“That’s been a week ago,” Charlie said. “They cleaned up here the end of last week. Mavity didn’t mention anything, but I’ll ask.”
“They came back yesterday. I thought you’d changed the schedule. I’d just pulled in through the gate when I saw the van pull away from the curb, down by the studio. I wondered why they didn’t park on the grounds as they usually do.”
Charlie frowned, puzzled. Maybe Mavity’s crew had cleaned one of their accounts near the school, though she didn’t remember anyone up there changing their standing appointments. And why would Mavity park down at the end of the school?
Charlie seldom went out on the work crews anymore, but she kept the schedules, paid the girls’ salaries and benefits, and handled the paperwork. Her cleaning teams were booked months in advance, and she could use more help, but it was hard to find competent new hires. Dorothy was proof of that, as hard a time as she was having finding acceptable people.
“I thought I saw one of the school’s old cleaning women in the village, a few days ago,” Dorothy said. “She drove off before I could hail her. I wish she’d come back-though I wasn’t sure it was the same woman. Her hair was black instead of mouse brown. Same tall, awkward look. She was a good worker. A rather sour sort, but she didn’t mind heavy, dirty work. She did most of the cleanup when we bought the old studio, got rid of some trash and an invasion of mice. Good thing the paintings had all been moved out, long before. Those mice would have done hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of damage.”
They parted after their delicious lunch, and Charlie, walking back through the village to her car, thought about the old stone studio. It was easy to imagine the lovely isolation Anna Stanhope had enjoyed, living and working in that charming retreat.
She had to wonder about Anna’s studio appearing, at different angles, in the background of several of the intruder’s telephoto copies. Well, but the studio was there, she told herself. Of course it appeared; a photographer could hardly mask it out.
26
F ROM AMONG THE boxes behind the blue van, the cats watched Betty and Leroy finish loading their tools in through its side door, then vanish back into the house. The door to the kitchen clicked shut and the dead bolt slid home, seating itself with a solid thunk-and there was no way to open the dead bolt on the garage side, except with a key.
They hadn’t wanted to barge back in the house behind those two, to be shut in again with Betty and Ralph Wicken and Leroy. Getting into the house originally, on Betty’s heels, and then slipping into the garage so close to her, had already stretched their luck. It would take only one faint rub against a pant leg, and those three would be on them like hawks on a rabbit.
And, while Betty Wicken was admittedly a brutal woman to throw a clay pot at a little cat, her brother, Ralph, stirred a deeper fear. Ralph gave all three cats the chills. His thin face and close-cropped hair and big meaty ears made him seem almost like a predatory animal they might meet on the wild hills-but it was Ralph’s smell, of unhealthy, nervous sweat, that made their fur really bristle.
Even if, to most humans, they were only cats and presented no imminent threat, they did not trust what Ralph or Betty Wicken might think to do to them.
But now, locked in the Wickens’ garage like mice in a cage, the cats grew uneasy. To someone small, with only claws and teeth, the solidly built garage seemed nearly impregnable.
The other pedestrian door, which led to the backyard, was secured high above the knob, near the top, with a fastening that they might, or might not, be able to manipulate. And the plywood over the three small, high windows looked to be securely nailed.
And of course the electric garage door, if they leaped up to push the button, would cause a racket that would bring all three residents storming out-to glimpse them racing away, to realize it must have been cats who had opened that door, and to grow unreasonably alarmed and hostile. Dulcie licked her sweaty paws. Kit bit at a nonexistent flea, and Joe Grey paced, staring up to the ceiling, at the screened air vents high above them between the rafters.
But first he approached the small side door leading out to the garbage cans, the door they hadn’t been able to open from outside. There was a thin line of light on the left, where the door fit unevenly into its frame. The dead bolt had an interior knob, but while it might be possible to turn that, the hasp and loop high above, installed nearly at the top of the door, made the tomcat lay back his ears in consternation.
There was no padlock through the loop; instead the householders had shoved a heavy stick of wood through. Interesting that they were so security conscious. He wondered if he could climb on the stacked boxes and make a wild leap at the stick-wondered how much noise that would create inside the house as he thudded against the door. Behind him, Kit and Dulcie fidgeted. Joe leaped at last, not at the door but to the top of the van and from the van to the rafters.
Crouched on a rafter, he considered the three tiny, mesh-covered vents. They were so small that he wondered, even if he could claw the screen off, whether a cat could squeeze through. There looked to be less than three inches of clearance, and Joe wasn’t sure he could get his head through.
But behind him, Dulcie wasn’t waiting. Leaping to the van’s roof and to the rafter beside him, she stood up on her hind legs and attacked the screen, wildly clawing.
Off balance, she tore a rip down the nearest mesh grid, and slipped and nearly fell. Joe snatched at her, and braced her with his shoulder. The grid was tightly in place, stapled to the wooden molding and sealed with old paint. Kit leaped up beside them and reared up, too.
Frantically clawing and joggling each other, the two females at last loosened one corner, blood spattering from their paws. Then Joe took a turn, and with teeth and claws the three cats together managed to pull a corner of the screen free-they pulled until the whole screen came flying, flinging Dulcie off the rafter. She hung clinging, Joe’s teeth gripping her neck like a mama cat holding a kitten.
He pulled her up until she got a purchase and, scrambling, righted herself. Her paws were bleeding, and her lip was cut-but Kit had squeezed though the vent and was gone, tufts of her dark, bushy tail left behind on the torn screen. They heard her hit the garbage can.
Dulcie went next, fighting through the rough opening, pulling out hanks of her own fur and raking her tender flesh. Joe heard a second thud as she dropped onto the metal lid.
Gingerly, the tomcat reared tall and poked his head into the little space. He was bigger than Dulcie and Kit, and he’d hate like hell to get hung up. If he could get his head through, though, then the rest of him could follow. He fought, clawing and wriggling. Rusty wire ripped along his shoulder, and something jabbed down his leg. A nail? But suddenly he was free, and falling.
He hit the garbage can and thumped to the ground-and they ran, scorching around the side of the house and across the drive, smelling their own blood and leaving bloody paw prints, and into the shadows of the woods, where they crouched together, Dulcie and Kit shivering and Joe Grey tense and angry. Well, at least he’d memorized the license plates of both vehicles, though that seemed, at the moment, small reward.
“Whatever the Wickens are up to,” Dulcie said, licking her paw, “Harper needs to know about the van.”
Joe looked back at her. “I’m not sure that’s smart.”
“Why ever not? We-”
“If the Wickens go up there during the playhouse competition, we’ll see the van. Whatever they mean to steal, we’ll see them in the act, and then we’ll call the department.”
“What if they kidnap a child?”