Her daughter was coming home.
When she finished her breakfast, she pushed aside the newspaper and sat looking out the window at the damp rose garden. The sodden blooms seemed impossibly bright in the slanting sun, as unnaturally colorful as flowers in a vivid dream.
She lost track of time, might have been sitting there two minutes or ten, when she was snapped out of her reverie by a thump and clatter somewhere in the house. She sat straight up, rigid, tense, scared, her mind filled with images of blood-spattered walls and cold dead forms in opaque plastic bags.
Then Pepper broke the ominous spell by dashing out of the dining room, into the kitchen, claws clicking on the tile. She scampered into a corner, stood there, the hair raised along her back, ears flattened, staring at the doorway through which she had come. Then with a sudden self-consciousness that was comical, the cat pretended nonchalance, curled up in a furry puddle on the floor, yawned, and turned sleepy eyes on Laura, as if to say, ‘Who, me? Lose my feline dignity? Even for a moment? Never! Scared? Ridiculous!’
‘What’d you do, puss? Knock something over, spook yourself?’
The calico yawned again.
‘It better not have been anything breakable,’ Laura said, ‘or I might finally get those cat-skin earmuffs I’ve been wanting.’
She went through the house, looking for the damage that Pepper had done, and she found it in the guest bedroom. The teddy bear and the Raggedy Ann doll were lying on the floor. Fortunately, the cat had not clawed the stuffing out of them. The alarm clock had been knocked off the nightstand. Laura picked it up and saw that it was still ticking; the glass face wasn’t cracked, either. She put the clock back where it belonged, returned the doll and the bear to the bed.
Strange. Pepper had gotten over the reckless-kitten stage three years ago. She was now slightly plump, content, and thoroughly self-satisfied. This rambunctiousness was out of character, yet another indication that she knew her place in the McCaffrey household was no longer second to Laura.
In the kitchen, the cat was still in the corner.
Laura put food in the calico’s dish. ‘Lucky for you nothing broke. You wouldn’t like being made into earmuffs.’
Pepper rose to a crouch, and her ears perked up. Tapping the dish with the empty can of 9 Lives, Laura said, ‘Chowtime, you ferocious mouse-mauler.’
Pepper didn’t move.
‘You’ll eat it when you want it,’ Laura said, taking the empty can to the sink to rinse it before tossing it in the garbage.
Abruptly, Pepper exploded from the corner, streaked across the kitchen, through the doorway, into the living room, gone.
‘Crazy cat,’ Laura said, frowning at the untouched 9 Lives. Usually, Pepper was pushing in at the yellow dish, trying to eat even as Laura was scraping the food from the can.
PART TWO
ENEMIES WITHOUT
FACES
WEDNESDAY
1:00 P.M. – 7:45 P.M.
11
At one o’clock, when Laura drove her blue Honda to Valley Medical, a uniformed policeman at the entrance to the main parking lot barred the way. He directed her to the staff lot, which had been opened to the public ‘until we straighten out the mess here.’ Eighty to a hundred feet behind him was a cluster of LAPD cruisers and other official vehicles, some with emergency beacons rotating and flashing.
As she followed the patrolman’s directions and headed toward the staff lot, Laura glanced to the right, through the fence, and saw Lieutenant Haldane. He was the tallest and biggest man among those at the scene. She suddenly realized that the commotion might have a connection with Melanie and with the murders in Studio City the previous night.
By the time she slotted the Honda between two cars with MD plates and ran back the hospital driveway to the fence that encircled the public parking lot, Laura had half convinced herself that Melanie was hurt or missing or dead. The patrolman at the gate would not let her through, not even when she told him who she was, so she shouted to Dan Haldane.
He hurried across the macadam, favoring his left leg. Not much, only slightly. She might not have noticed if her senses hadn’t been sharply honed by fear. He took her by the arm and led her away from the gate, along the fence, to a spot where they could talk privately.