A uniformed officer appeared from the other side of Alberta’s house, a handcuffed figure walking a few steps ahead of him. It was Robin Byrde’s friend from the college cafeteria, and she and the officer were on a collision course with the group that Tom was with.
“What are you guys doing here ?” asked the woman. If her surprise was an act, she was very good.
“What are you doing?” asked a tall, intense young man with streaks of shocking blue in his spiked-up carrot-top hair. He looked at the flat bed and bulldozer, and his voice pitched an octave higher when he said, “What have you done?” Then the painted rocks seemed to register. He leaped into the air, let out a whoop, and yelled, “Totally!” I had no idea what it meant in that context, but the gist was clear.
Tom laid a hand on the young man’s shoulder and looked at the handcuffed woman, who was grinning back at the group even as the police urged her toward the cruiser. Tom called after her, “Don’t say anything until you have an attorney present. Do you need us to find you one?”
She shook her head and shouted from the cruiser, “Already called my dad. He’s meeting me at the lock up.” She was still grinning when the officer guided her into the back seat and shut the door.
Most of the group was now scattered across Alberta’s driveway and yard, except for one of carrot top’s friends, who was taking photos of the glowing rocks with his cell phone, and a straggler who was still back by the pond. Tom met my eyes but kept his distance. He said, “How’s your mom?”
“She’s doing okay. Going back to Shadetree.”
He nodded at me, and for the first time since I’d known him I couldn’t read his expression. It wasn’t exactly blank, and it wasn’t cold, but the heat and humor I had come to expect didn’t dance in his eyes or the curve of his lips. I thought I saw something like pain, but then he looked away and I couldn’t be sure that it wasn’t my own.
Alberta’s voice broke through the quiet that had descended on the group. “Did you find anything interesting out there?”
“Who else was in that car?” asked carrot top. He was looking at me.
“I don’t know. Tinted window …” I was about to ask whether it might be my new friend Robin, but then I saw her waving at me as she ran up the slope from the pond.
“Hi! Did you guys see the nests hanging in the cattails down there?” She was grinning and bouncing. “Anybody know what kind of birds …?”
“Red-winged blackbirds,” said Peg. “You need to come out in the spring and watch them, and hear them trill. It’s magic.” She pointed at the flatbed and bulldozer and added, “And those are the tools of the evil giant who would take the magic from us.”
forty-four
All eyes in the group seemed focused on what Peg called “the tools of the evil giant.”
Finally Alberta broke the silence. “Well, we’re all giant killers.” She put a hand on Tom’s sleeve and asked. “So what about the woods and wetlands? What did you find?”
“Did they do any other damage?” Peg still had her binoculars aimed at the construction equipment. “I don’t see anything from this side.”
Tom looked at Alberta and said, “Hold that thought.” Then he turned to Hutchinson. “That’s a good question. Did they do anything to the equipment?”
Hutchinson nodded. “Just paint. No real damage.”
Tom seemed to breathe a little easier. I didn’t think he would encourage vandalism, but he obviously liked these kids and their cause. He glanced at me but didn’t linger before turning to Alberta’s question. “It’s not the best time of year to assess the wetlands. A lot of plants have died back and aren’t immediately apparent, and the amphibians and reptiles, and some of the mammals, are holed up. And of course a lot of the birds that are here in summer are migratory. But Jordan,” he indicated the redhead, “is doing a count of migratory fowl.”
Jordan’s head bobbed wildly and he said, “I’ll be back at dawn. Best time to spot them.”
Tom went on. “We’ll check the survey maps. If the wetlands are being used by rare migratory birds, we may have a case. So, we have more work to do, but this is a good start. Let’s pull what we have together.” He hesitated. “And although I don’t encourage anyone to commit acts of vandalism, that,” he pointed at the fluorescent rock pile, “at least delays the planned destruction of the pond’s perimeter. We have an attorney working on a temporary restraining order against the so-called improvements.”
“Speaking of vandalism,” I said, “is there any news about the damage to Alberta’s house?”
“It was a golf ball that broke the window,” said Hutchinson. “They found it wedged into a bookcase. A Callaway. Top of their line.”
“My dad used to use those,” I said. I only knew that because I made doll furniture out of the empty boxes.
Several of the group members walked toward a beat-up car parked on the street. Tom and Jordan, the red-headed kid, were talking about whatever was in Jordan’s notebook. I wanted to ask Tom if we could meet later to talk, but I didn’t want to interrupt. Alberta tugged on my jacket and I turned toward her.
“Can we go take the cat photos now? I think it would be a good time to get pictures of most of them,” she said. She went into a convoluted explanation of the kinds of photos she wanted, as if I wouldn’t know how to get good pictures of felines, and finally wrapped up by saying, “Sally usually feeds them about now, so they come in for that.”
“Sure. Let me grab my camera, and give me a second.” I turned around, intending to ask Tom if we could grab a minute, but all I saw was the back end of his van as it accelerated away from me.
Focus on your work, whispered the voice that had helped me get past tough times before. I wasn’t sure it would get me through this, but having a job to do did keep me from dropping into a whimpering mess on the cold, wet grass. I got my camera from my own van, returned to Alberta, and said, “Okay, let’s do it.”
I could have walked to the cat feeding station in five minutes, but Alberta slowed me down. She had moved a lot faster with the adrenaline pumping through her when we were searching for Gypsy, but now she went at something between a toddle and a stroll. She was telling me about the current feeding and shelter situation for the cats, and what her little group of volunteers had in mind for the future.
“Right now we just have a few medium-size crates out there with the doors off and some straw inside. We’ve wedged them between bales of straw for the winter, for insulation.” She stopped and put her hand on her chest for a couple of breaths, then walked on. “If we get the permit, we’re going to put up a more permanent, insulated facility with access points so they can come and go as they please.”
“It sounds great,” I said. We were walking along the back of the clubhouse, and if I remembered correctly, the cat station was just a few yards farther past the corner of the building. “How will you keep wildlife out? I mean, it sounds like the perfect place for raccoons and possums and things, and they could cause a lot of problems, I would think.”
We rounded the corner and stopped short. Alberta let out a long moan, and I felt as if cold claws had sunk into my belly. Clearly wildlife were not the biggest danger for feral cats at The Rapids of Aspen Grove.
Alberta stopped moaning and began to swear. She was very good at it, and she had reason. The last time I had seen the shelter and feeding stations set up by Alberta and her network of volunteers, the place had been tidy and clean. It couldn’t be called an eye-sore because it lay in the right angle where a storage building met a row of juniper bushes and was invisible from the club house and road. For a stop-gap pending a better arrangement, it had looked pretty impressive.
Volunteers had built a frame of two-by-fours into which they had placed straw bales with plastic cat carriers tucked between them at staggered heights. At each end of the structure were feeding stations well-stocked with dry food and clean water,
all checked and replenished at least twice a day. The top and three sides of the affair had been covered with heavy plastic sheeting, stretched and stapled, to fend off wind and rain.
Now it looked as if a tornado had hit the place. The wooden frame had been pulled over, and many of the boards broken. The binders had been ripped from the straw bales, and the November wind had scattered straw far out into the golf course. Someone had taken something heavy, perhaps a sledgehammer, to some of the plastic crates, smashing and cracking them to uselessness. Food and water bowls had been tossed here and there, and the padlock had been broken off the food-storage bin and cat food lay everywhere. There was no sign of a cat anywhere.
forty-five
Alberta stepped toward the mess that once was the clean and tidy feral cat shelter.
“Wait,” I said. “Don’t touch a thing. Call the police. I’ll get some photos while you do that.”
She looked at me and nodded, her face very pale. She held a hand to her chest and said, “The cats.”
“I’ll look around. Come here,” I said, looping an arm around her shoulders and guiding her to a golf cart parked up against the club house wall. A piece of paper was taped to the seat. Rain and ice had obliterated most of the writing, but I made out enough to know the thing was out of commission. It still had seats, though, so I sat Alberta behind the wheel. “Call the police.” I was worried about her, but short of taking her home, I couldn’t think of anything to do better than keep her occupied. Besides, I knew she wouldn’t leave until I checked on the cats. The question was, where should I look? They weren’t likely to shout “here we are” after what must have been a traumatic experience.
I clicked off a series of shots, recording the damage from all sides. I had never used the video function on my camera, but this seemed like a good time to give it a trial run. I panned across the entire scene, slowly taking in the surrounding structures, the edge of the golf course, and houses in the distance. I walked slowly toward a clump of naked forsythia, thinking that if any cats were around, they would be hunkered down in whatever hidey holes they could find, watching.
It took me two trips around the sprawl of yellow-brown branches before I saw anything remotely feline, but finally I spotted a tuft of black fur fluttering from the sharp end of a broken twig. A minute movement caught my attention, and I stared into the tangled branches and debris toward the center of the shrubs. There. Once I saw the cat, I couldn’t not see him, but I marveled at the camouflage that made that first awareness so elusive.
“Hi, kitty,” I said very softly. “Are you okay?” The cat was a big gray tabby. One ear was missing its tip, marking it as a trapped, neutered, and released member of the colony. “Did you see who made that mess over there?” I knelt, sinking my knee into a mat of cold, wet leaves. “Where are all your friends?”
The cat didn’t come to me, but seemed to relax. I raised my camera, took a couple of photos, and slowly panned the underbrush in hopes that my viewfinder would show me something I hadn’t noticed. It did. Another cat, a black-and-gold tortoiseshell, was tucked into a nest of branches about five feet from the tabby. “Pretty girl,” I said. “Everything will be okay.” She looked like she had her doubts. I checked the whole sprawling mass of vegetation again, but those were apparently the only cats holed up there at the moment.
I walked all around the club house and peered under the shrubbery and planters, earning some semi-hostile stares from a group of well-coiffed older women on their way to the front door. No cats. I was almost back to where I had left Alberta when I noticed someone watching. The sweatshirt was different—mustard yellow instead of navy—but I was sure it was the same person who had been watching me at the pond. He, or she, was too far away for me to get a good view, so I raised my camera and click click clicked. I expected him to turn away, but for a long moment there was no reaction. Then the figure raised one languid arm, gave me the finger, and walked away. That was interesting. I’d be able to see who it was soon enough, I thought.
The weather hadn’t been bad for November when I started out from home, but the wind was beginning to pick up and the temperature was dropping. Low, blue-gray clouds had arrived in the past half hour, casting a cold shadow, and I started to shiver. I would check in with Alberta and then run back to my van for my warmer coat, thankful that I had thought to grab it on my way out of the house. I capped my lens and hustled around to the back of the club house.
Alberta was right where I’d left her, talking on the phone. She hung up when I reached her and said, “I’ve called the press.”
“What?”
“It’s time to get the public on our side. People will be outraged about this,” she swept an arm toward the vandalized cat colony and almost toppled out of the golf cart. “I know people. I called my contacts at the News-Sentinel and Journal-Gazette, two radio stations, and Channel 15 News. Someone will come, and these people,” she tipped her head toward the club house, “won’t like negative publicity.” She wriggled forward on her seat and stepped out of the cart.
“Did you call the police?” I asked, hoping they would at least get there before a mob of reporters, if reporters actually found this newsworthy. I crossed my arms and tried to suppress the goose bumps and shakes the cold wind was giving me.
“They’re on their way. And I called Homer, too.”
Homer Hutchinson. It always took me a second thought to put the first name with the man. Can’t hurt, I thought. Even if he wasn’t on the vandalism case, he might nudge someone to give it careful attention. Then again, this wasn’t like the attack on Alberta’s house.
A knife of wind sliced through my sweatshirt and I felt as if my torso were turning to ice. I told Alberta that I really was chilled and had to go for my warmer coat. Cradling my lens to keep my camera from bouncing, I ran around the club house and all the way back to Alberta’s driveway, where I jumped into my van and set my camera into the case on the passenger seat. I would warm up and go back, I thought. Alberta wore a ski jacket, mittens, a mad-bomber hat, and yellow rain boots, and she had been tucked into the lee of the building while I was out in the wind, poorly dressed. She’d be fine until I got back.
My fingers were so cold that I fumbled my keys and they disappeared under the seat. “D-d-dammit,” I said through chattering teeth. I got out and bent down to look under the seat. It was dark under there, and at first I couldn’t see much. Then an empty potato chip bag and a couple of gas receipts. Something shiny. I reached for it, thinking it was a key, and my fingers closed over my long-lost watch. I stared at it and said, “S-s-so there you are,” and shoved it into my jeans pocket. My keys had somehow fallen out of reach under the back of my seat.
By the time I closed the back side door and climbed in again behind the wheel, I was shivering nonstop and had to try a couple of times before I hit the ignition slot with the key. I turned the heat up full blast but it came out cold, then lukewarm. I pulled my down jacket from the back seat and draped it over myself like a blanket. It was cold, but I hoped my now nonstop shivering would generate some heat that the down-filled nylon would trap for me. I wish I had a nice warm cat in my lap and a dog stretched out beside me, I thought. Or a nice warm Tom.
The heat finally kicked in, but my body still shook and my teeth clackety-clacked. Still, I thought I could manage a conversation. I punched Tom’s speed dial number, almost hearing his voice through the ringing. Then I did hear his voice. Or, more accurately, his voice mail message. In spite of the heat now blasting out of all the vents, I felt a new chill well up from somewhere deep and lonely.
forty-six
My van took about five minutes to crank up the heat, and I sat there for another five, letting the heat blast out of the vents until my feet and my cheeks were warm and I had mostly stopped shivering.
I shut off the engine and reluctantly stepped from the warm van into the cold, damp wind. I tried to pull my down jacket on over my hoo
dy, but couldn’t make it work. Maybe I was just tired, but the jacket sleeves didn’t want to slide over the sweatshirt. “Dammit,” I said. I really wanted the hood to keep my head warm. I fished around the back of the van on the off chance that I might have left a hat in there, but no luck. I tried once more to urge the sleeves to just get along, but no dice. I threw the jacket onto the front seat and pulled off my hoody. All that remained between me and the wind was my long-sleeved t-shirt and my undies. I may as well have been nekkid. By the time I got my down jacket zipped up to my chin, I was shivering again.
I jumped up and down and fished around in the pockets again. One thin knit glove. “Better than nothing,” I mumbled, pulling it on. At least my right hand would be moderately warm. Good thing you aren’t caught in a blizzard, said a voice in my head. Nag, nag, nag.
I jogged back to where I had left Alberta, and by the time I got there my body was a little warmer. My face was another story. My cheeks felt as if someone were giving me a facial with one of those hand-held vegetable shredders, and I was afraid I had icicles hanging from my nose. I had no tissue, so I gave up, blew my nose into my glove, pulled it inside out, and shoved it deep into my pocket.
“Elegant,” said Alberta. I looked at her to see if she was serious, and as soon as my eyes met hers we both started to laugh. It was one of those tension-breaking, ridiculous laugh fests that shift the universe a hair, and by the time we stopped, I felt that I—we—would get through this convergence of crises. Somehow.
“Oh, man,” I said, wiping my eyes with my jacket sleeve. A question had occurred to me on my jog back from the car, and I asked, “Alberta, who actually owns this land?” I gestured toward the piece of ground where the bales and crates were scattered.
“Community association,” she said.
“And you have permission for the cat colony to be here?”
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