Backing away sneezing and coughing, she knew she had found something important. What was the old man up to? She wanted to look closer, but she daren't creep down into his stinking cellar, that smell was like something that would reach up and grab her. Tales filled her of human people dying, of skin and eyes burned, of lungs rotted, and even their brains turned to dust, and she hurried away, afraid clear down to her paws.
But she could follow the old man, if she kept her distance. She could see what that was about, dumping his bags of garbage down there among the ruins.
Hurrying away from the ugly, deserted cabin, she raced down the narrow road and down the scrubby, empty hills as fast and silent as a hawk's shadow. But she ran scared. Traveling the darkening, empty land so far from home, alone, was not like when she slipped through the night shoulder to shoulder with Joe Grey and Dulcie feeling bold and safe. Watching the falling blackness around her for prowling raccoons and coyotes or bobcats, she ran pell-mell for the Pamillon estate.
Dulcie hurried through the village beneath pools of light from the shop windows heading home, praying the kit was there, an uneasy feeling in her stomach, a frightened tremor that drew her racing along the sidewalks brushing past pedestrians' hard shoes and dodging leashed dogs, running, running until at last she was flying through Wilma's flowers and in under the plastic flap of her cat door. Mewing, she prowled the house looking for the kit, mewing and peering behind livingroom furniture and under the beds, unwilling to speak until she was sure Wilma didn't have company.
Determining at last that the house was empty of humans and of the kit as well, she called out anyway, her voice echoing hollowly. "Kit, come out. Kit, are you there? Please come out, it's important." All this in a voice that was hardly a whisper though her calls would reach feline ears.
There was no answer, not a purr, no soft brush of fur against carpet or hardwood as she would hear if the kit sneaked up on her, playing games.
At last, leaving the house again, she scented back and forth across the garden, and searched driveway and sidewalk for a fresh track. She raced up a trellis and sniffed all across the roof too and up the hill in back through the tall dry grass where hated foxtails leaped into her fur. Finding no fresh scent of the kit she grew increasingly worried. Kit hadn't been home at all.
Well, she couldn't search the whole world, one couldn't search all the hills though she and Joe had tried to do just that when the kit disappeared for three days last winter.
But the kit had been smaller then, and more vulnerable. She was a grown-up cat now. And, as Kit was far more than an ordinary cat, Dulcie thought stubbornly, she would have to take responsibility for herself.
Hurting and cross but giving up at last, Dulcie headed for Lupe's Playa. I must not worry, I hate when Wilma worries about me. The kit is big now and can take care of herself. But Dulcie was so unsettled that when she saw Joe on the low branch of a cypress tree outside Lupe's Playa she scorched up the trunk ploughing straight into him, shivering.
He hardly noticed her; his entire attention was on Ryan's red pickup parked just across the street.
The passenger door stood open. A man sat inside, poised with one foot on the curb and watching the restaurant through the window, as if ready to slip away at any sign of Ryan.
Joe Grey glanced at her, and smiled. "He opened the envelope. Removed Ryan's billing." They watched him fill Ryan's large brown envelope with the sheaf of papers from his pocket. "He opened the door with a long, thin rod. Only took a second. Opened the bottom of the envelope, peeled it back as slick as skinning a mouse. He doesn't see Ryan and Clyde watching." He looked toward the patio wall where the bricks were spaced in an open and decorative pattern offering passersby a teasing view of the garden and diners. In the restaurant's soft backlight Dulcie could just see Ryan and Clyde with their heads together, peering out through the wall's concealing vine. Talk about cats spying.
"I wonder if Ryan called Detective Garza," Dulcie said, glancing along the street as if Garza or Detective Davis might have hurried over from the station to stand among the shadows.
"I don't think so. She means to lead the guy on- that's Larn Williams, all right." Joe flicked an ear. "I was on the wall when he approached the truck. She told Clyde she can make a second switch, print a new, correct bill and mail it. Let Williams think he was successful, let him wait for the Jakeses to hit the roof because the bill's so high, wait for them to maybe file a lawsuit. She thinks he might tell the Jakeses that she cooked the books, even before the bill arrives, make up some story about how he found out."
"Would they believe him?"
"Are Larn Williams and the Jakeses close friends? We don't know a thing about them." Again Joe smiled. "One more phone call. Who knows how much Harper can pick up about Williams, while he's in San Andreas?"
"You're going to ask Harper to gather information for you?"
"Turnabout," the tomcat said softly, looking smug.
Dulcie stared at him for a long time. She did not reply.
Williams sealed the envelope and laid it on the seat. "Same position as he found it," Joe said. Quietly Williams depressed the lock, shut the truck door and slipped away up the street, disappearing around the corner. The cats heard a car start. He was gone when Ryan and Clyde emerged.
Ryan drove slowly away as if she had no idea the truck had been broken into. Clyde, parked in the next block, followed her.
"What will they do now?" Dulcie said.
"She'll swing by our place, I guess. She left Rock there. I'm betting that when they finish going over tomorrow's work Clyde will follow her home. Check out her apartment. Maybe try to talk her into staying at her uncle's for a few nights."
"She won't, she's too independent. And if Larn Williams wanted to kill her, why would he bother setting her up for a lawsuit?" Dulcie backed quickly down the tree and headed up the street toward home. "Maybe the kit's back, maybe she's raiding the refrigerator right now."
And Joe, his stomach rumbling with hunger, galloped along beside her. Within minutes they were flying through Wilma's garden among a jungle of chrysanthemums and late-blooming geraniums, the flowers' scents collecting on their coats as they approached the gray stone cottage.
Padding up the back steps and in through Dulcie's cat door, entering Wilma's immaculate blue-and-white kitchen, Joe headed directly for the refrigerator but Dulcie never paused, off she went, galloping through the house again searching for the kit.
The first time Dulcie ever brought Joe here, she had taught him to open the heavy, sealed door of the refrigerator, to leap to the counter, brace his hind paws in the handle and shove. Now, forcing it open, he dropped to the floor catching the door as it swung out. The bottom shelf was Dulcie's, and Wilma always left something appealing; she didn't forget half the time the way Clyde did. Joe might find on his own refrigerator shelf a fancy gourmet selection from Jolly's Deli, left over from the last poker game, or the dried up end of a fossilized hot dog.
Dulcie's private stock tonight included two custards from Jolly's, sliced roast chicken, a bowl of apricots in cream, and crisply simmered string beans with bits of bacon, all the offerings stored in Styrofoam cups that were light enough for a cat to lift, and with easily removable lids that were gentle on feline teeth. He had them out and was opening them when Dulcie returned.