Maybe they’d toss the downstairs rooms, too, to see what the law might have missed. Then they’d go get Dulcie, and hit the station-innocent, hungry, freeloading little cats. Get a look at Harper’s report and at the photos. And the tomcat fell asleep wondering about those pictures of the children.
But when he was deep under, his dreams of the orphan children and the break-ins at the school and at the Greenlaws’, and of the body under the Christmas tree and that little girl huddled in the pump house all tangled together in confusion badly frightening him.
He woke worn-out, hissing and angry. He felt better only when, trotting downstairs to the kitchen, he found Clyde in a cheerful mood again, an omelet already waiting for him on his side of the breakfast table and the morning paper opened neatly beside it. He did not, tucking in to his breakfast, question the change in Clyde ’s demeanor, from grouchy to sunny. Clyde seemed almost as if he’d settled some personal quandary, made some decision. But maybe it was only that he had finally decided, at the last minute, what to get Ryan for Christmas.
16
W HILE JOE GREY twitched through fitful dreams of threatened children and secret photographs and jimmied windows, the tortoiseshell kit took the investigation into her own paws. She woke several hours after Max Harper left her house. The sky outside the bedroom window was black. The lighted dial of the bedside clock said 5 A.M. The cold winter wind huffed at the windows, sending a chill over the top of the blankets. Lying tucked warmly between Pedric and Lucinda, she woke so filled with questions that she couldn’t help but wriggle and scratch at nonexistent fleas, was so fitful that after a few minutes Pedric turned over, irritably glaring at her, stared at the bedside clock, and glared again at Kit.
Ashamed of waking him, Kit dropped off the bed and raced away through the house to the dining room. Leaping to the window and out her cat door, and across the oak branch to her tree house, she looked down to the rental house-not a sign of Christmas cheer down there, no bright tree or colored lights, though the other neighbors’ Christmas lights, even at this hour, were cheerily burning. No smells of Christmas from that rental, just the smell of mud and rotting leaves surrounding the old neglected dwelling, sad and depressing and somehow coldly foreboding.
But someone was awake down there, already stirring. A light was on in the kitchen and she could see movement behind the shade.
Twice last week she’d seen the woman leave very early. Now, backing down the thick oak trunk, dislodging bits of bark with her claws, she hit the ground running. It crossed her mind that she might be foolish to prowl there alone and try to get inside, among strangers, that she really should wait for Joe and Dulcie, for a little backup, an additional arsenal of tooth and claw.
But Kit didn’t often heed the wiser choice, it wasn’t her nature to wait for the safer moment. Right now she felt far too impatient. Belting down the hill through the oak woods, she paused in their leafy shadows, her paws sinking deep in masses of wet leaves, looking up at the old, dusty windows.
They were all closed and covered with cheap brown window shades hanging slightly askew. As she circled, looking up at the flaking tan walls and studying each window, her paws were soon soaking. If there had ever been a lawn, generations of leaves had long since eaten it away. All she needed was one window left open, and she could be up and through in an instant.
She didn’t know, at this point, who was on the right side of the law, these three strangers or the woman who had spied on them. Or maybe they were all on the wrong side. Crooks against crooks?
She ignored the fact that there had as yet been no crime committed by these three, that the only criminal act was that of the woman breaking into Kit’s own home. She ignored the possibility that the woman’s spying might be the result of a domestic crisis, perhaps a cheating husband, a situation in which the Molena Point police wouldn’t have the slightest interest unless it turned violent. At that moment, the tortoiseshell kit wanted only to know why that woman had been spying, to know what she found so compelling.
There was no garden walk leading around the house, just the deep layer of wet oak leaves beneath the dripping trees. Soon not only her paws were soaked, but her legs and belly and tail, her long, fluffy fur sodden with icy water. Circling the house, she could see no windows open. The light had gone off in the kitchen; now that room, too, was dark. Three times she crouched to leap up to a first-floor windowsill, hoping to force an ancient lock, but each time, a frightened chill made her drop down again and sent her hurrying on around, not really knowing what had scared her.
She could hear no movement within, but at the back of the house, when she paused beneath the higher windows of an upstairs bedroom, she could hear the soft, slow breathing of someone asleep; and at the next bedroom window she heard the same. Trotting around the far side and up onto the driveway, she left dark, wet paw prints on the pale concrete. The car that stood in the drive was cold and dripping with dew, its tires and wheels cold, the air around the hood reflecting back to her only the night’s chill. She wondered why they didn’t use the garage.
How could it be full? It was a double garage, and she hadn’t noticed another car down here; and when they moved in she hadn’t seen very many boxes. That day, as the movers unloaded, as she and Lucinda watched through the dining-room window, Pedric had teased them about being nosy, and he had disdained to spy on the new neighbors-but later they saw him secretly looking, and they’d grinned at each other.
The garage protruded out beyond the skinny front porch. Padding along beside it, Kit approached the three concrete steps leading up to the front door. Above her in the garage wall were three high little windows, so small they’d be a tight squeeze for a human. Might one of those have been left unlocked? But when she reared up to look closer, they appeared to be covered from the inside with plywood or cardboard.
She considered the thin trellis beside the porch, where a dead vine clung. From its top rung she could easily leap to the first sill and try to get in. If that was only cardboard, wouldn’t it be taped or tacked to the window frame? If she could fight the window open, maybe the covering would go with it.
Silently she padded across the porch between a dozen empty clay pots, some tilted over, spilling dried clods of earth and dried-up ferns, brown and brittle, maybe abandoned by some previous renter. Crouching, ready to leap and scale the trellis, she heard footsteps within the house and before she could run, the porch light blazed on and the front door flew open. Kit froze, hunched among the pots, hoping her dark mottled fur looked like just another dry fern.
She could smell sleep on the woman who stepped out. A tall woman, her dark hair hanging lank and dry. She was fully dressed, but hurriedly so, her blouse only half buttoned over dark jeans, and over that, a heavy black peacoat. She didn’t notice Kit; she shut the door behind her and the lock clicked. But then, fumbling with her car keys, she glanced down-and caught her breath, staring straight at Kit, and backed away from her with a look of fear that quickly flared to anger.
Phobic, Kit thought. I’m in luck, she’s scared of me, she…The woman dove at Kit, striking out at her. Kit yowled and clawed her hand, and ran; as she hit the drive she glanced back, ducked as a clay pot came flying. It crashed on the concrete inches from her, flinging shards in her face; she leaped away, terrified, through the deep leaves and up an oak tree, climbing and not stopping until she was so high among the tangled leaves that the woman couldn’t see her.