Then, embarrassed, she leaped to the couch and curled up tight on her blue afghan. I blew it. Absolutely blew it. Harper won't pay any attention. I didn't half convince him. She thought about what she could have said differently. Thought about calling him back She did nothing; she only huddled miserably, disappointed in herself.
How was she going to tell Joe that she had failed, that she hadn't convinced Harper, that she couldn't even use the phone without panicking?
She wasn't like this when she hunted; Joe said she was fearless. It was that disembodied voice coming through the wire that put her off. Feeling stupid and inept, she squeezed her eyes closed and tucked her nose under her paw.
She slept deeply, and soon the dream pulled her in, spun her away into that world where the white cat waited.
He stood high above her on the crest of the hills. He beckoned, flicking his tail. And this time he didn't vanish; he turned and trotted away, and she followed. High up the hills, where the grass blew wild, he turned again to face her, his blue eyes burning bright as summer sky. Above him rose three miniature hills. Two were rounded, the third was sliced off along one side, sharp as if a knife had cut down through it. The white cat stood imperiously before it, his eyes glowing with a fierce light.
But as she approached him, a damp chill crept beneath her paws. She was suddenly in darkness, felt cold mud oozing beneath her paws, sour-smelling. They were in a cave or tunnel-blackness closed around them, and a heavy weight pressed in.
A thud jerked her from sleep. She leaped up in terror that the walls had collapsed on her.
But the dark walls were gone, and she was in her own living room, standing on her own blue afghan.
Glancing up at the windows, at the change of light, she realized she had slept for hours. She yawned, made a halfhearted attempt to wash. She felt lost, groggy. It was hard to wake fully. She thought the noise she'd heard might have been the evening Gazette hitting the curb.
Trying to collect herself, she trotted into the kitchen.
Pushing under the plastic flap of her cat door, she saw the paper out on the curb. Trotting down the steps, fetching the Gazette from among the flowers, she dragged it back, bumping up the short stair, and pulled it endwise through her cat door. And why would any neighbor find her actions strange? She had always carried things home, had stolen clothes from everyone in the neighborhood at one time or another, had stolen not only from their houses but from their porches and their clotheslines and their open cars.
Dragging the paper into the living room, onto the thick rag rug, she nosed it open to the front page. She read quickly; her tail began to lash.
SURPRISE WITNESS IN LAKE TRIAL
Observers predict that new evidence which has come to light in the trial of Rob Lake may be so important that Judge Wesley will call a new trial. A new and unidentified witness is scheduled to testify this week. Neither defense attorney Deonne Baron nor the county attorney would release the witness's name. Neither would speculate as to the nature of the impending testimony. Ms. Baron was not available for comment…
Dulcie rolled over, laughing. Mama did it, that old lady did it. Mama really came through-even if she was scared into testifying by the sudden interference of attorney Joe Grey.
She wondered if Joe had seen the paper.
The article speculated endlessly about the identity of the new witness, and recapped old facts just to make copy. A blurred photo of Rob Lake and a larger picture of Janet took up half the page.
Maybe I blew it with Harper, but we pulled this off. And maybe-maybe Mama's testimony can free Rob.
And maybe after tonight there would be more evidence, maybe there would be forty-six of Janet's paintings for evidence.
Carefully she folded the paper, carried it back through the kitchen, and pushed it out her cat door. She didn't want Charlie to come home before Wilma and wonder how the evening paper got in the house. Quickly dragging it across the garden, she left it at the curb, then slipped back inside, and cuddled up again on her afghan. She'd just have another little nap, then go to meet Joe. Mama did it. Hope she doesn't change her mind, get cold feet at the last minute. And she closed her eyes, smiling.
18
Moonlight touched Jolly's alley; a little breeze fingered between the small shops, stirring leafy shadows; the potted trees shivered; the glow from a wrought-iron lamp mingled with moonlight washing across the many-paned shop windows, brightening the rainbow colors of a stained-glass door. The brick paving was warm beneath the cats' hurrying paws.
Intent on their destination, neither cat spoke. Dulcie was all nerves. Joe was edgy with a need to run-to climb-to fight. They found it hard to stay focused, their spirits, their cat souls, wanted to be elsewhere. This was not a good night for measured discipline. The windy moonlight pulled at them, sought mightily to draw them away. They were filled with ancient hungers, with the moon's wild power, with mysteries surfacing from a vanished past.
Just as the hills above them, so ordinary in daylight, changed under the moon to dangerous veldts and tangled black jungles, so the cats' souls were changed. Ancient yearnings rode with them, drawing them like addicts toward lost times where medieval shadows fled.
Dulcie glanced at Joe and shuttered her eyes, trying to keep her thoughts on their mission. Slowing her pace, she padded demurely beside him. Leaving the alley, turning up the sidewalk, they put on civilized faces. Bland, kitty faces. With effort they returned to the domestic, became simple wandering pets, idle, dawdling.
Curving gently around planters and benches, duly sniffing at the shop walls, they stopped to investigate a bit of paper dropped at the curb. They scented mindlessly along a row of flowerpots. They meandered, working their way aimlessly in the direction of the Aronson Gallery, pretending vague inattention-but watching intently the gallery's broad bay windows and glass door. The Aronson, occupying a quarter square block, was the most prestigious of Molena Point's fifty galleries.
At the curb opposite the wide, low windows, Joe nosed at one of four huge ceramic pots planted with pink flowering oleander trees. Leaping up, he stretched out on the warm, potted earth; below him, Dulcie rolled on the sidewalk, both cats feigning empty-minded boredom as they studied the brightly lit interior, a montage of angled white walls and jagged, multicolored reflections more familiar to Dulcie than to Joe. A medley of colliding surfaces as intricate as the interior of a kaleidoscope, its maze of short, angled walls provided dozens of pristine white recesses flowing from one to another. Each niche accommodated a single painting, much as a jeweler displays one perfect emerald or ruby on a bed of velvet. The viewer could see each canvas or watercolor in isolation, yet had only to turn, perhaps take a step, to be immersed in the next offering. The snowy spaces blended so smoothly that gallery patrons seemed to wander in an open and airy world, surprised at each turn by a new and bright vista.
Now from deep within, three figures moved, approaching the front, their progress broken into crooked shadows. They seemed to be the gallery's only occupants. Sicily floated theatrically toward the door, her loose, drifting garments almost ethereal beside the staid figures of the couple who accompanied her. The middle-aged man was nicely attired in a raw silk sport coat and pale slacks, the thin woman elegant in a sleek black cocktail suit, her shining black hair pinned into a chignon, her huge silver earrings dangling and flashing in the gleam of gallery lights. The three paused in the open doorway, stood discussing painting prices. The cats listened and watched narrowly, pretending to nap, but tensed for the moment when back would be turned, and they could dart inside. The couple seemed undeterred by the cash sums Sicily was mentioning, money enough to keep the entire cat population of Molena Point in gourmet abundance for the next century. One of the paintings they were discussing was Janet's, a canvas the cats could see inside on the gallery wall, a painting of dark, rainswept hills.