Cat Cross Their Graves Read Online Free PDF

parking garage were thick and black, even to her eyes. She sensed Joe behind her, felt him brush against her, and in darkness they moved down together toward the bottom of the stairs.
    Had Kit come down here before the police arrived? All alone, trying to sort through the smells of blood, shoe polish, and scorched dust from the harsh spotlights, through the smell of camera equipment and gunpowder. There was black fingerprinting powder on every surface. They didn’t want that stuff on them. Not only did it taste bad, but their respective housemates would pitch a royal fit. Joe could just hear Clyde. “Stuff’s hell to get off, Joe. Can’t you think about these things? And do you have to have your nose into every damn crime scene?”
    As the cats slipped into the black garage, they would have been nearly invisible except for the snowy gleam of Joe’s white nose and his white chest and paws. His disembodied white markings moved beside Dulcie like tiny white ghosts. The garage stank of cigar smoke, of hair cream, of various scents that could belong to anyone. They could find no trail of the kit. Padding between the cold wheels of cars that had been parked there all night, they kept their noses to the concrete like a pair of tracking hounds.
    Back and forth they quartered the garage, under and around the cars. They caught whiffs of cops they knew, little air trails of human scent—shoe polish, aftershave, tobacco—swirled with the automotive stinks until, mixed by the sucking wind that swept through the garage, all became mucked together like an overdone stew, and nothing of value remained. When, after an hour they had found no trace of the kit, they left the garage feeling decidedly cranky. Trotting up the short drive, they slowly circled the block-long building, then padded in beneath the yellow crime-scene tape, where the wrought-iron gate stood open. The gate did not smell of the kit, nothing smelled of the kit, all was a mishmash of too many human scents. Stopping among the patio flowers, they stared up at the Greenlaws’ windows.
    The kit was not looking out; they saw no figure, no movement within. The one light was burning, as before. The patio was silent except for the faintest murmer of voices from the tearoom and dining room, and the soft crackle of a police radio turned low. And then, from across the gardens, they heard Lucinda calling again. Softly calling and calling the kit. Calling for a cat who might, by this time, be very far away and deep into trouble.

3
    T he harsh lights that had illuminated the patio had been extinguished; only the fainter garden lights remained, sending their soft glow low among the flowers. The tearoom lights were turned up brighter, and the cats could see Dallas Garza inside, beyond the flowered curtains, seated at a little table, talking with one of the waiters. The windows of the dining room, too, were bright where other employees or guests waited their turn. In the garden, two police guards moved back and forth along the walks, one of them yawning, their radios hoarse in the silence. Beneath the maple tree, Lucinda stood beside a wooden bench calling the kit. The thin old woman sounded more angry than pleading. When she saw Joe and Dulcie, she sat down on the bench and put out a hand to them.
    Leaping to the bench beside her, Joe Grey crowded close. Dulcie climbed into Lucinda’s lap, staring up into the old woman’s long, thin face. Dulcie’s voice was only a whisper, not audible to the guards above the mumble of their radios. “You’ve been out searching, out on the streets.” It was not a question.
    â€œWhere is she?” Lucinda said. “You’ve been looking, too?”
    Dulcie twitched an ear.
    Lucinda frowned. “She slashed through the screen. I woke hearing gunshots, very close, three shots. By the time I threw on a robe and went to find Kit, she was gone, the screen torn, her fur caught in the wire.”