She could go to Genelle's, but the library was closer. Hurrying along the street among window-shopping grownups, she wanted, now, only to get back into her cave.
And she knew something more about the beetle man. She knew, now, she'd seen this man when she was little. It was the same man, she was sure. He came in the schoolyard when she was six. In the second grade. In the schoolyard, standing inside the fence by the drinking fountain. They were playing kickball. Every time she ran near him, he watched her. He was there again the next day. She was eating lunch alone on a bench, reading. He sat down next to her and asked her what grade she was in and could he see her arithmetic and spelling papers that she had in her backpack. She stared at him and ran, back into the building. She'd called Mama, and Mama came for her. Mama didn't know who he was. That day had scared them both.
Uncle Hal always wanted to see her schoolwork, too. Or wanted her to play numbers games and do puzzles. At first she'd liked that. But Pa would make him stop, Pa didn't like those games. And that made Mama mad. Mama said, "What's wrong with her being smart? Why are you so set against a girl being smart? What if she were a boy?" Pa said it wouldn't make no difference, and then they'd fight and she, Lori, would go in her room and turn on her little radio loud and read a fairy tale that ended up happy.
Now, hurrying along the sidewalk staying in a crowd of people, she looked across at a shop window where a shadow moved, then jerked away suddenly behind the china and glassware. Fenner? She stopped for only an instant to look, but now there was nothing. Two women inside; she saw no one else. Hurrying across the library garden and in through the library's front door, she glanced back at the street. When she didn't see him, she slipped into the children's room.
The librarian was starting story hour. He didn't dare come here, among the children. She sat down on a floor cushion beside the crowded window seat, leaned against its cushioned edge beside the dangling feet of a four-year-old who was in turn snuggled up to an older child. She looked at the kind face of the librarian and listened to her quiet voice, and slowly she let the story take her away, saw the goats and the mountain and the grandfather and let the story become real, let the ugliness fade away until it was gone. Almost gone. He couldn't get her here, not in this safe place.
27
Jack Reed's house stood five blocks below the home of the senior ladies, and Genelle Yardley's, but seven blocks over the crest of the hill, closer to the sea. The two cats, leaving the seniors' garden and Drs. Hyden and Anderson to their dig, stopped only once, when a yapping terrier chased them. Spinning to face the frenetic animal, they smiled, and Joe Grey lifted an armored paw. The little dog stopped. Dulcie flattened her ears and crouched to spring. The dog backed up a step. Joe's burning yellow eyes and Dulcie's poison-green gaze made the terrier tremble right down to his hard little paws. Tucking his tail between cringing haunches, he moved back three steps more, let out a screeching challenge, then spun around and beat it out of there yipping for human protection.
Enjoying his retreat, the two cats smiled at each other and trotted on through the crowded backyard gardens, their path following the rocky ridge that began in Genelle's garden. An outcropping that ran for half a mile, cresting the hill in a ragged, stony spine. The yards through which it thrust were, for the most part, planted to enhance its sculpted curves. The ridge ended across the street from Jack Reed's bungalow, in an unbuildable jutting shoulder of stone. The cats paused among the boulders. They had seen this house many times, and they had never liked it.
None of these homes had much front yard, and little more backyard. A second row of roofs could be seen close behind them. The house was stark, forbidding, without any of the welcoming air of a beloved retreat, like most of the village cottages. Against the front of the one-story gray frame, with its dull-brown trim, was a line of dead or dying shrubs. The rest of the yard, where there might once have been flower beds, was covered with brick-colored gravel uglier than a parking lot.
The concrete driveway was empty, and Jack's white pickup with its neat side boxes and "Vincent and Reed" logo wasn't parked on the street. The two cats, padding up the concrete drive to avoid the gravel, stood for a moment assessing the windows and vents, looking for the easiest route of entry.
The foundation vents were so big that Lori could have gotten out through there, if ever she'd found a way down from the house above. The cats circled the house, but all seven vents were nailed shut. Slipping along between the bushes, they leaped up to the sill of the garage window and peered in.
No room in there for a vehicle; the place was stacked with cardboard boxes of clothes and other items spilling out, castoffs that looked too old and tired even to give to charity. The window itself was new and clean but nailed shut, a dozen nails angled into the inside molding.
"What kind of man is this?" Joe Grey said irritably.
"Paranoid."
"All this to lock in one little girl?"
"Nutcase."
"You think he hurt her?"
"She's never said that, and she talks to me a lot. When Genelle asked her if he'd done anything ugly, any kind of touching, Lori said no. That she'd heard all about those things from the other kids in the foster homes." She turned to look at him, the late-morning light catching across her green eyes and peach-tinted ears. "She's really afraid of going back to those foster places. I think, if she trusted the foster-care people, she would have called them, gotten some help."
"But help from what? What did he do to her?"
She turned on the branch. "He locked her in, Joe! Nailed the windows shut! How would you feel? You detest being locked in! Took her out of school, and she loved school. She was a prisoner!" Leaping from the narrow sill into the oak tree that towered above them, she trotted along a branch to examine an attic vent.
It was stuck tight. She examined the other vent on that side, then leaped to the roof and across it, into another oak. There appeared to be two vents on each side. All were stuck, but no new nails were visible. These vents were too small for a child to get through, and who would fear that a cat might enter or even want to. It was not until they were pawing at the last vent that they were able to rattle the wooden grid.
Pressing harder, then pulling with hooked claws, they loosened the hinges in the rotting frame where it had succumbed to dampness and maybe termites. Digging in harder, Dulcie flung herself backward on the branch, pulling with all her might- just as she would jerk a giant rat from its hole. The grid flew off, nearly taking her with it. In midair, she fought her paw loose, snatching at the branch. Teetering, grabbing for balance, she watched the grid spin away to the ground. She realized only then that Joe had his teeth in her shoulder, a mouthful of fur and skin to keep her steady. Turning, ignoring the pain from his teeth, she gave him a whisker kiss.
Joe released her and leaped to the edge of the hole, peering in. Dulcie edged up beside him. The attic was black and stunk of dead spiders and insects and mouse droppings, filling Dulcie with visions of black-widow spiders and the brown recluse arachnids and surly raccoons waiting in the dark to defend their lair. She wanted no truck with raccoons, better to face tigers. In Molena Point, raccoons were so well protected by the do-gooders of the village that they had grown unnaturally bold. Pet dogs had been attacked in their own yards, and just this winter, raccoons had badly bitten not only several family dogs but two different women, and a child, who tried to rescue their screaming pets. And only a few blocks from the Reed house, she and Joe and Kit had barely escaped a predatory band of raccoons in just such a black attic as this. That escapade had ended with gunshots. Dulcie still woke from nightmares in which she and Joe and Kit had been blown away instead of the raccoons.