How many abandoned strays, Joe wondered, was John Firetti already sheltering at the clinic? Actually, the woman looked worse off than the kittens, half starved, badly used by the world.
“What’s your name?” John said. “How do you manage, living in your car?”
“I’m Emmylou Warren. I was renting a shack on the Zandler property, there along the river, one of the old workers’ cabins. I lost my job bagging groceries. Well,” she said crossly, “my neighbor could have let me stay with her until I found a place, even if she does have only the one room.” Her anger made Joe uneasy, or maybe it was her mention of workers’ cabins along the river, though he couldn’t think why. Dropping to the ground, he caught Misto’s eye, then glanced away toward her car; both cats were of one mind as they slipped away through the shadows of the darkening street to where the nose of the Chevy stuck out among the bushes.
The windows were open. The interior of the battered Chevy smelled of banana skins, crackers, damp clothes, and still smelled of the two young cats. When Joe leaped in through the back window, he sank alarmingly among a mass of bulging plastic bags and folded blankets. Misto followed, scrambling over the sill, descending carefully down among the clutter.
Beneath the bags and blankets were cardboard boxes of canned goods, paperback books, and pots and pans. Stretching up to peer out the back window, making sure Emmylou wasn’t headed their way, Joe dropped down again among the detritus, sniffing at the tied plastic bags, pawing into the boxes. He didn’t know what he was looking for. He wanted to know more about the woman, to know why she made him uneasy. “She’s living in her car, all right. Her blankets could stand a good washing.” Pawing into a box among paper plates and kitchen utensils, he unearthed a padded brown envelope, the kind lined with bubble wrap. There was something hard inside, making it bulge. No address on the envelope, no writing at all. It wasn’t sealed. He peered in, reached in with an inquisitive paw. At the same moment Misto hissed like a den of snakes and Emmylou’s thin shadow came soundlessly along the side of the car, approaching the driver’s door. The cats exploded through the opposite window, hit the sidewalk in a gray and yellow tangle, scorched into the bushes as Emmylou opened her door.
They listened to her start the engine, watched her pull away. She had no clue they’d been in the car—but what would she care, they were only cats. Behind her, another pair of headlights blazed on and the white van came down the street, moving slowly as John Firetti looked for them. When his lights flashed in their eyes he pulled to the curb, reached over and opened the passenger door.
“What was that about?” he said softly, having apparently watched them toss the car. The cats padded out of the bushes grinning with embarrassment, and Misto hopped up into the van. They both looked down at Joe.
“Headed home,” Joe said, not wanting to explain his nosiness. Just curious, he thought. Just . . . something about Emmylou Warren, he thought, puzzled. He watched them pull away down the street, the pale van melting into the darkening evening, its red taillights growing smaller as they ferried their two little captives home to a good meal, a flea bath, a session with the hair dryer, and a nice warm bed.
Then, scrambling up a pine and up the shingles of a steep roof, Joe galloped away across the rise and fall of the crowded peaks, across heavy old oak branches that embraced the village houses, racing for home himself, wondering if the soft staccato of his thudding paws startled the occupants below, made them think they had rats in the attic.
5
It was two days later, just at dawn, that Joe woke in his rooftop tower to a bright red sunrise flickering up against the clouds above. Flickering? He leaped up from his cushions, saw flames licking and dancing among the eastern hills. Fire, running wild just where the Harper land lay along the crest. He reared up, staring, praying it was down the hill below their pastures, not their barn or house afire. He bolted in through his cat door onto the rafter, dropped to the desk below shouting, “Fire! Fire!” then realized no one was there. Remembered hearing both the car and truck drive away before ever it was light. Clyde had headed up the coast to look at a client’s 1920 Rolls-Royce that had inexplicably quit running, and Ryan left even earlier to trap one of the feral cats; the night before he had watched her tuck her cages and cat food into the pickup among her ladders and wheelbarrow.
Spinning around, he hit the phone’s speaker and pawed in 911, his heart pounding.
Were the Harpers’ horses trapped in their stalls, helpless? Had Max already left for work? Had Charlie seen the blaze or had she, too, left early, out with Ryan and Hanni, trapping strays? The day before, half a dozen more homeless cats had been called in, and already the three temporary shelters were full. He was still shouting at the night dispatcher when he heard a siren whoop. Quickly he broke the connection, raced into Ryan’s studio, leaped on the daybed where he could see out the east windows, reared up slamming his sweating paws against the glass.
The sky was barely light, streaks of gray and silver, the hills still dark except for the lick of orange flames rising up mixed with smoke darker than the heavy dawn clouds. If the flames reached the Harper land, reached the Harper barn with the horses still inside . . . Even if they had already been turned out they’d be at danger, terrified by the fire, running blindly into the fences. A panicked horse could injure himself so badly that, sometimes, he had to be destroyed. Leaping for the phone on Ryan’s desk, he punched in the Harpers’ number, shivering with nerves.
When Charlie didn’t answer he tried her cell phone. “Come on! Come on!” He was trying to calculate just how far the blaze might be from the Harpers’ pasture fence when he heard the shriek of a police car following the fire trucks. He prayed it was the siren on the police chief’s pickup, prayed Max was on the way.
Charlie had left the ranch long before daylight, she was up above the village, kneeling in the side yard of a small clapboard cottage among a mass of scratchy holly bushes, setting a trap for an old black cat who had been hanging around the vacant house. She was about to put the bait in when a work crew pulled up in front, a truck laden with ladders, lawn mower, gardening equipment. Pretty early for a gardening crew to be coming to work.
The driver was a handsome Latino boy she didn’t know, and there was no logo on the truck indicating any of the usual village gardening services. A car full of Mexican workers pulled up behind, parking at the curb. She watched the driver crimp the wheels in the wrong direction, assuring that if the brakes failed, the vehicle would careen backward down the hill clear to the bottom or until it crashed into a house or car. Five Hispanic men got out. They were dressed in jeans and sweatshirts, but something about them was off, they didn’t look like garden workers, they were too focused on the house, too quick yet wary in their movements. Quietly she picked up the cat food, closed the cage door, and headed away. This stray wouldn’t come around now anyway, until these men had left. It was only a few days since the department had raided a meth house just two blocks over, and maybe she was extra wary. Or not, she thought. The meth raid had been a nasty shock to every one of the few families still living in the small neighborhood. She was wondering if she should set the trap up the street, wondering how far this cat roamed, when her phone vibrated. Picking up, she spoke quietly.
Joe’s voice came loud and clear, shouting with a mewling panic, “Fire! Fire below the ranch, below the north pasture. Fire trucks on the way.”