The big pine tree that she remembered being there when she was younger was gone now, it had blown down in the last storm. She could easily have gotten across on its heavy branches. Instead, she headed for a smaller and spindly pine down at the end of her house near the Damens’ driveway.
Its branches swayed unsteadily when she put her weight on them. She worked slowly across toward their living room, swinging like a monkey from branch to branch, getting soaked and soon full of scratches. She clung finally to their living room roof, scrambling precariously until she was safely on top of it. There she crawled along the wet shingles to Joe Grey’s tower and looked in at him asleep, his paws limp over his belly, his eyes closed. She eased a window open and slipped in, closed it, and curled down around the tomcat among the pillows. Joe Grey didn’t move. She smiled, getting him damp again after he’d dried himself, but also getting herself warm against his thick fur. She was almost asleep when suddenly his yellow eyes were open looking directly into hers. A knowing look that told her he’d been aware of her all along.
She stared back uncertainly. Was he angry at her coming in here, was he about to scratch her? But Joe Grey wouldn’t do that. Was that piercing look only a sly smile? Did cats smile? When he didn’t seem disturbed at her presence she pressed closer against him. He eased closer, too, and began to purr, and Mindy felt safe and peaceful. Even if she was hogging his space, he was kind and caring and there was goodness in the world. Here was someone, here was a whole family, cat and humans, that she could trust and love, with whom she was safe. She drifted off, secure and warm.
She didn’t know how long she slept; seemed like hours but it was still dark when lights woke her and woke Joe Grey. He sat up and slipped out of the tower to the edge of the roof as car lights came along the street, two sets of lights, one from either direction. Thelma’s car, and Varney’s.
They pulled up next to each other in the middle of the street, their engines idling, the drivers sitting face-to-face where they could speak softly through their open windows:
Varney handed his sister-in-law a package, which Thelma shoved deep in her jacket pocket. They talked for a minute, mumbling so softly that neither Joe nor Mindy could understand much; Joe thought they were talking about money. It sounded like hundreds of thousands, like something you’d hear in a movie or on the news.
Thelma said, “Of course I know the combination. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, he’s there, I called him.” They closed their windows and Thelma headed away into the center of the village. Varney parked in his usual place in front of the apartment, Mindy watched him get out and go in the front door. She waited, looking across, but no lights came on in the living room or kitchen. In a moment the light in Varney’s room shone. He hadn’t bothered to stop and check on her, hadn’t had time to see if she was all right after being left alone, to maybe pull up her covers and tuck her in, the tender things that Grandpa or Grandma had done. What if he had gone in her room and found her gone? Would he even care? She was glad to be out of there, to not be alone in the house with Varney.
When she turned to look at Joe Grey he was wide awake, alert and poised for flight, watching where Thelma’s taillights vanished around the corner turning left—and suddenly he fled away over the slick rooftops, following her.
Why would a cat care where Thelma was going? Mindy herself didn’t care. All she cared about was getting Grandpa home from the hospital. Until then she wouldn’t think about her mother’s nighttime prowling, she’d think only about Grandpa.
Earlier in the evening, after Dulcie and Joe and Kit had left the Seavers’ roof, and golden Pan curled up outside the Seavers’ upstairs window intending to watch Courtney for the rest of the night, a fitful rain blew then eased. He pushed closer under the window’s ledge. Tired and hungry and cold, trying to keep dry against the plaster wall, the orange tomcat did indeed fall asleep, didn’t hear the phone ring, didn’t see Courtney wake and rise—the phone had startled her from her warm spot on the couch. She felt grouchy anyway from being shut upstairs all night—retribution for her stubborn response to Fay’s lessons. She listened to the second ring and to Ulrich’s low, gruff answer; she heard him get out of bed.
She rose and shook herself and changed position to make sure she was awake, that this wasn’t another dream. Ulrich said something she couldn’t understand, she heard him moving around then the bedroom door opened and he headed, in his robe, through the living room straight for the door to the stairs. He looked over at her where she’d curled up again, her eyes closed as if asleep. Did he expect her to wake up and watch him, expect her to know or care what he was doing?
Maybe, she thought, if she had done the tricks tonight, if she had made the Seavers proud of her cleverness, if she showed them how she really could perform, it might be easier to escape; they would be more loving again and less bossy. Maybe if she were more obedient she’d earn more freedom, maybe find a careless moment when she could pull off a fast vanishing act.
Yes, and maybe not.
Ulrich, turning the upper knob for the bolt, then the doorknob below it, glanced over at her then eased the door open and shut it quickly behind him. For an instant she considered darting through between his feet and leaping to freedom, but she thought better of that. She looked at the door with interest. He hadn’t locked it behind him, there was just the knob to deal with.
Slipping from the couch, she listened through the door as his slippers padded down the stairs, the back door opened, and he scuffed across the storeroom toward the outer door to the alley. Trotting into the kitchen, she put her ear to the floor just above where he had stopped. The outside door opened and there were low voices.
She approached the door again, at the head of the stairs. Leaping, she swung on the knob. She worked at it with all her might, swinging, swinging harder. She felt the knob turn, she was almost out when she caught her pad on a screw and blood ran down, soon making her paws so slippery that the knob wouldn’t turn at all. Leaping to the kitchen sink, she took the dishcloth in her teeth.
After what seemed hours, swinging with the cloth wrapped around the knob, pushing with her hind feet against the molding, she was able to turn the knob far enough so she could force the door open. She wiped blood from her paws on the cloth, slipped through, pulled the door softly closed behind her, and hurried down the stairs where she stuffed the cloth under an Egyptian dresser. She paused, listening.
Two voices coming from the storeroom, Ulrich and a woman. Was that Thelma Luther? The inner door stood half open. Peering through, she saw the door to the alley open, too. Thelma’s car stood there. Ulrich must be certain that his “little cat” couldn’t get out the upstairs door, that she wouldn’t know how to open the knob. In the workroom itself, the big door to the safe hung open. Now! She thought. Do it now!
She crawled beneath a carved armoire, deciding. She’d have only a second—could she pull this off? Joe Grey had told and told her, it was time to get out. She could imagine her daddy’s voice echoing, “Get the hell out,Courtney! Now! Do it now! What are you, a sissy little housecat? Do it now! Right now!”