Dillon wiped her tears with the back of her hand, smearing black and red. "I only wanted to see Jane. They acted like I was some kind of criminal." She gave them a deep, confiding stare. "She isn't there. Why else would they be so nasty. And they know that I know she isn't there." She gave them a determined look, her brown eyes blazing with anger. "Well they can go to hell. I'm going to find out what's going on.
"Yesterday I called her trust officer, but the switchboard said to leave a message. Voice mail-big deal. I gave my name and phone number, but now I'm sorry. My folks'll have twenty fits."
Dulcie reached a soft paw again, patting the child's face. Dillon gathered them both into her arms, pulling Joe into her lap with an insistent little hand. She held them against her as if they were rag dolls, pressing her wet face into their fur. The child was warm, and smelled of the perfumed cosmetics.
"I love you both. I wish you could tell me what to do." She kissed Dulcie's pink nose. "They were so gross, marching me out of there like a baby." She looked at them bleakly. "Jane isn't there. And no one will believe me."
Unblinking, Dulcie stared at the child, so intent that Dillon widened her eyes, looked into Dulcie's eyes deeply, suddenly alarmed. The two gazed at each other for a long moment, in a strange, silent aura of communication.
Dillon whispered, "What, Dulcie Cat? What is it? What are you trying to tell me?"
Joe wanted to shove Dulcie away, she wasn't behaving like an ordinary cat. He could feel her concern for Dillon. If the people of Casa Capri were this adamant about keeping out strangers, then maybe there was reason to fear for the child.
Dillon said softly, "Are you afraid of them, too?"
When Dulcie looked almost as if she would forget herself and speak to Dillon, Joe pushed her aside.
Scowling, she jumped down, turned her back on him, began to wash herself, contrite suddenly, and embarrassed.
They sat with Dillon for a long time, until at last she sniffled, blew her nose. Finally, she picked up her bike and began to drag it through the woods, heaving it over the tangles, heading for the road.
They didn't follow her.
At the top of the hill she blew her nose again, looked down at them once more, puzzled, then kicked off and sped away, coasting down the dropping street. They watched her small, lone figure until she disappeared around a curve.
They were licking Dillon's salty tears from their fur, licking away her makeup, when suddenly Dulcie gave him a wild look and exploded away through the sunshine, racing up across the hills-too wild to be still another instant. Shedding the restraint of cautious hours last night and this morning, shedding the tension of dealing with Dillon, she leaped invisible barriers, careened around bushes and through dead grass and across driveways and gardens, across the open fields. Joe sped behind her, infected by her drunken lust for freedom, their ears and whiskers flattened in the wind, their paws hitting only the high spots.
Dulcie paused at last, half a mile north of Casa Capri in a favorite field where three boulders thrust up. The smooth granite glinted hot with morning sun. Leaping to the top, she stretched out across the warm stone, twitching her tail, rolling in the heat. She chased her tail, then lay on her back, letting her paws flop above her, idly slapping at a little breeze.
Joe lay in the warm grass below, nibbling the tender new blades which thrust up between last year's growth. "The kid's going to get herself in trouble, nosing around."
"Not if we find out what's going on first."
He looked up at her, exasperated. "So what was Adelina writing? I'm surprised she didn't feel you breathing down her neck."
Dulcie lifted her head, her eyes slitted against the sunlight. "Personal letters. She was writing to a friend of Lillie Merzinger. The file had Lillie's name on it, and there were letters to Lillie in a scrawly handwriting, and some snapshots of two ladies standing beside a lake, with pine trees behind. There were graduation announcements, too, and wedding invitations, little personal mementos, the kind of personal stuff people save."
She rolled over to look at him. "There were machine copies of letters from Lillie to Dorothy. Adelina spread them all out, as if to refer to them, before she began to write."
She rolled again, to warm her other side. "What did she do, open Lillie's mail? Open the letters Lillie wrote, before they were mailed, and make copies?"
"What did the letter say?"
"Boring stuff. About Lillie's poor digestion, and about Dorothy's old dog and about Cousin Ed. Dull, personal things. Why would Adelina write the letter in the first person, and sign Lillie's name?"
"So Lillie Merzinger's too sick to answer her mail," Joe said. "Someone has to answer her letters, or her family would worry."
"But why doesn't she tell Lillie's family she's too sick to write? Why wouldn't she type a regular letter on the computer? Print it out with the rest of her letters. Tell them how Lillie's feeling, that she's taking her medicine, maybe getting a little better. And if someone's really sick, wouldn't she phone the family?"
Dulcie's eyes narrowed to green slits. "And the other letter, the one she wrote on lined paper-she wrote it in a totally different handwriting. She signed it James. Addressed the envelope from James Luther."
She snatched at a flitting moth, caught it in curving claws, chomped and swallowed it, then fixed him with a hard green gaze. "And why was her handwriting different for each letter? Why was she forging those letters?"
They both thought it: Because Lillie and James aren't there anymore. Their thought was as sharp on the wind as if they'd spoken.
Joe slapped at a wasp, turned away and began to wash his back.
Normally he'd be as eager as Dulcie to find out what was going on, but this situation made him edgy. He felt as though very soon they were going to wish they'd kept their noses to themselves. Casa Capri, with its locked doors, gave him the fidgets.
"And what," Dulcie said, "is Renet's mysterious presentation tomorrow? Like a speech? Why would Renet give a speech? A speech about what?" She sat up tall on the warm boulder, her eyes narrowed, thinking. She shivered once, then lifted a paw and began to clean her pink pads, licking fast and nervously, tugging fiercely at each claw. Tearing off each old sheath, she angrily released the sharper rapiers beneath. She was wound tight, edgy and irritable.
Joe wanted to say, You thought visiting the old folks would be all kippers and cream, wanted to say, Casa Capri didn't turn out like you expected. But she glared at him so crossly he shut his mouth.
As he bent to tend to his own claws, suddenly she leaped from the boulder and streaked away across the hills again, all nerves and temper. He stared after her, watched her vanish into the tall grass, watched the heads of grass shake and thrash in a long undulating line as if a whirlwind fled through.
He took his time about following her, lingering to sniff at the sweet dusty smells, at masses of yellow poppies which seemed to have bloomed overnight, at old scents of mouse, at rabbit droppings. She was headed diagonally across the hills moving north, and occasionally he stood on his hind legs, so as not to lose her.
He couldn't see her cross the crest of the hill but he could see the grass shaking. Beyond them to the north, the hills were black from last fall's fire but were slowly turning green again, as new spring grass sprang up between the remains of that terrible burn. He could still smell burned wood on the wind, and wet ashes. And against the sky there still stood the skeletons of black, dead trees, and a lone chimney, an abandoned sentinel, though some of the houses had been rebuilt.