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  Tea to Be Held for Genelle Yardley

  A tea will be held on Wednesday at Otter Pine Inn to honor Genelle Yardley on her sixty-sixth birthday. The tea will be hosted by Friends of the Library and by actress Patty Rose, in the inn's charming tearoom. Ms. Yardley has recently placed into trust for Molena Point Library her commercial building next door to the library. On her death, this will provide for a new children's wing and an enlarged reference collection. For many years, Ms. Yardley was known for her storytelling, for charming and original children's fantasies set on the central coast. A small edition was published locally. The book has long been out of print and is a collectors' item.

  For the last twenty years of her career, Ms. Yardley was office manager for Vincent and Reed Electrical Contractors. She left the firm four years ago. She has continued to write folk tales that she has never sought to publish. She has spent much of her time working with Friends of the Library.

  This Genelle Yardley had worked for Vincent and Reed, for Pa's company. She'd worked for them for ever so long, since before Lori herself was born. Lori had heard the librarians talk about a Genelle something, and about a tea party, when she was up in the children's room. One of the librarians said Genelle had something terminal, that meant you were going to die, like Mama. In Greenville, the doctor told the social worker that Mama was terminal; he thought she, Lori, wouldn't know what that meant.

  The librarian said Genelle's neighbors would take her to the party, put her folding wheelchair in the car along with her oxygen tank. Mama had had an oxygen tank. Lori guessed that tea party must be something this Genelle wanted very much before she died. Where do you go when you die? Mama, if you're somewhere, can't you tell me? Can't you just give me a sign, like a seagull flying around my head three times when I go out in the dark morning? Or like a seal rising up out of the ocean to look at me in a special way? Something so I'll know there's another place and you're in it?

  Or are you too far away to do that?

  Or is there nothing? Are you just cold dead, rotting in the ground? But Lori wouldn't let herself think that, she couldn't think that Mama had just stopped being, disappeared into nothing. She had to be somewhere.

  And this Genelle Yardley who was going to die like Mama. Was she scared? Had Mama been scared, underneath, and never told her? Or did Mama really know for sure where she was going? But how could anyone know?

  And more important right now was the fact that Genelle Yardley knew Pa. She'd worked for Pa, had worked for him a long time. Maybe Genelle Yardley knew what happened to Pa to make him so different all of a sudden. Maybe she knew things that even Mama didn't know?

  Did Mama ever go to Genelle Yardley to ask questions? No matter how Mama tried to understand what made Pa change, he would never talk to her, he only shouted at her.

  As far as Lori knew, Mama had never gone to any of their friends for help. Mama would have been ashamed to do that.

  Sliding down from the chair, Lori headed across the reading room with a whole new plan flaring in her mind. Genelle Yardley knew about Pa. Genelle Yardley knew secrets that she, Lori, needed to find out.

  Up the little half flight of seven steps, two at a time, she slipped behind the checkout desk. Shining her flashlight into the shelves beneath the counter, she hauled out the phone book and laid it on the floor. She found a pencil on the desk and a scrap of paper, and knelt on the carpet. Licking the end of the pencil, she found and wrote down Genelle Yardley's address, then turned to the front of the phone book to find the village map. She tried to imagine what Genelle Yardley looked like. She was old. Lori didn't know that people worked until they were over sixty. She wondered if Genelle Yardley had ever been to their house when she, Lori, was little, wondered if she'd ever seen her. She kept wondering if Mama had ever gone to ask that old lady what was wrong with Pa.

  Maybe Genelle Yardley didn't know, either. Maybe she couldn't help her, but Lori had to try.

  This would be the farthest she'd ever gone from the library since she came to live here like a hobbit in a hole. Like Mr. Baggins, she thought, smiling. Only his hobbit hole was a lot bigger, with all kinds of rooms, and was full of hams and bread and cider that she wished her hideout had, too.

  She'd have to go before it got light. Even so, she likely wouldn't get back from Genelle Yardley's house until it was bright morning. She'd have to wait all day, until nine that night, before she could be safe in her cave again.

  And she couldn't hang around the library for too long, and draw attention from the librarians. Some of those women might remember her, from when she was little and Mama worked here. And she didn't dare be seen during school hours.

  She wrote down the streets that climbed the hills to Genelle Yardley's, wrote where to turn and when to start looking for the number. The house was so high up the hills that it had a number. Those in the village didn't. If someone told another person where they lived, it was like, "Third house on Lincoln north of Fourth." People who lived in the village went to the post office to get their mail.

  Going up the hills, she'd have to watch for Pa's truck, out early going to some job. Hide if she saw him. But what worried her was the other man, the man she'd seen standing in the shadows one morning when she went out. She'd seen him later, too, when she slipped out before it was hardly light to walk on the beach. Probably she imagined he was watching her. Probably some homeless man with nowhere to go. Anyway, he was very thin and small, not much taller than she was, and Mama said she was strong for her age. Mama showed her things she could do to get away from someone, things that could hurt a person, so she wasn't very scared of him.

  Folding her slip of paper with the streets and address, she flicked off her flashlight and crossed the library to the stairs. As she headed down to the basement, the courthouse clock struck ten-two hours until midnight. She thought to set her alarm for really early, maybe four A.M. No one would see her on the streets then, it would be deep dark. Windy and cold, too. Pa sure wouldn't be out at that hour.

  But that man, he'd been out there early, before dawn. She looked out at the moonlight, bright now with the moon right overhead. She could go even earlier; he wouldn't be out in the middle of the night, would he? Maybe no one would. She could hurry up the hills to Genelle Yardley's house and hide in the bushes until the old lady woke up. Until Ms. Yardley turned on a light in the morning or came out to get the paper. If anyone bothered her she'd kick them in the groin, the way Mama taught her.

  As Lori bricked herself back into the basement room again and set her little alarm for one in the morning, five blocks away the kit pressed the two brown envelopes up between a floor joist and a plumbing pipe. Secure just inside the vent grid where a cop could reach in, they would not be seen by the casual passerby. Now, with the envelopes safe, the kit circled the underhouse again, frantic to get out. She circled, pawing uselessly at the other two vents, but both were fixed tight to the wall. With screws, she thought. She hooked her claws in but couldn't pull them out.

  Studying the concrete foundation, wondering how deep it went, she found a soft place in the dirt where she could smell the old, dry scent of squirrels, where their digging had made the ground soft.

  Thanking the little rodents that normally she would eat, she began to excavate the churned earth, kicking dirt behind her like a terrier. Her panic at being trapped was worst of all when she did nothing; she needed to move, it eased her to dig even if she had to dig to China. Listening for his car, she clawed down and down, wondering if he was coming back or if he was gone for good. She thought the time was past midnight. She dug straight down for nearly a foot, fighting the dirt away from the concrete wall, trying to find its bottom, scraping the skin from her paws until they bled again. And still the concrete went deeper.

  After a long, long time of digging she found a straight edge to the concrete, where it turned under. Her paws hurt bad. She was very thirsty. And hungry. But the discovery of the bottom of that concrete filled her with terrible joy. Pausing, she thought
she would just rest for a little while before she dug on through and up the other side. Soon enough she'd be free, be out of there and free.

  13

  Above the courthouse tower the clouds moved away; the full force of moonlight washed down across the parapet, caressing the two cats, etching Dulcie's black and brown stripes like a black ink drawing. She lay licking her paw, watching Joe, her ears back in a thoughtful frown but trying to remain silent, letting Joe come to his own conclusion.

  "Maybe you're right about Harper," he said at last. "If we tell the cops about the child, they'll have little choice, they're bound by law to call child welfare-if the kid's really all alone, if there's no family." He studied Dulcie, his yellow eyes narrowed and appraising. "But Wilma's retired, she's a free agent, she's not beholden to the law. She can do as she pleases."

  "But what would she do? You know how she feels about help from the proper officials, she's all for it."

  "Maybe. But she isn't stupid. She knows how twisted some of those agencies can be. You get one bad apple…"

  Dulcie shrugged. "I suppose. So frustrating that I can't ask Lori questions. That I can only hope she tells me more. I don't know why she doesn't want anything to do with child welfare. And the man she talks about, she just says he. I don't know if someone's stalking her, or if the man is family. I tried to find her last name in the library database for library cardholders, for children's cards with the first name Lori. Took me all night, those computers are so temperamental. Why don't they make a steadier machine, one that doesn't go off in a hundred directions?"

  "A cat-friendly computer."

  "Exactly. Someone ought to write to Bill Gates. Well, there's no library card for Lori, not one Molena Point child named Lori in the system." She told him how she had discovered Lori in the first place, when the scent of peanut butter and jelly drew her across the library basement to the bricked-up wall behind a little bookcase.

  "It was late, after the library closed, ten days ago. That's where I've been. She gets so lonely, especially at night. And it's dark in there all day. It took a lot of resolve for the kid to hide there, and I think it takes a lot more to stay."

  Her green eyes were big with concern. "She's not playing, Joe. She's made a safe little home for herself; she's thought it all out. She keeps her toothbrush and extra clothes and a bedroll in her backpack, and hides it in a rough niche in the wall-I think she must have dug the loose bricks out herself, maybe with a pair of scissors from the workroom. There are bits of concrete scattered on the floor, which she's pushed into a heap. And the hole where she enters her little basement, she fits loose bricks back into that really carefully."

  Dulcie smiled, her pale whiskers gleaming in the moonlight. "She does her laundry in the ladies' room after the library closes at night, hangs it in her basement from the rough, sticking-out bricks. Folds and hides the dried clothes when she wakes up in the morning, before the library opens, her little socks and panties, or a blouse, afraid someone might move the bricks and look in.

  "It's hard," Dulcie said, "with librarians working just on the other side of the wall. Hard to stay there in the dark and cold, alone. To only come out at night and early in the morning to use the bathroom and get books. She has everything she needs, though. And she never lets herself look seedy, never misses brushing her teeth, combing her hair, keeping her clothes fresh. She took a little lamp from the library storeroom, and she has a big tin can she empties at night to use as a makeshift bathroom in the daytime. Most children wouldn't do all that. There's an electric plug in there, but her lamp is the battery kind. Maybe the room was part of the library basement once or of the basement across the alley."

  Joe frowned but said nothing.

  "That room is underneath the alley, it has to be. I think it must have once joined the basement of the other building."

  "Why would someone build-"

  "It was originally all one house, in the 1800s. Gardens, stables, a carriage house. A little estate that filled the whole block. I found pictures in a history of Molena Point. The alley was a carriageway between the big house and the servants' quarters, where those apartments and the men's shop are now. Genelle Yardley's parents deeded the main house to the village for a library, but kept the servants' building for rentals. Genelle has lived partly on that income since her husband died and she retired.

  "Somewhere along the way, the lane became a paved service alley. Maybe it was then that the basement beneath was walled off. Maybe something to do with ownership or property rights. Or the weight of the garbage trucks on top of the basement, who knows."

  "You did a lot of research."

  "I wanted to know where that room came from. And where it might once have led." She looked up past the little parapet roof at the slowly dropping moon. "I wanted to know if there might be another way in or out of there, but there doesn't seem to be." Talking about Lori made her sad. Lori, with her little heart-shaped face and the way her mouth tilted up at the corners, and her dark, huge eyes. Dulcie always wanted to touch her with a soft paw, rub her face against Lori and purr. When Lori's tears came, Dulcie had to snuggle close; and when the child pressed her face into Dulcie's fur, Dulcie licked her shining brown hair. "Somehow," Dulcie said, "she got hold of someone's library card, maybe stole it. With that she can open the card lock to the women's bathroom. She brought a flashlight with her, and even extra batteries, and she has a little battery-operated clock. And she knows that library, Joe. Knows her way around.

  "Why has no one missed her?" Dulcie asked. "We'd have heard, if someone was looking for a lost child. When she slips outside, in the early morning before it's light, sneaks out through the basement window, she makes sure no one is on the street or sitting in a car. Makes sure no police car's parked around the corner.

  "She's really skittery; she startles if anything moves, stays in the shadows against the buildings. She must crave getting out. Every couple of days, she goes to walk the shore and drop her little bag of trash and wet paper towels in the public garbage cans."

  "And you follow her."

  Dulcie twitched her ear. "The child's as clever as a cat herself."

  "The streets are lonely that time of morning, Dulcie. Have you thought about someone grabbing her? Even in Molena Point-"

  "I'd rake and bite so hard he'd never grab another child." Dulcie cut him a fierce green-eyed look. "The real problem is, Lori's little stash of canned food won't last much longer. Maybe another three or four days. I don't know if she has any money to slip out and buy more, or if she'd dare go in the market in broad daylight. It's so frustrating not to know who she's hiding from, not to know what happened to her."

  "Maybe she has no one, maybe her parents are dead. A homeless child?"

  "She doesn't look homeless. There've been no reports of a homeless person found dead. And why suddenly move into the library? To get out of the cold and rain? But… I don't know. It doesn't add up. And if someone died recently in the village, a neighbor or school official would report that the child was alone. Everyone would be looking for her."

  "Maybe she ran away from home, and her parents think she'll get over it and come back?"

  "After nearly two weeks? What kind of parents wouldn't report her missing?"

  Joe shrugged. "The kind you know are out there. The no-good ones." He looked hard at her. "So why didn't you trust me enough to tell me?"

  "I didn't trust you not to go to the law."

  "That's not saying much."

  "It's saying a lot. It's saying you think like a cop, Joe. That you'd start checking Captain Harper's desk for fliers on a lost child, watching the computers, listening to every conversation."

  Joe shrugged. "The whole department will be looking now, with a body to identify. Checking the files for lost children."

  "They'll be checking old cases, not recent ones."

  "And the kit? Why didn't you tell the kit?"

  She widened her eyes, and Joe grinned. Of course she wouldn't tell the kit-Kit would be rig
ht down there in the basement making up to Lori, so fascinated that she would find it hard not to speak to the child. Or to blurt out Lori's business to some trusted human.

  "Anyway," Dulcie said, "before Patty's murder, Kit was too busy playing grand lady, living like a queen in her penthouse, letting Lucinda and Pedric spoil her. And now…," she said, "now…"

  "She'll turn up, Dulcie. Kit always turns up." But he leaped restlessly to the brick rail again, pacing, peering down at the moonlit streets for a small, dark feline shape hurrying along, and studying the darkly pooled treetops and shadows. Dulcie, leaping up to join him, wished with all her heart that Kit was at that moment safe in the penthouse, still being spoiled rotten, listening to Lucinda's favorite Dixieland jazz records and ordering outrageous delicacies from room service.

  "So what happens," Joe said, "when Lori runs out of food? You plan to deliver takeout through the basement window?"

  She looked at him bleakly.

  "I'll keep my mouth shut, Dulcie," the tomcat said with unusual constraint. "I do promise. It's your call. But where do we go from here?"

  She smiled and nuzzled him, purring and loving him. "I don't know where. Don't know where to go from here."

  Joe licked his shoulder, then turned his yellow gaze on her. "You wouldn't consider asking for help? Someone who won't go to the law or to Harper."

  Dulcie drew away, alarmed. "Who? Not Charlie, she's Harper's wife, we can't burden her. And Kate Osborne's out of the picture, moving up to Seattle. And Clyde, besides being Harper's best friend, really does think too much like a cop. And right now, Lucinda and Pedric are way too worried about the kit; I don't feel like putting anything more on them. So who…?"