Dulcie ate her custard slowly, thinking about Joe and about Rube; then she curled up on the couch, watching Kit trot away to the bedroom. Tomorrow, she thought. Tomorrow morning early I’ll find out what happened to Rube. Though I really don’t want to know.
Tomorrow! Oh, tomorrow Wilma will be home. And at once, her spirits lifted. No matter that Wilma had said the operation was routine and simple, she had been very worried. No operation was without pain and without risk. Dulcie wanted Wilma home again, home and safe.
She guessed she wanted, too, to be spoiled a little; to snuggle close at night as they shared the pages of a favorite book. The two of them would be up at Charlie’s tomorrow night, and Charlie would spoil them both just as she would spoil Kit. At Charlie’s house, Kit would tell more of her tales for Charlie to write down, and Wilma could be cosseted and cared for even if she said she didn’t need that. In Dulcie’s opinion, a little spoiling never hurt anyone. Ask a cat, spoiling was what made the rest of life worthwhile.
And maybe tomorrow Charlie would tell them what had happened on the pack trip. Tell them what she had left out of her story, over dinner at Lupe’s Playa-what she hadnottold everyone else, about the dead cyclist. Tell them what had caused the nervous twitch of her hands under the table, and her evasive glance. Maybe tomorrow, after Captain Harper had gone off to work, they would learn Charlie’s secret.
12 [��������: pic_13.jpg]
Joe had dreaded going home. He felt in every bone that old Rube was gone. Leaving Dulcie and Kit stealthily gathering information within the offices of Molena Point PD, he scrambled up to the rooftops, worried by Clyde’s call, heading home fast and feeling heavy as lead; he was already mourning for his old pal, was sure that Rube was gone or close to it. There was no other reason Clyde would have called the station asking for him. He needed to be with Clyde, needed to comfort him and to be comforted.
He’d known Rube since he himself was a kitten, when Rube was a young, strong dog. When Joe was half grown and feisty, it was Rube who had mothered him. Already mourning Rube, Joe felt like half of him had dropped away into an empty abyss; life would be very strange, with Rube gone.
Dulcie had read something to him once, in the library late at night as he lounged on a table among the books she had dragged off the shelves, something about part of your life suddenly breaking away, sliding away, forever gone. Even then, the words had stirred a huge emptiness in him. He was filled with that same dropping feeling now as he raced over the rooftops toward home.
The thin moon and stars were hidden, the sky gone dark and dense with clouds, and the sea wind blew harsher, too, and more cruel. Jumping wearily across the last chasm from an overhanging cypress branch to the rooftops of his own block, Joe glanced down automatically at Chichi Barbi’s small front yard.
There were lights reflected there, no light from the living room window and no flickering from the TV The house beneath him was silent, and when he looked around the side, down the drive, no light reflected from her bedroom. Making one last mournful jump from Chichi’s roof to his own, landing heavily on the fresh cedar shingles, Joe padded into his cat tower dreading what lay ahead.
“Joe?” Clyde spoke from the study just below him. Joe studied the flicker of firelight that reflected through his plastic cat door, sniffed the nose-twitching scent of burning oak logs, and pushed through under the plastic flap flinching as it slid down his spine. Padding out along the rafter, he dropped down to the desk, trying hard not to scatter Clyde’s papers.
Clyde sat in the leather chair holding Snowball, stroking and cuddling her. They were alone. He had not carried the invalid dog upstairs. Joe thought Clyde would not have left Rube downstairs alone.
Clyde looked up at him, and there was no need to explain.
“I brought his body home,” Clyde said sadly. “So the cats could see him, so maybe they’d know and understand. He’s downstairs, tucked up on the loveseat on the back porch, as if� so they can see him there.”
Joe nodded. If animal companions were not allowed to see the dead one when he passed, their grieving was far worse; they never understood where their friend had gone. The finality of death was, for an animal, far kinder than thinking a loved one had simply gone away, far less stressful than waiting for the rest of their own lives for that pet or human to return.
“I wrapped him in his blanket. I’ll take him in the morning, to be cremated.”
Again, Joe nodded. They would bury Rube’s ashes beside old Barney’s ashes, at the foot of the high patio wall beneath the yellow rosebush. There was room there for all the animals. Room for me someday, Joe thought, and felt his paws go cold. Leaping from the desk to the arm of Clyde’s chair, Joe rubbed his whiskers against Clyde’s cheek, then crawled into Clyde’s lap and curled down beside Snowball. And for a while he was only cat, safe in Clyde’s arms, at one with Snowball and with Clyde in the pain of their grieving.
Only after a very long time, when the fire had burned to ashes and the moon had come out again gleaming down through the skylight, did Clyde get up and warm some milk for all four cats, and break up bits of cornbread into the bowls, a special treat they all enjoyed. He waited at the kitchen table while the cats ate, then settled the two older cats cozily among the blankets in their bunk. He made himself a rum toddy. Carrying Snowball and his toddy, he headed upstairs behind Joe, and the three of them tucked up in bed.
But as Snowball slept in Clyde’s arms huffing softly, all worn out, and Joe’s eyes drooped and jerked open, Clyde insisted on hashing over Rube and Barney’s puppyhood in a maudlin display of memories that Joe found more than painful. Clyde reminisced about how he would take the young dogs to the beach to chase sticks in the ocean, how he judged his girlfriends by how they related to the two dogs. On and on, trying to get rid of the pain. The red numbers on the bedside clock flipped ahead steadily toward morning. It was after four when Clyde finally drifted off. Exhausted, Joe curled down deeper in the blankets, but he couldn’t sleep. All the joyful and irritating and funny memories of Rube crowded in to nearly smother him. Long after Clyde was snoring, Joe lay atop the pillow wide awake, his teeming thoughts too busy to settle.
He tried to pull his mind from Rube, to examine again the jewelry store scenario, to see Chichi all dressed in black slipping into her dark house carrying that small black bag, hiding something important, while a dressed-up kitchen broom sat in her easy chair watching sitcoms. Thinking about anything was better than lying there wide awake, thinking about Rube.
Right now, was Chichi asleep over there? How deeply did the woman sleep? Frantic for distraction, Joe rose and leaped off the bed.
What was the best way inside?
He considered the tried-and-true methods: check all the windows; if he couldn’t claw one open, then try a roof vent and go in through the attic.
Except that moving those plywood doors that opened from an attic could get noisy, and they were heavy as hell. Most weren’t even hinged, and you had to lift them away Usually, Dulcie was there to lend some muscle.
But who knew, maybe Chichi had left a window unlocked and he could claw right on through the screen. Worth a try. He wasn’t doing himself any good lying there fretting, listening to Clyde and Snowball snore.
Trotting across the little Persian rug into Clyde’s study, he leaped to the desk, so preoccupied he sent the stapler clattering to the floor. Cursing his clumsiness, he sprang to the rafter and pushed out through his cat door.
Scorching across the shingles to Chichi’s roof, he backed down the jasmine vine and dropped to the scruffy yard. First thing, he tried the front door just to make sure, swinging like a monkey with his paws locked around the knob. When the knob turned, he kicked hard with both hind paws.