Unknown - Cat_shining_bright_Merfi_630007

“Lena’s here now,” Voletta said sourly, blocking the slightly open door. “We don’t eat cookies.” Kate could smell cinnamon rolls as well as coffee, could see three cups on the kitchen table. “Whatever you want,” Voletta said, “I’m busy.”

Kate slipped her foot against the door. “I thought maybe Ryan’s carpenters might help with the broken window, or anything else that was damaged. That was a terrible storm.”

“Ryan. That’s that woman carpenter?”

Kate nodded.

“Pretty nice truck she drives. Must be full of all kinds of tools, those locked cabinets along the sides, that locked lid on the truck bed. Well, a carpenter makes good money. We’ll do the repairs ourselves.” She yawned, and pushed the door forward in Kate’s face.

Kate shoved the door in gently with her foot as she faked a matching yawn. “You didn’t get much sleep, either?” she said, smiling kindly. “With all those lights down in the yard?”

“What lights?”

“I don’t know,” Kate said. “I woke around three, I saw lights reflected from down here. I thought your porch lights were on, but they seemed very bright. I thought about getting up to look but I guess I fell back asleep.”

“Lena turned the lights on when she got home. Their car was acting up, they were trying to fix it. Her son’s car, he’s visiting.” Voletta looked at her for a long moment, kicked Kate’s foot out of the way, and slammed the door.

Her son? Kate turned away and headed home with her plate of cookies. She didn’t know Lena had a son.

Dulcie, behind the couch, crept to the end where she could see better into the kitchen, could see the old woman more clearly. She, too, was surprised to hear of a son. She retreated a few steps when she heard voices from the living room, Lena’s voice, and a man. They moved to the kitchen, sat down at the table, Lena reaching for the coffeepot, filling their half-empty cups. But when the man appeared, a chill gripped Dulcie.

Egan! Egan Borden! … Egan Alderson, he’d said.

But Egan was arrested late last night. He should be in jail, not here in Voletta’s kitchen. Why had Max Harper let him go? Or had he broken out?

He was freshly shaved, his blond hair slicked back, and had changed clothes, a cream shirt and tan chinos. Watching him, she had to willfully stop her tail from lashing. Why had Harper released him?

Lena had driven off with those men last night, but when the rest were rounded up, she had disappeared. Had Egan somehow talked his way out of jail and raced north, to pick her up?

Or, Dulcie thought, startled, could this be Rick Alderson? In and out of prison, evading police inquiries, and now suddenly appearing out of nowhere? Oh, but that isn’t possible.

Last night Dulcie had had plenty of time to study Egan. No other man could look so exactly like him. Long, slim face, long thin nose, blond hair. Egan’s square shoulders thrust forward on his thin frame. Of course this was Egan but why was he out of jail? She wished Joe were there. Sometimes Joe Grey, fierce and predatory, was keener in what he observed than she was. Is this Rick Alderson, out of prison in Texas and secretly making his way here? But how can that be? Egan said Calvin Alderson was his father. The police think his mother is dead—but Voletta said this man, Egan, was Lena’s son.

Behind Dulcie, Kit and Pan had tunneled along under the couch to crowd against her peering into the kitchen. Lena and Egan sat guzzling coffee while Voletta laid bacon on a grill, broke eggs into a bowl. The two cats were as shocked as Dulcie, they had all seen Egan locked in a squad car, handcuffs, leg irons, the works, along with his stepfather—Randall mad as a stuck pig.

Now, before the bacon began to cook, Egan rose to open a loaf of bread. As he passed close to the living room they got a good scent of him. They looked at each other, ears back, tails twitching. This man wasn’t Egan, he didn’t smell like Egan though he looked more like him than a twin. Soon they crept away to the far end of the couch where they could talk softly.

“This,” Kit whispered so faintly they could hardly hear her, “this has to be Rick Alderson. He was waiting for Lena last night and gave her a ride away from the cops? And Egan is still in jail? Rick’s been here, been part of the gang all along? And what do we do now?”

Pan’s yellow eyes glowed. “What would Joe Grey do?”

Kit and Dulcie looked at him.

The red tom smiled. “Joe would go straight for the connection, for why those two look alike. Calvin Alderson had only one son when he was sent to prison, and the cops think he’d killed the wife as well as her lover.”

Pan turned away; Kit followed him up the hall to prowl the bedrooms. This man had to have some identification, maybe a billfold left on the dresser. Dulcie returned to watching the thieves.

In the corner bedroom Pan made a flehmen face; the clothes tossed about stunk of Randall Borden and Lena.

The middle room smelled of the young man they were sure was Rick Alderson. The room was painted tan, furnished with twin beds, old mahogany headboards, and a dresser that might have been there fifty years. And, again, decorated with strewn-about clothes, jeans, shirts, shorts, and smelly socks. When they heard a cell phone ring from the kitchen, heard Rick answer then chair legs scrape and his footsteps coming, they slipped under the bed.

Rick sat down on the bed, his cell phone to his ear. “Okay, I’m alone.” He listened, then, “What the hell, Randall!” Silence, then, “They’ll be after you like fleas on a dog. Where are you?” The cats could hear only one side of the conversation until he said, “We’re breaking up, my battery’s about dead, I’ll call you back on the house phone.”

Rising, he listened to the voices from the kitchen then sat down again, dialing the phone on the nightstand. When his back was to them, Kit and Pan slipped out of the room and past the bathroom into the farthest bedroom. This was Voletta’s room, her scent, the austere furnishings old and dark but the room neat and tidy, only a pink robe lying across a chair. Leaping to the nightstand, Kit slipped the phone’s headpiece off, lowered it silently to the tabletop. They crowded side by side, listening.

“… walked right out of that small-town jail,” Randall was saying, a smile in his gruff voice. “I told you my stomach hurt. I made it seem worse, like maybe appendicitis. That shook up the rookie on guard, he came right on in, the dummy. I knocked him out, took his keys and gun, locked him in and beat it out of there, out the back gate to the street. Tourists everywhere, I just fell in among them—they hadn’t made me change clothes because I was headed for county jail as soon as they interrogated me. They’d took my belt, though. And my phone and billfold.”

“Where are you calling from?”

“Woman working in her yard, back among some cottages. She left the front door unlocked. Don’t worry, I can see her from the window, she didn’t hear the phone ring, I put a pillow over it. I saw her husband leave, there’s not another sound in the house.”

“Oh hell, Randall. Get out of there.”

“Can you come get me?”

“Where? You can’t stay there.”

“It’ll take me a while through these fenced backyards—they’re bound to have patrols out. I can hide safe in that …” Footsteps were coming, Lena’s steps. Quickly they slipped the phone back on its cradle and dove under Voletta’s bed. At the other end of the hall, Rick was saying, “Hell, you can’t go there. That’s the first …” A pause, then, “That’s a damned stupid idea. But all right—though it could put us in a hell of a mess.”

He listened again, then, “I said, all right. Now get the hell out of that house before someone comes in.”