She told Mabel they’d found the Greenlaws’ stolen Lincoln, and gave her the location. But as they talked, she watched Kit and Pan, up on the roof again sitting near but not looking at each other, both staring away into space—looking as if they wanted to make up, but both still too stubborn. She could see only a touch of Kit’s superior “I’m right, you’re wrong” expression. Pan, though he glanced sideways at Kit, sat tall and macho, still with a “I’m not changing my mind” look in his amber eyes. Both cats so hardheaded, Kit refusing to understand Pan’s hunger for new adventure, Pan just as obstinate, wanting Kit to thrill to his view of the world. Neither cat, even after their bold and concerted attack on the thief, willing to understand the other. And Ryan could only watch, disappointed with them both.
31
KIT LAY SPRAWLED on the dining table among the last pieces of jewelry that Kate and Lucinda had not tucked away in one bank or another, the gold and sapphires and emeralds reflecting bright shafts of light where the setting sun slanted in through the oak trees. With a soft paw she patted at the brooches and pendants, feeling like a queen counting her wealth, though it wasn’t hers at all. Lucinda was in the bedroom napping, Kate in the kitchen making a light supper, filling the house with the scent of grilled cheese on rye and herb tea.
It had taken Ryan and Clyde only a few minutes, yesterday, to strip the jewelry and money out of the Lincoln before they called the department, before the police were all over the car, lifting fingerprints, taking blood samples, and impounding the vehicle itself for closer inspection. But it had taken the two women all this morning and most of the afternoon to rent seven safe deposit boxes, each requiring them to open an accompanying bank account, to take the necessary cards and papers up to Pedric at the hospital to sign, and then return them to the banks. And then at last to retrieve the treasure from the Greenlaws’ padlocked freezer and tuck it securely away where, they hoped, the banks would keep the gold and jewels safe.
It was last evening after the police arrived to meet Ryan and Clyde at the small garage and go over the Lincoln, that Kit had trotted home shaky from their attack on Vic, and had made a follow-up call to the department. Talking to Max Harper himself, she had laid out in every smallest detail Vic’s murder of Birely Miller there in the hospital. She had hung up abruptly, of course, when Max asked for her name, as he always asked. Both knew he didn’t expect an answer to that question. Secrets upon secrets, she thought, pawing at the mysterious jewelry, and smiling.
Kate and Lucinda, after finishing with the banks, had kept back just this handful of antique pieces that lay scattered around her, now, each one featuring a cat or some mythical creature in its design. Patting at those Netherworld images, Kit thought about Pan’s hunger for that world, and she wondered if he would go there without her. But, then she wondered, would his attachment to Tessa keep the tomcat from leaving, after all?
That very morning when Ryan returned to Debbie’s, to put in the faucet herself, Tessa had whispered to her all about the man with the black car. It was the morning after the cats’ attack on Vic, and Tessa had told Ryan all about that, too, she had seen it all from the window above her bed. She had, much earlier in the day, seen him hide the Lincoln, too. The child had seen more than anyone guessed. “I didn’t tell Mama,” she whispered.
“Why didn’t you?” Ryan had asked her.
“She’d say I was lying. I’m not, that’s what I saw, that’s what happened. My Pan and those other three cats attacked that man to save you. My Pan is back,” she had said, smiling. “But, where is he now? When will he come to live with me again, to be my cat again?”
To that, Ryan had no answer.
No one owns a cat, and yet Kit knew that Pan, in his secret spirit, was indeed Tessa’s cat, just as Tessa was his person. Maybe, she thought, maybe Pan will stay here for Tessa, if he won’t stay for me.
But how will I feel about that? she thought, and she wasn’t sure.
She lay watching as Kate set the table around her, arranging the jewelry in a wicker basket that she put on the buffet. Kit watched her bring in the teapot and cups, watched her go to call Lucinda and help her get up; Lucinda’s cast was heavy and cumbersome, and was tiring to haul around. Walking out with Lucinda, Kate seated her in her own chair and brought in the sandwiches, steaming hot and oozing pale cheese with slices of salami peeking out.
Kate cut Kit’s sandwich in small bites and set the plate on Kit’s own place mat. Over supper they talked about Pedric’s knee surgery, a noninvasive laser technique that was scheduled for early the next morning; they discussed Birely Miller’s simple burial, which would also take place in the morning. Not until after supper did Kate read to them from her mother’s diary, from the later pages that she had found hidden among the moldering Netherworld volumes in the library of a fallen palace, the long passage disconnected from whatever the previous pages had told, from whatever had gone before or after those faded lines.
. . . all along. We have done our best to battle the royal families that would bring this world down. Inconceivable that the very rulers who benefit most from the labor of the peasants are now destroying their only source of food and goods, of the labor to produce what they need. Hatred, not logic, drives them. Hatred and greed. An evil drives them that comes straight from the hell pit and, in the end, will drag them down into the pit themselves. Soon we must get the baby out of here, must make the journey up into the surface world and find a home for Kate. I pray our one friend there, with Netherworld connections, can watch over her until she’s grown. Will there be any Netherworld left, when Kate is grown? I cannot bear to leave her, but we must return here and rejoin the battle, we must keep fighting.
There Melissa’s journal pages ended, the last page torn at the bottom as if whatever came after had been ripped away. “Maybe buried somewhere among the rubble of the palace,” Kate said, “buried in a world where no one reads books anymore or hardly knows what they’re for.
“Do you remember, Kit, the year I was given that other jewelry, by the old lawyer, the pieces he’d held so long for me in his office safe? That big old walk-in safe, the box hidden way at the back containing my mother’s journal, too? Do you remember how excited you were when you first learned of another world, how you had dreamed of such a place?”
“I remember,” Kit said quietly. “But that world was bright and happy, not crumbled and cold, it was not a dead world, then.”
Kate said, “You remember, Lucinda.”
Lucinda said, “Most of the earlier entries in your mother’s journals were bright. There was destruction even then, failure of the magic, but the world still held much of wonder. That was only the beginning, the failure of that magic that your parents tried so hard to prevent.”
Supper ended in sadness, which none of them had intended. Kate rinsed the dishes, and they sat for a long while in the living room before the fire, Kit curled in Lucinda’s lap. She looked up often at Kate, still caught and grieving in the remains of that sad world where her parents had died.
BIRELY MILLER’S FUNERAL, early the next morning, was indeed simple, only a few words spoken by a funeral director who had never known Birely nor, if he had, would have approved of him. A few words and then without further ceremony Birely’s casket was lowered into the ground next to the grave of his sister, Sammie. Only a handful of people attended: Max and Charlie Harper, the Damens, Emmylou Warren, and Kate Osborne. Lucinda was at the hospital with Pedric. Those were the human mourners, if one could call their solemn attendance a kind of mourning. The five cats sat at attention, exhibiting varied degrees of pity, sat concealed behind a headstone featuring the image of a praying angel with lifted wings. Six humans and five cats silently attending Birely Miller’s last contact with the souls of this world. The day had turned heavy, with a wet, gray overcast that made the women’s hair curl willfully, and made the cats lick their fur to try to dry it. What Joe Grey wondered, as he watched Emmylou drop a handful of dirt onto the casket, was, Where’s Birely’s old uncle buried, old train robber Lee Fontana? Where did he end up, carrying with him the secret of that final robbery—escaping without restitution and most likely without remorse?