Joe turned, gave her a look. “Snow. Right. Since when did it snow on the central coast?”
But even through the glass, the night felt cold enough to freeze the rain solid. They were peering out when a lone siren cut through the silence from the direction of the station: one whoop, like a squad car clearing traffic as it sped away. They imagined the black-and-white moving fast through the village followed by another and maybe by Kathleen’s white Ford two-door. Dropping from the desk, they slipped quickly out of the house, scrambled to the roofs again through the rain, which was heavier now, almost sleeting, and they followed where they knew the cop car was headed. The immediacy of the police response took precedence over the cold, over their sharp hunger, and over their need for sleep—even over their caution to remain unnoticed at the soon-to-be-busy crime scene.
24
Wilma was awake when the cats quietly left the house. She’d heard them come in just moments earlier, the faint brush as they slipped through the cat door, and she’d thought Dulcie was in for the night. But then when Dulcie didn’t trot in to leap on the bed, and she heard Joe’s soft voice from the living room, she’d rolled over to look at the phone.
With the red light for the main line flashing, she knew the phantom snitches were at work, calling the department, she knew the scenario too well. She hadn’t dared turn on her speaker to listen in, the little click would have alerted them at once. Swinging out of bed, shivering even in her flannel gown, she’d slipped barefoot to the bedroom door and listened, only mildly ashamed of herself. She could hear the faintest mumble, not Dulcie’s voice, but Joe’s, serious and urgent, too faint to make out a word he was saying.
She daren’t slip closer, they’d hear even the faintest brush of her gown against the wall or door, or would scent her approach. The next moment, the whoop of a siren rose from the center of the village, a squad car leaving the station. How cold the night had grown, her bare feet were freezing. She’d stayed by the bedroom door debating whether to go on out, but then she heard them leave as stealthily as they’d entered. Searching for her slippers, she pulled them on and went up the hall to the living room, turned on the desk lamp, and hit the redial button.
The number 911 came on the screen, and quickly she clicked off.
She couldn’t ask the dispatcher what was happening. How would she know they’d just received a tip from the snitches? That lone siren could have been a patrol unit pulling over a speeding driver, but from the cats’ stealth and haste, she didn’t think so. Something was happening out in the night, and she knew she wouldn’t sleep again. Wide awake, she turned out the lamp and pulled the curtain aside.
The rain had turned to slush, the cold was as sharp as knives. Closing the curtain again, she moved into the kitchen, flipped on the light over the sink, got the milk from the refrigerator, and a saucepan, and made a cup of cocoa. Carrying it back to bed, she opened the curtain, then tucked up under the covers, getting warm as she sipped her cocoa and looked out at the night. The slushy rain was falling more slowly, in a strange, drifting pattern.
She sat up straighter when she realized it was snowing, small flakes floating beyond the glass. Snow, here on the coast. And the weatherman apparently hadn’t had a clue.
This hadn’t happened in a decade, smatterings of snow in the village, deeper drifts up in the surrounding hills, an amazement that had brought the whole village out to look. There were newspaper articles in the library’s local history collection, pictures of heavy snow some fifty years ago when, one article said, Molena Point High School students abandoned their cars to throw snowballs in the drifts, getting to class hours late. That was the year that the steepest grades were too icy to drive on, and the Bing Crosby Pro-Am Golf Tournament was postponed because the golf course was covered with snow. The newspaper pictures made the higher elevations look like ski country, hills and roads solid white, roofs and the tops of the fence posts heaped with snow. The papers said that all day a steady stream of drivers headed up the valley to have a look and take photos.
And now here it was again. The real thing. She imagined the village waking in the morning to a white world, everyone running outdoors, excited by the novelty.
But right now, tonight, the two cats were out in it freezing their busy little paws. If they had alerted a patrol car, you could bet they were headed back to the scene, to whatever violence had occurred, that they’d be in the middle of the action, peering down from some freezing rooftop into the glare of strobe lights, hardly able to hear the officers’ voices for the harsh radio’s grainy insistence. Two little cats out in the icy night with no thought to frozen ears, their entire attention on the investigation unfolding below them.
It seemed so long ago that Dulcie was just a giddy kitten, with no thought to human crime, human evil, and with no notion of her true talents.
Though even then, that tiny little thing was strange and different. So covetous, for one thing, stealing the neighbors’ sheer stockings and bright scarves right through their bedroom windows, even then a clever little break-and-enter artist. And look at her now, a bold, grown-up, crime-solving lady, too often wired for trouble.
The day Dulcie first spoke, that was a shock to them both, had left them both shaken, staring at each other, Dulcie’s green eyes huge with amazement, Wilma trembling as if with vertigo. Dulcie’s disbelief had made her laugh, and hearing her own human laugh, she was startled all over again.
And now, besides her aggressive fascination with village crime, look what else the feisty little tabby was up to. She was suddenly filled with poetry, caught up in a whole new obsession, “What a lovely cat she is, Posed behind the curtain’s gauze . . .” And tonight, when Wilma stopped by the library after leaving the Damens’, and had turned on the computer, she found a new poem waiting. She hoped this was only the first verse, only the beginning, because it did make her smile.
All along the cliff top blowing
She stalks her prey in grasses growing
Forest tall and thick above her
Quick and silent feline hunter
Queen of the high sea meadow
She thought there would surely be more verses, that Dulcie might even be toying with the lines as she crouched beside Joe out in the freezing night, watching the police at work. She longed to follow them, but sensibly she ignored the urge, finished her cocoa and set the mug aside. She drew the curtain again and switched on the lamp, dispelling the comfortable dark, and reached for her book. Sliding deeper under the covers, she read for the rest of the night, or tried to. Even through the book’s gripping mystery she kept seeing the cats out in the cold, seeing the squad cars, the busy officers, wondering which detective had come out, which officers were on duty, all of them illuminated in theatrical unreality by the harsh strobe lights; she kept wondering what had happened to bring them out, what was happening, called out by the phantom snitches.
The cottage roof next door to Sammie’s was quickly growing white with snow, and the cats’ backs and noses were dusted with snow. This wasn’t a five-minute flurry, destined soon to melt away again, this snow was building, it was clinging, it seemed to be serious. The harsh lights below them picked out each drifting flake, and reflected from the cops’ slickers, and from the snow-covered patrol cars. One black-and-white was parked just below them in the side yard, one out at the curb beside Kathleen’s white Ford. In the drifting snow, two officers were stringing crime-scene tape; they had already cordoned off the open cellar door, which spilled light out into the yard brightening each drifting snowflake. Only a few minutes ago, Detective Kathleen Ray had gone down into the cellar alone, carrying more lights and her black crime-scene bag. “Where’s Davis?” Dulcie said.