One invasion had occurred just before supper-time when children were still playing in the street. Two homeowners had been attacked first thing in the morning when they went out to get the paper, leaving their doors unlocked behind them, returning to find they were not alone. So far, seven women had been beaten badly enough to be taken to emergency, four of them hospitalized. Max, besides increasing patrols into the quieter, out-of-the-way neighborhoods, had encouraged people to take their own sensible precautions as well. He’d been on TV three times, had done four newspaper interviews laying out the steps that people could take to discourage forced break-ins. It was all commonsense, basic information: Keep doors and easily accessed windows locked when you’re inside or outdoors, even when you’re right in the yard. Don’t answer the door without looking first to see who’s there. Don’t open the door at all to strangers; speak to them through a window or install a simple intercom. Watch your neighbors’ houses, note any strange cars in your neighborhood. Call your neighbors if anything looks suspicious—strangers hanging around, strange cars showing up repeatedly. Report to the police anything that couldn’t be explained, that made you uneasy. He had not suggested Mace or pepper spray, though anyone with good sense should already have looked into those or other options. The Gazette had printed Max’s articles as he’d dictated them, but then in their own articles and editorials they’d gone after him viciously, as accusatory as if he were masterminding the invasions himself. The one common denominator among the attacks was that each had occurred at the same time officers were headed for, or on the scene of, some other emergency call, when cars and men were drawn away from neighborhood patrol. Assuming the invaders had a police radio, the department had switched to a new code language, plus more reliance on cell phones.
Leading her sorrel mare into the stall, Charlie removed her halter, shut the stall door, then joined Max in the doorway of the barn; they stood enjoying the evening, watching their two half-Dane mutts out in the pasture, sniffing hopefully around a rabbit hole the rabbit long ago departed. This was the first day in some six weeks that Max hadn’t worked long overtime hours. He wasn’t twenty anymore, Charlie thought crossly, he needed some rest. Max was pushing retirement, and sometimes she wished he’d take early retirement.
But Max loved his work, he loved the department, and she wasn’t sure how he’d fare if he were idle. Though the way things were going, it looked like someone was working hard to push him in that direction, to separate him from Molena Point PD before he was ready. That enraged her almost beyond endurance, that someone was trying to destroy Max, that they were beating and injuring innocent civilians in order to hurt her husband.
Not that they would succeed. Whatever these people did, whatever this smear campaign was about, they wouldn’t destroy Max Harper, she thought fiercely, or destroy the men and women of the department who were so loyal to him.
But, standing with Max’s arm around her as they watched the evening descend, listening to the sea crash beyond the cliffs, Charlie had to smile. Despite the current trouble, there was one aspect of the investigation that even Max didn’t imagine, and lent a gleam of hope. Max could have no idea that one gray tomcat might tip the scales, that when Joe Grey and his two lady pals got their claws into the invasions, these cases could begin to open up and the department would start to receive evidence that, by its very nature, was inaccessible to the officers of Molena Point PD.
3
MAUDIE TOOLA AND her little grandson arrived in Molena Point in early December, eight months after the murder of Benny’s daddy and stepmother. They drove up the coast from L.A. with Maudie’s older son, David, who refused to let Maudie make the three-hundred-mile trip alone. Maudie seemed to David desperately in need of rest and peace just now, with her painful shoulder from the bullet wound, and after the stress of the murders and of the subsequent investigation. And after the strain of the last eight months as she had worked to sell Martin’s house and her own house, and put Martin’s and Caroline’s affairs in order. Caroline’s sister had helped her as long as she could, then had gone on back to Florida with Caroline’s two children. Now, Benny was all Maudie had. Except for David, and his first concern, at present, had to be for his wife. Alison wasn’t doing at all well in anticipation of her upcoming cancer surgery.
David glanced over at Maudie. Still recovering from her wounded shoulder, and still grieving so deeply for Martin, she needed a hassle-free trip, and he could do that for her. In Molena Point she and Benny could settle quietly into their new home and, hopefully, Maudie could start to make a new life for the two of them.
They had departed L.A. at six on Tuesday morning, planning to arrive in Molena Point that afternoon in plenty of time to meet the moving van, which had loaded up the previous evening. Their Thanksgiving had been quiet, a restaurant meal, the first Thanksgiving dinner Maudie could ever remember not having cooked herself. As they drove north up Highway 101, Maudie and David talked softly while in the backseat the small, pale little boy slept covered with a quilt, clutching his own familiar pillow. Benny’s brown hair was just the color of his daddy’s at that age, though he wore it longer than Martin ever had. Neither Maudie nor David could look at the child without seeing Martin as a little boy. The memories hurt, but they heartened Maudie, too. Maybe she was overly sentimental, but she took comfort in knowing that something of Martin himself would live on in his little son.
The morning was damp and cold. A thick fog lay along the freeway, staining the crowded neighborhoods the dirty gray-yellow of sour milk. David took the first shift, driving until Paso Robles where they meant to stop for a late breakfast. What worried him, as he pulled into the parking lot of the Paso Robles Inn, easing in between two tall trucks where the car wouldn’t be seen so easily from the highway, was that the killer might have followed them. That whoever had shot Martin might think that, despite the dark night, Maudie had glimpsed his face. That she’d seen, if not enough to make a positive identification, enough to give the police a clue. In the months before the shooting, Martin had, on three occasions, reported questionable airport personnel who later turned out to be security risks. Two of them were baggage workers, one the member of a maintenance crew, two with prison records, one with no green card and no passport. David worried that these men might be behind the shooting, and he thought about Martin’s ex-wife, as well. Pearl Toola had some questionable contacts, men David suspected she’d remained close to, from her earlier years working in the Las Vegas casinos. Martin and Pearl had married young, when Martin was perhaps wilder, before his responsibility as a pilot had settled him down. Pearl had been so beautiful, Martin hadn’t cared that she worked dealing blackjack and ran with a fast crowd.
After the shooting, when the L.A. police interviewed Maudie, she had made no identification, and as far as he knew, they still had no leads. The police told them there were no shell casings found and, on the hardtop road, the sheriff had picked up no tire marks. Maudie told the investigating detective that she had seen only the flashes of gunfire, that she hadn’t seen the shooter. When the L.A. detectives queried her about Martin’s ex-wife, Maudie told him that considering Pearl had had several affairs while they were still married, and had once asked for a divorce herself, it didn’t seem likely, when they did go their separate ways, she’d consider herself a wronged party in need of revenge. She said she thought Pearl was glad to be free of Martin and her little boy, that surely she wouldn’t be foolish enough to turn around and put herself in harm’s way for no reason. Maudie told the detective she was leaving L.A., and gave him her new address in Molena Point. She said she couldn’t continue living in L.A. with the memories of Martin’s childhood unavoidably all around her, that she didn’t want to live with those painful reminders.
Molena Point, too, was filled with memories, but of a different kind. This was the village of Maudie’s childhood, the one place she wanted to be, the one place she thought she and Benny could find peace and begin to heal, as much as they ever could heal. Am
ong the woods and along the seacoast of the small village, she thought Benny’s hurt spirit might begin to mend. She wanted only to lose herself again in that perfect place, to return, as well as she could, to those long-ago childhood pleasures, to that early innocence before the world forced her to see life more clearly.
She had kept the two cottages all these years, since her own parents died. She and her husband, Allen, had leased out the larger house, keeping the little guest cottage, four doors up the block, for their vacations. After Allen died, she hadn’t had the heart to return to the village, and had rented out the smaller cottage, too. It was then that she had bought the tiny log house nearer to L.A., just north of San Bernardino, the cabin where they had been headed the night Martin and Caroline were killed.
Now she had sold the San Bernardino cabin, and sold the Molena Point cottage. She and Benny would live in her old home, in the two-bedroom Tudor which, with a little addition, would provide room for her quilting studio. She desperately needed that involvement again with color and cloth and stitching, needed to get outside herself. She couldn’t hope to heal Benny’s broken life without first healing her own—without embracing once more the work that eased her spirit and that she found meaningful.
It had been hard to sell the L.A. home where Martin and David grew up, hard to sell it just after Martin’s funeral. But that part of her life was over now. She had put the money from the sale of the house and of the San Bernardino cabin into an additional trust for Benny. When Martin left Pearl he had made sure all his holdings were in trust for the child where Pearl couldn’t get at them, and Maudie had done the same. Closing out her bank accounts of her day-to-day funds, she had packed the cashier’s checks safely in her luggage among her lingerie, for deposit in a Molena Point bank.
They’d arrived in Molena Point at one, in time for a lunch of hot soup and fresh-baked bread at a small restaurant run by a Persian couple who were among Maudie’s favorite people; then they’d headed up the hills to their new home, up the steep, wooded streets above the village. Approaching the dark-timbered Tudor that had been her childhood home, Maudie caught her breath. This was their home now, hers and Benny’s; they would settle in here, Benny would grow up here. And whatever the outcome of their move might be, maybe the final words of Martin’s and Caroline’s epitaphs had not yet been written. Maybe, Maudie thought with a cool certainty, the last episode of her son’s death was still to be revealed.
4
THE NOTION THAT Maudie’s fate and the fate of her small grandson might be guided by a cat would have greatly amused the older woman, the idea that she and Benny would become the subjects of a tomcat’s sharp and life-changing attention would have made her laugh. Yet even that first afternoon as Maudie supervised the moving in of her furniture and packing boxes, she was closely observed from the branches of an oak tree just above her, where Joe Grey crouched, his yellow eyes narrowed with interest. There was something about the soft little woman that made the gray tomcat tweak his whiskers and lick a paw reflectively.
She was just a bit pudgy, a pale, round woman with powdery skin, her smile warm, her voice, as she supervised the unloading, gentle even when she was annoyed at a worker’s carelessness. She was impeccably groomed, her blond-dyed hair—which was probably gray—styled in an expensive bob, her loose, smocklike jacket well cut, in subtle patterns, over silky, gathered trousers. Expensive, flat-heeled shoes. Tiny gold earrings and a gold choker. A timid-looking woman, well turned out as if to give herself confidence, and with a smile that should draw one to trust her. Yet there was an air about her, too, that didn’t seem to fit, a watchful expression that showed itself for only an instant and then was gone again, a look that puzzled the tomcat.
Over the next three days, Joe Grey watched Maudie. He watched her grown son David carry in a fresh Christmas tree, and imagined the three of them busily decorating it among their still unpacked moving boxes. He arrived early each morning with his housemate, Ryan Flannery, as she came to work on the cottage that she and Clyde had bought from Maudie. Ryan and Clyde Damen had been married only since last Valentine’s Day, the providential joining of a pair of avid collectors: Clyde of classic cars, which he restored and sold; Ryan, of antique mantels and moldings and stained-glass windows, which she used in the homes she built. Now, perhaps driven by an excess of matrimonial bliss, the couple had combined their creative fervor into restoring old houses.
On this morning, the fourth after Maudie’s arrival, Joe sat on the roof of the Damens’ remodel venture dividing his attention between Maudie and the construction project under way below him. Peering over, he watched Ryan and her two Latino helpers pulling nails and ripping off strips of weathered siding, in preparation for a new sunroom addition that would look out on the greenbelt behind the backyards: a wild expanse that ran all along this side of the hills, a favorite retreat for deer, raccoons, bobcats, and dog walkers brave enough to face the occasional curious mountain lion. The banging of boards and the screeching of rusty nails was so loud, at this early hour, he expected the neighbors to pour out into the street shaking their fists and shouting, but for the moment, the street remained empty.
Around him, the fog-blanketed rooftops angled so close together that a cat could hop from one roof to the next and not miss a beat; or he could travel above the rooftops, along the aerial highways of twisting oak branches. Later, when the fog lifted, the leafy roof would come alive with sparrows and house finches, a veritable café on the wing if a cat was agile and quick—and the rich supply of small game didn’t stop there. Below him among the tangled yards and wandering garden walls and toolsheds lived generations of mice and moles and fat gophers to satisfy a hungry feline.
Between the bouts of noise beneath him, and the rattle of boards being tossed into the weeds of the side yard, Joe listened to the quick Spanish voices of Manuel and Fernando, and to Ryan’s softer replies. Her Spanish was so limited that Joe was sure the two men were secretly laughing at her—but in a kind way, the tomcat thought. Both of them liked Ryan, and she seemed to get her message across, enough for the work at hand, enough for her crew to have built some pretty impressive houses. But his new housemate’s talents weren’t one-sided, Joe was still getting used to the changes in his and Clyde’s bachelor life, still happily growing accustomed to Ryan’s expertise in the kitchen, which was every bit as impressive as her skills as a carpenter, designer, and building contractor.
What her talents were in bed, he couldn’t say. That was none of his business. Ever since the couple arrived home from their honeymoon, Joe spent only short periods of time sharing the king-sized bed before he retreated to his rooftop tower, which Ryan had designed and built for him. The hexagonal little house above the second-floor roof was walled with windows that a clever paw could open for easy access to the village rooftops, and was lined with a bright array of soft cushions. The design had been a collaboration between Ryan and Clyde, before even Ryan learned that Joe could speak. Joe had told Clyde what he had in mind, and Clyde had told Ryan, taking all the design credit for himself. This was long before Ryan and Clyde were married. They had begun seriously dating when she contracted to remodel Clyde’s small, dull, one-story summer cottage into a handsome two stories with bold beams, high windows, and a touch of Spanish charm.
It was later that Ryan discovered Joe Grey’s secret; she was one of the few humans who shared the knowledge of Joe’s talents, and he had to say, the woman had a quick understanding of the feline world—she knew very well how to flatter a tomcat and how to make him smile.
Take this morning. Ryan had made pancakes for his and Clyde’s breakfast, confections as light as a fluff of bird down. There she stood in the kitchen flipping pancakes, her short, tousled dark hair dusted with pancake flour, a ruffled apron tied over her work jeans and sweatshirt. And though she hated the smell of fish in the morning, she had generously presented Joe’s serving with a half-dozen kippers tastefully arranged on the side—a perfect combination of textures and flavors, the
salty fish blending smoothly with the pancakes and maple syrup.
Now, down the block, Maudie’s son, David, emerged from the front door heading away for his morning run. He was a tall man, slim and well made, his brown hair trimmed short; he was dressed in navy sweats and dark running shoes. Like his brother, David was an airline pilot—as if, Joe thought, both boys had grown up loving planes, maybe wanting to fly from the time they were toddlers. David had taken time off to get Maudie moved and settled, but soon would be going back to Atlanta, and Joe wondered how Maudie would fare alone, wondered if she was concerned about the unsettling invasions of homes occupied by lone women. But how could she not be, when the Gazette kept pushing its hopeless take on the situation to further upset the village.
But, Joe thought, Ryan and her crew would keep an eye on Maudie; Ryan wasn’t only remodeling the old cottage, she was at work as well building Maudie’s new studio, enclosing the patio that was already walled on two sides where the garage and kitchen met at right angles.
Below Joe’s rooftop perch, a jogger raced by, flashing beneath the oak branches. On the next street he glimpsed an old woman walking three elderly beagles, the dogs sniffing high above them in his direction, picking up the smell of tomcat. As the sun rose, a scurrying wind teased the fog and lifted it, ruffling his short fur. Below him, Manuel barked an order to Fernando in rolling Spanish, a song of words that made the tomcat wish he could speak the language—except that all that study would make him crazy, he wasn’t the studious type. Joe’s ability to speak English had required no books and studying; the talent had overtaken him without any effort on his part.
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