Terrified for Joe, Dulcie glanced in the direction of the garage. Where else would the tomcat go but to follow the stolen boxes? Perhaps, she thought, chilled, he meant to slip into the RV and ride with the thief to his destination? “Come on,” she whispered, slipping from under the stairs. The two cats, flashing behind the man’s feet, silently fled for the garage.
The door stood just ajar, the chill air smelling of concrete. They slipped through, dove beneath a workbench, and crouched against the wall, looking out, looking for Joe, and watching the door nervously. The garage was softly lighted by an electric torch that stood on top the workbench, its glow spilling down around them but leaving them in shadow. Both the big overhead door and the pedestrian door to the yard were tightly shut. There were no windows. The walls were smoothly finished and painted white. The usual garage clutter must be hidden within the row of white storage cabinets that lined the far wall. On the other side of the brown RV stood a tan BMW hatchback, most likely the Longleys’ second car.
Kit said, “Do you think Tansy got away safe? That she’ll get home all right, all alone in the night?”
“Maybe she’ll stay close until we come out,” Dulcie said, more to ease Kit than because she believed it. Beside her, Kit reared up to look at the lower workbench shelf that ran just above their heads. An assortment of tools was arranged neatly at one end: two hammers, four wrenches, and a dozen screwdrivers of various sizes. All were dusty. The rest of the shelf was taken over by a row of clear plastic containers filled with different size nails. Kit studied the contents of each, from tiny little brads to huge spikes. Focusing on a particular mess of black nails with extra-wide heads, the tortoiseshell smiled. And as Dulcie slipped out to investigate the pedestrian door that should lead out to the side yard, Kit busied herself trying, with stubborn claws, to loosen the lid.
“Door’s bolted at the top,” Dulcie said softly from across the garage. Kit didn’t answer, she was too busy. Why was anything plastic so hard to manage? She heard Dulcie jumping against the far wall, trying to reach the bolt of the side door, and listened to the tabby’s little grunt each time she fell back. When the plastic lid popped up, Kit whacked it to the floor, carefully put a paw in, and began clawing out nails.
The nails were heavy, and they wanted to stick in her pads. The points hurt even more when, with a little pile of nails on the shelf before her, she put her nose against them and pawed them into her mouth. Damn things stung her tender mouth like bees. Dropping down to the cement floor, she managed not to swallow any.
When Dulcie returned, defeated by the high bolt-Joe was the master at slipping hard-to-manage bolts-she did a double take at Kit’s protruding cheeks. She watched in silence as Kit circled beneath the RV, spitting out a few nails beneath each tire. Seeing what the tortoiseshell was up to, Dulcie smiled and slipped under to help her.
They pawed at each nail until they made it stand upright just beneath the tire. They had nearly finished when they heard footsteps approaching, loud on the hardwood floor. They dove back beneath the workbench as he came down the two concrete steps carrying another stack of boxes; they stared out at his feet as he set the boxes on the bench. They watched him return to the door, heard him lock it. This was the last load, then? Now they couldn’t get back inside to find Joe, and Dulcie began to fidget, watching the man nervously.
They still couldn’t see his face, unless they came out where he could see them, where they’d be center stage beneath the torchlight. He was putting the boxes in through the RV’s side door when they heard a car out front and the voice of a police radio. Had Brennan come back? The man froze. He glanced at the electric torch but daren’t extinguish it now in case it shone out beneath the overhead door. He didn’t move as the brighter light of the cop’s torch skated along the thin crack-but then the crack darkened again. There was a long silence, as if the officer outside was waiting and watching. Had the soft light within the garage alerted him? Or was this, again, only routine? Or was this Brennan’s supper break? The cats imagined him sitting in his unit eating a giant burger and sipping from a Styrofoam cup of coffee.
But then at last the unit backed out of the drive and moved on, its purring engine growing softer as it headed up the street. At once, the thief moved to the big garage door and stood with his ear against it, listening. He waited there for some time, but there was only silence from the street. Finally he loaded the last box and silently closed the door of the RV. Slipping into the driver’s seat, he activated the electric door with a remote that, at some point, he must have stolen. As he backed out, Dulcie and Kit, feeling the cold night air on their noses, longed for the freedom of the open night. The breeze was like a whisper urging them to run-but Dulcie thought of Joe and she didn’t move, she thought only of getting back in the house. Maybe he was hurt, injured by the heavy ashtray the man had thrown. The door started down.
“We can get back in quicker from outside,” Kit said. The door was halfway down. “Run!” Kit said. “Run now!”
Dulcie came to life. They fled beneath the closing door, jumping high over the red light that marked the electric eye. The door slammed behind them as they dove into the bushes.
Kit said, “We never saw his face.” In the shadowy living room they’d seen only his back. From beneath the workbench they’d seen his wrinkled brown running shoes, his dark jeans, and a glimpse of his green windbreaker.
“What did he smell of?” Dulcie said. She’d memorized his smell as he stood close above them, his personal male scent overlaid with something she should know but couldn’t identify. Something akin to catnip, only different. When they were certain the RV was gone, they fled around the house to the back. Dulcie bolted up the trellis and in through the bathroom window, frantic to find Joe, but Kit stopped on the balcony behind her, mewling softly to summon Tansy. She listened, then mewled again. She looked down at the yard, studying the dark and crowded bushes. “Tansy?”
There was no answer and no pale movement among the shadows. She looked away toward the hills, worried that the scruffy little cat had gone on through the night alone. Praying that if Tansy was headed home, she would be wary and cautious and safe.
23
WHEN DULCIE HAD hissed at Tansy to run, Tansy obeyed as fast as her thin little legs would carry her. The sight of that man chasing Joe jarred to life every terrified kittenhood memory of such cruel men and sent her streaking away up the stairs and into the bathroom, leaping out the window and scrambling backward down the trellis, catching hanks of fur on the thorns. At the bottom she stood shivering, looking out into the night and watching the darkest shadows. She waited a long time for Kit to follow her, and all the while Dulcie’s words rang in her head, Go! Get out, both of you! And the stink of that man’s anger clung to her. As she listened for the other cats to emerge from the house, her heart pounded with fear for them. But she was too afraid to go back. There was only silence from the house behind her. When after a very long time Kit didn’t come, when no one came, she fled for the far hills and home, running blindly up through the dark village-until she realized she was lost, was crossing un- familiar streets through neighborhoods that she had never seen. She was lost and her sense of direction seemed to have abandoned her.
She stood on an empty sidewalk on an unknown street among houses she was sure she had never seen. She listened. She sniffed the scents of this strange place, trying to smell something familiar, trying to find her direction.