She went on out the back door, locking it behind her, and along a little stone patch to the attached carport.
Backing out of the drive she looked carefully around the yard and along the street for strange animals. Heading down the hill toward the village, she watched the sidewalks, but she saw nothing unusual, no strange dogs. Only one man out walking, a thin, stooped figure walking away from her. She didn’t recognize him, at least not from the back, but the village was full of tourists.
Dulcie woke three hours after Wilma left. She knew at once that the house was empty by the quality of total silence, the air congealed into absolute stillness, a dead response to her seeking senses which occurred only in an empty house.
She prowled the rooms for a while, looking up warily at the windows. Wilma had drawn the draperies before she left. Usually she forgot. Twice Dulcie leaped up under the draperies, crouching on the sill to look out.
Each time she looked, beyond the cold glass the dark street was empty. And within the shadows of Wilma’s front garden, no one was standing half-hidden. No one standing against the dark trunks of the oak trees; and the flower beds and stone walks were undisturbed by any intruder.
Of the houses across the street, three were dark, and five had lights on. At the Ramirez house the porch light burned as if the young couple was expecting company. The Ramirez’s were one of her favorite families. Nancy Ramirez wore the prettiest silk nighties; and usually she left the back door unlocked.
She jumped down from beneath the draperies and warily approached her cat door.
The carport light shone in through the plastic. She sniffed the cold evening air that seeped in around the free-swinging door. She couldn’t smell the man, but she did smell salmon. Wilma had left her a nice bowl of salmon. Ravenous, she pushed out onto the porch.
She studied the yard and street briefly, then dived for a bite of the nice red fish.
A rank smell stopped her. She stared at the dark, rich salmon, and backed away. It smelled bitter.
The salmon smelled of death. Of poison. Her nice supper had been poisoned. She stood staring around the dark yard, sick with anger.
She knew about poison. The neighbor’s collie died last summer after eating a dead rat. Dulcie had approached the body of the unmoving dog where it lay sprawled across the lawn of the neighbor’s house. The time was dawn, the sky was hardly light. She was the first one to find the dog; it would be another hour before the family rose and discovered him there.
She had stood beside the rigid beast, shocked. She had never seen a big animal dead, only birds and mice. He was so still, his body so unlike the dog she had known. Empty. Horrifyingly still and empty.
She had liked that collie; he was always kind, he never chased her. Shivering, she had crept closer to the unmoving beast. She didn’t have to stretch forward to touch him, to know that he was dead, to know the hard, stiff, dry condition of what remained.
His spirit was gone. His tan-and-white body was nothing but a heap of fur. The sweet spirit of the collie had fled.
She had crept closer at last, and smelled the collie’s face, sniffed at his mouth.
He smelled bitter. A foreign, metallic bitterness.
Exactly like her salmon. She could taste the smell.
The thin, hunched man had done this. Had poisoned her supper.
A growl rumbled deep in her throat. She hissed at her supper bowl, then put her shoulder against it. Pushing, she shoved it across the porch and over into the pansies.
Jumping down, she dug a hole and pushed the bowl in-her dear blue bowl, that she loved.
She buried the bowl and the salmon deep, pawing flowers and earth over the mess, stamping the dirt down with hard, angry slaps.
Finished, she scented along the steps and soon found the man’s sour smell. She followed it. Ears back, tail jerking with rage, she tracked him across the garden through a low bed of leafy ajuga and along the sidewalk. Above her across the dark sky, clouds had rolled in to hide the moon. Following his trail, thinking about the poison, and thinking about his flying feet hazing her along the cliff, she flinched at every shadow.
Trotting up sidewalks and through gardens, she studied all the black concavities in the neighbors’ dark yards, but she saw no unfamiliar shape, only the black silhouettes of bushes and trees. But his scent was there, on the sidewalk. She followed it for two blocks before she lost it among car smells and the reek of dog pee. And even after the trail had vanished she pushed on.
She didn’t know what she meant to do if she found him. Sure, go for his throat. But her rage wouldn’t let her rest. Her poisoned salmon was the last straw.
Near to midnight, when at last her anger had cooled, when she calmed, and admitted the odds, when only her fear remained, she crept into the bushes to hide and rest.This is really not smart, to be out here alone,she thought. Not when he was probably lurking somewhere near, or would soon return to make sure she was dead.
She rested fitfully, startling at every tiny breeze. And when, half an hour later, she heard Wilma’s car pass on the street she rose eagerly and started home.
She was three blocks away when she heard Wilma pull into the drive, then heard the back door open and close. Then in a moment the front door opened, and Wilma was calling her. She let out a little responsive mewl, burst out of the bushes, and ran eagerly.
But as she passed a line of parked cars, she smelled him. She veered away, but he appeared from beside a carport, slipping out into the night. She ran.
Wilma called her again as she bolted away through the bushes-away from the man, but away from Wilma, too. Away from home.
She could not go home. Why had she thought she could go home?
He knew where she lived. Neither she nor Wilma would be safe. As he gave chase again, she streaked straight uphill between close-set cottages, flashing up across the narrow village streets wondering if she must run forever. Heading higher, for the wild hills, she prayed she could lose him for good on the tangled, overgrown slopes.
6 [????????: pic_7.jpg]
Clyde sat on the edge of his bed staring at the receiver of the telephone he held in his shaking hand. He felt as if he’d taken a blow to the midsection. The voice of the caller reverberated as if from some unseen dimension, replaying back to him an impossible message.
It’s me. It’s Joe Grey?Ithought you’d be worried.?I amyour cat. Bedtime Buddy. Favorite Feline? Cream and Wheaties with chopped liver? I don’t like that woman. It sickens me to watch you in the shower washing her back?
Some joke. Some twisted, sick joke.
Who had that been? Whose voice was that? Which one of his idiot friends? Who had the talent to pull off that kind of phone call? To make it sound so much like Joe Cat, and to tell him that personal stuff. Whoknewthat personal stuff? Who did he know who could pull that off, and not break up laughing?
He dropped the phone on the bed and stood up, looking around the dim bedroom. The rush of adrenaline generated by the phone call was making his stomach flip.
The drawn shades were awash with sunlight, bright rays creeping in around the edges.
He turned, stared at the phone. Maybe the phone hadn’t rung at all. Maybe he’d dreamed that it was ringing. Probably he’d dreamed the whole damned conversation.
That was it. He’d dreamed that the phone rang, and he snatched it up in his sleep. He’d dreamed he was talking to Joe. That had to be the explanation. The only logical explanation. It couldn’t have been one of his friends; no one else knew the things the caller had told him.
And no one-no one in the world could know exactly what he had shouted at Joe yesterday morning when Joe was pacing and muttering.For Christ sake, Joe, stop it! It’s too damned early to be horny!No one in the world could mimic the exact, irritated sound of his own voice at that precise moment, his own angry, half-asleep growl.