Wilma hushed, watching her. Courtney sat up straighter and began to read aloud, just where Wilma had left off. She read the tale smoothly and clearly all the way through, she spun the story out as lyrically as Wilma herself had ever done.
When she’d finished, they were all silent. Joe Grey looked so ridiculously proud that Dulcie had to hide a laugh; she licked Courtney, both she and Joe smug with their calico’s cleverness—until the morning that the words Courtney read brought not smiles but alarm.
It was a week after Courtney started to read that, sitting on the kitchen table on the edge of the newspaper, she placed a paw on the front-page article. “‘car thieves moving down the coast. to hit molena point again?’” She looked up at Wilma. “What is this? What are car thieves? What does it mean, to hit Molena Point? Hit how?” She kept reading, dragging her paw down the lines of type.
2
Joe Grey still hadn’t told Dulcie about the car-thieving ring, he didn’t want her thinking about village crime. Not because she’d be afraid; Dulcie was seldom frightened. But because his tabby lady would be torn with painfully conflicting desires—longing to prowl the night with him tracking the perps, but too deep with love for their babies to leave them. Wilma still kept the morning paper hidden and the TV news off. Dulcie was so entangled in busy motherhood that she hardly noticed Wilma’s changes in the household.
But the village had been struck, the thieves had been there twice, weeks apart and many weeks after the kittens were born. Both times in the small and darkest hours, the gang working fast, vanishing into the night in stolen cars. Then they had doubled back north, striking small towns that thought they had missed the attacks: Santa Rosa, Bodega Bay, San Anselmo, Ukiah, Mendocino. Molena Point PD remained on alert waiting for their return. Both the cops and Joe Grey found it interesting that in only a few cases were the perps able to steal the cars they broke into. Maybe only one of them carried the latest electronic equipment to unlock the ignition, or maybe the device they used worked only on certain makes. Joe slipped into Max’s office every day, leaping to the chief’s desk, picking up details that were not in the paper about the heists up the coast.
In the gang’s first descent on Molena Point they had stolen only three cars but had broken into twelve more, gleaning a fine array of cameras, clothes, money that some fool had hidden in the lining of a beverage holder, three pairs of binoculars, and a handgun tucked into a briefcase under the driver’s seat. The car owner reporting the stolen gun had been cited for not having a permit and for not properly securing his weapon. By the time Joe Grey and Kit and Pan arrived on the rooftops, the streets were black, clouds covered the thin moon, all was silent and the perps had apparently fled.
The second round of thefts was up in the hills beyond Wilma’s cottage. A houseguest had awakened hearing glass shatter, had looked out his bedroom window to the drive where two men were breaking into his new Audi. Grabbing the bedside phone, he had dialed 911.
The dispatcher sent out the call and then had called the chief at home. Max had risen, dressing hastily. Behind him, Charlie sat up in bed, pushed back her red hair, and tried to come awake, watching him pull on his boots. “What’s happened? Another car heist?”
Max nodded. “Up on Light Street. They broke into an Audi but couldn’t get it started, and burglarized five other cars.”
“They’ll be all over that neighborhood.”
“So will we,” Max said, belting on his holstered gun. Heading out, he didn’t imagine that his call from the dispatcher threw Charlie, too, into high gear. The minute his truck skidded up the drive, throwing gravel, Charlie called the Damen household to alert Joe Grey.
In the Damen master bedroom, Clyde snatched up the ringing phone, listened, then shouted grumbling up at Joe in his rooftop tower. “It’s Charlie. Are you there?” Hearing Joe yowl an answer, he laid down the phone and immediately dropped back into sleep. Beside him Ryan lay half awake, her short dark hair tumbled across the pillow. Above them, Joe Grey pushed in through his cat door onto a rafter, leaped down to Clyde’s study onto the desk, talked with Charlie on the extension, and was out of there, grabbing a small leather pouch in his teeth, leaping to the rafter, out through his tower, and racing across the rooftops. At the same time, at the Harper ranch, Charlie was calling the Greenlaws. By 2 a.m. tortoiseshell Kit and red tabby Pan had hit the roofs, too, heading for Light Street. Spotting the red lights of two cop cars and following them, they soon saw Joe Grey on a nearby peak, carrying his small cell phone in its leather pouch. Separating, the cats roamed the roofs watching the dark streets just as, below, the law was searching. They could see two cops attending to the Audi, taking prints, their flashlights and strobe cameras flashing off broken glass.
By three o’clock the cats had spotted and called in five other cars with broken windows. They could only imagine what contents might be missing. In the dense night they had barely seen two dark-clad men running, vanishing among the houses; one tall and heavily muscled, the other tall and thin. Not much for the cops to go on but Joe made the call, sliding out the phone, its pouch wet with cat drool. They watched three officers melt into the bushes, searching, but they never found the men. From the roofs, the cats watched patrol cars slide along the streets, spotlights flashing in among the houses, while other officers on foot prowled the tangled yards. Cats and cops found no one. There was no sound but the quiet passing of patrol vehicles.
The next morning Joe hit the station early, slipping under the credenza in Max Harper’s office, into the smell of freshly brewed coffee. Max was at his desk, Detective Dallas Garza sitting on the arm of the leather couch blowing on his hot brew. Two missing cars had just been called in, probably hours after the vehicles were taken.
Now, several weeks later, none of the stolen cars had been recovered. The first round of thefts had run for three days, each night in a different neighborhood. Weeks passed before the next assault. Both times, all MPPD got were fingerprints of the cars’ owners or passengers, many smeared by the thieves’ gloves. That second round began when a man getting home at midnight was knocked down in his driveway. The perp grabbed his keys, took his car, and was gone. The victim’s cell phone was in his car. His house key was on the ring with the car key. He dug a spare key from between two strips of wooden siding near the garage door, ran in the house and called the department. Patrols hit the streets. And, at Charlie’s call, the cats hit the rooftops. This time the thieves got away with four cars, one an antique Bentley, but they had broken into nine other vehicles.
Now, as Courtney read the article and Wilma explained to her what car theft was, the calico looked up at her, wide-eyed.
“Surely,” Wilma said, “they won’t return now, the weather page says a big storm is brewing. Slashing rain, high winds.” Already the kitchen had grown dim; outside the windows, high, dark clouds lay waiting to descend. “Why would that front-page reporter think car thieves would be out in a downpour?” She pushed back her long, silver hair. “Surely they’ll wait for better weather.”
“Maybe,” Dulcie said, “a storm is the best time. Harder for the cops to see or hear a man jimmy a car window, harder to see them drive away.” She was shocked and annoyed that neither Joe nor Wilma had told her about the thefts, that even Kit had been silent. But then, on second thought, she was glad. These last weeks, life had been so peaceful, nesting with her kittens, training them, reading to them, seeing them grow each day to develop his or her own unique habits and interests; no crimes to distract her, no worries about Joe out in the night stalking thieves—until now. Now she began to fret. Life beyond the cottage began to push at her; she longed suddenly to run with Joe across nighttime roofs hunting the bad guys. She was torn sharply between the excitement of the hunt, and the security of snuggling and caring for their bright and riotous kittens, safe in their peaceful cottage.