The Pumpkin Coach was enjoying extra publicity; the shop's display was featured prominently, its window nearly filling the space above the fold-a picture that, if they were right, was going to cause plenty of activity in the village, and not all of it welcome.
Since midnight they had stalked rats beneath the low, dense foliage of a dwarf juniper forest. The decorative conifers covered a residential hillside, a mass of three-foot high bushes so thick-growing that even in the silver dawn the world beneath had been without light, its prickly tangle of interlaced branches stretching away in pure blackness. The warm, sandy earth beneath was riddled with rat holes-a hunting preserve for the small and quick.
Their breakfast catch had consisted of two fat rats and a small rabbit. They could have killed many more, but they couldn't eat any more. Leaving the bony parts and the skin and fur, they had spent leisurely moments washing their paws and whiskers, then wound their way out of the dark jungle, their eyes shuttered and their ears back to avoid the tiny, prickly twigs. They came out onto the concrete drive just below a two-story house whose shades were still drawn. The cats' coats smelled sharply of juniper, and their mouths were filled with the rusty aftertaste of rat. It was as they padded down the damp concrete drive toward the street below that the morning paper caught their attention.
Thanks to the cheaper production costs of modern technology, the photo was in full color. It showed three carved wooden chests sitting on an embroidered table cover atop a small writing desk in the shop window. Joe pawed the paper open to the article, his dark gray ears sharp forward, his yellow eyes keen with interest. He glanced up once at the windows of the house but saw no one, and heard no sound. Flattening the pages with quick paws, they crowded together side by side to read. Any neighbor peering out would suppose the kitties had found a mealy bug or some such innocuous creature in the damp folds of newsprint and were about to eat or torment it. The article held their full attention.
ISELMAN ART COLLECTION UNDER BLOCK
Dorothy Iselman, widow of village benefactor James Iselman, has put the couple's multimillion-dollar art collection up for sale, retaining only a few favorite items. The oils and watercolors by famous eighteenth-century artists will be auctioned at Butterfield's in San Francisco in mid-July. Less valuable pieces, such as the African and Mexican folk art that Iselman enjoyed owning, have been sold to several local galleries and collectors. Several nineteenth-century wooden toys and primitive, carved chests have been donated to the Pumpkin Coach, a special offering for its charity sales. These can be seen in a handsome display installed last night in the shop's front window.
"What do they mean by primitive?" Joe said.
"Rough, bold. Not all refined and polished," Dulcie said knowledgeably. Her green eyes widened. "Don't they look Spanish? Could these be three of the Ortega-Diaz chests? Sitting in the Iselman house for how many years?"
"Not likely. Wouldn't Casselrod have known about them, tried to buy them?"
"Maybe he did try, we don't know. And did the Iselmans know about the letters? Would they have thought to look for some hidden compartment, like the white chest had?"
The cats looked at each other and took off down the drive heading for the Pumpkin Coach. Galloping through the fog across the empty residential streets, brushing through flowerbeds and trampling a delicate stand of Icelandic poppies, racing through patios and gardens, they had nearly reached the two long buildings standing end to end that housed the charity shop when a pale car pulled out of the street behind, coming straight for them. Dodging across the sidewalk into a recessed entry, they crouched against the door of a tile shop. Joe got one good glimpse of the license.
"Got the first four digits. 2ZJZ. A tan Infinity."
They stood looking after the vanished driver, then raced down the narrow brick walk between the two buildings, approaching the front of the charity shop. Somewhere in the village, a siren screamed, not uncommon in the early morning hours. Galloping past parked cars whose metal bodies exuded chill, they passed a car still warm, a green Chevy with the driver's door open.
"Cora Lee's car?" Dulcie said.
Joe glanced in, catching Cora Lee's scent, wondering why she had left the door open, and where she was. Skirting the glass that glinted across the sidewalk, warily he approached the shop window.
They could smell blood, and the sweet scent of candy. Circling around the glass, the cats reared up to look.
Fern Barth lay in the window, the blood from her wounds turning dark. Joe, leaping up over the jagged teeth of glass that protruded from the sill, stepping carefully around the blood and debris, put his nose to hers.
She wasn't breathing but she was faintly warm. He was backing away when sirens came screaming and a squad car and an emergency vehicle careened around the corner. Joe sailed out of the window over the ragged glass and behind the potted plants that stood before the shop. The cats were never able to shake their need to hide-and maybe for good reason. Max Harper wasn't unaware of cats showing up at a scene, of cat hairs clinging to evidence, of paw prints where they should not have been.
An officer swung out of the car, gun drawn, scanning the area, leaving his partner behind the wheel. From the ambulance, two medics stepped up into the shop window as if they knew exactly where to go. As the officer on foot checked the parked cars, the police unit took off toward the back street, apparently to circle the building. The officer on foot approached the green Chevy. Looking inside, he didn't touch anything. He checked the backseat, but didn't close the door. As he checked out the other cars, Joe and Dulcie slipped through the shadows to the bushes that lined the walk between the buildings. There, Joe tried to pull glass from his paws, dragging his pads across the small branches to dislodge clinging shards, then plucking some out with his teeth, spitting glass into the dirt, his ears back with annoyance.
The officer on foot had left the cars and moved up into the window, they heard him walk on back inside the shop. The minute he was gone, Joe sped for the Chevy and leaped into the seat.
He sniffed at Cora Lee's purse, but when he smelled the dash and the cell phone, he shook his head with disbelief. Dropping out again, he returned to the bushes, to Dulcie.
"The kit's scent is all over the phone."
"The kit made the emergency call?"
"Apparently. She's watched us enough times."
"So where is she? She stayed with Cora Lee last night. Where is Cora Lee? Oh, she's not in the shop! Lying hurt in there! But what happened?" Dulcie peered out toward the shattered display window, then turned to look at Joe, her eyes wide. "Or did she…? Oh, but Cora Lee wouldn't…"
Joe just looked at her.
"She was really hurt when she lost the part," Dulcie whispered. "Angry at Traynor, at Vivi, at Sam Ladler-she must have hated Fern. But she wouldn't…"
Joe was busy sniffing the bushes. "Cora Lee brushed by here. So did the kit. Come on."
They followed the scents of woman and cat up the brick walk and around to the street behind the Pumpkin Coach, where the shop's back door opened. The empty street smelled of car exhaust. They didn't see the officer on foot, nor was the squad car in sight. As they approached the small, blind utility alley just beyond the Pumpkin Coach, the scents they followed deepened. They could see nothing in the short dead-end alley but a heap of wadded white paper down at the end piled between the trash cans.
But something else was there, besides paper. They glimpsed dark hair among the white, and a tan arm. Then they saw the kit crouched over the figure, pawing at her, trying to wake her.