Страница 9 из 63
That secret was well kept by the tortoiseshell heroine of the story. Kit and Charlie shared the confidence only with Joe and Dulcie, and their few human friends who knew they were not ordinary cats: Clyde and the Greenlaws and Wilma herself were all privy to the cats’ secret.
After buying the dress for Charlie, Wilma found a lightweight summer blazer for herself to wear over jeans, then decided she was done with shopping. She’d hit the stores she liked best, and the afternoon was waning; the sun was low in the west as she headed for her car.
She clicked the trunk open and fit in the blazer package between the other purchases and her overnight bag; she could not have bought much more, she already felt like she’d made a grand haul. Shutting the trunk, she clicked open the car door, was leaning forward to put the long dress box in the backseat and wondering if she should just check out the two shoe shops she’d missed, when she was grabbed from behind. Big hands jerked her around, bending her arm back painfully and forcing her keys from her fist. Enraged that she’d been caught off guard, she kicked backward, hard, ramming the heel of her shoe down his shin and jamming her elbow into his stomach. He hit her so hard across the neck that she reeled, and saw blackness. In a frantic move she slipped her credit card from her pocket, bent it double, swung around in his grip, and slashed his face with the sharply folded corner. He swore and shoved her in the backseat on top of the dress box. She knew it was Cage before she saw him, but only then did she get a look at him. Cage Jones was gri
“Bend over. Put your hands behind you! Now!”
She fought him, tried to kick him in the crotch. His weight was too much on top of her, he was too strong. He jerked the rope so tight around her wrists he probably took the skin off. How the hell did he get out? How did he get out of jail?
6
D ulcie didn’t see Greeley Urzey as she raced across the roofs above him; she was too preoccupied. It’s nearly dusk. She will be home! No need to call the sheriff in Gilroy, she’ll be in the bedroom unpacking her overnight case and that thin little hanger bag. She probably stopped in the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee or make a drink, and she’s wondering where I am. Right this minute she’s home and everything is as it should be!
There! Her own shake roof, where she su
But something stopped her. She stood in the middle of the kitchen, very still. Something wasn’t right-the wrong smells, and when she reared up to stare at the tops of the counters and the tabletop, fear filled her. She leaped to a chair, looking. Wilma never left the kitchen like this. A mess of smeared jam and butter mixed with toast crumbs. The bread out of the bread box, its wrapper ripped raggedly and three slices of bread left to dry among the crumbs; the half-full juice bottle on the sink, its lid missing; the tub of butter atop the toaster, lid off, the butter smeared with crumbs and jam.
But when she peered through to the dining room, the dining room table was piled with bags from Liz Claiborne, Chico’s, all Wilma’s favorite shops. Had Wilma dropped her packages and, very hungry, stopped for a hasty piece of toast before she unpacked, and left that mess behind her? Dulcie cocked her ears toward the bedroom, listening.
The house was deathly still. She started to shiver. Had someone been in here when Wilma got home? Someone who’d hidden and waited…?
Dropping silently to the floor, she slipped toward the living room-and stopped: the scent of strangers, two men. And the living room had been trashed, the couch cushions thrown to the floor, Wilma’s beautiful Jea
Now she knew how their friend Kate Osborne had felt when her San Francisco apartment was broken into and ransacked; the same shock of invasion, of being defiled, a hot tide of helplessness and rage.
But the burglar in Kate’s apartment had been after jewels, searching for a rich inheritance that Kate had not, then, known the true value of. Wilma had nothing like that. A silver hair clip, one or two small precious stones, and the one valuable hair clip Kate had given her-but not enough to warrant this kind of search. And, what about the packages? If Wilma’s purchases were here, so was Wilma. Or, she had been.
Dulcie’s paws were sweating, her mouth dry. Trying to steady herself, she sniffed all across the floor searching for Wilma’s fresh scent, but she found only the sour smell of the two men. When she paused again to listen, she heard from the bedroom a drawer being pulled out softly, then a man’s hushed voice, low and angry…“It’s not here…”
Silently she padded into the hall that co
She knew she should spin around and go for help. She was no match for Jones, he was huge. If he killed her, there would be no one to help Wilma. But she had to see. She was slipping through the shadows toward the beefy man when she heard her plastic cat door swing and flap. Terrified they’d hear, she spun around…
The tortoiseshell kit stood behind her, her yellow eyes widening at Dulcie’s soft hiss for silence. When the voices came again, Kit dropped to the carpet, backing away in alarm.
Dulcie, creeping to the door, could not smell Wilma. She peered in, saw the two men. Wilma wasn’t there. She slipped away with Kit, to the living room, where Kit licked Dulcie’s ear just as, so many times in the past, Dulcie had comforted the tortoiseshell.
“Who are they?” Kit asked. “The burglars who killed that woman in the middle of the night? Oh…”
“It’s Cage Jones,” Dulcie whispered. “He shot Wilma’s partner this morning.”
“Mandell? Oh, he didn’t shoot Mandell Be
“He’s alive. Intensive care.” Be
“We need help,” Dulcie said, glancing at the phone that had, surprisingly, not been knocked off the hook; its receiver was still in place-but if they called 911, Jones would see the extension’s red light blinking in the bedroom. For several years, Wilma had had a second line for her computer, with two-line extensions where a red light blinked when one line was in use. That light would be a dead giveaway.
But what if Wilma was in there, and hurt, maybe tied up in the closet? Abandoning the phone, the cats headed back for the bedroom, Dulcie thinking, So what if they see us? We’re cats! What’re they’re going to do? Shoot a couple of house cats mindlessly looking for our supper?