Ryan set the salad on the table. “I was in the bank this morning making a deposit. Fay Seaver got home this morning. Ulrich was in there. We talked a little while. That made me feel weird, to be talking to the person who kidnapped Courtney—I wanted to punch him out.
“He said Fay would be back at work tomorrow. You’d think she’d want a day or two off. He said they were taking a vacation together soon. He looked at me with that amused, sarcastic expression and turned away. It was all I could do not to snatch him up, march him home, and make him give Courtney to me; we don’t know half of what goes on in there.”
“So far,” Joe said, “they’re treating her all right, spoiling her. She seems happy, most of the time.”
Clyde’s face was frozen. “I told you, Joe, if we don’t get her out of there soon, it’ll be too late, she’ll be on a plane for New York.”
“She won’t come out,” Joe said. “When we got her out the window, she dove right back in. She’s scared of Seaver one minute and wants to get out. The next minute she’s giddy with vanity at being in such a fine place, filled with big dreams from the stories he tells her. We should have forced her back out that window even if it meant a cat fight.”
Ryan said, “Now that Fay’s home, I’m really afraid for Courtney. That woman gives me the shivers, I can hardly stand her. For one thing, she smiles too much, fake smiles. Doesn’t Courtney notice?”
Clyde said, “You cats got in after they closed, you could have let us in.”
“Those locks on the big doors, you’d need a locksmith and an electrician. And that bathroom window,” he said, looking keenly at Clyde, “you’d have a hard time getting in there, with those bars on the outside.”
Clyde sighed. Ryan thought of the many times one or another of their friends had walked by the open shop and glanced in knowing Courtney was shut in upstairs, wanting to race up and grab her but afraid Ulrich would follow, that he would snatch her away and hurt her. She felt like there was nothing they could do—nothing Clyde said they could do. He said to wait for the right chance and until Courtney really wanted out.
“I still say . . .” Clyde began.
Ryan gave him another small serving of lasagna to shut him up and stop the argument, and opened a second beer for him. Clyde shook his head at the beer, glanced at Joe, and pushed his plate away. Joe demolished the several bites of extra supper thinking that, with Fay home, they had to do something now, despite what Courtney wanted.
Giving Ryan a lick on the cheek, Joe hissed smartly at Clyde and headed away up the stairs. Up onto Clyde’s desk. A leap to the rafter. Out his cat door and across the darkening roofs to the Seavers’ where he had a feeling that, with Fay home, some kind of change was about to begin. He felt that time was running short, that they had to find awayout for Courtney even if their humans had to storm the place, even if they had to call 911 and claim the building was on fire. Galloping over redwood shingles to the Seavers’, he wondered if Dulcie and Kit and Pan had returned and were once more clawing at that small bathroom window, fighting for a way in . . . To do what, when his daughter was so damn stubborn?
20
Peering over from Seaver’s roof, Joe looked down at Dulcie, working awayat the powder room window.She should have been inside, this was her night to stay with Courtney. When he hissed softly, she looked up. She was standing on the tallest crate digging away at the window screen—even as he watched, the screen flew to the ground ripped aside, lay tilted atop the fallen dead branches and tall grass.
The evening was nearly dark, the antiques shop had been closed for some time. At this angle, from the shop’s roof, Joe could see only the softly lit sidewalk, a reflection from the display windows; he couldn’t see into the windows themselves, not without hanging by his hind feet. As Kit and Pan appeared, from the higher roof of the apartment, Joe leaped into a shaggy stone pine and to the ground, the golden tom and Kit behind him. They stood looking at the screen and at Dulcie.
“I pulled the screen off,” Dulcie said proudly. “That woman is back, her name is Fay. I think she’s his wife, the way she acts. Courtney’s upstairs with them. When Fay and Ulrich came in, with her suitcases, Courtney and I were asleep. Courtney didn’t stir, she just slit her eyes open. She belongs here, or they think she does. The minute I heard them I flew into the powder room, pulled the window open a few inches, dove through so fast the whole screen went flying. I’d closed the glass and I’m sure I left it unlocked but I was in such a fright. Bert was still in the back. I guess he heard me, he looked out, saw the screen off but didn’t see me. Maybe he thought it just fell off, it was that old. He put it back. Maybe he found the window cracked open and locked it.” She looked at Joe and Pan. “I came back when he left and listened at the glass, that’s how I know her name. If we can open the window again, just a crack, maybe he won’t notice when he puts a screen up?”
And maybe he will, Joe thought. Pan thought the same. They could see inside where already a box of tools sat on the tile counter.
For a while, all claws dug fiercely at the window latch. If they could only open the glass, they could get in and Courtney could get out, and this time they’d make her come with them. Pan had a dry stick in his mouth, he was forcing at the edge of the latch. They had loosened it before, but now it had been made tighter. Pan looked at Joe, looked down at the towel they had left behind the crate. Wrapping it around the outside of the latch, they tried again. It took a long while before they knew they couldn’t open it. Together, the three of them headed for the roof, to make sure Courtney was all right and to get a look at Fay Seaver.
One would think that all the times they’d passed this shop, and the few times Dulcie and Kit had slipped in to admire the lovely relics, they would remember seeing Fay. The tomcats weren’t big on antiques; and all Kit had remembered was Ulrich Seaver, and the clerk. Maybe she’d thought Fay was one of the customers, or an interior designer; they came in here often, bringing their clients; the cats, staying in the shadows, had paid no attention to them; most interior designers were handsome, well-turned-out women.
Climbing the stone pine to the roof again, they made their way across the roof of the shop to the upstairs apartment. On the other side of that smaller structure they eased down onto the fancily sculpted edge of the overhang, its pie-crust décor iced with pigeon droppings. They arrived just as a woman was closing the draperies.
Was this Fay Seaver or someone else, maybe his lover? A handsome, auburn-haired woman about Ulrich’s age. As the draperies closed they left a little tiny slit at the end where a bookcase jutted out. The cats, crowding close, could just see through—and Joe Grey swallowed back a hiss.
Just look how Courtney had taken to this woman. Fay was gently holding his grown kitten, sweet-talking and cuddling her. Neither Dulcie nor Joe could bear to see Courtney smile up at her, they could both see that the calico was purring and they watched her lift a paw with delight. Joe was so disgusted he nearly bailed over the edge and left the scene.