“You woke me up to assess my physical condition?”
“I woke you to ask if you’d found the kit.”
“You woke me because you were hungry!” Clyde stared at him sharply. “Hungry! You can open the refrigerator. You know how to do that. So why wake me! Did it occur to you that I have to get up in the morning? Do you ever once think-”
“Spare me. I’ve heard it all. You have to get up and go to work. Someone in this family has to make a living. Someone has to pay for the kippers and smoked salmon with which certain cats insist on being provided.” Turning his back, Joe pawed his own pillow into the required configuration, kneading it energetically. He was too tired even to go downstairs and eat. Behind him, Clyde turned over. Joe looked around, regarding Clyde’s naked back. “You heard about the bodies, the buried bodies?”
Clyde rolled over, glaring. “I know about the graves. I know about the two buried children. I know that Hyden and Anderson are down from Sacramento. I know that they haven’t finished digging, that there are tents over the back garden and uniforms guarding the scene. I know that you and Dulcie were tramping all over the crime scene, right in plain sight, which was patently stupid. Have I missed anything? That’s not like you, Joe. It’s not like Dulcie. What got into you today? You cats have always been-”
“We werenottramping all over the crime scene. We were most diligent about staying out of the way, about not contaminating evidence. What do you think we-”
“And I know that earlier tonight you were on the dispatcher’s desk pawing through department faxes that are none of your business, and that Mabel Farthy fed you fried chicken that she took carefully off the bones before she gave it to you.”
Joe looked at Clyde for a long time before he turned away again and began to wash his paws. He felt Clyde roll over. He debated whether to go downstairs for a snack. That fried chicken seemed days ago. Already Clyde was snoring. Joe sat on his pillow, frowning.
Clyde would know about the graves from Max or one of the detectives or Wilma or Charlie. But Joe hadn’t thought Mabel Farthy would have occasion to blab. Why would she tell Clyde about something as casual as a little tete-a-tete that included fried chicken? You couldn’t do anything in this village; a cat had no privacy.
The fact that Clyde cared enough about him towantto know what he was doing did not excuse Clyde from snooping. Stretching out across his pillow, Joe yawned and, like Clyde, was gone at once into deep, untroubled sleep.
18 [��������: pic_19.jpg]
Thetortoiseshell kit woke to a harsh beam of light in her face; it brought her straight up, stiff and rigid, hissing and ready to fight, a light swinging in through a grate in the darkness above her, and the sound of a car, too, very close. Backing away, she didn’t know where to run, didn’t know where she was.
But then she smelled sour dirt, saw the loose dirt piled up, and remembered she’d been digging. Her paws hurt bad and were caked with damp soil and blood. She’d slept in the hole she’d dug; her fur was filled with dirt and smelled of sour dirt. Quickly she scrambled out, listening to the car outside scrunching on gravel, then heard the engine die. Fenner had come back. Now she might get out. Rearing up against the vent, she peered out into the yard, listening.
She couldn’t see the car for bushes. She heard the car door open, then slam closed. His footsteps crossed the gravel and started up the steps above her. The front door creaked open. He pounded across the room toward the bed and makeshift kitchen. Abandoning the hole, she scorched through blackness beneath the house, hurting her lacerated paws on the rubble.
Pausing beneath the hole in the bathroom floor, she listened, licking the grit from her hurt pads and washing the caked blood away. Her ears cocked to catch every sound above her, she listened to Irving Fenner move about near the makeshift kitchen. When he paused there, and did not enter the bathroom, she crouched to leap up through the hole. But first she looked for the gun, just to make sure. The space had been empty when she fetched the envelopes. She would not want to tangle with that gun.
But the dank space was still empty. Swinging herself up, she dug all her claws into the rough timber and hung there, then scrambled up beneath the sink.
She heard him in the bedroom dragging something heavy across the room. He was muttering and laughing. Was someone with him? He laughed once, very loud, a crazy cackle, and moved across toward the chair in the corner, that old upholstered chair.
He must have left whatever it was in the chair, because when he moved back across the room he wasn’t dragging it. She heard the bed creak, as if he’d sat down. Heard one shoe drop, then the other. She thought he’d lain down, but then he rose again, walking softly now, without his shoes.
He moved to the table; she heard glass clink against glass, then he set something down. In a minute she could smell liquor, its nose-tingling scent drifting in to her. Then softly he moved back to the bed.
His sudden voice came so clearly it shocked her. “You better sleep while you can. Lessons start early. If you do well, I might let you go home.” Kit heard a little creak, as if he’d lain down, a thunk as if he’d set something on the floor. Maybe his glass, or a bottle. Who was there with him? If he was drunk, maybe he’d sleep.
She waited a long time. All was silent above her. She heard no sound from the corner, no sound from the bed. Shivering, and so very thirsty and hungry, she thought about water in the sink. Maybe she could turn on a tap-if he slept deeply, and if it was the kind of handle she could move.
At long last, she heard his soft snoring. Pushing out through the cupboard door, she hopped noiselessly to the sink counter and peered into the basin.
Talk about filthy! Stains she didn’t want to identify, and grease. Long, black hairs, and short bits of black hair mixed with smears of shaving cream. Enough to make any cat lose her thirst.
But the handle was the lever kind. Pawing at it, she managed a small stream of water. Tilting her head, she drank the running water as best she could, wetting her whiskers and fur, unwilling to drink where the water settled in that mess. When she felt satisfied, she dropped down on silent paws, made sure he was still snoring, then nosed open the bathroom door.
She peered past the table legs to the bed. A faint haze of light from a pale night sky seeped in through the dirty windows. He lay sprawled on top the covers with the bottom part of the spread pulled up over his legs. And therewassomeone else in the room, a warmth, a presence, someone in the chair. A darkness curled up in the dark chair, in the darkest corner.
Encouraged by his steady snoring, she moved warily under the table and past the bed toward the lump in the chair. Sneaking across the room, belly to floor, she thought about the envelopes. If something happened to her, if she never got out, if he woke and caught her, the evidence she’d so carefully hidden would never be found. Who would think to look under the house, inside the vent, to feel around the joists for two brown envelopes jammed up under the floor among the spiderwebs and soggy insulation?
Oh, how sad. Captain Harper and Detective Garza might never have the pictures, and maybe Irving Fenner would go free, would never pay for Patty’s death. She had to tell the captain-but if Fenner killed her here, or this unknown person in the chair killed her, the law would never find those pictures and clippings. The gun was another matter. She didn’t know where it was. And likely the law would need a warrant for that. She turned to look back at the bed, wondering if the gun was on him, maybe in his pocket. Then she crept closer to the silent presence in the dim chair-and now she could smell fear, sharp and quick. She could smell the person, too: A child! A little girl! The kit reared up tall, looking. He’d brought a child here? Had kidnapped a child? She could see the child now all huddled up, and as she dropped down and moved toward the chair, she heard a muffled gulp. Then silence. Rising up again on her hind paws, she wanted to whisper,Don’t be afraid.And she could say nothing.