Around her the house was silent. It stunk of cat. Heaps of trash were piled in the dark corners, papers, wine bottles, beer cans. She thought there would be hoards of mice to feed the pale cats she'd seen slipping away. To her left a broken stairway led partway up to the floor above, where a ragged hole gaped. A pale cat peered down, then was gone, a cat that looked as hard of body as a dog, and with a lean killer's face. Beneath the stairs blackness loomed so dense, so complete that she felt as if the house floated in a void, as if the floor on which she stood had nothing but emptiness beneath. The room was cold, a coldness that went to the bone. Watching the cat, his hints of another world that had so stirred her dreams now filled her with fear. How could she have wanted any such world, how could she want any world to which this beast was drawn?
But she wanted her property back; she was not willing to turn away from what was hers. Moving closer in among the leaning boards, she thought that if she stood on the humped and folded mattress, she could reach the bag and snatch it away.
He watched as she began to climb, his smile slow and amused. And suddenly grabbing the bag in his mouth, he leaped directly past her face. She lunged, snatching the bag from his mouth-and felt claws like knives down her arm. The suede ripped open, too, under her spurting blood. The jewels spilled, falling away to vanish among the boards. Dropping down, she snatched at a bracelet, quickly kneeling among the boards reaching to catch the slithering chain of a locket. Snarling, the black tom came at her-and Joe Grey came flying, toppling boards and knocking Azrael among them. Jewelry scattered and fell between the fighting tomcats, lost in the rubble, hidden beneath falling boards.
Snatching up the emerald bracelet, Azrael spun and ran, leaping for the blackness beneath the stairs.
Kate rose to follow but Clyde grabbed her, drawing her back.
They stood at the edge of the hole staring down beneath the stairs into total blackness. They could see nothing, no hint of foundation, no broken timbers or tumbled earth. Only emptiness falling away, deep black space that seemed to go down and down as if it spread out beneath the house, black and endless, as if perhaps the quake had shifted the earth, leaving a cavern beneath that part of the house. Kate backed away, dizzy. Leaning against Clyde, she leaned against Joe Grey as well where Clyde had snatched him up, holding him safe from that abyss. In Clyde's arms Joe met her stare with the same deep fear that filled Kate herself; and from somewhere within the blackness, Azrael spoke to her.
"You would do well to follow me, Kate Osborne. You would do well to come with me." Was he crouched on some ledge or fallen timber that was invisible to her? She stared and stared but could see nothing, no glint of his yellow eyes. Then beside Kate something moved among the rubble, and from the shadows a pale cat leaped past her into the blackness, then another, another-and they too vanished. And from deep within that dank space, Azrael's purr rumbled. "You will forever regret your cowardice, Kate Osborne, if you stay behind. You can see that they accept me now. Because I took the jewels. Because I bear the emerald choker. They will lead me now, down into that world." The cat purred louder, his rumble echoing. "Come with me, Kate Osborne. Come now…"
Kate backed farther away.
"If you will follow me, I will lead you home, Kate, where hidden rivers run beneath the earth among green meadows, where you can dig jewels from the cavern walls, all the wealth you want, for the taking." A cold breath touched Kate, a stink of damp sour earth as if stirred by movement somewhere deep within that void. And Azrael did not speak again.
She stared down into the empty dark that waited just beneath her feet, and she turned away sickened, leaning into Clyde's steady grip. He pulled her away, putting his arm around her; she could feel Joe's heart pounding fast between them. The relief on the tomcat's face was comical.
Behind Clyde, Lucinda and Pedric stepped from the shadows. Whatever they felt, whatever they had seen, they did not speak. The four of them knelt, searching for Kate's inheritance among the rubble and broken lumber, while Joe Grey sat washing blood from his paws.
Moving one splintered board at a time, they uncovered and retrieved nine pieces of the jewelry. When Pedric got a flashlight out of his car and shone it under the stairs, they could see only blackness, as if indeed, beneath the house, a vast area of landfill had shifted away, leaving the building on some earthquake-riven ledge. There was no sign of the choker, no answering flash of gold and green from those murky depths.
"Out," Kate whispered, backing away, the true sense of danger coming home to her. They moved swiftly out beneath the door's barrier, into the fresh air.
A police car was pulling to the curb. As Detective Reedie stepped out, Joe Grey slid from Clyde's arms into Lucinda's, and under her jacket, out of sight. And the old woman wandered away with him.
Kate, smoothing her disheveled hair, smiled at the detective and held out her folded sweater, in which she had wrapped the jewels and the shredded blue bag. "We have them!" she said breathlessly, trying to invent a plausible story that did not include a thieving black tomcat. "How did you find us?"
Reedie looked at the jewels and at her bleeding arm, at her dirty hands and streaked face. "I saw you running," the detective said warily, "from the window of the condo. What was that you were chasing? A cat? It was carrying that blue bag?" The handsome young detective looked hard at her. "You want to tell me what happened?"
Kate didn't know what to say. He watched her, waiting. His thatch of brown hair made that handsome face look even more boyish; his brown eyes looked half angry at being scammed, half filled with curiosity.
"I saw Consuela's car," she said, "we were coming back from breakfast. The blue Corvette? I pulled over, hoping it was hers, and saw something running-a big black cat-from under a pine tree at the end of the condo. I couldn't believe… It was dragging something blue. My bag, I knew it was my bag. I just… jumped out of the car and ran."
The detective turned, glancing toward Clyde. "And your friend in the silver Cadillac?"
He had obviously seen Clyde parked in front of the condo. Kate explained that Clyde had seen the Corvette, too, that he had been sitting in his car watching the building where it was parked, wondering if it belonged to Consuela. She was faltering when Clyde took over.
Clyde seemed truly amazed that the cat had grabbed the blue bag; he thought Consuela must have thrown it out the window when she knew the police were at the door. "I was turned away," he said. "I thought I heard something hit the ground among the dead leaves. When I looked, I saw a snatch of blue. But why that cat would grab it up…" Clyde shook his head, at a loss to explain the black beast. "Cats do weird things. Well," he said, grinning, "Kate got her jewels back." He studied Reedie. "Was that Marlin Dorriss's condo? I'd heard it's in the Marina. Was Consuela connected with Dorriss?"
"It is Dorriss's condo," Reedie said stiffly. "What made you ask?"
"A hunch," Clyde lied. "I saw them together once, in Molena Point, and wondered. Are you going back there now?"
"I am. You have some business there?"
"I would like to follow you back, talk with you."
Reedie glanced at Kate, then nodded.
Kate just hoped Reedie wouldn't go digging for more answers than he needed.
Well, her story sounded plausible to her. The best lie, sometimes, was the truth, with the incriminating parts left out.
After Reedie left, Lucinda dropped Clyde and Joe back at the condo. There, Joe quietly slipped into the Cadillac while Clyde talked with Reedie then went with him to look for the Packard-but only after Reedie called Molena Point PD and talked with Harper.