Padding closer to peer into the dark, small garage, the cats saw no way through that cramped space into the house itself, no inner door. Circling the studio then moving around to the front, they looked for an open window, but they were all closed, probably locked, as Dorothy had left them.

In the side yard a giant cypress tree stood shading the mossy roof. Storming partway up, they tried to see in. Sounded like the Wickens were taking the whole house apart.

They could see little through the old dirty glass; the small panes reflected more of the tree and of themselves than they revealed of the room within.

“Maybe,” Dulcie said, leaping to a higher branch, “maybe we can see through the skylights, maybe the rain has washed them clean.” Scrambling up, she sailed to the mossy shingles and looked down through the nearest slanted pane.

The glass was embedded with chicken wire. Joe and Kit nudged up close to her, their noses pressed to the cold surface. Directly below them stood Leroy Huffman, his dark thick hair so close to them that, if not for the glass, they could have dropped onto his head. He was prying at the wall with a small crowbar, carefully removing soft pieces of composition wallboard. The scarred pine floor beneath his jogging shoes was covered with scraps of the dry, flaking board. Across the room, Ralph Wicken sat on the floor, his back to a narrow strip of wall between two doors. He was doing nothing, he sat sullenly watching. At an adjoining wall Betty Wicken was gently chipping away plaster, revealing the chicken wire beneath.

“Why,” Dulcie said, “would one wall be covered with wallboard, but the other one with plaster?”

Joe Grey shrugged. Who knew, with these old buildings? They watched Betty shake back her dark hair, concentrating on her careful work as if not wanting to damage whatever might lie beneath. The cats couldn’t see that her efforts had gleaned anything of interest, only plaster chips.

Leroy’s wall was another matter. The next piece of tan wallboard that he removed revealed, beneath, something that made him step back, his voice rising.

“Got it,” he said, almost shouting.

“Shhh.” Betty hurried to stand beside him. The cats could see nothing more than a rusted screw. No, three screws, lined up one above the other, some six inches apart, holding in place a thin strip of polished wood.

The strip seemed to frame a smooth portion of wall beneath the outer wall, a very white wall, as if plastered, but as Leroy moved aside, they could see it was painted in patches, too. Patches of gray, green, blue shone out, and quickly Betty ripped away more wallboard.

The screwed-on strips and the board they framed ran from floor to ceiling. The cats, their faces pressed against the skylight, watched Betty move along, tearing off more wallboard to reveal the treasure beneath.

After a quarter hour, they had uncovered a four-foot-wide, floor-to-ceiling painting. “A mural,” Dulcie said. “Part of a mural.” For now the two were stripping away the cardboardlike covering of successive panels of painted landscape. With every panel, the green hills shone more vividly, so filled with light and space that the cats might have been looking through the wall itself to the green winter hills that rose above the village: hills that were emerald bright with new grass beneath a wild and stormy gray sky so sharply reminiscent of these last winter weeks. This painting was Molena Point, the work so rich and real that the cats could almost hear the wind blowing, feel its cold fingers in their fur. Crouching over the skylight, their noses to the glass, they watched Leroy and Betty slowly remove the remaining covering to unveil the entire work; while on the floor in the corner, Ralph still sat, sulking.

“Poor Ralph,” Dulcie said, watching him. “He can’t be too smart. No wonder she watches over him. A man like that, in prison, wouldn’t stand a chance. He’d be victim of every prison brutality in the book.”

“If he is a child molester,” Joe said, “that’s exactly what he deserves.”

Six panels formed the mural, each maybe eight feet tall by four feet wide, each edged by a strip of hardwood to hold it in place and keep it from warping without marring the work itself with screws or nails. The Molena Point hills ran for twenty-four feet of rolling green that slowly turned to summer brown, in a panorama of the central coast seasons-the stormy winter of the present to the sun-golden burn of summer and then back again.

The sense of space and distance made Dulcie think of C. S. Lewis’s words that she so loved, of spaces larger, and mountains higher and farther away, than a living human had ever experienced. The painting filled Kit with the old wild longing she had known as a kitten and that often still returned to her, a hunger of the spirit that made the young cat tremble. The hills that Anna Stanhope had rendered so magnificently made all three cats want to leap away forever into far and unobtainable distances.

Betty Wicken, working with a much gentler hand than she’d displayed when she threw that flowerpot, undid the screws from the stripping and gingerly removed the first panel. This operation showed another side of the woman, showed her art-gallery background in dealing with valuable wares. She had set the first panel aside, leaning it against the wall, when a heavy vehicle pulled up the gravel drive. She spun around, as did Leroy, staring at the door.

“It’s Ryan,” Joe hissed, looking down over the edge of the roof. “Ryan’s truck.” And before Dulcie or Kit could move or speak, Joe’s gray rump and short tail disappeared over the edge and down the cypress trunk. They leaped after him, scrambling into the bushes, and stood watching.

The truck door slammed, and Ryan headed for the cottage. “Mavity?” she called. “Charlie? Who’s here?”

Trying to think what to do, the cats could only crowd through the door behind her.

When Ryan saw strangers, and saw the painting, she stopped cold, her hand flying to her pocket. “What are you doing?” Raised by cops, she wasn’t slow to react, she saw clearly what they were up to. “Get back! Now! Stand against the wall, now!” The bulge in her pocket might be a gun, or might be a wrench or a screwdriver. “Move against the wall now! Face the wall now! Do it now!” She moved quickly, and her split-second reaction was second nature.

Little Ralph Wicken immediately did as he was told; he stood up to face the far wall, and he stood still. Leroy stood still, watching Ryan, undecided about her resolve or whether she was armed. The cats knew she didn’t have a gun, that she wouldn’t come onto the grounds of the children’s home armed. As Leroy made a move toward her, Betty dove at her, swinging a hammer and hitting her a glancing bow; Ryan sidestepped and tripped her. At the same instant the cats leaped and landed on Betty’s back, biting and clawing. Ryan grabbed the end of Betty’s hammer, bending Betty’s wrist back and jamming the hammer into her ribs. Catching her breath, Betty fell. As Leroy lunged at Ryan, Joe Grey leaped in his face, raking with strong hind claws. Beside him, Kit, too, clung to the man, biting and clawing. But Leroy, despite their attack, swung his hammer a glancing blow at Ryan hitting her hard on the side of the head. She staggered, dropped, and lay still.

Betty spun away, ripped a panel from the wall, and passed it to Leroy. “In the van. Hurry up. Put the blankets between.” She snatched another panel, spattering it with her blood. The cats wanted to go to Ryan.

“They’ll be gone in a minute,” Joe whispered, “be still.”

“I can’t be still,” Dulcie hissed. “She needs help.”