Earlier, in the seniors’ kitchen, after he got the snitch’s call, Dallas had tried to call Maudie at home. He had gotten no answer, though she’d promised to stay near the phone. He’d alerted Brennan, but the officer, watching both houses, hadn’t seen or heard any disturbance. Brennan had seen Maudie’s bedroom light go on, and in a little while go off again, and had assumed that in spite of the missing child, she might be lying down, preparing herself for whatever came next.
The dog was tense with nerves, and so was Dallas. Where was Max? Too risky to move up on that car without cover and blow the whole thing, if Maudie was up there, maybe get her killed. Staying to the darkest part of the yard as Rock tried to pull him up toward the woods, he paused when he heard a vehicle coming up the hill. Rock stopped and looked expectantly in that direction, knowing the sound of Max’s truck. They heard it park somewhere in the dark below, and Dallas’s phone vibrated.
“Rock’s fixed on the top of the hill,” he told Max. “Something’s there, all right. We’re just at the base of the hill, and he’s hyped to have a look.”
In a minute Max’s shadow moved toward him through the dark. Rock wagged his tail and licked Max’s hand, but then again he fixed his attention on the hill above, his ears sharply forward, his pale yellow eyes never wavering from the black tangle of woods.
Max looked at the eager dog, looked up the hill. “Let’s go with it,” he said, and the three headed silently up through the dark, Rock straining at the leash, the officers’ hands close to their holstered weapons. Neither officer saw Joe Grey behind them slipping from the shadows. Moving swiftly, Joe picked up Pearl’s scent from the damp air, just as Rock was doing, a scent that made the fur along his back bristle. The instant they glimpsed the car the two men separated, circling around to come at it from the back, and Joe moved unseen into the woods. When Dallas was deep among the trees he gave Rock the command to “down, stay.”
Rock obeyed, but so grudgingly Joe thought he’d soon break position. Shivering, Rock stared at the car, the rumble in his throat so faint only Joe could hear it.
As Max moved along beside the car hunkered down, keeping below the windows approaching the driver’s door, Joe saw movement behind the glass that made him want to yell, to warn the chief. Pearl had turned in the driver’s seat, watching Max. Joe saw the gleam of a gun as she swung on Harper—and he did yell, yelled a warning, he couldn’t help himself. Dallas appeared on the far side of the car, his flashlight blazing in on Pearl, her gun pointed at Max. At the same moment, Maudie rose up in the backseat, a dark silhouette.
Two shots blasted the night: Maudie’s gun and Max’s. Dallas didn’t fire for fear of hitting Max. Two shots were enough. Pearl jerked and fell against the door. Max flung the door open, his gun on her as he pulled her out of the car to sprawl facedown in the dirt.
Pearl didn’t move. In the beams of the officers’ lights a thin finger of blood began to pool from the back of her neck, and blood stained the ground beneath her. Joe could see where one bullet had exited, tearing through her throat. When Dallas shone his light around inside the car, Joe could see through the open door that two of the dashboard dials were shattered where a bullet must have passed through Pearl. Easing back out of the way, Joe lay down beside Rock, wanting to comfort the big dog. Rock was shaking—from the stress? From the smell of human blood? Or from the loud explosion of gunshots? Lying close together, cat and dog watched Max slip into the backseat of the Jaguar beside Maudie and put his arm around her, saw the older woman lean against him.
Who had killed Pearl was a toss. But did it matter? Pearl wouldn’t kill anyone else, Joe thought with satisfaction. And she wouldn’t torment Benny or his grandma anymore.
And the tomcat had to wonder, what would happen to Pearl if indeed she now faced some divine retribution? This was a matter of conjecture, but Joe Grey had his own version.
46
BENNY TOOLA’S BIRTHDAY, two days after his mother’s death, could have been a grim affair for the little boy, and Maudie did her best to provide a gentle celebration. The child needed a party, needed folks around him who cared, who might herald a new stage in his life, help him deal with his fear and conflicted feelings. Benny had hated his mother, had mourned her lack of love for him. His shock when she murdered his father could have turned the child inward with a hatred and fear that might never leave him. But Pearl was his mother, after all, and he’d surely grieve for her, if only for what she’d denied him.
But Maudie’s emotions were conflicted, too, her guilt at having shot Pearl battling with her sense of strength and closure. She didn’t want to know the autopsy results, didn’t want to know whether her shot or Max Harper’s had killed Pearl. It was enough that she had taken a stand, though at that moment she could have done nothing less. Max said she had saved his life. Maybe she had, or maybe he’d saved his own. Whatever the truth, she had set out to kill Pearl, to see that Pearl paid for Martin’s death; she had never deceived herself about that. Now it was done, and she and Benny were free, now her concern was for Benny.
There would be no funeral until the coroner released the body. Most likely, he said, some time between Christmas and the New Year. Maudie hoped Benny could start the New Year with the funeral, too, behind him.
The day after Pearl died, Maudie made a trip down to the station to give her statement to Chief Harper and Detective Garza; then she fetched Benny from Ryan and Clyde’s remodel, where he was happily scrubbing the bathroom tiles alongside Lori, and together Maudie and the little boy went shopping to pick out the makings of a special birthday gift.
They found a set of furniture Benny liked, bright oak with brass fittings, and they consulted paint samples, taking home dozens of little colored swatches which Maudie held up to the wall while Benny chose the one that pleased him. Returning to the store, they bought the paint, and the next morning they were up before dawn, Maudie making pancakes as Benny set the table. Then, together, they painted the walls of the little sewing room. When the paint was dry they washed the windows and polished the hardwood floor. The next morning, the furniture was delivered: a twin-sized bed with drawers underneath, a small desk and bookshelves and a soft pad to fit the window seat, which Maudie covered with a bright quilt. They hung the big bulletin board they had bought and a trio of framed airplane prints they had found in a hobby shop. Benny moved his clothes and his few possessions into his new room, and he slept there the night before his birthday, at first curled up on the window seat under Maudie’s quilt, looking out over the rooftops and away across the greenbelt that ran behind the house.
“I looked for the yellow cat,” he told Maudie the next morning. “The yellow cat on the roofs, and for Dulcie and Joe Grey and Kit, but they didn’t come, no cat came. They haven’t gone away?”
“They’re not gone,” Maudie told him. “Ryan and Clyde wouldn’t let them go away. I’m sure that at least Ryan’s gray tomcat will be here later, for your birthday party.”
Neither Joe nor Dulcie nor Kit meant to miss Benny’s birthday, though Misto was otherwise occupied. The night that Pearl was shot, Misto, who was curled up beneath the seniors’ deck with Kit, felt lame and was hurting all over from his long run up the hills. Ryan had enticed him to come out, and she took him home with them, holding him on her lap as Clyde drove. Misto investigated the Damen house only briefly before he followed Snowball upstairs and curled up on the couch between the little white cat and Joe Grey. Next morning, the Damens and Joe crowded into Clyde’s yellow roadster to take Misto to see Dr. Firetti.