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ESCAPED CONVICT SHOOTS FEDERAL OFFICER
Dulcie couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. Didn’t know what to do but stand shivering and staring.
But then common sense took over-if the victim was Wilma, she’d already know, the police would have been to the house, Joe’s housemate would know and would have found her and Joe even on the rooftops. It wasn’t Wilma, couldn’t be Wilma. But then when she sca
The lead article might ordinarily have been of interest only to San Francisco readers, for the shooting had occurred in the city where the victim worked-but it was in the Gazette because he was well known in Molena Point as well. Mandell Be
Two people were watching her, two fat, fleshy tourists in shorts staring down at her, cackling with amusement. “What’s that cat doing? Reading the paper? What kind of animals do they keep here? Dogs in the restaurants, cats reading newspapers…”
Leaping at the paper rack, Dulcie snatched at an imaginary moth, batted it around the back of the stand, and took off ru
Wilma Getz had indeed left the city early, heading out around six A.M.; after two days in court, she was looking forward to a rare binge of shopping. Having gassed up her car the night before, she drove south on Highway 101, enjoying a ci
She’d had di
During the hearing, Mandell had weathered Cage Jones’s sullen anger with the cool equanimity he always mustered, while she had inwardly fumed. Their quiet di
“Wanting to change the bad guys-until I learned that most of them wouldn’t change, had no desire to change. And then wanting to keep them off the street, keep them from hurting others.”
She’d looked at Dulcie’s wide green eyes. “Maybe a bit of a predatory streak in me? A bit confrontational? A streak of the cat in my nature?”
“Maybe,” Dulcie had said, laughing. “Maybe that’s why we get along so well. And,” Dulcie continued, “that should help you understand why Joe and Kit and I love what we do.”
“I guess it does,” Wilma had said, diffidently stroking Dulcie’s sleek tabby back, tracing a finger down her dark, silky stripes. “I guess I understand very well.”
The drive to Gilroy took her an hour and twenty minutes, from hotel parking lot to the sprawling discount mall. Her first stop was to gas up her car, and then to her favorite restaurant where she enjoyed a large and decadent breakfast. Locking her car, she’d made sure her glove compartment was safely locked, too. The.38 Smith & Wesson had been important when she worked corrections, but now, with those years long past, the revolver was simply insurance in case her car broke down or something else unexpected occurred, such as a carjacking or attempted robbery. Life bloomed with the unexpected, and she felt more comfortable prepared. Though the gun wasn’t likely to be needed for a simple day of shopping; and her only known enemy of the moment was safely cooling his heels, watched over by San Francisco ’s finest.
She thought of checking the messages on her cell phone before she hit the stores; but she had called her close friend Clyde last night, and then called Lucinda and Pedric Greenlaw. Dulcie had been there with the elderly couple, tucked up on the couch with Kit as Pedric recited an old Celtic fairy tale for the two cats. Pedric was an authority on Celtic myth and, as the cats’ heritage lay within that distant and mysterious realm, they loved hearing his stories.
She supposed she could check for a message from Dulcie, but she’d talked with her just last night, and she’d be home in a few hours, even if she hit every store in the complex; she was trying to break herself of worrying about Dulcie. Ever since Dulcie and Joe discovered they could speak and understand the human language-were, as Dulcie put it, thinking like real human persons-Wilma had worried over the little tabby to the point of driving Dulcie crazy. Just as Clyde worried over Joe. When the two cats launched themselves into a life of spying and snooping, she and Clyde had worried big-time. The inherent dangers of such an occupation for two little cats had nearly undone them both.
From the first, Dulcie hadn’t liked Wilma fussing, and had set her straight with such insistence that she’d backed off. That hadn’t been easy. But the thought made Wilma smile, because soon the tables were turned. When the tortoiseshell kit arrived on the scene, a starving orphan kitten then, and had taken up with the Greenlaws and with Joe and Dulcie, she had proved to be far more of a handful than either of the older cats had ever been-and soon it was their turn to worry. Kit was fascinated with criminal investigation, and she was fearless.