Sneaking low and carefully the kit had followed him around the side of the house and saw him go in through an open glass door. Hiding in the shadowy bushes that grew among the boulders, she watched him enter that big house through an open slider. Was that door open for him} He sniffed the door, then went right on in, as bold as if he lived there. When he had gone inside she pressed her nose against the door, looking.
Joe had disappeared. She peered into the room, then she followed her nose. Joe's scent led across the huge big room that had brightly colored caves all around, all elegantly furnished, so many places to play and to hide. She investigated one fascinating niche then another, rubbing and rolling, racing across the backs of the couches and trying her claws in the brocade. Sniffing leather and velvet, exploring every single object in every single room, she never did find Joe Grey. At last she approached the stairs.
But looking up that broad, angled flight, the kit stopped and backed away. What was up there? Joe had been up there a long time. What was he doing? She had heard no sound, no thump of paws, and she was frightened. She was standing undecided, looking up, when she heard a car park out in front, heard the car door open and close, then a man's footsteps on the stone terrace. Quick she hid behind the closest chair, crouching against the thick, soft velvet.
The kit knew Marlin Dorriss. Didn't everyone in the village know him? He was a philanthropist, whatever that meant, and a womanizer. She knew what that word meant. Wilma said he was usually circumspect in his personal life and that meant quiet and careful like a hunting cat. Except he wasn't circumspect about Helen Thurwell. Marlin Dorriss was tall and slim, with a lovely tan, beautiful deep brown eyes, and short-clipped white hair. Handsome, and kind looking.
But as he crossed the big room and headed up the stairs where Joe Grey had gone, she felt afraid.
She couldn't race up the stairs past him to warn Joe. But she could slip out, and around to the front, and maybe, if she could gain the angled roofs and ledges, she could get inside.
Scooting through the bushes to the front of the house she clawed and scrabbled her way up bits of wall and across slabs of roof, looking above her for an open window-and then suddenly above her, a window slid open.
And there was Joe Grey. She saw his white paw slide the glass back, saw him press between the glass and the shutter with a huge packet in his mouth. He remained so for some time, staring back into the room. Then he crouched as if someone was coming and leaped into space twisting to land on a roof below. Above him, Marlin Dorriss appeared; she could see him at the next window. She choked back a cry. Joe stared down at her.
"Jump," she hissed. "He's coming! Jump! He's opening the shutters! Jump now! Drop that thing and jump!"
Then everything happened at once. Dorriss closed the shutters and turned away, and Joe leaped to the next angle with the brown paper bundle, then leaped again to the concrete. The bundle split open just at the edge of the bushes. In the wind, papers began to flap and dance. Kit had never seen Joe move so fast. Grabbing a mouthful of papers he pulled the package under the bushes and was back again snatching up more. The kit leaped.
And she was beside him snatching pieces of torn paper from the wind. Had Dorriss turned back? Was he looking? Had he seen the package fall before Joe snatched it away? The kit could not see Dorriss now, his silhouette was gone from the window-but then there he was standing at another window looking out.
Surely he couldn't see them beneath the bushes. Had they caught all the papers? Like catching swooping birds from the rooftop. The kit stared at the papers under her paws. "What is all this?"
"Evidence," Joe said, pushing little bits of paper back into the torn envelope, trying to fold it around the ragged mess. Kit helped him stuff papers in. Pressing the envelope into folds with their paws they gripped it between them, their teeth piercing the heavy paper as they tried to hold it together. And when Dorriss turned away, when the windows were clear once more, they dragged it out from the bushes and away.
Keeping to the shadows along the sidewalk, they tried to shelter their burden from the wind. It was a long way to Joe's house, and already the package was heavy. Trying to find a rhythm together, falling into an unwieldy pace, eight paws attempting to move in harmony, they hauled their burden through an empty alley and along the less-frequented backstreets. Kit's head was filled with questions which, with her mouth full, she couldn't ask.
The envelope grew heavier with every step. The wind died as they left the shore, and that helped. But the day grew muggy hot. Kit wanted to stop and rest but Joe didn't pause, pushing on from shadow to shadow and from bush to bush. When a human appeared far down the street they dragged their burden under a porch or behind a fence.
It seemed to take hours to cover those long blocks. When at last they neared Joe's house, the kit's entire being cried out for water, food, and a nap. A pair of tourists wandered past, and they slipped deeper among the bushes where they rested a moment, panting. Peering out at the house, the kit so longed to be inside, so longed for a drink of cool water.
The Damen house looked not at all as it once had. When Kit first came there as a young cat, the house was a white cottage with only one story, what Wilma called a Cape Cod. Now with its new facade of heavy Mexican timbers and plastered walls, it was truly elegant. And the best part was Joe's tower high atop the new upstairs. Kit loved Joe's cat-size house with a view of the village rooftops-it was a cozy bit of cat heaven.
Lucinda and Pedric had planned to build a tower just like it. Atop their own new house. "You will have a tower," Lucinda had said. "A fine tall cat tower looking out at all the world just like Joe Grey's tower."
Now Lucinda and Pedric would never build their dream home.
The kit would give all the towers in all the world to have them back. A tear slid down, spotting the brown envelope and its papers as they hauled their unwieldy burden through Joe Grey's cat door.
Pulling the package through, the papers catching on the door, they dropped it on the African throw rug and lay beside it.
"Heavy as a dead raccoon," Joe said. "Thank you, Kit. I guess you saved the day."
"What did we save? What are those papers?"
Joe Grey smiled. "With luck, this could be the claw that snags the big one. A killing bite to the slickest burglar this village has ever seen." He glanced toward the front door, listening. But the car he'd heard went on by. You never knew when Clyde might bring company, Max Harper or Dallas Garza or Ryan Flannery. "Come on, let's get it upstairs before someone walks in."
Dragging the envelope between them, they hauled it up the new stairway that had been built in half of the old guest room. The other half of that room was now a walk-in closet where Clyde kept all manner of oddments, from unused parts for his weight-lifting equipment to stacks of outdated automotive catalogs. At the top of the steps, in the new master bedroom, they dragged their burden across the new carpet to Clyde's study.
Hauling it up onto Clyde's desk, Joe pawed the papers out and carefully separated the various bills from the torn pages of the notebook. Fetching a rubber band from a box on the desk, he managed to secure the small bits of torn evidence. Watching him, Kit retrieved another rubber band, but he made her put it back. "Don't chew that, Kit. It could kill you."