The door flipped up. Joe's nose and whiskers pushed out, and he thrust out into the night, jerking his rump through, shaking himself irritably as the plastic flopped against his backside.
She was so glad to see him. "About time! Come on- I'm wired, let's go, the mice will be out in droves."
But Joe had stopped within the shadows of the porch, his ears down, his shoulders and even his stub tail drooping. He looked like an old, old cat, an ancient worn-out relic, a sad cat skin filled with weariness.
She approached him warily. "What?" she said softly. "What's happened?"
He did not move or speak.
She pressed against him, her nostrils filled with the scent of mourning. "Barney? It's Barney."
His eyes were filled with pain.
She sat down close to him, touched him with her nose, and remained quiet.
"His liver gave out. The pain was terrible. There was nothing… Dr. Firetti gave him pain pills, but there was nothing else he could do. It was terminal. He gave him…"
"He put him down?"
Joe nodded. They sat looking at each other. Clyde and Dr. Firreti had done what was needed.
"He's somewhere," she said at last.
"I don't know."
"Remember the white cat. The white cat could not have come to me in dream if he wasn't somewhere. He was already dead when I dreamed of him, and he told me things I couldn't know."
The white cat had led her to the final clue, led her to Janet Jeannot's killer. And this happened long after he died-his flesh was rotted when they found him, his bones bare-yet she had dreamed of him only days before.
There was, Joe knew, no other explanation but that the white cat had spoken to Dulcie from beyond the grave. Yet as they had stood over the white cat's desiccated body, over his frail, bare bones with the little hanks of white fur clinging, a hollowness had gripped him. He had not experienced Dulcie's joy at proof of another life. He had been filled with fear, with a sudden horror of the unknown. Terror of whatever lay beyond had ripped through him as sharp as the strike of a rattlesnake.
She nudged against him, and licked his ear. "Barney is somewhere. He's somewhere lovely, Joe. Why would a sweet dog like Barney go anywhere but somewhere happy?" She pressed against him until he lay down, and she curled up close. "He doesn't hurt anymore. He's running the fields now, the way he was meant to do." And lying tangled together in the shadows of the little front porch, comforting each other, they remained quiet for a very long time.
But at last Joe rose and shook himself. "He was such a clown," he said softly. "Every time I came home from hunting he had to smell all the smells on me, the stink of rabbit, the smell of bird, every trace of blood. He'd get so excited, you could just see him sorting out the scent of mouse, raccoon, whatever, wanting to run, wanting to retrieve those beasts the way he was bred to do."
Dulcie swallowed.
"He'd know when I stopped by Jolly's, too. He went crazy over the smells from the deli; he always had to lick all the tastes off my face."
She said, "He did that, once, to me. It was like sticking my head in a hot shower." She rose. "Barney knows we miss him. Maybe he knows we're talking about him." She nudged him until, at last, they left the porch, Joe walking heavily as if he were very tired.
Ignoring the little side streets and alleys where they sometimes liked to prowl, she led him straight for the open hills. They passed the little tourist hotel, where an elegant Himalayan presided over the clientele, a cat whose picture was featured on the hanging sign and in the inn's magazine ads; they could smell her scent on the bushes. The inn's clients liked to have the Himalayan in their rooms at night to warm their feet and sleep before the fire, and perhaps to share their continental breakfast. She, and all Molena Point's cats, were as revered in the little village as were the felines of Italy, taking the sun atop a bronze lion or stalking pigeons across Venice's ancient paving.
"She's a snob," Joe said.
"Not at all. She just fell into a good thing. If she knows how to milk it, more power to her." She nudged him into a trot, and soon they had crossed above Highway One and into a forest of tall dry grass that rustled overhead, casting weavings of shadow across their faces and paws.
It was much later, after several swift chases, after feasting on half a dozen mice and a ground squirrel, that Dulcie, too, began to feel uncertain and morose. Pausing in her elaborate bath, she flicked her pink tongue back into her mouth, licked her whiskers once, and stared at him.
He stopped washing, one white paw lifted. "What? What's with you?"
"I was thinking. About Mae Rose."
"Don't start, Dulcie. Not tonight."
"Mae Rose thinks maybe Jane Hubble ran away. That the home didn't look for her, that they didn't want to tell the police that someone ran away."
"Mae Rose is bonkers. How could an old woman run away from that place, an old woman who'd had a stroke? How far would she get before she collapsed somewhere, or someone brought her back?"
"Mae Rose says Jane got better after her first attack, that she was getting really restless. Then she had the second attack, and they moved her over to Nursing."
He just looked at her.
"She might have run away. I read once about an old woman who-"
"Probably she couldn't even get out of bed, let alone out of the Nursing wing." He gave her an impatient glare. "If the doors to Nursing are all locked, as Dillon says, and with nurses all over thick as a police guard, you think Jane Hubble got out of bed by herself, got dressed by herself, picked up her suitcase, and walked out."
She lowered her ears and turned away.
Joe sighed. "She's there. In Nursing. Safe and sound. Too sick to have visitors. Mae Rose has latched onto one fact, that they won't let anyone visit Jane, and she's turned it into a disaster."
The moon behind them had dropped below the clouds, turning the tomcat into a silhouette as dark and rigid as an Egyptian statue. "Mae Rose is full of fairy tales. Old people get childish, they imagine things."
"But she isn't childish, she's still very sharp. She's told me all about her life, and she isn't imagining that. She showed me her albums, she remembers every play she sewed for, every costume, she showed me the pictures, told me the characters' names and even the actors' names, she remembered them all. She-"
"She showed her albums to a cat? She showed pictures to a cat, told her life history to a cat?"
"No one else is interested; they're tired of hearing her."
"Dulcie, normal people don't talk to cats, not like the cat can really understand."
"But we do understand."
"But no one knows that." He hated when she was deliberately obtuse. "Mae Rose doesn't know we can understand her. Anyone-except Clyde and Wilma- who thinks a cat can understand human speech is bonkers. If Mae Rose thinks you can understand her, that old lady is certifiably round the bend."
She crouched down, deflated. "I'm all she has to talk to; everyone else treats her like she's stupid."
"Dulcie, the old woman is in her second childhood. For one thing, what sane, grown woman would carry a doll around with her? Does she talk to the doll, too?"
"She makes doll clothes; that was her living. If she still has dolls of her own, if she still sews for them, I don't see anything strange. She supported herself doing that, the clothes are all silks and handmade lace. She said Jane Hubble loved her dolls."
"Dulcie…"
The moonlight caught her eyes in a deep gleam, her pupils large and black, the thin rim of green as clear as emeralds. "No one understands how she feels; she's so terribly alone, and Jane was her only real friend. We could at least try to help her-try to find Jane."
"Can't you understand that she's making this stuff up? That no one is missing?" He moved away through the grass, irritated beyond toleration, so angry that he didn't want to talk about it.
He didn't want to admit his own unease.
Mae Rose was not the only one who thought Jane Hubble was missing. Whatever the truth turned out to be, he didn't think little Dillon Thurwell was bonkers.