Right. As far as he knew, all these phones were on one central system; he’d never heard an officer mention a private line. The minute he pressed the speaker button, June Alpine would see the light flashing up at the front and, knowing the offices were empty, she’d pick up to see who was there.
No, he’d have to hightail it back to Wilma’s house. Or go on home and hope everyone was asleep, that he wouldn’t have to listen to one of Clyde’s lectures. Sometimes he wished Max would discover he could talk, so he could stop breaking his butt trying to find a phone. Yawning, attempting to look bored, he dropped from the bookshelf to the floor. He guessed Max had known he was there, because the chief didn’t look surprised. Joe sat lazily washing his paws, trying to calm his pounding heart, then sauntered sleepily past the desk to the door and padded away up the hall.
At the dispatcher’s counter, the problem was how to get out of the building. If Mabel Farthy had been on duty, she would have risen from her desk at his first yowl, would have let him out at once, complaining with good-natured amusement. He glanced toward the holding cell, but that ten-foot jump from the bunk across the room up to the high window was different from dropping down; that leap would be a killer. He could imagine himself falling flat on his face on the concrete, splattering like a cartoon cat.
Yowling stridently at June, he fussed and paced until at last she scowled over the counter at him, rose, and let him out. “You keep up that kind of behavior, the chief’ll nail your hide to the wall.”
No he won’t, Joe thought smugly as the petite young dispatcher opened the glass door for him.
“Go catch a mouse,” she said flippantly, “cats don’t belong in a cop shop.” As she locked the bulletproof glass behind him and flounced back to her desk, Joe Grey ran like hell, heading for home and a phone.
30
IN THE DAMEN kitchen, the sun’s first light shone through the bay window brightening the granite counter and warming Joe Grey’s back, where he sat watching Ryan flip pancakes. She was dressed in work jeans, a yellow sweatshirt, a frilly apron, and fuzzy pink slippers, her heavy boots waiting in the living room by the front door. The smell of pancakes, frying bacon, and warming syrup was so strong it made the tomcat drool. The table was set with three places, two with the conventional mats, napkins, and silverware, one with Joe Grey’s plastic place mat printed with a motif of running mice, a gift from Ryan that might be a bit cutesy, but that amused the tomcat. Clyde, in their bachelor days, had never thought to offer him a place mat. Except maybe the want ads, which neither of them ever read. Across the room on the flowered easy chair, little white Snowball lay curled up alone, purring with the warmth of the cushions into which she had burrowed, waiting for her can of gourmet cat food to be served up. Beside her chair Rock waited, too, held in place only by Ryan’s earlier command to “Down. Stay.” His pale yellow eyes never left the stove, his sighs were frequent and dramatic.
“Don’t forget the kippers,” Joe told Ryan, licking a front paw. “Pancakes are nothing without kippers.”
She turned to look at him. “Pancakes with kippers are as disgusting as it gets. You’re lucky Clyde and I put up with the smell of fish first thing in the morning. And what about poor Rock? You know he loves kippers, and you know he can’t have them. I think you eat them just to tease him.”
“Rock understands,” Joe told her.
“He doesn’t understand at all. He thinks it’s unfair that you get treats that he can’t have. It’s hard enough for him to deal with a cat giving him orders, without tormenting him with your dietary indulgences. Don’t you ever think how he feels?”
“He’s happy—he loves obeying my orders,” Joe told her smugly. A less intelligent dog might have problems with a speaking cat giving him obedience commands, but Rock had learned early on to accept Joe’s strangeness with good will. The big Weimaraner, at first shocked and then curious when the gray cat spoke to him, had come to respect the tomcat’s talents, though still he liked to tease Joe, with a keen, doggy humor.
“As to the kippers, you know I need my protein,” Joe said, greedily eyeing the browning pancakes and stifling a yawn.
Ryan turned to look at him. “What you need is sleep. I heard you slide open your tower window, coming home. It was after three this morning.” Carefully she laid the delicate, salty fishes on his warm pancakes and set his plate on the table.
Leaping to his place mat, Joe tucked into his breakfast, thinking about his phone call to Max last night, wondering what Max would do with the information, with Joe’s suggestion that the blonde in the motel could be Maudie’s ex-daughter-in-law. The link between Pearl and the Colletto brothers left Joe edgy with unanswered questions, scattered information yet to be sorted out. He’d nearly finished his pancakes and kippers when he heard the morning paper hit the front door. Heard Clyde’s feet, coming down the stairs, make a detour out the front to pick up the daily rag. Sounded like he was wearing his heavy boots; that meant a workday at the cottage. He clumped into the kitchen dressed in ragged jeans and a khaki work shirt, sat down at the table generously laying the paper between them so Joe, too, could scan the front page.
LONE WOMAN AT THE MERCY OF UNKNOWN CRIMINALS
When Nannette Garver answered her doorbell yesterday evening the door was shoved in her face, knocking her down. Two men gagged and beat her, robbed her, broke and destroyed everything in her house. There were no police patrols on the street to deter such a crime and Nannette lay tied up for many hours before she was found and released. It is troubling indeed to realize how at the mercy of unknown criminals a lone woman is in our village, without the police protection our taxes pay for …
Stifling a rude comment, the tomcat licked his plate clean. Only then did he finish reading the vitriolic article, his ears flattened with rage. “They call this journalism? This garbage? I don’t even want to see the editorial page.”
“This is an editorial,” Clyde said with equal disgust, and turned to the actual editorial page at the back, where Nancyanne Prewitt’s inaccurate interpretation of last night’s events occupied two additional columns. Crowded together, Clyde and Joe read with irritated grumbles. Ryan put Clyde’s plate down on the table beside the Gazette, scanned the article, but made no comment. She sat down at her own place, trying to ignore the smell of kippers, and quietly ate her breakfast, choosing not to comment on the Gazette’s vitriol. Talking cats reading the local paper, punctuating the silence with angry comments, was still a bit much, first thing in the morning, she was still trying to get used to these changes in her life. She looked up at a knock from the front door and Charlie’s voice through the new electronic speaker, and rose to let her in.
After the third home invasion, Ryan had installed a simple intercom for the front door in the interests of security and peace of mind. No more leaving the door on the latch for drop-ins. Charlie followed her on back, sat down at the table between Ryan’s place and Joe, and accepted a cup of coffee. She was dressed in jeans and boots, a leather jacket over her sweatshirt, her red hair tangled from the morning wind. She barely glanced at the paper.