“Well, she has to know what’s going on,” Dulcie said to ease her conscience. “Maybe she’ll think we’re still in Max’s office, cozy and warm and picking up information.” Wilma Getz was as close with the department as were Ryan and Clyde, she knew about the meth house, and she would already know about the cartons of chemicals. Dulcie, lashing her tail with irritation because her housemate too often looked over her shoulder, swerved away in a sharp detour, heading for Jolly’s alley. Joe galloped close behind her, thinking of smoked salmon, crab salad, scraps of rare prime rib—then they’d search Sammie Miller’s cottage. He wondered, as they dropped down into the picturesque alley, if Emmylou had hidden Hesmerra’s metal box there in the house, when she broke in. Would she do that, with cops all over the neighborhood?
He still wasn’t sure whether Max had seen the box half hidden in the backseat of Emmylou’s car and whether he’d glimpsed the Kraft letterhead sticking out. Wasn’t sure what Max had thought at seeing him there. He told himself the chief was used to seeing him in strange places—he was, after all, an annoyingly nosy tomcat. Given the chief’s matter-of-fact take on life, what else could Harper think?
“Oh, my,” Dulcie said, licking her whiskers at the smell of roast chicken drifting up to them from Jolly’s alley. Scrambling down a potted bottlebrush tree into the brick-paved alley, they were about to make a dash for the food bowl when, from the shadows, a dark little shape leaped away and vanished, a little black-and-white cat, diving behind a potted geranium where, in fact, they could easily corner the little thing. They remained still, hoping it would come out again; they didn’t want to scare it all the more. The scent was of tomcat, a little young tomcat.
“Sammie Miller’s other cat?” Dulcie said. “Did he have a mustache mark?”
“I don’t know,” Joe said. “I’m starved.”
“We’ll share,” she said, “we’ll leave him some, he’ll come out when we’re gone. I’ll tell Wilma, maybe he’ll come out for one of the volunteers.” No one wanted to trap a cat unnecessarily, if he was friendly. And Jolly’s alley didn’t make good trapping, with so many neighborhood cats stopping in for handouts. Odds were, they’d have to release two dozen cats before they caught this one. Dulcie headed for the bowl, and Joe shouldered in next to her. It took great restraint to leave any chicken for the stray, they slurped up the deli’s offering as eagerly as if they, too, were homeless and starving.
When they’d finished, leaving a generous portion, they scaled the bottlebrush tree back to the roof, and waited nearly half an hour for the little cat to come out. When at last he did creep to the bowl, he inhaled their leavings in six big bites. “If they can catch him,” Joe said, “he’ll be happy to see his sister, and they’ll be fine at Chichi’s.” Chichi Barbi’s cages, set up in her airy daylight basement between the guest rooms, were large and clean with multiple levels for each cat; the cats, according to Ryan, got plenty of petting and attention from the women Chichi was sheltering. Leaving the young cat licking the bowl, they headed for Sammie Miller’s. This was a lot of fuss for a box of business papers that could turn out to be nothing; but something prodded Joe to find it, his instinct about those papers was as urgent as the curiosity of a stubborn cop.
No exterior lights burned around Sammie’s cottage; Molena Point neighborhoods didn’t have streetlights, the only illumination was what homeowners chose to install on their own. Sammie’s yard was not only dark but smothered by overgrown bushes clutching the walls, reaching toward the grimy windows. The frame building was no wider than a double garage, maybe six hundred square feet at best. Even from outside, the house had the sour smell of accumulated dirt and rotting wood, a house overripe for a teardown. In better economic times someone would already have bought it, razed it, and be building a new little retreat in its place. Or would have bought several adjoining houses, torn them all down, and built yet another overlarge, too impressive residence; even in this unpretentious neighborhood, every square foot of land was valuable.
The little front porch was no more than a slab of flaking concrete with three cement steps leading up. The front door was painted a dark, sticky color undetectable in the night, sealed with a new hasp and padlock, courtesy of MPPD, where Emmylou had pried the old lock open. There was a small window at either side, but no cat door. Trotting around the side of the house, they pushed downhill through patches of thorny pyracantha bushes, moving to the back where the dropping lot allowed for a taller basement, enough space for another pair of small, dirty windows. Twelve wooden stairs led up to a wooden landing supported by four-by-four pillars. The steps smelled rank and wild. “Raccoons,” they said together, hissing with disgust.
The back door was narrow, decorated with the same dark sticky paint. To the left, a cat door had been cut into the wall, a homemade affair closed by a flap of warped plywood hanging on rusty hinges. Raccoon fur was caught around the edge, where the beasts had pushed inside. “This,” Joe said, “might not be such a breeze, if we corner one of those mothers in there.”
“You want to leave? Wait until the department has a go? If they can get a search warrant. We could tell them we think maybe there might be a box hidden in there and maybe it contains information . . .”
“All right. Enough.” Laying back his ears, he shoved beneath the plywood flap into the kitchen. The place stank of raccoons and, even more viral, it smelled of soured milk and spoiled food from the refrigerator. They paused, listening.
There was no sound, no scuffling or snarling as if they had surprised some rough-furred bandit. The linoleum was gritty beneath their paws, the floor scattered with kibble where the animals had torn open a large bag of dry cat food. A five-foot length of counter held the sink, its dark cabinets featuring the same sticky paint as the front and back doors. The ancient gas stove was small, round cornered, pale enamel with chrome trim, short curved legs and curved feet. It stank of old grease and of the gassy pilot light, those smells blending with the aroma of cat kibble and the stink of raccoon.
A cracked white bowl stood on a rubber mat just inside the cat door. It was empty, licked clean save for two muddy, long-toed pawprints marking the white interior. Together, the cats pawed the cupboards open.
Old dented pots and pans in the bottom, five cans of soup in the top cabinets, a bag of flour with bugs crawling out, and half a dozen ants wandering aimlessly as if discouraged in their hopeless scouting trip. The inside of one cupboard door held a row of cup hooks where Sammie had hung a beer opener, a flat grater, a key on a ring, a set of measuring spoons, and a little rusty strainer. The refrigerator, when Joe swung on the handle and kicked the door open, offered half a loaf of moldy bread, a bottle of curdled milk, a bowl of spaghetti green with mold, three rotten tomatoes. The freezer, the size of the glove compartment in a compact car, held two packs of rotten meat. Had Sammie neglected to pay her bills, even before she vanished? The power company, with so many folks moving away with rent and bills unpaid, had grown rather surly in such matters.
Moving into the front of the house, they found one long room, with a notch cut out for a bathroom that left a narrow sleeping alcove with a brown curtain drawn halfway across. The same dark walls as the kitchen. A fusty gray carpet, gritty beneath their paws. Toppled stacks of newspapers cascaded against the furniture, some of the papers shredded among torn-apart paperback books. Had the raccoons done this? Or had someone else? Rumpled clothes were tossed across a fat, overstuffed couch and matching chair of undetermined color.
The room had four small windows, those each side of the front door, and two artlessly placed in the center of the side wall, half covered by graying lace curtains hanging crookedly. Sammie might have a roof over her head, in contrast to her wandering brother, but this environment seemed far more grim than his open roads. Beneath the smell of raccoons and the smell of dust came, faintly, the hint of young cats, an old and fading scent. No cats were visible. They started at floor level, scenting out like bloodhounds looking for the tin box, trying to pick up a whiff of water-soaked ashes, nosing into every pile of papers, old sweaters and rumpled T-shirts, feeling with careful paws for the smooth cold feel of metal. But only Joe thought the hunt might be worth the effort; Dulcie really didn’t think Emmylou would have hidden Hesmerra’s box in here, it didn’t seem to her a safe place at all—if the papers were of any value.