There was a tiny click from the other end. Seaver stared at the phone, and banged down the receiver. He sat a minute, swearing softly, then put the ledger in a drawer as if bored with his bookwork, turned off the light, and went back upstairs. Courtney watched him, sleepy and innocent, from a brocade couch.
Outside, the minute Seaver was gone, Joe Grey was off the crates and catching up with the other three where they waited in the alley behind the store—but suddenly Dulcie wasn’t with them. She flew past Joe, leaped to the crate, eased the window open and she was inside. Inside with Courtney, with her child. Joe Grey didn’t stop her, she had that intent mothering look when it was best to leave her alone. What did she have in mind? Was she going to babysit all night? She was as stubborn as her kitten, as stubborn as Joe himself—but he did feel better with Dulcie on guard. He stood in the weeds looking up at the sky; the fog had cleared, the moon was bright. A perfect night to hunt. But they had better things to do. He and Kit and Pan, crouched in the alley, laid out their plan; then Kit slipped back to hiss through the window, to tell Courtney and Dulcie what they meant to do—and hoping Courtney wouldn’t go all stubborn again.
When Kit returned to the alley, each cat headed home to tell their respective housemates that they’d found Courtney—though they were all three still angry at the young calico’s hardheadedness. They would go to Wilma to tell her the news, and to Kit and Pan’s old couple, and to Ryan and Clyde.
As they parted, Pan said, “Courtney will be all right. He’s treated her well this far, he hasn’t hurt her. If he thinks he can make money off her, why would he harm her? And, if he does get mean, she’s safer with one of us here each night, to fight and to go for the phone.”
Their plan seemed simple enough. Each cat’s housemate would alert their few human friends who knew the cats could speak, would tell them they’d found Courtney, tell them the cats’ routines and where she was, but they would tell no one else. They would leave the posters up, pretend to still be looking for her; they would not alert even the other members of CatFriends who did not know the cats could talk.
If they took down the posters, if everyone in the village knew she’d been found, Seaver would begin to watch for what kind of trick she was up to. And when she did escape, after the trouble he’d gone to to find and catch her the first time, during a second hunt she might not be safe anywhere.
Each evening before the store closed, one of the cats, taking turns, would slip inside. Would watch the young clerk leave, watch Seaver lock the glass doors securing his valuable wares. They would watch Seaver go back upstairs, watch him let Courtney out of his apartment, watch her race down—and once the clerk left, the rest of the night would be theirs.
If the chosen cat couldn’t slip in through the open front doors unseen, he or she would wait until pale, thin Bert had locked up, scuffling footsteps, heavy coat pulled tight around him as he headed home. When all was quiet, the chosen guard, eyes aglow and tail switching, would crawl in through the powder room window between the bars, under the loose screen and through the barely open glass, to spend the softly lit night with Courtney among gold-decorated and priceless antiques. With a phone on the desk and one in the back room, if something happened they could call the Damens or Wilma or the cops—why would he hurt her if he wanted to make a show cat of her?
But still, Joe was all atremble. The time would come, he knew, when the next step in Seaver’s plan would take shape, a plan that might carry Seaver’s calico prize miles away, first to the gallery in the city and then clear across the country, and how would they find her, then?
11
Joe Grey went on with the others, leaving Courtney and Dulcie in the antiques store but worrying about them both. On the rooftops he parted from Kit and Pan, their two tails, one golden, the other fluffy dark, flipping away under the risen moon as they headed home to their tree house—to Lucinda and Pedric, and to call Wilma.
And Joe raced home over the shingles, his claws scritching as he balanced across heavy oak branches. He heard music playing from the cottages below and smelled late suppers cooking. Then, close to home, the loud and familiar rancor of angry voices. Another Luther Domestic.
Did they have to be so loud? Couldn’t they fight quietly? Did all that shouting help release their anger? Thelma’s and Nevin’s voices came from the house, they were in their bedroom but they might as well have been outside in the yard putting on a two-person play for the neighbors who stood, now, staring in through the window. What were they fighting about this time? What had happened now?
Mindy crouched outside in the bushes beneath the kitchen window, wiping her nose on the arm of the sweater she’d pulled around her. Her silent shaking wasn’t from the cold. From where she huddled, the way the windows were open, she could hear her parents’ every word clearly, something about bank statements, and about “Too loose around the cops,” at which Nevin gave a snorting laugh. Joe climbed into the cypress tree outside their window, its furry branches dense as a jungle—that was when he saw Zeb Luther parked around the corner in an old, faded car, not his own truck, his window down as he listened. Peering through the branches, Joe could just pick out the old man, his ragged gray hair, faded flannel shirt, and worn leather jacket. Mindy’s grandfather. Ryan had said he hadn’t come to visit since the family moved in, she had heard Mindy shouting at her mother and crying about that. What was he doing here this time of night? Spying, listening instead of coming right on in?
This was the man Joe had seen in the village peering across the street into the tearoom at Thelma and Mindy and the freckled auburn-haired man. Joe had seen him standing outside the PD, too, looking uncertain, as if he was trying to decide whether to go in, his frown reflecting some painful decision that had interested Joe even then. The old man who had at last turned away shaking his head, looking so sad. If he hadn’t been such an old man, Joe would have thought he was crying.
Now, the tomcat didn’t think Nevin and Thelma could see Nevin’s father from the bedroom, the way he was parked and with the tree in the way. They faced each other hissing and snarling like fighting cats themselves, they sure didn’t care who heard them. Not a speck of dignity, Joe thought, nor did they have much feeling for their frightened little girl crouched under their window listening.
But then the subject grew more explicit, Thelma hissed something so quietly that Joe missed it and Nevin snarled angrily, “The hell I won’t and what right do you have to tell me what to do?” Thelma stared down at the neighbors in the street and told him to lower his voice. Joe Grey, in his tree, drew closer.