While two sheriff’s deputies shackled Randall, Ryan was out of the Jaguar chasing Joe and Dulcie and Courtney, Kit beside her, Rock and Pan racing ahead. Climbing the rough ground in the dark, trying to avoid protruding roots, Ryan called to the cats, “It’s all right, you can come down! Come down, kitties. Come down, Joe! Come here to me!” She knelt, waiting for them.
Slowly the three cats came out from among the trees. Even Joe Grey looked haggard, staying close to little Courtney, who was still shivering. Clyde and Wilma climbed up to kneel in the tall grass beside Ryan. Wilma picked up Dulcie and Courtney and held them close in her arms. Clyde hid his frown as Joe Grey clung to his shoulder, the tomcat’s face pressed against Clyde’s morning stubble, Joe’s sudden need for him bringing tears to Clyde’s eyes. Kit leaped to Wilma’s lap and began to wash Courtney. Rock, rearing up, licked the three escapees and sniffed them all over, picking up the scents of their journey in a strange car. No one scolded them for their wild expedition and for getting themselves trapped—but Wilma looked accusingly into Joe Grey’s yellow eyes.
Joe had gotten Dulcie and Courtney into this mess. She was thankful that at least the boy kittens were away at the Firettis’ and safe. But Joe, she thought, smiling just a little, he was only being his macho self; he was only trying to catch a killer. “Did they get the Bewick book?” she asked him.
“In the back,” Joe said, looking down the hill toward the SUV, where an MPPD officer was handcuffing Egan. “Maybe I can slip in and get it … It’s heavy as hell. If you …”
“Leave it there,” Wilma said. “It could be evidence, proof that Egan stole, as well as broke in.”
“But you paid a lot for that book.”
“It’s more secure at the PD. If he knows where it is, and if he’s released, he’d have a hard time trying to break into the department’s evidence room.”
Two MPPD vehicles were pulled up behind the brown Toyota. The cats went silent as McFarland and Crowley left the other officers, came across the road, and started up the hill to them. The humans rose, holding cats, wondering how they were going to explain having the five cats out here in the small hours of the morning during a car chase.
Rock, delighted to see his cop friends, trotted up to lick their hands, distracting Jimmie long enough for Clyde to say, “We’re headed for the shelter. Kate called, she’s been staying up there until she gets a live-in caretaker. She sounded scared, and that’s not like Kate. Sounded like she desperately wanted some backup, she said something was going on down at the Nestor place—men she’d never seen before, moving expensive cars out of that old barn. What would Voletta Nestor be doing with a bunch of fancy cars?” Clyde knew he was talking too much. “Kate said she called you?”
“She did,” Jimmie said. “We’re headed up there, backup behind us and roadblocks ahead. But what are you doing with your cats out here in the middle of the night? That is Joe Grey? Why … ?”
“The damn-fool tomcat,” Clyde said. “They leaped out of the SUV. I don’t know what happened, the driver must have left the window down, somewhere in town; maybe there’s food in there.”
McFarland just looked at him.
“I don’t know where they are half the time—but to see them jump out of that car … One of these is Joe’s kitten. Wilma was worried sick.” Clyde started down the hill. The cats watched young Jimmie McFarland, wishing he weren’t so nosy. And, walking down the hill, McFarland watched Clyde. He was silent for a long while, keeping pace with Clyde. “I guess,” he said at last, “unless something more turns up, we don’t need to bother the chief with the cat story. I don’t see how it affects the case.”
Down on the road, Officer Crowley was helping Randall, in leg irons and handcuffs, into the back of an MPPD squad car, pressing his head down so he wouldn’t crack his skull. Crowley’s big, bony hands handled Randall like a rag doll. On the other side of the seat, Egan was already confined. He looked across at Wilma so sadly that she approached the car. He said, through the cracked-open window, “I wanted to talk to you. When I was watching you? It was because I wanted to ask you something.”
She looked at him and said nothing.
“About my father,” he said. “You knew my father.”
“What’s your name—your real name?”
“Egan. Egan Borden. Randall, here, he’s my stepfather. I took his name, Borden.” He looked over at Randall. “You hurtin’ pretty bad?”
“Nah,” Randall growled. “Hitch in my side is all.”
Wilma looked at Egan. “What was your family name, who was your father?”
“My father was Calvin Alderson. He got the chair for murder, you helped send him there. I know he was executed for murder but that’s about all I know. A social worker told me that much, when I was older. They think he killed my mother, too.”
“What was your mother’s name?”
“Um … Marie. Marie Alderson.” Wilma watched him, knowing he was lying, and, again, she was silent. If this young man was Rick Alderson, he was seven years old when his father went to prison, he’d remember quite a bit about Calvin. And why lie about his mother’s name? But how could he be Rick when the fingerprints didn’t match? She was filled with questions—questions she couldn’t ask here, with officers listening. She wanted a proper interview with this man, maybe a recording—and so would Max.
She was convinced Randall was Barbara’s and Langston’s killer, but was his stepson—Rick or whoever this was—a part of that murder? “You’ll be in Molena Point jail,” she said. “We can talk there.” She turned away, walked over to the Jaguar, slid into the back between the cats and Rock. In the front seat, Ryan and Clyde were quietly talking.
McFarland, stepping over to the driver’s window, put a hand on Clyde’s shoulder. “CHP has cleared a path around the wreck, there against the hill. Wait until our units are through.” He scowled at Clyde. “Though I’d rather you turned around and went home. We don’t know what we have, up at Voletta’s.”
“Kate sounded pretty worked up,” Clyde said. “Sounded scared.” He didn’t mention that Scotty was there; their personal life was their business. He guessed Kate was frightened, if even tall, capable Scott Flannery wasn’t enough backup. “Whatever’s happening,” he told McFarland, “Kate asked us to come, and that’s where we’re headed.”
McFarland sighed. “Take the main road to the shelter, up above Voletta’s road. Stay off her place, and keep out of sight. Stay at the shelter with Kate, stay out of the way, Clyde.” No more was said about the two prisoners who were headed for jail. And McFarland said not another word about hitchhiking felines.
20
The five cats sat on the desk in the shelter office, their noses pressed to the window, watching the spotlighted farmyard below. The old place had once been a farm. The house, and the barn half hidden by eucalyptus woods, showed little change from their distant past except for the absence of crops and useful livestock. A once productive piece of land now dry and sour. Overhead the night sky had turned from black to the color of wet ashes. The cats’ tails were splayed out on the desk behind them, Dulcie’s striped tabby tail very still; Courtney’s orange, black, and white appendage twitching with interest; tortoiseshell Kit’s broad, fluffy flag flipping with her usual excitement. Pan’s orange-striped tail was curled around him, Pan himself rigid and predatory—as was Joe Grey as he joined them.
Across the way, Clyde and Ryan, Kate and Scotty, and Wilma stood in the shadows of the mansion’s open walls watching the cars lined up on the weedy gravel yard, the men and Lena milling around as if waiting for someone, perhaps waiting for more drivers.