When she wheeled the vacuum into Traynor's study, it was as neat and tidy as ever. Nothing on the desk but his computer and the freshly printed chapter he had written the night before. He always left the new chapter on the desk, possibly to go over the next day when he and Vivi returned from their walk or from the theater. They went often to approve the sets that Cora Lee was painting, then had breakfast out.
Tryouts were tonight. Charlie supposed that when rehearsals began they'd be at the theater for longer periods. It seemed a rigorous routine for someone being treated for cancer. Traynor had told her, when they first arrived and were discussing her work routine, that he worked late into the night. He said that was when the juices flowed. She remembered the amused look in his eyes, some private joke-or maybe his faint smile was simply juvenile humor at the off-color connotation. A strange man. He still interested her, despite her anger this morning.
He was far more stern in real life than he looked in the promotion picture on his book jackets. Long before this morning, Traynor had made her uncomfortable. He seemed to analyze and weigh a person far too closely-maybe a writer's penetrating observation, she supposed, as he tried to see beneath the surface.
Did she, when she was sketching an animal, stare like that at her subject? Did she make her animals uncomfortable? With Joe and Dulcie, she'd seen them both wince when she was drawing them. And despite the kit's bright disposition, several times when she'd looked too hard at the kit, she'd gotten a hiss in return or a striking paw that surprised her and made her draw back.
Who knew what an animal felt when you stared at them? In the animal world, a stare meant the threat of attack. One was supposed to stare at a mountain lion, to keep him from attacking first-to show superiority. But one was not, while hunting, supposed to look a deer or rabbit in the eye, that only alerted them.
Joe and Dulcie and the kit were sentient cats, not instinct-driven wild beasts. Most of the time, logic drove those three-but a logic overlying the same deep feline nature as any ordinary kitty-they weren't any less cat, they were simply more than cat.
Vacuuming beneath the fine walnut desk and along beside the walnut bookshelves, she reached to try the desk drawers and file drawers. As usual, they were locked. Hesitantly she reached for the new pages of Traynor's book that lay before her.
All week she had been sneaking looks at Traynor's manuscript. Last Friday, reading his earlier pages, she had been shocked and deeply upset. She'd been so excited to have a look at his work, had told herself that after all, it was written for public consumption, and it was right there on the desk; she only wanted to see how he developed his prose, from the beginning. In school she had been interested in writing fiction-though far more fascinated, always, with drawing, with the visual images she wanted to create. But Traynor had always been a favorite; she had loved reading some of his passages over and over, simply for their poetry.
She'd heard him tell someone on the phone that this new book was set in Marin County, above San Francisco, at the turn of the century. She liked the title, Twilight Silver. She had stood with the vacuum paused and roaring, reading the neatly printed pages.
They'd been dreadful. The words stumbled, the paragraphs didn't make sense. She had started again, thinking her lack of comprehension was her fault. She had skipped ahead several pages, but had found no improvement. She'd decided this must be a first draft, a rough beginning. Surely a writer was allowed a flawed first draft.
But why print it out so neatly? Why bother, until it was the way he wanted it-why print out these garbled pages, this lack of clarity with not a hint of his lucid style?
Being an artist herself, with a duly accredited degree-for whatever that was worth, she thought wryly-she felt that she had some sense of how a work of art, a drawing or manuscript, grew to fruition. But those pages, despite the promise of an exciting plot, had been so clumsy they embarrassed her.
Had the illness done this to Traynor? Was it slowly taking his mind as well as his body? The thought deeply distressed her.
Well, she didn't know much about how writers worked. Maybe from this draft he would construct the smooth prose that she so loved. Still, she'd thought that writers edited on screen, didn't print until they felt they had something of value. But maybe not. Surely they didn't all work the same.
That morning, aligning the pages as she had found them, she had felt a deep disappointment, almost a loss.
But now, this morning, maybe these pages would be better. Watching the driveway through the study window, she picked up the current chapter. She read hopefully, but only for a moment. His words were just as inept, just as off-putting. She read two pages, then tried again, but it was no better. She stopped when she heard a car pulling in, and laid the chapter on the desk.
But the car appeared in the next drive, parking before the house next door. Aligning the pages, she glanced up into the bookshelves-and caught her breath.
Joe Grey stepped out from behind the row of books, his yellow eyes wide with amusement. "I'm surprised at you, Charlie. I didn't dream you'd take the Traynor's money as a trustworthy professional, then pry into their personal business."
"What are you doing here? What are you up to?"
Joe smiled. "Does he always lock the drawers?"
Charlie grinned. "Why would you snoop on the Traynors?"
The tomcat shrugged, a tilt of his handsome head, a twitch of his muscled gray shoulders.
"Where's Dulcie? And what," she said, fixing Joe with a deep scowl, "did you have to do with that mess in the pantry?"
"You think I shot those beasts? That I've learned to use a pistol? Come on, Charlie."
"What did you have to do with those raccoons getting in the house?"
His gaze was innocent.
"Besides the raccoons-besides that gruesome mess that I had to clean up, what are you up to? There's not enough crime in the village? You've been reduced to idle snooping?"
"And what about you?" He lifted a white-tipped gray paw. "You sound so much like Clyde it's scary. No wonder you stopped dating him-before you turned into his clone."
"That is really very rude." She reached up to stroke Joe's gleaming gray shoulder. "Come on down. Were you looking for Traynor's research about Catalina's letters?"
Joe twitched an ear.
"I saw how interested you were, that night at Lupe's Playa. So, did you find it?"
He smiled. "It was right here in this stack. I pulled it behind the books, to read it while you vacuumed-while you snooped."
"And?"
"Catalina's letters to Marcos Romano are worth something. Two of them sold recently at Butterfield's for over ten thousand apiece."
"You're kidding me."
He pawed the sheaf of research from behind the books. "Between pages six and seven."
The auction notice lay there with Traynor's receipt. Joe showed her the notation at the bottom.
She raised her eyes to his, their faces on a level. "How many letters were there? How many did she write?"
"I don't know, Charlie. Maybe no one knows."
"If they're that valuable, why did he write a play about them- or why is he letting it be produced? Already, apparently, people are looking for them."
"Maybe he couldn't resist. Maybe, despite the wisdom of keeping them secret, the letters kept bugging him. The way you get bugged, wanting to draw something. The way you stare at a person, your fingers itching for a piece of charcoal."
"Aren't you perceptive this morning."
"My dear Charlie, cats invented perceptive. If some of Catalina's lost letters are still out there, and if Traynor thinks he can find them, maybe he figured he'd come on out to the coast and search for them while the play was still in rehearsal, before anyone saw the play, before anyone else thought of looking for them."