Inside she stood in darkness, perched above the lockers just beneath the metal roof. It was warm against her back, the day's accumulation of heat still radiating from the metal. The tops of the locker walls formed an open grid stretching away. The only light was from the vent opening behind her and a matching vent maybe forty feet away, at the back. In the locker directly below her, she could make out stacked furniture, tables, chairs, bedsprings, suitcases. Peering along above the walls, she could not see Joe. She didn't call to him, she mewled softly.

"Come over the walls." His voice sounded hollow. "The fourth locker."

She crept along the top of the wall, brushing under cobwebs. The second locker smelled of mildewed clothes and was piled with cardboard boxes. Two bicycles hung on its wall beside several car parts: bumpers, fenders, a hood. The third locker was empty, emitting a chill breath that smelled of concrete. She found it mildly amusing that humans accumulated so many possessions they had to rent lockers to store them-or clutter the house to distraction, like Mama.

But why should she be amused? Was she any different, with her box of stolen sweaters and silk stockings and lacy teddies? Who knew, maybe if she was a human person she might have every closet and dresser crammed full, a compulsive shopper mindlessly dragging home everything that took her fancy.

But then, peering down into the fourth locker, she forgot human foibles, forgot her own acquisitive weakness. Looking, crouching forward, she caught her breath.

The locker was filled with paintings. Not a foot below her marched a row of big canvases, standing upright in a wooden rack.

Oh, the lovely smell of canvas and dried oil paints. Shivering, her heart pounding, she reached down her paw to pat their rough edges.

And the canvas was stapled. She could not feel any thumbtacks.

Then she saw, on the floor beyond the painting rack, Joe's white face, white chest and paws, the rest of him lost in darkness. "Be careful," he said, as she bunched to leap down, "there's some…"

Too late. She landed on something hard that flew from under her, crashing to the floor loud as an explosion.

"Some wooden crates," Joe finished. "Are you okay?"

"Damn. I'll bet the guard heard that."

"Maybe not, with the TV on. His room is clear across the complex. Maybe the crates contain Janet's sculpture; that one rattled like metal when it fell." The six wooden crates had no markings, but they were heavy and solid, securely nailed.

She reared up to look at the paintings, then hopped up into the rack between them, looked closely at a big landscape.

Yes, it was Janet's, a splashy study of the Baytowne wharves, stormy sky, crashing sea. She pushed the painting back, to reveal the next, looked up at blowing white cumulus and red rooftops. She wanted to shout, turn flips. Pushing several more canvases to lean against their mates, she feasted on blowing trees, reflective shop windows, a view uphill of dark roofs against seething cloud, the rich colors dulled in the darkness, but the movement and bold shapes were unmistakably Janet's.

They counted forty-six paintings.

"Then Stamps and Varnie didn't take any, they're all here." She frowned. "But the way they talked, they must know where the canvases are hidden."

"Maybe they plan to come back when things die down, maybe with bolt cutters."

"Why would they think the paintings would still be here? That Mahl-if he wasn't caught-wouldn't move them?"

"I don't know, Dulcie. I guess that's why Stamps said, 'Get ours while we can, and get out.' Mahl had nerve," he said, "stashing them nearly on top of the murder scene."

"Maybe he thought this was the last place anyone would look, maybe…"

"Shhh. Listen." He backed away from the door.

Footsteps approached down the wide alley beyond the communal door.

Metal rattled as the outer door rolled up. They leaped to the top of the crates, to the top of the standing paintings balancing on their edges. They were poised to spring up to the top of the wall when lights blazed on, the bare bulb on the wall of their unit nearly blinding them. And the yellow glare above, washing across the ceiling, told them the lights in all the units had come on, ignited by a master switch.

Footsteps entered the inner corridor, sending them flying to the top of the wall and away toward the back, through light as bright as day.

Below them from the hall the old man shouted, "Come out of there. You're in the complex illegally." His voice was raspy, very loud for such a small man. "Come out now, or I call the cops." He began to pound on doors. "You won't be arrested if you come out now."

"How can he think anyone's here?" Dulcie whispered. "The doors are locked from outside."

"The empty ones wouldn't be locked."

"But…"

They heard him open one of the lockers, then another, heard him rattling padlocks; and warily they moved away again, along the top of the wall. "Let's get out," Dulcie said softly.

"Be still. He'll be gone in a minute. If we go out the vent now…"

"What if he has keys?"

"He can't see us; he'd have to climb to see us. And what if he did?"

She shivered.

"We're cats, Dulcie. He'd just chase us out. I've never seen you so jumpy."

She leaned against him. "I've never been afraid quite like this. I don't know why."

"Nerves," he said unhelpfully. But then, as they crouched atop the wall, the lights went out and the footsteps headed away again. The outer door rattled as it was pulled down and they heard the padlock snap closed.

Alone again in the warm dark they relaxed, basking in the heat from the roof, feeling their thudding hearts slow, breathing more easily.

"He didn't waste any time getting out," Joe said. Stretching, he trotted away around the top of the wall, heading toward the vent. There he waited, listening. Dulcie followed. They heard a light scuffing along the alley as if the old man was shuffling away, but then silence, as if he had stopped.

"He's up to something," Joe said.

She moved to look out through the vent, but he pulled her back.

"Now who's acting nervous?"

"Keep your voice down. He didn't walk away- unless he took his shoes off."

"We could go out the back vent." But suddenly from below came the hush of tires on concrete, the soft rolling sound of a car pulling down between the buildings.

The engine stopped. They heard a second car, then the static of a police radio.

"He called the cops," Joe said incredulously. "Before he ever came out here, he called the cops."

"That crash, when I knocked the crate off. He called them then. Who knows how long he was standing out there-who knows what he heard."

They listened to car doors opening, men's voices mixed with the harsh radio voices. Again the outer door rattled up, and the overhead lights flared on like a gigantic third degree. Quickly they slipped away along the top of the wall toward the back. They heard the cops enter the little hall, hard shoes on concrete.

"Police. Come out now."

Doors were flung open as officers checked the empty lockers. Locks rattled. But then at last, silence. A softer voice. "There's no one in here, sir. The locks and hasps are all in place, nothing looks tampered with. You must have…"

"I heard someone talking. Not my imagination. Maybe they got locked in from outside. Maybe someone's sleeping in here, got locked in… "

"If there's anyone trapped here, they're mighty quiet about it."

The footfalls receded, the men's voices became fainter. But the lights remained on, and the officers left the outer door open. The cats listened to a long silence broken only by the rasping crackle of the police radio.

Joe said, "They're waiting for something. Or planning something."