Approaching the downstairs window at the front of the house, they found it wide open. Crouching to leap to the sill, they heard voices inside, and footsteps coming down the hall.

“I will,” Lucinda was saying, “but you’ll have to trust me, Evina.” The soft scuff of their steps passed by the window, approaching the sliding-glass door. “I’ll do what I can, but in return you have to give me your word.”

There was a pause, another scuff, as if Lucinda had turned to face the woman.

“It will do your niece no good,” Lucinda said, “if you do something foolish and end up in prison. How would that help her?”

Evina’s voice was low and slightly raspy, with a soft Southern accent. “If you pull the law into this, old woman, I swear you’re the one to regret it.”

“I told you I would not. If it can be avoided. That’s the best promise I can make.”

“The law did nothing to help me. Nothing to help find Marlie. That sheriff’s thick with Leroy’s family, he’d do nothing against them. Cops. They’re all the same, don’t tell me about cops.”

“They’re not all the same. Our police aren’t like that.”

Silence.

“Our law enforcement folks couldn’t be more caring. And they are friends of mine. If I have to go to them, I promise they’ll help you.”

There was another shuffle, as if Evina had moved fast. Kit sprang to the sill, growling, meaning to leap in at her. But then the glass door slid open, and Kit dropped down again and raced around the side of the house as Lucinda came out, crossed the little deck, and started up the stairs. Dulcie and Joe held back as the slider closed again, and the woman’s soft steps turned away into the empty rooms. They were about to leap to the sill and inside, when they heard her approaching the window.

As they drew back into the shelter of the mock-orange bushes, the small, dark-clad woman swung a leg over the low sill, ducked under the upper glass, eased herself out and dropped to the ground. She was still dressed in jeans and a navy sweater, and was carrying black canvas backpack. Moving past the bushes where the cats crouched, stepping close enough so they could have slashed her ankles, she headed fast down across the yard to the street below and then along the narrow sidewalk.

Silent and quick, Joe and Dulcie were behind her. Trotting along through the neighborhood gardens, taking what cover they could, they tried to look like wandering neighborhood kitties as they followed Evina Woods. Twice she turned to look behind her. The first time, they leaped after a nonexistent bird that seemed intent on escaping them. Evina was so small and fine-boned that from the back she looked like a girl; only when they saw her face did they see the lines from sun and weather, and the large, prominent nose. Her black hair was short and scraggly, with a reddish gleam where the sun hit it. She made no friendly gesture toward the wandering kitties, as many folk would do; she was not, apparently, a cat lover. The cats, drawing more deeply into the shadows, followed her for two blocks, ducking into the bushes, watching as she got into a big, tan, rusted-out Chevy so old it had tail fins, a dinosaur of a car.

“A ’51 Chevy,” Joe said, well schooled in matters automotive from living with Clyde. “I don’t remember the name of that model.” They memorized the Oregon license number, though very likely this was the car on which Harper had already run the plates. They watched it head downhill toward the village, its dented top rust red where the tan paint was worn away to the primer. When they could no longer see it, they headed back for Kit’s house.

“You can bet Lucinda went down there without telling Pedric,” Joe said. He turned to look at Dulcie. “What’s she up to?” They had never known Lucinda to keep secrets from Pedric; the old couple were completely devoted to each other. They rounded the house through Lucinda’s camellias and ferns, scrambled up the oak and across the horizontal branch to the dining-room window. There they paused, listening.

Kit and Lucinda were arguing, a heated family disagreement that made Joe and Dulcie back away. The two seldom argued, not with this kind of anger. And now Pedric joined in, snapping at Lucinda. Through the cat door came the lovely smells of Christmas, pine scent from the Christmas tree and the lingering aromas of baking-all spoiled by the angry voices. The two cats listened, shocked, Joe’s ears back and his yellow eyes narrowed. But then as the argument raged, he sat down on the sill and began with great concentration to wash his front paws. He cleaned all four feet and then his silver-gray coat-while Dulcie responded to her friends’ quarrel by nervously biting her claws, removing the outer sheaths to sharpen each curved rapier.

Both cats felt they shouldn’t be listening to this private family scuffle. Except that this was not strictly a family disagreement, this might soon be a matter for the police, Lucinda’s safety was at stake here. And, anyway, who ever said cats weren’t nosy?

“I TOLD EVINA,” LUCINDA was saying, “that the police had already been here and we didn’t file charges. I said before we did that, we wanted to know what this is about.”

“That’s not what I want,” Pedric grumbled. “I want her out of here, pronto. I want her in jail, Lucinda, before she hurts you.” Pedric was no longer standing back. The thin old man was worried, and furious. Dulcie and Joe had never seen him so angry. They looked at each other, half amused, half frightened.

“She hasn’t harmed anything,” Lucinda said evenly.

“She scared the hell out of all of us, and she could have hurt you, bad. And damage? We don’t know what damage she might have done taking those pictures and spying. Do you want to be a party to some kind of blackmail?”

Lucinda looked surprised, as if she hadn’t thought of that-but Kit leaped to the arm of her chair, hissing at both of them. “When you questioned her,” Kit asked impatiently, “what did she say, Lucinda?”

“She gave me a wild tale,” Lucinda admitted. “And yet…She was so upset. She sounded…Well,” Lucinda said with embarrassment, “I’m really inclined to believe her.”

Pedric snorted. Kit didn’t reply. Joe and Dulcie, unable to remain uninvolved, slipped in through the cat door and dropped from the windowsill to the dining-room rug, beneath the table.

Looking into the living room, which Lucinda had turned into a forest of evergreen boughs dominated by the Christmas tree in the far corner, they were very still. The room smelled of pine and nutmeg, and a fire burned on the hearth. The cats could see only the back of Pedric’s head where he sat, rigid and angry. Kit sat on the rug, between their two chairs, looking intently at the thin old woman. “Tell us, Lucinda. Tell us what she said.” The fire’s pleasant crackling was the only comforting sound in the tense room.

“She told me she followed those three down from Eugene,” Lucinda said. “She thinks-is convinced that one of them killed her niece, after the girl testified against him.”

“This was in Oregon?” Pedric said.

“No, that was in southern Arkansas, some little backwoods town. She told me that when the killer ran, she thought he would head to Oregon to his girlfriend, and-”

“Then why is she here?”

“Let me finish. She said that he’d been phoning the girlfriend, that she’d found portions of his phone bills in his trash.” Lucinda gave Pedric a wrinkled smile. “She broke into his cabin and tossed it. She said she couldn’t go to their sheriff with her suspicions, that he would have done nothing.”

“Lucinda,” Pedric said, “that’s-”

“She said the killer was thick with the law in their town, and that the sheriff was so corrupt she had no faith he’d ever arrest the man.”

“Lucinda, this sounds…” But at her look, Pedric went silent.