“Let’s get to work.” She headed for the door to the garage, and Leroy got to his feet. Ralph remained at the table, his expression one of stubborn secrecy. Dulcie glanced up the stairs, wishing Joe would hurry; she was crouched to leap up after him when he appeared at the top.
Silently he trotted down to them, a gray shadow with only his white marks to attract any sudden attention. And as Betty and Leroy moved into the garage, the three cats were behind them, diving through on their heels, another bold gamble that left their paws sweating; and they melted among a stack of cardboard boxes standing beside the door.
“What did you find?” Dulcie whispered, edging close to Joe.
Joe Grey pawed cobwebs from his whiskers. “No sign of anyone else, no scent but theirs. I don’t think that girl was ever here.” He reared up between the boxes until he could see Betty and Leroy standing at a workbench along the opposite wall-and could see the vehicle parked less than two feet from his nose. His stifled growl made Dulcie and Kit rear up, staring.
As the Wickens stood selecting tools from a cardboard box on the workbench, assembling sledgehammers and handsaws and an electric drill, the cats could only gape with shock. In the dim and crowded garage, parked between a row of storage cupboards and a large tan SUV, stood Charlie Harper’s blue van. Charlie’s “Fix-It, Clean-It” van, its logo lettered clearly on the side. Charlie’s blue Chevy van that she had bought when she started her home maintenance business and had used ever since, the van that should be parked either at a cleaning job, or up at the seniors’ house for Mavity’s convenience.
“What’s it doing here?” Dulcie hissed. “Charlie’s crew sure isn’t cleaning this house! And why inside the garage?”
“Did they steal it?” Kit said. “But when? Charlie didn’t say a word last night. How…?”
“Shhh,” Joe hissed. “Keep your voice down.”
“That Betty doesn’t work for her?” Kit whispered. “That woman hasn’t gone to work for Charlie?” But Charlie was hiring, the business was expanding, and they all knew that it was hard to find competent help.
“Of course she doesn’t work for her,” Dulcie said shakily. “I know everyone she’s hired. You saw the record checks that Davis ran on the applicants-every one of Charlie’s employees has signed a release so the department could check for a record.” The police chief’s wife could not afford, for the safety of Max and his men and for the reputation of the department, to hire anyone who had the least potential of turning dangerous or stealing from her clients.
“But how…” Dulcie began, then, “Where’s Charlie? Oh, they haven’t…This can’t be another kidnapping!”
“It’s Mavity who drives it the most,” Joe pointed out, staring up at the van’s windows, half expecting to see someone looking back at them trying to get their attention. All three cats were thinking of last summer, when both Dulcie’s housemate and Charlie Harper had been brutally kidnapped and their lives in danger. But then, “Look,” Joe hissed, rearing up taller. “Take a closer look.”
23
I T WAS JUST noon when Ryan Flannery left her construction job in the village and walked the three blocks to Clyde’s house. A cozy lunch, just the two of them in the sunny patio, should take the edge off her grouchy mood. Glancing in the front window, she paused a moment to admire the tree they had decorated, and the garland wreath Clyde had hung on the door, then she headed around to the back. She was greeted by wild happy barks and loud banging as Rock leaped at the gate; and, when she opened the gate, by a dervish of excited hound. Rock danced around her, but never touched her, testimony to the improvement in his behavior. She took his outstretched front paws in her hands, let them rest on her arm as she talked baby talk to him.
A year ago, when the big, stray Weimaraner had adopted her, he would have nearly knocked her over leaping on her and clawing her arms for attention, a lovable clown with no idea of manners. Kneeling, she hugged Rock and scratched his sleek, sun-warmed back. He grinned, and slurped her ear-though the big, silver purebred had mastered the basics of obedience training, he was still a clown, and a challenge.
No one, she thought, unless they were dedicated athletes with plenty of time to devote, should even think of owning a Weimaraner, a breed meant for action and hard work. Without both, the dogs were miserable, and so were their owners.
Rising, she moved into the patio with Rock at her side, and closed the gate behind them. The walled retreat was almost balmy on this bright winter day; and she was inordinately pleased with the small, private world she’d designed and built for Clyde. Clyde had swept away the last of the fallen maple leaves, and the chair cushions were clean and dried of their morning dew. The long, plastered planters were bright with cyclamens and begonias, and a pot of poinsettias stood on the picnic table. The cushion on the chaise still bore the impression of the big silver hound, where Rock had been napping. On the table beside the poinsettias were a cooler, picnic plates and napkins, and a tray laid out with packets of sandwich makings and plastic containers of salad-this, too, attested to Rock’s improved manners, that he could now be left alone with a table full of food, she thought smugly. But then she looked up through the kitchen window and saw that Clyde was on guard. He grinned, and waved at her.
Fetching a bottle of nonalcoholic Buckler’s from the cooler, she popped the lid and stretched out on the chaise, rubbing Rock’s ears as he came to lean against her, and watching Clyde through the window as he filled the coffeepot. It was nice that, since she’d started the nearby job, she could run over for lunch. Slowly, now, the tension of the morning began to ease.
She’d been so hoping for a quiet holiday season, for lovely, peaceful evenings with Clyde before the fire, admiring their joint-effort Christmas tree, Rock and Joe and Snowball and the two older cats sprawled around them. No serious worries, no violent police matters to prod her with fear for her uncle Dallas and Max and their friends.
Certainly Max and Dallas had enjoyed very little about the Christmas season, with the department looking for a killer and for a vanished body, and trying to identity a silent little girl who was too scared and traumatized to say a word-and now the Greenlaws’ strange break-in that seemed to hint at an uglier scenario. And to top it off, there was Charlie’s strange preoccupation and her unwillingness to share her problem.
Charlie should be turning handsprings right now, should be ecstatic with her upcoming exhibit and book signing, but instead she was grim one minute, and drawn away the next as if to another world.
In fact, when Ryan thought about it, Charlie was that way with every major crime. Whenever Max and the department faced more than the usual danger, Charlie turned moody and secretive-and that thought saddened Ryan. A cop’s wife couldn’t live like that. Charlie knew that. They’d talked about it at some length, and she’d thought Charlie was finally committed to living each day to the fullest and not fretting about tomorrow. Committed to living the only way a cop’s family could live, and still survive. Charlie said she lived like that and thought like that. But if that was true, then what was this preoccupation?
Was worry over Max not the only cause of her stress? And a sudden realization startled Ryan: It wasn’t only Charlie who seemed to experience these worried, preoccupied spells. Clyde did, too. And Wilma Getz. And even the older, levelheaded Greenlaws. During every increase in crime that stressed the department and kept the men extra busy, Ryan’s friends seemed to turn moody and withdrawn, and, sometimes, inexplicably secretive.