Was he taping her call? He'd told Wilma once that taping the snitches' calls might be the only way he would ever learn who they were. Wilma had said, "Do you really want to know, Max? Seems to me you have a good thing going. You sure don't want to blow it."
Now, when Harper had been silent for too long, Kit said, "He had pictures of Patty Rose, Captain Harper. When she was young, a star. In every picture, there was a hole in her head like a bullet hole. And he had newspaper pictures of four men including him, so I think his name is Irving Fenner. After Patty was shot, someone ran away down into the parking garage. I think it was him, but I…" She couldn't say that the fresh scent of a man on the stairs near Patty went down into the parking garage.
"The pictures are in two brown envelopes, but they're not in the cottage anymore. They're under it. Under the foundation jammed up in the floor joists just inside the front vent."
So far, Harper had said nothing. But she could hear him breathing. The kit didn't expect him to say anything, and she sure didn't want him to ask questions. But then Harper said, "The cottage behind a brown house on Dolores. South of Tenth. We can retrieve the envelopes by reaching through the vent."
"The vent's on tight, though. Take some tools."
"How did you…?"
"He has a gun, Captain." She started to tell him to look under the bathroom sink, then she knew she couldn't tell him that. He was already wondering how the envelopes got under the house. How could they, when the vents were jammed tight? She had to hope, when they searched the house, that they'd find the murder weapon under the sink but wouldn't find cat hairs clinging to that ragged hole! Or paw prints and spatters of her blood-cat blood. She didn't dare think about a lab report that would show cat blood.
Pushing the phone back on its cradle and leaping to the window seat, she snuggled down, shivering again, trying to get warm again, and looked out at the slowly brightening morning that, despite the hint of coming sun, was all gray winter colors. Why was the light on in the tearoom? It had been burning when she got home.
Who was there this early? Against the dancing firelight, she could see the silhouettes of two figures sitting at a little table; the woman had short hair, but the man was more in shadow. Was that Detective Garza, the broad shoulders, the hint of a square jaw? She watched the firelight shift and leap, reflected across the glass china cupboards-and atop the cupboards, a small, dark shape crouched, intently listening. The kit smiled. She could see the gleam of his white markings, too. Whatever was going on in the tearoom, she would hear about it, hear it in detail from Joe Grey.
She imagined Captain Harper going to retrieve the envelopes, and that warmed her. She thought about the child and was thankful they'd found each other-without her, the child would still be tied up. Without the child, she would still be locked in there, too, with that insane little man. And the little girl-who knew what would have happened to her? She wondered where the child had gone, all alone in the night and so frightened. She prayed he wouldn't go looking for her, prayed she had a place to hide. She wondered, if Irving Fenner found the pictures missing, if he would think the little girl had taken them, and that could make everything worse for the child. From her window she watched an escaped newspaper twist and flap along the street like a live thing, then a flock of blowing leaves skitter; the hastening wind carried scraps of debris dancing and teasing and making her paws twitch-and the wild need to chase sent her leaping down again and racing for the bedroom.
She stopped at the doorway, looking in. The room was dim, the draperies still drawn. Lucinda hated closed draperies during daylight. The two lumps beneath the covers didn't move. Alarmed, Kit leaped up.
But the minute she hit the bed, Lucinda woke with a cry.
"Kit! Oh, Kit!" The old woman grabbed her, hugging her so hard that Kit couldn't breathe. Pedric woke and threw his arms around them both. "Oh, my," Lucinda said. "Oh! So good to have you home. To hold you safe! Where were you? We were all so worried. Where have you been?"
"I found something," Kit told her. "And then I got trapped in the bathroom and I was afraid he'd come back and find me and I…"
Lucinda laughed. "Slow down. You're not making sense." The old lady set Kit down on the bed, and rose, pulling on her robe. "Come on, let's make some coffee, Kit, and warm milk, while Pedric gets dressed."
Sitting on a kitchen chair at the tiny table, in the little bar/kitchen, lapping up warm milk and devouring leftover steak, she told about the man. Listening to the shower running and knowing she would have to tell it all again, and not caring, she told Lucinda about the pictures, the gun, the tied-up child. With the smell of coffee filling the apartment, and Lucinda dressed in her quilted robe with yellow buttercups on it, Kit told her all about the man who had killed Patty and how she'd followed his trail and lost it and found it again, and about the pictures of Patty with the holes in them and how she'd called Captain Harper. When she'd finished, Lucinda hugged and hugged her.
"It was a courageous thing to do, Kit. To chase him like that, to keep on until you found him and then to slip into that cottage behind him. Oh, I do love you." She held Kit away. "And I do worry so about you. It was a courageous, dangerous, foolish thing to do. I'm so very glad you and the child are safe. Without that child…" Lucinda wiped at her eyes. "Without the two of you together, neither one alone might have left that place."
Kit felt very warm, deeply content. Tucking her face down in the crook of Lucinda's arm, she pressed against the old lady purring so hard that her reverberating body shook them both. But after a while, Lucinda got up and laid some logs in the fireplace and lit the starter, then carried her coffee to the window seat. Picking up the phone, she called Charlie. "I hope they're awake," she told Kit as the phone rang.
Kit crawled into her lap, listened to three rings, and then Charlie picked up.
"She's home," Lucinda said. "The kit's home."
"Oh, Lucinda. I'm so glad. Tell… Tell Pedric I worried all night about her." Lucinda grinned down at Kit. Max must be right there, listening, not guessing at the disguised message meant for Kit. Charlie sounded as if she'd just woken up. They talked for only a few minutes, then Lucinda went out to the veranda to fetch the morning paper.
She spread it out on the coffee table as Kit lay across her lap yawning, watching the fire blaze up. Very soon now, Captain Harper would have the evidence that she hoped would fry Irving Fenner, fry him good. It was lovely here in their beautiful suite-so different from life when she was a kitten, before she knew that humans' houses were wonderful, when she'd thought that all of life, for a cat, was dirty alleys, mean dogs, broken glass, jagged, empty tin cans, and mean boys with rocks. When she was little, running with that wild clowder of feral cats, she had thought every cat in the world grew up on the street scared and hungry and cold. That was the way life was. The big cats took the only warm sleeping places, and snarled and slashed when you tried to eat. She'd stayed with that wild band because they were the only cats like her, the only speaking cats she knew of. She'd stayed because she was little and alone and they were better protection than nothing. She'd run with them until they found their way to Hellhag Hill. But there she'd discovered Lucinda and Pedric, and life was suddenly all different. Now, as Lucinda read the paper, Kit snuggled closer. "What?" she said, looking up at the thin old lady. "What's so fascinating?"