Harper hit the speaker.
The dispatcher said, "Thought you'd want this one, Captain."
When she'd put through the call and when Joe heard Lucinda's voice, he nearly fell off the bookshelf. The Greenlaws were alive? Not in the hospital, not harmed in any way, but alive and heading for the city?
Joe listened with the two officers to Lucinda's amazing story, watched the two men's pleased smiles, and listened to Harper's questions and Lucinda's responses: no, they hadn't yet talked with the sheriff, yes they were watching that they weren't followed. When Harper had the whole story and had hung up, he and Dallas were both grinning. This time, even without the law, it looked like the bad guy had got what he deserved. The sense of satisfaction that filled the officers and filled Joe Grey was thick enough to cut with a knife.
As the tomcat dropped from the bookcase to the desk, hit the floor yawning, and padded lazily out of the room, he was so wired that he could barely keep from racing up the hall to the glass door shouting for the dispatcher to let him out-by this time Dulcie knew, the kit knew, and he could hardly wait to hear the little tattercoat's excited yowls.
25
The Garden House Hotel had once been a pair of private residences, handsome Victorian homes each adorned with cupolas and round shingled towers, with diamond-paned bay windows and gingerbread trim along the intricate roof lines. To join the two houses, the architect had constructed a domed solarium, a large and handsome Victorian-style structure to accommodate the gardenlike lobby, the registration desk, and the patio portion of a casual restaurant. There were two elevators, one for each wing. Lucinda and Pedric Greenlaw parked in the small lot next door that was reserved for hotel guests. The time was 9 A.M. They had risen early, as was their custom, and had checked out of their Fort Bragg motel after only a quick snack for breakfast. Driving carefully in the dark pre-dawn for a while, they hoped to hit the lull before the late morning traffic that would be moving into the city across the Golden Gate Bridge.
Arriving at the Garden House, parking in the lot next door, and locking their rented Olds Cutlass, they hurried into the hotel carrying their only luggage: two small duffels, one old and scarred that had rolled with them out of the RV on that fateful night, and a new red canvas bag that they had purchased in a drugstore in Fort Bragg along with extra sweatshirts, socks, underwear, canned fruit, snack food, and half a dozen bottles of water. The two bags contained most of their worldly possessions, except for their CDs and investments. Approaching the door to the hotel, they were both thinking hungrily of pancakes and bacon and coffee when Lucinda, glancing up at the third and top floor of the hotel, stopped, laughing.
"How nice! They allow pets. Or maybe they have a hotel cat." A black cat sat in the window, staring down at them. They glimpsed the animal for only a moment before a woman picked it up, and both disappeared. Pedric looked at her, smiling. If Lucinda had a soft spot for anything in the world it was cats- though particularly their own tortoiseshell Kit, whom they had both missed very much during their travels.
Last night on the phone, the kit had nearly deafened them both, yowling and shouting with joy, so thrilled that they had survived the crash, demanding to know when they would be home and for how long. When Lucinda repeated to her, "For good, Kit. Forever and good," the kit had, as Wilma said, bounced off the walls with excitement. Now Pedric stood holding Lucinda's hand, both watching the high window thinking the cat might reappear, and admiring the hotel's domes and gingerbread and the soaring solarium; and the tall, thin, handsome eighty-year-olds grinned at each other like children. How pleasant to be in the city for a few days before they headed home. For a few moments they stood watching passersby on the street, too, and seeing what shops were nearby and admiring the San Francisco skyline against the blue sky.
But then, turning to approach the solarium lobby, looking through the long, bright windows into the tiled garden room with its lush plants, Pedric drew Lucinda back suddenly.
"Come away quickly." Turning and pulling her away, he hurried her down the street, into the first doorway they came to, into the entry to a used bookshop, a low-ceilinged, shadowed niche where the morning sun had not yet found access. "Give me your cell phone," Pedric said.
"It's in the car," Lucinda said, peering out, pressing forward trying to see. But Pedric pulled her back and inside, through the open door of the bookshop.
The store was small and dim, its shelves arranged with unusual neatness for a used bookstore, and it smelled dust-free and clean. Most of the volumes had leather bindings and looked expensive and in fine condition. The gold lettering on the front window, when they read it slowly backward, informed them that the shop featured California History, for collectors. Frowning, Lucinda peered out through the glass, watching the street and the hotel entry.
"Didn't you see him?" Pedric said. "Look there! Just shutting the trunk of that car! The man who stole the RV."
"It can't be." Lucinda dropped her duffel bag by a stack of books, craning to see out through the crowded display window between the neatly arranged volumes.
On the curb before the hotel, a thin, sandy-haired man was just swinging in through the passenger door of a pale blue Corvette. They could see a woman driving, could see her profile and a tangle of curly black hair. As she pulled away, a dark shape blurred across the back window as if a small dog had jumped up on the ledge behind the seat. Then the car was gone, losing itself in the traffic.
Turning back, Pedric snatched a business card from the counter and noted down the license. Slipping this in his pocket and taking Lucinda's hand, he moved with her deeper into the store, where the proprietor watched them-a short, thirtyish man with a round, smooth face, an unusually short haircut that let his scalp shine through, dark shirt and slacks, and a wrinkled corduroy jacket. When Pedric asked to use the phone, he passed the instrument over the counter at once with a gentle, almost Old World courtesy.
Within minutes, Pedric had called the police, had described the theft of their RV up in Humboldt County so the dispatcher could check police records, and had given them a description of the thief and the car, and its license number. The bookstore owner had turned back to shelving books, but was quietly listening.
A patrol car must have been in the neighborhood because by the time the elderly couple had walked back to the hotel and checked in, a squad car was pulling to the curb. They went out to join the two officers.
A young black woman officer emerged from the driver's side. "I'm Officer Hart." She looked like she was fresh out of college. The older officer, Sean Maconachy, was a ruddy-faced man with graying hair and a sour, closed expression.
"Let's step inside," Maconachy said. "Can you be certain that was the man who kidnapped you?"
"We are certain," Pedric said. "Yesterday evening we filed a complaint with the Humboldt County sheriff. Will that allow you to pick up the car and arrest the man?"
"According to our information," Maconachy said, "the accident happened last Sunday. Nearly a week ago. And you did not file the report until yesterday?"
"It's a long story," Pedric said. "We were afraid to file before. We had escaped the RV before the wreck, but afterward, when the thief wasn't found, we assumed he had escaped too. We didn't know where he might be. We holed up in a motel, afraid he might find us. Afraid, for a while, even to contact the sheriff.