But the minute he’d licked his plate clean, Ryan leaned over to refill it, and how could he resist? How he’d survived without this woman was hard to remember. She’d even left out the onion from her pot roast recipe, for fear that, as with ordinary cats, the onion would make him anemic. She’d told him she used, instead, red bell pepper, a combination of herbs, and a touch of bourbon.
“Delicious,” Joe said, eating with single-minded dispatch. When again he looked up, they were both staring at him. “What?” he said with his mouth full.
“You’re in a hell of a hurry,” Clyde said.
“Just hungry,” Joe said, and bent his head fastidiously to finish his second helping. Trying to look relaxed, he took his time licking gravy from his whiskers and, to humor them, he stepped up on the table and pawed the fliers apart so he could see them better.
There was the vacant ranch they’d talked about, its fences and outbuildings sprawled raggedly across the side of the hill, below a heavy stand of cypress trees. He couldn’t imagine they’d want to remodel that whole complex. There were seven other houses, three in the heart of the village and four tucked among the hills. All of them needed paint, a complete yard makeover, new roofs, and undoubtedly expensive interior repairs: new wiring, new plumbing, who knew what else to keep them marketable. He hoped none of them had drainage problems like the job Ryan was working on at present. At least that wasn’t her house, it belonged to a client who wanted it saved despite the cost.
Studying their prospective purchases, one of which looked like a real teardown, Joe didn’t know whether to laugh or to succumb to serious concern. A teardown, in Molena Point, could go for half a million or more. Half a mil to rip down a house and replace it with a dwelling that might hopefully sell well up in the seven figures. But with Ryan at the helm, what looked like a teardown might, in fact, turn into a real gem-and people were making money saving those old houses.
When Joe first learned he could speak, and was trying to understand the human world, the concept of work for money had meant nothing to him. But as he began to think more like a human, he’d easily absorbed the rudiments. Folks worked at what they liked to do, received promissory dollars for the quality of their skilled or creative efforts, and traded those for whatever goods they chose. To a cat, the concept had been a revelation.
Why, a cat could hunt mice all day, stack them up like cordwood, and trade them for caviar-if one could find a market for the mice. That was the rub, considering that the human appetite didn’t really run to dead mice. He glanced out the kitchen window at the night and knew it was time to meet Dulcie.
Clyde caught his look. “You’re going out to poke around the Parker house, aren’t you? What do you think you’re going to find after Dallas and Juana worked the area?”
It wasn’t the Parker house he was headed for, but he didn’t tell Clyde that. “You’re so incredibly nosy.”
“You think that guy will come back?” Clyde said. “If the guy watching us was the killer-if there ever was a killer-after we followed him, why would he come back? He’ll be long gone.”
Joe just looked at him.
Ryan watched them with amusement. She’d learned early on to stay out of these discussions. When Clyde glanced away, she winked at Joe. Joe twitched a whisker at her, and rubbed his face against her arm by way of thanking her for dinner. Then, dropping to the floor, he headed up the stairs to his tower and out to hit the roofs.
18
WHEN JOE SLIPPED out of his tower to the rooftops, his belly full of supper and his mind on the empty houses, the fog had blown away; the sky was clear, the moon bright as he leaped across the shingles to the neighbor’s roof and raced on into the night. He had gone three blocks galloping across the peaks through paths of moonlight when he spotted Dulcie. She stood on a little balcony, rearing up, her tabby coat silhouetted against the white wall of a penthouse. They raced to meet; skidding close together they exchanged a whisker kiss and then galloped away toward the block of Charlie’s vacationing clients. Who knew what scent they’d pick up, what details a human might miss?
Hurrying across the village, the streets below them were busy with cars and pedestrians, with couples coming from the restaurants or window shopping. The traffic thinned as they moved onto the residential roofs; soon the streets below were quiet and nearly empty, only a few pedestrians hurrying along. A silent runner passed beneath them as they approached the targeted homes. They were two roofs from the Waterman house when they saw Kit, poised high on a shingled peak. She was not alone.
“What’s this?” Joe said. “She’s picked up a stray?” A small, ragged, half-grown cat stood beside her.
“That’s the cat from the clowder,” Dulcie said. “The little cat that Kit was so taken with this morning. She’s hardly more than a kitten, what’s she doing here? Oh, my. Has Kit lured her away from the clowder?”
As Joe and Dulcie approached, the little female crouched warily. Kit looked down at her small charge in a patient and proprietary way. “Tansy,” Kit said by way of introduction. “She lived in the village once.”
“I lived in that house over there,” Tansy said shyly, pointing her ears at the Waterman house.
“Did you?” Joe said with interest. “That’s where we’re going. Do you know how to get in?”
“There’s a dog door. But-”
“Are you friends with the dog?”
“Oh, the beagle’s dead now,” Tansy said. “He was old and friendly. He was a little afraid of me,” she added, twitching her whiskers.
Dropping into a pepper tree beside the Watermans’, Joe crouched on a branch, looking back at Tansy. “Come on, then,” he told her. She followed as the four cats moved quickly, trying to remain out of sight among the foliage. To any casual observer this would look strange indeed, cats do not travel in packs, this was not normal feline behavior.
The house was one story with pale stucco walls, the curved tile roof still warm beneath their paws, holding the heat of the day. Below them, the solid wood fence that enclosed the backyard was far higher than necessary to contain the small beagle that had lived with the Watermans.
Dulcie said, “I’m surprised Ben Waterman went with Rita; Charlie said he hardly ever does, that he’d rather stay home, putter around, and play a little golf. But I guess a tour guide is pretty busy, maybe that’s why she makes her trips alone.”
“It’s their anniversary,” Joe said. “Clyde worked on their car a few weeks ago; they told him they were either driving up to San Francisco or flying to Greece or the Antilles, they hadn’t made up their minds.”
“I wonder what it’s like,” Dulcie said.
“What what’s like?” Joe said absently.
“ Greece. There are lots of cats, feral cats. I wonder…Are there cats like us? Are our relatives there? Have speaking cats survived there from ancient times?”
“Come on,” Joe said impatiently. Glancing toward the neighbors’ windows, they dropped down onto the six-foot fence and then into the backyard. Half hidden between two mock orange bushes was a dog door into the garage. They slipped inside one by one, Tansy headed through a second doggy door into the family kitchen.
The kitchen corner where the dog bed had been still smelled faintly of the sweet-leather scent of an old dog. There was no sound from deeper within the house. They stood sniffing, seeking any other scent that might seem out of place, and, rearing up, they looked around the bright room for any sign of disturbance.