Cat Shining Bright

“No. But I haven’t been staying up here long, just since we moved the cats in. And I don’t usually wake at three in the morning—not until the storm hit, and you were knocking on my door,” she said, coloring slightly. “I’m up at midnight to check on the kennel cats, then fall back asleep until about six.”

He stood thinking, his red hair and beard caught in the light from below. “How often did Lena visit her aunt, before Voletta was hurt and Lena moved in?”

“Every few weeks, I guess. I didn’t make a point to go down and visit with her,” she said coolly.

Scotty laughed. “No girly chats over a cup of tea?”

She made a face at him.

It was then that Ryan called to tell them about Joe and Dulcie and Courtney. “There may be a car headed to Voletta’s. We . . . Kate, if a dark SUV pulls in, it’s Wilma’s stalker and that heavyset man. We don’t know where they’re going, but Kit says the scent on the tires could lead there, to Voletta’s place. Joe and Dulcie and Courtney are trapped in that car.”

“Oh my God.”

“The cats dove in behind the driver’s seat. When it stops, see if you can delay the car, give them a chance to get out . . .”

Kate said, “Voletta’s yard is full of cars, men we’ve never seen are moving cars out of the old barn. These have to be the stolen cars. Scotty’s already called the department.”

When they’d hung up, Scotty, moving into the bedroom, pulled on his boots and a jacket over his sweats and hurried outside. “I’m going over to the mansion,” he said, “where I can see better.”

She watched him cross her freshly mown yard and then the tall grass of the berm that separated the shelter from the mansion. He stood just inside the missing wall of the living room, keeping to the shadows. She dressed quickly in a sweatshirt and jeans, strapped on her shoulder holster feeling slightly foolish, and pulled on a vest to conceal it. Better foolish than unprepared. Max had insisted she be armed when she moved up here alone. “You have your permit, Kate. Use it.” He didn’t know, then, nor had she, that she wouldn’t be alone. She was watching Scotty again when something pale moved beside him. One of the feral cats? Surprised, she watched him crouch and reach out to it.

The ferals never came that near strangers. Even when they watched Scotty working on that part of the house, they were shy and wary. Scotty wasn’t one of the inner circle, those few who knew the speaking cats’ secret. She stood frowning and puzzled.

Yesterday morning when she woke at five, Scotty had already eaten and left; the apartment smelled of coffee and fried eggs and bacon. In the tiny kitchen she’d found his dishes neatly washed, resting in the drainer. Looking out at the frost-pale lawn she had seen where his dark footprints had crushed the frost from the mowed grass; had seen the taller, wild grass of the verge falling aside where he had walked through. Maybe, she’d thought, he’d had some new thoughts about the work on the living room, maybe he had gone over to the worksite to consider some change?

But his footprints did not lead to the front of the house, they went toward the back of the old mansion. Dressing quickly, she had gone into the biggest shelter, down at the end, petting cats as she went and talking to them. Standing on a log that was part of a tall cat tree, she could see Scotty behind the old house at the edge of the small, sheltered patio that joined a large bedroom—the private little garden where, not long ago, Ryan and Wilma had found the Bewick book buried.

She had watched him kneel down. She had frozen with surprise when three of the feral cats came out of the bushes and fairly near to him, stood watching him, unafraid: pale Willow and Tansy, and dark tabby Coyote.

She could swear he was talking to them, trying to entice them closer to be petted, these wild cats who would have nothing to do with most humans.

Did the feral cats sense something in Scotty that made them trust him? Did they see a quality in him that drew them, maybe sense the old Scots-Irish traits that might be sympathetic to their own heritage? The cats did not move closer, they were still for a few moments, listening to him, studying him with interest—but then they turned away, almost as if something he’d said had startled them. They drifted back into the shadows and were gone—and within Kate something joyful had exploded, a hope that bubbled up fiercely and made her smile.

All that day she had found it nearly impossible not to wonder if Scotty had guessed the cats’ secret or was on the verge of guessing. Might he have thought he heard them talking and, though he really couldn’t believe that, he was curious?