Unknown - Cat_shining_bright_Merfi_630007

The officers pulled the driver over with flashing lights. They got out, ordered the driver out. He stood facing his van, hands on the roof. They frisked him and questioned him. They searched the van, looked at his driver’s license, then sent him on his way.

At first sight of the patrol car, the burglar had slid deeper in the pines and shrubbery. Now, when the cops had gone, he slipped his phone from his pocket. He spoke softly. Dulcie watched Joe listen from the roof then quickly choose a pine and back down, she watched him warily. If someone was picking this guy up, she knew what Joe meant to do.

“You stay here,” she told Courtney; but already the young cat was wired to move. “Right here!” Dulcie repeated. “Don’t you dare go down off this roof, not for anything. If I … if you are left alone, you are to go to your pa’s house. Do you know how to get to the Damens’?”

“Of course I know,” Courtney said, bristling. “Down that street four blocks, and to the left past Barbara Conley’s with the yellow tape.” And she turned her face away, sulking.

As Dulcie slid into a bougainvillea vine and down among its thorny branches a car pulled into the lot, a dark, older SUV. At once the thief fled from the bushes and opened the driver’s side back door. He folded half of the backseat down so it matched the platform of the rear storage space. Leaning in, he rummaged among the jumble at the back, tucking the box he carried under some duffel bags and bundles.

Behind him, Joe Grey sped for the open door, leaped in and slipped over behind the passenger’s seat. He could say nothing as Dulcie flew in and pressed against him; he glared at her, furious, ears back, yellow eyes narrow. He watched her claw a dark blanket down from the seat above them. As they slid under, Courtney flew in behind them.

They couldn’t scold, they daren’t even whack her lightly for fear she’d hiss and fight. This calico was getting too big for her britches.

Quietly the thief shut the door, went around and opened the front passenger door and slipped in. The driver took off, skidding as he turned.

Headed where? Where was he taking them?

Dulcie pushed the blanket aside for a little light. Courtney was wide-eyed and shivering. She hadn’t thought, she had only meant to help her pa. She hadn’t helped him at all, and now she was filled with fear. Dulcie thought of the time Joe had gotten in a car headed who-knew-where, and ended up in the parking garage of the San Jose airport, some eighty miles north. Lost, alone, surrounded by cars driving in and pulling away, a regular riot of moving wheels, he’d seen a woman he knew shot to death. He had, at last, stolen a cell phone from an open truck, had called Clyde and Ryan to rescue him.

Now, sliding around where she could see between the two front seats, Dulcie got a look at the driver: a heavy fellow, dark, short hair, heavy shoulders. He was built like Pan’s description of the car thief that windy night, the man whose trail bore the same white, flaky evidence as that from the beauty salon murders. Looking closely, she could see the same white specks stuck in the crepe soles of his dark shoes.

Kit and Pan hit the roof of the village market at the moment that Joe Grey, Dulcie, and Courtney dove into the dark SUV, saw them flash into the car and disappear. “Oh my,” Kit said and crouched to leap after them but Pan jerked her back, teeth and claws in her shoulder.

The two cats had, shortly after they’d returned home from dinner at the Damens’, slipped away again after giving Lucinda and Pedric face rubs, and loving them. They beat it out the cat door, headed for the stakeout at Wilma’s house where they knew Joe would be. There they had waited on the roofs across the street for a long time, they had watched Wilma’s living room light go out, then the reflection of the bedroom light come on, glancing off the pale back hill—and Wilma’s stalker appeared from the shadows near the front door.

This time he must have had a lock pick; it didn’t take long and he was inside. They came down from the neighbor’s roof and up onto Wilma’s shingles. They listened to him toss the house, the living room, the kitchen, they moved across the roof just above him the way they might follow the underground sounds from a squirrel tunnel. They heard, after some time, the stealthy sliding of a closet door in the guest room, the dry sound of shuffled boxes. Where was Jimmie? They scrambled down from the roof, they were racing for Dulcie’s cat door when they heard a back window slide open, heard the soft sound of running on the dirt path behind the house. From that moment, everything was confusion; climbing to the roofs again, leaping across the side yards scrambling from tree to tree chasing running footsteps. More than one man running but, in the dark below them, in the windblown night, all was uncertain. What they thought was the perp turned out to be a cop. What they thought were two perps, they saw suddenly were McFarland and Crowley. Where was Joe Grey? The running was louder, then it stopped; a door opened and closed softly. Silence, then a cop approached the door, found it locked, and moved on, looking back. The cops were gone when the door eased open and a tall, thin man came out, closing it behind him. He ran, almost soundlessly, racing along the edge of the hill and behind the village market. When he hid among the trees they crouched on the roof, listening.

They could smell Joe Grey’s scent on the shingles, could smell Dulcie and Courtney. Below, the black, windy, moonlit scene held them, the white van and the cops’ car, then the dark SUV, the perp leaping in, the three cats behind him. Kit crouched at the edge, ready to leap down. Pan grabbed her, stopping her—and the car skidded away, turning onto Ocean.

They followed up Ocean, over cottages and shops. When they couldn’t see up the hill any farther they scaled a tall pine to the top. “There!” Kit hissed. The SUV was climbing the last hump to the stop signal. They waited, panting, to see which way it would turn.

It turned north where Highway One would lead to a cluster of freeways. Kit couldn’t stop shaking. Oh, how did Joe let this happen? And the road was empty behind, no patrol car was tailing them. How did the cops, scouring the neighborhood, how could they miss such a blatant escape? Kit wanted to yowl.

“A phone,” Pan hissed, and they spun around, heading down the tree, dropping from branch to branch. Joe’s house was the nearest; but as they dropped to the sidewalk Kit said, “Wait … Wait one minute.” She raced across the parking lot to where the SUV had stopped. She sniffed where its tires had stood, smelling at the paving; she looked up at Pan making a flehmen scowl. The pavement smelled of … what?

“Garlic,” she said, inhaling again. “Garlic, geranium, eucalyptus, and … goats.” It was a sickening combination. “And here’s a eucalyptus leaf bent and crunched as if it fell out of a tire tread.”

“There are eucalyptus trees all over the village.”

“But that’s exactly what grows at the edge of Voletta Nestor’s weedy yard. I notice it every time we hunt on the Pamillon land, the eucalyptus, that ornamental garlic, its long silver grass. Red geraniums. And the damned goats,” she added. She looked at him, her eyes bright.

“Come on,” he said, and they raced through the dark for Joe’s house.

“If we can slip into the kitchen,” Pan said, “make the 911 call without waking anyone …”

“But we’ll have to wake Clyde, we need wheels. We can tell the cops about the car the prowler got into, and which way it went. I couldn’t see the license, only the first part, 6F … couldn’t see the rest. But how do we tell them that three cats are trapped in there, that the department’s Joe Grey is shut inside with those crooks?” She shivered, approaching the Damens’ cat door. The night was moving toward dawn, and where were Joe and Dulcie and Courtney headed? Slipping inside through the little plastic door, hurrying to the kitchen and a phone, Kit imagined the car turning onto the freeway, its three stowaways crouched out of sight, unable to see much out the windows above them, no idea where they were going or what would happen to them, and again she thought, Why did Joe do this? Dulcie and his own kitten? How could he let this happen?