. Wenona had been her only real friend. In little theater all those years together, Wenona in charge of scenery and publicity, and they’d had such lovely times. Their long walks through the village, and shopping together, going up to the city. Wenona had loved to look at fabrics for the doll wardrobes though she didn’t sew. Wenona couldn’t really love the dolls, not like she cared about cats.

She had to laugh, the way Wenona always had to go feed the stray cats down at the wharf. As if that were her sole responsibility. And the way she spoiled her own cats, putting in cat doors, buying special food, tramping the neighborhood calling if one of them didn’t come home. Always worrying over her cats.

But then Wenona went on down to Hollywood with a wonderful chance to work in the MGM prop department. She’d thought Wenona would be back, that she really wouldn’t like Hollywood, but she had stayed. She came up once a year, and they had a few days together, but then the cancer, very quick, and Wenona was gone.

And she was alone again.

Wenona dead. James dead. And her own daughters across the country. When Jane Hubble had come to live here, that was a blessing, but now Jane, too. The nurses said she was over in Nursing, said where else would she be? But she didn’t believe them.

She’d given Jane one of her five dolls before Jane had the stroke-they said it was a stroke. Once she asked a nurse if Jane still had the doll, and the nurse had looked so puzzled. But then she said yes, of course Jane had the doll.

If Jane had gone away or died, she’d like to have the little doll back again as a keepsake to remind her of Jane. But she didn’t ask. They were so strict here, strict and often cross. They took good enough care of you, kept you clean, changed your linens and washed your clothes, and the food was nice, but she sometimes felt as if Adelina Prior’s hard spirit, her cold ways, rubbed off on all the staff. There was no one Mae could talk to.

When she had phoned her trust officer to tell him that she didn’t think Jane really was over in Nursing, he treated her as if she was senile. Said he was sorry, that he had talked with the owner, Ms. Prior, and Jane was too sick to have visitors, that he saw nothing wrong. Said that the Nursing wing was too busy and crowded with IV tubes for anyone to visit,that visitors got in the way and upset the sick patients.

Jane would hate it over there. Jane was so wild and full of fun. In that way, Jane was like Wenona. Those years when Mae and Wenona roomed together, Wenona was always the bold one, always making trouble. She would never put up with any kind of rules, from their landlord or from the manager of little theater when she was helping with the sets. And Jane was like that, too, always telling the nurses how stupid the rules were. She made everyone laugh, so crazy and reckless-until they took her away.

Four times Mae had tried to go over to Nursing to visit, and every time a nurse found her and turned her chair around and wheeled her back. So demeaning to be wheeled around against her will, like a baby.

Eula said maybe Jane packed up and walked right out of Nursing, even if she did have an attack. Eula was her only friend now. Eula-so sour and heavy-handed.

She had wanted to tell Bonnie Dorriss, who ran the Pet-a-Pet program, about Jane, but she decided not to. Bonnie Dorriss was too matter-of-fact. That sturdy, sandy-haired, freckled young woman would never believe Jane had disappeared; she’d laugh just like everyone else did.

Well at least when Pet-a-Pet started, she had the little cat to talk to. Holding Dulcie and stroking her, looking into her intelligent green eyes, she could tell Dulcie all the things that hurt, that no one else wanted to hear. Cats understood how you felt. Even if they couldn’t comprehend the words, they understood from your voice what you were feeling.

Maybe the little cat liked her voice, too, because she really seemed to listen, would lie looking up right into her face, and with her soft paw she would pat her hand as if to say,“It’s all right. I’m here, I understand how you are grieving. I’m here now, and I love you.”

6 [????????: pic_7.jpg]

This was not a happy morning. Joe’s stomach twitched, his whole body ached with sorrow. As he watched through the front window, Clyde backed the Packard out of the drive and headed away toward the vet’s. Poor old Barney lay on the front seat wrapped in a blanket, too sick even to sit up and look out the window, though the old golden retriever loved the wind in his face, loved to see the village sweeping by. When Clyde had carried him out to the car he’d looked as limp as a half-full bag of sawdust.

Early last night Barney had seemed fine, frolicking around the backyard in spite of his arthritis. But this morning when Joe slipped into the kitchen just at daylight, Barney lay on the linoleum panting, his eyes dull with a deep hurt somewhere inside, and his muzzle against Joe’s nose hot and dry. Joe hadn’t realized how deeply he loved Barney until he’d found the old golden retriever stretched out groaning with the pain in his middle.

He had bolted back into the bedroom and waked Clyde, and Joe himself had called Dr. Firreti-said he was a houseguest-while Clyde pulled on a crumpled sweatshirt and a pair of jeans. Dr. Firreti said to meet him at the clinic in ten minutes.

Last night Joe’d gotten home about 3:00 A.M., parting from Dulcie on Ocean Avenue so full of rabbit, and so tired from a hard battle with a wicked-tempered raccoon, that he hadn’t even checked out the kitchen for a late-night snack. He’d gone directly to the bedroom and collapsed on the pillow next to Clyde, hadn’t even bothered to wash the coon blood from his whiskers, had hardly hit the pillow, and he was asleep.

He woke two hours later, puzzled by the faint sound of groaning. The bedroom clock said barely 5:00 A.M., and, trotting out to the kitchen, he’d found Barney hugging the linoleum with pain. Now at five-fifteen Barney was on his way to the vet, to a cold metal table, anesthetics, a cage, and Joe didn’t like to imagine what else.

He lay down on the back of his private easy chair and looked out at the empty street. The smell of exhaust fumes still clung, seeping in through the glass. From the kitchen, he could hear Rube pacing and whining, already missing Barney. The black Lab hadn’t been parted from the golden since they were pups. Joe listened to him moaning and fussing, then, unable to stand the old Lab’s distress, he leaped down.

Pushing open the kitchen door, he invited the big Lab through the living room and up onto his private chair, onto his beautifully frayed, cat hair-covered personal domain. He never shared this chair, not with any cat or dog, never with a human-no one was allowed near it-but now he encouraged old Rube to climb rheumatically up.

The old dog stretched out across the soft, frayed seat, laid his head on the arm of the chair, and sighed deeply. Joe settled down beside him.

This chair had been his own since Clyde first found him, wounded and sick, in that San Francisco gutter. Taking him home to his apartment after a difficult few days at the vet’s, Clyde had made a nice bed in a box for him, but he had preferred the blue easy chair, Clyde’s only comfortable chair. Clyde hadn’t argued. Joe was still a pitifully sick little cat; he had almost died in that gutter. Joe had known, from the time he was weaned, to play human sympathy for all he could get.

From the moment he first curled up in the bright new chair, that article of furniture was his. Now the chair wasn’t blue any longer, it had faded to a noncolor and was nicely coated with his own gray fur deposited over the years. He had also shredded the arms and the back in daily clawing sessions, ripping the covering right down to the soft white stuffing. This texturing, overlaid with his own rich gray cat hair, had created a true work of art.

The old dog, reclining, sniffed the fabric deeply, drooled on the overstuffed arm, and sighed with loneliness and self-pity.

“Come on, Rube. Show a little spine. Dr. Firreti’s a good vet.”

Rube rolled his eyes at Joe and subsided into misery.

Joe crawled over onto the big dog’s shoulder and licked his head. But, lying across Rube, Joe felt lost himself. He was deeply worried for Barney. Barney’s illness left him feeling empty, strangely vulnerable and depressed.

He stayed with Rube until long after the old black Lab fell asleep. He had managed to comfort Rube, but he needed comforting himself. Needed a little coddling. He studied the familiar room, his shredded chair, the shabby rug, the battered television, the pale, unadorned walls. This morning, his and Clyde’s casually shabby bachelor pad no longer appeared comforting but seemed, instead, lonely and neglected.

Joe rose. He needed something.

He needed some kind of nurturing that home no longer offered.

Frightened at his own malaise, he gave Rube a last lick and bolted out through his cat door. Trotting up the street, then running flat out, he flew across the village, across Ocean, past the closed shops, past the little restaurants that smelled of pancakes and bacon and coffee, fled past the closed galleries and the locked post office.

From a block away he saw that Wilma’s kitchen light was on, reflected against the oak tree in her front yard. He could smell fresh-baked gingerbread, too, and he raced toward that welcoming house like some little kid running home from schoolyard bullies.

Galloping across Wilma’s front yard and up the steps, he shot straight for the bright glow of Dulcie’s plastic cat door and through it, into Wilma’s friendly kitchen. The aroma of gingerbread curled his claws and whiskers.

Dulcie stood on the breakfast table looking down at him, startled by his charging entry. She watched him with amazement, her green eyes wide and amused, her muzzle damp from milk and flecked with gingerbread crumbs.“You look terrible-your ears are drooping, even your whiskers are limp. What’s wrong? What’s happened?”

“It’s Barney. Clyde took him to the vet.”

“But-not a car accident? He’s never in the street.”

“He’s sick, something in his middle, hurting bad.”

“But Dr. Firreti will?”

“He’s old, Dulcie. I don’t know how much Dr. Firetti can do.” He leaped to the table and pressed against her for comfort. She licked his ear and laid a soft paw on his paw. Around them, Wilma’s blue-and-white kitchen shone with warmth and cleanliness.

Above the tile counter, the rising morning light through the clean windows lent a pearly glow across the blue-and-white wallpaper and the blue cookie jar and cracker jars. Behind the clean glass of the diamond-paned cupboard doors, Wilma’s blue pottery sparkled. Wilma’s homey touches always eased him, eased him this morning right down to his rough cat soul. He sighed and licked Dulcie’s ear.

She nosed the gingerbread toward him and bent her head again, nibbling gingerbread and lapping milk from her Chinese hand-painted bowl. Hungrily, he pushed in beside her. Whoever said cats don’t like freshly baked treats didn’t know much about cats. Not until every crumb had vanished, and every drop of milk, did they speak again. His whiskers and his teeth were sodden with gingerbread crumbs and milk, and he felt infinitely better.

He knew there was nothing he could do for Barney but wait and hope. He wasn’t used to praying, but he did wonder if a cat prayer would be accepted by whatever powers-if indeed there were any powers existing beyond the pale.

He looked at Dulcie, sitting so regally in the center of the table delicately washing her face.“I thought you took your meals on the rug. When did Wilma start sharing the table?”

She glanced at her bowl, and grinned.“When I told her you ate on the table. She’s not about to let Clyde spoil you more than she spoils me.”

“The house looks nice,” he said, leaping down. He didn’t usually notice domestic details, unless Dulcie called them to his attention, but Wilma had recently redecorated. Her niece Charlie had helped her paint the walls white and replace the lacy curtains with white shutters. Wilma had sold the thick rag rugs, too, and bought deep-toned Khirmans and Sarouks that were luxurious to roll on. A dozen of Charlie’s animal drawings, framed in gold leaf, graced the front rooms, several of Dulcie and even one of himself, of which he was more proud than he let on. The couch had been recovered ina deep blue velvet as silken as Dulcie’s rich fur, and Dulcie’s blue afghan lay across the arm just where she liked it; the three upholstered chairs had been recovered in a red-and-green tweed. And over the fireplace hung a large oil landscape of the Molena Point hills and rooftops, all vibrantreds and greens, done by Janet Jeannot some years before she was murdered.

He trotted into the living room, following Dulcie, and leaped to Wilma’s desk, where the early light flooded in through the white shutters.

Beneath their paws lay a map of Molena Point, unfolded and spread out flat.

“Wilma left this for us?”

Dulcie smiled. Beside the map lay a stack of newspaper clippings about the cat burglar, machine copies of papers Dulcie had read in the library.

Joe scratched his ear.“If Clyde knew Wilma was leaving out maps and news clippings for us-aiding and abetting-he’d have a royal fit.” Clyde did not take easily to Joe’s playing detective. For a hard-nosed macho type, Joe’s housemate worried too much.

“A few measly clippings and a map,” she said. “That’s hardly aiding and abetting. And Wilma’s never helped us before-not that I wanted her to. She didn’t have a clue that we were into the Beckwhite murder.”

“Maybe she didn’t, but she knew about Janet. She told you afterward she was worried.”

“But she stayed out of it-she’s sensible, for a human.” Dulcie stretched, and curled up on the blotter. “You have to admit, Wilma tolerates our interests better than Clyde does.”

“She couldn’t spend her whole career working criminal cases without getting some sense of perspective.”

Some of the clippings were about the local burglaries, but most of them chronicled the cat woman’s thieving progress as she moved up the coast from San Diego, working ever farther north as the summer progressed.

“As if the old gal prefers cooler weather,” Joe said. “Southern California in the winter, San Francisco for the summer.”

Studying reports of the local burglaries, they inscribed a claw mark on the map at each location but found no pattern. The woman seemed to travel back and forth at random, across the wealthier neighborhoods, perhaps picking out whatever house she passed where people were working outside.

“I like this one,” he said, pawing at the newspaper clippings. “Shell Beach. She goes right on in while the guy’s sleeping.

“Guess she thought, if he’d been to a bachelor party, he’d be so drunk nothing would wake him.”

The cat burglar, slipping upstairs into the prospective groom’s bedroom on the morning of the appointed wedding, had lifted the matched gold wedding rings, laid out for the ceremony, from the dresser.

She took the rings out of the box, left the closed box on the dresser with two coins stuck into the slots, presumably to give the box some weight. The groom, probably hung over and in a hurry, or dazed with the thought of his coming nuptials, didn’t have a clue until he opened the box at the church, to give the ring to the best man, and found instead, two nickels.

Dulcie smiled.“The woman’s brazen.”

“And she’s afraid of cats. When she sees me watching, I scare the hell out of her.” He rubbed his whiskers against the shutters, staring out through the glass.

The morning was turning golden, the windows across the street reflecting tiny suns mirrored all in a row. He narrowed his eyes against the glare.“We need a lookout; I’ve about worn out my pads following false leads, when the cat burglar never did show. The roof of Clyde’s shop isn’t high enough. I can’t see half the hills.”

His plan, so far, had been to watch from the roof of the automotive shop as the cat burglar drove around choosing her mark, then nip on over to where she’d parked. Trouble was, she ditched her car blocks away, and sometimes she didn’t return to it. And that one time, when he thought she was inside a laundry room, she’d slipped away, or maybe had just outstubborned him. He’d waited what seemed hours, until he was faint from hunger, had left at last in a huff, not sure if she’d given him the slip or was still in there, and so hungry he didn’t care. Then the next day, sitting on the breakfast table, he’d read theGazettearticle with a list of what she’d stolen, including a miniature cat painting worth a cool two hundred thousand. He’d really muffed that one-he’d felt stupid as dog doo.

“That brown shingle house,” Dulcie said, “that tall one up on Haley with the cupola on top. Except for the courthouse tower, it’s the highest point in the village.”

“Right on.”

“And today’s Saturday, half the village will be digging up their yards.”

They leaped from the desk and out through Dulcie’s cat door, and as they headed up Dolores toward Sixth, she couldn’t help purring. She loved this sneaky stuff. Spying was a hundred times more fun even than stalking rabbits.

But as they crossed Danner, the wind quickened, swirling along the sidewalk and ruffling their fur, and above them the clouds came rolling. Joe stared up at the rain-laden sky.

“If that cuts loose, no one will work in their yard. If it rains, that old woman will stay home in her bed.”

“Maybe it will blow on out, dump itself in the sea.”

Crossing Danner, trotting between morning traffic, they angled through a backyard to Haley, could see the brown house rising just ahead, its cupola thrusting up like a child’s playhouse atop the wide roof, jutting up into swiftly gathering clouds. There was no tree by which they could reach the roof. As they circled the shingled walls and stared above for a likely windowsill or vine-covered downspout, the wind gusted sharply, pressing them against the bushes with strong thrusts. “Wind gets any stronger,” Joe said, “it’ll lift us right off the roof, send us flying like loose shingles.”

7 [????????: pic_8.jpg]

The dark and ungainly old house had been built long before earthquake restrictions decreed that no building over two stories be constructed in Molena Point. With its extra height and poor condition, it was a sitting target for ground temblors. At the first 6.0 on the Richter it would likely topple in a heap of scrap lumber and rusty nails. The roof was ragged. The dark, shingled walls looked as if they were eaten with rot. The FOR SALE sign which had been pounded into the mangy front lawn led one to imagine not a new owner and fresh paint but a future with the wrecking crew.

The house stood just a block off Ocean and a block below the green park which spanned the Highway One tunnel. As the cats circled it, pressing through scraggly weeds, they found at the back a precarious rose trellis held together only by the thick thorny vines. Swarming up, climbing three stories, they gained the steep, slick roof, trotted up across it to the cupola. The old shingles beneath their paws were worn soft. Scrabbling up, gaining the high peak, they pushed into the little open cupola-onto a thick white frosting of bird lime that coated the cupola floor. The place stank of bird droppings, despite a fresh wind that swirled through the four arched openings, bringing the smell of rain.

The swift clouds were fast darkening, the colors of the village deepening, and beyond the village the sea lurched steel gray beneath the heavy, dense sky. The sun had gone; Molena Point’s citizens would be indoors checking theTV Guideor curled up by the fire with a book. Joe and Dulcie could imagine the cat burglar, perhaps in one of Molena Point’s hundreds of little motels, bundled up, ordering room service. The sounds of passing cars rose up to them, muffled by the whine ofthe wind.

Looking down the steep roof to the sidewalks along Ocean, watching people heading to work or toward some cozy restaurant for breakfast, they could smell pancakes and the sweet aroma of warming syrup. The shop windows reflected the dark, swift sky. Over on San Carlos old Mr. Jolly, swinging open the glass front door of the deli, carried out four pots of bright red flowers.

He arranged the pots two at either side of the door, then paused to look up at the sky, and stood considering.

Finally he knelt again, picked up the pots, and carried them back inside. The cats watched him disappear into the warmth of the deli, then fixed their gazes on the alley behind, licking their noses, thinking of imported salmon or a dollop of warm chowder.

Some of the village shopkeepers claimed that Jolly’s gourmetic gifts drew mice. Indeed they might-and what could be nicer than a fat, warm mouse with a bit of seafood quiche or a slice of Camembert or Brie?

The cupola was chill with the sharp wind. Its four open arches looked squarely to the four points of the compass, affording maximum draft, but also fine views of the village streets. Both cats could see their own houses. To their left, beneath the spreading limbs of an oak, shone the shabby roof of Clyde’s white Cape Cod. That dwelling was badly in need of professional attention, but what did Clyde care? Clyde tended his cars like newborn babes, alert to the tiniest complaint, but the house-not until the roof leaked or the floor fell in was Clyde going to make any architectural adjustments.

To their right, past the shops and galleries, they could see the back of Wilma’s house, its steeply peaked roof and stone chimney just visible above the hill at the back-the front garden belonged to Wilma, but the back hill was Dulcie’s, a private preserve, a forest of wild grass rich with game and admirably suited to the quick, spur-of-the-moment hunt. Those mice and birds were strictly off-limits to any other neighborhood cat, if he valued his hide.

Almost directly below them, just across Ocean, shone the red tile roofs of Beckwhite’s Foreign Cars and of Clyde’s automotive shop. And beyond Beckwhite’s among a sprawl of cottages, was the white frame house which held Dr. Firetti’s animal clinic, where Barney now lay. Joe was afraid to know how Barney was doing; something about the old dog this morning had left him coldly distressed-as if Barney had already given up.

And he worried not only about Barney but about Rube. If Barney died, Rube would be a basket case. Old Barney’s illness made him think how short was life, how capricious and unpredictable.

Beyond the village to the east, above the rising hills, one patch of sky was still blue between the steely clouds, its clearer light striking down on the hills, picking out every bush, every tree and flower garden. The houses and streets, rising up, were displayed as clearly as a stage set. Between the scattered houses, the grassy fields gleamed golden. And despite the threat of rain, the shadowed, darkened yards, stretching across the hills were not deserted. Three children were playing catch up on Amber Street, and, as a very little boy crouched to dig in the gutter, half a dozen kids flew down the hill on their bikes.

They watched an old man cutting his steep hillside lawn with a hand mower, as if perhaps modern power equipment was not designed for such extremities of terrain. The wind grew colder. Shivering, Dulcie snuggled close to Joe.“Maybe the old burglar’ll show up-who could miss that white Toyota?” She snorted. “Mud on its license plate-what a tired old trick.”

“It’s worked, though. So far. Mud so thick I couldn’t even scratch it off.”

“Don’t you wonder if she noticed?”

He shrugged.“So she noticed. So if she’s scared of cats, that ought to chill her.”

“Or maybe she’ll have some other car. If she can burgle a house, it should be no problem to ‘borrow’ someone’s car for a few hours.”

They watched intently each vehicle that moved across the rising hills, watched a station wagon wind back and forth making its rounds, picking up children for some Saturday event, watched a FedEx truck trundle up the hills on its appointed stops, the driver running to each door and leaving his package, racing back to the truck again as if his pay scale was structured on swift timing.

A small red sedan turned up from the Highway One tunnel and parked beneath some maple trees on a residential block, and a lone woman emerged, a dumpy creature; the cats watched her so intently she should have felt their gaze like a laser beam.

She made her way directly up the walk of a two-story green frame house, paused to pick up the morning paper, and appeared to be fumbling with a key. Unlocking the door, she disappeared inside.

Five blocks away, a tan VW climbed the hills and parked before a half-timber cottage flanked by sycamore trees. Another lone woman emerged, a slim, sleek figure in a black business suit. She entered the house quickly, and in a moment lights came on.“If that’s the cat burglar,” Joe said, “she’s done a real state-of-the-art makeover.”

In the cupola a bee buzzed, circling their heads and diving at their ears. Dulcie slapped it down, nosed at it, then backed away. Far up the hill, at a yellow cottage, the back door opened and a man and woman appeared, dressed in shorts. Crossing the lawn, they opened a garden shed and pulled out a mower, rakes, a shovel. Above the yellow house, at a new house where the yard was still raw dirt, a woman appeared from around the back with a basket, knelt beside the front walk, and began to dig in the earth, setting out little plants, patting them carefully into the ground. Joe yawned.

“They plant grass, then have to mow it. Plant flowers, then have to weed them.”

She cut her eyes at him.“I’ve seen you rolling on those lush lawns.”

“On Clyde’s moth-eaten patch of grass?”

“On your neighbors’ lawns. I’ve seen you sitting in the neighbors’ flower beds, sniffing the blooms when you thought no one was watching.”

“I was hunting; those flower beds are full of moles.”

She did not remind him that he hated moles.

They had been on the roof for better than an hour when a blue hatchback came up Highway One from the south and turned up into the hills just before the tunnel. Heading up a winding lane, it cut across the hills and back again, cruising. By now, seven families were working in their gardens despite the dark sky and fitful wind, diligent homeowners too conscientious to spend the morning loafing.That,Joe thought,is one of the main advantages of being a cat. Cats do not have a problem with compulsive personalities.And now, far out to sea, a web of lines slanted down where rain was pouring.

The blue hatchback paused beside a two-storied Spanish house set well back on a large corner lot. It didn’t stop; it crept slowly by as if the driver was looking the place over. The way the house was angled, one would be able to see into a portion of the backyard, where a family of five was planting shrubs and small trees. The hatchback turned at the next corner and parked.

A woman emerged, a dumpy creature dressed in a long, full skirt, a sloppy sweater, and a floppy hat. Joe crept forward, watching her, his stub tail twitching. She glanced around her, studying the houses nearby, then headed up the street toward the white stucco. Approaching from the side street, she would be able to see the backyard, but might not be noticed by the busily gardening family. The cats watched her glance into the backyard then turn away, retrace her steps to the front door.

They didn’t see her ring the bell. She tried the knob, glanced around again, and moved right on in. Evidently no one in the backyard noticed her, no one made a move toward the house. Maybe she belonged there. And maybe she didn’t. Joe leaped to the cupola roof. Rearing tall, he studied the house, getting his bearings. Standing like a weather vane braced against the wind, he counted the streets.

“Five blocks above Janet’s burned studio. Four blocks to the left.”

And they fled down the trellis and across yards and sidewalks, up across the grassy park above Highway One and up the winding streets, through the high grass of the open fields, through tangles of broom and holly; across lawns and manicured flower beds, moving so swiftly that when they reached the blue hatchback-which turned out to be a late-model Honda-the motor was still ticking softly, and the tires and wheels were still warm.

Again there was dried mud smeared across the license plate. But this time, pawing together at the caked dirt, they were able to flake away enough mud to reveal California plate 3GHK499.

There was no indication of issuing county, of course. California plates did not include that information. The car could be registered anywhere in the state; only Max Harper would know, when he pulled up the number through DMV. It galled Joe that the cops had access to information the average citizen-average cat-couldn’t touch.

But he guessed it had to be that way; a cop’s job was tough enough. Give civilians access to the DMV files, and they’d create a ton of mischief.

Leaving the Honda, trotting on up the street to the white stucco house, they found the family still working away, lowering the burlap-wrapped roots of sturdy nursery shrubs into the earth. There the constricted bushes could stretch out their thin white roots like hundreds of hungry tongues reaching for food. A black Mercedes was parked in the drive. The cats jumped to the hood, then to the top of the car, leaving pawprints, and leaped to the garage roof, onto the rounded clay tiles.

To their left, the two-story portion of the house rose above the garage. The windows of both bedrooms were open, the sheer white curtains blowing. Within the front bedroom a figure moved, her baggy skirt and huge sweater catching the light in lumpy folds as she turned to the closet. The cats slipped closer, up across the tiles, and pressed against the wall, glancing around to look warily in through the glass.

The woman had pulled the double closet doors open and was examining the hanging garments. Her ragged gray hair was in need of a good trim and a vigorous brushing. She looked like she’d made her clothing selections from the “latest fashion” rack of the local charity outlet. Her skirt hem dipped so rakishly around her thick-stockinged ankles that one could imagine this style as the precursor of a new trend; and her shoes might soon be the “in” look, too, thick and serviceable and of a variety favored by the unfortunate homeless. Rummaging through the closet, the old lady carefully lifted a little gold lame dress dangling on its hanger.

As she turned to the mirror above the dresser, they could see clearly her reflection. Smiling with impish delight she held the slim little cocktail number up against her thick body, turning and vamping, pressing the svelte garment against her lumpy form.

Watching her, Joe choked back a laugh. But Dulcie crept closer, the tip of her tail twitching gently, her green eyes round with sympathy, with a deep female understanding. The old woman’s longing filled her to her very soul; she understood like a sister the frumpy lady’s hunger for that sleek little gold lame frock. Watching the dumpy old creature, Dulcie was one with her, cat and cat burglar were, in that instant, of one spirit.

“What’s the matter with you?”

Dulcie jumped, stared at him as if she’d forgotten he was there. “Nothing. Nothing’s the matter.”

He looked at her uneasily.

“So she makes me feel sad. So all right?”

He widened his eyes, but said no more. They watched the old woman fold the gold dress into a neat little square, lift her baggy sweater, and tuck the folded garment underneath into a bag she wore against her slip. They watched, fascinated, as she searched the dresser drawers, lifting out necklaces and bracelets, stuffing them into the same bag, watched her tuck away two soft-looking sweaters, a gold tie clip, a gold belt, a tiny gold evening clutch. When she moved suddenly toward the window, coming straight at them, the cats ducked away, clinging against the wall. She flew at the open window uttering a string of hisses so violent, so like the cries of a maddened tomcat that their fur stood up. In feline language this was a grade-one kamikaze attack. This woman knew cats. This old woman knew how to communicate the most horrifying threat of feline violence, knew something deep and basic that struck straight at the heart of cat terrors, knew the deep secrets of their own murderous language. They stared at her for only an instant, then fled down the roof tiles and onto the Mercedes. Racing its length, they hit the ground running, heading straight uphill, past the white house, into a wilderness with bushes so thick that nothing could reach them.

Crouching in the dark beneath jabbing tangled branches, they watched the old woman leave the house smiling, watched her slip away up the street looking as smug as if she had swallowed the canary.

Dulcie shivered.“She scared the hell out of me.” She licked her whiskers nervously. “Where did she learn to do that?”

“Wherever, she’s out of business now. As soon as we call Harper with the make on that blue Honda, it’s bye-bye, cat burglar.”

But Dulcie’s eyes grew huge, almost frightened. “Maybe we? She’s just an old lady.” She paused, began to fidget.

“What are you talking about?”

“Will the court? Do you think the court would go easy with her? She’s so old.”

“She’s not that old. Just frowsy. And what difference does it make? Old or young, she’s a thief.”

He fixed a piercing yellow gaze on Dulcie.“This morning you were plenty hot to nail the old girl.You’rethe one who always wants to bring in the law. ‘Call Harper, Joe. Give the facts to Captain Harper. Let the cops in on it.’

“So why the sudden change? You’re really getting soft.”

“But she’s so? They wouldn’t put her in jail for the rest of her life? How could they? To be locked up when you’re old, maybe sick?”

He narrowed his eyes at her.

“Maybe we shouldn’t tell Captain Harper. Maybe not just yet.”

“Dulcie?”

“They wouldn’t keep her in jail until she’s feeble? Maybe in a wheelchair, like the old folks at Casa Capri?”

“I have no idea what the court would do. I don’t see what difference.” He looked at her a long time, then turned his back and crept out of the bushes. Of course they were going to tell Harper.

He heard Dulcie crawl out behind him. They crouched together, not speaking, looking down the hill where the blue Honda had driven away. Just below them, the little family was still planting their trees and bushes. Neither the two adults nor the children seemed to have any notion that their house had been burglarized. That made him smile in spite of himself. The old girl was pretty slick.

But slick or not, she was still a thief.

Dulcie didn’t speak for a long time, but at last she gave him a sideways look. “I guess, with the number of burglaries that old lady has pulled off, and all the valuable things she’s stolen, I guess maybe jail will be the last home she ever has.”

“Can it, Dulcie. Let it rest. One look at the old lady mooning over that glittery little dress, and you sell out.”

He looked her over.“Sisters under the skin, is that it? You and that old lady, two of a kind, two avaricious, thieving females.”

Her look was icy.“It was a lovely gold dress.” Her green eyes stared him down, her glare as righteous as ifhewere the criminal.

8 [????????: pic_9.jpg]

Dulcie wasn’t much into cars, but she had a keen eye for luxury. The sleek red convertible that slipped by, moving like a whisper down the westbound lane of Ocean, left her gawking, her green eyes wide. The tip of her pink tongue came out, ears and whiskers thrust forward, and she took a little step along the sidewalk, twitching her tail, staring after the car’s beautifully molded rear and sleek black convertible top.

“It’s a Bentley Azure,” Joe whispered against her ear He twitched a whisker and pretended to lick his paw; there were people around them on the sidewalk, pedestrians, shoppers. “To quote the publicity, ‘the newest, fastest model in the Rolls Royce line’ “

They watched it turn at the corner and head back up the eastbound lane of Ocean. Joe’s yellow eyes widened. “That’s Clyde driving.Clyde.Driving that silky beauty. Look at him tooling along-as if he owned the world.” Passing them, Clyde turned into the covered drive of the automotive shop, beneath the wide tile roof of the Mediterranean building that housed Beckwhite’s Foreign Car agency.

Near the cats, several pedestrians had paused, gawking, as the lovely red car slid by. Joe ducked his head, pretending to nibble another flea.“That color’s called pearl red. That’s Adelina Prior’s new car. Three hundred and forty thousand bucks, paid for by the old folks up at Casa Capri.”

Dulcie’s eyes blazed in disbelief.

He gave her a narrow leer.“You hadn’t thought of that, had you? You don’t know anything about how rich Adelina Prior is. That car just arrived from the factory. White leather upholstery, CD changer, inlaid walnut dash, a bar in the back, the works. Clyde was supposed to install her phone; that’s probably why he has it.” He led her toward the shop, adroitly dodging pedestrians, then, crossing Ocean, dodging slow-moving cars.

But as they trotted into the covered drive, a Molena Point police car turned in, parking just behind Clyde. The static of the police radio made their ears twitch.

Max Harper stepped out of his patrol unit, leaned into the Bentley’s open window. Neither man saw the cats. The engine of the red Bentley Azure idled as softly and luxuriously as the purr of a jungle cat.

“Nice wheels,” Max said. The police captain’s scent drifted to them pleasantly on the little breeze that sucked in through the open drive. He smelled of horses and cigarettes, with a hint of gun oil. His thin hands, resting on the car door, were as gnarled and dark as Clyde’s old hiking boots.

“Adelina Prior’s.” Clyde leaned back into the soft upholstery and grinned, stroked the steering wheel. Harper looked the car over, took out a pack of cigarettes, then changed his mind and put them back in his pocket. As if he didn’t want to smoke up that pristine beauty. His thin, lined face was drawn into a scowl. “Got another line on that green truck that hit Susan Dorriss. Not much. And not much chance it’ll show up here, but thought I’d pass the word.

“Man came in the station yesterday. Seems our last newspaper article jogged his memory; he recalled an old green truck cruising the hills about the time Susan was hit, says he saw it three times that week, up around his place.” Harper nodded vaguely toward the hillside residences. “Green step-side. He thought it was a Chevy but wasn’t sure, didn’t know what year, didn’t get a plate number.

“Didn’t know it was important until he read yesterday’s paper. He was out of town when Susan’s car was hit, and he didn’t see the original newspaper story.”

Again he took out a cigarette, slipping it from the pack in his pocket in an automatic reflex. He started to tamp it on the door of the Bentley, then put it back again.“Why the hell does an accident like that happen to someone like Susan?”

Clyde turned off the Bentley’s engine. “I’ll watch for the truck, though not likely we’ll see it at Beckwhite’s. Green. A step-side. Not much to go on.”

Harper nodded.“Likely it’s down in L.A. by now with a new paint job, new plates, or it’s been junked.”

“And no idea of the year?”

“None. And Susan only got a glimpse before it hit her. She thought it was American-made, a full-sized pickup, not new. Faded green paint, and with fenders, she thought. Those models can fool you, can look older than they are.”

Harper eased his weight, as if perhaps his regulation shoes were uncomfortable.“I hate a hit-and-run, that was too damn bad. Susan’s a really nice woman; she used to walk that big poodle all over the village-before that guy put her in a wheelchair. You’d see her go by the station, Susan and the dog swinging along happy as a couple of kids.

“Tell you one thing,” Harper said. “That daughter of Susan’s isn’t going to give it up. One way or another, Bonnie Dorriss means to nail the guy that busted up her mother.” He managed a lean, leathery smile. “Bonnie’s really on my back, calls in every couple of days. Have we got anything new? Just what are we doing?”

He glanced up, saw Joe and Dulcie sitting in the wide doorway to the automotive shop.“You’re bringing your cat to work?” He raised an eyebrow. “I’d think you’d keep him out of here, after he nearly got himself blown into fish bait.”

Joe and Dulcie glanced at each other, and Joe watched Harper carefully. Max Harper never could figure out why his old beer-drinking buddy, his ex-rodeoing buddy, was so dotty about a cat. And he knew he made Harper nervous; twice this past year he and Dulcie had upset the police captain pretty badly.

Though whatever suspicions might needle Harper, they could be no more than suspicions.

Highly amused, laughing inside, he gave Harper a blank and stupid gaze. He loved goading Max Harper. On poker nights he always tried to have some new little routine, some subtle new irritant to taunt the captain-not because he disliked him, only because he enjoyed Harper’s stern discomfiture.

And what difference, if Harper was suspicious? No matter what he might suspect, if Max Harper breathed a word about intelligent cats, about crime-solving cats, to his fellow officers, he’d be off the force quicker than he could spit.

Dulcie nudged Joe, and he came alert, saw Clyde’s meaningful look, realized he must have been staring too hard at Harper, maybe smirking. Clyde’s look said, watch yourself, buddy. And to distract Joe, Clyde leaned over and opened the passenger door of the Bentley.

“Come on, cats. Come on, kitty kitty,” Clyde said sarcastically.

Glancing at each other, they lowered their eyes demurely and trotted around the front of the Bentley. Stood staring up through the open door as Clyde carefully arranged his clean white lab coat across the front seat. When he had suitably covered the creamy leather, he shouted,“Come on, dammit.” And they jumped up onto the coat, the three of them playing the master-and-cat game perfectly for Harper’s benefit.

“You two make one claw dent, you leave one cat hair anywhere near this upholstery, and you’re dog meat. Two little portions of Ken-L Ration.”

Harper observed this little tableau with only the faintest change of expression on his long, cheerless face. Whatever he was thinking didn’t show.

Clyde patted Joe roughly, and grinned at Max.“I volunteered the cat to Bonnie Dorriss for that Pet-a-Pet group she’s organized, to visit up at Casa Capri.”

Harper raised an eyebrow, but nodded.“She started the project for her mother, only way she could think of, to take the poodle up there. Thinks the dog’ll cheer Susan, help her recover. Susan loves that big poodle.”

“Bonnie told me the plan; she’s sure the dog can help Susan get through the pain of the therapy, keep her spirits up while she heals.” Clyde ruffled Joe’s fur in an irritating manner. “Bonnie wanted some cats in the group, so why not? Let the little beggar work for a living.”

Beneath Clyde’s stroking hand, Joe held very still, trying to control his rage. Clyde could be a real pain.Let the little beggar work for a living.Just wait until they were alone.

Pulling away from Clyde’s stroking hand, turning his back, he pictured several interesting moves he might pursue to put Clyde Damen in his place.

Harper said,“I can’t believe she’d take cats up there. A dog, sure. You can train a dog, make him mind. But a cat? Those cats will be all over; you can’t control a cat.

“But hey, maybe a few cats careening around will give those old folks a little excitement, anything to break the boredom.” Harper frowned. “When old people get bored, they can turn strange. We’ve had some real nut calls from up there.”

“Oh?” Clyde said with interest. “What kind of nut calls?”

Harper shifted his lean body.“Imagining things. One old doll calls every few months to tell us that some of the patients are missing, that her friends have disappeared.”

Clyde settled back, listening.

“When someone gets sick, Casa Capri moves them from the regular Care Unit over to Nursing. More staff over there, nurses who can keep them on IVs or whatever’s needed. They don’t encourage people from Care to visit the patients in Nursing, don’t want folks whipping in and out. I can understand that.

“So this old woman keeps calling to say they won’t let her see her friends, that her friends have disappeared. She got on my case so bad that finally I sent Brennan up to have a look around, ease her mind.”

Harper grinned.“The missing people were all there, their names on the doors, the patients in their beds. Brennan knew a couple of them from years ago. Said they were pretty shriveled up with age.”

He shook his head.“I guess that place takes as good care of them as you’d find. But poor Mrs. Rose, she can’t understand. Every time she calls, she’s bawling.”

“Damned hard to get old,” Clyde said.

Harper nodded.“Hope I go quick when the time comes.” He ducked a little, for a better look at the interior of the Bentley, at the soft white leather, at the tasteful and gleaming accessories and the sleekly inlaid dash. “How much did this baby set Adelina back?”

“Three and a half big ones,” Clyde said. “Poker this week?”

“Sure, if we don’t have a triple murder.” Harper glanced at the cats lying sedately on Clyde’s lab coat, shook his head, and swung away to his police unit. Stepping in, he raised a hand and backed out. Within thirty minutes of Max Harper’s departure, Joe and Dulcie were taking their first, and probably only, ride in Adelina Prior’s pearl red, $340,000 Bentley Azure convertible. Heading up into the hills, sitting in the front seat like celebrities, Dulcie sniffed delicately at the inlaid wood dashboard, but she didn’t let her pink nose touch that maple-and-walnut work of art. Carried along in that soft, humming, powerful palace of luxury, she felt as smug as if she were dining at the finest hotel, on a silver bowl of canaries prepared in cream.

Heading high up the hills toward the Prior estate, Clyde slowed as he passed Casa Capri. Following him at some distance was his own antique Packard, driven by his head mechanic. That quiet man had made no comment about Clyde giving two cats a joyride. Clyde was, his employees knew too well, touchy about the tomcat.

As they passed Casa Capri, Joe asked,“Did Harper mention anything more about the cat burglar?”

“Matter of fact, he did. He thinks she’s moving on up the coast. She’s started working Half Moon Bay.”

“Really,” Joe said, and shrugged. “Well she ripped off another Molena Point house just this morning.”

Clyde turned to stare at him, swerving the Bentley. But at his touch the car responded like a thoroughbred, righting herself with superb balance.“How do you know she ripped off another house? What did you do, follow her?”

Joe looked innocent.

“Can’t you two stay out of anything?”

Joe said,“She lifted a gold lame dress and some jewelry from that new two-story Mediterranean house up above Cypress.”

“Harper’ll be thrilled that his favorite snitch is on the case again. I suppose you got a make on her car.”

“Not a thing,” Dulcie said quickly. “Didn’t see the car. But the gold lame dress was lovely.”

Joe gave her a narrow look. He didn’t like this; Dulcie had turned completely sentimental about the old woman. He didn’t like this soft, sentimental side of his lady. What had happened to his ruthless hunting partner?

Clyde turned into a wide, oak-shaded drive. No house was visible; the curving lane led up over the crest of the hill. They drove for some time through the deep, cool shade beneath the overhanging branches of a double line of ancient oaks, then the drive made a last turn, and the house appeared suddenly, just on the crest of the hill. The two-story Mediterranean mansion was sheltered by oaks so huge they must have been here long before the house was built. The cats could see, far back behind the house, what appeared to be a much older structure.

The Prior house was two-storied, its thick white walls shadowed beneath deep eaves and beneath a roof of heavy, red clay tiles laid in curved rows. The front door was deeply carved, the main floor windows had beautifully wrought burglar bars, and each upstairs bedroom had French doors standing open to a private balcony.

“Five acres,” Clyde said. “All that land back behind belongs to Adelina, and this is just the tiny remainder of the old land grant. Worth several million per acre now, plus the house and the original farmhouse and stables.

“This house was built in the thirties, but the estate goes back to the early eighteen hundreds. It belonged to the Trocano family, was a Spanish land grant. All the hills, every bit of land you can see, was Trocano land, thousands of acres. The buildings behind the house date from then.”

Dulcie tried to imagine the distance in years, back to the early part of the last century. Tried to imagine Molena Point without houses, just miles of rolling hills and a few scattered ranches, imagine longhorns roaming, wolves and grizzly bears, where now she and Joe hunted the tiniest game. The terrible distance in time and the incredible changes made her head reel.

The grounds of the Prior estate were well tended, the lawn thick and very green. To the left of the old original house lay a wood, and they could see dark old tombstones between the trees.

“Family burial plot,” Clyde said, “from when families were laid to rest on their own land.” He parked the Bentley just opposite the front door. The cats could smell jasmine flowers, and the rich aroma of meat and chilies from somewhere deep within the house. Clyde picked up the two of them unceremoniously, carried them to the Packard, and deposited them in the backseat.

But on that brief journey as she was carried, Dulcie took in every possible detail she could see through the broad front windows of the house, a glimpse of library with walls of leather-bound books; pale, heavy draperies; the gleam of antique furniture; oriental rugs on polished floors. Dulcie’s green eyes shone with interest, her pink tongue tipped out, her dark, striped tail twitched.

The mechanic, slipping over into the passenger seat, turned to look back, watching the little cat, puzzled. As if he’d never seen a cat so interested in fine houses. And quickly she began to wash, trying to look uninterested and dull.

She had no idea that her interest in the Prior home, her desire to see inside those elegant rooms, would soon be more than satisfied-and in a way she would not have imagined.

9 [????????: pic_10.jpg]

Susan Dorriss regarded her lunch tray, which had been fixed across the arms of her wheelchair, with disgust. At least she’d wangled a meal alone in her room, though to gain that privacy she’d had to pretend a pounding headache. Solitary meals were against policy at Casa Capri unless you were fevered or throwing up. The home’s owner-manager considered anyone who liked to be alone as mentally crippled or suspect.“We put a high value on everyone making friends; we’re one big family here.” The longer she was in Casa Capri-and Thursday would mark her second month-the less she could abide this enforced closeness. The whole structure of Casa Capri seemed to her rigid and heavy, reflecting exactly Adelina Prior’s overbearing manner.

And today the food was just as unpleasant, the plate before her loaded with a pile of overdone roast beef and gluey mashed potatoes and canned gravy that smelled like sweet bouillon cubes. She knew she was being a bitch, but why not? There was no one to hear her even if she grumbled aloud.

Usually the meals were wonderful, when Noah was in charge of the kitchen. Lunch would be a fresh salad, plenty of fruits, and a variety of crisp greens, and for the entree something light and appealing, a small portion of light lobster Newburg or a nice slice of chicken with asparagus or sugar peas. You paid enough to live in this place that the food ought to be thoughtfully prepared. She’d forgotten this was Noah’s day off.

She ate some of the hot bread and forced down a bite of limp salad swimming in Thousand Island dressing, then pushed her plate away. She set the dessert aside, shoving the heavy bread pudding onto the night table next to her glasses and a stack of books. She was watchingTootsie,an old favorite. She loved the fun Dustin Hoffman had with this role, loved the way he handled his disguises. Bonnie had brought the video yesterday when she came; her daughter knew which movies she liked and she brought several each week.Tootsiewould finish up about one-thirty, and Bonnie would arrive at two with Lamb.

The big, chocolate-colored poodle was Susan’s ticket to freedom for a little while; it was Lamb who would take her out of here, away from the nurses and the regimentation and rules.

Bonnie had organized the Pet-a-Pet program mainly for that purpose. With the accompanying favorable publicity for Casa Capri, there was no way Adelina could refuse. Publicity meant money, and money was what Adelina Prior was all about.

On Bonnie’s first Pet-a-Pet visit, Lamb had been so happy to find Susan, had been so playful, overjoyed, acting as if she’d been hiding from him. And she’d had no trouble at all teaching him, that first day, to pull her along the deserted lanes of the adjoining, wooded park, using the harness Bonnie had fashioned. The acreage beyond the Spanish-style complex was large, and the path through the oak woods was shaded and pleasant, scented with the perfume of rotting leaves, peopled with a dozen varieties of birds flashing among the oaks and rhododendron. And with the cool wind, and with Lamb’s damp nose nudging her hand, after those afternoons she returned to the villa refreshed, renewed, quite ready to be calm and patient for a few days.

And then after the Pet-a-Pet session Bonnie had taken her out to dinner, folding her wheelchair into the backseat, tucking Susan herself into the leather front seat and gently fastening the seat belt around her, careful of the bones that had been broken. Dinners out were a real treat since she had come to Casa Capri. The evenings they spent sipping wine and enjoying lobster or scallops at The Bakery, or cosseted within the luxury of the more expensive Windborne, those evenings, and these afternoons with Lamb, were what made her long days at the nursing home bearable.

She removed her loaded lunch tray and set it on the bed. Wheeling her chair to the low dressing table, she began to brush her short white hair. She had been so excited about moving down here to Molena Point from San Francisco when she retired from Neiman-Marcus. She had always loved the village, loved its oak-wooded hills and the hillside views of the village’s rooftops gleaming red against the blue Pacific. She loved the upstairs apartment she had rented from Bonnie; it had a wonderful view. But she had hardly been moved in, half her boxes still unpacked, when the car accident changed everything.

She had run out to the store for some more shelf paper for the kitchen before she unpacked her dishes, and as she turned off Highway One just north of the tunnel, the truck came around a curve, crossing the center line. The driver hit his brakes, skidded, spun out of control, and hit her car broadside.

When she came to at the bottom of a ten-foot embankment, her car on its side, she had been conscious enough to dig the phone out from under her injured legs and dial 911. Had been very thankful for the phone. She’d given it to herself as a birthday gift, and that day it probably saved her life.

The police never had found the old green pickup. Bonnie said they were still looking, that they still had it on their list. But after all this time, what good? Certainly her insurance company would like to find the truck. Two weeks in the hospital, four more weeks in a convalescent wing, and then here to the nursing home, and a visit every day from a physical therapist, all this was terribly expensive. She spent an hour a day doing resistance exercises that hurt so badly they brought tears spurting.

But the exercises were strengthening her torn muscles, and that would help support her healing bones. She had metal plates everywhere. Bonnie kept saying she wanted to hug her hard, but she couldn’t-a hug would hurt like hell. Bonnie said she was like a poor broken bird one was afraid to pick up, and that had made her tears come in self-pity until she shouted at Bonnie to stop. If Bonnie had a failing, it was too much feeling for others, too much pity.

Bonnie was so much like her father. She had George’s way of looking at life just as she had inherited his square, sturdy build, his sandy hair and freckles. She had nothing of Susan’s own long, lean body that never seemed to take on weight. Bonnie had always had trouble with weight though she didn’t seem to mind. She was always reaching out,as George had, so eager to be with people and to help them.

When Susan came to Casa Capri, Bonnie had been appalled at the sense of depression among the patients. And Bonnie was constitutionally unable to leave any unpleasant situation alone. That, too, had propelled her into organizing the Pet-a-Pet program, though her plan was born primarily so she could bring Lamb to visit. The big, easygoing standard poodle had become as much Susan’s dog as Bonnie’s. From the day she moved into the hillside apartment, Susan had walked him twice a day, up among the village hills and down among the shops, her pleasure complete at having a dog to walk after so many years in a San Francisco apartment that wouldn’t accommodate a big dog. She didn’t like little dogs. Might as well have a cat, and her opinion of cats wasn’t high.

She loved Lamb’s steady, happy disposition. He was such a delightful and handsome dog. Bonnie’s downstairs apartment had a nice yard, and Bonnie kept Lamb’s chocolate coat clipped short, in a field cut, no ruffles or pompoms, no nonsense. One of the worst things about the aftermath of the accident was not having Lamb warm and pressing against her leg, looking up at her, sharing her lonely moments.

When the pain was at its worst, she kept thinking,Why me? Why did this happen to me. What kind of God would let this happen?But what stupid, pointless questions.

God was not to blame; God had nothing to do with accidents. Things just happened, and no use fretting. If she made the best of it, if she did the painful therapy and got herself back in shape, she’d be out of here.

That was what God looked at, how you responded to the random bad times that might hit. God could see if you were a fighter. He was pleased if you were, and disappointed if you didn’t fight back against life’s bad luck. She’d always known, ever since she was a little girl, that God didn’t like quitters.

And she was tremendously lucky not to be here for good like the other residents. She was only sixty-four and had plenty of plans for her remaining years. She was going to heal herself and be out of this place by the end of summer.

But for now she needed the extra care that the retirement home offered and which Bonnie couldn’t manage, working all day. For the first weeks she could hardly move. She’d rather be here with a regular staff who were used to giving care than at home trying to deal with some hired woman. She had spent her first three days in the Nursing wing at the other end of the block-long building, before she was moved over here.

At least in this wing the outer doors weren’t kept locked during the day, as they were in Nursing. That had given her the willies. Bonnie had really climbed the fire marshal about that, but he said they had Alzheimer’s patients over there and had to keep the doors locked. He swore that every person on duty carried door keys at all timesin case of fire or earthquake.

But locked doors or not, there was really no reason why the Nursing unit should be so strict about visitors. What did Adelina Prior think, that someone was going to pull out a sick patient’s IV or feed him poison? No wonder little Mae Rose got upset and let her imagination run wild.

Casa Capri was one of those complexes known as three-stage living. Residents could progress from retirement living in a private cottage, to assisted living here in the Care Unit, with twenty-four-hour service available, then on to Nursing, where you retired to your bed for good.

That was fine for some people, though in her view such careful planning for every remaining moment of your life was like living in a cage.

Many of the cottage residents still drove their own cars and jogged and traveled, but wanted the extra security and services such a place offered. They didn’t have to cook, didn’t have to worry about housecleaning or maintenance. Old Frederick Weems lived over in Cottages, while his wife Eula lived here in the Care Unit. And who could blame him, with Eula’s nagging? If they had the money, more power to him.

But maybe she was unfair in her assessment of Casa Capri. The car accident had allowed her no time to work up a mind-set that would help her adapt to these rigid group rules. She was never much for rules; during her years working in retail sales she constantly had to rein in her passions and her temper.

Now she no longer cared if people thought her abrasive-she’d be rude when she chose. That included, to Bonnie’s distress, being rude to Adelina Prior.

If she didn’t dislike Adelina so deeply, she’d get friendly and try to figure out what made the woman tick. Why would a woman as beautiful, as expensively groomed and elegantly dressed, want to spend her life running a nursing home?

But though the puzzle nagged at her, she didn’t have the patience to fake friendliness with Adelina. It was all she could do to deal with the pain; that alone, when it was at its worst, could turn her as short-tempered as a caged tiger. She dreamed of being free of pain and home again in her new apartment, she dreamed of wandering the village, with Lamb walking at heel.

She loved the fact that in Molena Point people shopped with their dogs. Anywhere in the village you might see a patient, obedient dog tied outside a shop in the shadow of an oak tree while his master or mistress did errands. It was such a casual, lovely little town. She burned to know Molena Point better, to discover more of the hidden galleries and boutiques which were tucked away in the alleys, to browse the bookstores and enjoy the many small restaurants. These were her retirement years. What was she doing in a wheelchair? She had been so glad to move away from the heart of San Francisco, from its growing street crime, to a village devoid of that kind of violence. Molena Point was a walking village, a safe and friendly place where one felt nothing bad could happen.

It was their first night out for dinner after the accident, the first night she was able to lift herself from the wheelchair into Bonnie’s car, that Bonnie told her about the Pet-a-Pet idea. Sitting in the Windborne at a window table, looking down at the sea breaking on the rocks below, Bonnie said, “You need a friend in that place. You need Lamb.”

“I wish. Bring him on over, we can share a room.”

But Bonnie laid out her plan with childlike enthusiasm; she had worked out all the details, even to convincing Adelina Prior of the positive public relations and advertising value of such a venture. The owner-manager of Casa Capri was not an animal lover, not that cold-eyed woman. Bonnie promised Adelina she would get articles about Casa Capri’s exciting Pet-a-Pet venture in several specialty magazines; she had some connections among the clients of the law firm she worked for that would help. No special favors, just casual networking. There was, at the time, a Pet-a-Pet group based in San Francisco, and a branch in Santa Barbara, making regular visits with their well-mannered animals to local nursing homes, and the local newspapers had done great human-interest articles with lots of pictures.

Bonnie said,“Halman and Fletcher is getting me an assistant, and I’ll be working Saturdays for a while with John Halman on this land-swindle case. That frees me up two afternoons a week, to bring the Pet-a-Pet group out to Casa Capri. I’ve already contacted the San Francisco chapter, and they’re sending instructions about testing the animals for sweet dispositions and gentleness. They suggested five Molena Point pet owners they thought might like to join us, and one is the reference librarian you met, Wilma Getz.”

The waiter brought their salad and filled their wineglasses; beyond the windows the sea had darkened.

“Lamb misses you, Mama. I swear he’s pining, he’s so sulky. And you miss him; so what could be more perfect?” She broke her French bread, looking out at the heaving sea, its swells running swift beneath the restaurant’s lights. “I have the plan all in place. Three hours each visit, two afternoons a week. One owner-handler for each pet.

“A reporter has already interviewed us. Of course, Adelina was there.” Bonnie grinned. “Guess who took all the credit. TheGazetteis sending a photographer later, when we get settled in. I don’t want the animals bothered until they’re used to the routine.”

Though Adelina Prior had been prominent during the newspaper interview, she had not been in evidence during the first two Pet-a-Pet sessions. Several nurses had worked with the group, attending each patient as an animal was brought to an old man or woman. The nurses brought water bowls for the pets, too, and after the session they vacuumed up whatever loose dog and cat hair might offend Adelina.

Of course when Adelina learned that Susan had taken Lamb outside into the oak-shaded park alone, the woman pitched a fit; but Bonnie calmed her with promises of a possibleSunset Magazinespread. Bonnie’s boss had gone to school with one of the attorneys who handled theSunsetaccount. The only sour note was the attitude of young Teddy Prior, Adelina’s cousin. Like Adelina, the young wheelchair patient had no use for animals. The difference was, Teddy made his sentiments clearly known. She thought it strange that Teddy Prior, though he drove his own specially equipped car, occupied a room at Casa Capri rather than his own apartment, or rather than living with his cousin. Though he had many amenities here-all the advantages of a hotel, maid service, and meals, while enjoying many privileges forbidden to the other residents.

She was ashamed of herself for faulting Teddy. He was only twenty-eight, and the accident that crippled his spine had caused damage beyond repair. Five bouts of surgery had been of no use. She should feel empathy for him-or at least pity, not annoyance. In fact, Teddy was to be admired. He had disciplined himself well against the pain; she saw no signs of stress in his smooth face and clear blue eyes. He had a sweet smile, too, as charming as a young boy’s, and he had a nice way with the old people. He was always interested in their personal lives, in their complaints and their family stories. Teddy had that rare gift of making each person feel he was their special friend.

But yet she couldn’t bring herself to like him.

He was particularly attentive to Mae Rose, too, though who wouldn’t be? Little Mae was a dear-if she just wouldn’t worry and fuss so. But Mae Rose did seem to have calmed, with the Pet-a-Pet visits-just as some of the other residents had become more lively and talkative, more outgoing.

Putting down her hairbrush, she turned off the video and tied a soft red scarf around her throat, tucking it beneath her white blouse. Maneuvering her wheelchair so she could pull open her door, she fastened the door in place with the little hook provided, and headed down the hall. It was time for Bonnie and Lamb, time to get out of this prison for a little while, time for a few hours of freedom.

10 [????????: pic_11.jpg]

The car was too hot-Joe felt steam-cooked clear to his whiskers. And the little girl’s lap, on which he had been encouraged to sit, was incredibly bony and uncomfortable. Setting out in Wilma’s car for Casa Capri, he hadn’t expected to ride in some kid’s lap; this was not part of the deal. And why would Wilma invite a twelve-year-old kid on this excursion? Was the child some new kind of pet to be added in with the dogs and cats? And did the kid have to keep petting him? Her hands were hot and damp and made him itch. Irritated out of his skull, suppressing a snarl, he crouched lower and squeezed his eyes closed.

The kid hadn’t messed with Dulcie for long. One green-eyed venomous glance from the little tabby, and the girl had jerked her hand away fast.

Dulcie stood, with her paws on the dash, staring out the window totally enthralled, as she always was in a car, watching the hills, watching eagerly for the first glimpse of Casa Capri, as if the retirement villa was some really big deal, as though she’d been invited to high tea at the St. Francis or the Hyatt Regency.

Dillon Thurwell, that was the kid’s name. Who would name a female child Dillon? Her black hair hung stringy and straight beneath her baseball cap. Her dark eyes were huge. She began to scratch behind his ear, but kept staring ahead expectantly as if she, too, could hardly wait to get to Casa Capri, all set for a fun afternoon.

She was dressed in jeans and one of those Tshirts that made a statement, a shirt she had obviously selected as appropriate for the occasion. Across her chest four cats approached the viewer, and on the back of the shirt, which he’d seen as she came around the car to get in, was a rear view of the same four cats walking away, as if they were stepping invisibly through the wearer’s chest, their tails high, and, of course, all their fascinating equipment in plain sight.

Abandoning his ear, she began to scratch his cheek just behind his whiskers. Couldn’t the little brat leave him alone? He was doing his best to be civil. It was enough that he had condescended to sit on her lap-and that only after dour looks from Dulcie and Wilma. Under her insistent scratching, he shook his head and got up, pressing his hard paws into her legs, and resettled himself dourly on her bony knees. He hated when people touched his whiskers.

But then she found that nice itchy place by his mouth, and she scratched harder, and that did feel good. Slowly, unable to help himself, he leaned his head into her hand, purring.

Wilma glanced down at the child, gave her a long look.“What made you dye your hair, Dillon? What’s that all about?”

Dillon shrugged.

“I always envied your red hair; I hardly knew you today. What did your folks say?”

“Mama said I might as well get it out of my system-I cried until she had to say something.” Dillon grinned. “It’ll grow back, it’ll be red again. I just wanted to try it.”

Wilma stopped at a red light, pushed back a strand of her long gray hair, and refastened the silver clip that held it. Then, moving on with the traffic, she turned up Ocean toward the hills, following the little line of vehicles, a cortege of five cars and a white Chevy van, headed for Casa Capri.

“Come on, Dillon, what’s the rest of the story?”

“What story? I don’t know what you mean.” The kid was cheeky, for being only twelve.

Wilma sighed.“Why change your looks the day before you join Pet-a-Pet? What’s the deal here?” Wilma Getz wasn’t easily taken in; she hadn’t spent her professional life listening to the lies of parolees without gaining some degree of healthy skepticism.

“I just wanted to try it,” Dillon repeated. “I wanted to do it now during spring break, so I can go back to school looking different. So I can get used to my new look before the kids see it.” The kid was, Joe felt, talking too much. “How could my hair have anything to do with Pet-a-Pet? My friend Karen has black hair, and she’s so beautiful.” Her little oval face was bland as cream, her brown eyes shone wide and honest.

Wilma shrugged and gave it up, said nothing more.

Joe figured that dyeing her hair was just a stupid kid tiling, but he did wonder why Dillon had joined Pet-a-Pet. What twelve-year-old would elect to spend spring break making nice to a room full of geriatric couch potatoes? She ought to be biking or swimming or playing ball.

He knew that Dillon Thurwell was a favorite of Wilma’s. Dulcie said she’d been going to the library ever since she could toddle, and when she asked to join Pet-a-Pet, Wilma was delighted. Never mind that the kid didn’t have a dog or cat; she could be in charge of Clyde Damen’s gray tomcat. Don’t ask him, just appoint the kid surrogate cat handler for yours truly, just plan his life for him.

The little entourage of cars trundled along up a steep, narrow side street like a third-rate funeral procession, and turned into a long, private drive. Ahead, on the crest of the hill, Casa Capri sprawled in Mediterranean splendor, a one-story villa as imposing as a Spanish monastery, pale walls and red-tile roofs all shadowed beneath the requisite oak trees, its deep-set windows guarded by handsome wrought-iron grilles, their intricate curlicues designed to prevent illicit entry. Or maybe illicit escape?

On beyond the buildings, up along the hills, ran a narrow street, but there were no houses near, just the round green hills dotted with old sprawling trees. To Joe’s left rose an oak wood, a little private park. He could see a path winding through it among beds of ferns, and he imagined the frail residents taking little walks there, in the cool shade, accompanied by attending nurses.

They parked at the beginning of a circular drive, and Dillon disembarked, clutching him tightly against her kitty T-shirt, holding the nape of his neck in her fist in a maneuver designed to prevent him from running away, a technique she had undoubtedly learned from some book on cat care. The full instructions would direct the handler to grip the nape of the neck firmly in one hand, grip the base of the tail in the other hand, and carry kitty away from one’s body to avoid being scratched. If Dillon went that far, she’d find herself dangling two bloody stumps.

Dulcie rode limply over Wilma’s shoulder, all sweetness and smiles, looking ahead to Casa Capri, her green eyes glowing with anticipation. All ready for a fun afternoon frolicking with the cat-loving elderly. Their party was made up of fourteen humans and the same number of household pets, a remarkable assortment of dogs, mostly tiny, and cats-in-arms. One small woman toted a plastic cat carrier with air holes, through which two enraged blue eyes glowered.

In the center of the circular drive was a raised fish pond with a little cupped birdbath at one side, and burbling fountain in the center, a little oasis for our aquatic and avian friends. A flock of sparrows and finches rose lazily away, birds perhaps fed by the residents until they had lost all fear of other creatures. Joe looked after them hungrily. This would be a prime hunting preserve if he could ditch the Pet-a-Pet crowd.

Flanking the walk and drive, regiments of stiff bird-of-paradise plants grew, their dark leaves thrusting up like swords, their red and orange bird heads turned stiffly to observe new arrivals. The walk was mosaicked with tiny stones set in a curving pattern, rising in three steps to a wide landing. The double doors were dark and ornately carved. The resemblance of Casa Capri to the Prior estate in architectural style, even to the doors themselves and the window grilles, led one to conclude that Adelina had ordered the plans and the architectural accessories at a two-for-one sale.

To his left, through long French windows, Joe could see white-clothed tables set with glasses and flatware, as if the help liked to get an early start on the evening meal. To his right, within the nearest window, he glimpsed a window seat scattered with a tangle of bright pillows. Dillon let go of his neck but continued to hug him, pressing him to her like a cuddly toy until he growled at her.

She cut her eyes at him, but loosened her grip only enough to let him breathe.

The group’s leader, Bonnie Dorriss, stood above them on the steps, smiling down as if she were a schoolteacher waiting for a gaggle of five-year-olds to gather. Her short sandy hair was the same color as the freckles which spattered her nose and cheeks. Her stocky figure was encased in tight, ragged jeansand a faded green sweatshirt. But she wore a good stout pair of Rockports.

Joe looked around him at their motley group of four-legged recruits, the little lapdogs fluffy and shivering and as useless as whiskers on a toad. But there were two big dogs as well; and the sappy-faced golden retriever looked so much like Barney, with that big silly smile, that Joe felt a lump in his belly the size of a basketball.

Clyde had brought Barney home that morning, had got him settled on his blanket on the bottom bunk of the two-tier dog and cat bed in the laundry room. Barney had seemed glad to be home, but the outlook wasn’t good. The problem was his liver. He was on medication; Clyde had come home again at noon to give him his pills and try to get him to drink; all morning, Barney hadn’t moved from the bunk.

Joe had hated to leave him all alone in there except for the other animals, because what could they do? Rube and the cats would be no help if he took a turn for the worse. Clyde said he’d run home a couple of times during the afternoon. He and Dr. Firreti were waiting to see if the pills would snap Barney out of it. It was midafternoon now, and he wondered if Clyde was at home. Worrying, he said a little cat prayer for Barney.

And he turned on Dillon’s shoulder so he wouldn’t have to look at the golden retriever; the dog made him feel too sad.

The other big dog was the brown poodle that belonged to Bonnie Dorriss. The poodle appeared totally aloof, paid no attention to any of the animals. Either he was extremely dignified or bored out of his skull. He must have felt Joe staring, because he glanced up, gave him a completely innocent look-as if to say he never, never chased cats.

Oh sure. Turn your tail, and you’d have poodle teeth in your backside before you could bare a claw.

Their little group consisted of eight dogs and six cats, including a black-and-white cat who could use some advice on the principles of a slimming diet. The longhaired white cat had one yellow eye and one blue, but she was totally color-coordinated: blue collar and a natty yellow name tag. Cute enough to make you retch.

The big yellow tom glowered threateningly at him, as a tomcat is expected to do. But beneath the show of testosterone he looked both sleepy and bored.

Joe could see into the plastic cat carrier now, where a scruffy-looking tortoiseshell huddled, her blue eyes not angry now, but only painfully shy. This was the Pet-a-Pet group? These scruffy cats and puny little lapdogs were expected to play skilled therapist to a bunch of needful humans? And, of course, among the mixed participants, Joe and Dulcie were the only nonhuman members who could have carried on a conversation with the old people.

That would generate some excitement.

Led by Bonnie Dorriss, their group moved on through the wide doors into the entry, the golden retriever gawking and stumbling over its own feet. The big poodle stepped lightly beside Bonnie into the spacious reception area and sat down at her heel. Impressive, Joe had to admit.

The entry was even more elegant than the carved double doors had implied, the blue tile floor gleaming, the small potted trees in hand-painted containers fingering their delicate leaves against the white walls. The heavy ceiling beams looked hand-carved, and to his right hung an old, antique oil painting of the Molena Point hills as they must have looked before any house marred the wild sweeps of grass and young oaks.

Directly ahead through an archway shone a well-appointed sitting area. This faced, through wide French doors, a sunny, enclosed patio surrounded by the wings of the building and planted with flowers and miniature citrus trees. Charming, totally charming. He wondered if the staff would serve tea, maybe little sandwiches of smoked salmon or imported sardines and liver pate.

But then he caught a whiff of medicines and pine-scented cleaning solution; of boiled beef and onions; a mix of smells that implied actual living went on beyond the pristine entry, implied a condensed, crowded occupancy involving many more people forced together than a cat found acceptable.

Dillon, carrying him, wandered away from the others toward the parlor, but she did not enter that elegant, perfectly groomed space. She stood at the edge of the cream-and-blue Chinese rug, looking. The area was too formal to be inviting-the couch and upholstered chairs done in pale silk damask, the little mahogany tables teetering on spindly legs, the damask draperies perfectly pleated. He could imagine digging his claws into that thick fabric and swarming up, laying waste to thousands of dollars worth of thoughtful design. This must be where the residents of Casa Capri entertained their relatives and visitors, away from hospital beds and potty chairs. The room smelled faintly of lavender. Joe found himself observing the furnishings not from his own rough, tomcat frame of reference but from Dulcie’s view. Dulcie loved this fancy stuff. He even knew from listening to Dulcie that the four stiff-looking chairs were of Hepplewhite design-chairs as rigid and ungiving as four disapproving spinsters.

The room, in short, might impress, but it did not welcome. There were no cushiony places to cuddle the body, no gentle pillows to ease tired old bones. Casa Capri’s parlor looked, to Joe, as if a sign should be placed at the edge of the Chinese rug warning all comers not to touch.

But beyond the stiff parlor, the bright patio was inviting, sunny and lush, the walled garden filled with pastel-colored lilies and low beds of pansies, with intimate arrangements of wrought-iron patio chairs fitted with deep, soft-appearing cushions that just invited a nap.

Surely, out there in that warm and protected setting the frail elderly could take the sun and gossip and doze in peace, comfortably sheltered from the chill sea wind and from the outer world. Sheltered within those walls?

Or imprisoned. Joe felt his fur rise along his back.

But maybe his sense of entrapment was only a recurrence of his own kittenhood terrors, when he had been trapped by screaming kids in San Francisco’s alleys. Thinking of those nasty small boys with bricks, and nowhere to escape, he found himself clinging hard to Dillon’s bony shoulder.

He was still clinging to the child when the big front doors opened behind them and a mousy little woman stood looking in, a pale, thin creature dressed in something faded and too long, and little flat sandals on her thin feet. Behind her, through the open door, on the wide sweep of curved drive, parked just before the door, stood the pearl red Bentley Azure.

And now the driver’s door opened and Adelina Prior herself stepped out. This could be no other: a sleek and creamy woman, slim, impeccably dressed in a little flared black suit and shiny black spike heels, her jet hair smoothed into an elegant knot-chignon, Dulcie would call it-which was fastened with a clasp thatglittered like diamonds. She carried a black lizardskin briefcase with gold clasps, a small matching handbag.

This was the grand dame of Casa Capri, and she was everything that Clyde had described, her arch look at the gathered Pet-a-Pet group, as she entered, was cold with superiority and distaste.

Allowing her pale companion to hold the door for her, she swept past them, lifting one perfectly groomed eyebrow, her perfume engulfing dogs and cats in a subtle and expensive miasma of heady scent that overrode all the others. Joe supposed that her faded companion, who trailed away after her, was Adelina’s sister, Renet. Nor had Renet appeared impressed by their little Pet-a-Pet gathering; she had remained as far from them as she could manage, quickly fading to invisibility beside Adelina’s blade-perfect presence.

As the two women moved on down the hall to his right, toward what seemed to be offices, Adelina paused, turned briefly to survey them-as if hoping they had somehow vanished.

From Wilma’s shoulder, Dulcie stared back at her, green eyes blazing as if she were reading Adelina’s thoughts, and taking in the woman’s sleek hair and slim expensive attire, her shapely legs and sheer black stockings, her spike heels sharp enough to puncture a cat’s throat.

It was Dulcie who glanced away.

This was the woman who could afford a three-hundred-thousand-dollar Bentley Azure but who presumably spent her days among bedpans counting soiled sheets and inspecting medication charts. A woman who had to be driven totally by love for humanity; why else would she do this? The woman who, Clyde had told him, supervised every detail of the retirement villa like an army general. As she disappeared into an office, Joe shivered, and he, too, looked away.

11 [????????: pic_12.jpg]

To Joe’s right, where Adelina Prior had disappeared, the admitting desk dominated a portion of the villa that was less fancy and smelled strongly of various medicines, of human bodily functions, and of a harsh disinfectant that made his nose burn. A nurse stood before the admitting counter writing on aclipboard, stopping frequently to push back a lock of bleached hair. A wheeled cart loaded with medicine bottles and various pieces of equipment that he didn’t recognize and with which he didn’t care to become familiar was parked beside the high desk.

The walls were plain and unadorned, the carpet of a dark commercial tweed that looked as durable as concrete. He supposed that on around the corner the hall would lead away between rows of residents’ rooms, rather like a hospital on TV. He imagined open doors revealing stark hospital beds and various uncomfortable-looking contrivances constructed of plastic and chrome, and perhaps an occasional closed door behind which a patient was indisposed or sleeping in the middle of the day. From thatdirection came a tangle of excited television voices, a mix of daytime soaps.

Their group did not approach the admitting desk but headed in the opposite direction, down the hall to the left, where a pair of double doors stood open revealing a shabby sitting room very different from the elegant reception parlor.

In the open double doors, Bonnie Dorriss paused, waiting for them to assemble, the big poodle sitting sedately at her heel in what was beginning to be, in Joe’s opinion, an excessive display of overtraining. Did the animal have no mind of his own? But then what could you expect from a dog?

He heard a phone ring behind them, probably at the admitting desk, and in a moment it went silent. He wriggled around on Dillon’s shoulder to get a better view of the social room. The decor was early Salvation Army. Mismatched couches and chairs in faded, divergent patterns, a pastiche of varied colors and styles stood about in vague little groups. The multicolored carpeting was of a variety guaranteed to hide any possible stain. Probably only a cat’s or a dog’s keen nose would detect the spills of cough syrup, oatmeal, and worse embedded in that short, tight weave. Surveying the room, Joe got the impression that when prospective clients were welcomed to Casa Capri to discuss the placement of an elderly relative, these sliding doors were kept closed.

An arrangement of several couches faced an oversize television set, and next to it a weekly TV schedule done up in large print had been taped to the wall. The other seating groups circled scarred coffee tables piled with wrinkled magazines and folded newspapers. There were no fancy potted trees or elegant little touches such as graced the entry and parlor. And the pictures on these walls were dull reproductions of dull photographs of dull landscapes from some incredibly tedious part of the world-the kind of cheap reproductions the local drugstore published for its giveaway Christmas calendar. A pair of lost eyeglasses lay under a coffee table, and a lone slipper peeked out from beneath a couch, implying that the room had not been recently vacuumed.

The few old people who were already in attendance, scattered about in the soft chairs, seemed to have dozed off. They were settled so completely into the faded furniture that occupant and chair might have been together for decades, growing worn and shabby as one entity.

The focal points of the room, besides the TV, were a set of wide glass doors leading out to the inner patio and, at the opposite side of the room, through an arch, the dining room, its tables laid with white cloths, its wide windows looking out through decorative wrought iron to the drive, the fountain, and the gardens beyond. A pair of swinging doors led to the kitchen, from which wafted the pervasive scent of boiled beef and onions. But it was not the kitchen that drew Joe. He looked away longingly toward the sunny patio, where, it seemed, freedom beckoned.

Off to the left of the patio doors, a second long hall led away. The two long wings, separated by the patio, were joined far at the back by a third line of rooms, completing the enclosure of that garden. Glass doors led from each bedroom into the sunny retreat.

As they entered the social room one of their group, a tiny fluff of dog, whined with eagerness. Immediately the dozing old folks stirred. Rheumy eyes flew open, little cries of pleasure escaped as the residents saw their visitors. A waxen-faced old man grinned widely and hoisted himself up from a deep recline, his faded eyes lighting like a lamp blazing.

Dillon’s response was surprising. Squeezing Joe absently, hardly aware of him, her body went rigid as she studied the approaching residents.

As patients rose from the deep chairs, others straggled in from the far hall, some led by nurses, some wheeling their chairs energetically along or hobbling in their walkers, converging toward the Pet-a-Pet group moving in slow motion but as eagerly as if drawn forward by a magnetic force.

The animals’ responses were more varied. While the little dogs wiggled and whined, hungering for the lavish attention without which, Joe was convinced, the miniature breeds would wither and die, and while the golden retriever, grinning and tugging at his lead, plunged ahead toward his geriatric friends, thecats were sensibly restrained, waiting circumspectly for further developments.

Bonnie Dorriss’s poodle remained sitting at heel in an attitude of total dullsville. This was why cats were not given obedience lessons-no cat would put up with this smarmy routine.

But suddenly the poodle stiffened. His short tail began to wag as a wheelchair approached bearing a thin, white-haired woman. His mouth opened in a huge laugh. Sitting at heel, he wiggled all over.

Bonnie spoke a single word. The poodle leaped away, straight at the wheelchair, and stood on his hind legs, prancing like a circus dog around it, reaching his nose to lick the woman’s face. His front paws didn’t touch the chair until the white-haired woman pulled him to her for a hug.

Within minutes, the pair had whisked away out the front door, the dog pulling the wheeled chair along as the woman held his harness, the two of them heading for some private and privileged freedom.

And now their little group began to disperse as each animal was settled with an old person. And the assorted cats surprised Joe, settling in calmly with one patient or another, relaxed and open and loving. Joe watched them with uneasy interest. It appeared that each cat knew why it was there, and each seemed to value the experience. For a moment, the simpler beasts shamed him.

Dulcie had coached him endlessly about his own deportment.Don’t flinch at loud noises, Joe. Don’t lay back your ears even if they pinch you, and for heaven’s sake don’t hiss at anyone. Keep your claws in. Stay limp. Close your eyes and purr. Just play it cool. Don’t snarl. Think about how much you’re helping some lonely old person. If you don’tpass the test, if you fail, think how ashamed you’ll be.

That was her take on the matter. If he didn’t pass the test, he’d be out of here, a cause for wild celebration. If he didn’t pass muster, he’d be free, a simple but happy reject.

Bonnie Dorriss had helped with the testing, and that had been all right, but the two women who came down from San Francisco were another matter, two strangers poking and pushing him and talking in loud voices, deliberately goading him. He’d responded, he felt, with admirable restraint, smiling up at them as dull and simple as a stuffed teddy bear.

He’d passed with flying colors.

So I’m capable of equanimity. So big deal. So now here I am lying across this kid’s shoulder wishing I was anywhere else because in a minute she’s going to plop me down in some old lady’s pee-scented lap.The approaching group of duffers that now converged around them thrilled him about as much as would a gathering of vivisectionists.

An old man in a brown bathrobe toddled right for him, pushing his chrome walker along with all the determination of a speed runner. Watching him, Joe crouched lower on Dillon’s shoulder. But then the old boy moved right on past, heading for the black-and-white cat, his sunken, toothless grin filled with delight. “Kittie! Oh, Queen kitty. I thought you’d never get here.”

Joe watched Bonnie Dorriss take the old man gently by the arm and settle him into a soft chair, setting his walker aside. When the cat’s owner handed down the black-and-white cat, the old man laughed out loud. The cat, a remarkably equable female, smiled up at him with pleased blue eyes, and curled comfortably across his legs, reverberating so heavily with purrs that her fat stomach trembled.

This was all so cozy it made him retch. He changed position on Dillon’s shoulder, turning his back on the gathering. This was not his gig.

He wasn’t into this do-good stuff, had no interest in the therapeutic value of cat petting. Absolutely no desire to cheer the lonely elderly. He’d come only because of Dulcie, because of the bargain they’d made.

You mind your manners at Casa Capri, not embarrass me, really try to help the old folks, and you can give Max Harper the make on the cat burglar’s blue Honda. Okay?

He had agreed-with reservations. Now he watched Dulcie, listened to her happy purring as Wilma lifted her down to the lap of a tiny, wheelchair-bound lady. This had to be Mae Rose, and she really did seem no bigger than an oversize doll. Her short frizzy white hair was like a doll’s hair, her bright pink rouge rendering her even more doll-like. She sat stroking Dulcie, smiling as hugely as if someone had plugged in the Christmas lights.

He watched Dulcie reach a gentle paw to pat the little woman’s pink cheek. Then, curling down in Mae Rose’s lap on the pink afghan, Dulcie rolled over, her paws in the air waving limply above her. The little woman’s thin, blue-veined hands shook slightly as she stroked Dulcie. What a fragile little human, so thin that Joe thought a hard leap into her lap would break her leg.

He stiffened as Dillon lifted him down from her shoulder. She held him absently, like a bag of groceries, as she stood looking around the room, preoccupied with some private agenda. Irritated, he mewed to get her attention.

She stared down at him, as surprised as if she’d forgotten he was there. Shifting his position, she fixed her sights with purpose on a big lady coming toward them.

She was going to dump him on that woman, he could feel it; all the kid wanted was to get rid of him.

The solid woman approached, leaning on the arm of Bonnie Dorriss, a big square creature clumping along, making straight for the empty overstuffed chair beside Mae Rose’s wheelchair. The old woman’s face was molded into a scowl. She walked like a rheumy ex-football player, rocking along. Why didn’t Dillon move away from her, get him away from her? The kid couldn’t dream of dropping him in the lap of that creature. That lady was not in any way a promising candidate for feline friendship therapy.

As the old lady descended on them he couldn’t help the growl that escaped him, it rumbled out of his chest as uncontrolled as an after-the-hunt belch. A growl that made the old woman’s eyes open wide and made Bonnie’s blue eyes fix on him with surprise.

“Oh,” Dillon said, “I squeezed him too hard?” She petted him furiously as the old woman settled weightily into the easy chair. “It’s all right, Joe Cat, I didn’t mean to hurt you.” Dillon’s face was so close to his that their noses touched. She snuggled her cheek against him, and gently scratched under his chin, whispering almost inaudibly.

“Just play along, Joe Cat. Please just play along?” And she petted him harder. “Just make nice,” Dillon breathed. “I wish you could understand.”

He was trying.

As Dillon approached the woman’s chair, the old lady scowled deeper and pulled her maroon woolen shawl tighter around her shoulders. “I don’t want a cat. I don’t like cats, take it away.” The old girl looked like a hitter. Like someone who would happily pinch a little cat and pull its tail, particularly a stub tail.

But Dillon lifted him down to the old woman’s lap and stroked him to make him be still, keeping a tight grip on his shoulder.

The woman glowered and moved her hands away from him as if he carried some unspeakable disease. She smelled of mildew. Her face was thick and lumpy. Her voice was as harsh as tires on gravel.“I want a dog, not a cat. I want one of those fluffy little dogs, but you gave them to everyone else.”

Her angry stare fixed hard on Bonnie, as if all the ugliness in her life might be Bonnie’s fault. “That fluffy little French dog, Eloise got it. She always gets the best. Gets the biggest piece of cake and the best cut of roast beef, too. Gets to choose the TV programs because no one will dare argue with her. No one asked me if I wanted a little dog.” She flapped her hands at Joe as if she were shooing pigeons. “I want that French dog. Take the cat away.” Joe crouched lower, determined not to move.

Bonnie told her,“The last time, Eula, when you held that little fluffy Bichon Frise, you pulled his tail and he snapped at you.” She smoothed Eula’s iron gray hair.

“Is that why you gave me a cat without a tail? So I won’t pull its tail?” Eula laughed coarsely. “Is this supposed to be one of them fancy breeds, them Manx cats? Looks like an alley cat to me.”

She stared past Bonnie, at Dillon.“Why would you bring a mean old alley cat?” She studied Dillon’s faded jeans and T-shirt. “And why can’t you wear a skirt to visit? That’s all you girls wear, jeans and silly shirts. I see them all in the village when Teddy takes us shopping. Why would you bring this bony cat here? No one would want to pet this mean creature.” She peered up harder at Dillon. “Do I know you, girl? You look familiar, like I know you.”

Two spots of red flamed on Dillon’s thin cheeks, but she knelt beside Eula, stroking Joe.

“The creature is going to scratch me. It’s just laying to scratch me.”

Joe raised innocent eyes to her, giving her his sweetest face, fighting the powerful urge to nail her with a pawful of sharp ones. He was at a crossroads here. He could show this old woman some teeth and claws and get booted out on his ear-in which case he’d be free to go home. Or he could make nice, stay curled up in her lap, and endure, thus effectively keeping his bargain with Dulcie.

The bargain weighed heavily.

With Dulcie’s eyes on him, warily he settled down again. He hadn’t called Harper yet to give the police captain the make on the blue Honda. So he could still back out, cut out of here.

“If I had a dog instead of this alley cat,” Eula said, “I wouldn’t let anyone else pet it, certainly not Frederick. Frederick can get his own dog. Where is Frederick? It’s criminal for that Prior woman to move me right out of my own apartment and make me stay over here in a hospital room like a prisoner and give Frederick all the fun in that apartment alone just because I had a little blood pressure.”

Bonnie said,“Frederick will be over pretty soon. Pet the cat gently, Eula. Maybe he’ll purr for you; he has a lovely purr.”

Joe sat up clamping his teeth against any hint of a purr. But Dulcie’s look said,You promised. If you didn’t mean to be nice, why did you promise?And, reluctantly, he curled down again, into a rigid, unwilling ball.

Dulcie was so sure that this gig was important, that a dose of feline therapy really would help these old folks-help them be happy, help them deal with thoughts of death.

Personally, he didn’t agree.You get old, you get feeble. Pretty soon you check out. That’s the program. That’s how nature works, so why fight it. Let nature take its course, don’t screw things up with some kind of newfangled therapy.

Thinking about getting old, he tried hard not to dwell on Barney’s plight. After all, Barney was just a simple, lovable dog, he had no need for-and no way to acquire-some fancy philosophy, some comforting idea of an afterlife the way Dulcie believed.

Dulcie was convinced there was an afterlife for all creatures. So, fine. So who said the next life would be all sardines and cream? That realm could be anything, any number of terrors could await the unwary voyager.

He had, after the Jeannot murder, after weeks of thinking seriously about such matters-and growing incredibly nervous and irritable-decided that this starry-eyed dream of eternity was not for him. That he was not constitutionally equipped to maintain on a long-term, conscious level, Dulcie’s idyllic and nebulous dreams.

He’d rather believe in nothing. Rather subscribe to plain uncomplicated termination, than keep wondering about a chancy unknown.

Soon Bonnie Dorriss left them, moving quickly across the room to attend to a pair of ladies who both wanted the yellow cat and were arguing loudly. The cat, smiling up from the lap of one of the participants, looked unaffected by their furor, lying limp and relaxed, enjoying every moment.

Dillon paid no attention to the battle; she stood scanning the room, intently scrutinizing each newcomer who appeared belatedly from down the hall. The kid was wired, so intense she made his whiskers itch.

“Stuck here all day alone,” Eula said, “and Frederick over there in the apartment doing who knows what. Likely over there with some woman. Or reading some storybook. Always getting out of bed before it was decent to read a storybook. Sun not even up, but he’s out there making coffee and reading, I could always smell the coffee. Hiding in the kitchen wasting his time.” Her stomach shook violently against Joe.

Dillon glanced down at Eula, hardly listening. And Mae Rose and Dulcie seemed oblivious, engaged in some silent communication of their own. Mae Rose kept smiling and petting, and Dulcie had that beatific look on her face. Mae Rose’s overburdened wheelchair was fascinating. The vehicle was hung all over with bags: cloth bags, flowered bags, red bags, blue ones hung from the arms of the chair and from the back, all of them full to bulging. He could see magazines sticking out, a copy of the Molena PointGazette,the sleeve of a blue sweater, a box of tissues. A clear plastic bag contained little bits of bright cloth, and he could see the end of a Hershey bar, a single white glove, and the smooth porcelain face of a doll.

Dillon sat down on the arm of Eula’s chair. She wiggled some, getting settled. She did not seem so much relaxed as determined.

“I bet,” she said to Eula, “you have a lot of friends in here.”

Eula looked at her, surprised.

“Did you live in Molena Point a long time before you moved to Casa Capri?”

Eula didn’t answer. She stared hard at Dillon. “I know I’ve seen you somewhere.”

“I guess,” Dillon said, “if you go into the village much.”

“No, not in the village. I remember a face, girl. Forget a name but remember a face.

“But then,” Eula said, “there’s always some child visiting out in the parlor.

“Though my nieces don’t come. Never bring their children. Only came here twice, both times to find out what’s in my will.” She glowered at Dillon. “Well I never told them. None of their business.”

“I bet you and Mrs. Mae Rose are good friends, too,” Dillon persisted. Joe had to smile. The kid wasn’t subtle. Someone ought to have a talk with her; she wasn’t going to get anywhere in life without a little guile.

She leaned closer to Eula.“I bet you and Mrs. Rose watch TV together.” Joe had no idea what she was after, no notion where she was headed with this interrogation, but she meant to hang in there.

“No TV,” Eula grumbled. “AllMaedoes is play with her dolls.” She scowled deeply at Dillon. “You have as many questions as my old mother. Dead now. Dead a hundred years.” She cackled wickedly.

“I didn’t mean to be nosy,” Dillon said, “but I bet you know everyone, though. Everyone here at Casa Capri. I bet you know if they lived in the village, and all about them.”

Eula shut her mouth, leaned her head back, and closed her eyes. Dillon sank into a quiet little funk, realizing she had pushed too hard. But then soon she rose, leaning to stroke Joe.“Would you hold him a little while longer? Don’t let him get away? While I go to the rest room?”

The old woman snorted, but she took such a good grip on the nape of Joe’s neck that he had a sudden flash of her reaching with both hands and squeezing; her fingers were as strong as a man’s. “I won’t be long,” Dillon said, and she was gone down the hall toward the entry. Joe stared after her wondering what she was up to. Maybe the kid was going to skip-beatit out the front door.

“That’s not?” Eula called after her, but Dillon was gone.

Joe could see the rest room in the opposite direction, a door clearly marked, just outside the dining room. He listened for the front door to open, but he heard nothing. Where was the kid headed, acting so secretive?

12 [????????: pic_13.jpg]

“That cat killed an entire litter of newborn pigs,” Eula Weems said. “Biggest cat on the farm. So mean even the sow couldn’t run it off.

“And after it killed those pigs it kind of went crazy. From that day, it just wanted to bite your bare toes. You couldn’t go barefoot all summer, had to wear shoes. Terrible uncomfortable and hot.” Eula stared accusingly down at Joe, where he crouched rigid in her lap, glowering at him as if the dead pigs were his fault.

Mae Rose said,“If they won’t let us see Jane or Darlene or Mary Nell, then I say they aren’t here. Not in Nursing, not anywhere in Casa Capri.”

“Maybe in the county home,” Eula said helpfully. “Maybe they couldn’t pay. County home is free. When that cat got run over by the milk wagon everyone celebrated. It sure did feel good to go barefoot again. Took a month, though, for my feet to harden up on them tar roads. Burn your feet right off you.”

Mae Rose pawed through the contents of one of the hanging pockets attached to her wheelchair until she found a handkerchief. She blew her nose delicately. Joe watched the arch where Dillon had disappeared, listening for the front door to open and close, convinced the kid was going to leave. He’d like to beat it, too. Mae Rose blew her nose again and wiped her eyes, then wadded up the handkerchief. “Maybe they’re dead.”

Eula Weems snorted.“How can they be dead? You know Darlene Brown was in the hospital with cataracts, and you saw her yourself when her cousin came. Right there in that corner room with the dark glasses. You’re not making sense, Mae. And you know James Luther’s trust officer was over there all one afternoon withhim talking and signing papers.”

“That’s what they told us.” Mae Rose glanced across the room toward the open double doors, where a nurse had appeared.

The white-uniformed woman propelled Dillon along before her, clutching the child’s arm. Dillon balked and twisted, trying to pull away, her thin face splotched with anger.

“I was only looking for the rest room,” the child argued, “I don’t see?”

“The rest room is there, beside the dining room, not a block down the hall in the private wing. That area of the building is reserved for the very sickest patients, and they must not be disturbed.”

“But-”

“You’ll remain here in the social room as you were told, or you cannot come back to Casa Capri. You will not disturb the residents.” The thin woman dropped Dillon’s arm, stood staring down at her as if to make her point, then turned away. Dillon’s face was red, her scowl fierce.

Across the room a man in a wheelchair watched the little exchange with interest, and as Dillon sat down on the couch across from Eula, he headed in their direction.

Though he was wheelchair-bound, he seemed too young to be living here among the elderly. Joe thought he couldn’t be out of his late twenties-though Joe admitted he was no authority on human age. The man’s smooth, white face was lean, his blue eyes friendly, but his body was puffy from inactivity. The roll of fat around his middle, beneath his white cotton shirt, looked like a soft white inner tube. Wheeling his chair toward them, he swerved around couches and chairs with a flashy disregard for the occupants. Coming to rest beside Mae Rose, he gave his” chair a final twist like a young man spinning his sports car, and parked beside her chair. He looked Dillon over with curiosity, winked conspiratorially at Eula, then leaned toward Mae, looking hard at the tabby cat in her lap. Dulcie looked back at him warily.

“What’s that, Ms. Rose, a fur neckpiece? Did someone drop a moth-eaten fur piece in your lap?”

Eula Weems giggled.

Mae Rose’s painted cheeks flamed brighter, and she petted Dulcie with quick, nervous strokes. Dulcie didn’t move; she lay stretched out across the pink afghan coolly regarding the young man, and definitely not looking moth-eaten-her dark stripes gleamed like silk. She was very still, and nothing about her seemed to change except that her green eyes had widened; only Joe saw her stiffen imperceptibly, as if to strike.

Eula smiled coquettishly, stroking Joe.“Look, Teddy. I have an old fur piece, too.”

Teddy laughed.“Or is that one of those moldering gray union suits you tell about on the farm, that your mama sewed you into?”

Eula favored him with a girlish guffaw.

Teddy said,“Mae, you’re hugging that cat like it was a baby. Or like one of your little dolls.”

“Leave me alone, Teddy. I shouldn’t wonder if it was you that drove Jane Hubble away.”

The young man’s eyes filled with amazement. His smile was sunny and very kind; he looked as if Mae Rose could not help her aberrations.

But Dillon, watching them, was suddenly all attention. Gripped by some inner storm, Dillon raised her eyes in a quick, flickering glance at Mae Rose and the pale young man; then she looked down again.

Eula said,“Everyone knows Jane Hubble’s right over there in Nursing.” She looked to Teddy expectantly.

“Of course she is,” Teddy said kindly. “They can’t let us visit them, Mae. It’s too hard on sick people to have us underfoot going in and out, getting in the way. Of course she’s there. Where else would she be? Ask Adelina.” He put his arm around Mae. “I know you miss her. Maybe when she’s better, something can be arranged.”

Dillon had turned away, seemed to have lost interest in the conversation. She was all fidgets, moving restlessly, and when she settled on the arm of Eula’s chair and leaned down to pet Joe, her fingers were rigid, tense; she was filled with hidden excitement-or apprehension.

“She could send word,” Mae said. “The nurses could at least bring a message.”

“She’s too sick,” Eula said. “So sick she has tubes in her arms. They wanted to send me over there with the blood pressure, but I wouldn’t have it. I won’t have all those tubes stuck in me.”

Mae Rose’s wrinkled face collapsed into a hurt mask. “I’d only stay a minute.”

“The doors are locked,” Eula said. “That’s all I know. That’s all there is to know.”

Mae Rose said nothing more, sat quietly stroking Dulcie.

“If she’s sick?” Dillon began, “if this Jane Hubble is sick?”

Teddy turned to look at her.

Mae Rose burst into tears, covering her face with her hands. Dulcie sat up and touched a paw to the old lady’s cheek as the little woman huddled, sobbing.

“How long since you’ve seen her?” Dillon said to Mae, ignoring Mae’s tears. “How long since you’ve seen your friend Jane?”

“Mae doesn’t remember,” Eula said. “She gets mixed up-in this place all the days run together. She knows Jane’s all right; she just likes to make a scene.”

But when Mae Rose finished crying and blew her nose, she fixed Eula with an accusing stare.“Your own husband went over to see her. He tried to see her. He was angry, too, when they wouldn’t let him in.”

“I told Frederick, don’t you go over there.” Eula’s fat fingers pressed irritably along Joe’s back. “I told him, you’re not to go over there alone to see that woman.”

Dillon looked at Eula uncertainly.“You didn’t want your husband to see Jane? But??” She looked blank, then looked shocked suddenly. Then fought to keep from laughing. “You didn’t want your husband?” She swallowed, then began again. “Does your husband-does he live here, too?”

“Lives over in Cottages,” Eula said. “You can have your own car, very stuck-up. Then if you get sick you come over here. Frederick says he can’t stand it over here, says it’s depressing. If you get real bad sick, like Jane with a stroke, then you go into Nursing. I don’t know what Frederick does over there in that cottage all day. He says he goes into the village on the bus, to the library. I don’t know what he does. I don’t know what goes on over there with those women.”

Dillon rose and turned away, smothering a laugh.

But after a moment she turned back, gave Mae Rose a little smile.“You must miss your friend. I had a friend once who went away.”

“Her room was next to mine,” Mae said. “The corner room, the one they use now for visiting. When Jane? When they moved her to Nursing,” Mae said doubtfully, “they closed that room, and now they use it for visiting.”

“Which corner room?” Dillon asked.

“The one behind the parlor right next to my room.” Mae pointed vaguely out through the glass doors toward the far side of the patio.

Dillon walked over and peered out. Turning back, she said thoughtfully,“I don’t understand. You mean visitors stay overnight?”

“They-” Mae began.

“No,” Eula said irritably. “No one comes overnight. But if you’re in bed all the time-bedridden-and you have a dinky little room, you have your visitors there in the big room, it makes a better impression. Those corner rooms are the biggest, private bath and all. If you have a little poky room, or if you’re in Nursing, they move you into the corner room to entertain company. Your relatives come, it looks grand. They figure you’re getting a good deal for what they pay.

“But when they’re gone again, it’s back to your own dinky room, and they shut the big room. It’s all for looks. Everything for looks.” Eula yawned and settled deeper into her chair, shaking Joe. He rose, turned around several times against her fat stomach. Teddy left them, spinning his chair around and wheeling away. From the kitchen Joe could hear a clatter of pots and then a nurse came out, rolling a squeaky metal cart with a cloth draped over.

“Meals for the Nursing wing,” Eula said. “Not many of ‘em can eat solid food. They get fed early, then get their medicine and are put to sleep.”

Joe shivered.

Dillon watched the white-uniformed nurse push the cart away toward the admitting desk. And, ducking her head, pretending to scratch her arm, she kept glancing out the patio doors.

But not until Eula loosed her grip on Joe and began to snore, did Dillon pick Joe up in her arms and head for the patio. His last glimpse of Eula Weems, she had her mouth open, huffing softly.

Pushing open the glass slider, Dillon slipped out into the walled garden, into patches of sun and ragged shade. Joe sniffed gratefully the good fresh air.

Along the four sides of the building, the rows of glass doors reflected leafy patterns. Most stood open to the soft breeze. In some rooms a lamp was lit, or he could see the shifting colors of a TV. The corner room was dark, the glass sliders closed and covered by heavy draperies. Dillon, tightening her hold on him, pressing him against her shoulder, headed quickly for Jane Hubble’s old room.

13 [????????: pic_14.jpg]

Up in the hills above Molena Point the Martinez family was gathered at the pool, Juan and Doris Martinez sitting at their umbrella table wrapped in thick terrycloth robes, their hair streaming from their swim, the two children still doing laps, skimming through wisps of chlorine-scented steam. The harsh light of afternoon had softened, and the shadows stretched long. Though the wind was chilly, the spring day was bright and the pool was comfortably heated-the water was kept all year at an even seventy-eight degrees. The couple sipped their coffee, which Doris had poured from a thermos, and watched ten-year-old Ramon and seven-year-old Juanita swim back and forth the length of the long pool as effortlessly as healthy young animals. The adults had already completed their comfortable limit for laps. Doris’s limit most days was about twenty, Juan’s twice that. The kids would swim until hunger drove them out.

With careful attention to the changing times even here in Molena Point, to the increase in household burglaries even in the village, they had left only the patio door unlocked, and it was in plain view behind them. They were discussing an impending trucker’s strike, which would delay deliveries of window and wall components for Juan’s prefab sunroom company. This, in turn, would delay scheduled construction and throw the small firm behind in its work for the next year or more, depending on how long the strike lasted.

While the adult Martinezes were thus engaged discussing alternate sources of income to tide them through the coming months, a woman entered the yard behind them, making no sound, and slid open the glass door, timing its soft sliding hush to the noisy rumble of a passing UPS truck.

Slipping inside, she found herself in the large, comfortably appointed family room, all leather and soft-toned pecan woods. Crossing the thick, soft carpet, she headed for the front hall and moved quickly up the stairs; she liked to do the upstairs first. Usually, when people were in the pool or the yard, there would be a billfold left on the dresser, perhaps a handbag. Or she would find the handbag in the kitchen when she went down. Climbing the stairs, she thought about making a trip soon up to the city. She didn’t like keeping such a large stash of stolen items. She liked to move the goods on, dump the take-all but those few pieces that were so charming she couldn’t bear to part with them.

She thought of these as keepsakes. She was not without her sentimental side. She enjoyed the houses she entered, liked looking at the furnishings and getting to know the families, if only superficially, by the way they lived. Each new house, while offering fine treasures, offered also a little story about the residents. And though she knew it was foolish to hang on to keepsakes, she did love the little reminders she had saved, the lovely Limoges teapot from the McKenzie house, the five porcelain bird figurines carefully packed, and the little Swiss clock with a white cloisonne face that she couldn’t bear to part with. She had yet to determine the value of the clock, but she thought it would be considerable. She needed more specific information on these miniature clocks; she was finding quite a few. The cloisonne clocks, imported from Europe, were big in California just now. She’d take care of the research up in the city at the main branch of San Francisco Public, not here in Molena Point, where someone might recognize her; she felt particularly wary of that ex-parole officer in the library’s reference department.

She’d like to drive up to the city early, spend several hours with Solander; Solander’s Antiques was the most reliable fence, and she didn’t have to hobnob with little greasy shoplifters. No, Solander was strictly first-class. Then a stop at several banks to get rid of the cash, and a nice lunch, maybe at the St. Francis. Then the remainder of the day in the art reference room of San Francisco Public. The trips made a really nice change from her everyday routine. Maybe she’d stay over, catch a play, do a little shopping.

Though before she left, she did want to get her map of Molena Point in better order. She’d nearly made a bad mistake yesterday, had really scared herself when she realized she was in the Dorriss house. And she had forgotten, if she’d ever known, that the upstairs was a separate apartment.

But no matter, she hadn’t gotten that far. Though not until she saw Bonnie Dorriss’s car pull into the drive, saw her getting out with that big brown dog, that poodle, did she realize where she was. Luckily the young woman had taken the dog around to the backyard, and she had slipped out the front. She hadn’t time to lift anything, and the experience had left her unsettled.

Upstairs, in the Martinez master bedroom, she found a billfold containing something over two hundred in small bills. She didn’t find a purse, but she did find a jewelry box and picked up a nice pearl choker and a lovely antique emerald necklace. This last could be a real find-it must be well over a hundred years old and was probably Austrian by the looks of it. If those tiny emeralds were real, she had a fortune in herhands. But even if the emeralds were only chips, or even paste, the finely made antique piece would still be worth a nice sum.

She found a few gold and silver coins in a cuff-link box, none of them in protective envelopes, but found nothing else of value. She was checking the other bedrooms when, in what appeared to be the guest room, she came on a glass case containing five big dolls.

These were not children’s toys, but replicas of adult women, works of art so lifelike that at first sight they shocked her. As if, peering into the case, she was looking into a tiny alternate world, spying on live miniature people. The doors of the case were locked.

Each female figure was a very individual little being, her skin so real one wanted to feel its warmth, her tiny fingers perfect. And each lady was totally different from the others, each face different, registering very different human emotions. She could not resist the Victorian woman’s aloof smile. Each tiny woman was so alive that even their individual ways of standing and looking at her were unique. In their lovely period lace and satins, these lively ladies were surely handmade. She wondered if they were one of a kind; certainly they were collector’s dolls.

Thinking back, she could remember glancing at magazine articles about doll shows, and at ads for dolls, but obviously she hadn’t paid sufficient attention. She had missed a whole movement here.

Well she would pay attention from now on, close attention. Her fingers shook as she fished out her lockpicks.

The operation took forever, and she was growing nervous that some member of the family would come slipping in from the pool and up the stairs before she had the glass case open. Her hands were trembling so badly that when she did get the lock open she almost dropped the first doll. The little lady’s full silk skirts rustled, and her direct, imperious gaze was disconcerting.

Each doll was over twelve inches tall. They were going to make a huge bulge under her coat. But at last she got them tucked away in the deep pockets that lined the garment, and, still in the guest room, she checked herself before the full-length mirror.

Not too bad, if she stood with her shoulders hunched forward to make the coat fall away from her. She could hardly wait to research these beauties and get them up to the city.

She would take these to Harden Mark; he was the best with the real art objects. And, of course, before she saw him she needed to educate herself. There wasn’t a fence in the world who wouldn’t rip you off if he could.

She had finished upstairs, was downstairs in the kitchen going through Mrs. Martinez’s purse, when she heard the sliding door open. She stuffed the bills in her coat and closed the purse. On her way out the back door she snatched up a handful of chocolate chip cookies.

Silently closing the door, she let her body sag as if with fatigue and discouragement, shrugging deeper down into the lumpy coat, and slowly made her way along the side of the house ambling heavy and stiff, peering into the bushes, calling softly,“Kitty? Here, kitty. Here, Snowy. Puss? Puss? Come on, Snowy. Come to Mama, Snowy.” Her old voice trembled with concern, her expression was drawn with worry. She did not let down her guard until she had left the Martinez residence unchallenged-really, this was a great waste of talent-and had ambled the three blocks to her car.

Driving home along Cypress, up along the crest of the hills heading for Valley Road, passing high above the sprawling wings of Casa Capri Retirement Villa, she slowed her car, pulled onto the shoulder of the narrow road for a moment. Sat looking down with interest at the red-tile rooftops softened by the limbs of the huge old oaks and at the tangle of cottages climbing up the hill; even those small individual houses gave one a sense of confinement.

From this vantage she could look almost directly down into the patio. Though the garden was charming, shadowed now, and the lemons and the yellow lilies shining almost like gold, the high walls made her shiver. Casa Capri was beautiful, but it was still an institution, sucking dry your freedom. As the poem said, she could wear red rubber boots to dance in, she could drink wine on street corners if she chose and laugh with the bums, and who was to stop her?

Parked above Casa Capri, she eased off her heavy coat, folded it carefully with the five dolls protected inside, and laid it on the seat. Studying the sprawling complex, she laughed because she did not belong there, then headed away thinking of supper and a hot bath.

14 [????????: pic_15.jpg]

The patio doors were securely closed and partly obscured by the drawn draperies. Dillon could feel her heart pounding as she pressed her face against the glass, cupping her hands-and ramming the cat’s face against the doorframe. Growling, he backed away as if to jump, but she grabbed the nape of his neck. “I’m sorry, Joe Cat, you have to stay here.” She stroked him and hugged him, and he settled down again. He was really a good cat. She rubbed his ears, then cupped her hands once moreto peer in.

The room showed no sign of life, no lamp burned, no TV picture flickering, no figure moving about or seated in a chair reading. She could see a dresser and a chair, and a bed neatly made up with a white spread, its corners tucked at exact angles. There were no clothes lying around, nothing personal, no glasses or book or newspaper, not a stray shoe, not even a wadded tissue. The surfaces of the dresser and nightstand were bare. The room was definitely empty.

Mama said they charged a bundle to stay here at Casa Capri. So why would they keep a room empty, even for the reason Eula gave? She was so intent on the room that when Joe turned to nibble a flea, jerking around to bite his shoulder, she grabbed at him again, startled.

Pressing him against her cheek, she looked behind her, glancing toward the social room. Making sure no one was watching, she tried the door, testing the latch while pretending to smell the blooms on the lemon tree.

It was locked. Well she’d known it would be. She tugged and jerked to be sure, then turned away.

Moving on down the brick walk close to the row of glass doors, she paused to look in through each, searching for a familiar face, for Jane’s tall straight figure, and knowing she wouldn’t find her.

At home, the minute she and her folks had gotten back from living in Dallas after their year away, the minute they pulled in the drive, with the car still loaded with suitcases, she had run up the street to Jane’s house. They’d lived in Dallas while Dad did a special project at the university, and she’d really missed Jane, specially after Jane stopped writing to her, because at first they’d written every week. Four times while they were living in Texas she’d tried to call Jane, but there was never any answer. Mama tried twice, and then Jane’s phone was disconnected, and she didn’t know what had happened. By then it was time to come home, so Mama told her to wait, that she’d see Jane soon. But she hadn’t seen her; when she got home, Jane was gone.

That afternoon, when they pulled into the drive and she ran down the block, there was the FOR SALE sign pounded into the lawn in Jane’s yard. And all the curtains drawn. The neighbor said Jane was in Casa Capri with a stroke and that a trust officer was selling the house.

She had run home, gotten her bike, and come up here to Casa Capri, but they said Jane was too sick to see anyone. They said children weren’t allowed in the Nursing wing because of germs. They weren’t very nice about it.

As she moved down the patio beside the glass doors, Joe Cat began to wriggle. Though his whiskers tickled her ear, he was being really careful not to dig in his claws. The old people sitting in their rooms watching TV made her sad; they looked so lonely and dried up.

Jane wouldn’t be watching TV-she’d be reading or doing exercises or out walking, shopping in the village, maybe buying some little trinket; she loved the antique stores. Jane might be wrinkled, but she’d never be old like these people. Moving along, peering in through the glass, she approached the end of the patio, where sunlight slanted in through the panes across the carpets and beds, across the unmoving old folks as though they were statues-virtual reality that didn’t move, figures in stage sets, like the animal dioramas in the museum. Each old person looked back at her, but no one changed expression, no one smiled. One old man sat propped in a reclining chair, sound asleep, with his mouth open, under a bright reading lamp. She was never going to get old.

She knew that the Nursing rooms were directly behind this row of rooms. The second time she came up on her bike, she’d tried to get in there, had gone around to the little street in the back between the main building and the retirement cottages. She’d tried to go in that door directly to Nursing, but it was locked. She’d looked in the windows of the rooms, and they were like those in a hospital, with metalbeds and IV stands and bedpans. And then today, when she went down the hall and tried to get into Nursing, that nurse made her go back. She didn’t see why everything was so secret, and everyone so grumpy. Unless there was something to hide. And that was what she meant to find out.

Before she started back up the third side she sat down on a bench beneath an orange tree and pulled Joe Cat off her shoulder down into her lap, petted him until he lay down. She supposed it was hard for a cat to be so still. She’d like to let him loose, but she’d been told not to. She could imagine him scorching away up a tree and over the roof and gone, and it would be her fault.

That first time when she came to see Jane and she told Mama they wouldn’t let her in, Mama called Jane’s trust officer. He said Jane was too sick to have company, and that was the policy here, that they allowed no visitors into Nursing, that only the family could come.

He said Mama could take his word that Jane was doing as well as could be expected, whatever that meant, and that he was in constant touch with the doctor who cared for Casa Capri’s patients. And Mama believed him. With Mama going back to work, she didn’t have time to go up to Casa Capri and raise a little hell, which Mama really could do when she wanted.

Mama’s office, the real-estate office where she worked before she took leave of absence to go to Dallas, wanted her back right away. Three people were out sick, and the office was having a Major Panic. And after that, Mama hardly had time to pee. She did the laundry at midnight, or left it for Dillonand Dad, and they ate takeout most nights, or Dad made spaghetti. All you could hear around the house was “deeds” and “balloon loans” and “termite inspections” until even Dad was tired of it. Mama did talk to the doctor, though, and he said exactly the same thing, that Jane was too sickfor visitors, and she was getting excellent care at Casa Capri.

Any sensible child, Mama said, would believe the combined word of several responsible grown-ups.

But she didn’t. She didn’t believe any of them.

Sliding Joe back onto her shoulder, she rose, catching her hair in a branch of the orange tree. Working it loose, she almost let Joe leap away, but then he settled down again, nosing at her hair, and began to purr. She hated her hair black. But if she’d come up here with red hair again, the nurses would have recognized her. Everyone remembered red hair.

Freeing her ugly black hair, petting Joe Cat, she moved toward the third wing of the building that would lead back to the social room. Moving along the row of mostly open glass doors, she tried the screens.

The third screen was unlocked, and the room empty. Dillon slipped inside.

“Just a little look around, Joe Cat. Who’s to care?”

He purred louder, and seemed to be looking, too.

This was a man’s room, a pair of boxer shorts tossed on the chair, a man’s shoes under the dresser, and that made her sort of uncomfortable. Across the unmade bed lay a rough navy blue robe, and on the dresser beside a little radio, was a pile of paperback books with covers of tigers, grizzly bears, and half-naked women. When she opened the closet, his slacks and shirts hung loosely and smelled sour. Closing the closet again, she slipped on through the too-warm room and out into the hall, turning down toward Nursing.

The door at the end of the hall was locked. She pushed, and pushed harder, then turned away.

Moving back up the hall she inspected every room she could get into, slipping quickly from one side of the hall to the other. She and Jane used to readAlice in Wonderland,where Alice tried all the doors, like this, never sure what she would find inside.

But there was no magic mushroom here to make her a different size and maybe give her special powers.

The lady’s clothes in one room were all purple, purple satin robe, purple slippers, a lavender nightie tangled on the floor. On the nightstand a stack of romance novels teetered beside a vase of purple artificial flowers, their faded petals icky with dust. She picked up a worn paperback and read a few lines where it flopped open. And dropped it, her face burning.

Did old people read this stuff?

She wanted to look again, but she didn’t dare. Reading that stuff, even in front of a cat, made her feel too embarrassed. And strange; she could feel Joe Cat peering over her shoulder staring.

What was he staring at?

She put the book back on the pile and left the room quickly, before someone caught her here.

She thought the occupant of the next room must be moving in or out. At least all her possessions were in boxes. Shoe boxes were neatly lined up on the dresser, and bigger boxes lined up on the floor, all stuffed with sweaters and books, with little packets of letters tied together with ribbon, with lace hankies and little china animals wrapped in tissue. This room faced the outside of the building, toward a narrow terrace.

At the outer edge of the terrace ran a tall wrought-iron fence, separating it from the lawn and garden beyond. Farther away rose the oak grove, and in the wood among the shadowed trees a figure moved swiftly, rolling along in a wheelchair, her short gray hair lifting in the breeze, her chair pulled by the big brown poodle. The dog trotted along happily, pulling her, the two of them looking so free, as if they never had to come back inside Casa Capri. She pretended that the woman was Jane. But of course that woman was Bonnie Dorriss’s mother. Dillon turned away, feeling lonely.

Each patio was separated from the next by a low stucco wall, with an open space at the end so you could walk from one patio to the next. But when she tried the wrought-iron gates that led outside, they were all locked.

All our nurses are required to carry keys,that’s what Ms. Prior said. The wrought-iron fence ended just where Nursing began, turning at right angles to join the building. The Nursing wing went on beyond. Its wall had only high, tiny windows. There was one outer door, like the emergency exit door in a movie theater. From this, a line of muddywheelchair tracks led away, cutting across the grass and across the concrete walk to the blacktop parking lot. The nine cars in the lot looked new and expensive.

She stroked the tomcat lightly.“I never told them my name. When I was here before, I told them my name was Kathy.

“Jane Hubble was my friend ever since I was seven. We read the Narnia books together, and she took me horseback riding my first time and talked Mama into letting me have riding lessons.

“Jane let me ride Bootsie, too.” She sighed. “That trust officer sold Bootsie. I hope he got a nice home. I wish my folks could have bought him, but no one told us, no one called us when Jane got sick.”

Joe yawned in her face and wiggled into a new position. She was sure he’d like to run and chase a bird. When he started squirming again, she gripped the nape of his neck. “I can’t let you loose, I promised. Please, just stay quiet a little while longer, then we’ll go back to Eula.” She gave him a sidelong look. “Eula will love holding you.”

She left the row of terraces, moving back inside to the hall, and wandered up the hall in the direction of the social room, stopping to check each open room. Hoping maybe she’d see something of Jane’s in one of the rooms, a sweater, a book. But she knew she wouldn’t.

“Somehow, Joe Cat, I have to get into Nursing. Find Jane for myself-if Jane is there.”

Joe was, he thought, maintaining a high level of patience considering that he hated being carried, particularly by a child, and that prowling these small cluttered rooms where lonely old folks waited out their last years, was infinitely depressing. He might tell himself that he took a realistic view of getting old, that getting old was just part of living, but this Casa Capri gig was more tedious than he cared to admit.

As for Dillon playing detective, whatever the kid was up to with her intense search for Jane Hubble, the project had begun to wear. He felt as nervous as fleas on a hot griddle. By the time they returned to the social room he was ready to pitch a fit, so strung out that he actually welcomed being dropped down into Eula Weems’s lap. Maybe if he just lay still, he could get himself together.

It was not until late that night, as he and Dulcie hunted across the moonlit hills, that he learned more about Dillon’s missing friend. And that he began to wonder if Jane Hubble, and maybe those five other old folks, really had disappeared.

15 [????????: pic_16.jpg]

Cloud shadows ran along the street where Dulcie trotted, skittish in the wind. Ahead, moonlight shifted across Clyde’s cottage. She approached through uncertain heavings of darkness and moonlight; above her the oak’s twisted branches plucked at the porch roof, scraping and tapping. But beneath the roof the shadows were deep and still, framing the lit rectangle of Joe’s cat door.

Slipping across the damp grass, she leaped to the steps, watching the smear of pale plastic, willing Joe to hurry out. Midnight was already past; the small wild hours, in which the dull and civilized slept, in which the quick creatures of the night crept out to feed and to bare their tender throats for the hunter’s teeth, lay before them. The hour of the chase waited, the hour of adrenaline rush and fresh blood flowing.

But as, above her, the moon swam and vanished, and the clouds ran unfettered like racing hounds, the cat door remained empty.

Waiting, she sat down to lick the dew from her claws.

Soon, then, the deepest shadows fled, the moon appeared suddenly again, and at the same instant the plastic door darkened, struck across by a sharp-eared shadow.

The door flipped up. Joe’s nose and whiskers pushed out, and he thrust out into the night, jerking his rump through, shaking himself irritably as the plastic flopped against his backside.

She was so glad to see him.“About time! Come on-I’m wired, let’s go, the mice will be out in droves.”

But Joe had stopped within the shadows of the porch, his ears down, his shoulders and even his stub tail drooping. He looked like an old, old cat, an ancient worn-out relic, a sad cat skin filled with weariness.

She approached him warily.“What?” she said softly. “What’s happened?”

He did not move or speak.

She pressed against him, her nostrils filled with the scent of mourning.“Barney? It’s Barney.”

His eyes were filled with pain.

She sat down close to him, touched him with her nose, and remained quiet.

“His liver gave out. The pain was terrible. There was nothing? Dr. Firetti gave him pain pills, but there was nothing else he could do. It was terminal. He gave him?”

“He put him down?”

Joe nodded. They sat looking at each other. Clyde and Dr. Firreti had done what was needed.

“He’s somewhere,” she said at last.

“I don’t know.”

“Remember the white cat. The white cat could not have come to me in dream if he wasn’t somewhere. He was already dead when I dreamed of him, and he told me things I couldn’t know.”

The white cat had led her to the final clue, led her to Janet Jeannot’s killer. And this happened long after he died-his flesh was rotted when they found him, his bones bare-yet she had dreamed of him only days before.

There was, Joe knew, no other explanation but that the white cat had spoken to Dulcie from beyond the grave. Yet as they had stood over the white cat’s desiccated body, over his frail, bare bones with the little hanks of white fur clinging, a hollowness had gripped him. He had not experienced Dulcie’s joy at proof of another life. He had been filled with fear, with a sudden horror of the unknown. Terror of whatever lay beyond had ripped through him as sharp as the strike of a rattlesnake.

She nudged against him, and licked his ear.“Barney is somewhere. He’s somewhere lovely, Joe. Why would a sweet dog like Barney go anywhere but somewhere happy?” She pressed against him until he lay down, and she curled up close. “He doesn’t hurt anymore. He’s running the fields now, the way he was meant to do.” And lying tangled together in the shadows of the little front porch, comforting each other, they remained quiet for a very long time.

But at last Joe rose and shook himself.“He was such a clown,” he said softly. “Every time I came home from hunting he had to smell all the smells on me, the stink of rabbit, the smell of bird, every trace of blood. He’d get so excited, you could just see him sorting out the scent of mouse, raccoon, whatever, wanting to run, wanting to retrieve those beasts the way he was bred to do.”

Dulcie swallowed.

“He’d know when I stopped by Jolly’s, too. He went crazy over the smells from the deli; he always had to lick all the tastes off my face.”

She said,“He did that, once, to me. It was like sticking my head in a hot shower.” She rose. “Barney knows we miss him. Maybe he knows we’re talking about him.” She nudged him until, at last, they left the porch, Joe walking heavily as if he were very tired.

Ignoring the little side streets and alleys where they sometimes liked to prowl, she led him straight for the open hills. They passed the little tourist hotel, where an elegant Himalayan presided over the clientele, a cat whose picture was featured on the hanging sign and in the inn’s magazine ads; they could smell her scent on the bushes. The inn’s clients liked to have the Himalayan in their rooms at night to warm their feet and sleep before the fire, and perhaps to share their continental breakfast. She, and all Molena Point’s cats, were as revered in the little village as were the felines of Italy, taking the sun atop a bronze lion or stalking pigeons across Venice’s ancient paving.

“She’s a snob,” Joe said.

“Not at all. She just fell into a good thing. If she knows how to milk it, more power to her.” She nudged him into a trot, and soon they had crossed above Highway One and into a forest of tall dry grass that rustled overhead, casting weavings of shadow across their faces and paws.

It was much later, after several swift chases, after feasting on half a dozen mice and a ground squirrel, that Dulcie, too, began to feel uncertain and morose. Pausing in her elaborate bath, she flicked her pink tongue back into her mouth, licked her whiskers once, and stared at him.

He stopped washing, one white paw lifted.“What? What’s with you?”

“I was thinking. About Mae Rose.”

“Don’t start, Dulcie. Not tonight.”

“Mae Rose thinks maybe Jane Hubble ran away. That the home didn’t look for her, that they didn’t want to tell the police that someone ran away.”

“Mae Rose is bonkers. How could an old woman run away from that place, an old woman who’d had a stroke? How far would she get before she collapsed somewhere, or someone brought her back?”

“Mae Rose says Jane got better after her first attack, that she was getting really restless. Then she had the second attack, and they moved her over to Nursing.”

He just looked at her.

“She might have run away. I read once about an old woman who-”

“Probably she couldn’t even get out of bed, let alone out of the Nursing wing.” He gave her an impatient glare. “If the doors to Nursing are all locked, as Dillon says, and with nurses all over thick as a police guard, you think Jane Hubble got out of bed by herself, got dressed by herself,picked up her suitcase, and walked out.”

She lowered her ears and turned away.

Joe sighed.“She’s there. In Nursing. Safe and sound. Too sick to have visitors. Mae Rose has latched onto one fact, that they won’t let anyone visit Jane, and she’s turned it into a disaster.”

The moon behind them had dropped below the clouds, turning the tomcat into a silhouette as dark and rigid as an Egyptian statue.“Mae Rose is full of fairy tales. Old people get childish, they imagine things.”

“But she isn’t childish, she’s still very sharp. She’s told me all about her life, and she isn’t imagining that. She showed me her albums, she remembers every play she sewed for, every costume, she showed me the pictures, told me the characters’ names and even the actors’ names, she remembered them all. She-”

“She showed her albums to a cat? She showed pictures to a cat, told her life history to a cat?”

“No one else is interested; they’re tired of hearing her.”

“Dulcie, normal people don’t talk to cats, not like the cat can really understand.”

“But we do understand.”

“But no oneknowsthat.” He hated when she was deliberately obtuse. “Mae Rose doesn’t know we can understand her. Anyone-except Clyde and Wilma-who thinks a cat can understand human speech is bonkers. If Mae Rose thinks you can understand her, that old lady is certifiably round the bend.”

She crouched down, deflated.“I’m all she has to talk to; everyone else treats her like she’s stupid.”

“Dulcie, the old woman is in her second childhood. For one thing, what sane, grown woman would carry a doll around with her? Does she talk to the doll, too?”

“She makes doll clothes; that was her living. If she still has dolls of her own, if she still sews for them, I don’t see anything strange. She supported herself doing that, the clothes are all silks and handmade lace. She said Jane Hubble loved her dolls.”

“Dulcie?”

The moonlight caught her eyes in a deep gleam, her pupils large and black, the thin rim of green as clear as emeralds.“No one understands how she feels; she’s so terribly alone, and Jane was her only real friend. We could at least try to help her-try to find Jane.”

“Can’t you understand that she’s making this stuff up? That no one is missing?” He moved away through the grass, irritated beyond toleration, so angry that he didn’t want to talk about it.

He didn’t want to admit his own unease.

Mae Rose was not the only one who thought Jane Hubble was missing. Whatever the truth turned out to be, he didn’t think little Dillon Thurwell was bonkers.

Nor had Dillon and Mae Rose invented this story together. The two hadn’t met each other until today, yet both were possessed with this fixation that Jane Hubble had met with foul play.

“I want to help her, Joe. Somehow I’m going to help her.”

“Dulcie, we’re cats, not social workers. We weren’t born to help little old ladies, we were born to hunt and fight and make kittens.”

“Fine. You go make some kittens.” She lashed her tail, her green eyes blazing. “You do what you were born to do, act like a stupid tomcat. And I’ll do what I think is right.”

“Dulcie-”

“You were eager enough to solve Samuel Beckwhite’s murder.”

“But there hasn’t been a murder.”

Her ears went flat, her whiskers tight to her face, her tail lashing.“And you’re anxious enough, now, to spy on that harmless woman burglar just because she loves pretty things.”

“Come on, Dulcie. The woman is stealing.” Dulcie’s logic-female logic-drove him crazy.

“I suppose,” she said, “it makes no difference that Jane Hubble isn’t the only one who’s missing. That there are five other patients who were moved to Nursing and haven’t been seen again.”

“That old woman ought to write for Spielberg. And you heard what Eula said, that some of those people have been seen-the one with the cataract operation, and the man who spent all afternoon with his attorney.”

She gave him a dark look. She didn’t have an answer; but that didn’t change her mind. Exasperated, he stared down the hill toward the lights of the village.

She said,“If I can help you stalk the cat burglar, which I think is stupid, then you could help me search for Jane Hubble.”

“If it’s so stupid, why did you read all those news clippings? Why??”

“Will you help me look? It’s safer with two,” she said softly.

Joe knew he was defeated. She always knew how to push some vulnerable button.

“For starters, I want to search the Nursing wing.” She assessed his mood through narrowed eyes. “If we can get into Nursing,” she said softly, “we can see for ourselves if Jane and those other old people are there. And that should settle it.” She lay down in the grass watching him, all gentleness now, quiet and submissive.

He was beaten. She wasn’t going to let go of this; when she got her claws in like this, and then turned gentle, she’d hang on until her quarry-him-was reduced to shreds. “All right,” he said, ignoring the uneasy feeling in his belly. “Okay, we’ll give it a try.”

She smiled and rolled over, and leaped up. Sooner than he liked they had licked the last dribbles of mouse blood off their whiskers and were headed across the hills for Casa Capri.

Trotting across the grassy slopes between scattered houses, as he looked past Dulcie, down the hill, watching the tiny lights of a car leave the police station, heading away toward the beach, he thought about Dillon Thurwell.

Dillon had joined Pet-a-Pet so she could look for Jane Hubble; she had dyed her hair so the nurses wouldn’t recognize her. And maybe because of Dillon more than any other reason, he’d let himself get hooked into a predawn break-and-enter that could get plenty hairy. He thought of getting locked into that hospital wing among half a dozen antagonistic nurses, nurses who could wield a variety of lethal medical equipment, and he could almost feel the needles jabbing.

The doll lay in a small dark enclosure just large enough to accommodate her eight-inch height. Her blond hair was matted. Her blue eyes, dulled by grime, stared blindly into the blackness. Her little hands were raised as if she reached but there was no one to pick her up and cuddle her or to examine the knife slit across her belly beneath her little dress.

Her porcelain skin, which had once been clear and translucent, was grayed with dust. Her flower-sprigged blue-and-white frock, made of the finest sheer lawn, and her white lacy slip, all hand-sewn with tiny, even seams, now hung yellowed and limp. And beneath her pretty dress, where her cloth body had been ripped, the three-inch gash had been sewn up again with ugly green thread in large, ragged stitches jabbing any which way into her white muslin body, and the thread knotted with a heavy, lumpy closure.

The walls around the doll were of thick oak, and the container bound outside with brass corners. Someone had hidden the doll well. If anyone had ever loved this doll, she lay forgotten, abandoned. If someone should find her there, they might have no notion of her significance-she was simply a grimy old doll ready for the trash or the Goodwill. Very likely, if she had a tale to tell, no one would know or care. No one would question who had ripped her apart and sewn her up again, or question why. And if there were significant fingerprints remaining on her porcelain face or arms, who would think to look for such a thing? She was not, at this juncture, a clue to any known crime.

17 [????????: pic_17.jpg]

As the cats crouched on the moonlit hillside, above them the high grass stems thrust black and sharp as knives against the moon. Through the grass they looked down onto the rooftops of Casa Capri, the sloping tiles struck into patterns of curving shadow. Far down beyond the retirement villa and beyond the village roofs, the moon’s path cut like a yellow highway across the dark Pacific.

Nothing moved. No wind. The night was still and bright.

Just above the main building of Casa Capri, the rows of small retirement cottages climbed up toward them, their moonlit roofs gleaming pale, their little streets lit at intervals by the decorative lamps spaced along the winding lanes. But the cottages themselves were dark. No light shone, no curtain stirred where retirees slept. The time was 4:00 A.M.

The main building of Casa Capri was dark at the front. Along the sides, a thin glow from the softened hall lights seeped out from the residents’ rooms. At the back of the building, in the Nursing wing, bright lights burned. One imagined sleepless patients suffering late-night changes of IV bottles, or perhaps restless with pains and discomforts and with the fears which can accompany old age.

Glancing at each other, the cats slipped on down through the grass, down between the dark cottages, and across the little narrow streets. Pausing in a geometrically neat bed of pansies, they studied the Nursing wing.

The windows in Nursing were high and securely closed, as if perhaps those shut-in patients disliked the cool night air. There was no access there, through those windows. They had crossed the last street into the shadow of the building when suddenly a clashing explosion of sound hit them, loud as the crash of wrecking cars. Metal clanging against metal. They crouched belly down, staring wide-eyed, frozen to the earth, ready to run.

But then they identified the harsh metallic music of a radio booming out from the Nursing wing, a blare of Spanish brass, of trumpets blasting and snorting, and they crept on again, ears tight to their heads, slinking.

The next instant someone turned the volume down, and the noise subsided to a nearly tolerable decibel level.

Eight cars stood in the parking lot, their metal bodies pale with dew from having been parked most of the night. Not a car among them was more than two years old, and they were all top-of-the-line Buicks, Chevys, even two Mercedeses. Skirting the parking lot, the cats headed for the Care Unit, and there, slipping in through the wrought-iron fence that guarded the little terraces, they searched for an open glass door, for access to a bedroom and the hall beyond.

Most of the glass doors were closed. The two that had been left open a few inches were secured in place by a bar, and the screens were latched. As if the occupants worried seriously about human intruders scaling the six-foot fence and strangling them in their beds.

The cats could hear the soft breathing of the shadowy sleepers, but some of the occupied beds looked hardly disturbed, the covers nearly flat and only a small, thin mound where the sleeper lay. Other occupants had tangled their covers and twisted them or thrown them on the floor. One old man, wrapped in a cocoon of blankets, snored like a bulldog with bad tonsils.

Trying each door and screen, they were nearly to the end of the row before they found a glass standing open and the screen unlatched, or perhaps the latch was broken. The room smelled of cherry cough syrup. Slipping inside, they crept past the bed and its mountainous occupant. A metal walker with rubber feet stood beside the open door to the hall. They crouched beside it, looking down the empty corridor, then fled along it toward the social room.

In the darkness, the room seemed huge, the hulking shapes of couches and overstuffed chairs looming like fat, misshapen beasts. Beyond their hunching black forms, the white-clothed dining tables were moonlit, the moon itself shining in through the glass. To the left of the dim room, the patio gleamed pale through its glass doors. They leaped to the back of a dark sofa, listening.

From down the hall, toward the admitting desk, two women were talking; and the cats could smell coffee. Leaping from the couch to a chair, and to a couch again, they moved in that direction, then quickly through the open doors and down the hall.

At the parlor they slipped into the deep shadows beneath a chair. Staring out, they studied the brightly lit admitting desk and the open doors of the two lit offices.

The admitting desk was deserted, but in one of the offices the two women were laughing, and a coffee cup rattled. The cats fled past and down the hall, toward the closed door of Nursing, where they could hear the brassy music playing softly. Sliding into the nearest darkened bedroom, they sat close together, looking out through the crack of the door, studying the secured entrance to Nursing.

The door was one of those pneumatic arrangements which, the cats knew from past experience, was beyond their strength to open. If they waited long enough, someone had to come through; all they needed was patience. Behind them, in the dark bedroom, the sleeper moaned and turned over; the room smelled sour, of sleeping human, and was too warm. Soon Dulcie began to fidget, and then a flea began to chew at Joe’s rump. He bit at it furiously, easing the itch, trying in vain to catch the little beast. Lately he’d begun to think of his minor but stubborn flea infestation as a serious breach of personal hygiene, a scourge on the civilized being he had become, a source of deep embarrassment.

Clyde had suggested that if he hated flea spray so much, he might try a daily shower. Well, of course, Clyde would offer some incredibly stupid solution. Joe was surprised Clyde hadn’t bought him a razor, encouraged him to take up shaving; certainly that would get rid of the fleas.

They waited, watching the lit crack beneath the door to Nursing for what seemed an endless time before suddenly that space darkened, and footsteps hushed on the carpet within.

The pneumatic door sucked inward, and a nurse hurried out past them, her white shoes flashing along, inches from their noses. Before the door sucked closed they bolted through.

They nearly rammed into the heels of a second nurse. Crouching behind her, their hearts pounding, they stared around for a place to hide, but the best bet, the only real option, was the cart beside her. She stood with her back to them, arranging something on its metal shelves. They could smell hot cocoa and buttered toast, and, as she turned toward a counter, they fled underneath, between the chrome wheels.

Soon they were creeping along beneath the moving cart as she pushed it down the hall, their ears flicking up against the cold metal. The rubber tires made a soft pulling sound on the carpet, like tape being ripped from a fuzzy surface. Around them they could see only the wheels, the wooden molding along the wall, and the bottoms of the evenly spaced doors. If there were charts on the doors presenting the patients’ names, they could see nothing of these. They might be passing Jane Hubble’s room at this moment and never know. This procedure wasn’t going to cut it. If they could ride on top the cart, that would be an improvement. Dulcie glanced at him with impatience, her tail twitching nervously against the metal wheel.

Some of the rooms were dark, but most were lit, and in some the voice of an elderly occupant groaned or called out. The smells of medicine and of sick people made them both want to retch. They could see the bandage-wrapped feet of one patient who was out of bed sitting in a chair. Halfway down the hall the cart stopped, the black rubber tires were stilled, and the nurse’s white shoes padded away into a softly lit room. Behind her, they crept out to look

Through the open door, a bedside lamp threw a narrow glow across the metal bed and across the thin, wrinkled occupant; he had an obedient, gentle face, as if he had long ago resigned himself to the entrapments of old age. As the nurse turned to straighten his nightstand, the cats slipped in behind her and under the bed.

Crouching beneath the dusty springs, they were only inches from her size five white oxfords, so close they could smell the mown grass through which she must have recently walked. This blended pleasantly with the smell of cocoa and buttered toast, and they could hear her arranging a tray before the patient, could hear the plate slide on the metal surface. She spoke to the old man in Spanish, but he answered her in English. Both seemed comfortable with the arrangement. They could hear her fluffing his pillows, then she braced her feet as if helping him into a sitting position. When she had him settled she left the room, wheeling her cart away.

The patient ate with little sucking and clicking sounds, as if his teeth didn’t fit very well. They could see no chart on the inside of the partially open door, to tell his name. They had started to creep out when another nurse came down the hall.

Retreating again beneath the bed, Dulcie hunched uncomfortably, her paws tight together. She didn’t like this part of Casa Capri-the Nursing wing was a fullblown hospital, reminding her too sharply of the vet’s clinic. The disinfectant and medicinal smells and the cold, hard surfaces brought back every dreadful moment of her five days in Dr. Firetti’s animal hospital, when she was sick with a respiratory infection.

She had, over in the social room, been able to maintain the illusion of happy days for these old folks, in a comfortable little world set aside just for their nurturing. But suddenly illness and the failure of the body were too apparent. In this wing of Casa Capri, all she could think of was sickness and dying.

Still, though, the old people were cared for, their meals were prepared, and they were warm and clean. If they had no one at home to look after them, and if they could not care for themselves, then where else would they be happier?

The cats remained beneath the bed until the hall was silent again, until they could no longer hear the rubber tires of the cart working its way from room to room. Above them, each time the old man set down his cocoa cup, it rattled as if his hand was shaky. He spilled a few crumbs of his toast, which rained down over the edge of the bed. He coughed once, then gulped cocoa. When he picked up the remote from the nightstand and turned on the TV, when presumably his attention had become fixed on an ancient John Wayne film, they slipped away, streaking out of the room.

Surely he hadn’t seen them; behind them he raised no cry of surprise. Gunshots cut the night, and a horse whinnied.

They fled down the hall without the cover of the cart, repeatedly looking behind them, and quickly scanning the charts affixed to the patients’ doors. Looking for Jane, Lillie, Darlene, Mary Nell, Foy Serling, and James Luther. They were just at the corner where the hall turned to the right when someone spoke behind them. Joe careened against Dulcie, shoving her down a short, side corridor.

The voices came closer, two nurses speaking casually as they approached on some routine business. The end of this little hall was blocked by a door which must lead back to the Care Unit. They sucked up against the wall as two nurses passed, their white-stockinged legs and white oxfords marching in rhythm. One heel of the taller woman’s size nine shoes had a minute speck of dog doo. The cats wrinkled their noses at the smell. Speaking Spanish, the women turned down the longer hall, passing a fire door. As they moved away the cats followed. Joe paused at the heavy, closed door.

“Teddy went out here. Spice shaving lotion.”

“So?”

“So when Dillon was dragging me all over, I saw wheelchair marks going out the fire door and into the parking lot.”

“Mae Rose said he drives a car, one of those specially equipped cars. If he’s Adelina’s cousin, probably he comes and goes as he pleases.”

“Then why does he live here? Adelina Prior is loaded. Why wouldn’t she get him a nice apartment and hired help? Or why doesn’t he live on that big estate with her?”

“Maybe he’s sort of unofficial social director. Mae Rose says most of the old people like him, that he’s always doing little favors, asking for the special foods they want, remembering their birthdays. He doesn’t seem as sarcastic with the others as he is with Mae Rose.”

Someone changed the Spanish radio station to hard rock, and the thudding drummed at the cats’ nerves like a distant demolition crew. Over the din they heard another nurse coming, the sticky sound made by her rubber-soled shoes on the carpet, and quickly they slid into a darkened bedroom.

Immaculate white shoes and red-tasseled sox passed them at a trot, trailing the scent of Ivory soap. Then two more nurses, their snowy Oxfords flitting like two pairs of white rabbits hopping along the hall.

When the way was empty again the cats moved fast, looking up at the names on the charts. The hall formed a rectangle around a block of center rooms, so that only the outside rooms had windows. By the time they had rounded the last corner and could see the nursing station again, they had found not one of the six residents that Mae Rose claimed were missing.

The nursing station ahead was so busy they might never get past it and out the door. Nurses moved swiftly between two counters, which were covered with medicine bottles and boxes and cartons and a stack of paper towels, with a large stainless-steel coffeepot and a tray of ceramic mugs. As they slipped into yet another darkened room, they were beginning to fidget with impatience. Staring out at hurrying feet and listening to disjointed snatches of conversation, both in English and in Spanish, they felt completely surrounded. Trapped. They grew so irritable they nearly hissed at each other.

Someone changed the radio station back to Spanish music. One of the nurses began to sing with it in a sultry voice. When at last the hall was clear for an instant, they fled for the nursing station, running full out, pausing only to scan the remaining charts, then slide beneath the counter.

Crouching under the crowded shelves that lined the back of the counter, they were hardly out of sight when Size Nine returned, moving in near them, smelling of dog doo. She had only to glance down beneath the shelves to see them huddled. Standing inches from their noses, she began to stack papers, tamping the stacks against the desk. The air under the shelf was hot and close. They heard the pneumatic door to the hall open, and someone wheeled the food cart away, presumably back toward the kitchen.

A nurse came to the counter, there was a short conversation about medications, then Size Nine went away with her, down the hall. The instant she left, they reared up to examine the contents of the shelves, looking for some record of the patients’ names.

They found boxes of syringes, tongue depressors, small packets containing artificial sweetener and fake coffee cream. There was a row of nurses’ handbags lined up, fat and wrinkled, smelling of peppermints and makeup and tobacco; but no files, no list of patients.

“Come on,” Joe said. “Check out the other counter. You watch the hall while I look.” Leaping to the counter among the medicine bottles and IV tubes and the makings for a hot cup of coffee, he sorted through the tangle, patting irritably at the boxes.

“Here we go,” he said softly, pawing a small file box out from behind the coffee canister.

She leaped up, watching the hall, watching him impatiently as he clawed through the alphabetized tabs. The cards contained patients’ names and their medication information, the dosage, times per day, and for how many days.

They found no Jane Hubble, no Darlene Brown or Mary Nell Hook. They had no time to look for the others. Dulcie hissed, and they leaped down, dived back beneath the shelves as three nurses appeared.

“I’m beginning to feel like a windup toy,” Joe said. “Programmed to jump at the sight of a human. I need a good run, need to clear my head.”

“Shh. They’re coming.”

The nurses moved back and forth. Medicine bottles clinked. Someone sneezed. Coffee was brewed, and the radio station was changed again. They waited nearly half an hour before Size Nine returned to pick up her stack of papers, thumped them on the desk again, and headed for the pneumatic door.

They followed behind her heels and fled into the hall. For an instant, behind her, they were as visible as dog turds on a white sidewalk If she had turned to look back, it would have been all over; they’d have had the whole staff chasing them.

They dodged into a bedroom, and in the dark, Joe paced. He couldn’t settle. When something furry touched his nose, he jumped and raked at it, hissing.

But it was only a furry slipper. He shook it and shoved it aside. Out beyond the glass the moon was setting, its slanting light fading into the blackness of predawn. When the nurse vanished down the hall, they fled for the admitting desk.

In less time than it took for the moon to sink beyond the windows, they had searched not only that tall counter but two nearby file cabinets, clawing open the drawers, pawing through the folders. The procedure gave Joe fits-he’d been creeping and stealthy too long. All this snooping made him feel as if he was going to jump out of his skin. He needed to storm up trees, yowl at the moon. His mood would be considerably improved by a good bloody tomcat brawl.

But Dulcie pressured him on. She was most interested, of course, in the one office that was locked. They could smell Adelina’s scent beneath the door, the same expensive perfume that had accompanied her into the entry the first time they saw her. The same scent which had already settled faintly into the leather upholstery of her new red Bentley the day Clyde took them for that memorable ride. Dulcie tried the door, leaping and fighting the knob, but at last she turned away.

In the two open offices they clawed open the desk drawers and file drawers, pawing through, flipping the file tabs with their claws.

They found the patients’ full-sized record files, each set of documents in its own manila folder, but they found no record of any of the six missing residents. If those people had ever really existed, they weren’t here now. Or at least their records weren’t here.

“Maybe Jane took off for Tahiti, booked a cruise. Maybe right this minute she’s paddling her feet in some balmy tropical bay, eating coconuts.”

“Very funny.” Dulcie leaped down from where she had been balancing on the last file drawer.

“There have to be records, even if those people aren’t here. Dead files.” She shivered.

“Whatever secret this place is hiding. I’m betting it’s in Adelina’s office.” She leaped up onto a desk. “That would be the?”

She paused, looking down between her paws at the glass-covered desk top. Beneath the glass, the desk was overlayed with photographs.

“Movies-they’re movie stills. All the old reruns. Look at this, here’s Clint Eastwood before he had any wrinkles. And Lindsay Wagner-she can’t be more than twenty.”

Joe leaped up. Strolling across the desk, he nosed at the pictures.“Who’s the washed-out blonde? She’s in every shot.”

The thin woman appeared in the background behind Clint Eastwood, and at a restaurant table with a very young Jack Nicholson. Joe twitched a whisker.“She looks familiar, but I?”

Dulcie studied the lank-haired woman, frowning.“That’s Adelina’s sister.”

“Come on. Why would Adelina’s sister have her picture taken with Clint Eastwood?”

“It is her, only younger.” The pale blond appeared as a maid standing stiffly beside a fireplace, appeared in several group scenes, and in the backgrounds behind the stars. “She’s a bit player. Or she was-she’s really young, here.”

Beyond the office windows the wind had quickened, and the sky was beginning to pale, the branches of the oaks twisting black against the running clouds. Joe turned, watching the office door.“What time does the shift change?”

She shrugged, lifting a tabby shoulder.

“I don’t relish getting caught in here. Like flies stuck to the chopped liver.”

“We can have a little nap in the parlor while we wait. We can see the front door from there.”

“While we wait for what?”

“For Adelina to get here. Don’t you want to search her office? As soon as she unlocks her door, we-”

“Sure, we’ll nip right on in, she’ll be so pleased. Dulcie, I want into that woman’s office like I want into the rabies lockup at the city pound.”

She gave him a cool look, leaped down, and trotted away toward the parlor. Bellying beneath the damask sofa, she curled up yawning.

He gave it up and joined her. Far be it from him to back out. If they ended up murdered by Adelina’s stiletto heels, there was always, presumably, another life. Unless, of course, they’d already used all nine.

They were cuddled together dozing beneath the sofa when Joe glimpsed movement beyond the black glass. Waking fully, he watched something shiny flickering through the heavy shadows beneath a lemon tree. Quickly he slid along beneath the couch for a closer look, pulling himself across the Chinese rug. Why did people make couches so low? How many cats in the world had to scrape their backs every day, every time they crawled under the family sofa? Where were people’s minds? Didn’t they think about these things?

Again the movement, glinting and dancing through the dark: the metallic flash of spokes.

Chrome spokes-the spokes of a wheelchair. He watched the chair turn and wheel away into the heavy shadows of the dark, predawn garden. Dulcie was beside him now, peering out. They could see, deep within the blackness, a figure standing, facing the wheelchair, as if the two were talking softly, their voices inaudible through the glass.

The cats looked at each other and slid back deeper under the couch.“I didn’t hear the wheels,” Joe said nervously. “And I didn’t hear footsteps. I don’t like when I can’t hear something that’s moving.”

Dulcie stared out at the patio.“Maybe Teddy doesn’t sleep well at night; maybe he and some other patient like to roam the halls.” Uneasily, she curled up close to Joe, trying to purr, to calm herself. And at last they slept.

Joe woke to the first chirping of birds from the garden. The leaves of the lilies and azalea bushes shivered with activity, forcing Joe’s eyes open wide, his metabolism to swing into high, and he crept out from under the couch.

The branches were full of birds. Flitting wings, hopping little bodies. Rigid, his muscles geared immediately into the kill mode, he crouched, staring out at that fluttering feast, at that brazen display of fresh meat, inches from his waiting claws. These birds, reared in that sheltered garden without a cat in sight, would be as stupid and tame as pet chickens.

18 [????????: pic_18.jpg]

It was early morning when she passed Police Captain Harper; he was just coming out of the drugstore as she went in. He smiled and nodded, and she turned away, hiding a laugh. He’d looked right at her, didn’t guess a thing. Not a clue.

But why should he? If she went clanking by him in her black raincoat loaded and lumpy, he’d be onto her like an ambulance chaser onto a five-car collision. But dressed as she was, she could safely pass any village cop or, for that matter, could likely walk right by any hillside resident who had seen her looking for poor lost “Kitty.” People weren’t that observant. Who would connect?

In the drugstore she made her purchases, thanking fate that there were three druggists in town, so frequent purchases of certain items would not be easily noticed. She returned directly to her car, dropped her packages on the seat, and drove west down Ocean. Turning along Shore Drive, she cruised slowly, admiring the large and expensive beach homes. Out over the sea, the sky was blue and clear, not a cloud. Going to be a bright, boring day. Too much sunshine, the kind of day that seemed to turn the village into a featureless cardboard diorama. She was getting tired of Molena Point. When a town began to pall on her like this, it was time to move on, time to scratch these itchy feet.

Surveying the two-and three-story residences that faced the sea just across Shore Drive, she slowed and parked for a moment, letting the engine idle. She was powerfully tempted to give one of these beauties a try.

But every time she headed down here, she turned back again. The houses were expensive and well furnished, but the area made her nervous. Too much activity, too many tourists on the beach and wandering the sidewalks. Tourists provided good cover, but idle people saw a lot, too. And tourists drew police patrols; there were always cops cruising, checking the teenagers, spotting for possible drug sales or some unlawful sexual display; and keeping an eye on the dangerous and illegal swimming areas.

Watching the oceanfront houses, she considered several other areas of the village that she had so far neglected. She had, in fact, restricted her work entirely to the newer houses up in the hills, had stayed away from the village proper, from the cottages which flanked and were mixed in with the shops and restaurants, mainly because of the street traffic.

Putting the car in gear, she cruised Shore Drive. Where the houses ended, giving way to rising sand dunes, she turned back again, driving slowly, studying the three houses that interested her the most, houses where she had never seen more than one car in the drive, and never seen much activity-not a lot of people going in and out.

It wasn’t hard to check out such a house-a look at the city directory, then a few phone calls to see how many different people answered; but she seldom bothered. So far, her routine had worked fine without making all that fuss.

Turning off Shore Drive up Ocean into the village, she headed for the library. Wouldn’t hurt to run in for just a minute, take care of that last bit of research. She wanted more information on the cloisonne clocks. Once in a while, using this library wouldn’t hurt, as long as she kept an eye on who came in and didn’t get involved with the librarians. Yesterday, in the San Francisco library, she’d been too busy learning about handmade dolls, trying to assess the value of the five dolls from the Martinez house. This whole business of handmade dolls was fascinating.

But the pricing range was incredibly large, their value depending on the skill and creativity of the artist and on his reputation, just as in the art world, where a painter spent years building a following. The price depended, as well, on whether the doll was one of a kind, or whether it had been produced in a limited edition, as was an etching or serigraph.

She had made quite certain of what she had before she approached Harden Mark. All five dolls were by a well-known name and were of small, limited editions, the retail price of each doll ranging close to five thousand.

She’d had the dolls only overnight before she packed them up to take to the city, but just having them propped on the dresser overnight she’d hated to part with the perfect little ladies. At the last minute, she’d kept one back, the blond sixteenth-century lady in the blue silk. She could alwayssell her later.

In the city she had come away from Harden Mark’s office with ten thousand in cash, half the dolls’ retail value, which was fair. She’d gone directly to her three banks, distributing the cash among them to avoid undue interest on the part of some nosy teller.

Now she drove on past the library and parked a block beyond. The library’s pale stucco walls and sheltering oaks looked incredibly boring. She was getting tired of this faux-Spanish architecture. Maybe she was taking an unfair and warped view of the small coastal towns, but she found more color in San Francisco. The skies were more fitful, the wind-driven clouds seemed larger, vaster, the city more dramatic. Or maybe she just noticed the drama of the city more, looking out from the high, upper floors of the better hotels, the Mark or the St. Francis.

Before leaving the car, she reached under the seat for her good shoes, slipped them on, and flipped down the sun visor to redo her hair. The long tresses offered infinite possibilities. She pulled out the pins and combed it out, letting it fall over her shoulders.

Reaching into the backseat, she retrieved a large, floppy sun hat printed with pink flowers. Settling this low over her face, she applied a careful smear of hot pink lipstick. Peering up into the mirror at herself, she grinned, then slid out and headed up the street for the library, moving through alternate sun and shade beneath the oaks that spread across the narrow street. It wasn’t such a bad village, picturesque in its way, though really too cute with all the steep roofs and balconies and gables. Maybe she’d hit two or three more Molena Point houses, then move on. Get out before the papers started about the cat burglar or before Captain Harper picked up a make on her car-though she’d been incredibly careful, painstaking in the switches she’d made.

Entering the library, she glanced around for the cat, hoping fervently to avoid it. How totally stupid, for a public office to keep a cat. There’d been a big fuss in the paper about how wonderful it was to have a “library cat,” editorials, letters to the editor. And then that battle to get rid of the beast, headed up by the librarian who was allergic to cats. And people getting up petitions to keep the animal. What idiots. Half the village thought a library cat was just darling-and of course the tourists loved it. The cat was of no earthly use, just a common cat, shedding hairs and fleas, one of those ugly, dark-striped creatures-there were hundreds like it-that you could see in any alley.

Passing the checkout desk, she studied the adjoining rooms warily but didn’t see the beast. It gave her the creeps to approach a table or the book stacks thinking she might suddenly see the cat wander out under her feet. Just thinking about it made her ankles itch, as if any minute it might find her and rub against her.

The woman behind the desk kept staring, so she smiled brightly back at her. What was she looking at? Watching her like she was some kind of character. Didn’t she like floppy pink hats and pink lipstick?

Well I like them, and I’m the one wearing them.And she had to smile-if she was a character, that was just fine, she didn’t give a fig what some librarian thought.

19 [????????: pic_19.jpg]

In Casa Capri, Dulcie woke beneath the parlor couch, curled up warmly on the thick Chinese rug. Joe was gone. Looking for him, out past the squat couch legs and through the glass to the patio, she stiffened to full alert.

The garden was alive with birds, with the swift flitting and chirping of sparrows among the low bushes and flower beds, with quickly winging finches darting under the leaves to harvest the morning’s insects; that busy, winged feast beckoned and enticed, begging to be sampled.

She saw Joe at the glass doors, standing on his hind legs working at the latch, pawing at the lock, his teeth chattering as if he was already crushing succulent sparrow bones.

She settled back. She wasn’t particularly hungry; really she felt too lazy to leave the soft, warm rug. She’d like to nap a little longer. Let Joe hunt, she’d catch breakfast later.

Rolling over, she pawed at the rug’s intricate, labyrinthian patterns. Then, rolling onto her back, she reached a paw above her to stroke the bottom of the couch. Through the black gauze dust cover-it did smell dusty-she could see the rows of springs and the couch’s thick wooden frame. Patting at the black gauze, smoothly she let her claws slide into the thin, flimsy fabric.

She raked hard, ripped down through the thin material a long, straight tear, felt her blood surge at the delicious sound of ripping cloth.

She clawed again. Again. In long straight gashes. She had no idea why the underside of a couch roused such an irresistible urge to tear and shred. She was about to kick with all four feet, really give the dry, frail gauze a workout, when she heard the front door open.

Flipping over, she peered out toward the front entry.

The door opened slowly, as if someone were not sure of a welcome. A nurse slipped in, a small woman, and thin. She wore the requisite immaculate white uniform, white oxfords, a white nurse’s cap tipped over her dark, sleek pageboy. Her hair was beautifully done, not a strand out of place, as if she had just come from an expensive beauty parlor. Her face was made up with blusher and dark eyeliner, and with a touch of green eye shadow that made her brown eyes look larger, made her look far older and very sophisticated. Her lipstick was bright and carefully applied, her gold earrings small and tailored.

But even beneath the scent of cosmetics, the young nurse still smelled like Dillon. Dulcie hardly knew the child-a casual observer would guess this young woman to be at least eighteen.

She watched Dillon move away quickly toward the social room and on through, among the couches, to the dining room. Watched her push the door open with casual assurance and slip into the kitchen. The door swung back and forth behind her, slowed to a stop.

Dulcie watched the closed door, expecting any minute to hear angry scolding from within, and see Dillon come flying out again.

Nothing happened. There was a long silence. She waited nervously, her tail twitching, her paws growing hot with wary anticipation. Any minute she was going to hear enraged shouts, and Dillon would be hustled out by some irate kitchen employee, would be roughly scolded and sent packing for her effrontery.

But after a few minutes the door swung out again and a breakfast cart appeared. Dillon pushed it out swiftly and efficiently, letting the door swing closed, looking as if she did this job every morning. The top shelf was heavily laden and covered with a white cloth, the rubber tires made the same soft sticky hum that the snack cart had made over in the Nursing wing.

Dillon pushed the cart past her toward the admitting desk and around the corner toward Nursing, trailing the scent of eggs and toast. Dulcie was about to follow her when Joe returned from the patio, licking blood from his whiskers, slipping under the couch beside her.

He stared toward the passing cart, sniffed the child’s scent, got a glimpse of her sleek hair and grown-up face. “What the? That can’t be Dillon?”

Dulcie smiled.“Would you take her for twelve years old?”

Joe licked his whiskers.“More power to the kid. She might get away with it.”

“But if they catch her again, what will they do? Those nurses? She’s only a little girl. Would they??”

“They won’t hurt her. Get a grip. Why would they hurt her? This isn’t some den of murderers; it’s an old people’s home. If they catch her, they’ll give her hell and pitch her out and maybe that would do the kid good. Got to admit she’s pretty nervy.”

“How did she learn to make herself up so beautifully? If I didn’t know her?”

“She’s a girl, Dulcie. Girls are born reaching for the eyeliner. To a girl, that stuff comes naturally, you ought to know that better than anyone. Look at how you fuss over silk nighties, dragging them home. And you should see Clyde’s sleepover girlfriends. Lipstick and junk all over the dresser. They drive Clyde crazy, hogging the bathroom mirror.”

“But she’s only twelve. She-”

“So she’s twelve. So look at those child models you read about. Eleven years old, and they look like they could buy a double martini.”

He slipped out from under the couch and returned to the glass, fixing his gaze again on the birds.“I could eat another; guess I didn’t get my fill. Come on, we can-” But when they heard footsteps and a sharp voice in the hall, he slid back under.

Around the corner, a woman was hurrying down the hall, scolding. The nurse rounded the corner, pulling Dillon along by one arm.

Dillon had abandoned her cart. Her nurse’s cap was gone, and her pretty pageboy hair was all mussed, her uniform awry, and one white shoelace untied. But though the nurse was scolding, pushing her out into the entry toward the front door, Dillon didn’t look repentant. She looked mad, red-faced and scowling.

The nurse reached around her, opening the door.“If I see you back there again, young lady, if there’s a hint of trouble because of you-if I lose my job over this, you’re going to be a sorry little girl.” The woman pushed her out onto the porch. Dulcie crouched to leap after Dillon, but Joe grabbed her leg in his teeth. She stared at himand hung her head.

The nurse slammed the door, shutting Dillon out, and turned away.

“What were you going to do?” he whispered. “Run after her and tell her you’re sorry?” He licked her ear. “She’ll be okay. She’ll cry and then go home.” He groomed Dulcie’s ears and her face until she calmed. He was washing his own whiskers when they heard a car door close softly, heard high heels on the walk, heard the knob turn.

Adelina came in quickly, seeming preoccupied. She did not seem unduly upset, had evidently not seen Dillon slinking-the kid must have gotten out of there fast. Adelina was dressed in another little black suit, this one with a low-cut jacket over a fluff of white lace. She wore patent spike heels, black sheer stockings. Behind her, as the door swung in, they glimpsed the pearl red Bentley standing in the drive.

Slamming the big double door, she moved toward her office, her black skirt swishing in soft friction against her silky legs. Her keys jangled, and they heard the click of the lock opening. She disappeared into her office, leaving the door ajar.

Dulcie crouched, tail twitching, eyeing the open door. The next instant, she was gone, had fled through, not waiting for Joe. Without asking for his opinion, without asking if he was coming, she was gone into Adelina Prior’s lair. Within the room a blue light came on, and Joe could hear the click of computer keys. He waited to see if Dulcie got pitched out again.

When nothing happened he stifled his urge to beat it out of there and, slinking, followed Dulcie.

Just inside the door and to his right stood a little seating group, a purple leather love seat and matching chair, and a dark, polished corner table. He slid beneath the love seat, flattening himself down into the white carpet. The piece was so low he had to belly along like a snake. Oozing along in the dark space, he realized he was alone, that Dulcie wasn’t there, the space was unoccupied except for a spider huddled inches from his ear, clinging to the squat mahogany leg. This schlepping around under furniture was getting old. He felt as if he’d spent his whole life underneath couches and beds and desks, like some weird mole-cat, living entirely in a four-inch-high world beneath heavy furniture. Why was he doing this? He was a cat, not an earthworm; he was a freewheeling tomcat born to the wind and high places.

From this vantage, all he could see of Adelina were her well-turned ankles and spike heels, the desk legs, and the five-castered pedestal of her wheeled desk chair.

Slipping out to the edge of the love seat for a wider view, he studied the sleek black desk and the computer behind which Adelina sat, her smooth profile bathed in green light, her black hair a shining wing pulled back into an elegant roll, her diamond earrings catching green sparks with the movement of her typing. He did not see Dulcie. She wasn’t under the desk, nor under the upholstered chair. Searching for her, he crept farther out, careful to stay out of Adelina’s line of sight. Surveying the room, he was not impressed by the decor of purple and black against the lavender walls. And who would want paintings of flat, purple, naked humans that looked like they were drawn with a ruler? The work had no passion, was like purple cutouts, or as if the artist had filled in the outlines for a street sign.

Adelina stopped typing, removed a tissue from her top desk drawer, and delicately, blew her nose. She smoothed her hair, touching the intricate dark coil, then resumed her work. He could not see the computer screen, it angled toward the window at her back. The window was open a few inches above a long window seat covered with decorative pillows. There was no screen on the window. Dulcie could, if she’d lost her nerve, simply have slipped on out. Escape out the window, through the scrolled iron bars and away, leaving him in the lurch.

If she’d ditched him, if she’d cut out of here, she’d never hear the end of it. He judged his distance, ready to leap across and follow her. One jump into the cushions, and he’d be through before Adelina could grab him. The pillows were done in such a maze of wild patterns and colors they dizziedhim, a tangle of intricate tapestry, a panoply of color and texture that must have cost a bundle. He suddenly saw, tucked between the lavish weavings, a pair of green eyes watching him.

Swallowing back a laugh, he crept out and winked at her. Among the pillows, she looked exactly like a puff of dark, striped embroidery.

She cut her eyes at him, then blinked them closed, was at once invisible: a little commando hidden in jungle camouflage.

She had positioned herself directly behind Adelina, where she could see clearly the computer screen. When she opened her eyes again, she glanced at him, then watched the screen intently. She seemed impatient at what she was seeing. He could see, between the pillows, the end of her tail irritably twitching.

He wondered if Adelina was working on the files they had sought, on the information they’d searched for all night.

If she was, whatever it showed, Dulcie didn’t look pleased.

Soon Adelina turned on the printer, and the state-of-the-art machine spit out five pages as fast as bullets. When the printing ended she punched a few keys, turned off the machine, then unlocked a desk drawer.

As she removed several files, Dulcie emerged from among the cushions and reared up behind Adelina, peering over her shoulder like some sudden, ghostly visitation. They watched Adelina remove an untidy sheaf of papers from the top folder, and a sheet of stationery. With a thin gold pen, she began to write. Behind her Dulcie stood taller, so fascinated, stretching up to see, that she rocked precariously on her hind paws, her front paws drooping over her pale belly, her tail switching for balance. Joe guessed they were both thinking the same thought: Why would Adelina turn off the computer and write a letter by hand?

Exchanging another glance, they watched her finish one letter, address the envelope, seal it, and drop it in her purse. When she opened a second file, she removed a large pad of lined paper, the kind a school child might use, and started a second letter, writing with a lead pencil. Adelina had written two pages when the soft scuff of shoes in the hall sent Dulcie diving into the pillows again and Joe slinking deep beneath the love seat.

The feet, in scarred, flat shoes, that scuffed across the carpet belonged to Renet. He caught her scent, and, as she went around the desk, he could see her, pale hair hanging ragged around her ears, no makeup-that plain face could use some help-her cotton skirt and cotton blouse wrinkled and baggy. She dropped a large brown envelope onto the desk.“Done. Good job if I do say so. Worked it out last weekend. Did the prints this morning, to make sure.”

She sat down on the love seat, her light weight nearly squashing Joe. Maybe the love seat needed new springs. If she’d been heavy, he’d be flat as a twenty-cent hamburger. Belly down, he slid away to the other end, then out between the love seat and the wall.

From this vantage he watched Adelina remove a sheaf of photographs from the envelope and lay them out on the desk. She studied them solemnly.

“Yes. Very good. How long does this one take?”

“An hour to be safe. I hope that Mae Rose woman doesn’t come snooping.”

Adelina raised her dark, expressionless eyes.“Forget Mae Rose. You’re fixated with the woman just because she knew Wenona.” She gave Renet a long, chill look. “Wenona’s dead, Renet. Please forget everything connected with her.”

“But Mae Rose-”

“And as for Mae Rose going on about Jane Hubble, that’s all talk. What possible connection could she make?”

“I don’t like her. I think Mae Rose should-”

“Mae Rose has three daughters. Get your mind off her.”

“They never visit her, they live clear across the country. I could easily-”

“She’s not a suitable subject. For one thing, she’s too small, you know that. Pay attention to the business at hand. If you do just one sloppy presentation, Renet, it’s over. You’ll have no need to worry about Mae Rose.”

Adelina slipped the files back into the drawer, locked it, and put the photographs back in the envelope.“I don’t know why these people have to visit the same day as that Pet-a-Pet business. And I don’t know whether allowing those animal enthusiasts in here is worth the trouble, for the little PR it affords.”

“Well it certainly wasn’t my idea.”

Adelina sighed.“Have you done all the errands?”

“Of course. What time?”

“Two-thirty. Don’t leave half the box in the closet.”

“I never do. What about that new nurse, that big slow woman? I don’t-”

“I’ll see that she’s kept busy. Have you made any progress on her? I don’t like keeping her when she-”

“So far, nothing. You should have looked deeper before you hired her.”

“I didn’t have any choice. It isn’t easy to get help. Just get on with your job. Everyone has some skeleton in the closet, and you’re to keep on until you find it. You’ve had two weeks, and you don’t have a thing. If you’d pay more attention to business-”

“I’ve checked DMV. Five credit bureaus. Four previous addresses and talked with three of her landlords.”

“What about NCI? That was foolish, to allow that Lieutenant Sacks to get married.”

“What was I going to do, poison his dearly beloved? There’ll be someone else. Max Harper-”

“You’ll leave Harper alone; he’s not to be approached. I don’t trust him for a minute. What about that Lieutenant Brennan?”

Renet did not reply.

“If not Brennan, then you’ll have to buy the information in San Francisco-that should be no problem.”

“You needn’t be sarcastic. And I might have other things to attend to.”

“You had better plan your time around matters of first importance.” Adelina rose. “Lock the door when you leave. And make sure you have your little party under control.” And she disappeared into the hall, her black skirt swishing against her silken thighs.

Renet didn’t move from the love seat for some time, but sat tapping her foot irritably. When she did rise, she stepped to the desk and tried the locked drawer. When she couldn’t open it, she tucked the brown envelope under her arm and left the room, locking the door as she’d been instructed.

The instant they were alone, Dulcie slid out from between the pillows. Standing on the window seat she shook herself, licked her paw, swiped at her whiskers.“I’m all matted down-those pillows are hot as sin.” She watched Joe slide out from under the love seat, pawing dust from his whiskers. He leaped up beside her, and they sat looking out to the drive and the gardens.

They could see no one. The red Bentley and Renet’s blue van were parked before the door. When they were certain they were unobserved they slipped out beneath the open window, through the scrolled curves of the burglar grille, and dropped into a bed of marigolds.

Crouched among the sharp-scented flowers, they scanned the gardens. They saw no one.

“The smell of marigolds is supposed to keep away fleas,” Dulcie said.

“Old wives’ tale. Come on, we’re out of here.” Close together they raced across the drive away from the manicured grounds, flew down the hill into a tangled wood so wild and unkempt it could never be a part of Casa Capri. At once they felt safe again, and free.

Fallen branches and drifts of rotting leaves lay tangled against the trunks of the ancient, sprawling trees. Together they fled, leaping from log to log, plunging through piles of crackling leaves, shaking off the tight sense of closed rooms and locked doors and under-furniture niches that would hardly let a cat breathe. They were flying down through leafy tangles and branches when a shrill sound stopped them. A strange and muffled cry. They froze still, two statues, listening.

20 [????????: pic_20.jpg]

The woods angled downward, the old twisted oaks rising among fallen, rotted trees, among dead branches and dry, brittle foliage: a shadowed graveyard of dying trees. The cry came again, a muffled gurgle. Puzzled, the cats trotted down among the shadows, watching, leaping silently over logs, sinking down into drifts and damp hollows. Far below them, between a tangle of dead branches, they glimpsed something bright, a gleam of metal glinting from the dark tangles.

Slowly and warily padding down, they could soon make out the handlebars of a bike. The crying came from there. The rough, gulping sobs sounded more angry than hurt.

The bike leaned against the forked trunk of an ancient oak that had split down the middle, its two halves leaning jagged against their neighbors. At the tree’s base, Dillon sat in a pile of dead bracken, her head down on her knees, her arms around her knees, bawling so hard she didn’t hear them, heard no rustle of paws crunching leaves.

Dulcie dropped down beside her. Dillon startled, looked up. The child’s face was smeared with tears and makeup, black eyeliner and lipstick and powder all run together. Dulcie climbed up into her lap, touched Dillon’s cheek with a soft paw. Dillon smiled through her tears, grabbed Dulcie to her, hugging her, burying her face in Dulcie’s shoulder-then began bawling again, crying against Dulcie until Dulcie’s fur was wet. Joe sat watching, exasperated at the female display of weeping. All this because she’d been booted out of Casa Capri.

When at last Dillon stopped crying, she eased her grip on Dulcie and reached her fingers to Joe, touching his nose.“What are you two doing, way up here in the hills? You’re miles from home. This isn’t Pet-a-Pet day.” She frowned, puzzled. But then she grinned through her streaked makeup. “You were hunting-Wilma said you hunt all over these hills.”

She looked hard at them, and her eyes widened.“Did you hear me crying? Did you come down here because you heard me crying?”

Dulcie snuggled against her, but Joe turned nervously to lick his paw. Had they shown more than a normal cat’s interest? The kid didn’t need to get any ideas about them.

But she was only a kid. All children believed in the sympathy and understanding of animals; most kids thought their dogs understood every word they said. Kids grew up on fairy tales featuring helpful animals, and even onLassiereruns-a helping animal was no big deal, to some kids as natural as a loving grandmother.

Dillon wiped her tears with the back of her hand, smearing black and red.“I only wanted to see Jane. They acted like I was some kind of criminal.” She gave them a deep, confiding stare. “She isn’t there. Why else would they be so nasty. And they know that I know she isn’t there.” She gave them a determined look, her brown eyes blazing with anger. “Well they can go to hell. I’m going to find out what’s going on.

“Yesterday I called her trust officer, but the switchboard said to leave a message. Voice mail-big deal. I gave my name and phone number, but now I’m sorry. My folks’ll have twenty fits.”

Dulcie reached a soft paw again, patting the child’s face. Dillon gathered them both into her arms, pulling Joe into her lap with an insistent little hand. She held them against her as if they were rag dolls, pressing her wet face into their fur. The child was warm, and smelled of the perfumed cosmetics.

“I love you both. I wish you could tell me what to do.” She kissed Dulcie’s pink nose. “They were so gross, marching me out of there like a baby.” She looked at them bleakly. “Jane isn’t there. And no one will believe me.”

Unblinking, Dulcie stared at the child, so intent that Dillon widened her eyes, looked into Dulcie’s eyes deeply, suddenly alarmed. The two gazed at each other for a long moment, in a strange, silent aura of communication.

Dillon whispered,“What, Dulcie Cat? What is it? What are you trying to tell me?”

Joe wanted to shove Dulcie away, she wasn’t behaving like an ordinary cat. He could feel her concern for Dillon. If the people of Casa Capri were this adamant about keeping out strangers, then maybe there was reason to fear for the child.

Dillon said softly,“Are you afraid of them, too?”

When Dulcie looked almost as if she would forget herself and speak to Dillon, Joe pushed her aside.

Scowling, she jumped down, turned her back on him, began to wash herself, contrite suddenly, and embarrassed.

They sat with Dillon for a long time, until at last she sniffled, blew her nose. Finally, she picked up her bike and began to drag it through the woods, heaving it over the tangles, heading for the road.

They didn’t follow her.

At the top of the hill she blew her nose again, looked down at them once more, puzzled, then kicked off and sped away, coasting down the dropping street. They watched her small, lone figure until she disappeared around a curve.

They were licking Dillon’s salty tears from their fur, licking away her makeup, when suddenly Dulcie gave him a wild look and exploded away through the sunshine, racing up across the hills-too wild to be still another instant. Shedding the restraint of cautious hours last night and this morning, shedding the tension of dealing with Dillon, she leaped invisible barriers, careened around bushes and through dead grass and across driveways and gardens, across the open fields. Joe sped behind her, infected by her drunken lust for freedom, their ears and whiskers flattened in the wind, their paws hitting only the high spots.

Dulcie paused at last, half a mile north of Casa Capri in a favorite field where three boulders thrust up. The smooth granite glinted hot with morning sun. Leaping to the top, she stretched out across the warm stone, twitching her tail, rolling in the heat. She chased her tail, then lay on her back, letting her paws flop above her, idly slapping at a little breeze.

Joe lay in the warm grass below, nibbling the tender new blades which thrust up between last year’s growth. “The kid’s going to get herself in trouble, nosing around.”

“Not if we find out what’s going on first.”

He looked up at her, exasperated.“So what was Adelina writing? I’m surprised she didn’t feel you breathing down her neck.”

Dulcie lifted her head, her eyes slitted against the sunlight.“Personal letters. She was writing to a friend of Lillie Merzinger. The file had Lillie’s name on it, and there were letters to Lillie in a scrawly handwriting, and some snapshots of two ladies standing beside a lake, with pine trees behind. There were graduation announcements, too, and weddinginvitations, little personal mementos, the kind of personal stuff people save.”

She rolled over to look at him.“There were machine copies of letters from Lillie to Dorothy. Adelina spread them all out, as if to refer to them, before she began to write.”

She rolled again, to warm her other side.“What did she do, open Lillie’s mail? Open the letters Lillie wrote, before they were mailed, and make copies?”

“What did the letter say?”

“Boring stuff. About Lillie’s poor digestion, and about Dorothy’s old dog and about Cousin Ed. Dull, personal things. Why would Adelina write the letter in the first person, and sign Lillie’s name?”

“So Lillie Merzinger’s too sick to answer her mail,” Joe said. “Someone has to answer her letters, or her family would worry.”

“But why doesn’t she tell Lillie’s family she’s too sick to write? Why wouldn’t she type a regular letter on the computer? Print it out with the rest of her letters. Tell them how Lillie’s feeling, that she’s taking her medicine, maybe getting a little better. And if someone’s really sick, wouldn’t she phone the family?”

Dulcie’s eyes narrowed to green slits. “And the other letter, the one she wrote on lined paper-she wrote it in a totally different handwriting. She signed it James. Addressed the envelope from James Luther.”

She snatched at a flitting moth, caught it in curving claws, chomped and swallowed it, then fixed him with a hard green gaze.“And why was her handwriting different for each letter? Why was she forging those letters?”

They both thought it:Because Lillie and James aren’t there anymore.Their thought was as sharp on the wind as if they’d spoken.

Joe slapped at a wasp, turned away and began to wash his back.

Normally he’d be as eager as Dulcie to find out what was going on, but this situation made him edgy. He felt as though very soon they were going to wish they’d kept their noses to themselves. Casa Capri, with its locked doors, gave him the fidgets.

“And what,” Dulcie said, “is Renet’s mysterious presentation tomorrow? Like a speech? Why would Renet give a speech? A speech about what?” She sat up tall on the warm boulder, her eyes narrowed, thinking. She shivered once, then lifted a paw and began to clean her pink pads, licking fast and nervously, tugging fiercely at each claw. Tearing off each old sheath, she angrily released the sharper rapiers beneath. She was wound tight, edgy and irritable.

Joe wanted to say,You thought visiting the old folks would be all kippers and cream,wanted to say,Casa Capri didn’t turn out like you expected.But she glared at him so crossly he shut his mouth.

As he bent to tend to his own claws, suddenly she leaped from the boulder and streaked away across the hills again, all nerves and temper. He stared after her, watched her vanish into the tall grass, watched the heads of grass shake and thrash in a long undulating line as if a whirlwind fled through.

He took his time about following her, lingering to sniff at the sweet dusty smells, at masses of yellow poppies which seemed to have bloomed overnight, at old scents of mouse, at rabbit droppings. She was headed diagonally across the hills moving north, and occasionally he stood on his hind legs, so as not to lose her.

He couldn’t see her cross the crest of the hill but he could see the grass shaking. Beyond them to the north, the hills were black from last fall’s fire but were slowly turning green again, as new spring grass sprang up between the remains of that terrible burn. He could still smell burned wood on the wind, and wet ashes. And against the sky there still stood the skeletons of black, dead trees, and a lone chimney, an abandoned sentinel, though some of the houses had been rebuilt.

Janet Jeannot’s studio had been replaced in a way Janet might not like if she were alive to see it. It was now a second-floor apartment, an inoffensive cedar structure without any of the excitement of an artist’s studio. To the east of Janet’s house, up beyond the highest homes, he could see where the drainage culvert emerged from the hills, the place where he and Dulcie had discovered the final key to Janet’s killer.

Dulcie had disappeared. He leaped to the highest hillock to look for her. Gazing down the rolling hills, he thought how they must have been a century ago, before there were ever houses. A wild land, all open, alive with animals far larger than the creatures he and Dulcie hunted, a land of cougars, of wolves and bear, a land belonging to beasts that would sendFelis domesticusscooting for cover.

And though the wolves and bears were gone, still sometimes the cougars and coyotes came down out of the mountains, driven by thirst or hunger, and by encroaching civilization-where tracts of new houses covered their hunting territories-wild animals moving closer each year to human dwellings. Now sometimes in the small hours, a lone coyote wandered the street of a coastal town, hunting domestic cats and small dogs. And already two humans had died at the claws of attacking cougars. He was gripped with amazement that a shy, totally wild creature would dare enter the world of houses and concrete and fast cars.

But the animals, if they were starving, had little choice. He was no philosopher; the only conclusion he could draw was that if humans kept pushing the animals off the land they needed to survive, then humans had better sharpen their own teeth and claws.

Rearing above the grass, still he did not see Dulcie, saw no thrashing where she sped through, only a faint susurration all across the grass tops where the breeze fingered. He heard no sound above the hush of wind and the churr of the buzzing insects.

But suddenly he knew where she was headed, and a chill of fear touched him.

High above the last houses, an ancient barn stood rotting and half-fallen in, its silvered boards leaning inward, its roof torn open to the sky. Dulcie would be there, he’d bet on it. Hunting the rats that ruled that dim, cavernous ruin.

Someday the remains of the old barn would collapse and rot to nothing, but now it belonged to wharf rats. Having long ago cleaned out the last kernel of grain in the feed bins, they subsisted on roots and on mice and lizards, and on whatever smaller creature ventured into their domain.

Some of the rats had migrated down to the boatyards again, but the biggest and boldest had remained to challenge whatever predator invaded their dark and rotting home. Raccoons did not bring their kits to hunt there. A fox had to be full-grown before it would face those beasts.

A stupid place for Dulcie to go, insane to go alone. Terrified for her, he raced across the hills, hoping he was wrong, but knowing she was there. That rat-infested mass of timbers was exactly the place she would go to work off frustration from their night of confinement. He wished she wasn’t so damned volatile.

Ahead, the old barn towered drunkenly, its timbers balanced precariously against one another. He was on the crest of the hill some ten feet above when he saw Dulcie, crouched in shadow among the fallen walls. She seemed, at first, a part of the shadows. She moved slowly, slinking beneath the timbers, her belly hugging the ground. She was poised to leap, but he could not see her quarry. He watched her swing her head from side to side, sorting out some tiny sound that he could not yet hear.

He sped down soundlessly, but he did not approach close enough to spoil her attack. He waited, ready to leap, every muscle and nerve jacked into high voltage, watching her creep deeper into the blackness.

She froze, remained still, the tip of her tail flicking.

She was gone in a sudden blur, flashing through shadows into the blackness.

Silence. No sound, no movement. He could see nothing within that dark, rotting world. He crept swiftly closer.

A scream jarred him, the enraged scream of a rat. A board fell, thundering. Dulcie yowled. He dived for the blackness, charging in, storming in beneath fallen boards.

She screamed again, then another rat scream. He saw its eyes red in the blackness. The two were thrashing; it was a huge rat, a monster. Joe piled into the thudding squealing flailing bodies, grabbing at rat fur. He found the rat’s face and bit deep. Pain burned him. Dulcie twisted and shook the rat so violently she shook him, too. His ears rang with rat screams and with the thuds of his own body. The three of them slammed into timbers, into the earth. His blood pounded, he felt teeth in his leg.

And then, silence.

His mouth was filled with the bitter taste of rat. The beast lay between them, unmoving, their fangs in it, Dulcie’s in its throat, his seeking its heart, its ribs crushed against his tongue. It was a huge, grizzled beast, its body as long as Dulcie, its coat rough with age, its pointed muzzle knobby with old scars. Its eyes even in death were cold and mean.

They rose, spit out rat hair.

But they did not turn away from the kill in the usual ritual to wander aimlessly, cooling down and letting off steam. They remained watching, one on either side of the rat, staring at that giant kill.

It was the biggest rat Joe had ever seen. He wanted to yell at Dulcie for having attacked such a beast, for having been so damned stupid. And he wanted to cheer her and lick her face and laugh. His lady had killed the monster, had killed the king of rats.

She gave him a green-eyed grin of triumph and leaped up. She spun, clawing at the timbers. She leaped over the rat, racing and whirling among the fallen boards, careening in circles; she laughed a human laugh; she spun and danced, driving out the built-up tension, ridding herself of that last terrible violence and rage. She careened into him broadside, pummeled him.

“We killed the king-king of rats-we killed it.” She was insane, rolling and spinning and chasing her lashing tail. “The king, we killed the rat king.” She was crazy with victory and release.

She collapsed at last and lay still. He sat beside her, washing himself. They licked the blood and cobwebs from each other’s faces and ears, licked the deep wounds that would, too soon, begin to hurt like hell.

Joe’s paw and leg were torn, and his cheek ripped. There was a gash across Dulcie’s pale throat, another up her shoulder. They cleaned each other’s wounds carefully, though they would be tended again at home. Joe could hear Clyde now, ragging him about how septic rat bites were. And Wilma would pitch a fit.

But they had demolished the great-great-granddaddy of wharf rats.

The midmorning sun warmed them. Dulcie rubbed against him sweetly and smiled. A gleam of sunlight picked out the shingles and boards of the old barn, the rusted nails, and the rat’s mangled body. Joe supposed that some possum coming on the rat in a week or two would be thrilled, would maybe drag the moldering rat away to its babies. Possums would eat anything, even the blood-spattered cobwebs.

He watched Dulcie stretch out limp across the grass, her green eyes closed to long slits, her purr rumbling with little dips and high notes. Life had turned out better than he’d ever imagined. If a cat really did have nine lives, he hoped he and Dulcie would be together in all the lives yet to come.

Last summer, his alarm when he found himself able to speak human words had nearly undone him. He knew himself to be a freak, an abnormal beast fit only for a side show. He hadn’t dreamed there was, anywhere in the world, another like himself.

But then he’d found Dulcie, and he was no longer alone in his strangeness. She was the most fascinating creature he had ever met; their love had changed his very cat soul. Lovely Dulcie of the dark, marbled fur, her pale peach paws and peach-tinted nose so delicate, her green eyes watching him, laughing, scolding, emerald eyes set off by the dark stripes perfectly drawn, like the eyes of an Egyptian goddess.

Only a master artist of greatest talent could have composed his lady. And she was not only beautiful and intelligent, she’d beaten the hell out of that rat.

She rolled over, her green eyes wide.“I’m starved. Too bad rats are so bitter.”

“How about a nice fat rabbit?”

She flipped to her feet and stood up on her hind legs, looking away across the grass to where the hills rose in a high, flat meadow bright with sun, a meadow so riddled with rabbit burrows that any human, walking there, would fall through to his arse pockets. And within minutes, high on the sun-baked field, they were working a rabbit, creeping low and silent, each from a different angle, toward a shiver of movement within the dense grass.

No normal house cat hunted as these two; ordinaryFelis domesticushunted only as a loner. But Joe and Dulcie had developed a teamwork as intricate and beautifully coordinated as any team of skilled African lions. Now they crept some six yards apart, moving blindly through the grass forest, rearing up at intervals to check the quarry’s position. They froze, listening. Slipped ahead again swift as darting birds.

Joe stood up, twitched an ear at her.

She sped, a blur so fast she burst at the cottontail before it had any clue. It spun, was gone inches from her claws. Joe cut it off. It doubled back. Dulcie leaped. It swerved again, angling away. They worked together hazing, doubling, then closed for the kill.

The blow was fast, Joe’s killing bite clean. The rabbit screamed and died.

They crouched side by side, ripping open its belly, stripping off fur and flinging it away. Joe ate as he plucked the warm carcass, snatching sweet rabbit flesh in great gulps. But Dulcie devoured not one bite until she had cleaned her share of the kill, stripped away all fur. When the warm meat lay before her as neat as a filet presented for her inspection by a favorite butcher, she dined.

They cleaned the rabbit to the bone. They washed. They cleaned one another’s wounds again, then climbed an oak tree and curled together where five big limbs, joining, formed a comfortable nest. The breeze teased at them, and, above the oak’s dark leaves, the blue sky swept away free and clean. Below them, down the falling hills, where the village lay toy-sized, theirown homes waited snug and welcoming. Home was there, for that moment when they chose, again, to seek human company.

But at that moment the cats needed no one. They tucked their chins under and slept. Joe dreamed he was a hawk soaring, snatching songbirds from the wind and needing never to touch the earth. Dulcie dreamed of gold dresses and of music, and, sleeping, she smiled, and her whiskers twitched with pleasure.

They woke at darkfall. Below them the lights of the village were beginning to blink on, bright sudden pricks like stars flashing out. The smell of cooking suppers rose on the salty wind, a warm and comforting breath of domesticity reaching up to enfold them.

Galloping swiftly down the hills, within minutes they were trotting along the grassy center median of Ocean Avenue beneath its canopy of eucalyptus trees, their noses filled with the familiar and comforting aromas of Binnie’s Italian and an assortment of village restaurants, and with the lingering scent of the greengrocer’s and the fish market; how comforting it was, when home smells embraced them. Their wounds were beginning to burn and ache.

They parted at Dolores Street, Dulcie trotting away toward the main portion of the village, where, beyond the shops and galleries, her stone cottage waited. Joe turned left, crossed the eastbound lane of Ocean, and soon could see his own cat door, his own shabby white cottage. He pictured Clyde getting supper, pictured the kitchen, the two dogs greeting him licking and wagging.

He stopped, sickened.

Only Rube was there. Barney would never again greet him. He approached the steps slowly, riven with sadness.

His plastic cat door was lit from within, where the living-room lights burned, and he heard the rumble of voices. Looking back over his shoulder toward the curb, he realized that he knew the two cars parked there-both belonged to Molena Point police officers.

Turning back across the little scraggly yard, he leaped up onto the hood of the brown Mercury. It was only faintly warm; Max Harper had been here a while. Sitting on Harper’s dusty hood studying the house, he tried to decide-did he want to spend an evening with the law?

He didn’t relish Harper’s cigarette smoke. But he might pick up some useful information. And it amused him to hassle Harper, and to spy on the police captain, to lie on the table among the poker chips, listening. Learning things that Harper wouldn’t dream would go beyond those walls. And even if hiseavesdropping didn’t prove useful, it was guaranteed to drive Clyde nuts.

Flicking an ear, he leaped down and trotted on inside.

21 [????????: pic_21.jpg]

The letter had been folded many times into a tiny rectangle no larger than a matchbook. It had been stuffed between layers of cotton filling in the belly of the doll, and the doll’s stomach sewn shut again with the ragged green stitches. The letter had lain concealed for more than three months, and the doll hidden and forgotten.

Dear Mae,

I don’t know if I’m being foolish in writing this. Maybe my distress and unease are only a result of my condition or of the medication they give me. Maybe that causes my shaky handwriting, too. I do feel odd, off-balance, and my hands don’t work well. I was so hoping you would visit me here and that we could talk. The nurses say you haven’t asked about me, but I don’t believe them. I’ve longed to come over to your room or the social room. You’re so near, just beyond this wall, but it’s as if a hundred miles separate us.

The doctor told me to walk, so I have been all around the halls, but always accompanied by a nurse, and none of the nurses will let me come over to the social room. They are so needlessly stria, and I haven’t the strength to defy them, not like I once had. Six months ago I wouldn’t have stood for this high-handed treatment.

Ihaven’t seen anything of your friends, Mae, though I have watched the doors where the charts are posted. I don’t think any of them are here. Their names are not on the doors, and I’ve looked carefully.

If your fears continue, maybe you should talk to the police. But I wouldn’t ask these nurses questions, they get terribly cross.

I heard the supervisor scolding one of the nurses when she thought I was asleep. Though I don’t know much Spanish, just a few words, I’m sure she was saying something about a phone call and your friend Mary Nell Hook. I think she told the nurse not to answer questions from anyone, told her to tend to her own job unless she wanted-something “guardia,” something about the police. Though I didn’t understand much of it, the conversation frightened me. The supervisor mentioned Ms. Prior, too, in a threatening way. I think Adelina Prior can be very cold, I would not want to cross her.

I don’t know if there’s any connection, but twice late in the night I’ve awakened to see a man standing across the hall inside a darkened room, just a shadow in the blackness, looking out. And once when I woke around midnight I thought someone had been standing beside my bed watching me. Not one of the nurses but someone studying me intently, and I felt chilled and afraid-but maybe it was only my overactive imagination, or maybe the medication is affecting my nerves.

I’m putting this note inside Mollie, and I mean to ask Lupe to bring her back to you. I’ll tell her that I don’t want her anymore, that the doll makes me sad. I know you’ll make Mollie a new dress. When you do, you’ll find my stitching hidden under her skirt and slip-Ijust hopeLupe doesn’t find it. I’ll use green thread so you won’t miss it-but you wouldn’t miss it, my hands are no better for sewing than for writing.

I know I seem very depressed. I suppose that’s natural, given my illness. Though I do wonder if the medicine doesn’t make me feel worse.

I long to see you, Mae, but I’m so very tired, too tired to argue. I miss you. And I long for my friend Dillon, too. Since I came here, she hasn’t written, though I have written to her several times. How strange the world has become. I feel very disoriented and sad.

With all my love,

J.

22 [????????: pic_22.jpg]

Joe pushed in through his cat door and headed for the kitchen, toward the cacophony of good-natured male voices and the click of poker chips. He heard someone pop a beer, heard cards being shuffled. When he heard Clyde belch and politely excuse himself, he knew there were ladies present. And that meant a better-than-usual spread from Jolly’s Deli. He could already smell the corned beef, and wished he hadn’t eaten so much of that big cottontail rabbit.

As he quickly shouldered into the kitchen, the good smells wrapped him round, the thick miasma of smoked salmon and spiced meats and crab salad, this gourmetic bouquet overlaid with the malty smell of beer, and, of course, with a fog of cigarette smoke that he could do without. His first view of the group as he pushed in through the kitchen door was ankles and feet among the table legs: two pairs of men’s loafers below neatly creased slacks; a pair of well-turned, silk-clad legs in red high heels; and Charlie Getz’s bare feet in her favorite, handmade sandals. Clyde, as usual, was attired in ancient baggy jogging pants and worn, frayed sneakers. On beyond the table, Rube lay sprawled listlessly across the linoleum, the big Labrador’s eyes seeking Joe’s in a plea of lonely grieving.

Slipping between the tangle of feet, Joe lay down beside Rube, against the dog’s chest. He tried to purr, to comfort the old fellow, but there was really no way he could help. He could only be there, another four-legged soul to share Rube’s loneliness for Barney. Rube licked his face and laid his head across Joe, sighing.

Clyde had buried Barney in the backyard, but he had let Rube and the cats see him first. Dr. Firetti said that was the kindest way, so they would know that Barney was dead and would not be waiting for him to return. He said they would grieve less that way. But, all the same, Rube was pining. He and Barney had been together since they were pups.

Joe endured the weight of Rube’s big head across his ribs until the old dog dozed off, falling into the deep sleep of tired old age, then he carefully slipped out from under the Labrador. Rube didn’t stop snoring. Joe was crouched to leap to the table when he glanced toward the back door and saw the latest architectural addition to the cottage: Clyde had installed a dog door. He regarded it with amazement. The big plastic panel took up nearly half the solid-core back door, was big enough to welcome any number of interested housebreakers. Clyde had evidently reasoned that Rube would need something to distract him from grieving. Surely this new freedom, this sudden unlimited access to the fenced backyard, couldn’t hurt. Too bad Barney wasn’t here to enjoy it.

The other three cats would certainly find the arrangement opening new worlds. They had, heretofore, been subject to strict supervision. They were kept shut away from the living room so they couldn’t go out Joe’s cat door, and Clyde let them into the yard only when he was with them. In the mornings and evenings he let them have a long ramble, but strictly inside the yard. With the aid of a water pistol, he discouraged them from climbing the back fence. Two of the cats were elderly, and disadvantaged in any neighborhood fight, and the little white cat was so shy and skittish she was better off confined. Joe wondered what they’d make of their new liberty. Clyde must have been really worried about Rube to instigate this drastic change in routine.

As for himself, he had never been confined, not from the very beginning of their relationship, when he was six months old and Clyde rescued him from the San Francisco alleys. For the first week he’d been too sick to go out, too sick to care, but when he was himself again and wanted access to the outer world, and Clyde refused, he’d pitched one hell of a fit. A real beauty, a first-class, state-of-the-art berserker of snarling and biting and raking claws.

Clyde had let him out. And from that moment, they’d had a strict understanding. They were buddies, but Clyde would not under any circumstances dictate his personal life.

Leaving Rube sleeping, Joe leaped to the poker table, gave Clyde a friendly nudge with his head, and watched Clyde deal a down card. This group seldom played anything but stud. If the ladies didn’t like stud, they could stay home. Max Harper glanced at his hole card, his expression unchanging. Harper had the perfect poker face, lean, drawn into dry, sour lines as if he held the worst poker hand in history.

Harper had gone to high school with Clyde-that would make him thirty-eight-but his leathery face, dried out from the sun and from too many cigarettes, added another ten, fifteen years.

The other officer was Lieutenant Sacks, a young rookie cop whose dark curly hair and devilish smile drew the women. Sacks had recently married, the heavily made-up blonde with the nice ankles and red shoes had to be his new wife. Joe thought her name was Lila. Absently he nosed at Clyde’s poker chips until the neat round stacks fell over, spilling chips across the table.

“Oh, Christ, Joe. Do you have to mess around?”

He gave Clyde an innocent gaze. Clyde’s second card was a four of clubs, and Joe wondered what he had in the hole. With Clyde’s luck, probably not much. He tried to think what he’d done on poker nights before he understood the game. Just lain there, playing with the poker chips. The smell of the feast, which had been laid out onthe kitchen counter, was making his stomach rumble. Clyde always served fancy, in the original paper plates and torn paper wrappers. He tried to remember his manners and not dive into Clyde’s loaded plate, which sat on the table just beside him, but the smell of smoked salmon made his whiskers curl. Watching the bets, he studied the two women.

Charlie Getz was Clyde’s current squeeze, a tall, liberally freckled redhead, friendly and easy, the kind of woman who did most of her own automotive repairs and didn’t giggle. She wore her long red hair in a ponytail, bound back, tonight, with a length of what looked like coated electrical wire in a pleasant shade of green. Charlie tossed in her chips to raise Harper, and absently petted Joe, then handed him a cracker piled with smoked salmon. Across the table the little blonde watched this exchange with distaste.

He tried to eat delicately and not slop salmon onto the table, but when he took a second cracker, this time off Clyde’s plate, the blonde shuddered, as if he’d contaminated something.Who the hell are you, to be so picky?

Though the fact did cross his mind that he’d recently been gnawing on a dead rabbit and had, moments before that, bitten and ripped at a flea-infested rat.

Sacks bet his king, and Lila folded on a six of hearts. On the last card, Clyde dealt himself another four. Across the table, Max Harper’s lean, leathery expression didn’t change. There ensued a short round of bluffing, then the hole cards came up and Harper took the pot on a pair of jacks. Charlie made a rude remark, rose, and filled her plate. She prepared a plate for Harper, too, and set it before him, then fixed a small plate for Joe, a nice dollop of crab salad and a slice of smoked salmon cut up small so he needn’t make a mess, so he wouldn’t have to hold it down with his paw and make a spectacle of himself chewing off pieces. Charlie did understand cats. He feasted, standing on the table beside her, thoroughly enjoying not only the fine gourmetic delicacies, but the scowling blonde’s disgust.

When he had finished, he gave Lila a cool stare and curled up next to Charlie’s chips, ducked his head under one paw, and closed his eyes. He was dozing off when Charlie said, “Oh, hell,” and tossed her three cards toward the center of the table.

Joe reared his head to look. Harper had a pair of aces showing. With Harper’s luck, probably his hole card was an ace. Clyde started to bet, glared at Harper, and changed his mind. He folded. Sacks and Lila folded.

“Bunch of gutless wonders,” Harper said, gathering in the few chips. “What kind of pot is this?” He did not turn over his hole card, but shuffled it into the deck.

“His luck won’t last,” Sacks said. “It’s the full moon-screws up everything.” Sacks rose and opened the refrigerator, fetched five cans of beer, and handed them around.

Lila gave her bridegroom an incredibly sour look.“Honey, that’s such a childish idea. I wish you wouldn’t talk like you really believe in that stuff.”

Harper looked at her.“Believe in what stuff?”

“In these silly superstitions-that the full moon changes your luck. The moon can’t affect people. The moon-”

“Oh, it can affect people,” Harper told her. “You’d better read the arrest statistics. Full moon, crime rate soars. Moon’s full, you get more nutcases, more wife beatings, bar fights.”

Charlie, petting Joe, had discovered his wounds. She sat examining them, parting the fur on his paw and leg, holding his head so she could see his cheek. Anyone else tried that-except Clyde-he’d get his hand lacerated. But for Charlie, he tried to behave, waited patiently as she rose, opened the kitchen junk drawer, and fetched the tube of Panalog. Returning to her chair, she began to doctor him, drawing from Lila a look like Lila might throw up.

“The presumption is,” Harper said, “that the increase of crime is caused by the pull of the moon, same as the moon’s pull on the ocean causes the tides. That people emotionally or mentally unstable lose what little grip they have on themselves, go a little crazy, teeter on the edge.”

Lila studied Harper as if he had suddenly started speaking Swahili.

“It’s the same with animals,” Charlie said. “Ask any vet. More crazy things happen, more cat fights, runaway animals, dog bites during the full moon.”

Lila looked at them as iftheycame from the moon. Joe had never seen a more closed, disgusted expression. The woman had no more imagination than a chicken. He wanted badly to set her straight, tell her how he felt when the moon was full-like he was going to explode in nine different directions. The full moon made him wild enough to claw his way through a roomful of Doberman pinschers.

But he couldn’t speak; he could tell Lila nothing. She wouldn’t buy it, anyway. She stared at Charlie and Max Harper as if they were retarded. “You can’t really believe that?”

“Come down to the station,” Harper said. “Take a look at the stat sheets, check them with the calendar. Right now, today, full moon. Seven domestic violence, five dog poisonings, and one little old lady brought in a human finger.”

Lila shuddered.

Joe raised his head, watching Harper.

Clyde said,“A finger?”

“Nettie Hales’s motherin-law called the station.” Harper sampled the crab salad from the plate Charlie had fixed for him. “The Haleses live up the valley, a little five-acre horse farm up there. Her terrier brought the finger in-just a bare bone, dirt-crusted.”

Harper tilted his beer can, took a long swallow.“The old lady didn’t know where her dog had been digging. Said he’d brought the bone in the house and was chewing on it.” Harper laughed. “Gumming it. Old dog doesn’t have a tooth in his head. Still, though, even gumming it didn’t please the lab. Bone was fractured, and covered with dog slobber. Don’t know what kind of evidence it might have destroyed.”

Lila’s blue eyes had opened wide. “You mean it might be a murder? Al, you didn’t tell me there’d been a murder. You didn’t tell me anyone was missing.”

Sacks gave his new bride a sour look.“The finger is old, Lila. Old and dark and brittle. And when do I ever talk about that stuff?” He glanced uneasily at Harper.

Lila grew quiet.

It was Joe’s turn to study the blonde.This woman isn’t only a snob, she isn’t too bright.He didn’t realize he was staring until Clyde began to stroke his back, pressing down with unnecessary insistence. He lay down again and shuttered his eyes, tried to look sleepy.

Clyde said,“What did the lab come up with?”

“Nothing yet. That finger’ll be sitting under a stack of evidence until Christmas. They’re so backed up, the place looks like a rummage sale. The court’s putting all criminal investigations on hold, waiting for the lab. Victims’ relatives can’t even collect insurance until the lab is finished, can’t do anything until they get a death certificate. Thirty investigators working the county lab, and still they can’t stay on top.”

Harper sipped his beer.“That Spanish cemetery up the hills, it may have come from there-that old graveyard on the Prior place. It’s only a mile from the Haleses’ house.” For Charlie’s benefit, because she hadn’t lived in Molena Point long, he said, “It was part of the original Trocano Ranch from Spanish land-grant days. Family members were buried at home, tradition to be buried on family land. Even after the land passed down to the children and grandchildren, the family still buried their dead there. The funerals-”

“Isn’t there a law against that?” Lila interrupted.

Harper looked at her, a hard little pause as expressive as an explosion. He did not like interruptions.“No one would enforce that law, with the Trocanos,” he said shortly. “Long after Maria Trocano married Daniel Prior, they buried family at home. Both Daniel’s and Maria’s graves are there.

“When Adelina came of age she sold off all but five acres. Kept the original old ranch house and the cemetery, turned the house into servants’ quarters,” Harper said. “Built that big new house for herself and Renet, and I guess Teddy’s there part of the time. Turned that fine stable into garages. Not a horse left on the place.

“That was quite some stable in its day,” Harper said. “Some of the finest thoroughbreds in California came off the Trocano Ranch.”

He drained his beer.“When Mrs. Hales brought in the finger bone, we had a look at the old cemetery. Thought the dog might have dug into one of the old Spanish graves, but not a clod disturbed. The Priors keep the grounds nice, the grass mowed and trimmed around the old headstones.

“We’ve got three men out walking that area looking for where the dog was digging, and I’ve ridden every inch of that land. So far, nothing.” Harper lived on an acre up in the hills several miles north of the Prior estate. He kept only one horse now, since his wife died.

“I told Mrs. Hales to keep her terrier in before he picks up something worse than a finger bone. The dog poisonings were in that area, too. Three dogs this week, dead of arsenic poisoning. We’ve put two articles in theGazettetelling people to keep their animals confined.” He looked at Clyde. “That would go for cats, too. If I recall, that tomcat’s a real roamer.” He studied Joe intently. Joe gazed back at the police captain. Harper was talking more tonight than Joe had heard in a long time; Harper got like this only occasionally, got talky.

But it wasn’t until Lila left to use the bathroom that Harper told Clyde, “One good thing turned up this week, we got a line on that old truck that hit Bonnie Dorriss’s mother.”

“That’s good news. Wilma will be glad to hear it, too, she’s fond of both Susan and Bonnie. How’d you get the lead? Another anonymous phone tip?”

“No, not another anonymous phone tip,” Harper snapped. Those phone calls were a sore subject for Harper. He hadn’t a clue that his anonymous snitch was sitting on the table not a paw’s length from him.

“That auto paint shop out on 101,” Harper said. “They fired one of their painters, Sam Hart.” He grinned. “Getting fired made Hart real mad. The guy plays baseball with Brennan, and he told Brennan about this pickup he’d painted. It was a job his boss wanted done in a hurry, and the truck’s owner had acted nervous. Hart thought maybe the vehicle was hot.

“A week after he was fired, Hart spotted the truck up in Santa Cruz in a used lot. He was up there looking for a fender for a ‘69 Plymouth he was rebuilding. He saw this Chevy truck with fresh brown paint. Same model, same year. He could still smell the new paint, and when he checked the front bumper there was the same little dent. Looked like someone had scrubbed at it with maybe a Brillo pad.

“Brennan had filled him in on the green truck we were looking for, so Hart called Brennan, and Brennan hiked on up there.”

Harper shook his head.“By the time Brennan got there, just a couple of hours, the dealer had sold it. Described the woman who bought it as a looker, tight leather skirt, long auburn hair.

“We ran the new registration but it came up zilch. False ID. And the previous plate was stolen, registered to an L.A. resident, guy with an ‘82 Pinto. Plate had been stolen three months before.”

Lila had returned. Clyde rose, and set the sandwich makings on the table with a stack of fresh paper plates.

“We’re trying to get a fix on the woman,” Harper said. “Samson did a sketch from the dealer’s description, but the guy didn’t remember much about her face, he was looking at her legs.”

Charlie grinned.

Lila looked annoyed. This woman, Joe decided, wasn’t going to be a cop’s wife very long.

There was a long silence while sandwiches were constructed. Rube went out his dog door, barked halfheartedly, and came back in again. Charlie fixed Rube a corned beef sandwich. It was near midnight when the poker game broke up and the officers and ladies left. Charlie’s parting remarks had to do with an early repair to a rusted-out plumbing system; she seemed actually eager to tackle the challenge.

Clyde opened the back door and the window to air the kitchen, shoved the remains of the feast in the refrigerator, and emptied the ashtrays in deference to the animals who had to sleep there. Joe left him stuffing beer cans and used paper plates into a plastic garbage bag, and lit for the bedroom.

Pawing the bedspread away so not to be disturbed later, he stretched out on his back, occupying as much of the double bed as he dared without being brutally accosted. He was half-asleep when Clyde came in, pulling off his shirt.“So how was Pet-a-Pet day?”

“What can I say? Paralyzing.”

“You are such a snob.”

“My feline heritage. And why are you so interested?”

Clyde shrugged.“When you weren’t home last night, I figured maybe you liked those folks so much you moved in with them, took up residence at Casa Capri.”

“Slept in a tree,” Joe said shortly. He did not like references to his nocturnal absences. He didn’t ask Clyde abouthislate hours.

But then, he didn’t have to. It was usually apparent where Clyde had been, the clues too elemental even to mention, a certain lady’s scent on his collar, his phone book left open to a certain name, hints that did not even add up to kindergarten training for an observant feline.

He did not mention that he and Dulcie had searched the Nursing unit at Casa Capri, and had run surveillance on Adelina Prior in her private office. No need to worry him.

“Harper said, before you came slinking in tonight, they think the cat burglar is getting ready to move on up north.”

“What made him say that?”

“This morning’s police report had an identical operation in Watsonville, and another at Santa Cruz. Harper thinks she’s testing the waters up there. That’s what happened down the coast, a couple of isolated incidents weeks apart before she moved in for the action.”

Clyde wandered around in his shorts, belatedly drawing the shades. No wonder the elderly matrons in the neighborhood turned pink-faced and flustered when they met him on the street.“TheGazetteis going to do an article on the cat-lady angle. Max never did like keeping that confidential, but he didn’t want to scare her away. Once that paper hits the street, she’ll be gone.” He picked up the remote from beside the TV and turned on the late news.

“Pity,” Joe said, “that a police force the size of ours didn’t have the skill to nail her. Do you think they’d like the make on her car?”

Clyde turned off the volume, turned to stare at him.

“Your mouth’s open,” Joe said, yawning. He burrowed deeper against the pillow.

“So what’s the make? I won’t ask the details of how you got it.”

“Blue Honda hatchback. Late model, not sure what year. California plate 3GHK499 with mud smeared on it.”

Clyde sighed and picked up the phone.

But he set it back in its cradle.“I can’t call him now. Where would I have gotten that information, just a few minutes after he left?”

Joe gave him a toothy cat grin.“Where else?”

Scowling, Clyde settled back against his own pillow and turned up the volume, immersing himself in a barrage of world calamities, avoiding the subject he found far more upsetting.

Joe rolled over away from him, curled up, and went to sleep. But he did not sleep well, and in the small hours before the first morning rays touched the windows he rose and padded into the kitchen to the extension phone.

The time was 3:49 A.M. as he punched in the number of the Molena Point PD and gave the duty officer the make on the blue Honda: the color, style, and license number. The officer assured him that Harper would get the information the minute he walked into headquarters.

And that, Joe figured, would be the end of the cat burglar’s long and lucrative spree. Harper would have her cold. And if a twinge of sympathy for the old girl touched him, it wouldn’t last.Dulcie’s the easy mark, not me. She’s the sucker for thieving old women, not Joe Grey.

23 [????????: pic_23.jpg]

Eula rose hastily from the couch, spilling Joe to the cushions. Scowling, clutching the back of the couch to support herself, she stood looking out the glass doors across the patio toward the empty corner room.“There’s someone over there; the curtains are open. There’s a light on-there, in Jane’s old room.” This was Joe’s second visit. Again, he’d been paired with Eula.

Mae Rose came alert, wheeled her chair around, almost upsetting it, staring out. On her lap, Dulcie rose up tall, looking, her tail twitching with excitement, her green gaze fixed across the patio on the corner room, where figures moved with sudden activity.

Joe leaped to the back of the couch, looking out, nipping at his shoulder, pretending to bite a flea, as he gave the distant view his full attention. Across the patio, through the loosely woven draperies, a bedside lamp shone brightly, picking out three busy nurses. The room seemed to brighten further as the sky above Casa Capri darkened with blowing clouds.

Along the length of the patio garden, each room was lit like a bright stage. In some, the occupant was reading or watching TV; other rooms were empty, though residents had left lights burning while they came to the social hall. Dillon came to stand beside Joe, leaning against the back of the couch, stroking him, but her attention was on the far room.

He hadn’t expected to see Dillon again after finding her bawling in the woods, after the nurse booted her out. He’d figured she was done with Casa Capri, that she’d give up looking for Jane Hubble, but here she was, fascinated by that far bedroom, her brown eyes fixed intently on the action behind the curtain.

Suddenly, everyone moved at once. Dillon fled past him out the sliding door, leaving it open to the wind. Mae Rose took off in her wheelchair toward the front entry and the hall beyond, moving faster than he thought that chair could move, Dulcie balanced in her lap, stretching up to see. Eula followed behind Mae Rose’s wheelchair, hobbling along in her walker as fast as she could manage.

Joe delayed only a moment, then nipped out the glass doors behind Dillon.

The kid stood across the patio beneath an orange tree, pressed against the glass, shielded by the partially open draperies, looking in, her hands cupped around her eyes. Joe, slipping along beneath the bushes, rubbed against her leg. She looked down and absently scratched his ear with the toe of her jogging shoe. She must think, with the patio darkening and the room so brightly lit, and the flimsy drapery to shield her, that she wouldn’t be noticed. He sat beside her in the shadows, watching the three white-uniformed nurses within. One was setting out some books on the dresser, another was filling the dresser drawers with folded garments: neat stacks of lacy pink nighties, quilted satin bed jackets, and what appeared to be long woolly bed socks. The closet door stood open, but the space within did not contain hanging clothes.

The closet was fitted with shelves, and the shelves were stacked with cardboard boxes, wooden boxes, plastic bags, small suitcases, several small flowered overnight bags, and two old-fashioned hatboxes. Dillon seemed fascinated with the jumble; she peered in as if memorizing every item. She looked away only when a fourth nurse entered the room, wheeling a patient on a gurney, a thin old lady tucked up beneath a white blanket, her face pale against the white pillow, her body hardly a puff beneath the cover. The nurse positioned the gurney beside the hospital bed and set its wheel brakes.

Two nurses lifted the patient. Working together they settled her onto the taut, clean sheets of the hospital bed and tucked the top sheet and blanket around her. She squinted and murmured at the light from the bedside lamp, and closed her eyes. A nurse turned the three-way bulb all the way up, forcing a moment of bright glare, switching on through to the lowest, gentle setting. For an instant, in that brief flash of harsh light, something startled Joe, some wrong detail. Something he could not bring clear.

He had no notion what had bothered him, whether some detail of the room, or something about the patient, but soon the feeling was gone. If something was off here, he didn’t have a clue. Probably imagination. Annoyed at himself, he lay down across Dillon’s feet, watching the room as the nurse pushed the gurney out into the hall.

Another nurse attached an IV tube to the patient’s wrist where a needle had already been inserted, and hung a bottle on the IV stand. The old lady was dressed in a lacy white nightie with a high, ruffled collar, and on her hands she wore little white cotton gloves.

“The gloves,” Dillon whispered, looking down at him, “are so she won’t scratch herself. Wilma says their skin is like tissue paper when they get old. Mae Rose’s skin is thin, but I don’t remember Jane’s being like that.”

He wondered if a cat’s skin got thin and fragile in old age. Old cats got bony. Old cats looked all loose-hinged, their eyes got bleary, and their chins stuck out. Old cats had a lot of little pains, too. Maybe arthritis, maybe worse.

He didn’t think he wanted to hang around after he got frail and useless; he’d rather go out fast. End it quick in a blaze of teeth and claws, raking the stuffings out of some worthy opponent.

Slowly Dillon backed away from the glass.“It’s not Jane,” she said sadly. She picked him up, buried her face against him. But soon she moved closer to the glass again, peering in as if the sight of that poor old soul fascinated her. He still couldn’t figure out what was off about the scene-the old woman looked comfortable and wellcared for; the room seemed adequately appointed.

The old lady was very pale, but so were a lot of old people. Her white hair fanned out in a halo onto the white pillow, hair so thin he could see her pale pink scalp beneath. Her wrinkled cheeks and mouth were drawn in, her pale blue eyes were rimed with milky circles. Her lids were reddened, too, and at the corners of her eyes liquid had collected. Dampness shone at one side of her mouth in a small line of drool.

A nurse bent to wipe her face, taking such gentle strokes she seemed hardly to touch the old woman. Behind the nurses in the hall, two visitors appeared, figures robed in black, stepping heavily into the room, two square and hefty old women dressed all in black like two Salvation Army bell ringers.

Their gray hair, frizzed close to their heads, formed little caps as kinky as steel wool. Their shoes were black and sturdy, their black skirts reached nearly to the floor. They seemed as ancient as the bed’s occupant, but of a different breed. These two ladies looked indestructible, as if they had been tempered perhaps by some demanding religious sect. Or maybe the vicissitudes of life, alone, had toughened them, just as old leather becomes tough.

The shorter of the two carried a brightly flowered handbag of quilted chintz, its yellow and pink blooms screaming with color against her sepulchral attire. The taller lady bore in her outstretched hands a small bowl covered with a white napkin. Adelina Prior moved behind them, shepherding them inside. She wore beige today, a tailored suede dress that showed less leg, and she wore less makeup, her eyes almost naked, her lips a flesh-colored tone.

The women paused uncertainly by the foot of the bed, watching the patient. She lay with her eyes closed, whether in sleep or out of shyness or bad temper was impossible to tell. The two black-robed ladies leaned forward, peering.

“Mary Nell? Are you awake? It’s Roberta and Gustel.”

“Mary Nell? Can you hear us? It’s Cousin Roberta and Cousin Gustel.”

When the patient didn’t open her eyes, Ms. Prior took the ladies’ arms and guided them to a pair of upholstered chairs that had been drawn up at the side of the bed, the backs to the wall and facing, across the bed, the glass doors. The black-clad women sat woodenly. The shorter lady leaned forward. “Mary Nell, it’s Roberta. Are you awake?” As she leaned, she deposited her flowered handbag on the floor. The tall lady remained silent, clutching her bowl in her lap.

Joe, dropping down from Dillon’s arms, slipped behind the orange tree, then leaped up into its branches. The sky had grown darker, and the clouds were moving fast. A damp wind scudded through the branches, shivering the leaves. He settled in a fork where he could see out between the moving leaves, directly down upon the bed, upon Mary Nell Hook and her two sturdy cousins. He could see, as well, beneath the bed, Dulcie’s two hind paws and the tip of her twitching tail.

Dulcie’s view was restricted to the floor, the bed legs, a corner of the blanket hanging down, and the high-topped black shoes of the visitors. Each woman, when seated, kept her feet flat on the floor as if to assure adequate balance. Above their ankle-high shoes, two inches of leg were encased in thick, black corrective stockings-a sharp contrast to Adelina’s silk-clad ankles and creamy pumps, her sleek narrow foot tapping softly beside the bed. The two ladies smelled of mothballs, a strange mix when combined with Adelina’s perfume and the sweet aroma of vanilla from the bowl that Gustel held. These, with the strong air freshener that had been sprayed earlier, left her nose nearly numb. But she did catch a whiff from the bed above, of nail polish remover. This seemed a puzzling aroma to be associated with a frail, bedridden lady. But maybe she liked nice nails-though one couldn’t seethem beneath the white cotton gloves.

She could see Dillon standing beyond the glass door and draperies, a shadow among shadows in the darkening patio, a subtlety probably not detectable by human eyes. She had seen Joe streak for the tree-he was hidden, now, high among the leaves-but she caught a glimpse of his yellow eyes, watching.

A chair creaked as if the short lady had leaned forward.“Mary Nell? Mary Nell, it’s Roberta. Open your eyes, Mary Nell. It’s Roberta and Gustel.”

There was a rustle of the covers as if Mary Nell had turned to look at her visitors.

“Mary Nell, Cousin Grace sends her love,” Gustel said. “I’ve brought you a vanilla pudding.”

Mary Nell murmured, faint and weak.

“Her husband Allen’s son is graduating from Stanford, and we came out to the coast for the ceremony, and, of course, we wanted to see you; it’s been years, Mary Nell.”

Mary Nell grunted delicately.

“Do they treat you well? We talked with your trust officer, and she said they are very kind here.”

Another soft murmur, a bit more cheerful.

The conversation progressed in this vein until Dulcie had to shake her head to stay awake. From Mary Nell’s responses, the patient, too, was about to* drift off. The cousins took turns talking, as if they had been programmed by some strict familial custom which allowed exactly equal time to all participants. Mary Nell’s answers remained of the one-syllable variety. Not until Gustel began to talk about the old school where Mary Nell had taught did the patient stir with some semblance of vigor.

Gustel, holding her pudding gently on her lap, told about the grandchild of one of Mary Nell’s students, who was now vice principal of that very same school. When she described for Mary Nell the new modern gymnasium with a skylight in the dome, this elicited from Mary Nell her first decipherable comment. “A light in the roof. Oh my. And little Nancy Demming, just imagine, she was no bigger than me.”

“We have all your old history books and cookbooks, Mary Nell; we’re keeping them for the great grandchildren.”

“A regular window,” Mary Nell said. “A regular window in the roof.” The springs grumbled as if she had shifted or perhaps leaned up for a better look at her cousins. It was at this moment that Dulcie saw Mae Rose.

Mae Rose had abandoned her wheelchair and was creeping along the hall. Walking unsteadily, clutching at the wall, she was headed for the open door.

Dulcie had left Mae Rose near the front door, in the parlor. When Mae Rose stopped to wait for Eula, Dulcie had lost patience, leaped down, and streaked in through this door behind the nurses’ feet. She thought that not even Dillon peering in through the glass had seen her as she slid beneath Mary Nell’s bed.

She didn’t know why Mae Rose had left her wheelchair; it frightened her to see the little woman walking so precariously. She did not see Eula, though she could see a good slice of hall from where she crouched; it was only close up that her view was limited to chair legs and feet. Mae Rose crept along to the door, clutching her little doll Lucinda and hanging on to the wall. Moving inside, she approached the bed, drew so close that Dulcie could see only her pale, bare legs and her bright pink slippers. The smell of air freshener was so strong she couldn’t even catch Mae Rose’s sweet, powdery scent. Just the chemical smell of fake pine.

Wanting to see more, she reared up behind the bed, shielded by Mary Nell’s plumped pillows, and peered out through a tiny space beside Mary Nell’s left ear. She watched Mae Rose lean over the bed, smiling eagerly at Mary Nell, holding out the doll. Mary Nell grunted, perhaps startled at the proximity of the doll. When she leaned up a few inches from the bed, Mae Rose pressed the doll toward her, as if by way of a loving gift.

The cousins, sitting beside the bed like two black crows, watched this exchange with blank stares. And Dulcie drew back imperceptibly, deeper into the shadows behind the bed.

She felt that if either cousin spotted her, escape would be imperative. And now suddenly Eula appeared in the hall, stumping along in her walker. Behind Eula came a scowling nurse, pushing Mae Rose’s empty wheelchair.

Soon the nurse had forced Mae Rose away from the bed, back into her rolling chair, and started away with her, pushing determinedly. But then the nurse seemed to take pity. She turned back again, rolled the chair back into Mary Nell’s room, and up to the bed.

Again Mae Rose held out the doll.“Mary Nell, do you remember Lucinda?”

“I remember her,” Mary Nell said weakly.

“She’s for you, to keep you company. She’s your doll now.” Mae Rose thrust the doll at Mary Nell. The bed creaked as Mary Nell reached. Dulcie watched intently through the tiny space between the two pillows. Mae Rose and Mary Nell looked silently at each other. Mae Rose said, “I’ve missed you, Mary Nell. And I miss Jane. Do you see Jane over in Nursing?”

“She’s not well,” Mary Nell told her. “She misses you. She said-she said, if I saw Mae Rose, to give her love.” Her voice was weak and shaky. The effect on Mae Rose was to bring tears; Mae Rose’s face crumpled. And at the same moment, Adelina appeared.

Adelina paid no attention to Mae Rose’s weeping; she dispatched the tearful old lady back to her own wing, and Eula with her; sent them both away, escorted by two nurses.

The two cousins had sat scowling and silent through the little episode. Seated firmly, their feet planted, they gave each other a meaningful look, then rose as one. Moving slowly, with a measured precision, Roberta clutched her flowered handbag. Gustel turned away from her sister only long enough to deposit her vanilla pudding on the dresser beside the books.

As the two cousins made their good-byes to Mary Nell, Dulcie studied the hall and the glass door, weighing her chances. She could likely unlatch the glass door, but she didn’t want Dillon to see her do that. She was assessing the traffic in the hall when she saw the foot.

The nurses had wheeled the empty gurney back into the room. Even as the cousins departed, clumping away, they prepared to lift Mary Nell onto the rolling cart. Wrapping Mary Nell’s blanket around her, and one nurse lifting her shoulders while the other supported her hips, they set Mary Nell on the cart for her return to Nursing. But as they slid her acquiescent body off the bed and onto the gurney, her blanket caught and was pulled awry, pulling her off-balance. She kicked out against the bed, to right herself.

Dulcie, looking up from beneath the bed, saw Mary Nell’s bare foot kick out beyond the edge of the cart. A slim, smooth foot, without the blue veins and knobby joints of an old woman. A lightly tanned foot that might easily run and dance.

She paused, frozen with amazement, then reared up beneath the blanket for a closer look. Staring at that healthy, slim foot, she was so fascinated that she forgot herself and let her whiskers brush Mary Nell’s skin, catching a whiff of disinfectant from the blanket. At the tickle of her whiskers, Mary Nell grunted, startled, and reached to scratch her instep. Dulcie dropped down, crouching deep beneath the bed, in the far corner. Mary Nell scratched her foot vigorously with a white-gloved hand, drewher foot back beneath the covers, and pulled the blanket closer around herself. And she was wheeled away.

Dulcie remained hidden until they had gone, her mind fixed on that slim, smooth foot with its neat, professional pedicure of bright red toenails, and on the sudden, vigorous movements of that frail old lady.

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It was getting dark in the grove. Susan knew she should head back, should turn her wheelchair around. She had only to speak to Lamb, and he would circle back toward Casa Capri. Bonnie would be wanting to leave; she had scheduled this afternoon an hour later than usual, having had to work later, and now it looked like rain, the clouds so dark and low overhead they seemed to cling in among the oak trees. Beyond the grove, the lights of the dining room and the long line of bedrooms shone brightly, the big squares of the glass doors marching along behind the wrought-iron fence. She could see, down at the end, a portion of Teddy’s wheelchair behind his open drapery, saw movement as if perhaps he sat reading. He didn’t stay long at the Pet-A-Pet sessions. Mae Rose thought the proximity of so many animals annoyed Teddy, irritated him.

The wind was picking up. Speaking to Lamb and stroking him, she gave him the command to turn back. Willingly he led her around, pulling her chair in a circle off the path and back again. It was at that moment, as they turned, that she saw Teddy rise from his wheelchair, stand tall, move away from it.

She spoke to Lamb, and he stopped in his tracks, stood still.

She watched Teddy walk across the room to the other side of the glass doors. No mistaking him, his hanging stomach forming a pear-shaped torso.

She watched him reach to pull the draperies, saw him pause a moment, looking out-then step back suddenly against the wall, out of sight.

Saw the draperies slide closed as if by an invisible hand, from where he had concealed himself.

He had seen her, despite the gathering dark. Had seen some glint, maybe her white blouse, seen her here in the grove. Seen her watching him.

She shivered deeply, unaccountably frightened.

Now the draperies obscured the room. Those drapes on the outside windows were not like the thinner casement curtains that faced into the patio. These window coverings, facing away from Casa Capri, were opaque, totally concealing.

She sat still, watching the obscured glass door, still shaken, chilled.

Teddy couldn’t walk. Not at all. His spine had been crushed. He was completely incapacitated from his waist down, could use only his arms. Drove his car with special hand equipment.

That is what they had been told. That is what Adelina Prior told them.

Ice filled her.

And in her fear she made some movement, some little body language that made Lamb whine and nose at her. Stroking him, hugging the big poodle to her, she felt very alone suddenly, the two of them, too vulnerable alone here in the gathering night.

But Bonnie would be waiting. She spoke to the poodle, urging him on, and headed fast for the social room. Wanting Bonnie, wanting company, wanting to be around other people.

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The cats read the newspaper article while standing on the front page, on the Damen kitchen table. They were not amused at the eveningGazette’streatment of Max Harper. Behind them at the stove, Clyde and Wilma were cooking lasagna, boiling pasta and making sauce, Wilma’s silver hair tied back under a cloth, Clyde wearing an ancient, stained barbecue apron. The steamy kitchen smelled deliciously of herbs and tomato sauce and sauteed meat; and the room reverberated with banging from the roof above, where Charlie was at work replacing shingles. Working for her supper. There was, Joe thought, nothingverycheap about Clyde.

Dulcie sat down on the paper and read the article again, her tail lashing with annoyance.“This is really a cheap shot,” she said softly.

Joe agreed. He might make fun of Harper, but when theGazetteput Harper down, that made him mad.

“Not only bad for law enforcement,” Clyde said, chopping cilantro, “but bad politics.”

“And poor taste,” Wilma said, glancing up toward the roof. Further banging told them Charlie was still out of hearing. “Max Harper is a fine man. He keeps this town clean, and that’s more than I can say for some city officials.”

There was a big difference, Joe thought, rolling over on the newspaper, between his own good-natured and secret harassment of Max Harper, and theGazette’scaustic misinformation.

POLICE FAIL TO NOTICE OPEN GRAVE

Molena Point Police, searching earlier this week for the body from which a finger bone was stolen supposedly by a neighborhood dog, failed to find during their investigation of the Prior estate, the wide-open grave of Dolores Fernandez. The excavation, in plain sight in the historic Spanish cemetery, had been dug into so deeply that the dirt was scattered across the grass and the body uncovered. Police gave reporters no explanation for their failure to find the body until their second visit to the estate, just this morning.

On Tuesday of this week, the human finger was brought to Captain Harper’s attention by Mrs. Marion Hales, who had taken the bone away from her dog. Harper claims his men searched the cemetery at that time but says they failed to find any ground disturbed. Yet this morning, inexplicably, the Prior caretaker reported the grave open, the body revealed, and the finger missing.

The grave of Dolores Fernandez is an historic landmark. Fernandez, who died in 1882, was first cousin of Estafier Trocano, one of the original settlers of Molena Point and founder of the Trocano Ranch. The Prior estate is part of the original Spanish land grant given to the Trocano family by Mexico. Police have sent the finger, and samples from the body, to the State Forensics Lab in Sacramento for analysis.

Sacramento forensic expert Dr. Lynnell Jergins told reporters that several weeks may be required to make positive identification.

Dr. Jergins said the county forensic laboratory is facing a large backlog of work because of a shortage of scientific personnel. The grave is not open to public observation, and is under police surveillance until their investigation is completed. The Prior Ranch is private property and is patrolled.

Joe rolled over and began to wash. Above their heads, Charlie’s pounding came steady and loud as she fitted in new shingles. Last night’s rain had flooded Clyde’s hall closet, drenching half a dozen jackets, Clyde’s suitcase, and an old forgotten cat bed. It was about time Clyde got around to some repairs. Typical, of course, to get the work for free, if he could manage it.

But better free than not at all. In this household, it was a big deal if he remembered to buy lightbulbs before the old ones burned out.

Joe felt eternally thankful that cats didn’t have to replace lightbulbs, repair shingles, and paint walls. And, of course, no cat would write such a misleading newspaper article. This display of bad taste was beneath even the scroungiest feline. TheGazettehad no reason for their caustic slant; it was obvious to any idiot that the grave had been dug up after Harper’s men searched the Prior estate. Probably someone at the paper had a grudge against Harper, not uncommon in the politics of a small town.

He could see that regardless of the slant, the story of the open grave fascinated Dulcie. You could bet your whiskers they’d be up there digging before you could shake a paw. And he had to admit, whatever scoffing he’d done about missing patients, the fact that a skeleton had turned up, and that maybe the finger bone belonged to that body and maybe it didn’t, shed a new light. His interest had suddenly shifted into high gear. His feline curiosity sat up and took note.

Glancing at Dulcie, he knew they were of one mind: investigate the grave. Maybe, as well, they could get into the Prior house. Who knew what they’d find, maybe more photographs like the ones of Mary Nell Hook that Renet had put on Adelina’s desk yesterday morning.

There was no doubt the pictures were of Mary Nell-Dulcie had seen them clearly, and she had seen Mary Nell clearly. They had no idea what use Adelina had for such pictures. She hadn’t given them to the two black-robed cousins; they had left empty-handed except for Roberta’s flowered handbag. He supposed Adelina could have given them the pictures as they stepped out the front door, but when Adelina appeared in the hall earlier, she hadn’t been carrying them.

Dulcie hadn’t dared follow the cousins; there had been nurses all over. Besides, she’d been too busy watching young Dillon. The minute the room was empty, Dillon had slipped in through the glass doors, making directly for the closet. And as Joe and Dulcie watched, Joe from the orange tree and Dulcie from under the bed, Dillon had removed from the crowded shelves one item. She had known exactly what she wanted.

Dillon had only an instant alone, before two nurses returned and began straightening the room, opening drawers, and putting Mary Nell’s clothes into cardboard boxes. In that instant she had removed a wide, flat oak box with metal corners. Carefully lifting it out, watching the door to the hall, she had opened the lid-and caught her breath.

From the tree, Joe could see into the box clearly. It was like a little portable desk, with a slanted top for writing, and with small compartments inside. He could see that some of the spaces still held stamps, a pen, some white envelopes. But in the largest compartment, which was probably meant for writing paper, lay a doll.

Her porcelain face looked dusty, her pale hair matted, her blue-and-white crinoline dress wrinkled and limp with neglect. Dillon lifted it out quickly and tucked it inside her shirt, where it made a large lump.

She closed the box, looked undecided for a moment, then shoved it back into the cupboard. As she slipped out through the glass door, Dulcie had nipped out behind her, crowding against Dillon’s heels. They were hardly out when two nurses entered. Just as Joe slipped down from the tree, the rain hit. By the time the three of them reached the social room, racing across the garden, they were soaked. The cats had sat behind the couch, dripping onto the carpet, washing themselves, as Dillon squinched across the carpet to Mae Rose and laid the doll in the old lady’s lap. She had kept her back to the room, and her voice low.

“Is this the doll you gave Jane Hubble? The one you told me about?”

“Oh yes.” Mae Rose’s smile shone bright with surprise. “This is my little Becky. Where did you find her?” She cuddled the doll, staring up at Dillon, then immediately slipped the doll out of sight beneath the pink afghan, tucking the cover around her. “Where did you find her? Did you see Jane? I gave her to Jane before she was moved to Nursing. Where??”

“She had a little writing desk, a lap desk.”

“Of course. It’s one of the few things Jane asked her trust officer to bring from home.” She looked up at Dillon, her blue eyes alarmed. “Jane wouldn’t give up her little desk and give up Becky. She wouldn’t give her up if she? No matter how sick she was. How did you know about the desk?”

“We were neighbors; she kept it on a table by the living-room window. She’d carry it to her easy chair before the fire to write letters. Fix herself a cup of coffee and sit by the fire to pay her bills, or write a letter to the editor of theGazette-she loved doing that. She didn’t have any close friends to write to.”

Dillon looked down at Mae Rose, touching the arm of Mae’s wheelchair. “I found the doll in the desk, and the desk was in the cupboard of that room-the room where you went, where Mary Nell was. But why would they take Jane’s desk away from her?”

Mae Rose stroked the afghan where the doll was hidden. She didn’t reply.

Dulcie and Joe glanced at each other. Dulcie shivered. She told Joe later that it was Dillon’s finding the doll and the desk that made Wilma decide to go to Max Harper.

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She had a sudden change of mind about stealing from one of the oceanfront houses. After what happened Thursday afternoon, she decided to give it a shot; how could she resist. The conversation she overheard in the drugstore, the exchange between this Mrs. Bonniface and the pharmacist seemed destined specifically for her enlightenment. And Friday morning, when she woke and saw the fog thick outside her windows, fog heavy enough to give her total cover approaching and leaving the Bonniface house, there was no decision to make. She was on her way. Not only would the fog conceal her, but the beach would be virtually empty, the tourists all in bed, warm in their motel rooms, or bundled up drinking hot coffee in the little restaurants. And the cops, with minimal beach attendance, wouldn’t put out a full patrol.

In the drugstore, Mrs. Bonniface, whom she had seen around town, of course, had been standing at the pharmacy counter waiting for a prescription. Bonniface was a big name in Molena Point-he was the founding partner of Bonniface, Storker, and Kline. Dorothy Bonniface was thirtysomething, one of those beautifully groomed blondes, perfect haircut and professional makeup, one of those women who could walk into the Ritz Carleton wearing out-of-style jeans and a worn-out sweatshirt and still have the entire staff falling over themselves to serve her.

Mrs. Bonniface, standing at the pharmacy counter, had told the druggist conversationally that Donald was in Japan wrapping up a sales contract with some Sony subsidiary, that he would be home a week from Friday. They talked about little Jamie’s cough, which was not bad enough to keep her out of school. The prescription was for Jamie. She said the other two children were just fine, she was on her way to pick them up from school and drop them at a birthday party. Her shopping list, lying on the counter beside her, included a flat of pansies and a flat of petunias and six flats of ajuga ground cover, presumably from the local nursery. This meant, with any luck, that Dorothy Bonniface might be spending the next morning in her garden, putting in the tender plants, leaving her house unattended.

She had left the pharmacy, walking out behind Mrs. Bonniface, feeling high, a delicious surge of excitement. She had stopped in at the Coffee Mill two doors away to look up the Bonniface address in the Molena Point phone book.

There were three Bonnifaces; she knew they were related. The Donald Bonnifaces lived at 892 Shore Drive. Leaving the Coffee Mill, she got her car and took a swing by the Bonniface house, cruising slowly.

The nicely kept two-story blue frame featured a huge patio in front, with expensive wrought-iron furniture. The handsome outdoor sitting area, walled in by glass to cut the sharp sea wind, reached to within ten feet of the sidewalk, and was given privacy by a row of pyracanthas. The entry walk, the lawn, and the flower beds were to the right of this, with a wide expanse of bare earth where some kind of bedding plants had recently been removed.

She had glimpsed behind the house another bricked terrace, sheltered by a series of freestanding walls, these supporting espaliered bushes, and offering privacy from the neighbors’ windows. As there were openings between them, it was a perfect setup. She could park on the back street a block away and slip through the neighbors’ yards and into the Bonniface yard calling for her lost kitty.

Friday morning she did just that: parked on the back street and wandered on through, calling softly for Kitty. She was certain no one noticed her moving through the fog; she could hardly see the neighbors’ flower beds and fences. Approaching the Bonniface house, she wandered innocently to the back steps.

Wiping the damp from her feet, she surveyed what she could see of the neighbors’ windows, which wasn’t much. But no one was watching. She tapped lightly at the back door, though she didn’t expect an answer. As she drove by the front, she had seen Dorothy Bonniface already on her knees in the dirt, hard at work setting out her petunias. The woman was an early riser. The pansies were already in place, perky and bright in the pale fog; and the flat of ajuga stood waiting. There was no car in the drive, as if a maid might be working within, and no car nearby on the street. Most Molena Point families, except for those with estates in the hills, hired help only for housecleaning and to assist at dinner parties.

No one answered her knock. She tapped again, hoping she wouldn’t be heard from the front yard, and after a safe interval she turned the knob. The door was unlocked. Smiling, she slipped inside.

Dorothy Bonniface had left the coffeepot on, and the cooking brew smelled as strong as boiled shoe polish. The morning paper lay folded on the table as if Mrs. Bonniface had saved it, perhaps to read during a midmorning coffee break. The kitchen was handsome, all creamy tile, deep blue walls, and whitewashed oak cabinets. Under one of the upper cabinets was installed a nice little miniature TV set. She wiggled it in its bracket. Yes, it would slip right out. And, in the fog, it wouldn’t be too noticeable beneath her tan raincoat.

She’d get it as she left. Moving on into the dining room, she spent a few minutes assessing the Spode and crystal in the china cabinet. These items weren’t much good unless she took a whole set, and she had no way to carry so much. The china was lovely. Maybe she’d come back later, load up her car, do things a bit differently for a change.

Down the hall, the master bedroom faced the front, opening with sliding doors onto the glassed terrace. Standing at the dresser, she broke the lock on Dorothy Bonniface’s jewel chest and surveyed an impressive collection of gold and diamond earrings, amethyst and emerald chokers, a topaz pendant, a few gold bracelets. Dorothy Bonniface liked color, though all the pieces were delicate and in good taste. She was lifting them out, tucking them away in the various pockets beneath her coat, when the phone rang.

There was only one ring. When the phone stilled without ringing again, a stab of alarm touched her. Had Mrs. Bonniface come into the house? Had she been passing the phone when it rang?

But when she stepped to the bedroom window, she saw Mrs. Bonniface still kneeling on the walk, talking on a remote, holding the phone gingerly so not to dirty it with her soiled gardening glove. Her trowel lay in the half-empty box of petunia plants. She was not speaking, now, but listening. She glanced once toward the house, glanced up the street, and made a short reply. When she hung up, she rose and headed for the front door, studying the living-room windows.

At the porch she removed her shoes, stepping through the front door in her stocking feet. Someone had snitched, some nosy neighbor.

Moving fast down the hall and through the kitchen as Dorothy Bonniface crossed the living room, she slipped quickly out the back door, moved quickly away through the fog-shrouded backyards. Softly calling the cat, she glanced around toward the neighbors’ indistinct windows, wondering which busybody little housewife had made that phone call.

Ambling around through a neighbor’s garden to the street, she moved slowly down the sidewalk, still calling for Kitty, but wanting to get out of there fast. She was half-wired with nerves, and half-strung with amusement. Heading through the fog for her car, she glanced back several times.

The houses behind her had nearly vanished.

She had not brought the blue Honda, and she had put a Nevada plate on this car, along with half a dozen bumper stickers pointing up worthwhile wonders to be seen around Nevada. She had applied the stickers with rubber cement so she could tear them off in a hurry.

She drove eight blocks up the beach to where the houses ended, where the dunes rambled away to the south. Getting out, she left the engine running as she removed the stickers and stuffed them in her purse. Then she headed for the village and across it to The Bakery, craving a cup of coffee and a chocolate donut.

She left her coat and slouch hat in the car and changed her shoes. In the restaurant she chose a veranda table, where she could enjoy the fog-muffled sea. She ordered, then headed for the rest room.

In the little cubicle she tore the bumper stickers into tiny pieces and flushed them away, then worked her loose hair into a knot.

Returning to her table, to her steaming coffee and an incredibly sticky, nut-covered donut, she got her first look at the morning edition of the Molena PointGazette.

The paper lay on the next table; she nearly had palpitations before the occupant left, and she could snag the front page.

The Molena PointGazettepaid little attention to world events. People could buy the San FranciscoChronicleorExaminerfor that. Village news, the small local stories, that was what sold theGazette.Yesterday evening’s paper, putting Max Harper down about missing the open grave, had been sufficiently amusing. But this article in the morning edition, though it, too, put down Harper-and that pleased her-this article did not cheer her. She felt, in fact, a chill depression, an emotion which perhaps had taken some time to build, and which she did not care to examine closely.

She might enjoy this newspaper column later, about the cat burglar, and she would certainly save it, but at the moment it presented only a personal warning. And though maybe it wasn’t that warning alone that frightened her, whatever emotions caused this hollowness in her belly, she knew it was time to go, time to leave Molena Point.

CAT BURGLAR ON THE PROWL

The recent rash of Molena Point burglaries, police report, are very likely attributable to a shabbily dressed old lady that local police have dubbed“The Cat Burglar” but whom they have not been able to apprehend. Captain Max Harper was not able to explain to reporters the failure of his officers to arrest the lone woman who has entered and burglarized more than a dozen Molena Point homes.

As the woman prowls Molena Point neighborhoods, she pretends to be looking for her lost cat. If questioned, she gives a plausible story about the escape of the cat from her car. The woman’s operation is not unique to Molena Point. Within the past year, she has burglarized countless homes in cities up and down the coast, including San Diego, La Jolla, Ventura, Santa Barbara, Paso Robles, San Luis Obispo, and smaller towns between. She is in and out of a house so quickly she seems to move like a cat herself, as silently and with as furtive intentions.

To date, in Molena Point, she has burglarized fifteen homes. None of the stolen items has been recovered. And while Captain Harper has been unable to apprehend her, he warns homeowners to keep their doors locked even when they are at home, either inside or working in their yards.

“This is the time of year when everyone likes their doors open to enjoy the spring breeze,” Harper said. “Leaving a door unlocked is an invitation. The old lady will wander the neighborhood where people are working in their gardens or enjoying their swimming pool. She slips into the house quickly, looking for jewelry, cash, and small collector’s items. If she is discovered inside by a surprised homeowner, she claims to be looking for her lost cat.”

Besides cash and jewelry, she favors expensive cameras, the more expensive brands of small electronic equipment, and she has been known to take small pieces of artwork. Missing from the home of John Eastland on Mission Drive is a complete set of rare ivory chess pieces, and from an unnamed residence in the hills, five valuable, limited edition collector’s dolls of unusual beauty. From the Elaine Carver residence the woman has stolen a small etching by Goya valued at a hundred thousand dollars, and for which there is a generous reward. The rash of burglaries is an unfortunate stain on the reputation of Molena Point. Anyone having information about the identity of the woman, or about the stolen items, should contact Captain Harper of the Molena Point Police.

She set down her coffee cup, staring at the newspaper. Mrs. Garver’s claim of a missing Goya so amazed her she had almost choked. There had never been a Goya. She’d seen no etching by Goya in that house, nor had she seen any valuable artwork there. The woman was flat lying. Planning to rip off her insurance company for a cool hundred thousand, and using her as the patsy.

The fact that someone would piggyback a scam of that magnitude on her own modest operation was both annoying and, in a way, flattering. But then she started to get mad-mad that this Garver woman would set up a poor little old bag lady to take the rap for a hundred-thousand-dollar painting.

The idea so angered her that by the time she finished her coffee and paid her bill, she was seething. The woman wasn’t going to get away with this.

Returning to the ladies’ room, she dropped a quarter in the pay phone and called the Molena Point PD.

She was able to reach Max Harper himself, and told him there was never any Goya etching.“I expect the Garvers’ insurance agent will be pleased to have that information.” And because she was feeling so mad, and because she had to prove to Harper that she spoke the truth, she gave him a complete list of the items she had taken from the Garver house, gave him a far more detailed accounting than was in the paper.

Hanging up the phone, she stood a moment, letting her pounding heart slow. Then she got out of there fast.

In the car she pulled on her coat again, against the chill of the fog, and headed on through the village. That insurance company would nip Mrs. Garver’s scam, jerk her up short. And as far as Harper tracing her phone call, he hadn’t had time. She knew how long such a thing took; she’d researched phone tracing carefully. Anyway, she’d be out of here in a day or two, and on up the coast. Withcat burglarsmeared all over the front page, the whole village was alerted, she didn’t dare hang around. Just a few loose ends to take care of, and she’d be gone. In Molena Point she’d be history.

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Max Harper left the police station at midmorning, heading up the hills to have another look around the Prior estate. He didn’t intend to pull into the Prior drive in his police unit. He thought he’d stop by his place, saddle Buck, and take a ride. He’d been using Buck all week to quarter the hills above the residential areas, looking for human bones or a shallow grave. And he could do with a break this morning, get out of the station for a few hours. The morning had not started out well, everything he’d touched seeming as murky and vague as the fog itself. Driving slowly uphill through the thick mist, he went over this morning’s and last night’s phone calls, looking for some detail he might have missed.

He had come in just before eight, parking in his reserved slot in the lot behind the station. He was pouring his first cup of coffee when his phone buzzed. The caller was a woman; she wouldn’t give her name. She told him that Elaine Garver had lied about the Goya etching, said there was no etching. He couldn’t dismiss the call; the woman gave him a detailed list of stolen items, information that only the Garvers or the burglar herself could know-or one of his own people, and that wasn’t likely. If he prided himself on anything, it was on the quality and honesty of his officers, in a world where that wasn’t always the case. Nothing made him as deeply angry as hearing some report about a bad cop, about someone’s inner departmental decay.

When the anonymous caller hung up, too quickly to trace, Wilma Getz was on another line. She wanted to come in with the little Thurwell girl, see him for a few minutes. She said just enough to make him uneasy, make him think the problem might be tied in with Susan Dorriss’s phone call late last night.

He would never peg Susan Dorriss as one to pass on wild stories, any more than he would think of Wilma that way. Yet the story Susan gave him was the same wild tale he’d heard weeks ago from that Casa Capri patient, little Mrs. Mae Rose.

Last night, Susan had called from her daughter’s car phone, sitting in the parking lot of Casa Capri. Said she didn’t want to use a phone inside Casa Capri. She had called her daughter at about ten, and Bonnie came on down and wheeled her out to the car.

Susan had called Bonnie just after Mae Rose came to her with the note she had supposedly found inside an old doll, a note from the woman Mae thought was missing, from Jane Hubble. Susan said the note and the doll smelled musty from being closed up in a locked closet. His immediate reaction was, what was he supposed to do about a note some old lady found inside a doll? And maybe he’d been short with Susan. When she read the note to him, his temper flared. He’d wanted to say, maybe it was something in the water up at Casa Capri that made everyone nuts, that he’d rather deal with any kind of straightforward crime than some groundless mystery that had just enough truth toturn him edgy. And when Susan told him about seeing Teddy Prior get out of his wheelchair and walk, that set him back. Everyone knew Teddy was incurably crippled-everyone thought they knew that.

And then this morning when Wilma brought the kid in, little Dillon Thurwell, to tell him about the doll, neither Wilma nor the kid knew that Susan had called him with the same story. Neither Wilma nor the kid knew about the note; Mae Rose had found that hours after the two of them left Casa Capri yesterday afternoon, and Mae Rose had taken the note to Susan.

He’d never known Wilma Getz to go off on a tangent. She’d worked her whole life in corrections and wasn’t the kind to buy into some nut story. Unless Wilma herself was getting senile. On the phone, she’d said, “I guess it’s all nonsense, Max. I know it sounds crazy-but you know that little niggling feeling? That ring of truth that’s so hard to shake?”

“Go on.”

“I saw Dillon take the doll from the closet, I could see clearly across the patio, from where I stood in the glass doors of the social room. I watched her slip inside, remove the lap desk, open it, and take out the doll. She shoved the desk back, hid the doll in her shirt, and made a dash out thedoor just as it started to rain. The cats?” She’d paused, stopped talking.

“The cats? You started to say, what?”

“Oh, that the cats were out in the rain, too. You know, the Pet-a-Pet cats.”

“So?”

“I don’t know-so they got wet. What time can I come in?”

“Come on in,” he had said, sighing. “I can give you a few minutes.” He had hung up, poured another cup of coffee, and gotten some paperwork done. Not twenty minutes later, there was Wilma coming into the station with the kid. Threading their way back through the crowded squad room, Wilma herded the kid along, her hand on the little girl’s shoulder, the child looking fascinated by all the uniforms, and looking scared.

He’d poured coffee for Wilma and got the kid a Coke. Dillon was real silent for a while, but when she saw the picture of Buck on his desk she brightened right up. He told her about Buck, and they’d talked about horses. She started talking about Jane Hubble’s horse, and the next thing she launched right in, telling him that Jane was missing, that she’d tried three times to see Jane and every time had been run off from Casa Capri. Told him how yesterday afternoon she’d found Jane’s lap desk with the doll inside.

He didn’t point out to Dillon that she had no business in that closet and that she was taking things that weren’t hers. The kid knew that. She described the closet shelves as stuffed full of small boxes of folded clothes and purses and shoes, items which, she thought, must belong to several people. Maybe, she said, to the six people Mae Rose said were missing.

The irritating thing was, Dillon seemed like a sensible kid. He knew her folks; they were a decent family, no problems that he knew of. Helen Thurwell was one of the most reliable Realtors in the area. And Bob, for a literature professor, was all right-he seemed a no-nonsense sort. Dillon Thurwell did not seem the type to go off on wild fancies, any more than Wilma did.

And what disturbed him was, the kid’s story dovetailed exactly with Susan Dorriss’s phone call.

That made him smile in spite of himself, and made him know he’d better pay attention-better to be wrong than plain bullheaded, and miss a bet. He’d hate like hell to be outflanked by a team of juvenile and geriatric amateur sleuths.

Driving slowly up the hills through the thick fog, he topped out suddenly above the white vapor blanket into sunshine. The hills, above that dense layer, shone bright, the sky above him clear and blue. Maybe he was getting old and soft-headed, and he’d sure take a ribbing from the department if he followed up on this doll business, but it wasn’t something he wanted to ignore.

Turning south, he soon swung into his own narrow drive and headed back between the pastures. Across the pasture he saw Buck lift his head, looking toward the car. The gelding stood a minute, ears sharp forward, then headed at a trot for the barn, knowing damn well if Harper was home in the middle of the day that they’d take a ride. Buck loved company, and he was rotten spoiled.

Harper parked by the little two-stall barn behind the house, wondering idly how Dillon Thurwell would get along with Buck, or maybe with one of the neighbor’s horses.

No one knew better than he that kids could be skilled liars, that Dillon could be jiving him. The kid could have gone along with Mae Rose’s fantasy just for the excitement, could have made up more details and embroidered on the story just for fun, could have put that note in the doll herself, sewn it up, hidden it in the cupboard-ragged stitches like a child’s stitches.

He’d hate like hell to get scammed by a twelve-year-old con artist.

But he didn’t think Dillon had done that.

His gut feeling, like Wilma’s, was that the kid, though her imagination might have colored what she saw and was told, did not mean deliberately to mislead them.

In the house he changed into Levi’s and boots and a soft shirt, and clipped his radio to his belt. Stepping out to the little barn again, he brushed Buck down, saddled him, and swung on. Buck ducked his chin playfully as they headed over the hills toward the Prior place.

Within half an hour he was crossing the hill above the old hacienda, looking down into the old, oak-shaded cemetery. The estate lay just above the fog, and as he studied the wooded cemetery and the ancient headstones, a mower started up near the stables. Buck snorted at the noise and wanted to shy. He watched the groundskeeper swing aboard the machine, and as he started to mow around the stable Buck bowed his neck and blew softly; but he was no longer looking at the mower, he was staring toward the old graves.

Scanning the grove, Harper saw a quick movement low to the ground as something small fled away into the shadows. Maybe a big bird had come down after some creature, maybe a crow. Or maybe it had been a rabbit or a squirrel, frightened by something. The breeze shifted, rustling the oak leaves; and as the light changed within the woods, he saw it again. Two cats streaking away.

He guessed if there were cats around, still alive, there wasn’t any poison nearby. Or maybe cats were smarter than dogs about that stuff. He rode on down, pulling Buck up at the edge of the woods. And he saw the cats again, watched them disappear into the bushes near the main house. That gray cat looked like Clyde Damen’s tomcat, but it wouldn’t be wayup here.

He was getting a fixation about that cat. Ever since that hot-car bust up at Beckwhite’s last summer, when Damen’s cat got mixed up in the action and almost got itself shot, ever since then he thought he saw the cat everywhere.

But he did see it more than he liked. Every poker night there it was on the table, watching him play his hand. Who, but Damen, would let a cat sit on the table. It gave him the creeps the way the cat watched him bet, those big yellow eyes looking almost like it understood what he was doing. He could swear that last night, every time he raked in a pot, the cat almost grinned at him.

Harper sighed. He was losing his perspective here.

Getting as dotty as the old folks at Casa Capri.

Yet no amount of chiding himself changed the fact that there was something strange about Damen’s cat, something that stirred in him a jab of fear, or wonder, or some damned thing. He sensed about the cat something beyond the facts by which he lived, something beyond his reach, some element he should pay attention to, and would prefer not to consider.

28 [????????: pic_28.jpg]

Earlier, on a hill above the Prior estate, the two cats crouched, looking down at the old hacienda, enjoying the warm sunshine after climbing up through fog so thick they thought they were under the sea. Licking hard at their damp fur, energetically they fluffed their coats, licked beads of fog from their whiskers and paws. Directly below, the old hacienda and stable stood faded and dusty-looking, their tile roofs bleached to the color of pale earth, their adobe walls lumpy with the shaping of patient hands long since gone to dust.

Beyond the old buildings, the main house rose sharply defined, its tile roof gleaming bright red, its precision-built walls smooth and white, and its gardens and lawns neatly manicured. The hilltop estate at this moment was an island, the sea of fog lapping at its gardens and curved drive. Far away across the top of the fog, the crowns of other hills emerged: other islands, an archipelago. And the real sea, the Pacific, and the village beside it were gone, drowned in the heavy mists.

Above the estate, on the sun-drenched hill, the warm grass buzzed with busy insects, ticking away beneath the cats’ paws. And as Joe and Dulcie rested, washing their ears and faces, from below came the soft cadence of Spanish music, electronically broadcast songs from somewhere within the hacienda, music plucked out of the air in a manner never dreamed possible when this hacienda was built, when the only music available came from live musicians blowing and jigging and strumming.

Three cars were parked before the old homeplace, all late-model American makes. Evidently the house staff, like the employees of Casa Capri, were well treated.

“If Adelina hires so many Spanish-speaking people,” Dulcie said, “she must speak Spanish herself. How could she control someone if she didn’t know what they were saying?”

Joe smiled.“Or if no one knew she spoke Spanish, she’d be ahead of them all. Could really keep them in line.” He batted at a grasshopper, knocked it off its grass stem, but released it. “Whatever’s going on at Casa Capri, those nurses with no English might not have a clue.”

He studied the cemetery below them, off to their right, the dark, misshapen headstones set among thick old oaks. They could see the police barrier of yellow ribbon at the far side, strung around a rectangle of raw earth. Dolores Fernandez’s open grave. “What makes Harper think no one will bother the grave just because he tied a ribbon around it?”

“Maybe there’s a guard.”

“Do you see a guard?”

She shrugged, a brief twitch of her dark tabby shoulder.“Maybe the gardener or handyman?” They could see no one on the grounds, though they could hear someone tinkering, an occasional metallic click above the radio music, coming from the direction of the old stable. Dulcie yawned, stretched, and they trotted on down into the shadowed woods of the cemetery.

The grass beneath their paws was clipped short and smooth, was as well kept as any park. It had been cleared of leaves, and was trimmed neatly around the thick oak trunks and around the old headstones. Some of the graves had sunk, forming shallow depressions. The old granite markers were deeply worn by water and wind, their crumbling edges blackened with dirt, their ornately written Spanish epitaphs dark with soil, some nearly illegible. Several headstones featured the angel of death, with hands beckoning and wings outspread. Other grave markers were carved with hollow-eyed, bony skulls. They found one happy-looking angel, a cherub-faced child with a broken nose. Farther on, two blackened angels joined hands, dirty-faced and naughty. They did not know the meaning of the epitaphs, butmuereappeared twice, and Dulcie thought it meant death.

Se muere como se vivi.

No se puedo creer eso ella es muerto.

Walking softly, they approached the cordoned-off grave and trotted under the barrier of yellow police tape.

The body had been removed; only a hole remained, neatly excavated. The investigating team had not taken only bone samples, as the newspaper said.

Circling the raw earth mound, they sniffed at the shovel marks and at an occasional shoe print where the police and the forensics examiner had been working. Outside the ribbon barrier, clods of raw earth lay scattered across the grass.

They did not know precisely what they were looking for-but they were looking for anything strange, any small detail the police might have missed, but that a cat would see or smell. The grave did not smell of death; it smelled of moldering earth.

There were marks in the earth where pieces of the casket had lain, and they could see the bristle marks of a small brush, as if the excavation had been as carefully attended as an archaeological dig.

“We could dig deeper,” Dulcie ventured.

“And find what? They have the bones. And don’t you think they dug deeper beneath the body?” He prowled beyond the grave, nosing among tree roots, sniffing at the grass.

Once, they thought they caught Teddy’s scent, but they couldn’t be sure. They could find no wheel marks from Teddy’s rolling chair. Quartering the cemetery, trotting over the smooth turf and protruding roots that bisected the lawn like huge arteries, they moved in a careful grid, working back and forth. Twice more they caught Teddy’s scent. But it was old, faded, and mixed with the sharp perfume of grass and leaves and earth.

But then, suddenly, a powerful smell stopped them. The stink made Joe bare his teeth in a grimace of disgust, made Dulcie back away.

The smell of death, of rotting flesh.

Approaching a heap of dry oak leaves, where the smell came strongest, Dulcie froze.

“Cyanide. I smell cyanide, too.” The smell made her gag and grimace. The leaves were piled against a tree, as if they had been missed by the lawn-care equipment, by the vacuum or blower or mulching mower. It was the only pile of leaves in the neatly manicured cemetery. Dulcie lifted a reluctantpaw, lightly pulled away leaves, hating the cyanide smell. She had, earlier this year, been shocked to find the same deadly chemical lacing her freshly served salmon.

Now she raked angrily at the tangle, pawing it away.

Revealing, half-hidden beneath the pile of leaves, a lump of dark, raw meat.

She thought at first it was a lump of human flesh, then she saw that it was hamburger, half-rotted, a disgusting mound several days old. The combined stink of rotting meat and the almondlike smell of the cyanide forced bile into her mouth. She turned away quickly, gagged, and threw up on the grass.

Joe regarded the bait with disgust.“We can’t leave that mess for a dog to find.” A cat, of course, would have better sense than to go near it; no cat likes rotten meat, no cat would roll in rotten meat the way a dog does.

Holding their breath, they dug a hole deep into the sandy loam, and, by pushing a heap of leaves against the meat, they managed to paw it in. They had covered the hole with earth and leaves and had moved away where the air was fresher, were scuffing their paws in the grass to clean them, when Dulcie stared at the turf between her paws.

“There’s a little crack here. Look at this. A little thin crack in the earth, under the grass.”

The line was as straight as a ruler. She pressed her nose against it.“And the grass blades go in a different direction.”

When they followed the line, they found another, crossing it. Pacing, they made out an even grid of crossing lines. Someone had laid sod here, piecing it so cleverly that one would never see the cracks unless one’s nose was practically against them. From a human’s view, they thought, the turf would seem undisturbed. Fascinated, Dulcie skinned up a tree for a look from a person’s height.

Yes, from six feet up the grass stretched away smooth as velvet, a clean, unbroken turf.“No one would know. They could?” She paused, watching the hills above. “There’s a rider coming. Do the Priors keep horses?”

“Harper said they don’t. Remember, he sounded disgusted that Adelina would waste such a nice barn.” Joe grinned. “He was really annoyed that she didn’t have the place full of horses.”

Horse and rider were too far away to be seen clearly, and on the crest of the hill they stopped; the rider sat his horse, looking down toward the cemetery.

“Can he see us?”

“I doubt it. And what difference?”

She studied the rider’s tall, slim form, his easy seat, the tilt of his head. “I think that’s Harper. Let’s get out of here.” She leaped out of the tree, and they moved away, going deeper among the shadowed headstones. They had just settled down where they knew they wouldn’t be seen, when the roar of a motor started up, coming from the stable and heading in their direction.

Rearing up, they could see a big riding mower, the dark-haired driver wheeling it directly toward the graveyard. Irritated, they moved out of his path, into shadows between the trunks of six big oaks.

But the mower turned, making straight for them again, toward the exact spot where they crouched. Unnerved, they ran, quitting the grove, racing flat out toward the main house.

Azalea bushes bordered the back patio. They crouched beneath that shelter, at the edge of the wide brick terrace.“Nice,” Dulcie said, looking out. The sunny expanse was furnished with heavy wrought-iron chairs cast in the patterns of flowers and twining leaves and fitted with soft-looking, flowered pillows. Pots of red geraniums set off this outdoor sitting area, and at its edge, wide glass doors opened into the living room and the dining room, where they could see polished floors, and rich, dark furniture.

From within the house they could hear the roar of a vacuum cleaner, accompanied by the same Spanish radio station that played behind them in the old hacienda, the brassy cadences of a metallic horn and guitar.

The French doors to the sunken living room stood open. They glanced at each other and grinned. There was no need to break and enter-they could waltz right on in. If cats could do a high five-and did not find such antics beneath their dignity-they would have been slapping paws.

In fact, they could enter the house almost anywhere; nearly every window stood open, welcoming the sunny morning. Along the second floor, six sets of French doors stood ajar, giving onto a row of private balconies. And far to their left, facing the patio, the kitchen door was wide-open. Beyond the corner of the house, they could see two cars parked, the door of one open, as if someone were unloading groceries or perhaps ready to leave.

Behind them, the mowing machine grew louder; it had not entered the grove after all, it had gone along the edge, then turned back. Roaring past the terrace, its spinning blade cut swiftly across the short lawn just above them.

They were about to make a dash into the living room when the maid with the vacuum cleaner entered-stepping on stage right on cue, Dulcie thought, annoyed. Her machine roared across the wood floor, then was muffled by the thick oriental carpet.

They headed for the kitchen. Moving swiftly beneath the azalea border, around the edge of the patio, they pressed against the wall of the house beside the kitchen door, then slipped along to peer in.

The kitchen shone bright with sunlight, light poured across the rosy tile floor and across the tiled cooking island. The aroma of something meaty, with cilantro and garlic, forced a moment of involuntarily whisker licking.

A maid stood at the sink washing tomatoes, surrounded by hanging pots of herbs and flowers; her view through the window was of the wide blue sky and of the cars parked beside the kitchen. Dulcie sat very still, admiring the bright room. Joe never ceased to wonder at her love of anything beautiful; as if her little cat spirit had, in some life past, been a reveler among the arts. There was, within his lady, far more knowledge and spirit than any ordinary cat could ever contain.

“Move it,” she said, nudging him.

The maid had turned her back to them. They sped past her and through the kitchen into the dining room. They paused within the shadows beneath a huge, ornately carved, black-lacquered banquet table, a monster of Spanish elegance.

Looking back toward the sunny kitchen to see if they were observed, they watched the maid dancing and jiggling to the brassy trumpet. And they saw, as well, trailing across the kitchen’s clay tiles, two lines of fresh, damp pawprints.

“They’ll dry,” Dulcie breathed hopefully. But the prints would leave little dirty paw marks; they both knew that too well. The fact had been pointed out to them more than once, by their respective housemates.

Crouching among the forest of carved table legs, Dulcie nosed appreciatively at the Persian carpet, its colors as vibrant as an oil painting. She rolled over, luxuriating in its dense, soft weave. Joe was watching her, amused, when the vacuum cleaner headed their way. Between the mower outside and the vacuum cleaner within, the world seemed inclined toward a science-fiction horror scene of sucking and slicing adversaries. As the machine approached they fled again, racing for the foyer, where they could see the front stairs.

A gold-framed mirror hung beside the carved front door, reflecting the curving stairway; the stairs’ soft carpet was woven in patterns as bright and intricate as a bird’s feathers. Quickly they raced up, listening for any sound from above. Who knew how many people Adelina Prior employed to keep her house?

Upstairs they followed the central hall, followed a hint of Adelina’s perfume. Where the first door stood open, Adelina’s scent was strong. They slipped inside, tensed to leap away. The room was huge, done all in white. They crossed the thick white carpet and slid beneath a chair, half-expecting to be yelled at, to have to run again, this time for their lives.

29 [????????: pic_29.jpg]

Crouching beneath the chair in Adelina’s private chambers, they could hear no sound. Beyond the dazzling white parlor, they could see into her bedroom and mirrored dressing room; the walls of mirrors reflected all three rooms, and reflected the huge, luxurious bath-as if the layout had been planned, not only for ample reflection of Adelina’s perfectly groomed image, but to afford complete and instant surveillance of her private quarters.

They could see that the suite was empty, that they were alone. They could hear faintly, from downstairs, the hum of the vacuum cleaner.

The deeply padded white leather couch and chairs looked as soft as feather beds. The rooms smelled of the expensive leather and of Adelina’s subtle, smoky perfume, the scents combining into the aroma of wealth, tastefully and egocentrically displayed. But it was the vast expanse of thick, snowy carpet that fascinated Dulcie. She pawed at it and rolled on it, her purrs rising to little singing crescendos. “This is better than rolling on cashmere. Why didn’t Wilma put in carpet like this when she redecorated?”

“Because this stuff would cost her life savings; I’d bet several hundred, bucks a yard.” He gave her an arch look. “Adelina lives pretty high, considering those old folks at Casa Capri make do with Salvation Army castoffs for their sitting room.”

The white carpet stretched away to pure white walls unsullied by any ornament or artwork, and to a white marble fireplace so clean that surely no smallest stick of wood had ever burned there. That pristine edifice was flanked by tall French doors standing open to the balcony, where three large pots of bird-of-paradise stood guard. Adelina’s view would be down over the front drive to the dropping hills and the village and the sea beyond.

The large, carved desk was the only piece of dark furniture. Dull and nearly black with age, it stood alone on one long white wall, its four drawers fitted with black, cast-iron handles. As they approached this impressive vault they heard, from the garden below, the mower rounding the corner, making its way toward the front lawn. Its vibrating rumble, louder than the vacuum cleaner, would mask any sound of a maid approaching, or of Adelina herself entering her chambers.

Together they fought open the bottom drawer and pawed through desk supplies: unused checkbooks, notepads, labels, pens, all neatly arranged, nothing that seemed of great interest. The next drawer up contained packets of canceled checks tied with red string, a stack of used check registers, bundles of paid bills. Dulcie wanted to take the checks, but the packets were too bulky. At the bottom of the drawer, beneath these neatly tied records, lay a small black notebook. Joe took it in his teeth, lifted it out, and on the carpet they pawed it open.

Each page was marked with a Spanish name accompanied by a short personal history that included arrest records; convictions, mostly for such offenses as failure to file income tax, failure to report as a noncitizen, failure to file social security papers, or, in some cases, passing NSF checks. All the names appeared to be female, but who could be sure, unless one knew Spanish.

Joe’s yellow eyes gleamed, he pawed at the pages, smiling. “Personal dossiers.”

“Blackmail material.”

“I’d bet on it.”

The next drawer held stationery and printed envelopes, but tucked beneath the thick creamy paper they found a list of numbers, each with a date entered beside it, and some with two dates. These extended over a fifteen-year period. The list made no sense-yet. They slipped it into the notebook and slid this beneath the desk, far to the back.

Before they left the sitting room, Dulcie licked away cat hairs from the white rug, where they clung prominent as a road sign.

Moving into Adelina’s bedroom, they avoided the white velvet bedspread, which cascaded onto the carpet; probably it would pluck hairs from them like sticky paper. The bed and dresser were of black wood, light-scaled, and slender, maybe of Danish design. They rifled the dresser drawers but found no papers or photographs among the expensive silk lingerie; the silk and handmade lace were more than Dulcie could resist. She rubbed her face against the neatly folded garments, rolled on them, slid her nose beneath a satin teddy.

“Come on, Dulcie, leave the undies in the drawer. You go trotting out of here dragging that black lace, and we’re dog meat.”

She smiled sweetly.

“And don’t curl up in there; you’re leaving cat hairs.”

Reluctantly she leaped out.“How often do I get to look at lingerie from Saks or Lord& Taylor? Don’t be so grouchy.” She cut him a green-eyed smile and licked up a few cat hairs that she had left on the lace.

In Adelina’s mirrored dressing room they were surrounded by roaming cat reflections; the sudden feline entourage, the crowd of mimicking cats unnerved them both. Soon their paws felt bruised from fighting open drawers, and their efforts netted nothing more than a half hour survey of fashion that numbed Joe’s brain and caused Dulcie to speak in little hushed mewls. Adelina’s designer outfits offered a degree of luxury that left the little cat giddy and light-headed.

Outside the bedroom, below the open glass doors, the mower chugged back and forth, guttural and loud, the air perfumed with the clean scent of cut grass. Leaving the suite, they listened at the hall door, then slipped out, tensed to run.

The hall was empty; and the next door opened on a room so plain it must belong to Adelina’s maid.

The tan bedspread was of the variety seen in the boy’s rooms section of an old Sears catalog, and the desk and two chests could have come from the same page. The room was strewn with skirts and sweaters dropped and tossed across the floor and across every available surface. Maybe the occupant had made many costume changes, this morning, before settling on an outfit for the day. Or maybe she liked to have everything handy, within quick reach, not stuck away in the closet. The skirts were long and gathered, some in flowered patterns, some plain. The sweaters were baggy, and snagged.

Dulcie said“Renet. This is Renet’s room.”

“That figures. It looks like Renet. What it is about that woman, she’s such a nothing.”

Dulcie moved toward an inner door. The room smelled faintly of Renet, and of some sharp chemical, a scent pungent and sneeze-making.“It smells like those photographs. The ones Renet gave Adelina.”

“Photographer’s chemicals?” Joe said. “Maybe she has a darkroom.”

“Why would she go to the trouble of a darkroom, when she can take her film to the drugstore?” Pressing her nose to the crack, she sneezed. “Yes, it comes from here.” She switched her tail, and leaped, twisting the doorknob and kicking at the door.

“Maybe she’s a professional photographer,” Joe said. “They don’t use the drugstore. To a professional, that’s like taking your Rolls Royce to a Ford mechanic.”

“How do you know so much?”

“Clyde used to date a photographer.”

Dulcie crossed her eyes.“Is there any kind of woman he hasn’t dated?” She leaped again, kicking harder, but the door didn’t budge. And there was no little knob to turn the dead bolt Only a key would open it. She dropped down, ears flat, tail switching.

The dresser drawers were no more enlightening, yielding nothing more exciting than Renet’s white cotton underwear and flannel nighties and more baggy sweaters. Besides the closet, which was nearly empty, Renet’s clothes being kept handily on the floor, there was a built-in wall cupboard with drawers beneath.

The drawers were locked, but the cupboard itself, when they pawed the doors open, revealed shelves filled with assorted small cardboard boxes, a few children’s toys, some cheap china knickknacks, and several cameras. Crammed among the clutter was a doll; they could see just a wisp of blond hair and a flick of white lace. Dulcie reared up, looking. “Is that the doll Mae Rose gave to Mary Nell Hook?”

“Why would Renet take the doll away from Mary Nell? The old woman seemed really happy to have it. Why would Renet want? Well hell, she is a mean-hearted broad.”

Dulcie crouched to leap up onto the shelf, tail lashing for balance, but she dropped back again as, from the hall, the sound of the vacuum cleaner approached, sucking and roaring, its bellow suddenly louder as it slid from the hall runner onto the bare hardwood, heading for Renet’s door. They froze, staring, then streaked away through the open French doors to Renet’s balcony.

Crouching behind a clay pot planted with ferns, they watched the machine, guzzling and seeking, come roaring into the room; and they shivered.

They were not inexperienced kittens to cower at a vacuum cleaner, but that kind of machine stirred a deep, primal fear, a gut terror about which neither Joe nor Dulcie could be reasonable.

Besides, any machine that could suck up crew sox and sweater sleeves was to be respected.

The maid guided the blue upright around the discarded clothes, moving nothing, circling each castoff item, scowling as if this business of a messy room might be some private vendetta between herself and Renet. She’d be damned if she’d move one item. She was a middle-sized, middle-aged, dumpy, and unremarkable woman, her black uniform and ruffled little cap reminiscent of an English comedy on TV. A few strands of gray hair protruded from beneath the edge of the frilly cap. Moving toward the cupboard, shepaused as if to close its two doors, but instead she lifted out the doll, seemed very familiar with it, as if perhaps she had done this before.

Her back was to them, but they glimpsed the movement of the doll’s pale hair and could see a flash of white and a long slim leg. The maid’s arm moved as if she were stroking it or smoothing its hair. Clutching the doll, she seemed about to carry it away with her, but then she sighed and returned it to the cupboard, tucking it back among the boxes.

Shutting the cupboard doors, she moved on into the adjoining bath-they could hear the water running as she scrubbed the sink and tub-and began to sing. Her words were in Spanish, the melody sad and slow and enhanced by the heavy echoes of the tiled walls.

Even a cat’s singing resounds better in the bathroom; the reverberations from the surrounding hard surfaces tending to make one’s voice seem full-bodied and professional. They remained on the balcony listening, a captive audience, until she returned at last, drying her hands on a paper towel. Before she left Renet’s room, she tried the inner, locked door.

She twisted the knob and pushed, and when the door wouldn’t open, she pressed her ear against the panel. But at last she turned away, with a closed, dissatisfied expression.

Pausing again at the cupboard, she reached as if to open it, then seemed to change her mind, headed for the hall.

“Why was she so interested in the door, interested in the next room?” Dulcie said softly.

Joe didn’t answer; he stood rigid, looking intently in, at the locked door.

“Maybe,” Dulcie began?

But he was gone; the balcony beside her was empty. She whirled around, caught a flash of gray as he vanished over the rail into empty space.

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Dulcie crouched on the balcony, staring across empty space where Joe had disappeared. He was not on the next railing eight feet away, and when she pushed out between the wrought-iron bars to look down far below to the concrete, the curved drive stretched away unbroken. Stories shivered through her, of cats who had fallen, sometimes to their deaths-it was another human myth that cats invariably landed on their feet.

But no pitiful accident victim lay below her, no gray tomcat flattened and unmoving or trying to right himself.

Looking again to the far terrace, she hopped up onto the balcony rail and gathered herself, crouching, and steeled herself, wondering if she could make that eight-foot span.

If she’d had a good purchase, a solid platform, or if her target was somewhat below her, no problem. But the tiny, slick metal rod beneath her paws felt like a tightrope, and the other rail was no wider.

She could see that the glass doors stood open, and she caught a scent of the harsh chemicals. Surely Joe had gone in there, but why couldn’t he have waited for her. Talk about impulsive-he was always onhercase for being impetuous.

She knew she was procrastinating, afraid of a simple eight-foot hop.

No good thinking, just do it. Why would she fall? She crouched tighter, a coiled spring, and took off with a hard thrust-was in midair when Joe appeared from out the glass doors, springing to the rail. She nearly plowed into him, nearly fell; landed beside him hissing. The chemical smell hit her so hard she doubled over, choking and sneezing. She glared at him angrily.

“Why didn’t you wait for me? I thought?”

He gave her a sideways smile and licked her ear.“You okay?”

“I guess.”

He trotted on inside, couldn’t care less that she was mad enough to claw him. “Come on, Dulcie, this is too good to miss.”

She followed, swallowing back her anger.

Beyond the glass doors, shutters had been partially closed, dimming the room within. The chemical stench came so strong she could taste it, like swallowing some disgusting prescription medicine.

The room seemed to be half dressing room, and half some kind of workroom. A stainless-steel worktable occupied the center of the large space, and around it the walls were crowded with cabinets and built-in drawers. On their left was the locked inner door to Renet’s bedroom. Across the room to their right were two doors. One stood open. But the chemical smell that came from beneath the closed door was so strong one did not want to press one’s nose against that crack; Joe sniffed as close to the space as he could manage.

“It’s a darkroom. I’d bet on it.”

Occupying most of one wall was a large dressing table, an elaborate affair with a hinged, three-way mirror, its glass top cluttered with bottles and jars and, at one end, a stack of round, old-fashioned hatboxes. Dulcie paused, torn between the dressing table and the two doors. The room seemed a wealth of possibilities, a treasure trove perhaps bristling with clues hidden inside the cupboards or on the dressing table.

Leaping up, she wandered among the bottles and crowded jars, stepping carefully, sniffing at the lids, trying to identify the contents. Makeup, certainly, but some smells were very strange. Stepping over an array of lipsticks and little boxes of eye makeup, over eyebrow pencils, cotton swabs, and a pair of tweezers, she paused to look into the three-way mirror, enchanted by her multiple reflections. To see herself from all angles at once, see herself from the back as if looking at another cat, was like an out-of-body experience.

Forgetting Joe, preening shamefully, she heard, from the drive below, from somewhere beyond the kitchen, a car start up and pull away, heard it move around the front of the house and head off up the long drive.

A miniature chest of drawers stood beside the hatboxes, a little, perfect piece of furniture no taller than her shoulder. She nosed at it, and with a careful claw she pulled out one of the drawers-and she raised her paw to strike, her eyes blazing.

But these were not mice. In the small drawer, the furry bodies looked, in fact, more like dead caterpillars lying fuzzy and still.

Some were gray, some brown, some nearly white. They did not smell like anything that had ever lived. Puzzled by the lifeless fuzzy creatures, she shoved the drawer closed and opened the next.

She froze, staring.

Eyeballs. The drawer contained human eyes.

Pairs of eyes lay jumbled together, blue eyes, green, light brown, hazel. Each pair had been placed inside a tiny transparent box. Some were faded, their color drained away at the outer rim to a ring of foggy white. Her heart raced.

These were not disembodied human eyeballs.

She sat down and coolly regarded the little pairs of contact lenses.

“What’s with you?” Joe said from the floor below. Rearing up below the dressing table, he had pawed open its larger drawers. She looked down into a drawer full of neatly folded nighties, soft and beautifully made, with high, ruffled necklines. Tucked into the corner of the drawer were severalpairs of neatly folded gloves, white cotton gloves.

They could no longer hear the vacuum cleaner; for some time the upstairs rooms had been silent. Joe pushed the drawer closed and leaped up beside her, to the dresser. Tramping heavy-pawed among the delicate bottles, he posed before the mirror, twitching a whisker, giving her a toothy grin. Panning and turning, he glanced over his shoulder, studying his stub tail and his tomcat equipment. She hadn’t known he was such a ham.

She had known cats who were afraid of mirrors. And, of course, a kitten’s first experience with its own reflection puzzled and frightened it. She knew a cat once who, when he was laughed at for growling at his mirror image, leaped to the lap of his tormentor and slapped her face.

Leaving Joe leering and clowning, she left the dressing table and approached the adjoining room, which she could see through the open door. It was a huge space, and bare, nearly empty. Bare floor, bare walls, hardly any furniture. A room so hollow that her startled mewl bounced back at her in a sharp echo.

At first glance, the vast space looked like the set for a low-budget science-fiction film. Five tall metal tripods stood about like spindly space aliens. The only other furniture was a hospital bed, with its nightstand, alone in the far corner.

The bed was neatly made up with a white blanket, the corners tucked under with rigid precision. Over the metal headboard hung a gray electrical cord fixed with a squeeze button so a nurse could be summoned. There was a clip-on light, too, like the ones used at Casa Capri, and a stand for an IV bottle.

Joe, having abandoned his multiple reflections, trotted in and pressed against her, his warmth and solidity suddenly very comforting. She did not like this room.

He scowled at the bed, his ears back.“Does Renet keep some patient here? One of the missing women?”

She shivered; they stood looking at the bed as if a patient might suddenly materialize beneath the smooth covers, a pale, thin figure softly moaning. Standing on their hind legs, they sniffed the bed warily. They could smell nothing but laundry soap.

Each of Renet’s three rooms-bedroom, the peculiar dressing room, and this hollow chamber-had its own detached balcony. Perhaps at one time these had all been separate bedrooms, had been joined together for Renet’s convenience. Another solid door led from this room, the smells beneath it were of fresh air and newly cut grass. They sniffed deeply.

“Must be an outside stairway,” Joe said. “I think we’re above the kitchen.” He leaped for the knob and swung. It turned, but the door was locked with a dead bolt. They sniffed beneath it again, a good lungful of fresh air, then returned to the dressing room.

Approaching the door that closed away the sharp chemicals, again Joe leaped, clamping his paws on the knob. Swinging and pushing, he managed to force the door open.

The room was small and windowless, very dark. As their eyes adjusted, they could see another metal table; it occupied most of the space. Along the back wall stretched a counter with drawers below and shelves above. Four red lightbulbs hung over it, and Dulcie could just make out the switch, beside the door.

Three leaps, and the red lights shone like canned fire. The blaze turned her paws pink, stained Joe’s white face and white markings to the color of thin blood. The shelves held gallon jugs reeking of developer, their labels clearly visible. Leaping up to the stainless-steel sink, the cats balanced on the edge.

“That’s the printer, there on the table,” Joe said. “And, I think, an enlarger.”

Clawing open cupboards, they found four big cameras, and when they pawed into a long, thin drawer, it contained slick photographic paper. A deeper drawer held hanging files filled with negatives in plastic envelopes, items nearly too slick for paws and claws. They managed to pull out several with their teeth. All were portraits of people, but the reversed images showed faces strange and unnatural. The strong smells in the warm enclosed space were beginning to dizzy the cats.

“So this,” Joe said, “is where Renet printed the pictures of Mary Nell Hook. If the pictures were taken here, in that hospital bed, if they’re keeping that old woman here, we’d better look for her.” He leaped to the cold metal table, stood licking his shoulder. “A darkroom, a hospitalbed, that elaborate dressing table?”

“The sod in the graveyard,” Dulcie said. “The missing finger? Like parts of a puzzle that all seem to fit, but when you try to put them together, the key piece is missing.”

She felt, not enlightened by the varied bits of information, but as if they’d lost their way.

“It takes time,” Joe said. “Like playing with a mouse. Let it run free, then catch it again. Maybe you have to play with the facts. Let them run free, catch them from another angle.”

“There’s a car pulling up the drive.”

He heard it and stiffened. They both came to attention as the car stopped beside the house, near the kitchen.

The car door slammed. Footsteps came up the back stair, keys jingling. They leaped together at the light switch as they heard the dead bolt slide back, felt a suck of wind as the door opened.

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The fog was breaking apart, blowing in tatters. Pulling Buck up, beside a stand of eucalyptus trees, Max Harper watched a black Toyota come up the Prior drive and around the house toward the kitchen. A gray-haired woman got out, probably one of the maids returning from an errand. He could hear no sound now from within the house-the radio and the vacuum cleaner were silent.

He had ridden in a circle around the Prior land along its outer perimeter, crossing the long drive down the hill, then making a second pass closer to the house, looking for any sign where the ground might be disturbed, any sign of digging, just as he had searched every foot of these hills. Though very likely forensics would identify the finger as belonging to Dolores Fernandez.

He wondered how a venerable member of the Spanish aristocracy would view the vandalism and dismemberment of her ancient, frail remains.

Maybe Senora Fernandez wouldn’t care, maybe what happened to her earthly self would mean nothing to her now-or maybe would even amuse her.

He pressed Buck in the direction of the cemetery though Buck wanted to shy, began to fuss, didn’t want to approach the shadowed grove. When Harper forced him on, the gelding tried to whirl away, snorting rollers. Buck was seldom spooky, and never without cause. He kept ducking and staring into the grove.

Buck’s nervous attention was fixed on a spot where three old thick trees stood close together, casting heavy shadows. Harper could see nothing moving there, but Buck was watching something. Max heard, behind him, the car door slam, then footsteps going up the outside stairway at the far end of the house, and in a minute he heard a door open and close. He forced Buck to the edge of the grove, where the gelding tried again to whirl away, snorting and staring like some green colt. Max squinted into the shadows between the heavy oaks, pressed Buck on, amused by their stubborn-willed contest. He seldom had a problem with Buck. But suddenly the breeze changed. Came sharper. And he knew what was wrong with the horse.

He caught the smell himself, the smell of rotting flesh.

Frowning, he let Buck spin around and move away, and at the far end of the grove, upwind from the stink, he swung out of the saddle. Undoing his rope, he made a halter of it and tied the gelding to an oak tree.

He stayed with Buck, talking to him until the gelding calmed, then left him. Walking slowly, he quartered the cemetery around the old graves, looking. Could not pinpoint the source of the putrid scent as it shifted on the wind, could see no sign of digging, but as he neared the three close-growing trees, the smell came so strong it gagged him.

The only thing that looked out of place on that smooth turf was the heap of dry leaves piled against a tree.

Poking around with a branch, he found a small portion of earth disturbed beneath the leaves and, scraping the leaves aside, digging into the dirt, his stick hit something unnaturally soft, something that wasn’t earth.

He knelt, gently brushed soil and leaves away with the tip the branch, uncovered a small lump of what looked like rotting flesh, a dark and stinking mess buried in a shallow hole. Covering his nose and mouth with his glove, he knelt to look closer.

It appeared to be hamburger, chopped meat of some kind. And he could smell, besides the rotting meat, the distinctive scent of cyanide.

He had found not a body as he’d expected, but a lump of poison bait.

And as he knelt studying the meat and the disturbed earth, he saw not only scrape marks from digging, but faint pawprints-as if perhaps some animal had been after the meat, and had been frightened away.

Except, the pawprints wereunderthe leaves, not indentations on top. These animal tracks had been made before the leaves were scraped over.

Had some animal buried the stinking mess and scraped leaves over it?

Exploring further, he found where the bait had originally lain, some two feet from where it was buried.

What kind of animal would move rotten meat and bury it? Would dig a hole, push the meat in, and scrape dirt and leaves over it?

Cats buried offal, buried their own offensive mess.

He stood looking into the gloom of the cemetery, then fished his handkerchief from his back pocket and, with the stick, scraped the cyanide-laced meat into it.

Leaving Buck tied, carrying the rotten meat, he headed for the old adobe stable, where he could hear a hose swishing and could glimpse, through the open gates to the stable’s inner courtyard, the caretaker at work, hosing off the wheels of the big riding mower. Moving quickly, Harper stepped inside the big double gates.

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As the door opened, the cats streaked from the darkroom, through Renet’s dressing room, and out onto the balcony, and crouched against the wall beneath a spindly iron chair. There were no potted ferns here to conceal them. They heard the outer door close, and as footsteps crossed the room, Dulcie peered around through the glass-and went rigid.

“That’s not Renet. That’s-oh my God. She hasn’t come here. What colossal nerve.”

“Whohasn’t?” He pressed against her, to look.

“Your cat burglar. That’s yourcat burglar.”

The frowsy old woman was dressed, today, not in her tentlike black raincoat, but in a tan model, equally voluminous. A floppy, matching rain hat was pulled down over her straggling gray hair-perhaps she found the fog just as distasteful as a pouring rain. She crossed the room as brazenly as if she owned the place. Joe watched her with blazing eyes, enraged by her nerve-yet, highly amused. He felt a sudden, wild admiration for the old woman. Talk about chutzpah.

She had walked right into the Prior household, and in the middle of the day. Walked in, with who knew how many maids and other household help on the premises, walked in here bold as brass balls on a monkey.

“And where did she get a key?” Dulcie whispered. “From one of the maids? Did she bribe one of the maids? And didn’t the yardman or anyone see her, didn’t anyone wonder?”

Entering Renet’s dressing room, the woman pulled off her raincoat and laid it carefully on the metal worktable. It was lumpy, its inner pockets loaded. Her baggy black skirt and black sweater made her look even more ancient. She stood looking around the room, then approached the dressing table.

Staring into the three-way mirror at her wrinkled old face and shaggy gray hair, she winked. Winked at herself and grinned. Seemed as pleased with her reflection as if she were young and beautiful.

Sitting down at the dressing table, making herself right at home, she removed the floppy hat, shook out her long gray hair, and eased off her shoes. She seemed unafraid that someone would burst in and find her. She undid the waistband of her skirt, rose, and pulled it off.

“What’s she doing?” Dulcie breathed.

“Maybe she’s planning to wear some of Renet’s clothes when she leaves.” As he reared up for a better look, he glanced down over the balcony and saw the horse and rider crossing the drive, headed up toward the cemetery. “There’s Harper.” And he grinned, his yellow eyes gleaming. His voice in her ear was barely audible. “Perfect timing. We’ll get Harper up here. She’s a sitting duck; Harper will nail her.”

The woman tossed her skirt onto the table, atop her coat. She removed her black sweater, and her blouse and slip, then turned back to the dressing table. Stood in her pants and bra, looking in the mirror. The cats were so amazed they couldn’t have spoken, if their lives depended on speech.

But the cat burglar did not seem distressed. The shocking contrast between her young, firm, smooth body and her ancient wrinkled face seemed not to phase her.

She looked like a young woman wearing the mask-the living mask-of a Halloween witch.

She sat down at the dressing table, lifted up her gray hair, and removed it with one smooth motion as casually as she had removed the floppy hat. Beneath the vanished wig, her own pale hair was wispy and matted. She brushed it and tried to fluff it, and sighed.

Putting the wig in one of the hatboxes, she arranged it as if the box might contain a little stand, perhaps one of those white Styrofoam heads with no face. The cats crept closer to see, moved in through the balcony door, into the room, staying behind the metal table.

Lifting a large bottle, she uncapped it, releasing a smell like nail polish remover. Pouring the clear liquid into a little dish, she soaked a cotton ball and began to scrub at her eyebrows, then rubbed the sharp-smelling liquid into her wrinkled face.

She did this several times, and then, working quickly, she peeled away her thick gray eyebrows and began to peel off her wrinkles, wadding them in handfuls, dropping the refuse in the wastebasket. Revealing young, smooth skin beneath.

Slowly Renet’s face emerged, smooth and plain. A face totally unremarkable, as quickly forgotten as bland generic cat food.

Halfway through this task she stopped her work and turned, looking nervously around the room. Behind the table, the cats froze. Did she sense someone watching?

But she did not look in their direction, her glances across the room were higher up-looking for a human spy. And as she rose and turned, the cats slipped away to the balcony again, sliding beneath the questionable shelter of the lacy iron chair, into its thin, openwork shadow.

She tried the door leading to her bedroom and seemed relieved that it was securely locked. She stepped to the darkroom and stood in the doorway, looking in, then returned to the dressing table. The cats hunched close together, watching her cup her hands over her face and lean down, removing her contact lenses.

She cleaned the contacts carefully, put them in their little plastic box, and slipped that into the small drawer of the tiny chest. Her face was red and blotched from the harsh chemical.

Now, still in her cotton pants and bra, standing at the worktable, she removed from the coat’s inner pockets a handful of glitter, flicked on the gooseneck lamp, and held to the light several gold bracelets, three gleaming chokers, four pairs of glittering earrings. She studied each, then turned away, leaving the jewelry scattered across the table.

Unlocking the door to her bedroom, she moved inside. They heard her open the cupboard, but from this vantage they couldn’t tell what she was doing. Not until they slipped in again, to the bedroom door, did they see that she was holding the doll, cuddling it.

For the first time, Dulcie could see the doll clearly. She crept close, halfway into the room, took a good look. As they slipped away again to the balcony, she whispered so close to Joe’s ear that her breath tickled.

“That’s not the doll Mae Rose gave to Renet; that was a regular child’s doll. This is something else. It’s so real, like a real person. That’s one of the stolen dolls, those valuable collector’s dolls.”

They watched Renet return to the dressing room, carrying the doll, touching its cheek with one finger. Sitting down again before the mirror, she propped the doll at the end of the dresser against the hatboxes, then began to work cream into her own chapped, red skin, using little round strokes as one might learn from a beauty magazine article on correct skin care. They were watching her with interest when, in the mirror, Renet’s eyes caught theirs.

From the glass, she stared straight at them. Her eyes locked on their eyes.

They backed away, crouching to leap to the next balcony. She ran, dived for them. Before they could jump she was between them, cutting them off from each other and from the rail. Joe streaked between her legs into the bedroom. Dulcie fled toward the darkroom, swerved, slid behind the dressing table. Renet slammed the balcony door shut and turned, began to stalk them.

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Carrying the rotten meat in his handkerchief, Harper approached the old adobe stables that Adelina had converted to a maintenance building and garages. The structure was designed for maximum cooling, its rows of stalls set well back beneath deep overhangs, and its four sides facing an inner courtyard fashioned to trap the cool night air and hold it during the heat of the day. Entry to the stable yard was through an archway wide enough for a horse and wagon, so would easily accommodate any car. One row of stalls now served as garages-their inner walls extended out to the edge of the overhang, and individual garage doors had been added-providing a roomy eight-car area to house the Prior vehicles. All of the garage doors stood open, and a push broom leaned against the wall halfway down.

The spaces nearest him were empty; one of these probably belonging to Adelina’s new Rolls, one to Renet’s blue van, and a space likely reserved for Teddy’s specially equipped van, for the times when he chose to stay here. The other vehicles showed him only a bumper, a bit of rear fender.

The courtyard was wet and slick where Carlito Vasquez was hosing down the wheels of the big riding mower. Vasquez was a middle-aged, lean little man, likable and generally responsible, who did not talk, as far as Harper knew, about his employer, about details of her estate management, or about any personal business he might be privy to.

Moving across the courtyard to where the hose hissed and splattered, carrying the package of rotten meat, Harper paused only briefly to take a better look into the open garages.

A surge of surprise hit him. And a deep excitement.

In the last stall stood a blue‘93 Honda. The plate, where dried mud had flaked away, was partially legible: California plate 3GHK?

It was days like this, when something unexpected and significant was handed to him almost like a gift, that made all the dirt he had to deal with seem worthwhile.

As he moved on toward Carlito, the groundskeeper turned off the hose at the handheld nozzle. Harper handed him the handkerchief-wrapped, stinking meat.“You put this in the garbage, Carlito. You know what this is. Show me where you keep the cyanide.”

Carlito cringed, as if he’d been hit, and pointed toward an open stall. Harper could see bags of fertilizer piled inside and, along one wall, a shelf of cans and bottles, probably garden sprays, vermin poison.

“Leave the cyanide where it is, Carlito. My men will take a look. Don’t even go in that stall until I tell you.”

Carlito nodded.

He gave the caretaker a long look, then waved him away.“Go put that meat in the garbage. Put the lid on real tight so nothing can get at it.No mas animales muerte. Comprende?”

Carlito nodded again, dropping his glance before Harper’s angry stare. And, Harper thought, the man had only done what he was paid to do.

“No matter what kind of orders Ms. Prior gives you, if I find any more poison anywhere on this property, you’re going to find yourself sleeping inla carcel. Comprende?Now vamoose, get rid of this stuff. I’ll speak to Ms. Prior.”

Carlito left, carrying Harper’s redolent handkerchief, took off across the stable yard fast for the narrow arch at the back that led behind the stalls. The estate kept its garbage cans there, secured to the wall to keep local dogs and raccoons from overturning them.

When Carlito had gone, Harper moved on over to the garages. The ceilings were low, the shadowed spaces exuding cool air. He could hardly tell where the walls of the old stable ended and the new adobe had been added on, the work matched so well. Adelina didn’t stint when it came to builders and construction work.

Scraping the remaining mud off the last three numbers, he stood grinning.

This was the one.

Feeling like a kid at Christmas, he circled the Honda, looking in through its closed windows, touching neither the glass nor the vehicle itself.

A flowered hat lay on the backseat beside a woman’s blue sweater and a pair of flat shoes. He used the tail of his shirt to open the passenger door and the glove compartment and lift out the registration.

The car was registered to a Darlene Morton of Mill Valley. This was neither the name nor the address registered in Sacramento to this particular California plate.

Turning up his radio, he spoke to the dispatcher, asking for a team to dust the Honda and collect other evidence. When he signed off, he moved out through the arch again, stood idly watching the house, considering the possibilities of who the car might belong to.

He knew of no old, gray-haired woman in the Prior household, except that maid he’d seen.

That would be a gas, one of the maids into burglaries on her day off.

He found it impossible to imagine Adelina rigging herself up as the cat burglar; Adelina wouldn’t waste her time on such foolishness. These burglaries were more like a lark, someone’s idea of a little profitable recreation, B and E for a few laughs. And he didn’t think Adelina would stand for that misbehavior from her sister, not when it might cast a shadow on her own image.

Or would she?

Unless maybe they had some kind of trade-off.

The animal poisonings were another matter, and were easy enough to explain if Adelina didn’t want dogs digging up the old, historical cemetery. She was big on historical landmarks, on civic pride; that stuff impressed other people.

As he stood watching the house he heard shouting and someone running inside on the hard floor. Renet’s voice, shouting again. And a shadow that looked like Renet ran across the living room. At the same moment a streak of darkness fled, low, inches from the floor: out the door and across the terrace, disappearing into the bushes. One of those cats had sneaked in, he thought amused, and Renet hadchased it out.

The next moment, Renet stepped out through the patio door, stood studying the terrace and bushes and the lawn beyond, then looking away toward the oak wood and graveyard.

When she turned at last, she seemed to see him for the first time. She gave him a friendly wave, and moved back inside.

Across the grove, he could see Buck standing easy now, only fussing idly at his rope, trying to get a mouthful of grass. He watched with interest the azalea bushes where the cat had disappeared. But when, after some minutes, nothing moved there, he turned away and headed back through the courtyard toward the back of old stables, where the garbage cans were kept, to make sure that Carlito had done as he’d been told-had put that poisoned meat where nothing could get at it. But, crossing the stable yard, he kept seeing the cat running from Renet, seeing that swift, low shadow.

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Dulcie crouched high among the branches of an oak tree, looking down on the old graves and watching out through the dusky leaves to the Prior house. Watching for Joe. Nervously, she listened to Renet shouting, heard Renet running through the house across the hard floors-surely she was still chasing the tomcat.

Below her, at the base of the tree, the doll sat on the grass. Dulcie had gotten the lady out, had dragged her down the stairs and across the lawn despite the wild chase Renet gave them.

Renet shouted again, and Joe burst out the patio door, streaking across the terrace. As he dived into the bushes, Renet came flying out behind him, her robe flapping half-open over her pants and bra. As she hit the terrace, Dulcie saw Max Harper standing beyond, at the stables, watching her with interest.

Renet didn’t see Harper, stood looking for Joe. Not until she headed for the bushes did she spot Harper. She stopped, waved to him, maddeningly casual, then turned away and went back into the house, her search foiled. Dulcie smiled, and watched Harper to see what he would do.

Earlier, when Renet attacked them on the balcony, driving them apart, she had fled straight for the dressing table. Leaping up, she had snatched the doll in her teeth. She was desperate to take away some evidence, somehow to alert Harper-short of shouting the whole story at him.

For a split second, as she grabbed the doll, her eyes locked with Joe’s, then they fled in opposite directions, Joe leading Renet away, racing into the empty photo studio. The minute they were gone, Dulcie dragged the doll out, down the hall, and down the stairs, jerking it along in a panic of haste, clumping down the steps, terrified she’d break the delicate lady. But she had no choice. She needed the doll-this was the only plan she could think of. As she gained the bottom stair she could hear Renet running, just above her, chasing Joe through Adelina’s room. She prayed he could keep safe.

But if Renet caught that tomcat, she’d be sorry. She’d be hamburger. Unless? unless he made a misstep, unless she threw something heavy and had good aim. She heard Renet double back, shouting, could picture Joe dodging beneath the bed, beneath the white leather chairs, pictured him leaping from one balcony to the next and back again as Renet raced from room to room in hot pursuit. If she hadn’t been so terrified for him, despite his claws and teeth-and so busy dragging the heavy doll down the stairs-she’d have found the humor in this, would have watched the charade, laughing.

Pulling the doll along through the living room, she had reached the terrace and managed to jerk the doll across into the azaleas. It seemed to grow heavier, every step. She hardly paused to catch her breath; she raced away again across the lawn, jerking the doll along and praying no one was watching. When at last she dragged it in among the tombstones, her insides felt as if they were ruptured.

She felt better when she reached the hidden squares of new turf. Working carefully, she had placed the miniature lady between two squares of sod, arranged her so she sat just on the crack, leaning over to touch the grass. The lady’s pale skin and white petticoats and blue silk dress shone brightly against the dark woods. Dulcie had smoothed the doll’s skirts with her paw and carefully pressed the doll’s little hands down into the earth, into the thin seam between the sod squares.

Then she had scorched up into the oak tree.

As she watched the terrace, Joe burst suddenly from the bushes, a gray streak flying across the lawn and into the woods, crouching behind a headstone, staring out toward the house, wild-eyed. Renet must have given him a real chase.

“Here,” she whispered, moving so he could see her.

He raced to the wood and stormed up the tree and onto her branch, his ears flat, his yellow eyes huge. He crouched beside her, panting, his sides heaving.

She licked his ear, but he shook his head irritably and backed away.

“Hot. About done for. That woman’s as full of fight as a bulldog.”

She was quiet until he had rested and caught his breath. At last he moved closer, settling against her.“You’d never think it to look at her. Three times she nearly creamed me, throwing things. She even threw a camera-damn thing could have killed me.” He scowled down at the doll sitting on the turf below them.

“Very pretty bait, Dulcie. But even if Harper finds it?”

“I can hardly wait.”

“He’ll dig up the turf, all right. He’ll find whatever’s hidden underneath. But he won’t connect the doll to Renet.”

“He’llknowit’s one of the stolen dolls. You said the Martinezes gave him a good description.”

“They did. Of course he’ll know the doll is evidence, and Harper told Clyde those dolls are worth plenty. But that doesn’t connect to Renet. And even if he did suspect her, he can’t search the house without a warrant.”

“He cangeta warrant, call the judge. He’s done that before. Judge Sanderson-”

“Harper finds a doll in the cemetery. Sanderson is going to issue a warrant on that?”

“If he dusts the doll for prints, finds Renet’s prints-”

“That takes lab time. Computer time. And even then, there might not be a record. If she’s never been arrested, then those prints from the burglarized houses will match those on the doll, but neither set will link to Renet.”

Dulcie sniffed with impatience. Tomcat logic was so pedestrian.“First he has to find the doll. Then we’ll take it from there. If he comes this way, he can’t miss it. If he doesn’t come into the grove, I’ll lead him here.”

“Fine. That’s a clever move.”

“I think-” She paused, looking past him. “He’s coming.” They watched Harper swinging toward them across the lawn. But at the same moment, two squad cars pulled down the front drive. The first black-and-white parked in front of the house. The other car moved on down the drive to the back, stopping beside Harper. The police captain stood leaning on the door. They couldn’t hear much of the conversation over the static of the radio. When the car pulled away, Harper turned back toward the house.

Dulcie wasn’t having that; she hadn’t planted the doll for nothing. Like a flash, she dropped out of the tree, fled for the tethered gelding. Puzzled, Joe watched her from the branch, then realized what she was up to. He tensed to charge down and defend her as she leaped at the gelding’s head, then raced around his hooves. Darting in, she slapped at his legs and spun away, harried him until he snorted and began to rear, jerking on his tie rope. When she jumped up at his neck, clawing him, the buckskin squealed and bucked.

Harper came running.

The horse jerked and squealed. When Dulcie saw Harper, she vanished. She was gone, behind headstones, behind trees.

Harper was totally intent on getting to the buckskin, he’d never see the doll. Joe let out a bloodcurdling yowl, a caterwaul that should stop a battalion of fast-moving cops.

Harper paused; he was not six feet from the doll. He stood looking.

Glancing away to the buckskin, seeing that the horse had begun to quiet, Harper knelt, studying the little seated lady, looking at her tiny hands tucked down into the seam between the squares of sod. His thin, lined face showed no emotion, not surprise, not incredulity. It was a cop’s face, stony and watchful.

But his fingers twitched as he carefully parted the grass, studying the line in the dark, rich soil.

He didn’t touch the doll. He moved to several positions, looking at the thin creases where sod met sod. The gelding was quiet now, was, Joe decided, a sensible horse not given to unnecessary histrionics. When the danger passed, he forgot it.

As Harper walked the excavation, following the nearly invisible lines, finding the cross seams, behind him, among the headstones, Dulcie slipped past, returning quietly, swarming up the tree without sound, not even a whisper of her claws gripping into the thick oak bark.

They crouched close together watching Harper step off the breadth and width of the excavation. When he lifted his radio from his belt, Dulcie crept out along the branch, flicking her tail with anticipation.

Harper called for two more squad cars. When he told the dispatcher to patch him through to Judge Sanderson, Dulcie grew so excited, waiting for the judge, shifting from paw to paw, that she nearly lost her grip on the branch. Joe nosed at her, pressing her back against the trunk to a more secure perch, glaring at her until she settled down.

By the time the two police units arrived, Harper had bagged the doll for evidence, had posted a guard beside the two-by-six sod-covered excavation, and had stationed another guard at the stables. The cats burned to know what was there. Harper had not mentioned, to the judge, anything about the stables, had told Judge Sanderson only that he needed to excavate further in the cemetery, and that he had new evidence about the string of burglaries. When Harper left the grove, so did Joe and Dulcie. Slipping along behind him, keeping to the cover of the headstones, they followed him toward the house.

Slinking from gravestone to gravestone in swift dashes, streaking across the lawn behind Harper, they gained the azalea bushes. Then under a chaise lounge, working their way across the terrace toward the kitchen, and past.

A tan Ford was parked by the back stairs. They slipped up the narrow steps, listening. Beside Renet’s door they scrambled up a support post to the roof.

Within moments they were prowling the warm tiles, the red clay expanse seeming as long as a city block. Below them, on the front drive, the two black-and-whites were parked, and four officers stood talking with Harper. The other squad cars, behind the house, had stopped beside the stable.

They watched the long front drive, as an unmarked car turned in. Approaching the house it pulled up in front. The driver handed Harper a white envelope.

“Search warrant,” Joe said softly.

“I hope Renet hasn’t already cleared out all the evidence, every necklace and bracelet. We could go down there, distract her. Give Harper a chance to search. We can just drop down onto her balcony and-”

“Yeah, right. We could do that.”

“But?”

“I’ve had enough of her. The woman’s a fiend.” Whatever bland, innocuous presence Renet managed to exude in the course of everyday living, she was a Jekyll and Hyde when it came to cats.

Dulcie nudged him, and he turned to look. Away behind them, across the upper hills, two more police cars were coming, making their way along a narrow, rutted back road. Behind them followed a dark, unmarked station wagon. The three vehicles turned downhill just above the grove, onto the dirt lane that bordered the cemetery on the far side, parking at the edge of the graves near the yellow police tape.

Four uniformed officers got out of the police units. The two men in dark suits who emerged from the station wagon each carried a backpack. Farther on, Harper’s buckskin gelding, still tied to his tree, looked toward the men with interest. He didn’t shy now; he was beautifully calm.

The six men stood talking beside the raw earth of Dolores Fernandez’s grave, then moved on across the grove toward the patch of nearly invisible sod squares where Harper had found the doll, where he had left a yellow tape tied.

The two men in suits set down their packs and walked around the sod rectangle, then knelt to carefully probe at its edges. They worked at this for some time before one of the men fished a camera from his pack, adjusted some lens attachment, and began to take pictures.

Dulcie smiled with satisfaction, and settled more comfortably on the warm roof tiles. Joe yawned and curled down against the chimney in a patch of sun. When the photographer finished shooting pictures, both men walked the area, bending to pick up minute bits of evidence, dropping each into a little transparent bag. After some time, they produced long slim knives, working carefully at the sod, slipping the blades down into the hairline cracks. The cats were distracted only when two more cars came down the long drive: a black Lincoln and Adelina’s pearl red Bentley, both vehicles squealing to a halt before the front door.

Car doors were flung open, two men in dark suits got out of the Lincoln, moving close to Adelina as she approached the house. At the same moment, as if she had been watching the drive, Renet slammed out the front door to join her sister. The cats could imagine phone calls from within, down to Casa Capri, could just picture Renet’s panicked phone summons to Adelina. The two men had to be Adelina’s attorneys.

From within the house, Max Harper appeared behind Renet. And as Renet and Adelina began to argue, the two men lit into Harper. They wanted to know what business he had bringing his police up here. They informed him that if he didn’t leave at once, they’d have him in court.

“Lawyers,” Joe said with disgust. “They’d better think again, if they plan to takeHarperinto court.” He might rag Max Harper, but no one else had better give him a hard time. Harper did not seem pleased with the attorneys’ abrasive attitudes. The cats had never before seen him really mad. They watched, highly entertained, kneading their claws against the clay tiles, as Harper worked the two attorneys over. They watched him back the lawyers toward their car, watched the two retreat inside the Lincoln and drive away, watched Harper herd Adelina and Renet into the house. That was thelast the cats saw of the Prior sisters until they were escorted out the front door an hour later to a patrol car, where they were locked in the back behind the wire barrier. “Like common drunks,” Dulcie said.

When the Prior sisters had been driven away, and the cats looked back toward the grove, the forensics team had removed two squares of sod and were lifting out a third, placing it on a plastic sheet, using tools as small as teaspoons. The two men stopped only long enough to pull on protective blue jumpsuits, to tie on white masks over their noses and mouths, and pull on rubber gloves.

Another half hour and the smell of decomposed flesh hit the air like a giant huff of fetid breath. Another hour more of tedious work, and the men had something new to photograph.

Within the carefully excavated grave, an arm and shoulder had been uncovered, protruding from the freshly dug earth, the body misshapen by decomposition. The smell was so strong that even Joe gagged. Dulcie turned away, retching. How could the police stand this?

It took several hours more for the officers to remove the remaining sod, to photograph and measure the body, to bag bits of evidence, and to dust for prints. The coroner had arrived, and later a forensic anthropologist who had been called down from San Francisco; the cats picked up this much from officers talking in the yard, and from the police radio. The sky began to darken, the roof tiles to cool. A little wind scudded up the hills, chill with approaching night. The two uniformed officers who walked the grove searching for additional unmarked graves soon were using high-powered flashlights, and the forensics men fetched portable spots from their cars.

Below the cats, the drive and gardens lit up suddenly, as the house lights came on, aprons of yellow brilliance casting their wash across the lawns and flowers.

Despite the untoward events which gripped the Prior estate, the household routine seemed unbroken. The cats could smell supper cooking, the scent of something meaty and spicy rising from the kitchen, as if perhaps the cook found it soothing to go on with her schedule in the face of confusion and perhaps disaster.

Joe licked his whiskers.“When did we eat last?”

“I don’t remember. Seems like weeks ago. Supper smells so good, I’m tempted to go down and beg.”

“Hey, we have to have some principles. I don’t take handouts from anyone but George Jolly.”

The mention of Jolly left them weak, feeling empty to the point of panic.

It was well after dark when the forensics team finished, and when, in the house, Harper’s men were done bagging evidence, labeling and packing it and carrying it out to a squad car. Not until the police and the assorted experts had all gone, locking up the main house, leaving four officers on duty, sending the help back to their own quarters, did the cats come down from the roof and head home.

Just this one time, they wished they could have snagged a ride in a police car. They were beat. Drained. Trotting down the hills they were too tired even to hunt. They did find, before they left the Prior estate, enough water on the paving bricks of the stable yard to slake their thirst. When they slipped into the brick courtyard, the Mexican caretaker spoke to them in Spanish. But they stayed away from him, they could smell cyanide clinging around him, pervasive as a woman’s perfume.

And even if he hadn’t smelled of poison, they didn’t need a friendly stranger just now. All they wanted was home and their own housemates, their own cozy houses and something warm and comforting in their supper bowls. The arrest of Adelina and Renet, the beginning of official police work on the tangle of events, had left them worn-out. Their comfortable homes, at that moment, had never seemed so sweet.

35 [????????: pic_35.jpg]

“No,” Harper said, “there was not enough flesh on the body to take fingerprints. But we have positive identification-there’s no doubt the body hidden beneath the turf was Jane Hubble’s.” Mae Rose was very still, but she was calm; her primary emotion seemed to be her deep rage at Jane’s death. Harper had wondered if he was being too graphic for these elderly ladies, but evidently not for Mae Rose. Her clear blue eyes were fixed on him not only with anger at Jane’s murder but with a bright, intelligent attention. “It was not only the finger,” she said, “but Jane’s dentalwork that identified her?”

“Yes, and also an X-ray of an old multiple fracture of her left ankle.”

“I remember that. She told me she broke her ankle when she was in college, on a ski trip. That old break pained her a lot in bad weather. And so the X-rays matched?”

“They did,” Harper said. He supposed he was an incongruous figure, uniformed and armed, sitting at the delicate garden table in the beflowered patio of Casa Capri. At their small tea table, besides himself and Mae Rose, sat young Dillon Thurwell and Susan Dorriss. Susan had graduated from her wheelchair to a metal walker-it stood beside her chair-and the brown poodle lay beside it, napping. The entire Pet-a-Pet group was in attendance, the occasion a celebration hosted by the new management. At the next table were seated Clyde, Wilma, Bonnie Dorriss, and old Eula Weems.

“If the finger came from Jane’s grave,” Mae Rose said, “then the other grave, the open grave of Dolores Fernandez, that was just a red herring?”

“It was,” Harper said. “After the dog dug into Jane’s grave and took the little finger bone, Adelina had Dolores Fernandez’s grave dug up to make it look like the finger came from there; and they put new sod on Jane’s grave. Adelina must have had some wild idea-some silly hope, that we’d take the incident at face value, wouldn’t bother to run the finger through the lab.”

“But it didn’t work,” Mae Rose said with satisfaction. The little, doll-like woman amused Harper. Despite her fragile appearance, she’d been bull-stubborn in her insistence that Jane and the others had met foul play.

“When the dog dug up Jane’s grave, that was when Adelina started putting out poison.” Mae Rose shook her head. “Adelina had a regular shell game going, switching patients around.”

“That’s exactly what she had. It started when a Dorothy Martin died, fifteen years ago. We’ve identified Dorothy, too, from X-rays of her dental work. Adelina buried her secretly in the old cemetery, and told the other residents that Mrs. Martin had been moved over to Nursing, and she continued to collect the two thousand dollars a month for Dorothy’s care. Though I guess the fee, now, is more like three thousand.”

“Three thousand and up,” Susan Dorriss said.

“Adelina did the same with the next two patients,” Harper said. “It’s possible both of those were natural deaths, forensics is still examining the remains. Neither death was reported, and the trust officers went right on paying.

“All three patients had bank-appointed trust officers looking after their incomes, paying their bills, people who had never even seen their clients. Bank trust officers aren’t expected to visit their charges; they haven’t the time, and they aren’t paid to do that.

“And none of those three woman had any close relatives who might pop in for a visit. If a trust officer phoned to schedule a visit for some business reason, Renet did a standin, made herself up like the deceased.”

“So Adelina buried her charges,” Mae Rose said, “and went on collecting their monthly fees. No wonder she drives a new Bentley.”

Harper nodded.“Adelina was able to keep most of her scam from her Spanish-speaking nurses, and she nearly doubled the salaries of the three supervisors. She’s always hired nurses who wouldn’t be apt to talk, who don’t have much English and who’ve had a problem with the law. Women she can control through threats and blackmail.” He sipped his tea, wishing he had a cup of coffee, and studied Mae Rose’s overburdened wheelchair-all her worldly possessions. “That doll in your blue bag, Mrs. Rose, is that the doll that Jane had, where you found the note?”

Mae lifted the faded doll and fluffed its dry, yellow hair.“Yes, this is the doll I gave Jane. The doll that was Jane’s cry for help.” She gave Harper a long look. “A cry that didn’t arrive until after she was dead.” She stroked the doll sadly, and laid it in her lap beside the brindle cat curled asleep on the pink afghan. “Was there evidenceof who-which one of those three-actually killed Jane? And of who buried her?”

“None,” Harper said. “We know only that she was given a lethal dose of Valium mixed with other drugs. Drug traces in the body are a cause of death which is still detectable long after bruises and flesh wounds can no longer be found. We’re assuming that either Adelina or Teddy buried her; forensics found hairs from both suspects around the grave. The lab had to separate them out from some animal hairs that forensics collected at the site, all of it was mixed together in with leaves and dirt and grass.”

“What kind of animal hairs?” Dillon said.

“Cat hair,” Harper said. “Some stray cat.”

He did not look at Clyde, though Clyde was watching him. He was still ridiculously edgy about Damen’s gray tomcat. The cat was, at the moment, perched above them in the orange tree, presumably asleep, though twice he had caught a thin gleam of yellow through its narrowly slitted eyes. Aware of the cat, he felt as he did too often lately, edgy, nervous, wondering if he was losing his grip.

The cat had got mixed into the case in a way that left him uncertain and short-tempered, left him so edgy he wouldn’t care if he never saw another cat. Cats in the cemetery, some cat racing through the house with Renet in hot pursuit, cat hairs around the doll which had been set up for him to find. And the tiny indentations in the doll’s arm, those marks, the lab swore, were the marks of a cat’s teeth.

None of this helped his digestion. None of it was comfortable to think about.

If this had been the first time these two cats had got mixed up in a case, he’d shrug and chalk it up to coincidence, forget about it.

But it was not the first time. This was the third murder case within a year that, one way or another, these two cats had seemed to blunder into, leaving their marks, leaving their own perplexing trail.

And the worst part was, he had an uncomfortable feeling this would not be the last time.

Dulcie, lying on Mae Rose’s lap, yawned and curled deeper into the pink afghan, pushing aside the doll. She had not looked up when Harper mentioned cat hairs on the grave, nor had she glanced up into the tree. Joe, crouched up there among the leaves, would be highly amused that Harper had sent cat hairs to the lab. If she dared look up at him, she’d see that stupid grin on his face. Grinning out through the leaves as smug as Alice’s Cheshire cat.

Harper hadn’t looked up at Joe, either. She hoped he wasn’t putting some things together that were best left apart.

Still, if he was, she couldn’t help it. He couldn’t prove anything. She and Joe had, she considered, done an admirable job to assist Harper. But he’d never know for sure. If he insisted on feeling nervous, that was his problem.

“It’s so strange,” Susan said, “how the stolen doll got into the graveyard-and why Adelina’s black book was hidden under her desk. Surely she’d have some better place to hide it.” She glanced at Dillon. “It’s almost like a child’s prank, moving evidence around.”

Dillon looked blank Harper helped himself to another slice of lemon cake from the plate in the center of the table. Some details of the case did not bear close scrutiny.

They had a solid case, but there were unanswered questions that could prejudice the prosecution. He just hoped defense didn’t claim the notebook was tainted evidence. They’d have to wait and see. Certainly the department had done a fine job sorting out the information in Adelina’s black book, checking its entries against the backgrounds of her nurses.

The black book had contained, as well as the dossiers of two dozen employees, a separate sheet of paper with a code list of the dead patients. No name, just a number, with a birth date, and apparently the date he or she was secretly buried. Some had a second date when that person was given a public funeral and some other body buried. He had, when he removed the coded paper, found caught in the spine of the book one short dark hair, a hair varied in color like the hair of a dark tabby cat.

He had not sent this to the lab.

In the old cemetery, his men had found fifteen unmarked graves. They had found, as well, double burials in four of the Spanish graves where more-recent bodies had been tucked in to sleep, perhaps restlessly, beside ancient Spanish bones.

When he did the numbers on that, it looked like Adelina was raking in well over half a million a year on dead patients.

“It was with the fourth death,” he said, “whatever the cause, that Adelina decided to have a funeral. By this time, the long-deceased Dorothy Martin would have been ninety-nine years old. Adelina probably decided that she’d better fake a death before Dorothy started receiving unwanted publicity for her longevity. She gave Dorothy a nice, though modest, send-off, using the body of a newly deceased Mary Dunwood. With Renet’s background in the makeup department, it was no trick for her to make up the dead Mary Dunwood to look like an aged Dorothy Martin.

“Over the years,” he said, “no one seemed to notice that Casa Capri always used the same funeral parlor, nor to think it unusual that the funeral director drives top-of-the-line Cadillacs which he trades in every year. Not likely anyone would have commented. No one takes a friendly view of funeral directors-people like to think of them as rip-off artists.

“For each prospect who fit Adelina’s requirements-no close attachments, no close family-she kept a detailed record of any distant relative or friend, and she made copies of all their correspondence. It wasn’t hard to learn to fake different people’s handwriting. And she got personal information, as well, from what Teddy learned during his friendly little chats with the patients. Adelina knew more about those people than they ever imagined.

“And it wasn’t hard for Renet, using her makeup and acting skills, to impersonate the dead patients. People change sufficiently as they age; five or six years can make a significant difference.

“Renet took photographs of the victims often, before they died. And she photographed herself made up like them, to compare. She made quite a study of how the patients would look as they aged; we found books outlining the changes that can occur. I’m guessing Adelina demanded that amount of commitment from Renet. Adelina is a perfectionist. She made sure, as well, that wherever Renet was living, up and down the coast, they were in touch. All Renet had to do, if she was needed, was hop on a plane. The nursing home made it known-an inviolate rule-that visitors must give twenty-four-hour notice. That patients did not like surprises, and did not liked to be disturbed during any small illness, such as a cold or an attack of asthma.”

Susan and Wilma exchanged a look; Susan’s dislike for the Priors was very clear. She had told Harper her suspicions about Teddy and how, the afternoon Adelina and Renet were arrested, there had been a major panic at the home. Susan said Teddy had spent maybe fifteen minutes in Adelina’s office, then Adelina had left in a hurry; Teddy had wheeled to the front door, watching her drive away, then whirled his chair around, racing into the social room.

There he had confronted Susan, had wanted to know what she’d told the police, what she’d seen out in the grove, what she’d said about him.

Susan had played dumb, said she didn’t know what he was talking about. She’d been terrified of him, said his eyes looked almost glazed, said she expected him to leap out of his chair and start hitting her.

Now, Harper watched Susan speculatively. He had been really distressed about Teddy’s threat, thinking of Susan so vulnerable in the wheelchair. Strange, Susan was the only woman, since Millie died, who gave him that warm, totally honest, comfortable feeling, as if with Susan you could be totally yourself.

But he didn’t need a woman in his life, not any more than he needed cats under his feet during an investigation.

Across from him, Wilma said,“How did the three Priors respond when you took them in for questioning?”

Max smiled.“Renet was upset, angry. And she was scared.

“Young Teddy went ballistic, threw a real tantrum-though he wasn’t sufficiently out of control to abandon his wheelchair. Adelina was cool as ice, totally in charge of herself. And, of course, she already has her attorneys at work on her defense.

Mae Rose said,“Were thereother murders besides Jane and Mary Nell? Or did the others die naturally?”

“Forensics is still examining the remains; there’s indication that James Luther may have been a victim. With bodies that old, a murder can easily go undetected.” He had to marvel at these old people. Some old folks would turn queasy at this much detail. These folks did not seem morbid in their interest, except maybe Eula Weems. They simply wanted information.

But Eula’s hands fidgeted and plucked at each other. “How-how did they kill Mary Nell?”

“The way her skull was broken,” Harper said, “she probably died relatively quickly. The murder weapon was a smooth, thin object, swung with force.

“One theory is that someone may have tried to smother her, and when she fought back she was hit a hard blow, possibly with the edge of a dinner plate. Such a blow would break the skull in just that way.”

He would not ordinarily have discussed a case so openly, particularly when it was not yet in court, but the newspaper had got hold of most of the details; and these old folks did have a vested interest. Two of their close friends had been murdered, maybe more than two. These folks had a right to some answers when the very people who were entrusted with their well-being had betrayed them.

Dillon said,“Jane was desperate, to sew that letter in the doll praying someone would find it. And no one did, not in time.”

“But we have her killers,” Harper said. “And no one might ever have known, their little scheme might never have been discovered, if not for you and Mae Rose.”

He thought he saw the tabby cat’s expression change, a twitching of whiskers almost like a smile. But of course he was imagining that.

“The court won’t let the Priors go free?” Eula said.

“No matter what happens in court, and I don’t see them going free, Adelina Prior will not be back at Casa Capri, nor will Renet or Teddy. Judge Sanderson has promised that.”

The home, left without management, had been placed under jurisdiction of the court and was being managed temporarily by a court-appointed chain of retirement homes. In the interest of public relations, the new manager had organized not only this little gathering today, but had announced several new policies, trying hard to counter the bad publicity and bad feelings.

He had opened the Nursing wing to patients’ families and to all residents each afternoon, so they could visit those patients who felt well enough to have company. The Pet-a-Pet program would continue as a permanent part of the home’s therapy, along with several other new programs, including a weekly reading of best-selling fiction by one of the local library staff and several evening classes to be presented as part of the continuing education offerings of the local college.

“Them college classes,” Eula said. “Teddy talked about getting some kind of fancy schooling here, but it never happened.” Eula sighed. “Teddy was all hot air.” The old woman snorted. “He never did need that wheelchair. All the time, he could walk.”

She half rose at the table, addressing her audience.“I bet it was Teddy dug those graves. Maybe took those poor old folks out of here, himself, in his van.”

Minute particles of flesh and hair had been found in the van, identified as belonging to the dead patients. Clothing fibers were found matching threads from the graves. And similar particles had turned up behind the stable where, for years, an old truck had been parked. Harper’s theory was that the bodies were transferred from the van to the truck late at night, and driven out into the cemetery.

And, even more interesting, the fragments of tire marks found behind the stable had matched the casts of tire marks taken from the scene of Susan Dorriss’s accident. Same tread, same small L-shaped nick at one edge. The truck had been recovered three days ago in the small town of Mendocino, north of San Francisco.

At one time the truck had been legally registered to Adelina Priorits original plates had been found in the old stable along with a dozen other plates hidden in a niche beneath the wooden bottom of an old feed bin in one of the stalls used for storage.

His theory was that either Renet or Teddy was driving the truck when it hit Susan, and that Renet had taken the truck to be painted. He hoped with time the department could establish that it was Renet who appeared at the paint shop dressed as a little frumpy Latino housewife, black hair, Spanish accent. He was hoping they could find hard evidence that it was Renet who later bought the truck from the used-car dealer, dressed in a short leather skirt, her hair a blaze of red curls, her legs shapely in black hose. The redhead who bought the truck had put a FOR SALE sign in the window, and two hours later had sold it cheap to a Mexican family moving to Seattle. When the truck blew a head gasket in Mendocino, they sold it for bus fare.

Mae Rose looked at Harper.“Strange that Renet would hit on the idea of calling herself The Cat Burglar. I had a friend once who used to joke that if she ever became a professional burglar, that was what she would do. Pretend to be looking for her lost cat.”

She stroked Dulcie, watching Harper.“You said Renet worked in wardrobe, in Hollywood? So did Wenona. I wonder?” The little lady frowned. “It would seem strange, wouldn’t it, if they knew each other? But Wenona lived in Molena Point when she was younger. She was forty when she moved to L.A.

Renet would have been about twenty then, doing those early films.”

The little woman cocked her head, thinking.“Wenona used to go down to the wharf to feed the stray cats. She liked to feed them, but she was afraid of them, too.”

Harper tried to keep a bland face, but Mae Rose’s words hit home. When they locked Renet up, she kept shouting,It was the cats. It was those damn cats that put me here.No one had asked what she meant, she was in a violent temper. He hadn’t asked, and he hadn’t wanted to know.

Harper shivered. He didn’t look up, but he felt, from the tree above, the yellow stare of the tomcat. And on the pink afghan, Wilma’s cat didn’t wiggle an ear, didn’t open an eye, yet he could sense her interest as sharply as if she watched him.

And later, as Harper drove Clyde back to the village, he couldn’t help glancing down at the gray tomcat. The animal lay stretched insolently between them, across the front seat of his squad car. Clyde said taking a cat in the car was no different than taking a dog, and Clyde was so argumentative on the subject, you couldn’t reason with him.

Everyone knew that dogs were fine in cars, dogs stuck their heads out in the wind, hung their tongues out and enjoyed. But cats-a cat was under the gas pedal one minute, then trying to jump out any open window. Cats weren’t meant to ride in cars; cats were more attuned to creeping around in the shadows.

Besides, he wasn’t keen about cat hairs in his squad car.

Though certainly Clyde’s cat was obedient enough, it didn’t make a hiss, didn’t leap around clawing the upholstery, didn’t go crazy trying to get out the window. It napped on the seat, purring contentedly. It looked up at him only once, a blank, sleep-drugged gaze, dull, ordinary, unremarkable, making him wonderwhat he thought was so strange about the animal.

If he thought this dull-looking cat had anything to do with events at Casa Capri or at the Prior estate, maybe he needed a few days off, a vacation.

Pulling up before Clyde’s white Cape Cod, he watched Clyde swing out of the car carrying the cat and set it down on the lawn. The cat yawned, glanced up blearily, and wandered away toward the house. Just a dull-looking, ordinary tomcat.

The tomcat, the minute Harper let him and Clyde out of the squad car in front of their cottage, headed for his cat door. Walking slowly, trying to appear stupid, he was nearly choking with amusement.

Pushing in through his cat door, leaving Clyde leaning on the door of the squad car talking, he moved quickly to the kitchen, where he might not be heard, leaped up onto the breakfast table, and rolled over, laughing, pawing the air, bellowing with laughter, working himself into such a fit that Clyde, coming in, had to whack him on the shoulder to make him stop. It took three hard whacks before he collapsed, gasping, and lay limp and spent.

“It’s a wonder he didn’t hear you; you were bellowing like a bull moose. You really have a nerve, to laugh at Harper.”

Joe looked at him slyly.“Harper gets so edgy. Every time we wrap up a case, hand him the evidence, he gets nervous, starts to fidget.”

“Just where would the case be, Joe, without Harper? You think Adelina and Renet would be in jail? You think you and Dulcie would have made a citizen’s arrest? Hauled Adelina and Renet and Teddy into jail yourselves?”

“I wasn’t laughingatHarper. I was laughingbecauseof Harper.”

Clyde looked hard at him.“You’re not making sense.”

“Harper’s a great guy, but he’s letting us get to him.

How can I help but laugh? He’s developing a giant-sized psychosis about cats.”

Silence. Clyde snatched the dish towel from its rod, folded it more evenly, and hung it up again.

“Youcan laugh at Harper,” Joe said. “So why can’t I? There he is, a seasoned cop with twenty years on the force, and he’s letting a couple of kitty cats give him the fidgets.”

Clyde sat down at the table, looking at him.

“In the squad car-he could hardly keep from staring at me. He knows we were up to something, and he can’t figure it out. So we helped nail Adelina, so does he have to get spooked about it? We scare him silly. Can I help if he breaks me up?”

Clyde put his face in his hands and didn’t speak.

But it was not until later, when Joe had trotted up through the village to meet Dulcie in the alley behind Jolly’s Deli, that he realized the full import of what he and Dulcie had done and how their maneuvers would affect Harper. Why wouldn’t Harper be upset? The man was only human.

“Three murderers are behind bars,” Dulcie said. “A rash of burglaries has been stopped. And, best of all, now that those old people are free of Adelina, they’re not afraid anymore. They’re safe now, and looking forward to enjoying life a little, in their remaining years.”

She looked at him deeply, her green eyes glowing.“And we did it. You and me and Dillon and Mae Rose.”

“And Max Harper,” he said charitably.

“Well of course, Max Harper.” And she began to grin.

“What?” he said. “What are you thinking?”

“Renet in her underpants and bra, with that wrinkled old witch face.” She rolled over, mewling with laughter, and soon they were both laughing, crazy as if they’d been on catnip. Only a sound from the deli silenced them, as George Jolly came out his back door bearing a paper plate.

They could smell freshly boiled shrimp, and the aroma drove out all other thoughts. They looked at each other, licked their whiskers, and trotted on over, smiling. As they began to eat, old Mr. Jolly stood looking up and down the alley, wondering how those laughing tourists had disappeared so quickly. Only the two cats knew that there had been no tourists, and even for old George Jolly, they weren’t telling.