“If they stay in the kitchen,” Kit said, “we can be in and out, and they’ll never know.”
They thought the windows, with their dry, cracked frames, would be a snap for the three of them together to jimmy, but by the time they’d leaped up, trying half a dozen double-hung panes, working at the old locks with impatient claws, they decided these round, brass closures were stronger than they looked. All the windows were locked tight or perhaps stuck tight with the ancient paint. Sealed for eternity, as far as they were concerned.
The garage might have proven easier, except that its three small high windows were covered, inside, with plywood. They sniffed beneath the electric garage door and smelled a miasma of grease, mildew, new paint, and gas vapors.
At the far side of the garage, a small door opened to the backyard. Leaping up, Joe swung on the knob. It turned freely, but kick as he might against the molding, the door wouldn’t open. “Feels like it’s bolted from inside.”
Beside the little door stood an overflowing garbage can amid a half-dozen sodden cardboard boxes filled with empty bottles and wet, wadded newspapers. Very high above were three small, mesh-covered ceiling vents. Maybe big enough for a cat, maybe not. Leaping from the top of the garbage can, Joe managed to snag the mesh of one-and got his claws hung in it. He couldn’t get loose. Panicked, fighting the screen, he tore it enough to free himself. He dropped down, his ears back, swearing angry hisses.
“Mesh is nailed or stapled on, and sealed with old paint.”
“Come on,” Dulcie said. “We-”
“The car’s coming,” Kit said. Ducking into the bushes, they watched the old green Dodge turn in to the drive, parking before the front door. Betty Wicken stepped out, her long, dry-dull black hair tangled on the collar of her black peacoat. Moving quickly up the steps, she was just stepping in through the front door when the cats, with swift timing, shot in behind her. They made not a sound, did not once brush her ankles as they passed her and ducked under the hall table. The whole house shook when Betty slammed the front door.
The table had a low shelf just above them, which helped to hide them-a shelf thick with dust. Didn’t people know how to use a duster? It seemed to Dulcie that they had spent half their lives crouched in mite-ridden household dust beneath someone’s unkempt furniture-and household dust was not at all the same as good clean garden dirt or beach sand, was nothing like the fresh earth on the wild, far hills.
When Kit tried to stifle a sneeze and couldn’t, Dulcie and Joe threw their bodies against her, muffling the sound. Above them, Betty had pulled off her coat, tossed down her keys, and moved away down the hall toward the kitchen. They breathed easier when she’d gone.
The entry was dim and small. To their right, a flight of stairs led up to the bedrooms; the living room was beyond it, looking out to the back. Shoddy furniture, early Salvation Army, that made Dulcie wonder what kind of rent they were paying.
Down the hall near the kitchen was a door that breathed out the same garage smells of gas, motor oil, and paint. Joe thought the paint smelled like automotive enamel, with which he was familiar from Clyde ’s classic-car restorations. In the kitchen Betty poured herself a cup of scorched-smelling coffee and sat down at the breakfast table.
“They fit?” Leroy asked, lifting his big-boned hand to scratch his shaggy brown hair.
Betty nodded. “They haven’t changed the locks, the garage, or the house.” She jingled two keys on a ring and dropped them back into her pocket. Using her fingers as a comb, she shook out her black hair, its tangled mass so dry one imagined dandruff drifting into her coffee. With the three tenants thus occupied, Joe Grey peered with predatory interest up the narrow stairs.
Before Dulcie could speak, he was on the first step. “Stay and watch them,” he hissed. “Distract them if they start up there. I won’t be a minute.” And he disappeared up the worn carpet treads to the top floor. Dulcie hoped no one else was there-except maybe the kidnapped girl. If she had been kidnapped, if Huffman had brought her all this way. That seemed so strange. Why would he? As some kind of hostage protection?
“Supposed to rain again tonight,” Betty was saying. “Maybe hail.”
Leroy smiled, easing his muscled bulk in the small dinette chair. “That hail the other night…Could of fired off a canon, no one’d of heard.”
Ralph Wicken grinned. He was a small man, thin head with short crew-cut hair, ears sticking out as if he might take off in frightened flight.
“Gets dark about seven,” Betty said. “They tuck the kiddies up at eight. Lights go on upstairs, off again around eight-thirty.”
Huffman said, “They’ve hired more guards, they’re all over the place at night. Middle of the day would be better. The day they do that judging, place’ll be crawling with people, trucks, power tools, carpenters hammering away. That should be enough diversion.”
“What time do the day-school kids leave?” Ralph said. His eyes were muddy brown, like Betty’s, but his brows were thick and black.
“You’ll keep away from the kids,” Betty told him. “You mess around this time and blow it, I swear I’ll turn you in, Ralph. Leave you in prison for the rest of your stupid life.”
Ralph smiled. Betty seemed pale and nervous. “I mean it. I won’t have one of your mindless escapades mess this up.”
Ralph’s face flushed red and he lowered his glance. Betty watched him with distaste, then glared at Leroy. “Why the hell did you let him have the camera? I told you-”
“I didn’t let him have it, he took it. Middle of the night, sneaked in our room, took it off the dresser. You didn’t wake up! Well, hell, neither of us missed the damn thing.”
“I don’t see what difference,” Ralph whined. “How come you can do what you want, but you’re always on my case?”
Betty fixed her gaze again on her brother. “You stay away from that school. There’s a hell of a difference.”
“We better take him with us,” Leroy said. “Keep an eye on him.”
Ralph’s thin face twisted into a toddlerlike sulk. “No one knows me here. Why do you always have to…?”
“This isn’t Oregon,” Betty snapped. “ California, these new laws, they find you’re not registered, you’re as good as locked up anyway. Serve you right,” she said coldly.
The kit, sitting silently beside Dulcie, watched Betty Wicken, puzzled. “Maybe I’ve seen her in the village,” she whispered softly.
“Where, Kit?”
“A long time ago. I can’t remember where, I’ve been trying.”
Whispering, both cats glanced toward the kitchen, but no one had heard. No human had a cat’s range of hearing. Mankind was, in many ways, an inferior and handicapped specimen. God’s work left unfinished, Dulcie thought, at least in the areas of auditory skills and night vision.
But now Kit’s own skills seemed to have faltered. For the first time Dulcie could remember, the tortoiseshell didn’t have total recall. The more she studied Betty Wicken, the more shadowy was the memory Kit tried to bring forth of where she had seen the woman. Where and when? Under what circumstances?
Betty drained her coffee and picked up a stack of papers from the kitchen table, flipping through them. They seemed to be magazine articles. The cats could see colored pages torn from slick publications, some stapled together, some with pictures of houses. Was that the Stanhope mansion? Both cats swallowed back mewls of recognition as Betty sat looking at the page. But then Betty flung down the pictures and rose, giving Ralph another glare-a look of distaste and of long-standing resignation.