Slipping out the door behind them through the miasma of alcohol, they scrambled up the oak tree. They sat on the tile roof only a moment before they headed across the roofs again, moving south and east in the direction of John Firetti’s veterinary clinic. Despite their preoccupation with the attacks, their strongest urge was to sit with Misto. While we can still be with him, Dulcie thought sadly.
Below them along the narrow streets the traffic was heavier now. The fog was thinning, the shops were open, and a few tourists had left their motels, looking up at the sky hoping for sunshine. The smell of coffee and sweet confections rose from the little bakeries, the smell of late bacon and eggs from the small cafés, from clusters of tables in street-side patios. The cats were passing above a tree-shaded court when they stopped, looking down, watching two strangers below. A woman with a cane was limping through the patio toward one of the shops. Behind her a short, older man had turned into the courtyard, walking without sound following the woman, his eyes intently on her; she seemed unaware of him.
4
Looking down from the roof, engulfed in the smells of café breakfasts, Joe and Dulcie watched the woman in tight black workout clothes limp along toward the back shops of the little courtyard, watched the man following her. Her cane was one of those folding aluminum models. Her face and arms were sun-wrinkled, her calves pale between her cutoffs and black socks. She wore sturdy black walking shoes and a black fanny pack strapped low at her side. She glanced uneasily now at the small, thin man behind her, a grizzle-haired fellow wearing a boy-sized leather jacket and jeans. He moved easily, like a boy. He slowed when the woman slowed and pretended to look in a store window. As she limped along she watched his moving reflections. Turning suddenly, she headed toward a small toy store that was just opening.
The cats could see the owner inside pulling up the shades, a tall, bald man in a pale blue sport shirt. As soon as he unlocked the door the woman stepped inside. The two spoke for a few moments, then she moved deep into the shop. The owner stepped out into the courtyard, stood facing the man with a forbidding look. Everyone in the village, it seemed, was on edge over the assaults. The ragged fellow stared back at him, turned away and headed for the street. Neither had spoken. The cats heard, from somewhere behind the shop, a door open and close as if perhaps the woman had slipped out the back, to the side street or an alley.
Within the store, the shopkeeper had picked up the phone. The cats, watching him, watching his gestures, felt certain he was calling the police, giving the man’s description. He glanced out once to see which way the stalker had gone—as Joe and Dulcie turned to follow the little man from above. A few parking places down, he approached a white Toyota pickup. Slipping in, starting the engine, he pulled out into traffic between a UPS van and a pair of wandering pedestrians. The cats saw, behind him, the shopkeeper run from the patio and step into the street, stopping traffic, watching the pickup pull away with a hard, intent look as if he were committing the license to memory.
“He’ll call that in, too,” Dulcie said, smiling, flicking her whiskers.
But the cats had memorized the number as well. “If that was the same person as at the courthouse,” Dulcie said doubtfully, “that we thought was a boy, then somewhere he changed jackets, maybe left the black hoodie in the Toyota.”
“Why not?” Joe said. “Or maybe not the same guy. Maybe he thought to take advantage of the attacks. Snatch a few bucks and lay the crime on the real bully.”
“So even if the real thug’s never caught,” she said, “the crime’s laid on him, and this fellow goes free.”
“He’ll be caught,” Joe said calmly. “A matter of time. Time and stealth.” The tomcat never doubted that between cat-power and the cops, they’d catch the right man. “We’ll call the department from Misto’s house,” he said, hurrying along.
“But the shopkeeper got the number, he’ll be calling right now.”
“Maybe. Or maybe he got it wrong, couldn’t see it all.” Joe didn’t like to depend on chance when it came to humans. “We’ll tell Harper about that kid, too, there in front of the PD following the woman in the wheelchair. If I hadn’t shouted . . .”
Dulcie stopped, gave him a long, steady look. “This time, Joe, let’s leave it. We don’t know that either one was going to attack. We didn’t see an assault.”
His yellow eyes narrowed, his ears went flat. “We saw two stalkers . . . We—”
“Wait, Joe. Wait until we have something certain. We don’t want—we can’t afford to make niggling little tips that could turn out to be nothing.”
His scowl deepened; his claws dug into the shingles.
“We can’t shake their confidence in us, we don’t want them wondering, every time we call, if thistip is worth pursuing.” She nosed at him gently. “Leave the calls for the big stuff. The important information that we know they can run with. Don’t throw it away on conjectures.”
Joe turned and trotted away from her, over a low, shingled peak, toward Ocean Avenue. He badly wanted to get to a phone. He didn’t like to admit that maybe, just maybe, Dulcie might be right.
She caught up with him quickly, nosing at him so he wouldn’t be cross. But she stopped abruptly, peering over the edge of the roof at a plump couple in matching red sweatshirts: the couple from in front of the PD, the woman’s unruly hair tangled around her jowly face. Joe had a sharp recall of the red-sweatered couple turning to stare at the would-be victim, then moving quickly away as if they didn’t want to be seen.
When the portly couple turned into the low-walled patio of the Ocean Café, Dulcie followed them. Joe wanted to move on to a phone.
“Just for a minute,” she said. “I want . . . there’s something about those two.” With Dulcie so keenly intent, suddenly so focused, Joe put aside the thought of the phone, his own curiosity tweaked, too, and he followed her.
The brick terrace was crowded with small round tables draped in red, blue, or green cloths. As soon as the couple in red was seated, the cats backed down a stone pine, dropped down inside the wall and behind a row of potted geraniums.
“From the looks of them,” Dulcie whispered, “they could skip a few breakfasts,” But glancing down at her own tummy bulge, she thought she shouldn’t criticize.
No one was looking as the cats slipped under the table’s blue cloth, avoiding the couple’s canvas-clad feet; avoiding the woman’s floppy carryall that she’d set on the floor, one of those flowered, quilted numbers that tourists couldn’t resist. Crouched in the shadows, they listened to the rustle of their menus and to their discussion of what sounded good—blintzes, omelet, hash browns. The cats licked their whiskers. Dulcie’s appetite lately had been way too demanding, another aspect of her secret that was hard to conceal from Joe Grey.
The click of footsteps and the deep voice of the waiter brought his black shoes gleaming just inches from their noses. The tinkle of ice as he poured water. He offered coffee and poured it, and the couple gave their matching orders: pancakes, eggs, ham, and apple pie. The sound of the server’s shoes clicked away again. The restaurant and patio were crowded, so the staff didn’t linger.
The woman’s voice was grainy and low. “That was her, all right, Howard. She’s colored her hair different, it was blond before, but the same big brown eyes with those little creases, same long face. Same tennis tan,” she said with sarcasm. “She wasn’t in a cast and wheelchair then, but that’s the same woman. Bonnie something, don’t you remember? Even the same gold hair clip and gold earrings, I remember those.”
“So?” Howard said. “How would I remember? I wasn’t there every day, like you. And she has as much right to come down here as we do. Half of San Francisco vacations in Molena Point—even if we do come down partly to see your sister. But that woman—Bonnie, you said?—and that Betty Porter, they have nothing to do with us.”