The table had a low shelf just above them, which helped to hide them-a shelf thick with dust. Didn’t people know how to use a duster? It seemed to Dulcie that they had spent half their lives crouched in mite-ridden household dust beneath someone’s unkempt furniture-and household dust was not at all the same as good clean garden dirt or beach sand, was nothing like the fresh earth on the wild, far hills.

When Kit tried to stifle a sneeze and couldn’t, Dulcie and Joe threw their bodies against her, muffling the sound. Above them, Betty had pulled off her coat, tossed down her keys, and moved away down the hall toward the kitchen. They breathed easier when she’d gone.

The entry was dim and small. To their right, a flight of stairs led up to the bedrooms; the living room was beyond it, looking out to the back. Shoddy furniture, early Salvation Army, that made Dulcie wonder what kind of rent they were paying.

Down the hall near the kitchen was a door that breathed out the same garage smells of gas, motor oil, and paint. Joe thought the paint smelled like automotive enamel, with which he was familiar from Clyde ’s classic-car restorations. In the kitchen Betty poured herself a cup of scorched-smelling coffee and sat down at the breakfast table.

“They fit?” Leroy asked, lifting his big-boned hand to scratch his shaggy brown hair.

Betty nodded. “They haven’t changed the locks, the garage, or the house.” She jingled two keys on a ring and dropped them back into her pocket. Using her fingers as a comb, she shook out her black hair, its tangled mass so dry one imagined dandruff drifting into her coffee. With the three tenants thus occupied, Joe Grey peered with predatory interest up the narrow stairs.

Before Dulcie could speak, he was on the first step. “Stay and watch them,” he hissed. “Distract them if they start up there. I won’t be a minute.” And he disappeared up the worn carpet treads to the top floor. Dulcie hoped no one else was there-except maybe the kidnapped girl. If she had been kidnapped, if Huffman had brought her all this way. That seemed so strange. Why would he? As some kind of hostage protection?

“Supposed to rain again tonight,” Betty was saying. “Maybe hail.”

Leroy smiled, easing his muscled bulk in the small dinette chair. “That hail the other night…Could of fired off a canon, no one’d of heard.”

Ralph Wicken grinned. He was a small man, thin head with short crew-cut hair, ears sticking out as if he might take off in frightened flight.

“Gets dark about seven,” Betty said. “They tuck the kiddies up at eight. Lights go on upstairs, off again around eight-thirty.”

Huffman said, “They’ve hired more guards, they’re all over the place at night. Middle of the day would be better. The day they do that judging, place’ll be crawling with people, trucks, power tools, carpenters hammering away. That should be enough diversion.”

“What time do the day-school kids leave?” Ralph said. His eyes were muddy brown, like Betty’s, but his brows were thick and black.

“You’ll keep away from the kids,” Betty told him. “You mess around this time and blow it, I swear I’ll turn you in, Ralph. Leave you in prison for the rest of your stupid life.”

Ralph smiled. Betty seemed pale and nervous. “I mean it. I won’t have one of your mindless escapades mess this up.”

Ralph’s face flushed red and he lowered his glance. Betty watched him with distaste, then glared at Leroy. “Why the hell did you let him have the camera? I told you-”

“I didn’t let him have it, he took it. Middle of the night, sneaked in our room, took it off the dresser. You didn’t wake up! Well, hell, neither of us missed the damn thing.”

“I don’t see what difference,” Ralph whined. “How come you can do what you want, but you’re always on my case?”

Betty fixed her gaze again on her brother. “You stay away from that school. There’s a hell of a difference.”

“We better take him with us,” Leroy said. “Keep an eye on him.”

Ralph’s thin face twisted into a toddlerlike sulk. “No one knows me here. Why do you always have to…?”

“This isn’t Oregon,” Betty snapped. “ California, these new laws, they find you’re not registered, you’re as good as locked up anyway. Serve you right,” she said coldly.

The kit, sitting silently beside Dulcie, watched Betty Wicken, puzzled. “Maybe I’ve seen her in the village,” she whispered softly.

“Where, Kit?”

“A long time ago. I can’t remember where, I’ve been trying.”

Whispering, both cats glanced toward the kitchen, but no one had heard. No human had a cat’s range of hearing. Mankind was, in many ways, an inferior and handicapped specimen. God’s work left unfinished, Dulcie thought, at least in the areas of auditory skills and night vision.

But now Kit’s own skills seemed to have faltered. For the first time Dulcie could remember, the tortoiseshell didn’t have total recall. The more she studied Betty Wicken, the more shadowy was the memory Kit tried to bring forth of where she had seen the woman. Where and when? Under what circumstances?

Betty drained her coffee and picked up a stack of papers from the kitchen table, flipping through them. They seemed to be magazine articles. The cats could see colored pages torn from slick publications, some stapled together, some with pictures of houses. Was that the Stanhope mansion? Both cats swallowed back mewls of recognition as Betty sat looking at the page. But then Betty flung down the pictures and rose, giving Ralph another glare-a look of distaste and of long-standing resignation.

“Let’s get to work.” She headed for the door to the garage, and Leroy got to his feet. Ralph remained at the table, his expression one of stubborn secrecy. Dulcie glanced up the stairs, wishing Joe would hurry; she was crouched to leap up after him when he appeared at the top.

Silently he trotted down to them, a gray shadow with only his white marks to attract any sudden attention. And as Betty and Leroy moved into the garage, the three cats were behind them, diving through on their heels, another bold gamble that left their paws sweating; and they melted among a stack of cardboard boxes standing beside the door.

“What did you find?” Dulcie whispered, edging close to Joe.

Joe Grey pawed cobwebs from his whiskers. “No sign of anyone else, no scent but theirs. I don’t think that girl was ever here.” He reared up between the boxes until he could see Betty and Leroy standing at a workbench along the opposite wall-and could see the vehicle parked less than two feet from his nose. His stifled growl made Dulcie and Kit rear up, staring.

As the Wickens stood selecting tools from a cardboard box on the workbench, assembling sledgehammers and handsaws and an electric drill, the cats could only gape with shock. In the dim and crowded garage, parked between a row of storage cupboards and a large tan SUV, stood Charlie Harper’s blue van. Charlie’s “Fix-It, Clean-It” van, its logo lettered clearly on the side. Charlie’s blue Chevy van that she had bought when she started her home maintenance business and had used ever since, the van that should be parked either at a cleaning job, or up at the seniors’ house for Mavity’s convenience.

“What’s it doing here?” Dulcie hissed. “Charlie’s crew sure isn’t cleaning this house! And why inside the garage?”

“Did they steal it?” Kit said. “But when? Charlie didn’t say a word last night. How…?”

“Shhh,” Joe hissed. “Keep your voice down.”

“That Betty doesn’t work for her?” Kit whispered. “That woman hasn’t gone to work for Charlie?” But Charlie was hiring, the business was expanding, and they all knew that it was hard to find competent help.

“Of course she doesn’t work for her,” Dulcie said shakily. “I know everyone she’s hired. You saw the record checks that Davis ran on the applicants-every one of Charlie’s employees has signed a release so the department could check for a record.” The police chief’s wife could not afford, for the safety of Max and his men and for the reputation of the department, to hire anyone who had the least potential of turning dangerous or stealing from her clients.