Only tonight instead of giggling, they listened— to the settling sounds the old house made, and for the faintest stealthy and unusual stirring, for noises that did not belong to the old house. They talked in whispers about Rebecca, remembering when she'd overturned Bailey's canoe and the cooler with their lunch in it sank fifty feet to the bottom of the lake. "With Granny's lemon cake in it," Florie Mae said, "and warm sausage biscuits."
"Remember when we all learned to drive in your grampa's old truck, how stubborn he was that we had to learn to drive with a gearshift?" Martha said.
"And Rebecca went through Richardson's pasture fence. Flattened it right down to the nibbled dandelions and let Ms. Richardson's cows out."
"The old crook-horn cow run all over Greeley afore we caught her."
They lay in the dark listening to the night sounds, remembering how the boys would flock around Rebecca, as if Florie Mae and Martha wasn't anywhere near. Rebecca had always had boyfriends, long before her mama allowed her to date. A dozen guys in high school, more afterward. But all of it respectable enough. "Respectable most times," Florie Mae said, giggling. A few older men hanging around, too, but Florie Mae didn't think Rebecca had gone out with them. Surely not with Herald Fremkis. She'd dated those her age, Grady and the boys he ran with. And she got real serious with Albern Haber.
They'd wondered some about Daryl Spalding, when Rebecca went to work for him. Daryl wasn't long out of law school. He was younger than his wife, and a site better looking. But Rebecca'd told Martha, she liked her job too much to date Daryl and spoil a good thing.
"She didn't run off," Florie Mae said. "You've seen her and Tommie together."
Martha wiggled deeper under the light cover. The upstairs windows were open but no breeze came in, the night was as still and close as a cook oven. "Might be those old gossips are right, that she's having a last fling with someone, just gone off for a few days?"
Florie Mae rose up and looked at her. "It's nearly two weeks. She wouldn't hurt Tommie like that."
"Albern Haber was plenty mad when she and Tommie got engaged," Martha said. That was when Albern started hanging out at the Blue Saddle. Got arrested three times that month for DUI. But after three overnight stays in the Greeley jail, folks thought Albern would mend his ways. The Greeley jail was over a hundred years old, with damp stone walls, no heat, and plumbing so bad that all the cells stunk.
"Well she can't be with Albern. He's been right here in town the whole time, since she disappeared. He's out with the men tonight, was in the store three times last week."
"Maybe she's staying somewhere else, and he..."
"He commutes?" Florie Mae said, laughing. "He commutes to a secret love nest?" She sat up in the darkness, looking at Martha. "I only wish," she said sadly. Then, "Who would hurt her?" she said softly. "Who could hurt Rebecca?"
"Maybe she had a last fling with Grady or Lee Nolton or Eric Farlon," Martha said, "and Tommie caught her."
"Tommie wouldn't hurt her. He might kill whoever she was with, but he wouldn't hurt Rebecca." Florie Mae shook her head, a soft rusting in the darkness. "Tommie'd just go away his ownself, he'd be real crushed if that happened."
"Who else would be so jealous? Who else couldn't stand for Rebecca to belong to another?"
"Every male in Greeley," Florie Mae said, smiling. "Take Grady—Grady Coulter thinks he should have the pick of the crop.
"Herald Fremkis was always hanging around. And that Tom Sayers, works in the courthouse."
Martha snorted with laughter. But then she turned on her pillow, looking at Florie Mae. "Herald tortures dogs." She shivered.
"He does more than that. Granny says there are two children she knows of, in town, knows for a fact they aren't their father's babies, that they're Herald's."
Martha giggled. "How could she know that?"
Florie Mae shrugged. "How does Granny know anything? Lived all her life in Greeley. Granny goes back to Noah and the flood."
"But who could ... what woman could stand to be with old Harold Fremkis?"
"Someone hard up, I guess. Someone whose own husband is... who doesn't have enough love at home," Florie Mae said. And she went quiet. Someone whose husband is just too tired, she thought, ashamed of her own needs, whose husband works all day till after dark hauling and stacking heavy bales and tending to the hundred things needed in the store—who does all that for us, for me and Granny and the children, so he's just wore out at night. And Florie Mae turned her thoughts away, didn't want to follow the path their talk was taking.
She thought instead about Lester. He was only a boy, just seventeen. But she thought how flustered he'd been with the news about Susan Slattery. Lester, dragging in the newspaper, dropping it on the counter unable to talk or look at her. Same as he'd been, exactly the same, when Rebecca disappeared.
But Lester was like that, always had been, he wouldn't hurt a flea. His embarrassed ways was no more than shyness, Lester had watched Rebecca no different than Grady or Albern Haber and their friends, no different than Herald Fremkis with his beer gut and roving eye, or than any other male in Greeley—but now with Susan Slattery missing, with two young women missing, the horror of what could have happened to Rebecca seemed a thousand times more real; and, thinking about Rebecca lying somewhere dead, she put her face in the pillow and shook with silent, convulsive weeping, shook, hugging her pillow, until she dropped into grieving sleep.
They were deep asleep when the raucous noise began. The screams jerked Florie Mae awake, jerked them out of bed: cat screams. The shrill, enraged and terrified cries of cats fighting in the store below. The screams of the mother cats defending their young. Florie Mae and Martha near fell over each other racing down the stairs, Martha snatching up the red plaid robe like a weapon. Behind them Granny emerged from her room with her shotgun. The baby began to howl. Bursting through the kitchen and into the store, Florie Mae flipped on the lights.
The on-off flicker of the fluorescent tubes flashed pulsing reflections from a pair of glaring eyes. Then the light stayed on, illuminating the enraged glare of the tomcat. He was backed against the shelves of trowels and garden gloves, a dead kitten dangling from his teeth, a tiny white kitten.
The two females were at him, pausing for only an instant, their ears flat to their heads, their tails lashing.
They hit the tomcat together, tore into him, their screams filled with blood-lust, raking and biting him, clawing at him, a dervish of flying fur and screams. In their rage, the dead kitten was tossed aside. The cats didn't separate long enough for Florie Mae or Martha to grab any one cat. To reach into the flying whirlwind trying to save the mother cats could be lethal.
Martha threw her robe over the tom as Florie Mae grabbed up gunnysacks. The instant the three cats were covered they became still, their fighting reduced to enraged growls. Neither Florie Mae or Martha knew which cat was poised beneath her own pressing hands—until an orange paw appeared under a fold of cloth.
Pulling back the gunnysack no more than an inch, Florie Mae let Goldie slip out, then pushed the cloth down fast.
Goldie went straight to her dead little kitten, picked it up, and carried it back to the box.
As the snarling continued, Martha slid a red plaid corner of cloth back, trying to see under. The cat responded with a scream like attacking tigers that made her cover the beast again.
The next move was so well coordinated they could have practiced for days. While Florie Mae guarded her side, holding the gunnysacks in place, Martha lifted another corner, revealing a black tail. Pulling the cloth higher, she pushed Blackie from above.
Streaking out, Blackie fled for the kitten box. What was left under the burlap was a cyclone. Bundling the corners of the bags together around the storm of snarling, yowling fury, Florie Mae and Martha each held a fistful of cat securely through layers of burlap.