The two women had been seated at a big round table beside the fire pit; though they were almost directly beneath the cats, their low conversation was hard to hear among the rising tangle of voices. Only Charlie was aware of them on the roof above. She glanced up once as they basked in the warmth from the blaze; she watched them sniffing at the heady scents of broiled shrimp and lobster, and she raised an eyebrow, then looked away again, hiding her smile.

The brick patio was enclosed on two sides by the restaurant itself, the other two by a two-foot-high wall topped with the pots of poinsettias and bright red winter cyclamens separating the café from the sidewalk. The street beyond was busy with tourists and locals coming from the theater or enjoying last-minute, late-evening Christmas shopping. The whole village was festive tonight, the shop doors hung with wreaths, the overhanging oaks and pines strung with colored lights-and their friends looked festive, too. The cats seldom saw Charlie in anything but jeans. Tonight she wore a soft, metallic-gold tunic over slim black pants, her untamable, kinky red hair bound back with a heavy gold clip, and a thick, golden stole over her shoulders. Dorothy Street was sharply tailored, very handsome with her sleek, dark hair, and her winter tan from running the beach, her clean beauty set off by a black silk blazer over crisp white pants and white boots. She had let her dark hair grow long, and was wearing it in a braid wrapped smoothly around her head-a more serious, finished look than the short, windblown mop she’d sported when she worked for Patty Rose as the retired actress’s assistant, an efficient young secretary who often went to work in jeans and sweatshirt and smelling of the sea. Now, as Patty’s heir and new owner of the inn, and as trustee for the Patty Rose Home and School, she presented a far more businesslike demeanor. The cats weren’t sure they liked her new look; but they supposed that status-conscious humans were impressed, and that that was good for business.

Dorothy was talking about a break-in at the Home, speaking so softly that over the noise of the other diners, the cats had to crouch low across the roof gutter to hear at all.

“Nothing was taken,” Dorothy was saying. “There’s nothing in there to take. Why would someone break into that old, empty studio? Not a stick of furniture, you can see through the windows that it’s empty. But the front door was jimmied last night, fresh scars in the molding. Last week, after we found the back door open, we changed the locks. But the next morning, two of the boys came to tell me they’d found a window open, banging in the wind.

“I went over, found the lock broken, and called the department again. It’s embarrassing to have to call them out for such a small thing, but…Whatever this is about, we need to find the cause before Ryan starts work. She’ll have material and power tools stored in there.”

Above, on the roof, the cats glanced at one another, wondering if that had been the work of the old tramp. On these cold nights, that old stone studio would be dry, all right, just as he’d said, a welcome retreat from rain and wind.

Charlie pushed back an escaped strand of red hair and gave the waiter a long, annoyed look where he lingered just beyond their table, coffeepot in hand. Charlie liked good service, but she didn’t like overt attention.

“The old window locks were easy enough to break,” Dorothy said. “Ryan says they were the original ones. That studio is nearly a hundred years old. She sent a carpenter over to replace them.”

Dorothy sipped her coffee. “That, combined with whatever happened in the plaza last night, is giving me the fidgets. I keep thinking about our Christmas bazaar, in a just few days, about how vulnerable we are up there, how vulnerable the children could be.

“I’ve hired six more guards,” she said softly, “besides the regular three.”

“You really do expect trouble? But…”

“I don’t know what to expect.”

Charlie frowned. “You think there’s some connection between the plaza murder and the break-ins?”

“I don’t know, Charlie. But the two things at once…If we’d had only a simple break-in…But three times, without anything to steal. That’s so strange.”

“No possessions of Anna Stanhope’s left forgotten? Maybe tucked away in a closet?”

“Nothing. The few paintings that were left locked up in there, all those years after she died, and a few books and papers, we’d already removed and stored safely. Her son had long ago sent most of her remaining work up to her gallery in the city.”

“I understand that Anna was rather secretive, inclined to stash things away.”

Dorothy smiled. “I really don’t think there was anything left hidden. There’s nowhere to hide anything in that studio. I think that’s one of those stories that gets started-maybe John Stanhope started it, to boost the price of the studio when he sold it. I wouldn’t put it past him.”

John Stanhope, Anna’s son, had built the big, newer mansion on the property some years after Anna died. The mansion badly dwarfed the small, stone studio where Anna had lived and worked. Later he’d sold the studio as a separate dwelling, but had retained most of the estate grounds with the new mansion. When actress Patty Rose bought the mansion, wanting to convert it to a children’s home, the smaller house was not available. Then last year, after Patty died, the studio came on the market again, and Dorothy, representing the Patty Rose Trust, quickly bought it, thus reuniting the property. She meant to turn the historic studio into additional classrooms for the children, and she badly wanted to get started with the work right after the holidays.

“These break-ins made me feel so…not just vulnerable,” Dorothy said, “but as if I’ve let Anna Stanhope down. She loved that old studio, she would not have liked this invasion. Her journal is full of entries about how happy she was there, and now I feel responsible that this has happened.

“But most of all, I’m worried for the children. I don’t want…It’s almost like a personal attack on the children themselves, that someone would break into the Home, where we’ve tried to make everything safe for them. Those kids…”

“Those orphan kids are like your own babies,” Charlie said. “But-you don’t think the intruder was some jealous village child, playing pranks?”

“That’s possible, I suppose. Certainly none of our children would do that.” Dorothy smoothed her dark hair. “Why do I keep trying to tie the break-ins to the murder in the plaza? Assuming there was a murder. How could there be a connection? Why do I keep thinking of that?”

Charlie couldn’t answer.

“I don’t mean to talk about things you aren’t free to discuss.”

“There isn’t much to discuss-not until Max knows more about what happened there. Dorothy, I just don’t have any answers.”

“It isn’t my nature to fly apart,” Dorothy said. “I guess, after Patty was murdered last year, and the things that happened to her daughter and grandchild, that I’m overly nervous about our kids.”

“You have a right to be anxious. But you have extra guards in place, and you use an excellent agency. Have you talked with Max about…”

They looked up as Lucinda and Pedric Greenlaw along with Cora Lee French came in, crossing the terrace to join them. Cora Lee’s cousin, Donnie, and her housemate, Gabrielle Row, came in behind them, holding hands like youngsters, the two so wrapped up in each other that the cats had to smile. A Christmas romance, Dulcie thought, purring. It pleased her when older people found that kind of happiness. She looked at Donnie’s blond and white hair, and at Gabrielle’s blond dyed hair that was very likely graying, too, under that elegant color. The two were so attentive to each other that they hardly seemed to know anyone else was present.

The Greenlaws sat down next to Charlie. Lucinda had pulled a warm cashmere stole close around her shoulders, over her silver-toned wool suit. The elderly Greenlaw couple was the tortoiseshell kit’s human family, a tall pair of octogenarian newlyweds as spry and adventurous as folks half their age. Pedric looked handsome tonight in a pale cashmere sport coat, white shirt, and camel-toned tie and black slacks. The new arrivals had, as they entered the patio, also been talking about the Stanhope house, the subject having been brought to their attention by a large display in the theater lobby showing old photographs of Anna Stanhope’s studio and giving some of Anna’s background, as promotion for the Home’s bazaar and auction on Sunday.