He stood staring uncertainly around the garden, then wandered away up the path, his gait slow and hesitant. As he stumbled along Ocean, the black cat dropped down out of an oak tree and fell into step beside him.
At the same instant, Joe and Dulcie leaped from the window seat and scorched across the library and out Dulcie's cat door. They reached the front garden just as Greeley and Azrael turned the corner, disappearing into a tunnel of dark, low-growing cypress trees.
The two cats grimaced at the death smell, softened by the scent of crushed lilies. Joe placed an exploring paw on Ralph's arm.
Dulcie nosed at Dora's hand-and drew back from the icy flesh. She looked at Joe, stricken.
"Greeley didn't do this. Greeley didn't do this terrible thing, not to his own daughter."
"Maybe he just found them. They've been dead for hours, Dulcie. If he killed them, why would he come back?"
"But if he just found them, why wouldn't he head for the police station? He went in the opposite direction."
"Maybe he was too upset. Maybe he'll call the cops from somewhere. Maybe go home to Mavity, call from there."
"Oh, Joe, these poor, silly people. What did they do, that they would die in such-distress?" She pressed close to him, thinking of the stolen computer printouts, then of Ralph and Dora's feet beneath the table at Pander's, Ralph's penny loafers beside Bernine's silk-clad ankles, thinking of Dora kicking Ralph when his remarks didn't suit her.
"Whatever they did, they were just simple folk. Who would kill them?" She stared at the tangle of pale, twisted limbs, shocked by their raw whiteness. The Sleuders were such very bulgy people, their limbs lumpy and misshapen. It must be terrible not to have a nice coat of sleek, concealing fur to cover your fat places and your rawness. She watched Joe sniff at Ralph's nose and mouth-he made a flehming face, raising his lip and flattening his ears.
He smelled Dora's face, too, scowling. "Drugs? Were they into drugs?"
"Don't be silly. Dora and Ralph Sleuder?"
"What else would smell so foreign?"
She sniffed at the dead couple's faces and backed away sneezing at the strange, pungent odor. "We'd better call the dispatcher."
As they started toward her cat door, he stopped suddenly, pressing her back. "Dulcie, wait."
She paused, one paw lifted. "What? It's nearly opening time; the staff will be coming to work. What's the matter?"
"Isn't children's story hour this morning?"
"Oh! Oh, my! Come on!" She dodged past him. "They'll be crowding in any minute, running to the window." And she took off round the side of the building.
Twice a week story hour began at eight-fifteen. The kids came flocking in, breaking away from their parents, laughing and pummelling each other and heading straight for the window seat, leaping into the cushions in a frenzy of enthusiasm, pressing their noses to the glass to look out. Children were always drawn to windows-as surely as kittens were drawn to dangling string. Entering any room, children flocked to the glass as if, like Alice, they expected to find beyond the pane any number of exotic new worlds.
This morning, beyond this glass, they'd find an exotic world, all right-a scene never meant for a child's viewing. But now, as she leaped for her cat door to call the precinct, Joe barged into her again, blocking her way.
"What?" she hissed, shouldering him aside.
"Listen, Dulcie. What would happen if we don't call the cops?"
She stared at him, shocked. "The children would be… We can't let them see those bodies. They'd…"
"They'd start screaming," Joe suggested. "Screaming, giggling, making jokes to hide their fear and confusion. Their parents…" He licked a whisker and smiled wickedly. "Their parents would see the dead bodies and pitch a fit-that the library would let the children see this."
He began to purr. "Those parents would put Freda right on the hot seat."
She looked at him, her eyes widening. She didn't breathe. What he was suggesting was terrible.
"How embarrassing for Freda," Joe said softly.
"No!" she said, shouldering past him. "I won't do that. It would be dreadful for the children."
"Those kids are tougher than you think. All they'll need is plenty of hugging and a chance to talk it out with their mom or dad-any good parent could put a positive spin on the experience. Turn a shocking situation into something positive-as long as the kids are hugged and loved."
"No!" she said, pressing past him.
But again he blocked her, licking his whiskers. "It would be the parents who are stressed. And they'd dump it all on Freda-complaints to the mayor, to the city council, letters to the editor, follow-up editorials. Enough fuss," Joe said, his yellow eyes burning, "to get Freda fired."
There was a long silence. Joe's eyes gleamed with the devil's own light.
"No, Joe. We can't! Not frighten the children like that-not to spite Freda, not to spite anyone." Hotly she slashed at him and bolted through her cat door into Wilma's office where she could call the station.
But she was too late.
As she leaped for Wilma's office she heard two librarians talking, heard Freda call out as she came in through the back door, and the next moment she heard children running up the walk past the hidden, flower-shrouded bodies, heard them racing across the reading room straight for their window seat.
18
THE LIBRARY and garden were crawling with cops. From the roof, Joe Grey watched three medics kneel among the lilies beside the bodies of Dora and Ralph Sleuder. Unable to observe all the action from inside, he had streaked up the back of the building to the roof, leaving Dulcie inside on the book stacks doing interior surveillance. The police action upon entering the garden had been swift and precise as each man swung to his appointed job.
But now the medics, unable to help the deceased, rose again and moved away, nodding to the police photographer. He, pushing back his shoulder-length black hair, knelt among the flowers to shoot close-ups first of the victims' faces, then of their raw white limbs, recording from every possible camera position; loading new film, at last he turned from the bodies to photograph the surround, the window above the corpses, the white stucco wall, and the garden itself, calling an assistant to part the lilies so he could shoot the earth beneath. Across the garden, Freda Brackett's angry accusations rose sharply.
She stood before the library's open front door, toe to toe with Max Harper, her words burning like flames. Harper listened to her harangue without speaking, his thin face frozen into complicated lines of distaste that made Joe laugh. Didn't Freda see the deep anger in the police captain's eyes-and the spark of cold amusement?
"What kind of police force is this, Captain Harper, to let such a shocking crime occur practically inside the library! This is beyond excuse. You have no idea the damage this will cause the children. What kind of police would subject children to this nightmare? Any well-run police force would have prevented this shocking event. You…"
Joe ceased to listen to her-as he suspected Harper had, too. The aftermath of the Sleuders' deaths was turning out pretty much as he'd thought-and as Dulcie had feared. The children, on arriving for story hour and discovering the bodies, had crowded against the window, pushing each other out of the way, shocked at first, then quickly out of control. Staring down through the glass, smearing it with their noses and with sticky fingers, they screamed then laughed, working themselves into a furor of shrill giggles that did not abate until their parents dragged them away. Not even the ululation of sirens careening through the village had quieted them, nor had the arrival of the ambulance and four police cars skidding to the curb; they only shouted louder, fought harder to see every detail.
Out beyond the garden, two officers were clearing the street and putting up cordons at the ends of the block. At both corners, pedestrians had gathered, idle onlookers drawn to tragedy, some out of empathy but most with prurient curiosity. Of all those who crowded to look, Joe was the only observer enjoying a rooftop vantage. Lying with his chin propped on his paws and his paws resting on the roof gutter, his alert gray ears caught every whisper.