Joe agreed. Scotty and Kate would be another couple where one partner knew the cats’ secret and one didn’t. Scotty had no notion the cats could speak. Not an easy way to live, where one member of a happy couple had to harbor lies, as did Charlie Harper. No happily wed couple wanted the dark specter of deception shadowing their honesty with each other. And in Kate’s case, the stress could be worse.
Kate, who had divorced a philandering husband long ago, said she’d never trust another man. Scotty, the loner, dated casually but had never found a woman he loved—he said he wouldn’t marry for less than a deep, true commitment. How would Kate hide the truth from him, when she herself had such a close connection to speaking cats?
Joe looked around for Billy, wondering if he, too, had been watching Kate and Scotty, but then he remembered this was a full school day in the work/school schedule that had been set up for the boy. Joe had turned on Ryan’s shoulder so he could look behind them when Ryan spoke softly. “Look,” she whispered, facing away toward the tree-sheltered Pamillon mansion that stood beyond the rise.
Across the hilly meadow, on the remains of a fallen stone wall, a brown tabby crouched. “One of the clowder cats?” Kate said. “Oh, have they come back from the Netherworld, too? But Kit and Pan can’t know, they didn’t say anything.”
Joe stretched up from her shoulder to look. The tabby was gone, but a white face peered out from the shadows; he could barely see her pale calico against the light stone wall. “Willow,” he said. “That’s Willow! I don’t see the tabby, but Willow’s back! They’re back!” He leaped down to join the clowder cats, racing away.
Ryan stood looking after him. What would this mean? Were the ferals still fine with her building the shelter here? They’d better be, at this late stage. They’d known about it before they descended down the tunnels to that other world. She would not have begun the project without Joe and Dulcie and Kit and Pan seeking out the wild clowder and telling them. Asking them, she thought, smiling.
The ferals had seemed all right with the plan, had seemed comfortable with the close proximity to the rescues. They were pleased with this caring human help for cats in need. Though no one had been sure, in fact, that the little group of feral cats would return from the Netherworld; there were charms and wonders in both lands.
Kate had situated the shelter, and the road that approached it, nearly half a mile from the mansion, away from the ferals’ preferred hunting grounds, from the overgrown rose gardens and the woods beyond. Ryan and Kate hoped, as the shelter was populated, as volunteers came and went, they wouldn’t drive the shy little band away. They would never want to do that. They had already posted small signs around the mansion grounds marking that area dangerous and off-limits.
When Ryan heard the sound of the drill once more and saw Scotty back at work, she found Kate inside the main building in a large communal room, busy with her drawing pad. Planning the cat perches, the overhead walks, the lofts and hiding places to entice the resident cats. Laying down her drawing pad, Kate handed Ryan one end of her tape measure. Neither spoke of Scotty. Kate smiled and hugged Ryan, showed her what she wanted to measure, and said nothing more.
Joe Grey galloped across the wide, hilly berm and through scattered trees into the weedy grounds of the stone mansion, searching for Willow and the ferals. There, by the stone walclass="underline" Willow came out, stepping delicately, smiling, then rubbing whiskers with Joe. One by one the ferals appeared to greet him. Soon he was surrounded by seven cats all talking at once. He followed them deep behind the big house where no human would see or hear them. Their eyes were bright with a secret, their tails lashing. There was no small talk, not even tales of their return up the tunnels. What were they so eager to tell him? He had no notion that their message would send him racing away again for a phone.
The ferals greeted him with nose touches and rollovers and a little crazy chasing, then they led him to a narrow dirt road back in the trees beyond the mansion. “You’ll want to see this,” pale-coated Sage said. “This might be for the police. These people that were here made our fur bristle. Those humans coming here into the ruins, they were scum.”
The cats led him down the old sunken road, hidden deep in the woods, where he and Dulcie had sometimes wandered. It was hardly wide enough for a car, so cars never came there. But now a car had come, its tire marks fresh and deep in the mud where a small rivulet crossed. Joe could see where the vehicle had parked and where it had turned around, making several passes, its bumpers and fenders biting into the earthen berm. The feral cats crowded around him, dark tabby Coyote, creamy Tansy, light tabby Sage, and Willow of the pale calico coat, all seven of the small band of ferals that had ventured down to the Netherworld. Willow said, “This is your kind of hunting, Joe Grey. Hunting humans. Those people smelled of evil.”
“The car nearly got stuck,” Coyote said, the long-eared tabby smiling with pleasure. “They came here in daylight yesterday. The first thing they did was turn the car around. Took them a long time, big clumsy wheels spinning in the mud,” and that made Coyote laugh. “Way too big for this narrow road. They waited until dark to leave. Hiding,” the dark tabby said. “Hiding from what?”
“Did they see you?” Joe said.
“Not us,” said Sage, glancing at Tansy. “They had a boy, a big, rude boy, he got out and stamped around in the woods and broke branches and threw them. We made ourselves scarce.”
“What kind of car?” Joe said, not expecting them to remember. “What make?” The ferals didn’t pay much attention to man’s noisy machines, except usually to avoid them.
“Brown,” Willow said. “Like a station wagon.”
“An SUV?”
“I think so. It opened in the back so you could see through to the front. There were suitcases, blankets, as if for traveling. We could see the mark that said Ford. The license was all mud, caked and dry. But close up, you could read it. We thought you might want to know what that was?”
Joe Grey smiled. “Of course I do.” Well, the ferals did know, from past encounters, what police work was about. When Willow told him the number he said it over twice, committing it to memory. Now he burned to get to a phone. He said his hasty good-byes, nudged each cat gently and touched noses and promised to return soon.
“Most likely,” Joe said, “a detective will be out to look the scene over, to photograph the tire marks and those footprints back and forth into the woods.”
“What about our pawprints?” Willow said.
Joe thought about that. “They know there are feral cats up here, they think you are one of the wild bands that CatFriends feeds. Charlie has made it clear you are to be left alone, to be protected. They won’t be surprised to see pawprints.” He gave Willow a final friendly nudge, spun around and raced back through the woods and across the berm to Ryan, praying she hadn’t left.
He found her in the car, sitting quietly. He leaped in. “Thank God you waited.”
“What else would I do? You take off like gangbusters, all riled up. I knew I’d better wait.”
Standing in her lap he snatched up her cell phone and hit the button for the station—hoping he wouldn’t get Evijean.
Of course he got Evijean. “Captain Harper is not . . .” she began with her delaying routine.
“Evijean,” Joe said coldly, “I have the license number the chief is waiting for. If he doesn’t get itnow, pronto, you’ll never get a recommendation for another job, no matter where you look—and believe me, you’ll be looking.”
Evijean put him through.
The conversation was brief. Max said, “I’m putting the information out as we speak. We’ll see what this gets. Again, many thanks. This could reel in our fish.” And he hung up.
When Joe ended the call Ryan grinned and caught him up in a hug that, as usual, deeply embarrassed him.