Wilma grabbed her purse, smothered the fire with ashes, found a jacket on the hook in the kitchen. She never questioned Dulcie’s perception. She picked Dulcie up gently and they were out the kitchen door into the bright afternoon, into the car, backing out. “What did you see? What did you dream?”
Dulcie snuggled close against her. “I was with Misto in another place, not Molena Point, not this world but a place so bright, larger than our world could ever be, the sky stretching away more huge than our sky and millions of miles of green hills rolling on and on and up into endlessness . . . And yet,” Dulcie said, “at the same moment we were in our own village, so tiny in those vast spaces. I can’t explain how that could be, we floated in eternity but still were in our own tiny village, and then . . . And then Misto and I were in the village library but the room, the book stacks, were dwarfed like a tiny jewel in endless space. We were looking through old, old books at pictures of my little calico, the way I dream of her, the way Misto describes her. We were looking at our girl kitten over the centuries. The same sweet face, sly and clever, the same faded calico markings and dark swirling stripes, and her little soft paws.
“There she was in those ancient tapestries and books, in lives so many generations gone. There, in one century and then another, born to different times, though Misto said she will remember little of those lives. But now,” she said, “he has shown her to me for the last time. Now Misto himself is going home. My dream of Courtney is his parting gift.”
Slowing the car, Wilma turned onto the Firettis’ street. She felt cold, her hands shaking. Parking before the cottage, she lifted Dulcie as if, Dulcie thought, she were as frail as porcelain. Contritely Dulcie leaped from Wilma’s arms into the fern bed by the Firettis’ front door, the fronds soft beneath her tummy and paws. She waited as Wilma knocked, both strung tight with heartbreak—but both would smile and comfort Misto. They would offer only brightness to the old cat, would lay only love before the venerable cat they so treasured.
In much the same way that Dulcie knew Misto needed her, Kit looked up suddenly from hunting gophers in Lucinda’s garden. She had come home from MPPD alone, abandoned by Joe, left on her own by Dulcie and Ryan and Charlie; had padded home feeling lonely and not sufficiently praised for finding and retrieving the evidence of shoes; had padded home to her empty house, to hunt alone in her empty garden. But now suddenly she turned from the gopher hole, startled. She listened. She sat very still looking away across the village, hearing in her thoughts a bright whisper. She felt awash suddenly in brilliance. Joy filled her, a need filled her, the old cat was calling to her . . .
She was distracted suddenly as the gopher stuck his head out. She grabbed and killed it all in a second, in a fast reflex, and then she bolted away, left the dead gopher lying limp and forgotten. The old cat was calling her. She raced away through neighbors’ gardens and up to the roofs and down and down across the shingles and peaks of cottages and shops, hurrying, sprinting for the Firettis’ cottage.
But Joe Grey, bolting home from the Bleaks’ empty rental, was driven by another mission. Still smiling at his well-timed escape from the Rottweiler, he leaped into his tower and through it onto the high rafter and dropped down onto Clyde’s desk. From the love seat Snowball looked up at him sleepily. She was alone; likely Rock was with Ryan. The little white cat yawned, watching him paw at a pile of papers. Finding his cell phone he punched in the one digit for Max Harper. He waited only two rings.
“Harper,” the chief said shortly.
“The Bleaks have skipped. Left town in another car, a small brown SUV. Clothes, suitcases, maps, like they’re set to travel. I didn’t get a good look at the car, can’t tell you the make, couldn’t see the license. It was in that little garage where they were renting, it was gone when your officers got there. If they’re still there,” Joe said, “there’s a gun in the bedroom, under the armoire. A loaded automatic, in a gun case. Get it out before the damned dog—”
“They have the gun,” Max said, amused. “The dog did find it, but he couldn’t get his nose under.” Max was silent, then, “We lifted a couple of pretty good prints, good match for Tekla’s. We’ve sent the gun to the lab.”
Once again Joe smiled to hear that Max was confiding in him. This whole situation was different from past cases. But there was something else that he hadn’t yet told Max. “There’s a second gun in Tekla’s suitcase. A big, stainless steel revolver. I couldn’t get a good look to tell what make.”
But it was the automatic that was the real evidence. If the riflings on it matched the bullet that killed Ben, they’d have the Bleaks cold. Have evidence far more telling than a notebook and phone and torn pieces from a mouse nest.
And yet now, even after Max had thanked him and they’d ended the call, Joe had an edgy, “something waiting in the background” feeling, as if something were yet to happen. He looked down at Snowball, who was deeply asleep again. He listened to the hollowness of the empty house. He stared away to the east of the village where Ocean Avenue met Highway One, where the Bleaks would have escaped—and suddenly he was out of there, leaping nervously from the desk to the rafter.
With a sudden sure sense of what was wrong, he was through his tower onto the shingles, streaking away across the roofs of the village plaza and the cottages and shops beyond. Heading not toward the tangle of highways where the Bleaks would be speeding, where no cat could ever catch them. Heading for Firetti’s Veterinary Clinic, led strongly now by the same urgency that had called Dulcie and had summoned Kit.
In the Firetti bedroom, the old cat didn’t sleep. He was not, this day, feeling exhausted; he was not drugged by medication. He had had no pain shots since the night before, nor did he want them. His body was in a transition that he knew well.
Though he was weak, he had put his failing aside, had found a new temporary strength. He sat tall on the bed, snuggled all around by his furry entourage, by Kit and Pan and Dulcie, and now Joe Grey as the tomcat slipped in across the room and up on the bed to join them. In Joe’s eyes there was sadness, there was hurt at what was to come.
The cats heard Wilma’s and Mary’s voices from the living room, but the two women didn’t enter. They heard the fire crackle to life and sensed its warmth. The old cat looked at each of them and smiled. He put a paw on the paw of his son Pan, his constant companion these last days. He looked at Kit. “You found shoes,” he said, smiling. “You hauled all that evidence across the yards and hid it for Captain Harper to find.”
Kit beamed.
He looked at Joe and the old cat shook his head. “That Rottweiler could have eaten you in one gulp, tomcat.”
Joe’s eyes widened. The venerable cat’s omniscience unnerved him.
“You did well, Joe Grey. But you’ll soon be a father.” He gave Joe a stern look but said no more. Smiling at Joe, he turned to Dulcie.
“You have another poem in your head, my dear. So much goes on, within. Even as you nurture your kittens, that clear voice nudges you. Those words want life, too. Your verses want to taketheir place in this world. Will you tell us this one?”
“A little of it,” Dulcie shyly. “Just a little . . .”
Duchess of the garbage can
Queen of the alley
Lolling under dustbins
Rolling fat and jolly
No thin beggar, never shy
This lady dines most royally
Fine salami, leftover Brie
Scraps of salmon from the sea
She is beautifully obese
Who feasts on kippers and roast geese
Queen of the garbage can
Duchess of the alley
Accepting largesse with greed
Rolling fat and jolly.