Lilly stared at her and didn’t answer; they were silent now as they moved on through the village and started up the long hill.
“And what was that Greeley person doing in our house?” Violet asked at last. “When I came in and saw him…Lilly, why did you let him stay there?”
“He was trying to trade on his friendship with Cage to get a free room. Cheap. And pushy. He kept banging at the door. I got tired of it, and let him in. Then I got tired of his whining, gave in to shut him up, just for the one night.” Climbing the hill, the women had slowed even more, but at last Joe could see the dark old house rising up ahead, smothered by its pine and eucalyptus trees.
“He could have murdered you,” Violet said.
“That little runt? I locked my bedroom door.”
“You could have called the police.”
Lilly looked at her and laughed, a dry, mirthless sound. “Cage would like that. He’d be wild if there were any more cops in the house. Twice was bad enough. Anyway, he’s gone. Guess he’s at the Seaview Bed and Breakfast. He made a call there, this morning. I wish he’d pack up and leave town, him with his ugly gold devil-”
“A gold devil? Cage has…What was it like?”
“Some kind of trinket from South America, had it in his pocket. Ugly as those masks. What about Cage?”
“I…He has a devil thing like that, a dangle on a key chain. Could there be two? Eddie says the one Cage has is real gold and worth a lot.”
Scowling, Lilly looked at Violet for a long moment, then turned and moved quickly up the steps, fishing her house key from her pocket. They disappeared inside, slamming the door nearly in Joe Grey’s face.
Not that he wanted to enter that house and be shut in with those two. Turning away, he galloped down through the neighborhood’s overgrown yards, and scrambled up a cypress tree to the hot rooftops, heading for Dulcie and Wilma’s house-thinking about Greeley in South America, and about Greeley’s little gold devil and that Cage had one like it. Wondering if those trinkets were solid gold, and what they might be worth, and if there were more, and who had them? He had reached Wilma’s block and was about to come down the pine tree beside the stone cottage when Dulcie came flying out her cat door. She stared up at him, her green eyes bright, and clawed her way up the pine between its tangled branches.
“I was coming to find you. Wilma-”
“Come on,” he hissed, “tell me on the way…”
“But-”
“Greeley’s in a motel,” he said. “A bed and breakfast. He has-” Seeing her impatient stare, he stopped. “What did Wilma tell Harper? Come on, tell me on the way!” And before she could answer, he took off across the roofs in the direction of the Seaview Bed and Breakfast, Dulcie close on his tail, bursting with her own news.
36
“B e still one minute, can’t you!” Racing across the roofs, Dulcie careened against Joe and took his ear in her teeth, pulling him to a halt. “Just listen! Mavity told Wilma about some kind of gold devil Greeley carries, and Wilma got some library books and showed Mavity pictures. They found one the same as Greeley’s, just a tiny figure, among all kinds of idols, some huge. All solid gold, and worth a fortune. Wilma went online and found that a lot of them were stolen, never recovered…some about the time Greeley and Cage were there-and every piece worth enough to keep us in caviar for a lifetime.”
The shingles were too hot to stand still. They moved on again, trotting. “Could they have pulled off a theft like that?” Dulcie said. “Is that what Cage claims went missing, and Greeley was looking for? They stole something worth a fortune, and then someone stole it from them?” She paused in the shadow of a chimney. “Or did Greeley…? Where is Greeley? Which bed and breakfast?”
“Seaview, on Casanova.” And Joe took off again running flat out, Dulcie close behind him. “There,” he hissed, flying along the edge of a steeply shingled slope, “that green roof with white dormers.” And with a wild leap, he dropped down into a shingled valley between the two rising dormers of a rambling old frame building.
Crouching on the scorching shingles between the steep roofs, they looked down into the inn’s tiny patio. A cooler breeze rose up from freshly sprinkled bricks, where a gardener was watering. They were discussing how best to find Greeley’s room when the old man himself appeared out on the sidewalk, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, as if he’d just come from breakfast. He had a large, greasy stain on his pants leg. As he headed for a room directly below them, they drew back against a chimney.
They heard his key turn in the lock, heard his door open. When they didn’t hear it close, they peered over.
The door stood wide open, as if to catch the cooler air that lingered in the small patio. From within the room, they heard Greeley open a window, then apparently drop a handful of change on the dresser, maybe emptying his pockets, meaning to change pants-though a grease stain had never before seemed to bother that old man. They heard an inner door close, then water running in the bathroom basin.
“Now!” Dulcie said, flying backward down a trellis, knocking off clematis blooms; ducking into a mock orange bush beside Greeley’s door, they looked into the dim room-and moved inside, searching for the best hiding place. They might have only a minute. And Greeley knew them. To that old man, they were not simple neighborhood cats, he knew very well what they were capable of, and that their sympathies lay not with cheap crooks like Greeley, but with the law.
The room was small, dim, dusty smelling, and overfurnished. Huge, dark mahogany dressers, big unmade bed. Wildly flowered, faded draperies left from another era, striped upholstered chair crowding one corner. On an upholstered bench stood Greeley’s wrinkled leather duffel. They hopped up beside it, and Dulcie disappeared halfway inside, searching, as Joe leaped to the dresser behind her, among the tangle of small items from Greeley’s pockets.
Greeley’s billfold smelled of old leather and old man and was well stuffed with cash. Beside it, a fall of loose change, a little penknife, a wadded-up handkerchief that Joe didn’t want to touch. A ring of five keys, including three safe-deposit keys, flat and smooth, without ridges. And a little flashlight and the tiny periscope that Greeley favored for cracking a safe. But no gold devil.
They heard the toilet flush. Dulcie leaped out of the duffle, the small gold devil dangling from her teeth, and took off fast, out the door, Joe beside her. They had barely made it to the shadows beneath a potted tree when Greeley came out of the bathroom. When he opened the closet door, they were gone, up the clematis trellis to the safety of the roof.
They heard items rattling on the dresser below, loose change clinking, as if Greeley was dropping those small possessions back in his pocket. They wondered if he had changed to clean pants? On the roof above the old man, Dulcie dropped the little gold figure on the dark shingles. It caught the morning sun in a flashing gleam: square, scowling face and large nose beneath an elaborate headdress, its body naked, its maleness boldly explicit. Its entire aspect, as Mavity had said, gave one the shivers.
Joe lifted it by the dark leather string from which it was suspended, widening his eyes when he felt its weight. “Heavy as a wharf rat,” he said, laying the huaca down again.
Dulcie’s green eyes glowed; the same triumphant look as when she came tramping across a field dragging a large and succulent rabbit. “It’s so heavy, Joe. If it’s real, and solid gold…then as sure as I have paws, this is what Cage was after, a stash of artifacts like this.”
“But…I don’t know.” Joe shook his head. “That’s big-time, Dulcie. To steal from a museum, in a country that will shoot you if you sneeze wrong. Greeley isn’t that sophisticated. Is Cage? Just how were those burglaries handled?”