Or had she not had time to mail it? Was the envelope still in her truck? If he had followed her to the restaurant, he'd know she didn't stop at a mailbox. Maybe he'd strolled by her truck and seen the envelope lying on the seat.
Shutting down the machine and slipping his various sets of bills and the printout into his pocket, he was out of there quickly, locking the door behind him. The cats fled to the desk watching him descend the stairs, walk the half block up the bill, and swing into the gray hatchback. He headed back toward the village.
"What now?" Dulcie said. "If she's already mailed her bill, what's he going to do with that stuff? Do you think that was Larn Williams? That he called earlier just to see if she was going out this evening?"
Joe didn't answer. Knocking the phone off the cradle, for the second time that night he pawed in the number of Ryan's cell phone.
Ryan was enjoying the last of her flan when her cell phone rang. She didn't want to answer, she pushed it across the table to Clyde.
"R. Flannery, construction," he said between mouthfuls.
"May I speak to R. Flannery? I called earlier, I have an urgent message for her."
"I can take the message," Clyde told Joe, trying not shout with rage.
At the other end, Joe sighed. "All right," he said. "I think the guy who followed her is going to break into her truck, within the next few minutes. It's kind of complicated."
Clyde stared at the phone. "Just a minute." He handed the phone to Ryan. "You'd better take this." But he leaned close to listen.
"It's me again," Joe said. "I believe someone is intent on falsifying your billing for the Jakes addition in San Andreas. Have you mailed that bill?"
"I… who is this? How do you…? What are you talking about?"
"Have you mailed the bill or is it still in your truck?"
"No. Yes. It's in my truck. What…?"
"The person who followed you earlier returned to your apartment and broke in. With lock picks. While you've been having dinner he changed the billing on your computer and made copies of the original bills and doctored them. He ran a new printout, made copies of the doctored bills, and left. I'd guess he's headed your way."
"Who is this? How could you know such a thing?"
"He prepared the new statement for considerably more than your original cost-plus numbers. If you've mailed the bill, probably no harm done-unless he is able to intercept it at the other end. If you haven't mailed it, I think he'll try to break into your truck, open the envelope, and switch billings. In other words, he wants to set you up, add embezzlement to the possible charge of murder."
"Why would he bother? Isn't murder enough?"
"Maybe he thinks embezzlement would in some way strengthen the murder charges."
"What does this guy look like, who's supposed to be doing all this?"
Listening to the caller's description of the burglar, she felt all warmth drain from her hands and body.
"Don't let him get that envelope," the caller said. "There isn't much time." And he hung up.
Hitting the disconnect, Joe dropped to the floor and headed for the bathroom window. Ahead of him Dulcie, balanced on the windowsill, said, "I'm going home first, see if the kit's there. She…"
"There's not time," he said, leaping past her. "We'll miss the action."
"Can't help it. Go watch Ryan's truck. I'll be along when I know the kit's safe."
"But…"
Dropping from the window she fled around the building and raced down the sidewalk heading for home, filled with worry.
17
The rusty wire netting of the chicken houses was half falling down like those the kit had seen long ago in her travels when she was small. She longed to push inside and have a look but the smell stopped her, burning and stinging her nose. The stink came strongest where the dirt floor of the pens was covered with sheets of rotting plywood. In the darkening evening she could see that one of those had been shifted aside. A black emptiness loomed beneath, a hole big enough for a man to slip through. Why would a man want to go down there? Padding around the side of the pen, she could see down into the pit where heavy timbers stood against the earthen walls. Rough steps led down.
Backing away sneezing and coughing, she knew she had found something important. What was the old man up to? She wanted to look closer, but she daren't creep down into his stinking cellar, that smell was like something that would reach up and grab her. Tales filled her of human people dying, of skin and eyes burned, of lungs rotted, and even their brains turned to dust, and she hurried away, afraid clear down to her paws.
But she could follow the old man, if she kept her distance. She could see what that was about, dumping his bags of garbage down there among the ruins.
Hurrying away from the ugly, deserted cabin, she raced down the narrow road and down the scrubby, empty hills as fast and silent as a hawk's shadow. But she ran scared. Traveling the darkening, empty land so far from home, alone, was not like when she slipped through the night shoulder to shoulder with Joe Grey and Dulcie feeling bold and safe. Watching the falling blackness around her for prowling raccoons and coyotes or bobcats, she ran pell-mell for the Pamillon estate.
Dulcie hurried through the village beneath pools of light from the shop windows heading home, praying the kit was there, an uneasy feeling in her stomach, a frightened tremor that drew her racing along the sidewalks brushing past pedestrians' hard shoes and dodging leashed dogs, running, running until at last she was flying through Wilma's flowers and in under the plastic flap of her cat door. Mewing, she prowled the house looking for the kit, mewing and peering behind livingroom furniture and under the beds, unwilling to speak until she was sure Wilma didn't have company.
Determining at last that the house was empty of humans and of the kit as well, she called out anyway, her voice echoing hollowly. "Kit, come out. Kit, are you there? Please come out, it's important." All this in a voice that was hardly a whisper though her calls would reach feline ears.
There was no answer, not a purr, no soft brush of fur against carpet or hardwood as she would hear if the kit sneaked up on her, playing games.
At last, leaving the house again, she scented back and forth across the garden, and searched driveway and sidewalk for a fresh track. She raced up a trellis and sniffed all across the roof too and up the hill in back through the tall dry grass where hated foxtails leaped into her fur. Finding no fresh scent of the kit she grew increasingly worried. Kit hadn't been home at all.
Well, she couldn't search the whole world, one couldn't search all the hills though she and Joe had tried to do just that when the kit disappeared for three days last winter.
But the kit had been smaller then, and more vulnerable. She was a grown-up cat now. And, as Kit was far more than an ordinary cat, Dulcie thought stubbornly, she would have to take responsibility for herself.
Hurting and cross but giving up at last, Dulcie headed for Lupe's Playa. Imust not worry, I hate when Wilma worries about me. The kit is big now and can take care of herself. But Dulcie was so unsettled that when she saw Joe on the low branch of a cypress tree outside Lupe's Playa she scorched up the trunk ploughing straight into him, shivering.