The house belonged in part to Wilma; she and the other four ladies of the Senior Survival Club had bought the property together as a private retirement retreat. The structure was large enough to give each a spacious room and bath, and to accommodate as well a housekeeper and perhaps a practical nurse or caretaker when that time arrived. It hadn't yet, for any of the ladies. While each woman's room was designed to her own taste, the common living, dining, and kitchen areas were a triumph of compromise, a fascinating eclectic mix that the ladies had put together with a minimum of harsh words. In their intelligent cooperation Wilma found great encouragement against the time, far in the future, when she would sell her own home and move in with them.
The raftered great room with its raised fireplace and long window seat was done in a combination of wicker and leather, with contemporary India rugs, white plantation shutters and, scattered among the books in the wall of built-in bookcases, a collection of local, handthrown ceramics. Whoever had built the house had loved fireplaces; there was a raised wood-burning fireplace in nearly every room. Following Cora Lee up the stairs, Wilma was not prepared for her friend's decorating approach to her own large bedroom.
Because the apartment Cora Lee had recently vacated had been all in shades of cream and white and cafe au lait, Wilma expected the large, sunny upstairs retreat to be much the same.
But this room was wild with color, as bright as the Dixieland jazz that Cora Lee and Wilma loved. The walls were a soft tomato red. The long, cushioned seat that filled the big bay window, the wicker armchairs, and the bed, were piled with patterned pillows brighter than the artist's paints that Cora Lee favored. The room was a medly of reds and greens and blues and every possible color, all in the smallest and most intricate patterns. Pillows like jewels, like flower gardens; and Cora Lee's paintings on the walls were just as bright.
The kit, crouched on Cora Lee's shoulder, looked and looked, then leaped into the heap of cushions on the window seat rolling and purring.
"I think," Wilma said, "that she likes it. I love it!"
Cora Lee stood in the center of the room caught between laughter and amazement. "She does like it. Well, new things always smell good to cats. But… look at her pat at the brightest colors. Cats don't see color?"
"Maybe they do," Wilma said uneasily. "The world of science hasn't discovered everything yet." She glanced at Dulcie who stood beyond Cora Lee admiring every detail, and the two shared a look of delight. The private chamber was jewels set in cream, flowers scattered on velvet. The minute Cora Lee sat down on the window seat the kit stepped into her lap, nuzzling her hand, looking from her to Wilma so intelligently, so much as if she meant to join in the conversation, that Wilma stiffened, and Dulcie leaped to the cushions to distract her.
But the real distraction was the tea that Cora Lee had set out on the coffee table before the blazing fire. As the two women made themselves comfortable, the cats looked with interest at the lemon bars and shortbread; and Wilma fixed her gaze on the kit. 'This is your home for a little while, Kit. You are to behave yourself, you are to mind your manners."
Cora Lee grinned at Wilma's stern tone, but Wilma's look at the kit was serious and cautionary. Don't speak, Kit. Don't answer by mistake. Don't speak to Cora Lee. Don't open securely closed doors or locked windows. Don't under any circumstance forget. Do not talk to Cora Lee or to anyone. Keep your little cat mouth shut.
The kit understood quite well. She smiled and purred and washed her paws. Certainly she was content to behave herself, at least until late at night. Only then, if her wanderlust grew too great, who would know? If, while Cora Lee slept, she lifted the window latch and roamed, who was to see her?
Meanwhile the bits of tea cake that Cora Lee fixed on two small plates were delicious. The kit, finishing first, eyed Dulcie's share but she daren't challenge Dulcie. She listened to Wilma's half-truths about how she had had a prowler and was worried about the kit because of her reputation as a highly trained performing cat, how she thought it best to get her away for a while.
Early this summer when the kit's surprise appearance onstage with Cora Lee had turned out to be the sensation of the village, Wilma had gone to great lengths to make Kit's appearance seem the product of long hours of careful training. But even trained cats were valuable.
"I'll keep her safe," Cora Lee said. "We all know the doors must be kept shut. I have no theater sets to work on now, not until close to Christmas. I'll be right here most of the time, working on the house. We still have the two downstairs apartments to paint and recarpet. Kit will be up here, two floors away from the paint fumes, and with the windows just cracked open-she can't get through those heavy screens. I've hidden some toys and games for her around the room, that should keep her entertained. Well, she's already started to find them."
The kit, exploring the bedroom, had discovered an intricate cardboard structure with many holes where, within, a reaching paw could find and slap a Ping-Pong ball. Next to it, hardly hidden but blending nicely in the fanciful room, stood a tall, many-tiered cat tree that led up to a high, small window. She found a tennis ball beneath Cora Lee's chair, and a catnip mouse under the bed.
"You will," Wilma told the kit again, sternly, "behave as we expect you to do. You will mind Cora Lee and stay inside this room, you will not slip away on some wild midnight excursion."
Cora Lee laughed. "I'll see that she behaves."
But the kit's look at Wilma was so patently innocent that all Wilma's alarms went off-alarms just as shrill as when, during her working career, she had assessed a parolee's too-innocent look and listened to his honeyed lies.
The sheriff pulled up beside Max's pickup, drowning them in dust. He was a heavy man, maybe six-four, with a prominent nose and high cheekbones, and in Charlie's opinion an overly friendly smile. He loaded Hurlie into the backseat of his unit, behind the wire barrier. "What charges?"
"Interfering with the duties of a law-enforcement officer," Max said. "Harboring a felon."
"Fine with me."
"And obstructing justice. I'll want his prints."
The sheriff nodded. "You want to toss his place? You have a warrant for the old man. Or I can do it on the way down."
Max considered. "Let's run down together and have a crack at it."
The sheriff made Hurlie hand over his keys, and moved Hurlie's truck onto the shoulder; Max and Charlie followed him down toward Little Fish Creek. As the two men entered the cabin, Charlie waited in the truck. Max had parked where she could see in through the window of the one-room shack. A single bed, covers in a tangle. An easy chair so ragged that not even Joe Grey would tolerate it, far scruffier than Joe's clawed and hairy masterpiece. One plate and cup on the rough wooden sink drain. A door open to a fusty-looking little bathroom that she imagined would be dark with mold. Max and Sheriff Beck were in the shack for nearly half an hour; she watched them going through the few cupboards, checking under the mattress, pulling off wallboard and ceiling tiles in various locations. They performed similar searches in the two scruffy outbuildings. The sheriff's unit, parked directly in front of the shack, afforded prisoner Hurlie Farger a direct view of her. She sat sideways, with her back to him, but she could feel him staring. Max came away from the search looking sour. He stood a moment in the dusty yard beside the truck, with the sheriff.
"You ask questions around those estates," Beck said softly, "you might want to watch yourself. DEA seems interested in that area. They took out two small marijuana plots up in the national forest, day before yesterday, and they still have a plane up. I haven't heard of anything on those estates, but they're all big places and there's sure plenty of money up there."