But the old man found nothing, his hands were empty except for the shovel. Idly swinging it, he headed for his truck, started it, and spun a turn kicking up snow and gravel, sped up the lane, and a right turn onto the highway heading for the village. When he’d gone Billy hauled his bike out of the ditch and took off fast for work, thinking he’d call Captain Harper from the Harmann place, tell him Zandler sure was looking for something.
Misto was lame with the cold, but despite his paining shoulder, father and son raced across the snowy rooftops wild and laughing, amused by this sudden surprising touch of displaced Oregon winter. Eugene hadn’t had snow every year, but when it did they’d found it highly entertaining, the whole family, even when the kittens were small, plunging through the drifts like demented hound dogs. There was never much snow on the valley floor, in the business section of Eugene. But up in the residential hills snow formed drifts high enough to bring cars to a halt, people clueless how to drive in it, cars skidding, drivers honking or stalling or both—while Pan and his sisters, watching from the snowy rooftops, could barely contain their laughter.
Now, below the two cats, the same drama was at work, cars sliding sideways, drivers going super slowly hanging their heads out of ice-blind windows; and Misto and Pan, as they headed for Kit’s house, delighted by this familiar circus of winter confusion.
The morning was so cold that twice, when a car pulled to the curb to park, they waited for the occupants to hurry away then bellied down a tree, leaped to the car’s hood, and sat warming their paws and backsides before they raced on again. When they reached Kit’s house, the smell of waffles and syrup drew them like bees to honey, despite their own ample breakfast. Licking his whiskers in anticipation, Misto led Pan up the fat trunk of Kit’s oak tree and into her tree house—where Pan halted, staring around with amazement.
“This is Kit’s? All hers?” He looked up at the timbered roof and out at the surround of twisted oak branches that formed an extended bower. “All hers?” he repeated.
“All of it,” said Misto, laughing, “the fancy pillows, the velour lap robe, the works.” The cushions smelled deliciously of Kit, and there was a fine mat of her tortoiseshell fur embedded in the velvet and brocade. Drifts of snow had piled up outside one edge of the planked floor, but the tree house itself was fine and dry. Pan lingered, looking, followed Misto only reluctantly as he headed for the smell of breakfast, padding along a snow-covered branch to Kit’s cat door. The old cat pushed in under the plastic flap onto the windowsill, a leap to the dining table, and he paused, listening.
The house was silent. The smell of breakfast was immediate and rich, but the table had already been cleared. Peering into the kitchen, they could see dirty plates hastily stacked, sticky with syrup, as if Lucinda and Pedric and maybe Kit, too, had gone off in a fine hurry.
But at the far end of the table, two small saucers had been left on a single white place mat. Each plate presented a waffle, cut small and glistening with butter and syrup, and a slice of bacon broken into small bites. On the place mat itself shone one perfect, syrupy paw print carefully incised: a pretty invitation to breakfast, which they could hardly ignore. Pan said, “How did she know we’d come here?”
Misto smiled. “How could she not? She knew I’d be showing you the village, and where else would we start?” He turned his attention to breakfast, handily licking up every bite of his own share, and the good food warmed them right down to their icy paws. When no one appeared, they circled through the empty house, then returned to the tree house. Backing to the ground, their claws deep in the rough bark, they circled the house on the outside, as well, and finding Lucinda’s and Pedric’s boot prints leading away, and Kit’s paw prints trotting along beside them, they followed.
“They’re heading for the murder scene,” Misto said. The grave had not remained a secret for long, word never did in this small village; news traveled from friend to friend, neighbor to neighbor, and back again. The Firettis had heard it over breakfast from a busy-minded neighbor, and where else would Kit go?
The two tomcats galloped along in the wake of the Greenlaws’ footprints, amused when Kit’s paw prints vanished suddenly, to appear again after a block or so—little forays to the rooftops, or sometimes where Pedric had picked her up and carried her, most likely tucked inside his coat until her paws grew warm again. The two toms followed them up into the neighborhood of the Damens’ remodel and on up to where the yard and street were full of cop cars. Ryan Flannery’s red truck, too, and a white van marked with the seal of the state of California. There were cops everywhere, and over all came the sick smell of something dead for a very long time. Warily they scrambled up into the low, weeping branches of an acacia tree, crouched there behind its leafy curtain, looking out, their fur dusted with yellow pollen from the tree’s early blooms. The snow outside the tree was stained yellow, too, as was the bare ground within, sheltered by the tent of branches.
Lucinda’s and Pedric’s footprints made patterns among the tangle of other prints as if they had stood talking with the officers, then their trail headed away again, while Kit’s prints vanished at the base of a pine tree. And there she was above them, on a neighbor’s roof, Kit and Joe and Dulcie, three dark small shapes silhouetted against the milky overcast, watching the action below. Pan and Misto didn’t race to join them, there were too many people to see them, too many cops. Enough to see three cats together there on the rooftop so intently watching. What would they make of five? Such a gathering would stir far too puzzled an interest.
From among the drooping branches they could see directly into the big hole that was cut in the side of the small brown cottage, the raw earth within picked out with bright spotlights, blinding in their intensity. A slim, dark-haired woman in faded jeans stood looking in, her dark glasses shielding her from the searing light. “Detective Ray,” Misto said. A curtain of clear plastic had been hung over the opening, pulled to the side and tied back like a hastily devised shower curtain. They couldn’t see what was happening inside but could hear the soft brush of careful digging, as delicate as the brush of a cat’s paws.
But then soon, another decaying smell reached them, a bit different from the cellar’s taint of death. Pan, following his twitching nose, looked down beneath the tree where the ground was bare of snow, where rotted leaves were matted between the tree’s exposed roots: smooth gray roots as thick as human arms, twisted together, and over the aroma of death from the cellar, and the honey scent of the acacia blooms, this other faint, metallic smell. Dropping down from the low branches, Pan sniffed at the roots and at the dark stains on their smooth gray surface, and curled his lip in a flehmen face. “Blood.” He looked intently up at Misto. “Human blood.”
Misto jumped down and sniffed, too, flehming, trapping the smell on his tongue. “Old blood, not fresh,” he said. There was no scent of anyone having recently entered under the tree’s low branches, and he looked away to where the officers were at work. “How could they miss this? Stay here,” he said, and slipped out through the leafy curtain.
Easing across the snowy yard among the white-crested bushes, he scrambled up through the dark pine that crowded the neighbors’ house, and across a swaying branch onto the neighbors’ roof to join the other three, and excitement filled the old cat.