30
JOE WAS HIGH up the hills making his way through a tangle of fallen oaks when the wind shifted and he smelled the stink of coyote. Slowing to a trot, he scanned the slopes around him. He didn’t see the beast, and he caught no glimpse of Dulcie or Kit. The rolling mass of open land remained empty, and he went on warily through the dark, tangled grass.
When he smelled the coyote again it was way too close, somewhere in the black valley just below him. Ducking into a maze of boulders he backed into a hollow between them just as the beast lunged. He backed deeper, pressing down among the granite rocks. The coyote pushed its nose in and began to dig, reckless and fierce. Joe raked him twice. The beast ignored him and kept digging. When Joe struck for its eyes and bit its black nose, it yowled and backed away. He was poised to charge out at it when the coyote spun around and ran.
Slipping out to look, Joe watched it race away with a cluster of cats clinging to its back, raking into its thick coat. Joe stood up on a boulder, laughing, as the beast went tearing off into the night with its unwelcome passengers. Then Dulcie was there beside him, frantically nosing at him.
“Are you all right?”
“I am now,” he said. They heard the coyote scream, heard dry bushes breaking, saw the beast vanish over the high crest.
Moments later a dozen cats emerged from the night, crowding around them. These were the clowder leaders: white-coated Cotton, tabby Coyote with his tufted ears, and pale Willow of the faded calico coat and green eyes.
“Come on,” Willow said. “That was a yearling pup, three of them are off hunting on their own and it isn’t safe. We were hunting wood rats for…” She paused uneasily. “To take back to the clowder when we saw him stalking you.”
“Hunting wood rats for who?” Joe said. Only a sick or injured cat didn’t hunt on his own. “What’s wrong? Where’s Kit?”
“She’s fine,” Dulcie said.
“Tansy, then?” he asked, thinking guiltily of that scrawny little mite who had led them through the empty houses and then run away so frightened.
“Sage is hurt,” Dulcie said. “I think he found the missing body, I think he found the killer.” She turned, and she and Joe followed the clowder cats up the hills toward the Pamillon mansion, Joe filled with questions that she insisted must wait.
As long as they could remember, the mansion and its acreage had stood abandoned, home for raccoons, deer, the occasional bobcat, but more recently for the wild clowder. Soon they were crowding in through the fallen front wall of the two-story house, where the parlor, and the nursery above, stood open to the world like a vast stage ready for a theatrical production.
To the wild clowder, this shelter was a palace. The slate roof was sound, the rooms dry enough, and not only did the big house offer protection, but its acreage with all its cellars and outbuildings provided uncounted places for a cat to hide from danger and to hunt the smaller beasts that sustained them.
The parlor’s flowered wallpaper was peeling off in long strips, the tables and beds and upholstered furniture sagged with rot, their stuffing pulled out by generations of long-deceased mice and rats. Dulcie led Joe across the cluttered room to the back where, behind a moldering couch, Tansy crouched beside Sage. The young tom lay on a cushion that was little more than cotton stuffing but that looked warm and soft; he was very still, his eyes closed, his breathing quick and shallow. Kit sat nearby, her ears down, her tortoiseshell face grim with worry.
Joe sat down beside Sage, and the clowder cats crowded around, resuming a vigil they had left when they went to hunt. Four cats carried dead wood rats, which they laid beside the couch where their scent might tease Sage’s appetite. Outside the broken wall the night darkened as the clouds shifted, and the wind blew cold off the far sea, intruding into the abandoned room, unwelcome and bold.
Joe could smell Sage’s distress and fear. “What happened? Where did you see the body? What-?”
“Let him rest awhile,” Willow said. “The wind was knocked out of him, maybe some ribs broken. He hurts here and here,” she said, lifting a careful paw but not touching Sage. She looked up when an orange tomcat slipped in beside them dangling a wood rat from his jaws. When he held it right in Sage’s face, Sage’s eyes opened and brightened, and he struggled to sit up, wincing as he reached out with a gripping paw and pulled the wood rat to him. He was soon gulping down the welcome meal, his enthusiasm strengthening with each morsel.
When he’d finished he rose and stretched, and clearly he felt stronger. He clawed at the sofa and then limped around the barrier and stood looking across the ruined parlor through the wide vista of broken wall, to the hills below. Far away, the moon hung low above the sea, half hidden by low clouds.
“The pain’s not so bad now,” Sage said. “My side doesn’t hurt so much.” He looked at Joe Grey, in awe of the older cat, thinking about the time, in the animal hospital, when Joe and Dulcie had let a doctor take their own blood so that he could live.
Joe came to stand beside him. “What happened tonight?” he repeated.
Lying down again for a little rest, Sage told Joe about the pit inside the garage and how the man had buried a woman there, how the man saw him looking and went pale and snatched up the hammer and threw it, how the glass had shattered and he was knocked off the lumber pile. As Sage spun the tale, the clowder cats all crowded around, their minds filled with what, to them, was indeed a threatening but fascinating scene. The speaking cats might fear humans, but the strangeness of the human world never ceased to stir their wonder. There was a link between the two worlds that would forever fascinate them.
“That man left the same smell,” Tansy said. “The same as the man who robbed those houses.”
Joe Grey looked at her with interest, then trotted to the edge of the broken floor and stood looking down toward the remodel tucked among the lower hills. “Ryan will dump gravel in the morning, they’ll fill in the pit and then pour the concrete.” He looked around at Dulcie. “We can’t let them do that.” And without another word he trotted out through the broken wall and headed away toward the village. As Dulcie and Kit galloped to join him, behind them, Sage rose.
“You’re too weak,” Willow said.
“I’ll go just a little way,” said Sage. “I want to see…” He turned to look at her. “I’m stronger, I want to go just a short way…” Willow looked at him, puzzled, but she said no more. She and Tansy followed him, unwilling to let him go alone. Soon the whole clowder was moving down the hills, surrounding Sage to shelter him, but filled with curiosity, too, wanting to see this strange grave, this cruel and lonely disposal of a human person.
IT WAS VERY late when Clyde and Ryan headed upstairs, Clyde still complaining because Joe had raced away into the night. Ryan dropped Snowball gently on the bed and set her cup of cocoa on the nightstand. Crossing to the fireplace, she knelt to light the gas logs. There was a little pop, and bright flames licked up, silhouetting her slim form through her translucent gown. She rose, turning, her dark hair tumbling across her cheek. She picked up her cell phone from the dresser, and before putting it in the charger she checked her messages.