Last night Dulcie had had plenty of time to study Egan. No other man could look so exactly like him. Long, slim face, long thin nose, blond hair. Egan’s square shoulders thrust forward on his thin frame. Of course this was Egan but why was he out of jail? She wished Joe were there. Sometimes Joe Grey, fierce and predatory, was keener in what he observed than she was. Is this Rick Alderson, out of prison in Texas and secretly making his way here? But how can that be? Egan said Calvin Alderson was his father. The police think his mother is dead—but Voletta said this man, Egan, was Lena’s son.
Behind Dulcie, Kit and Pan had tunneled along under the couch to crowd against her peering into the kitchen. Lena and Egan sat guzzling coffee while Voletta laid bacon on a grill, broke eggs into a bowl. The two cats were as shocked as Dulcie, they had all seen Egan locked in a squad car, handcuffs, leg irons, the works, along with his stepfather—Randall mad as a stuck pig.
Now, before the bacon began to cook, Egan rose to open a loaf of bread. As he passed close to the living room they got a good scent of him. They looked at each other, ears back, tails twitching. This man wasn’t Egan, he didn’t smell like Egan though he looked more like him than a twin. Soon they crept away to the far end of the couch where they could talk softly.
“This,” Kit whispered so faintly they could hardly hear her, “this has to be Rick Alderson. He was waiting for Lena last night and gave her a ride away from the cops? And Egan is still in jail? Rick’s been here, been part of the gang all along? And what do we do now?”
Pan’s yellow eyes glowed. “What would Joe Grey do?”
Kit and Dulcie looked at him.
The red tom smiled. “Joe would go straight for the connection, for why those two look alike. Calvin Alderson had only one son when he was sent to prison, and the cops think he’d killed the wife as well as her lover.”
Pan turned away; Kit followed him up the hall to prowl the bedrooms. This man had to have some identification, maybe a billfold left on the dresser. Dulcie returned to watching the thieves.
In the corner bedroom Pan made a flehmen face; the clothes tossed about stunk of Randall Borden and Lena.
The middle room smelled of the young man they were sure was Rick Alderson. The room was painted tan, furnished with twin beds, old mahogany headboards, and a dresser that might have been there fifty years. And, again, decorated with strewn-about clothes, jeans, shirts, shorts, and smelly socks. When they heard a cell phone ring from the kitchen, heard Rick answer then chair legs scrape and his footsteps coming, they slipped under the bed.
Rick sat down on the bed, his cell phone to his ear. “Okay, I’m alone.” He listened, then, “What the hell, Randall!” Silence, then, “They’ll be after you like fleas on a dog. Where are you?” The cats could hear only one side of the conversation until he said, “We’re breaking up, my battery’s about dead, I’ll call you back on the house phone.”
Rising, he listened to the voices from the kitchen then sat down again, dialing the phone on the nightstand. When his back was to them, Kit and Pan slipped out of the room and past the bathroom into the farthest bedroom. This was Voletta’s room, her scent, the austere furnishings old and dark but the room neat and tidy, only a pink robe lying across a chair. Leaping to the nightstand, Kit slipped the phone’s headpiece off, lowered it silently to the tabletop. They crowded side by side, listening.
“… walked right out of that small-town jail,” Randall was saying, a smile in his gruff voice. “I told you my stomach hurt. I made it seem worse, like maybe appendicitis. That shook up the rookie on guard, he came right on in, the dummy. I knocked him out, took his keys and gun, locked him in and beat it out of there, out the back gate to the street. Tourists everywhere, I just fell in among them—they hadn’t made me change clothes because I was headed for county jail as soon as they interrogated me. They’d took my belt, though. And my phone and billfold.”
“Where are you calling from?”
“Woman working in her yard, back among some cottages. She left the front door unlocked. Don’t worry, I can see her from the window, she didn’t hear the phone ring, I put a pillow over it. I saw her husband leave, there’s not another sound in the house.”
“Oh hell, Randall. Get out of there.”
“Can you come get me?”
“Where? You can’t stay there.”
“It’ll take me a while through these fenced backyards—they’re bound to have patrols out. I can hide safe in that …” Footsteps were coming, Lena’s steps. Quickly they slipped the phone back on its cradle and dove under Voletta’s bed. At the other end of the hall, Rick was saying, “Hell, you can’t go there. That’s the first …” A pause, then, “That’s a damned stupid idea. But all right—though it could put us in a hell of a mess.”
He listened again, then, “I said, all right. Now get the hell out of that house before someone comes in.”
Above the cats, Lena was searching the drawers of Voletta’s nightstand. She rummaged until she found a bottle of pills, maybe Voletta’s pain medication. Turning to the mirror, she fussed with her hair, using Voletta’s brush before she returned to the kitchen.
In the other room, Rick had apparently hung up the phone. When the cats could hear him changing clothes, Kit beat it to the living room, leaving Pan slipping down the hall and under the hall table to watch him. Was Egan still in jail, had Randall just left him there?
Kit, crowded under the couch against Dulcie, wondered if, the next time someone cleaned house—and it could sure use it—they would puzzle over cat hairs mixed with the dust bunnies.
Rick came into the kitchen jangling his keys, Lena following him. “Going to pick up Randall.”
“Pick him up?” Voletta said. “He’s out of jail? How come they let him out?”
“He broke out,” Rick said, laughing. “Knocked out the guard. He left Egan locked up.”
Rick laid his keys on the table, picked up his cup to swallow down the last sip of coffee. Fast as a viper Lena grabbed the keys. “I’m going with you.” She spun around, headed for the bedroom, perhaps for her purse.
He snatched at her, hit her a glancing blow. “You’re staying here.” She hit him, pulled away, and raced to their corner bedroom.
In the hall, Pan crept out from beneath the table far enough to see her pull on a leather jacket and open the dresser drawer. She found a clean handkerchief, used it to lift out a revolver. She used a corner of the cloth to open the cylinder and check the load then wrapped the gun and slipped it in her jacket pocket. She fished through a lower drawer beneath silk undergarments, dropped some small item in her left pocket, stuffed her cell phone in on top. She raced for the kitchen, flung out the door leaving it open behind her, jumped in the car just as Rick put it in gear. Voletta watched them, not interfering, sour and expressionless.
When Lena ran for the kitchen, passing the couch a few feet from Dulcie’s and Kit’s noses, Dulcie lay quietly watching her. She didn’t want to follow and get tangled in this, she’d had enough of being trapped in cars. But Kit and Pan, their heads filled with Rick’s phone conversation, sped for the front door they’d left cracked open, leaped up the vine beside the porch, were across the roof to the back just as Lena raced out. All the car windows were open against the warm morning. Kit crouched to leap through behind Rick’s head into the backseat. There in the shadows they’d never be noticed, they could find where Randall was hiding, they could find a phone and call in, they could—
Sharp teeth in the nape of her neck jerked her away from the roof’s edge, Pan’s growl low and angry. Shouldering her down, he pressed her so firmly to the shingles that she couldn’t move, even when he let go his bite.