He lowered his light, stood numb and shaken, and couldn’t breathe.
At last, steadying himself, he replaced the boots against the wall, and again looked around for anything else he’d left amiss. When he was sure that everything was in place he fled, silently shutting the door, pausing to go through the tedious process of locking it while looking and listen ing for the cat and praying he’d killed it. When the door was locked, he climbed the hill, started the engine, and hauled out of there, heading for the rented garage.
DOWN BESIDE THE garage, Sage crawled away from the broken glass and the fallen hammer and moved deep among the bushes, easing himself down on the cool ground. He wanted to lie quietly, he hurt bad and he was bleeding. He had never trusted humans and now he hated them.
He’d been hunting, minding his own business and waiting hopefully for Tansy after she’d gone off with those village cats. He was angry with her because she’d defied him but still he’d waited-and now he wished she were there, now he needed her.
He’d been curious when he saw the man leave the parked car, moving so stealthily, and slip down the hill and into the garage. Leaping onto the lumber pile beside the window he’d looked in, had watched him digging, making the pit deeper and then in a little while had watched him carry a dead woman in there and that had frightened him, a naked dead woman with a blanket wrapped around her. He’d watched him bury her, and he knew two things: This secret burial would be very wrong in the law of the clowder. They did not bury their dead secretly, there was always a ceremony. And he knew from the village cats that such behavior was equally against the law of the human world.
Uneasily, he had watched the man bury her, and when the man looked up, his face filling with fear, that had pleased Sage. He had watched him as he nervously filled the grave with dirt, had seen him leave and return. It was then, when the man shone the light on him, that he had bristled up, half angry and half amused by the human’s fear, had made himself big and wild, and that was when the man’s face contorted with rage and he grabbed the hammer and threw it.
He hadn’t been quick enough, the glass shattered and the hammer struck him, and now he lay beneath the bushes hurting very bad and wishing Tansy was with him. Wishing he had someone to care that he was hurt, and to help him.
22
ON THE HIGH narrow balcony of the Longley house, Kit was trying to claw open the bathroom window when lights flashed along the street below and paused, hitting the edge of the roof as a car pulled into the driveway. The intrusion so startled Kit that she aborted her leap to the window, dropping back to the balcony. Crouching, she jumped higher, hit the roof snatching at the gutter, pulling herself onto the shingles. Joe, Dulcie, and Tansy followed, their hind paws clawing at empty air as they scrabbled up beside her and they trotted to the edge to peer over.
A dark brown recreation vehicle stood below, a compact RV with two camp chairs tied on top. They heard the electric garage door open. The RV pulled in, and the door rolled down again. The cats, directly above, could not see into the cab.
“Is that the Longleys?” Dulcie said. “They just left for their vacation. What, did they rent an RV? Has something happened to bring them back?”
“Maybe they gave some friend the key,” Joe said doubtfully.
“They would have told Charlie,” Dulcie said. “And she would have told us, she knew we were coming here.” She cut a look at Joe. “Shall we go in anyway?”
“Are you out of your mind?”
“We could just crack the bathroom window open and listen, find out if it is the Longleys. If they come upstairs, we’ll hear them talking and we-”
Joe shrugged, and turned, and slipped back across the roof walking softly as he headed for the trellis. They dare not gallop, even a crow hopping on the shingles would be heard from within, in a series of little drumbeats. They were about to drop down to the balcony and try the high window when another pair of lights came up the street, and a second car paused in front of the house. They heard a police radio, and the reflection of a spotlight glanced up through the trees as its bright beam swept the yard.
Slipping back across the roof, the cats looked down on a black-and-white. It stood at the curb, portly Officer Brennan sitting behind the wheel, shining his torch along the house, across the doors and windows. Did he know there was someone here who might not belong? Brennan got out and dutifully circled the house, shining his light up and down so it glanced along the edges of the roof. Then he eased himself back into his car, looking bored. As if he had found nothing out of order, as if this was only a routine check. That angered Dulcie, that he’d found nothing amiss. “He’s just going to leave?” she said angrily, her tail lashing, her ears flat.
“How would he know?” Joe said. “Even Brennan can’t see through walls.”
Starting his engine, Brennan headed down the street, pulling up at the Waterman house. The cats watched him go through the same routine there. He was simply doing a vacation check, possibly at Charlie’s request. When he headed for the Chapmans’, they returned to the balcony and its high window.
“Are we going in, or what?” Dulcie said impatiently. “We can’t learn anything out here.”
“In,” Tansy said boldly. “I know places to hide.”
“So they see us? We’re only cats,” Kit said, forgetting times past when such a discovery of unexplained feline entry had led to disaster-when one such incident had frazzled her little cat nerves so badly that she remained jumpy for weeks, flinching at every shadow.
Dulcie looked at Joe. When Joe shrugged, and nodded, the tabby leaped to the little window, her claws in the sill, her hind legs braced against the house. It was an awkward angle, but more swiftly than her companions expected she dug her claws into the window frame, gave one hard jerk, and was surprised to see the glass slide open beneath her paws.
They crowded onto the sill, dropped to the tile counter, and slipped softly down onto the bathroom rug. The bathroom door was cracked open. Crouched in the chill little room, they could hear from downstairs hard footsteps cross the wooden floor, heard someone walking back and forth, back and forth, as if slowly pacing. Then came the scraping of metal against metal, then several little thunks, then a click, as if a door had been opened.
“Stay here,” Joe said. “Wait here.” And he was out of the bathroom and down the hall before Dulcie could stop him.
The three lady cats followed, to see him disappear down the curved stairs. Pausing on the top step, they tried to see where he’d gone. Dulcie’s and Kit’s dark coats were nearly invisible on the dark runner, but pale little Tansy shone as bright as the moonlight that was shining in through the high windows. The curved stairway led down to a wide entry, where a cream-colored Chinese rug shone against the dark parquet floor. Arches opened into two adjoining rooms, flanking a carved settee that stood against the wall. Joe appeared beneath the settee, and paused in the entrance to the living room where moonlight brightened a wall of bookshelves and glass-fronted cupboards. A man stood there, his back to them, opening the glass door of a cupboard, a tall man dressed in jeans and a dark windbreaker.
As he began removing the books within, Joe slipped up behind him and vanished beneath a spindly leather love seat that was stacked with empty cardboard boxes. The door on the other side of the fireplace stood open as well. These shelves were empty, and on a chair nearby, a carton marked VODKA was neatly filled with small, round, glass objects nestled among folds of bubble wrap.