There she crouched, shivering and licking sweat from her paws and wanting suddenly to be home, wanting to be held and comforted, wanting to be home with Lucinda and Pedric. She had done some wild break-and-enters, but never where someone threw things at her, threw great, hard pots at a poor little cat.
If that pot had hit her, it could have done her in. She imagined her lifeless body sprawled on the drive as flat as highway kill, imagined her two old folks finding her there and kneeling over her, weeping. Imagined her little cat spirit wandering alone and lost in some mysterious otherworldly realm as she tried to find her way into cat heaven. And she wanted to be gently held and comforted.
But she couldn’t go barging into the bedroom soaking wet and covered with rotting leaves, reduced to nothing but a heap of trembling fear. Nor did she want to explain to Lucinda and Pedric where she’d been, after they’d warned her not to go snooping around that place.
No one had ever thrown things at her like a stray mutt, not since she was a starving kitten and a man in an alley had thrown a shoe at her. That had frightened her very much, had enraged and shamed her because she was so small and alone that she could not fight back.
That shame filled her now, and she was not ready to go home.
Leaping through the oak branches to the next tree and the next, she headed away across the roofs for Dulcie’s house. Dulcie would understand. Both Dulcie and Wilma might scold her for being reckless, but she would not be embarrassed to confess to them, as she would with Lucinda and Pedric. Through the dark predawn she ran, the sky above her streaking with paler gray, the sea wind fingering cold into her wet fur.
Wilma’s garden flowers were wet, too, when she plowed through; she was soaked when she plunged in through Dulcie’s cat door, the plastic flap slapping her backside like a powerful hand chastising her.
She stood in Wilma’s kitchen dripping onto the blue linoleum, sniffing the lingering scents of crème brûlé and chowder from last night, of Dulcie’s late-evening snack that Wilma had brought home, and of the Christmas tree from the living room. And the aroma of freshly brewed coffee, too, which she followed through the familiar house; crossing the dining room toward the hall and Wilma’s bedroom, she paused, dripping water on the Oriental rug, to look in at the Christmas tree; it shone bright and festive with its white and silver and red decorations gleaming among the deep green needles. She looked with interest at the richly wrapped gifts, then moved on, following the smell of fresh coffee.
Dulcie’s housemate so loved coffee in bed that when she woke up she would pad barefoot out to the kitchen, switch on the coffeepot, wait patiently in the cold dark dawn, then carry a full mug back to bed, where she’d tuck up again beneath the warm, flowered quilt. Kit found her so now, sitting up in bed cradling a steaming mug, a warm fire lit in the woodstove, and Dulcie curled by her side looking up sleepily as Kit entered.
“What?” Wilma said, putting out her hand, seeing clearly Kit’s distress; and Dulcie leaped down to sniff her face and her wet fur.
“Where have you been?” Dulcie said. “Oh, what happened?”
“Come up, Kit,” Wilma said, patting the covers. “Come up and get warm, I don’t care if you’re wet.”
Leaping up onto the quilt, Kit snuggled down between them. She was silent for a long time, getting warm, licking at her wet fur, and wondering where to begin. She remained silent until Wilma lifted her chin and looked into her face.
“What, Kit? What upset you?”
Sensibly, Kit started from the beginning, from the moment last night when she’d left Dulcie and Joe on the roof of the Patio Café. Carefully she told everything that had happened since, every little detail. If she didn’t tell it all, Clyde or the Greenlaws would-and if Kit told it first, she could tell it her way.
17
A S WILMA GETZ sipped her coffee in bed, and Kit snuggled down between her and Dulcie telling all about the Greenlaws’ break-in, up in the hills at the Harper ranch, Charlie Harper hurried to do her morning chores, feeding the horses and dogs, turning them out into the pasture and cleaning the stalls. The sky was barely light, the time not quite seven. Max had left for the station some time ago, warmed by a breakfast of buckwheat pancakes and thick sliced bacon. Charlie, seeing him off, had stood in the stable yard watching his truck move away up their long, gravel road, worrying because he never got enough sleep. At the far end of the road, as he turned onto the highway, Max had blinked his lights once and then he was gone over the rise, heading down to the village.
He’d been up late the night before with the Greenlaw break-in, and the night before that he’d gotten to bed later still because of the missing body. Max wasn’t the kind of chief to stay in bed and leave his men to do all the legwork; but it was hard sometimes to rein herself in and not fuss at him that he needed rest.
Last night’s late rain had left the ranch yard muddy and squishing under her boots. As she entered the barn, dawn was beginning to brighten the sky. The air was as cold and fresh as springwater. Soon, as the sun rose, the pasture grass would gleam emerald bright-this time of year the four horses were wild to get out of their stalls, hungry to get at the new sweet grass. Besides Max’s big buckskin gelding and her own sorrel mare, they were boarding the kids’ horses now, a dun mustang that young Dillon Thurwell’s parents had bought for her, and a small, borrowed mare called Parsnip, named for her color, who had been a fine teaching pony for younger Lori Reed.
Lori was experienced enough now for a bigger and more challenging mount, but she so loved Parsnip that Max and Charlie had hesitated to return the little mare to her owners. As Charlie fed the horses and the two big dogs and then turned them all out to the pasture, her thoughts moved from the disappearing body to the Greenlaws’ mysterious intruder, her head filled with a tangle of questions. The department would come up with the answers, given time-but how much time was there for that scared little girl?
And was there a connection between the child and the break-in at the Patty Rose Home? It seemed to Charlie there had to be, if someone was secretly taking pictures of the orphan children.
As late as it had been last night when Max got home from the Greenlaws’, he’d described the break-in and the photographs; he had been royally irritated that Lucinda had refused to press charges. Without charges they couldn’t arrest the woman, nor could they officially do much to investigate the incident. Max said Pedric had tried to reason with Lucinda, but Lucinda wouldn’t give, and that wasn’t like her at all. She’d said she wanted a few days to see what the woman was up to, and had promised not to put herself in danger. But why did Lucinda care about a woman who’d broken into their home?
When Max pointed out that there could be a connection between this woman, the neighbors, and the break-in at the school, Lucinda had shrugged it off. That, too, was not like sensible Lucinda Greenlaw. Lucinda knew the woman could be violent, but she wouldn’t listen.
It wasn’t as if the older lady didn’t believe bad things could happen; Lucinda’s first husband had turned out to be a thief and philanderer. After he’d deceived her for years, Lucinda had grown far more wary.
She’d been so lucky to meet and marry Pedric; he had helped her through that time, and was a dear. But then, while the two were on their extended honeymoon trip in their RV, they had been kidnapped and nearly killed. Pedric’s cleverness, and the toughness of both old folks, had saved them.
That was when they changed their minds about building their new home up on the crest of isolated Hellhag Hill, and decided to settle instead in the village, closer to law enforcement and to medical facilities. The Greenlaws weren’t cowards, far from it, but at eighty-some, it can be nice to have certain support services near at hand. Their biggest consideration, however, had been the fact that Kit would be closer to Joe and Dulcie, that the little cat wouldn’t have that long and sometimes dangerous race up and down the hills to the village. So, Charlie thought, when Lucinda is usually so levelheaded and sensible, why is she suddenly so protective of this housebreaker? Well, maybe I can talk to her.