Parking in his drive, Clyde took a few minutes to put up the top of the antique Chevy. Following the slow, cumbersome routine, pulling and straightening the canvas and snapping the many grommets in place, he thought how strange and amazing, the way his life had turned out. Who would have imagined when he was living in San Francisco walking home from work that particular evening, when he paused to kneel by the gutter looking at that little bundle of gray fur among the trash and empty wine bottles. Reaching to touch what he was sure was a dead kitten, who could imagine the wonder that lay, barely alive, beneath his reaching hand?
When he took up the little limp bundle and wrapped it in his wool scarf and headed for the nearest vet, who could have dreamed the off-the-wall scenario that would soon change his life? That he was holding in his hand a creature of impossible talents, a beast the like of which maybe no other human had ever seen, at least in this century.
No other human, except Wilma.
It didn't bear pondering on, that Joe Grey and Dulcie had ended up with him and Wilma, who had been fast friends ever since Clyde was eight years old and Wilma was in graduate school. Through all of Wilma's moves in her career as a parole officer, and through Clyde's own several moves, they had remained close.
But how and why had the two cats come to them?
Dulcie said it was preordained. Clyde didn't like to think about that stuff, any more than Joe did. The idea that some power totally beyond his comprehension had placed those two cats where they would meet, not only kept him awake at night but could render him sleepless for weeks.
And yet…
Fate, Dulcie said.
Neither Clyde nor the tomcat believed in predestination, both were quite certain that your life was what you made it. And yet…
Entering the living room and switching on the low-watt lamp by the front door, he found Joe fast asleep in his well-clawed armchair. The gray tomcat lay on his back, snoring, his white belly and white chest exposed, his four white feet straight up in the air. Obviously overfull of party food. He must have left the reception early and hiked right on home and passed out, a surfeited victim of gluttony. Clyde turned on a second lamp.
Joe woke, staring up at Clyde with blazing eyes. "Did you have to do that? Isn't one lamp enough? I was just drifting off."
"You were ten feet under, snoring like a bulldog. Why aren't you hunting? Too stuffed with wedding cake? Where's Dulcie?"
"She took the kit home, she doesn't want her out hunting." Joe flipped over. Digging his front claws into the arm of his chair, he stretched so deeply that Clyde could feel, in his own spine, every vertebrae separate, every ligament loosen. "She's worried about Kit, afraid that old man saw her jump the boy and will come back to find her."
Clyde sat down on the couch. This thought was not far-fetched. Already Joe and Dulcie had been stalked by a killer because of their unique talents. If the kit had foiled the old man's plans, wouldn't he wonder what kind of cat this was? Wouldn't his rage lead him back to her? Clyde looked intently at Joe. "So where are you going to hide her?"
"I was thinking about Cora Lee French, when she gets home from the hospital. Since the play, she and the kit are fast friends. And that big house, that the four senior ladies bought for their retirement, has a thousand hiding places. Sitting there on the edge of the canyon, it would be a cinch for a cat to escape down among the trees and brushes-that old man would never find her, it's wild as hell in those canyons."
"Right. She can just slip away among the bobcats and coyotes, to say nothing of a possible cougar."
Joe shrugged. "We hunt that canyon now and then, we've never had a problem."
Clyde headed for the bedroom, pulling off his suit jacket and loosening his tie. You couldn't argue with a cat. Behind him Joe hit the floor with a thud, and came trotting past him into the bedroom. Glancing up at Clyde, he clawed impatiently at the sarouk rug, waiting for Clyde to turn back the spread.
Share and share alike was okay, cat and man each claiming half the bed. But one couldn't expect a poor little cat to turn back the covers.
Grumbling, Clyde pulled off the spread. At once Joe leaped to the center of the blanket and began to wash, waiting in silence for Clyde's inevitable lecture. You don't need to take your half in the middle. And as to that canyon, you can't possibly foresee all the dangers in that canyon. You do remember the mountain lion? And we can all hear the coyotes at night yipping down there. And those bands of raccoons…
When Clyde's words of caution were not forthcoming, Joe stopped washing to look at him.
Clyde said, "You are very cavalier when it comes to the kit's tender young life."
"That isn't fair. That is really insulting-to me, and to the kit. Kit can smell another animal, she knows how to slip away."
Clyde didn't answer.
"What would you do," Joe said, "if you were out on the hills and a cougar came prowling? You would simply keep your distance, use a little common sense."
"I'd get the hell out of there. And I'm not seven inches tall." He glared at Joe. "You can be so-cats can be so…
"Irritating," Joe Grey said, smiling. "Cats can be so maddening and unreasonable." Turning his back, he pawed his pillow into the required nest shape for absolute comfort. He was just settling down, warm and purring, when Clyde pulled off his shirt. Joe sat up again, staring at Clyde's bare back, at the dried blood and raw, red wounds. "What happened to you? You look like you had a really wild night."
"Don't be crude." Clyde twisted around pressing against the dresser to look in the mirror. "That's the kit's handiwork-when she jumped on me to warn us about the bomb."
Joe watched Clyde dig through his top dresser drawer searching for the medication he used when one of the cats, or their elderly retriever, Rube, had a scratch. Clyde found the salve and, twisting and straining, began to spread it on the scratches.
"Dr. Firetti would be interested to know how you're using his prescriptions. Aren't you afraid of picking up something from old Rube or one of us cats? A touch of mange? Ringworm? Poison oak? Some ancient and incurable-"
"Cool it, Joe. This is all I have. I don't handle this stuff carelessly. I don't…" He stared at the open tube, and at his fingers, and turned a bit pale.
"There's iodine in the medicine cabinet," Joe said helpfully. "You used it on Rube when he cut his foot, but you poured it in a cup."
Recapping the tube, Clyde went into the bathroom. Joe heard the shower running as if Clyde were scrubbing off the dangerously infected salve. When Clyde came out again he smelled sharply of iodine. Refraining from comment, Joe turned over and closed his eyes. He was soon deeply asleep while Clyde lay in the darkness worrying about ancient and unnamed diseases.
Two floodlights washed across Ryan's drive, shining down from the roof of the duplex onto her new red pickup-not new from the factory, the vehicle was a couple of years old, but new to her, in mint condition and with really low mileage. A handsome new workhorse with locked toolboxes along both sides, and a strong overhead rack to hold lumber and ladders.
In the six-foot truck bed Dallas knelt examining the tarp that she had so carefully shaken out the night before and neatly refolded, unwittingly destroying all manner of evidence.
A few long black hairs remained, which Dallas removed with tweezers, and there were some short gray hairs, that Dallas hoped might have come from the old man. "I'll need to take the tarp to the lab."
"I have another." She watched as Dallas finished up. As he packed away his fingerprinting equipment and locked the truck, she went up the outside stairs to make fresh coffee. Filling the coffeepot, she wasn't sure how much information she could supply about Curtis Farger or about his two friends. She tried to recall the other boys' names, tried to remember which direction they came from when they arrived at the trailer, and to remember any chance remarks that might help Dallas know where Curtis had been staying. It was nearly midnight. With so little sleep the night before, it was hard to keep her eyes open. As the coffee brewed she stepped into the closet and took off her suit and high-heeled pumps, pulling on a warm robe and slippers. The idea that that boy had hitched a ride for two hundred miles, and she'd never known, both angered and amused her. You had to give him credit.