“This is too much, Lucinda. That woman is putting you on.”
“Just listen, Kit. Just, for once, be still and listen.”
“I have been listening,” Kit said crossly, exchanging an exasperated look with Pedric before she turned her face away from her beloved Lucinda.
“Please, Kit.” Lucinda looked shaken at being pitted against both Pedric and Kit, the two she loved best in all the world. She stroked Kit, trying to make up, but Kit remained aloof, her tail lashing.
“Let me finish,” Lucinda said more sharply. “From the clippings she found, Evina thought that in coming to Molena Point, they were after some kind of artwork, something from the last century.
“I asked her if they seemed the kind of people to know about art. She said the woman’s letters to Huffman mentioned several Seattle galleries where she’d worked. Evina said the letters were vague, didn’t spell out exactly what they might be planning, but said that if he wanted to come out to the coast and help them, they might make a real haul. That’s how the letters put it.
“She said the letters also mentioned Betty Wicken’s brother, Ralph, that she had to keep him with her, after what had happened, that he was a real worry. That if she left him on his own he’d be in trouble again, and be back in prison.”
Lucinda shook her head. “Evina said she cares only about what happened to her niece. That when she found out more, she’d go to the police, and get an attorney. That she took those pictures of the Wickens so she would have some identification to give the police. The Xerox copies, she said, are from a roll of film that Betty Wicken’s brother took into the drugstore.
“She said she saw him by accident, she was back by the cosmetics aisle when he took the film in. Curious about him and what crimes he’d committed that Betty was so worried about, she returned early on the day the pictures were to be ready, picked them up, Xeroxed them, and then returned the envelope saying it was given her by mistake, said the clerk didn’t question that.”
Lucinda looked hard at Pedric, and at Kit. “Evina came all this way to find out what happened to her niece. She planned well enough to bring a piece of Marlie’s laundry, for DNA testing. She means to get into that house down there and look for Marlie or for some further evidence.”
Pedric remained silent. Joe and Dulcie couldn’t see his face. The whole story sounded so strange and unlikely-yet the cats had never known Lucinda to be such a soft touch for a hard-luck story.
“This Leroy Huffman,” Pedric said, “did she tell you anything else about him?”
“She said he’d lived all his life in their little town, and had always been in trouble, but his family had always been tight with those who ran the town, that the present sheriff and Leroy’s father were second cousins, and that Leroy and his two brothers could get away with anything.”
“But how do the pictures fit in?” Kit said. “The ones of the Home and the children?”
“In the house in Eugene, she had found one old, yellowed clipping about the brother, Ralph, and a child abduction. She tried to check on him, to see if he was a registered sex offender, thinking the information might help in some way, but molesters living in Oregon aren’t required to register.” She said no more, but they were all thinking of the dead man and the little child in the plaza. Could Ralph Wicken have tried to kidnap her, and the man fought him off, and Wicken killed him?
“Did she see if he was registered here?” Pedric asked.
“She tried on that Web list,” Lucinda said. “For California, and then the national one, but he wasn’t listed in either.”
The kit began to fidget, thinking about Betty Wicken’s fingerprints on the broken pot shards, and what those prints might show. Did Betty Wicken have a record? And was Wicken their real name, or an alias? Was that why Ralph didn’t show as a registered sex offender?
But now, with Betty’s fingerprints, could the department identify her? And if she had a record, would it show information about her brother? So much to learn, Kit thought nervously, all based on the fingerprints lying unguarded among the bushes, hidden only by a few rotting leaves. She looked intently at Lucinda.
“What?” Lucinda said uneasily.
“We have Betty Wicken’s fingerprints,” Kit said with a twinge of guilt.
Lucinda was very still. “You promised me, Kit, not to go down there.”
Kit looked at Lucinda, as wide-eyed and innocent as a kitten.
“Where are the fingerprints?” the thin older woman said patiently.
Silence.
Lucinda sighed. “Down in that house?”
“Not exactly.”
“You are not to go down there again, for any reason. Particularly now that we know more about those three. Is that clear, Kit?” It was. Kit dropped her gaze in consternation.
But Pedric looked at Kit slyly and rose from his chair, and hiding the first smile the cats had seen all morning, the old man put on his outdoor shoes and his jacket, questioned Kit further, and then went down the hill himself.
Despite his somewhat shady past, Pedric Greenlaw was a tall, erect, white-haired man as dignified-looking as a federal judge. No one who saw him wandering the oak woods would suspect him of prying into the lives of others-even when he knelt to dig among the wet leaves and lift out the white plastic bag, slipping it swiftly under his coat. Pedric had been raised from childhood to the skills of a pickpocket and shoplifter, talents of which he was no longer proud but that could sometimes be put to good use.
22
F ELINE PROMISES ARE not, from a cat’s viewpoint, really meant to be kept. Except, of course, when the cat is closely watched and can do little else. Five minutes after Pedric returned up the hill with the evidence hidden in his coat, while he was busy in the kitchen and Lucinda was on the phone to Max Harper, the cats slipped out and headed for the rental house, reassured that the pot shards were on their way to the police.
Even as they raced down through the wet woods, they heard the Greenlaws’ garage door open, heard the car start. They ducked when they glimpsed Lucinda backing out. Then, in a moment, her car came around and down the hill on the street below, heading for the village with the plastic bag, delivering, hopefully, a vital key to the identity of the strange neighbors-certainly Lucinda might notice her neighbor drop a flowerpot and, already curious and entangled in the mystery of who these people were, would of course hike on down at the first opportunity, and fetch the possible evidence.
Perfectly logical, Pedric said. No need for the snitch to be hanging around the kit’s house, to “accidentally” see that evidence, no need to invite unnecessary connections regarding the cats. They had already been in the cops’ faces this week, during the murder investigation at the plaza, and during the search for the little girl, why encourage unnecessary speculation and awkward questions?
But now, with neither Lucinda nor Pedric watching, the cats approached the rental house studying the blind-covered windows above them. Didn’t anyone in there ever want to look out at the daylight, or ever long for a breath of fresh air?
The driveway was still empty, the car still gone, and so, presumably, was Betty Wicken. There was no sound from within the house, the morning was quiet except for the scratching of a fat gray dove, in the bushes. Were the two men gone? If they, too, had left the house, the empty rooms were prime for a quick break-and-enter. If Evina’s niece might be held prisoner in there, this was the moment to find her.
Or were Leroy Huffman and Betty’s brother, Ralph, still sleeping? Crouching beside the front door, the cats listened. The house seemed taller than it was wide, just the garage at the front, the entry, and one small window. The kitchen and living room were at the back, with a view downhill to the village. Upstairs there seemed to be three bedrooms and a bath-a classic circa-1940s house that hadn’t received much attention since it was built, some seventy years ago. Circling, they paused below the kitchen, where the dinette window jutted out-the kind of shallow bay window that one would decorate with potted plants. The Wickens’ decor ran to newspapers and tattered paperback books stacked on the wide sill, ragged garish books such as one might pick up for a quarter in a used bookstore. They could hear the footsteps of two men, and could hear them talking, then the rattle of a cup against a saucer and the rustle of papers. The coffee smelled like it had been cooking for hours.