"Are you sure you didn't find anything, Cara Ray? Where were you looking?''

"Sam, you'd know if I did. It's only been three days. Sitting in that old woman's stuffy parlor drinking tea until I think I'll throw up-and at night, listening to their boring stories. Grown men and women, telling fairy tales." She raised her head to look at him. "You made yourself scarce enough." Glancing down, she saw Joe under her chaise, and caught her breath. Snatching up her towel, she flapped it at him. "Shoo. Shoo."

Joe rose and moved away, out of her line of sight.

"Wha'd you want me to do, Cara Ray, jump up and throw my arms around you? Anyway, who'd have the chance, with Cousin Dirken all over you?"

Cara Ray laughed. "Farting around repairing that house. What a joke." She glared under the chaise, didn't see Joe.

Sam sniggered. "Pulling off the siding, chopping holes in that old cement and filling 'em up again." He fished a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, carefully selected one from the center, where it presumably wasn't crushed, and lit up. "Dirken tags me around every minute I'm at the house, won't let me out of his sight. Nearly has palsy if I head out into the yard."

She half rose, holding the bra. "If he watches you so close, then how do you think I can do any better? He tags me, too-as bad as Newlon."

"When Dirken watches you, Cara Ray, his mind isn't on what you're looking for. More likely on what he's wanting to look for."

She bellowed out a laugh, an alarming bray for such a sleek, petite lady.

"And the old woman?" he said. "She suspect anything?"

"Not a clue. Dim as a blind deacon passing the collection plate." She rolled over on her back, clutching her untied bra to herself, revealing more white skin than tan. "What about Torres?"

He lowered the paper and raised up, looking around at the other sunbathers. "Torres died in an accident, Cara Ray. His brakes failed." He half turned, his face in profile behind the raised newspaper. "It's time you got some results out of that old woman."

She sat up, straddling the chaise, tying on her bra. "I'm working on it. You think I can just waltz in there and make nice to his widow, right away we're bosom buddies? You think that dry old biddy is going to trust me? Share all her girlie secrets, right down to what Shamas was like in bed-if she can remember that far back. You think she's going to cozy up to me the way she does to Pedric? And we don't need that buddy-buddy stuff, either, between those two. I think…"

"Well, I have to be careful, Cara Ray. You know my old parole officer lives in this burg."

"Not likely you'll run into him. Why would you? If you stay out of jail."

"It's a her. And I damn sure might run into her. She and Lucinda are thicker than cats in a bowl of cream. All I need is for that bitch to get on my case. She sent me back twice, always hassling me. Sent me right damn back to federal prison."

"So? You're clean now. You told me you were clean."

He glanced back at her and smiled.

She laughed. "If you…" She stopped speaking, rolled over suddenly onto her belly, hiding her face.

Joe, stretching up to see what had startled her, backed deeper under the chaise as the uniformed captain swung out of the motel office. Harper didn't seem to notice Cara Ray, not a blink as he headed across the patio toward the street. Joe kept his head down, hiding the white strip on his face and his white paws, muttering a little cat prayer that Harper, watching Cara Ray out of the corner of his eye, wouldn't notice one small, gray, immobile hunk of cat fur crouching in the shadow under the chaise.

Leaving the patio, Harper walked right on past his king cab, never glancing at it. Probably he'd leave the truck parked between the buildings under the jasmine vine until Cara Ray and her friend had left the pool area. It was just after Harper left that the conversation turned even more murky. Sam, turning the newspaper page as if he were reading, said, "I need to move on, Cara Ray. Before the funeral. I've details to tend to."

"You leave before the funeral," she snapped, "don't you think someone will wonder? The funeral's what you came for. And as to the machine sales, that little adventure was your idea, not mine."

"One road leads to the other, Cara Ray." "What about the boat? The cops been back on it?" "Why would they? They got no reason. And what would they find? There's nothing to find." He snapped the newspaper irritably. "It was an accident, Cara Ray." "One road leads to the other, Sam, only if you make a track between them." Cara Ray rose; her look was as brittle as broken glass. Heading for the stairs, her blue eyes and delicate features shone as cold as an arctic ice field.

9

THE TEA tray, on the coffee table before the fire, was set with Wilma's hand-thrown ceramic cups and saucers and arranged with an assortment of lemon bars, scones, and fruit-filled custards. The blazing fire cast bright reflections across Wilma's deep-toned oriental rug and across the blue velvet couch and love seat. Above the mantel, a rich Jeannot painting of the Molena Point hills lent further richness to the cozy room. Behind Wilma's cherry desk, the white shutters were open to the stormy afternoon, framing the old oak trees that twisted across her tangled flower garden. Wilma had put on a CD of Pete Fountain, the bright clarinet jazz filling the house with its happy sound. Dulcie sat on Wilma's desk, her green eyes deeply amused. They were waiting for Lucinda.

"It was a cat," Dulcie was telling Wilma. "A tiny little cat, riding that big pup. You should have seen Selig racing away with the littlest, scruffiest kitten you can imagine raking his backside. Kitten the color of charred wood, and fierce-angry as a tiger."

It seemed to Dulcie that all her world suddenly was filled with young animals, both exasperating and lovable. She had spent the morning sitting on Clyde's back fence beside Joe, watching as Clyde tried to train Selig. Selig had accepted the command, Sit. He knew what it meant, and he obeyed when the mood struck him. But Down seemed a position with which he was not conversant. Clyde might be a fine auto mechanic, but as a dog trainer he was about as effective as a declawed cat in a room full of Rottweilers.

Wilma adjusted the quilted tea cozy and glanced across at Dulcie. "Where do you suppose those cats came from? You always told me the hill wasn't inviting to cats, that the village cats didn't like to go there."

"Sometimes it does seem a frightening place," Dulcie said. "But that young cat doesn't seem to mind; she acts as if the whole hill belongs to her."

Dulcie licked a bit of scone and custard that Wilma had put on a small flowered plate for her. "I saw those cats, the first time, a week after the earthquake, slipping across the hill like shadows. I couldn't get close, I could hardly see them except the little dark one. She stopped and looked back at me, stood for a long time, staring, before she raced away. I thought she wanted to come nearer, but then she'd glance behind her almost as if the others didn't want her to get friendly."

Dulcie smiled. "She's a terrible little morsel, with that dirty blackish-and-brown fur all matted and sticking out every which way. No more than skin over bones, and she can't be four months old."

"Do you suppose they lost their home in the earthquake?" Wilma asked.

"Maybe," Dulcie said. "Maybe they're a small feral colony that fled up the coast when the quake hit." The epicenter of the earthquake had been some eighty miles to the south of Molena Point. "Maybe they're from one of those managed colonies that you read about."