And she couldn't call out; the line was dead.
She'd have to go down and get her cell phone. How stupid, to have left it in the car. Fetching her keys, she pulled on her coat, snatched up the pepper spray, locked the door behind her, and went down the stairs, hating this sense of fear. Reaching the garage she moved quickly, watching between other cars. Unlocking her Riviera she snatched up the phone, hit the lock, and slammed the door. She was up the stairs and in the apartment again before fear had immobilized her. This was crazy; she couldn't live like this. On a hunch, she tried the apartment phone again-and got the insistent beeping of the message service.
Sitting down on the couch with the now functioning phone, she started to play back her messages, then decided first to call Clyde. She needed, very much, to hear his gruff and reassuring voice.
The downstairs rooms of the Damen cottage were dark, but upstairs behind the closed shutters the bedroom and study were bright, the desk lamp lit, a warming fire burning in the study where Clyde sat at his desk filling out parts orders. Or trying to, working around the prone body of the sleeping gray tomcat where he lay sprawled across the catalogs. Far be it from Joe to move. Far be it from Clyde, who found the tomcat as amusing as he was exasperating, to ask him.
Ryan had left half an hour ago, after an early supper in the big new kitchen: takeout from their favorite Mexican cafe. Impatiently waiting for the building permit for the Harper place, she had gone home to her blueprints, anxious to finish putting together a design proposal for a remodel at the north end of the village. "I want to get that wrapped up, so I can concentrate on the Harper job."
"You are not," Clyde had said, "going to get so busy that you keep pulling men off one job to work on another, like most contractors? Delaying all the jobs?"
"No fear." She had grinned at him, flipping back her short dark hair. "I can manage my work better than that." She had given him a warm, green-eyed smile and laid her hand over his; her closeness led him, more and more lately, to imagine her always there with him. He sat at his desk now thinking about Ryan sharing the house, comfortable and warm and exciting.
Clyde's view of women had changed dramatically since the time, a few years back, when every conquest was exciting, when every new looker was a challenge even if he couldn't stand her as a person. Joe Grey had chided him more than once about bringing home some airhead. Well, that life was not for him anymore; the idea of bringing home some bimbo now disgusted him.
The change had started when Kate left her husband and came to him for help. He had been so smitten with her, and for so long, but after that night when he had hidden her from Jimmie, he had been so confused by her bizarre nature.
He had mooned over Kate for a long time after that, but she had distanced herself. She had known better than he that with the difference between them a relationship would never work; she had seen too clearly his fear of her impossible talents.
The night she left Jimmie and came running here to him, he would not believe what she told him about her alternate self, although her feline nature was part of the reason Jimmie wanted to kill her. In order to prove to him what she could do, she had done it. Standing before him, whispering some unlikely spell, she had taken the form of a cat. A cream-colored cat, sleek and beautiful, with golden eyes like Kate's and marmalade markings.
His fear had been considerable. He had charged into the bedroom and slammed the door and wouldn't open it. He did not want to see her again in either form. The next day he'd been better, although the concept still shook him. He became civil once more; but he would never get over it.
And yet even after that shattering incident, he had longed for her, had tried every way to get her to come home again after she moved to San Francisco.
Neither Joe nor Dulcie could take human form. Nor did Joe Grey want to; the tomcat said he liked his life as it was, that the talents he had were plenty. Well, the upshot for Clyde was that he had begun to look at a woman as a person. To want to know who she was and what she thought about life.
While pining over Kate, he had dated Charlie, a woman as honest and real as anyone he'd ever known. It was then he had let himself realize, as he had known deeply all along, what the real values were. It was then he put away his shallow philosophy and turned, as Max had done years before, to look at what a woman believed deep down, what she cared about in life.
Joe Grey would say, big sea change. The tomcat had ragged him plenty about his earlier lifestyle. Clyde stared down at Joe now. The tomcat seemed to make himself twice as big when he sprawled across a desk where a person was working. "You wouldn't consider rolling over, so I can finish this order?"
Joe stared up at him, his yellow eyes wide and innocent. "You think you should try Kate again? The phone has to be out, it wouldn't be busy all this time, even Kate can't talk that long- but she has to be home, she's expecting Lucinda and Pedric, she'll be worried."
They had been trying all evening to get her, calling both the house and her cell phone. Clyde wished he had started calling that morning. Both he and Wilma had been waiting for more information, for the sheriff to find the bodies, for some assurance the old couple had indeed been killed. Then when he tried to get Kate this evening, busy signal. "I left a dozen messages on her cell phone. Why the hell doesn't she check her messages!"
Joe said, "Maybe by now she's had the TV on. If it's been on the news, she…"
Again Clyde hit the redial. If she had seen the news, if she knew, maybe she was talking with Wilma.
He got another busy. Five minutes passed as he tried to work, patiently lifting Joe's gray paw to check a price, peering under a gray ear to retrieve a parts number.
"Try again," Joe said. "I'm worried about her."
Clyde tried three more times before Kate's phone rang. Just one ring, and she picked up. Clyde left the speaker on so Joe wouldn't crowd him pressing against the phone. "Kate? You okay?"
"No, I'm not okay. Did you…"
"You heard the news."
"This can't have happened. It's impossible to believe. What were they doing out on the highway in the middle of the night? If they'd had some emergency, say one of them got sick, they'd have called the medics. Or the sheriff. Or a cab. They'd been staying in a campground, they could have called the manager. Have you talked with anyone up there? The highway patrol? The Sonoma County sheriff? What have they found? Couldn't it be some kind of mistake? The wrong RV. Or maybe they-"
Clyde said, "Wilma talked with the sheriff. They've had a crew there all day going through the wreckage."
"And?"
"They- So far, no bodies. Nothing much at all left." He glanced at Joe. "It was a terrible fire, Kate. Ashes, rubble. The truck driver… they did find his body, in his crashed truck. The truck wasn't burned as badly as the RV."
Kate was silent for a long time. When she spoke again, her voice was very small. "They were so happy together. Their late marriage was like a fairy tale, like one of their Old-World folktales. It isn't fair. They were having such a good time traveling. And planning to build their dream house…"
Clyde stared at the phone.
"It's all wrong," Kate said. "Their campsite hadn't been vacated, they left canvas chairs, a folding table set up under the pines. The late news said some towels were left hanging on a portable line, an expensive bear-proof garbage can."
The fur along Joe Grey's spine felt rigid. His paws were cold as he sorted through the facts-Lucinda and Pedric heading for San Francisco to stay with Kate, Lucinda with the same kind of jewelry that Consuela had gone to steal from Kate and that the appraiser had tried to buy.
Moving closer to the phone, Joe placed a paw on Clyde's hand, staring at the speaker.
Clyde scowled and shoved the phone at him.