"She's getting big-headed," Joe told Dulcie as they wandered the rooftops. He rolled over on a patch of tarpaper that still held the heat of the day. "You think it's a good thing, for Charlie to be writing about her?"
"Charlie's not putting in anything she shouldn't. No talking cats." Dulcie twitched her whiskers. "Kit'll calm down. How many cats have their life story written in a book for all kinds of people to read, and with such beautiful portraits of her? You wouldn't spoil that for the kit."
"I guess I wouldn't." Joe nuzzled Dulcie's cheek. "But you have to admit, she does get full of herself."
Dulcie shrugged. "That's her nature." And the two cats trotted on across the rooftops, thinking about Kit's mercurial temperament as they headed for the courthouse tower-until Joe came suddenly alert, stopping to watch below them.
Some of the restaurants and shops were still open, the drugstore, the little grocery that catered to late-shopping tourists. From the edge of a steep, shingled roof, they looked across the street to the grocery's side door. "That's…"Joe hissed, and the next instant he was gone, scrambling backward down a thorny bougainvillea vine and racing across the empty street. Dulcie fled close behind him.
Slipping into the shadowed store, they followed the short, stocky Hispanic man along the aisles, their noses immediately confused by a hundred scents: onions-coffee-oranges-sweet rolls-raw meat-spices, a tangle of smells they had to sort through to pick out the man's personal scent-which, at last, was recorded in their scent-memories: a melange of Mexican food, sweat, and too much cheap aftershave. They flinched as an occasional tourist glanced down and reached to pet them; though the locals paid no attention. This family grocery store had cats, it was not unusual to see a cat in the aisles. Quickly down past cereal and bread they followed Luis, then down between shelves of canned vegetables and canned soup and then soft drinks. At pet food, Luis stopped. Pet food?
He began to fill his cart with the cheapest tins of cat food. He tossed in a fifty-pound bag of cat litter as if it were a little bag of peanuts. They watched him add a large bag of cheap kibble. He didn't seem to give a damn for favorite brands or flavors, for what his cats might like or what might be good for them.
His cats? Luis Rivas did not seem to them to be a cat person. Dulcie's green eyes were wide, her voice no more than a breath. "Are you sure this is Luis Rivas?"
Joe wouldn't forget the scowling, burly Latino who had visited Chichi the morning before the burglary. And as Luis filled his rolling cart and joined the checkout line, it became more than clear that this man was, indeed, no cat lover.
The checker was a pretty, young brunette, probably still in high school. She looked at Luis's purchases, and gave him a sunny smile. "You must surely love your cats. How many do you have?"
"Not my cats!" Luis snapped. "Far as I'm concerned, every cat in the world should be drowned or strangled."
In the shadowed aisle, Dulcie's eyes narrowed with rage, and Joe flexed his claws; but patiently they waited, filled with escalating excitement.
They followed as he slipped out the side door. He stood with his grocery cart, looking around, then headed up the sidewalk.
Following, they kept away from the shop lights, clinging within the black shadows of steps and curbside plantings. Two blocks away, on a narrow side street, Luis tossed the bags into the back seat of an old, white Toyota. Swinging in, he took off in a cloud of black exhaust. Phew. The car was one of the last square models, a rusted vehicle with a loose front bumper and a dent in the right front fender.
Committing the license number to memory was a no-brainer, and made them smile. Luis's plate, in the standard succession of letters and numbers issued by California DMV, read 7CAT277.
Scrambling up the nearest tree to the rooftops, they took off after him, watching his lights for as long as they were visible.
Before they lost him among the hills and trees, they heard his radio come on. They followed the loud Mexican music for several blocks more, up into the residential hills. As the brass and guitar grew fainter, they could catch an occasional glimpse of headlights high up the hill, flashing between the branches of oaks and pines. Far up the hills they caught one last flash as the car turned abruptly, and then the light was gone; the blast of trumpet stopped in midsquall.
"Ridgeview Road," Joe said, studying the narrow ribbon that snaked along the far crest. "He turned off Ridgeview, maybe a quarter mile up, that's the only road that goes along the side of that hill."
"Come on!" Dulcie flew from the last roof into a willow tree and dropped down to a little hiking trail. Racing along the greenbelt above the sea, the cats dodged into the bushes whenever they met a nighttime jogger or biker; and prayed they wouldn't meet anything wilder; there were coyotes up here, and bobcats.
Dallas Garza's cottage lay to the east of them, the senior ladies' house to the northeast. The houses far ahead crowded ever closer as they rose higher, half hidden among overgrown oaks and shrubs. And suddenly, Dulcie didn't like it up here.
She pushed on stubbornly, but this was not their regular hunting territory. Even in daylight the meanly crowded houses on this part of the hills seemed to her somber and forbidding; not friendly like the good-natured crowding of the village cottages, with their exuberant gardens. She slowed to catch her breath, shivering with an inexplicable fear. "We'll never find it at night, with no scent trail. If he put the car in a garage…"
"You're tired," Joe said softly. "You feel okay?"
"I'm fine. I just…"
"Let's go home," he said, untypically. "We'll come up in the morning. If they're cooking breakfast maybe it'll be chorizo, smell up the whole length of Ridgeview with Mexican spices." She leaned against him, yawning, imagining the kit at home snug and safe in her bed, and wanting to be in her own bed. Joe studied her, concerned. "We'll find the car in the morning," he repeated, and together they headed toward home, down the long, lonely path through the chill night, then up to the roofs again, Joe's thoughts seething half with concern for Dulcie, and half with tangled questions surrounding Luis Rivas.
22
But while Joe and Dulcie hurried home, each thinking of a midnight nap, Kit was not in her bed at all, but out in the night on her own mission. Having left the rooftop apartment after Lucinda and Pedric slept, much too wide-awake to stay in, Kit lay on a copper awning above a little cigar shop, watching Chichi Barbi across the street in the Patio Cafe.
Chichi sat at an outdoor table, observing the shops that flanked the cigar store just below Kit. I'm a spy spying on a spy, Kit thought. That's what Dulcie would say. The curvy blonde, pretending to read the newspaper by the soft patio lights, glanced up every few seconds then wrote something down in the small spiral notebook half hidden beneath the sports section. Kit stretched out to see, but felt too impatient to remain still.
Dropping from the awning to the low-hanging cigar sign then to a raised planter, she landed among a tangle of bright cyclamens. Choosing a pair of late shoppers, she padded across the street behind them: a bare-legged woman in flat sandals and a man who smelled of the leather jacket he wore. Once across, she sprang atop the two-foot brick wall that defined the patio and approached Chichi from the rear.
She could not see the pages of the notebook until she was up on the next table, behind Chichi. Most of the other diners had left, their tables stacked with dirty plates waiting to be cleared. She had time only to glimpse Chichi's odd notations when a dark-haired waiter double-timed across the patio, his black, hard-soled shoes ringing on the bricks, and waved to shoo her away.
"Scat! Get down! Cats on the bricks, that's allowed! Cat on the table, bad, bad! You village cats know better!" Swiping at her with a dish towel, he picked up a plate that contained several scraps of leftover shrimp, set it under a chair, picked her up and set her down beside it, then began to gather up dishes. Laughing to herself, Kit scoffed up the shrimp.