But there was one thing Joe and Rock knew that their human companions did not.
They had now picked up not only Benny’s scent, but Dulcie’s, and a thrill of apprehension touched Joe. Dulcie, too, was tracking Benny, alone through the black night.
Or maybe Dulcie had already found him, Joe thought hopefully. Maybe by now the child was no longer alone. And though Joe wasn’t given to prayer, tonight he made an exception as he worried for his tabby lady.
Leaving the wreck behind, Rock took them straight up the steep road until it dead-ended, and there the silver dog plunged into the woods again, dragging Ryan crashing up through vines and heavy undergrowth. Rock’s human followers were soon fighting blackberry thorns that snatched at their jeans and windbreakers, swearing with a creativity that amused the tomcat. When, above them, two dogs began to bark, Rock paused, listening. But their voices were familiar and welcome, and he wagged his short tail.
“Benny can’t be headed for the seniors’ house?” Dallas said. “How the hell could he find their place in the dark? How would he even know the direction? What kind of blind luck is that?”
Not blind luck, Joe Grey thought, this was Dulcie’s doing, she had led Benny there.
They came out of the woods at the top of the hill, the three humans scratched and cranky from the blackberries’ embrace. They were half a block from the seniors’ rambling frame house. No lights burned in the flat-roofed, two-story structure, except for a faint light at the back, apparently from the kitchen. The seniors’ dogs were still barking, but now with pleased little woofs. They knew who approached, and were excited to have midnight company. Rock wasn’t distracted by them, he hurried along sucking Benny’s fresh scent from the air. Only when Dallas put a hand on Ryan’s arm did she speak to Rock and pull him to a halt. The good dog looked up at her reproachfully. He’d run for nearly two hours tracking Benny, he wanted the satisfaction of the find, he wanted a joyous reunion. “Just for a minute,” she told him, stroking his muscled shoulder.
As Dallas and Clyde stood surveying the house and street, Joe moved on up beside Rock, to reassure him that this pause was all right, that this was part of the job. Ryan waited as Dallas and Clyde walked the street, checking the interiors of the seven cars parked at intervals before they turned their backs on them. Though Joe hadn’t caught any fresh scent that could indicate someone waited concealed there. When at last Dallas nodded to Ryan and she released Rock, the big dog bolted not for the front door but around the side to the back deck.
Above the daylight basement, where a light burned in the kitchen, they could hear the murmur of voices. Benny’s voice? Rock leaped up the stairs to the deck and across it, yipping at the door with impatience. Before Ryan could knock or call out Cora Lee opened it, releasing the smell of hot cocoa—and releasing the Dalmatian and the standard poodle. They rushed at Rock, excited and ready to play. But Rock plunged past them through the open door and raced across the kitchen, heading straight for Benny.
The child sat at the kitchen table with a blanket wrapped around him. Lori had pulled her chair close beside him, and there was a big mug of cocoa on the table in front of him. There was a fresh bandage on his face, and one on his right arm. Rock reared up, softly keening and licking Benny’s face; and when the big dog cut a look at Ryan, his yellow eyes were filled with such pride that Ryan pressed her fist to her mouth and couldn’t speak; Rock’s doggy excitement at his accomplishment was so great that Clyde and Dallas, too, seemed choked with emotion.
From atop the little planning desk tucked beside the refrigerator, Dulcie looked on, purring extravagantly, her own triumph nearly as great as Rock’s. Joe didn’t know the details, but from the look on his lady’s face, Benny Toola had enjoyed two miracles tonight. One when an “untrained” dog successfully tracked and found him. The other when he must have been led through the cold night to safety by an “ordinary house cat,” a miracle that most humans would find impossible to believe. A rescue that, even to the hard-nosed tomcat, proved there might, indeed, be a touch of magic in the world. A special Christmas blessing, perhaps, that Dulcie had found Benny in the dark night, searching all alone, and that the child, lost and afraid, had been willing to follow her.
But Joe wasn’t the only one focused on Dulcie. When he looked at Dallas, the detective was frowning at the purring tabby, as if puzzled that Wilma’s cat was up there so far from home. Benny saw him looking. “Dulcie brought me,” he blurted out. “She was in the woods, a man was calling me and I saw lights and I didn’t know who that was. I ran, and then Dulcie was there, and she brought me here.”
“She must have been hunting,” Ryan said. “I’ve seen her over there on that road. Maybe she heard the police, saw the lights, and that frightened her just as it scared Benny.”
Dallas watched Ryan, puzzled and silent—maybe not really wanting to know what this was about.
“A miracle that they met up,” Ryan said. “Maybe, since she knows the seniors’ house, maybe she thought of this as a place of safety …” Ryan knew she was talking too much, but she couldn’t seem to stop. She didn’t like the skeptical look on Dallas’s face. He’d started to reply, his scowl stern, when his cell phone rang.
Picking up, the detective listened, then turned and stepped into the entry hall where he could talk in private. Silently Joe followed him, slipping into the shadows to listen.
“She’s where?” Dallas said. “How could you know that? Who is this? Where are you? Are you certain she has Maudie?”
I‘M SURE,” KIT said. “She pushed Maudie in the backseat of a maroon Jaguar, her hands tied behind her. I followed them up where you are. I saw you with that dog. She didn’t stop anywhere, she couldn’t have let Maudie out. She’s parked up in those trees, in the darkest shadows.”
Kit’s heart was pounding when she clicked off the speaker on the phone by Lori’s empty bed, after calling Dallas’s cell phone. She listened to Lori’s voice and Dallas’s voice from the kitchen below, heard him ask a question, heard Ryan answer. There was silence for a few minutes, then she heard the front door open. When she peered out through Lori’s window, Dallas and Rock were on the porch, Rock straining at the leash, staring up the dark hill, his ears up, his whole body quivering. Soon they would head up there. Kit didn’t know whether to follow them as they closed in on Pearl, or go down to poor Misto, who was crouched beneath the back deck, waiting for her.
Having clawed through the bathroom window, then slipped into Lori’s room, having found Lori’s bed empty and heard her voice downstairs, she’d made the call to Dallas, all the while worried about Misto. The old cat was worn out from running, tired and sore, and he’d been breathing hard when she left him. Now, still hearing Lori’s and Cora Lee’s voices from the kitchen, she fought the lock on Lori’s window, pawed it open, and slipped out onto the roof. Peering down, she listened as Dallas spoke on his cell phone, talking with Max. She watched Rock pull on the lead, staring up into the night, fixed intently on Pearl’s hidden car. She knew Dallas was waiting for backup. She wanted badly to follow when they closed in on Pearl’s car. Instead she dropped off the roof onto Cora Lee’s hood, then to the drive, and streaked around to the back and beneath the deck, where Misto lay curled up, breathing raggedly.
45
THE MAROON JAGUAR sat high up the hill sheltered among a dark overhang of cypress branches, well hidden from the houses below. Weeks ago, Pearl had driven up here with Arlie when he was looking for a house. He’d taken one look at the neighborhood and pronounced it a wilderness, too far from the amenities as he called them, too removed from his lifestyle. Didn’t that make her laugh. What about his lifestyle while he was in prison? Though the area was so out of the way she wondered if the cops even bothered to patrol here.