Softly she’d padded up the back steps, approaching the yellow cat, who had backed against the door snarling defensively, guarding her children. The cries of the kittens was heartbreaking, and one of them was clawing determinedly at the door, his mewls loud and demanding.

Rearing up, Joe had peered between the door and the molding. The dead bolt gleamed back at him, solidly engaged.

Leaving the frantic female, they had circled the house looking for a way in. If they could gain access, they could open the door from inside-no trick at all for clever paws.

They had tried all the windows, leaping up, balancing on the sills and clawing at the sliders, but all were solidly locked. They clawed at the knobs of the front and back doors, and at the garage pedestrian door, with no luck, the dead bolts holding them tight. It was when they leaped to the back deck to try the glass sliders there that they’d found the deep, fresh pry marks along the slider’s edges, as if the door had been jimmied.

If it had been pried open, it was locked again when they tried it. Even with both of them clawing and straining, they couldn’t force it open. Had someone come in this way, burglarized the house, and then carefully locked the door as he left?

Or had a thief locked it behind him when he entered, the cats had wondered, and was still in there?

Maybe he had gone into the laundry, frightening Mango so that she fled to another room as she tried to lead him away from her kittens. Maybe then, confused, she’d fled out the open slider. Moving on around the house to the far side, they had found the laundry window unlatched, but closed. The scent of the mama cat was strong around it, and when Joe leaped to the sill, he was able to slide it open four inches. There it stopped, against the auxiliary lock.

Dulcie leaped up beside him, nosing at the yellow cat hairs caught in the window frame and molding. “An entrance that would be too high for the kittens to reach.” They kept their voices low, always wary of being overheard. “But,” Dulcie said, “if Theresa left it open for Mango, who closed it?”

“Theresa wouldn’t leave it open while they’re gone,” Joe whispered. “She wouldn’t invite raccoons or possums inside, to get at the kittens. No,” he’d said with certainty, “Theresa left it closed, with Mango and the kits safe inside. Someone else was here, someone let her out. Or drove her out.”

Frowning, Dulcie had peered down into the laundry room. “We have to tell Charlie-once we’ve let Mango in.”

Charlie’s Fix-it, Clean-it service took care of all the houses on this street when the owners were on vacation. One of their specialties was their responsible care of their clients’ pets-and the cats trusted Charlie; she was their close and reliable friend.

Squeezing in through the window’s four-inch opening, Joe dropped down onto the counter beside the laundry sink, Dulcie directly behind him-before they could open the back door and let Mango in, there was a thud behind them, then a thud on the floor as the yellow female dove past them, streaking to the cardboard box. Her frantic kittens squalled even louder at the cry and smell of their mother. A fifth kitten was still at the back door, yowling and clawing. When he saw his mama, he fled to her, scrambled into the box, and began frantically nursing before she even laid down.

Hastily the female settled in among her little ones, all the time scowling at Joe and Dulcie, her ears back, her slitted eyes never leaving them. To a queen with kittens, the presence of a tomcat wasn’t comforting; many tomcats would kill those little babies. All five kittens piled onto her, greedily sucking and pushing as if surely they were starving.

A big bowl of kibble stood at the end of the laundry counter, and there was a large bowl of water in the sink, high off the floor where the kittens couldn’t climb in and drown. Theresa had left the tap dripping into the bowl, and the sink drain open to avoid an overflow. It was Theresa who would have done this, no one thought Carl Chapman cared that much about Theresa’s cats. Joe didn’t think he cared about much of anything, even including the delightful Theresa.

“She made it as safe and comfortable for them as she could,” Dulcie said softly. “She even unplugged the washer and dryer so the kittens wouldn’t chew on live cords. She wouldn’t leave the window open, Theresa would never leave the mama outside.”

“And why,” Joe had muttered warily, “would she leave the door open from the laundry room to the rest of the house? Leave the kittens to roam where the electric cords are still plugged in?” Standing on his hind paws, he had peered from the laundry room through the kitchen to the living room. “I can see two lamps plugged in. No, someone’s been in here. And maybe still is?”

Dropping from the counter to the linoleum, the cats headed through the kitchen to inspect the rest of the house. Behind them, the female growled, but she didn’t follow. They had searched the three-bedroom house from one end to the other but could see nothing obviously missing. The plasma televisions were in place, the nearly new DVD and CD players. There was a plasma computer monitor in the little home office, a checkbook on the desk, items that surely any thief would take. It was hard to know, in the comfortable clutter of the Chapman home, whether anything else might be unaccounted for. When at last they returned to the laundry room, they managed to pull the kitchen door closed with their paws beneath the crack. Again the yellow cat hissed and yowled and this time she left her box, stalking them, stiff legged and threatening. To avoid a confrontation, Joe leaped to the counter and directly out the open window. Dulcie had followed and, balancing on the sill, they’d slid the glass closed behind them, leaving the mama cat safely confined. It would be a long three weeks for her before Theresa would be home to love and comfort her.

“Charlie will give her plenty of attention,” Dulcie had said, dropping down into Theresa’s tangled garden. “She’ll find out what happened, she’ll know if anything’s missing.”

That had been last night. When Joe got home, pushing in through his cat door, when he told Clyde and Ryan where he and Dulcie had been and what they’d found, Ryan had risen at once to call Charlie, but Clyde stopped her, his hand gently on her arm. They’d been sitting in the living room reading after supper, Clyde in an ancient pair of jeans and a faded T-shirt, his dark hair rumpled. “What’s she going to tell Max? Who’s she going to say was in her clients’ empty house this time of night, to find a break-in?”

While Charlie knew that the cats could speak and were quite capable of using the phone, Max certainly didn’t. If Charlie suddenly went charging out at night to check on a burglary, he’d start asking awkward questions, and one didn’t brush off Max Harper’s probing.

“Maybe he isn’t home,” Ryan said hopefully. “Maybe he’s still at the station.”

The hours of a police chief could be long, and Max was no exception. “She’ll think of something,” Ryan said confidently, gave Clyde a green-eyed grin, and punched the single button for the Harpers’ number.

The upshot was that Max was indeed working late. Charlie had left the two big dogs guarding the ranch house and barn, and had come down the hills to have a look. She’d called back afterward, once she left the Chapman house. She said she’d found nothing more amiss besides the pry marks on the sliding door, that the mama and kittens were fine, and that she’d check again in the morning. Of course she hadn’t reported the problem. That was the one glitch in Charlie and Max Harper’s marriage, that Charlie was forced to keep information from him. This upset her considerably, but it would distress her a lot more if Max learned the truth. If he were forced to believe the vital role that three unnatural felines played in the workings of Molena Point PD -and Joe was mighty glad Charlie was fully committed to keeping their secret.