This made Lucinda and Pedric chuckle, too. They were still smiling when Clyde and Ryan pulled to the curb out front, Clyde’s yellow Model A roadster gleaming in the falling evening. Charlie’s new, red SUV parked behind them, then Max’s truck. They all crowded in through the back door, setting their bags of takeout on the kitchen table.
Now, with Ryan and Max present, the cats must remain mute; they turned their attention to supper, committing themselves fully to a dozen Oriental delicacies that Clyde and Charlie served for them on paper plates. The highlight was the golden shrimp tempura. Clyde had brought three extra servings. Kit ate so much shrimp that everyone, human and cat alike, thought she’d be sick. She slept so soundly after supper that when Pedric lifted her up into a soft blanket and carried her out to the car to head home, she didn’t wiggle a whisker.
And it was not until Joe and Dulcie had wandered away to the rooftops, alone in the chill evening, that they discussed the Rivas brothers again. Then they laid out a businesslike schedule for shadowing Chichi Barbi, to discover what she found of such interest during her long, solitary vigils.
Joe could see her leave the house in the mornings, so he would follow her until noon. Dulcie would prowl the rooftops in the evenings when most of the shops were closing. Kit would be going back to Charlie’s in the morning for a few more days of storytelling; she had no desire to accompany Lucinda and Pedric on a spree of furniture shopping, any more than she’d wanted to look at houses. She might revel in a velvet love seat or a silk chaise, but she didn’t care for the shopping.
The Greenlaws had no furniture, they’d sold everything before they moved into their RV to travel the California coast. After the RV was wrecked and burned, the old couple, though safe, had owned little more than the sweatshirts and jeans they were dressed in; plus their ample bank accounts. The task of furnishing a whole house seemed monstrous to Kit; the only shopping that interested her was a nice trip to the deli. Besides, she was so looking forward to sharing more of her adventures with Charlie. Charlie’s book aboutherwas far more exciting than furniture stores and pushy salesmen.
“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.
Hiscats? 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�”