Кроха - Dedication

How much strife can the kittens sense, he wondered, when they’re still inside the womb? We don’t want frightened babies. Will the tension that Dulcie feels, will that weaken them or strengthen them? Make them more fearful or make them bold and strong? Maybe, he thought, no one knows the answer to that. But for his lady and the babies, he’d prefer restful and tender care.

Kit and Pan had emerged from the tunnels among the Pamillon ruins just where they had entered to go down seeking the Netherworld. Emerged from beneath a stone porch between tumbled pillars and vine-covered buildings. “Home.” Kit mewled again softly. “Oh, we’re home.”

They stared up at the endless sky above them; they drank in the scents of pine and cypress, the smell of the grassy fields and of the distant sea. This world’s breeze caressed them, rippling through their fur, made them race in circles. They were fiercely hungry. In the tall grass among the broken carvings Pan lifted his nose scenting for mice, for rats or squirrels, for anything edible, and Kit did the same. The tunnel had provided water and an occasional blind lizard or sightless fish snatched from the black waters, but never enough, nothing substantial enough to truly sustain them. Now they dodged through the ruin on the trail of a wood rat, doubled through overgrown bushes working together hazing the little beast until they took him down. Quickly they shared their kill, but left the tail. They spied and cornered a big wharf rat, attacked it with businesslike urgency. Soon, killing and gorging and feeling stronger, they finished off their meal with a pair of small and succulent field mice.

They drank from a little spring within the overgrown garden, and at last, sated, they lay washing blood from their paws. They wanted a nap after their long and stressful climb, but Kit hungered too passionately to be home. Had Lucinda and Pedric returned? Would they snatch her up and hug her and cry over her and comfort her? Would they hold her warm and safe and hug Pan, make a loving fuss over both of them? Were her humans home to welcome and comfort them?

Eagerly she headed down the hills, Pan following close beside her, down and down where the hills dropped away, dotted by cottage rooftops. Down they fled, racing belly-deep in grass, paws flying, crushing dandelions and wild nasturtiums, leaping through tangles of honeysuckle. Down and down the familiar hills where, far below, the sea reflected late afternoon sun; down through cottage gardens that smelled of onions and rotted leaves, down until at last they could see Kit’s own roof among the distant oaks. She could see her tree house. Racing steeply down they bolted at last into Kit’s own garden.

The house towered two stories above them. Kit’s tree house thrust higher still. Up the oaken trunk they scrambled, up into her aerie into scattered leaves and cushions. Kit rolled among her pillows, lay on her back looking up into the tree’s sheltering crown, up into the sky beyond. Hersky, her tree, her house, her gardens all around. Their world, their village, their rooftops stretching away where they could travel the shingled byways as familiar as other cats’ firesides. Among the leaves and pillows Pan sprawled beside her, his amber eyes laughing. “Our world,” and it was theirs, their own sky rising high and away without any stone barrier, high and away forever.

But even now, even so content, Kit couldn’t be still. Restlessly she rose again from among the cushions, peering toward the big house. Were they home? Could she hear them? Could she catch their scent?

She heard no sound. She saw no movement at the kitchen windows, the shades were still half drawn. There was no smell of cooking, no lingering scent of recent and comforting meals. The big house smelled distant and empty.

But maybe . . . Maybe they’d just gotten home, maybe they had just now come in. Maybe . . . Leaping from her aerie, Kit raced along the thick and twisted branch that led to the dining room window. In through her cat door that was set into the lower pane. One leap from the windowsill and buffet to the dining table, Pan close beside her, the cat door swinging behind them.

No one cried out at hearing the flapping door, no one came running. All was still. The house was empty. But even so they went racing through the hollow rooms, one room to the next, and in each room scenting out and listening and rearing up, looking for an open suitcase, sniffing for some hint of new smell.

All was still. All was as Lucinda and Pedric had left it. Nothing in the house was changed, no book or magazine moved from where Kit had last seen it. Wastebaskets empty, clothes hamper empty, clean towels hanging on the racks neatly folded, double bed carefully made, bedroom shades at half-mast. Nothing out of place in the kitchen, trash basket empty when Kit stood on the foot lever and Pan reared up to peer in.

The only change was the stack of mail piled on Pedric’s desk in the living room, where Kate must have brought it in. Yes, Kate Osborne’s faint scent where she had been through the house making sure no tap was leaking, no intruder had entered.

“Maybe Kate’s home,” Kit said, “the downstairs apartment,” and she was out the cat door again, along the wandering branch and down the oak tree, Pan close behind her.

“Her car isn’t in the drive,” Pan said behind her, but Kit paid no attention; down the hill she fled and around the lower wall of the house to Kate’s sliding glass door.

They could smell her scent stronger there, beneath the edge of the door. They pawed at it, Kit yowled, they tried the knob, swinging and kicking, but that did no good, the dead bolt was in place. They pawed and scratched and meowed together in a fine chorus, but there was no answer. They scrambled up bushes to peer in through the windows. At last, discouraged, they gave it up and headed for Wilma and Dulcie’s. They needed welcoming. Kit needed hugging. And, in spite of being full of rodents, they longed for a bite of home-cooked supper. No wood rat or even field mouse was ever as succulent as a meal prepared lovingly by human hands.

They had left Kate’s door, were crossing the neighbors’ roofs when a brown car came along below them and stopped at the curb. A Dumpster stood across the street before a vacant lot where a dozen dead trees had been felled. Two men sat resting from cutting the logs with chain saws. The big metal bin was nearly full of smaller branches.

As the brown sedan slowed, a passenger stepped out, emptied a bag of old shoes in under the twigs and leaves, swung quickly into the car again, and it moved away. The workmen glanced up but paid little attention—they were only dumping old shoes. The cats didn’t recognize the make of the car; they didn’t see either the driver’s or the passenger’s faces. They moved on toward Wilma’s hoping for a hot supper.

Alone in the stone cottage, Wilma had put on a CD of Pete Fountain, a favorite among her collection of early jazz. These days when Dulcie was gone and Wilma worried, the lilting clarinet eased her. But now even as she paced the cottage worrying over the pregnant tabby, she knew she was being foolish. She knew very well where Dulcie was, from the police scanner that sat on the cherry desk and, later, from Ryan’s phone call. She felt ashamed keeping such a close watch on Dulcie, but just now, considering the tabby’s condition, she and Ryan might both be forgiven.

She’d known, early this morning when Dulcie bolted out her cat door, where she’d gone, had known when she turned on the scanner, and then from calling Ryan. Young Ben Stonewell had been shot. The murder sickened her, she was . . . had been fond of Ben; he was kind and caring and nothing cruel about him. Why this death? Was there something about Ben that they hadn’t known? Could his murder be connected to these other crimes?

She had been tempted to drive over to the Bleak renovation this morning, but with the department working the scene she didn’t like to get in the way. Pacing the cottage, across the Persian rug, brushing by the flowered couch, thinking about Ben’s murder, and worrying about Dulcie, she hardly saw the room at all. She jumped when the phone rang, and snatched it from the cradle.

“The cats are fine,” Ryan said, knowing how she worried. “They’re with me, we’re moving the rescues from Ben’s place. Celeste is taking all three. We’ll swing by the department so Billy and I can give our statements—Dulcie and Joe will be right there in our faces, you know that. Dulcie will be just fine. Joe Grey,” Ryan added, “Joe has grown very attentive.”

Wilma laughed. “He’d better be, he’s responsible for this miracle—half responsible.”

There was a smile in Ryan’s voice. “I’ll bring Dulcie home when we’re finished. Please don’t worry about her.”

Hanging up, Wilma put on another CD and stretched out in the easy chair. Listening to the haunting clarinet helped to push away her worry, helped to ease life’s dark side. She dozed off listening to Pete Fountain. The CD was nearly to the end when a different sound stirred her from sleep. The soft flap of the cat door, then a demanding mewl that startled her wide awake.

Having raced over the roofs heading down toward the village, Kit and Pan paused several blocks above where the shops began. Scrambling down a pine they fled through Wilma’s bright garden and in through Dulcie’s cat door—but at the sound of music, they paused. Music filled the house, the clear notes of a clarinet, the dulcet riffs of the one musician in all the world who could speak to a cat’s very soul.

Listening and smiling, but then curious, they padded into the kitchen. Wilma seldom put on a CD unless she or Dulcie were celebrating some special joy, or unless they were very blue and needed that soul-healing music.

Kit and Pan, lonely and hungry and needing loving, did not want to face some sadness. Which was this they were hearing? The lilting clarinet to ease an unwanted sadness, to assuage unexpected bad news? Or was the bright music a celebration of some wonderful event, of which they knew nothing? What were they to find?

Hesitantly they crossed the dining room beneath the big table. Softly they padded toward the living room prepared for either extreme, ready to offer comforting if that was needed, or to add their own joy to some bright and mysterious celebration. The cozy room was so welcoming, the soft oriental rug under their paws, the smell of recent baking, the flowered couch and overflowing bookshelves, sunlight streaming in on the cherry desk. In her easy chair, Wilma had stirred from sleep, an open book in her lap. Kit, watching her, gave a loud and startling mewl. Wilma jerked up, fully alert. She leaped up and knelt before them, grabbing them both in a hug, laughing, nearly smothering them in her joy, in her delight at their return.

12

In the lobby of MPPD two men and a young woman waited in the folding chairs, a chair between each as if they had come in separately. The thin woman, in pale blue workout clothes, had focused on the younger man, grousing to him about the unfairness of the police, how that cop had pulled her over just because she was talking on her cell phone. Both men glanced away, their minds on their own problems. Ryan and Billy stood near the desk, waiting for a detective to come out for them, to escort them back to one of the offices to take their statements.

Joe Grey and Dulcie, having slipped into the holding cell, crouched under the bunk, trying not to breathe the mixed fumes of sweat and Lysol that so sharply stung their noses. They watched Detective Davis come out to get Ryan, watched the two disappear down the hall, leaving Billy at the mercy of Evijean Simpson; but Evijean had all she could do to deal with an enraged wife who had come to bail out her husband. “Of course he drinks,” she snapped at Evijean. “What do you think I can do about it? Why should I be hassled and embarrassed because of the trouble he gets into!”