Azrael didn't know who this was. He didn't know if the stalker was, indeed, connected to Bristol. When the two women left the Bakery, heading for the gallery, he had followed above them, trotting across the rooftops.
From the roofs he had observed the gathering at the gallery, the fancy clothes, the expensive cars pulling up. Then much later he had looked down through the skylight on the Harper party's cozy little supper, and heard Kate and Charlie make their date for breakfast.
Turning away to pace the midnight rooftops, his black tail lashing, his nerves rippling under his skin like electrical shocks, the black tom had devised a plan so audacious, so perfect in its concept, that even when at last he settled down beside the brick chimney, mightily purring, he was so wired he found it hard to sleep. Stretched out against the warm bricks he lay for a long time perfecting the details, the tip of his tail flicking with challenge.
7
Dawn had not begun to bloody the sky when Azrael brushed through Wilma Getz's daisies, trampling the white blooms, and paused beneath her lighted kitchen window. The front yard had no lawn, just stone and brick walks, which he avoided, and flower beds as tangled as a Panamanian jungle and so heavy with dew that immediately his fur was soaked. Scowling, he moved swiftly up the back steps.
Both the front and back doors of Wilma Getz's stone cottage opened to the front garden. The house didn't have any useful backyard, in human terms. The hill that rose nearly straight up behind it was wild with tall grass and heavily populated with small creatures: a serviceable hunting spot. He had seen Dulcie and the tortoiseshell up there just yesterday dragging out a fat rabbit.
Pausing on the back porch, he sniffed the plastic flap of Dulcie's cat door, drinking in the sharp female scents-though he didn't need that message to know that Dulcie and the tortoiseshell had already left the house. Coming down from the roofs he had seen them racing away, likely going to hunt. The tortoiseshell had been talking a mile a minute, making Dulcie drop her ears in annoyance then turn to hush the younger cat before they were overheard. The young tortoiseshell was so eager, so filled with curiosity. The black tom smiled evilly.
Slipping under the flap, he stopped its swinging with his nose and moved through the shadows of the small laundry room, pausing behind a cardboard box filled with newspapers. How civic-minded of the old woman to dutifully recycle her copies of the Molena Point Gazette.
Though maybe old woman wasn't the term for Wilma Getz, even if she did have white hair hanging down her back. Maybe gun-toting granny, the way Greeley called her. The woman had taken no guff from Greeley, that time he came here to see his sister.
Greeley had been drunk as a boiled owl, stinking of booze and needing a bath. No wonder the woman had treated him like dirt. Though she hadn't messed with him, with Azrael. It took more than some white-haired ex-parole officer to run him out of a house.
From the shadows of the laundry, he looked through the open door to the kitchen. Wilma Getz stood at the sink, her back to him, mixing something in a bowl. He could smell raw eggs, and milk, and the sharp aroma of bacon sizzling in the skillet, sending tremors of greed through the tomcat. He licked away some drool. Wilma Getz's long white hair was tied on top her head with a yellow scarf, her sweatshirt printed with yellow flowers; the woman was as wild for color as some Panamanian maid, wearing red and purple and dragging her ragged bouquets.
Padding silently across the blue-and-white linoleum behind her, he could hear a shower running from deeper in the cottage. Moving on past Wilma to the dining room, he slipped under the cherry buffet, where he stretched out on the thick Kerman rug, tucking his paws under trying to keep warm. Why the hell didn't people turn up the heat?
He knew the layout of the house from his visit here with Greeley. That had been a year ago this last summer, when Greeley's sister Mavity got herself hit on the head and had come here from the hospital to recover. Neither Greeley nor Azrael had had anything to do with that little caper. Greeley was drunk the whole time, the old man laying up in that storeroom among those stacked cases of liquor, drowning himself in Scotch and rum-though Greeley had come to visit his sister that once, before they took off again for Panama.
But then Greeley had dragged that shopkeeper woman along on the plane and had married her down there. What a laugh. Couple of old farts playing at being newlyweds, trying to act like spring chickens.
Peering out from beneath the buffet past table and chair legs, he scanned the living room on his left, with its stone fireplace and blue velvet furniture and the painting of Molena Point rooftops over the mantel. Its dark green trees and bright red roofs reminded him of Panama. A wave of homesickness filled him, deeply angering him. He had no use for such sentiment.
Across the dining room from him, the door to the hall stood open, leading to Wilma's bedroom on the left and the guest bedroom on his right. Wilma's big room, where he and Greeley had gone to visit Mavity, was furnished in white wicker, flowered chintz, and a red metal woodstove. A room that, despite his disdain for human trappings, touched within him some regrettably cloying hunger, some weak aspect of his nature that made him want to curl up in there, purring.
He heard the shower stop.
In a minute the bathroom door opened; a cloud of scent reached him, as soft barefoot steps went down the hall. From the guest room came little rustling sounds as if Kate were getting dressed. He imagined her stepping out of her towel naked, beautiful Kate with her creamy skin and silky golden hair, and her golden eyes-unusual for a human. He imagined her as cat, golden and creamy, and again he smiled.
After dressing in pale jeans and a cream polo shirt, Kate pulled on her sandals and flipped a brush through her short hair. She needed to make a decision this morning on one of the three apartments-Charlie's, or one of the other two she had already looked at. If she was really serious about moving, she needed to put down a deposit. In Molena Point, as in the city, nice rentals didn't last.
The thought of moving again, of starting life over once more, though in a smaller way, wasn't pleasant. Moving out of her pretty Molena Point house after Jimmie tried to kill her, hiding from him, then later selling the house and furniture, at the same time being involved in his trial and conviction, had been more than traumatic. She had thought that when she moved to the city that would be the last move.
But now again everything was changed. Now, when she returned to the city, she'd be followed once more, the strange man appearing in the shadows, in dark doorways, always with her like some incurable illness.
She had never really thought, until these last weeks, that when someone threatened you, they stole your freedom; that by following you they confined you, hindering your movements, limiting your options.
Heading down the hall for Wilma's bright kitchen, badly wanting coffee, she paused in the dining room, startled.
Was someone here? Someone in the house besides Wilma and herself? What did she sense? What a strange feeling. A sense of something unwelcome, someone who did not belong here.
Stepping into the living room, she found it empty. She moved back down the hall to Wilma's room. That room, too, was empty; the light, bright room with its red stove, its white wicker furniture and flowered chintz, seemed undisturbed. The bath and the open closet were empty. Yet the feeling of a foreign presence, of being watched, persisted.
This was not at all like when Dulcie or the kit watched her, not a friendly and amused little awareness, no sense of camaraderie.
Surely she was imagining this-yet the sensation was so real, she felt goose bumps. Strange that last night talking with Wilma over dinner she'd had the same uncomfortable idea that someone was watching them and listening-though the patrons at the surrounding tables had all been deep in their own conversations, paying no attention to them.