Cat Breaking Free (22 page)

“Accessory to what? Nothing more has happened.”

“Arrest her on suspicion? Or on some kind of drummed-up charge, before there are any more break-ins?”

He laughed and shook his head. “We'd really have to stretch, to do that.”

“But if there are more burglaries, and she has the list of those places…?”

“When and if that happens, yes. You know that, she'd be an accessory, then.” But he was brief, as if holding back. There was something he wasn't saying, that he didn't feel free to tell her. Of course that was sometimes necessary, but it always made her burn with curiosity. She guessed she was as nosy as the cats.

“Meanwhile,” she said, “at least the list your informant gave you helps know what shops to watch, doesn't it? Helps you know what places they might rob?”

Max nodded. “Particularly if they're planning one grand snatch-and-grab, all the shops at once. Get out fast, head for some prearranged destination.”

Charlie watched him. “Would you have enough men?”

“If they're planning this in conjunction with some
kind of diversion, where we're busy with crowd control, for instance, we might not.”

“But what kind of diversion? Oh…the jazz festival's next week.”

“Or maybe this growing dispute over water control. If there's a full-blown protest, if someone were to bring in a hundred or so protesters to clutter up the streets, slow down traffic…”

She shook her head. She'd hardly paid attention to the battle over the area's water supply, it seemed a part of central coast life, seemed to go on and on.

“It's been done before,” Max said. “Bringing in professional protesters for various causes—so far, never in Molena Point.”

She eased in the saddle and flicked a hank of Redwing's mane straight. “A diversion? A protest? The jazz festival? Or why not the big classic car gala? Except that's months away. Oh,” she said, “and you bring in extra police, then. And CHP.”

“Exactly. I don't think this little group is that high-powered. And now, with Luis Rivas's brothers dead, maybe Luis will change his plans. But still there's Tommie McCord and I'd guess a dozen others.” He looked intently at her. “How much is Ryan seeing of this Roman Slayter?”

“
Slayter
is part of this?”

“I don't know, Charlie. Just a hunch.”

“The snitch, again?”

Max grinned. “Maybe. How much is Ryan seeing of him?”

“She's not seeing him at all, if she can avoid it. She hates Slayter. She had dinner with him a night or two
ago, because he told her he had information about the jewel burglary. She said she stormed out of the restaurant before their dinner was served.”

“She told me about that,” he said. “In L.A. the Rivas brothers ran with a dozen men. They could all be here, holed up in motels, rented rooms.”

She looked bleakly at Max. “That's not a pleasant thought. That house where I saw that truck…”

“That house belongs to an elderly widow, Estrella Nava. She's the Rivas boys' grandmother. Dallas dug that out this afternoon after you found the truck.”

“Can't you get a search warrant on that?”

“We'll search at the right time. Dallas and Davis are talking with the jewelry store and shop owners, the ones Chichi's been watching.” He shifted in the saddle, looked down at the sea, then back at her. “Store owners are pretty much in agreement.” He let it lie and busied himself leaning forward over Bucky's neck to straighten Bucky's mane under his headstall.

“Agreement on what?” she pressed. “What can they do?”

He smoothed Bucky's mane all the way down the withers, exasperating her.

“You're such a tease! What are the store owners planning? What are you planning?”

“The owners like the idea of a sting,” he said. “There are eighteen stores on Chichi's list. If it's the jazz festival, some of the streets will be closed off, curb-to-curb crowds. Hard to get a squad car through in a hurry. If the robbers come in on foot, and if they have enough men to hit all the stores at once, they'll grab and vanish in the crowd while we're cruising traffic and keeping order.

“Or they could plan to hit in early morning, just before or during opening time when there's maybe only one person in most shops. Or even the middle of the night, two or three a.m., if they can get a handle on the stores' security systems. We're not sure these guys are sophisticated enough to deactivate many of the alarm systems, but we don't know that.”

“So what's the sting? What are you and the shop owners planning?”

He gave her a look that needed no words, that said this was totally off-the-record confidential, and that made her nervous. If she promised not to share what Max told her, she was promising not to tell Joe Grey and Dulcie and Kit—not to tell the three snitches who relayed to Max the very information he was relying on.

There were times, Charlie felt, when promises
must
be broken, no matter how shabby that made her feel. It could be far shabbier not to tell the cats, to leave them only half informed, and thus perhaps in twice as much danger.

A
t the same time that Charlie and Max set out on
their evening ride across the hills, Kit began to miss Joe and Dulcie. She hadn't seen them since the night before, at Wilma's house, hadn't seen them all day while she was spying on Chichi Barbi and then racing home to Lucinda to call the station. Where were they, all that time? Where were they now? As evening settled onto the Greenlaws' terrace, throwing soft shadows across the rooftops, Kit fidgeted and paced, increasingly uneasy until at last, losing patience, she sped away, hit the roofs, and went to search.

Kit seldom worried about the two older cats;
they
were usually looking for
her
. She might wander away or she might get angry and go off in a snit, but that was different,
she
knew where she was. Now, in the falling dusk, muttering softly to herself, she prowled among the shadows of balconies and peered down into the streets and alleys. Had they gone off to the hills hunting without her? Oh, they wouldn't! She did not choose to
remember that she herself had recently vanished for several days, that she had worried not only Joe and Dulcie but all their human friends, that they'd all gone searching for her. Well,
she
couldn't help
that
, she'd been locked in. Locked up in that old rental house and she couldn't get out and that wasn't
her
fault. Locked in, trapped in there and scared out of her kitty mind.

Locked in? Kit thought, and felt her fur ripple with unease. That idea gave her a very bad feeling…

But Joe and Dulcie wouldn't be locked in. Where could they be locked in? Who would lock them in, and why? That couldn't happen to them.

Yet why this terrible, sinking feeling? Now that she'd thought of such a thing, she got so nervous she had shivers in her belly and her paws began to sweat.

She searched every inch of the village rooftops, or tried to; she looked and searched until it was deep dark. There were clouds over the moon, low and heavy. Were they at home by now? Maybe Clyde was cooking something special or maybe Wilma was making chicken pie? The slightest scent of chicken pie on the breeze would always draw Dulcie home. Well, she'd just trot by Clyde's and then by Wilma's and sniff the air. She was all alone anyway; Lucinda and Pedric had gone off with Ryan's sister, Hanni, the gorgeous interior designer, to look at furniture—instructing her to go to Wilma's if they were very late, to stay there with Dulcie—leaving a poor little cat to fend for herself.

Well, Lucinda
had
left an elegant supper in the apartment for her, laid out on the kitchen table with creamed sardines and kippers set into a double bowl of ice. Kit licked her whiskers. She would look a little more for Joe and Dulcie and then return to the rest of
the creamed sardines; and she headed first for Clyde and Joe's house.

Approaching across the roofs, she saw Clyde's car in the drive. The living room lights were on and she could smell something nice, a deep slow beefy smell, like maybe a roast in the oven. With that good aroma filling the evening, Joe would surely be home. She was headed for Joe's tower when she heard Clyde's voice yelling, blocks away behind her, calling, calling Joe Grey.

But at the same moment two other voices exploded, closer, ringing out from the house next door, from Chichi Barbi's bedroom: a man shouting and swearing and Chichi shouting back at him.

“The hell you don't have it! Give it over, Chichi! Why the hell would you take the key! What the hell would you
want
with the damn key! You said you didn't want nothing to do with them. Hand it over!”

“I don't
have
your key, Luis! Why would
I
take it!”

Shivering with the violence of the man's anger, but keening with curiosity, Kit sped across Clyde's roof for the back of Chichi's house and dropped down into the twiggy branches of the lemon tree. Clinging among its thorns and leaves, she peered in through Chichi Barbi's window.

 

Max and Charlie returned to the ranch well after dark; the cloud cover was breaking apart, and the full moon picked out new details across the pastures and fence lines, making the horses shy. Bucky was more teasing than startled, having fun with Max. Redwing was naturally more nervous, she bowed her neck and snorted but she didn't try to bolt.

“Just being a female,” Charlie said. “Likes a little drama.”

“And you?” Max said, riding close to her. “How do you like your drama?” In the moonlight he couldn't see her blush, but he knew she was; it didn't take much. He loved that about her, that she blushed so easily, that he could gently embarrass her.

“Don't try to distract me with your ways, Captain. I want to hear the rest of the plan—if you want to tell me.”

“The jewelry store owners have been meeting, getting together two or three at a time, in someone's shop at odd hours. Making their plans as quietly as possible.” He moved Bucky aside from some ground squirrel holes, though Bucky was perfectly aware of where he was stepping and cocked an ear back at Max in annoyance.

“But what
is
their plan?” Charlie said patiently.

Max eased Bucky against their own pasture gate so he could open the latch. “Fake jewels,” he said, looking up at Charlie. “John Simmons and Leon Blake suggested it.” He swung the gate wide. They rode through, and he closed it. “They're collecting every realistic piece of imitation jewelry they can lay hands on to replace the real stuff. They've already begun to switch the jewelry in the cases every night, using pieces as much like what they have in the daytime as they can manage. In the heat of the break-and-enter, they're counting on no one taking the time to examine the take closely.”

He had lowered his voice as they approached their own stable yard, watching the lighted sweep of yard and barn, the shadows beneath the trees and around his truck and around her SUV, though the dogs sensed nothing amiss; they raced ahead sniffing and checking
the territory in their untrained, rowdy way. When dismounting, Max slid open the stable door, the dogs raced in, circled the open alleyway between the stalls, then shoved their black-and-tan noses deep into their bowls of kibble.

As Charlie slid off Redwing and undid the girth, her thoughts were full of elegant jewelry cases lined with fakes. She was still smiling as she walked Redwing to cool her down, then led her into her stall, took her halter off, filled her water bucket and tossed her a couple of flakes of hay. But
would
those men notice the switch? Would one of them think to put a jeweler's glass on a diamond, or take a careful look at the rich settings?

She began to worry about what she would tell the cats—what she dare tell them. And to wonder what danger she might put them in if they weren't told, if they didn't fully understand the operation. And she knew she had no choice.

Besides, when she promised Max to tell no one, in Max's mind the meaning was that she would tell no human. Max had made no mention of cats.

 

The short, dark, square man was roaring drunk. The stink of secondhand alcohol through Chichi's open window made Kit want to retch. What was wrong with his face? He had adhesive bandages on it and on his hands, under his long-sleeved shirt.

Chichi stood facing him, very angry. “I don't
have
the key to your cage! What would I want with those stinking cats! I don't even know what
you
want with them!”

Cats?
Kit's heart was pounding.
Cats in a cage? What cats?

“There was no one else to take the friggin' key! Them cats couldn't!”

Kit's whole body was rigid. Only her tail moved, lashing wildly against the branches. She concentrated hard to make it still. Sometimes her tail was like a stranger, all out of control.
What cats? In what cage?
And
where?

“And now them two others,” Luis said with triumph. “They're the same, you can bet! Why else would they be in there?”

Kit began to shiver. She had to find out where, and fast! She pressed against the screen, drawing in a great breath, sniffing Luis as he rounded on Chichi, trying to smell past the whiskey for some other scent, for cat scent—for the scent of Joe Grey and Dulcie.

But she could smell only the booze.

“Did you search Abuela?” Chichi asked suspiciously.

“Of course I searched her.
She
don't have the damn key.”

“You searched Abuela!” Chichi screamed. “You pig, you searched your own grandmother! You are scum, Luis. Pure scum!” Chichi lunged at him and slapped him. Luis grabbed her hands, twisted her arm behind her until she screamed. As he turned, forcing her against the dresser and raised his arm as if to hit her, his sleeve brushed the screen right across Kit's nose.

And there it was: Joe Grey's smell. Sharp on Luis's sleeve. The smell of the enraged tomcat, mixed with the smell of blood and medicine.

Kit was shaking so hard that for a moment she couldn't move. A cage…Trapped in a cage…

Where? She had to find out where.

She moved fast, springing out of the tree and across the damp grass and weeds and around the house to the front and across Clyde's yard onto the porch. She was crouched to bolt through Joe's cat door when she stopped.

He wasn't in there; she could still hear him far away, calling for Joe.
Oh, Clyde
,
he's in a cage, they're in a cage and no one knows where, no one but Luis and Chichi—if they're in a cage, how long before…before…? But Chichi knows where, she knows this Abuela so she must know where…
Kit needed Clyde. She needed him bad, right now. Clyde could make Chichi take them to where Joe and Dulcie were in a cage. Chichi had been there,
she
knew where, Chichi would have to lead them…

But if the key was lost? Well, Kit thought, then Clyde would have to break the cage. Clyde was strong, he'd know how to do that…

Rearing up on the porch, she looked down the street where Clyde was shouting for Joe, and she streaked away through the night toward his impatient voice…