Except, Lilly would be more afraid of Cage than of the law. Cage could be mean and coersive, and Lilly was reclusive and weak, not nearly bold enough to defy her brother. Dulcie sighed. Nothing would make sense until they knew why Cage wanted Wilma. Dulcie’s housemate wasn’t some heiress with unlimited funds for a ransom. What could she have, or know, that would make her so valuable to Cage Jones?
But maybe Greeley was here looking for something, and not for Wilma at all.
But what? And why now, just when Wilma had vanished?
Greeley had abandoned the weather as a topic, and was digging for information, feeling Lilly out with questions about as subtle as a Great Dane in a crystal store; but at last he got down to specifics, wanted to pack Cage’s clothes and take them to Cage, and bring some papers, too, that Cage had put away. Could Lilly get those for him? He’d be glad to get them himself, save her the trouble. He said Cage had mentioned a small box he wanted, and that Cage had told him where to find it. The old man seemed as nervous as a cornered rabbit in his eagerness to break away from Lilly, to get at the rest of the house on his own. He kept at it until Lilly said, “What are you looking for, Greeley? What do you think Cage has hidden here that you want so badly?”
Greeley widened his eyes in surprise. “Just what he told me to get, Lilly. Oh, you can’t think Cage has hidden something illegal? Oh, my. If them cops search the house, looking for him, and they find something incriminating…”
“I told you, they have already searched.”
“But they’ll be back,” Greeley said darkly. “Now that Wilma Getz has disappeared, they’ll be back here looking for her. You can bet on that. And if they find something illegal in your house…” Greeley shook his head. “That would make you an accessory, Lilly. There’s a terrible long prison term for that.
“Of course, if it’s something he’s brought across the border, carried up from Panama, that makes it a federal offense, with an even longer prison term-for Cage, and for you, if you knew about it.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Lilly snapped. “An innocent woman, alone. No one would put an old woman in prison. What a foolish thing to say.”
“Norma Green went to federal prison when she was eighty-seven, for passing forged checks. Eileen Clifton was sixty-eight. Sentenced to twenty years by the feds for taking her kidnapped granddaughter across a state line. Her granddaughter! Anything that goes across a state line…”
Kit’s ears were back, her yellow eyes narrowed with disbelief; Dulcie swallowed back a hiss of disgust.
“Them federal judges are sticklers for the law, Lilly. Don’t make no difference, your age. If you know that he’s hidden something here, you’re aiding and abetting. Them judges will see you do federal time, sure as hell is filled with brimstone. Well, I’d just hate to see them even book you, even take you off to the local jail…” And Greeley kept laying it on, about how bad the prisons were, about the sexual bullies and prison gang wars. It was hard to know what Lilly was thinking, with that sour poker face. When Dulcie could stand it no longer, she cut her eyes at Kit and they slipped out from behind the chair into the shadows of the hall.
Trotting swiftly through the shadows from one room to the next, they didn’t look for whatever Greeley was after, they wanted only to find Wilma; poking into closets, they prowled a room used for sewing, two unused bedrooms, a dark room dedicated to storing boxes and other junk, and a large linen closet, skillfully and silently sliding open closet doors, poking their noses behind the brittle shower curtain of a second bath-all to the background of Greeley’s wheedling and Lilly’s sour, one-line refusals. And even as they inspected each depressing room for Wilma, it was hard not to keep an eye out for whatever Greeley had come here to find.
Slipping up the stairs from the hall to inspect the second floor, they made quick work of the four other bedrooms, the last of which was redolent with Lilly’s lilac scent, Lilly’s clothes and shoes in the closet. Nowhere was there the faintest scent of Wilma, no hint that she had been in this house.
They found Cage’s room, though, and he had been there recently-same sour male smell as in Wilma’s house. Cage had, within the last few weeks, slept in the front bedroom; a few of his clothes hung in the nearly empty closet.
Interesting that Lilly had said no word, when Greeley claimed that Cage had sent him for his clothes. But still, nothing really made sense; Dulcie hated when things didn’t add up.
They tossed Cage’s room more thoroughly than the others, though Wilma certainly hadn’t been in there; they found nothing valuable that Greeley might want. Heading back down the stairs to the first floor, the drone of Greeley’s voice met them, accompanied by a faint clicking. And when they peered around from the hall, they saw that Lilly was knitting-having grown totally bored with Greeley’s wheedling-her needles flying through some project fashioned in pink yarn, she was so engrossed she seemed hardly to notice Greeley.
Some women knit when they’re nervous, when they need a calming diversion. Some knit when they’re angry. As the cats watched the needles flying and the rows of pink stitches building, Lilly seemed to grow calmer. Greeley, apparently running out of hot air, sat watching her, stone faced, then at last he rose.
“I’m sorry to have troubled you,” he said stiffly. “I hope, Lilly, you are doing what’s best for your own welfare.”
The cats smiled as Lilly hustled him out the door; behind her back, they fled for the kitchen; and there they waited crouched on the worn linoleum until they heard her return to her knitting, sighing with relief to be rid of him, her needles once more clicking away madly. They prowled the kitchen, pausing to sniff thoroughly at a door that smelled strongly of musty basement and of gas and oil from the garage.
Could Wilma be down there, so securely confined that Lilly felt no need to go downstairs and check on her? Could she be drugged, or so hurt that she could not escape? In her terror, Dulcie leaped and snatched at the doorknob, clawing and swinging, making too much noise. She couldn’t see if the separate dead bolt was locked. But, fighting the door, she heard the knitting stop, heard the hush of Lilly’s footsteps on the carpet. Frantically, both cats fought and kicked-until Lilly entered the kitchen, then they slid behind the refrigerator, a tight squeeze, the motor hot against their fur.
They listened as Lilly opened a cupboard, apparently getting herself a little snack; they could smell vanilla cookies, could hear her munching. When, rattling the package, she headed for the living room again, they followed on her heels. Dulcie’s mind was on the basement, on the windows at the back of the house where the cliff dropped away and the daylight-basement looked out at the ravine. And, slipping past the living room as Lilly again bent over her knitting, they made for the bathroom. Onto the counter, and then they were up and out the window, leaving tabby and tortoiseshell fur caught in the torn screen. Ignoring the trellis, they broke their fall among the bushes and fled for the back of the house. Only there did they pause to lick their paws, bruised from the doorknob, and their bare tender skin where the screen had pulled out hanks of fur.
“Will it ever grow back?” mewled Kit who, six months ago, couldn’t have cared less how she looked. Now she sounded as foolish as the vainest house cat.
“It will,” Dulcie said dryly, studying the basement windows and, for a quick escape, the grassy canyon that dropped away below them.