"We can't take that," Tucker said.

"I know but stairwells are usually near elevator pools so start looking, genius." Her voice was sarcastic.

Sure enough, the stairwell was tucked in the corner, the door unlocked. Tucker, a strong dog for her size, pushed it open and the animals sped downstairs, opening the unlocked door with a red BAs.e.m.e.nT neatly painted across it.

They had landed on the east side of the building, site of the elevator bank.

"Come on, let's get out of here before someone steps off that thing." Murphy turned left, not out of any sense of where she was going but just to escape possible detection. They raced past storage rooms, finally arriving at the boiler room, the hub of all corridors.

"Oh." Pewter saw the blood on the wall; most of it had been washed off, but enough had stained into the old stone wall that she could see it.

The three sat down for a moment, considering where Hank Brevard's body had been crumpled.

"This is where Mom got hit on the head. In this room." Tucker put her nose to the ground but all she could smell was oil from the furnace.

"She should never have come in here by herself," Pewter complained. "She has no fear and that isn't always a good thing."

"Boy, you'd think the hospital could afford better lights." The dog noted the low wattage.

"That's why we're here." Mrs. Murphy systematically checked out each corner of the room. "Let's go outside."

"Which door?" Tucker asked.

"The one in the opposite direction. We came in from the east. Let's go west."

"I hope you remember because it all looks the same to me." The bas.e.m.e.nt gave Pewter the creeps.

"Wimp."

"I'm not a wimp." Pewter smacked Murphy, who smacked her back.

"Girls," Tucker growled.

The cats stopped following the dog as she pushed open the door, which wasn't latched. A hallway led to the end of the building. The light from the small square in the door was brighter than the lights overhead.

"Is that the door we first tried?" Pewter asked.

"Yes. It's the only door downstairs on the west side."

They slowly walked down the hall, the storage rooms appearing as innocuous to them as they had to the humans. Satisfying themselves that nothing was amiss in that hall, they returned to the boiler room and went down the southerly corridor, the one which contained the incinerator.

Tucker sniffed when they entered the room. "This incinerator could destroy a mult.i.tude of sins."

"And does, I'm sure," Pewter said.

"Nothing in here." Tucker had thoroughly sniffed everything.

They returned to the corridor, poking their heads in rooms. Hearing voices, they ducked into a room that had empty cartons neatly stacked against the wall.

Bobby Minifee and Booty Weyman walked by. Bobby had been promoted to Hank's job and Booty had moved up to day schedule. Engrossed in conversation, they didn't even glance into the storage room.

Tucker put her nose to the ground once the men pa.s.sed. The cats heard them turn toward the boiler room.

"Someone's been here recently." Tucker moved along the cartons.

"That doesn't mean anything. People have probably been in each of these rooms for one thing or another." Pewter was getting peckish.

Tucker paid no attention to her. Murphy knew her canine friend well enough to put her own nose to the ground. She could smell shoes, one with leather soles, one with rubber.

"Hands." Tucker stopped over a spot on the old slate floor. "I can smell the oil on their hands. They've been here today."

"Hands on the floor?" Pewter's gray eyebrows shot upward, for the dog was sniffing where the wall met the floor.

"Yes." Tucker kept sniffing. "Here, just above the floor."

"Pewter, look for a handle or something," Murphy ordered her.

"In the wall?"

"Yes, you dimwit!"

"I'm not a dimwit." Pewter declined to further the argument because she, too, was intrigued.

The animals sniffed the walls. Murphy, claws out, tapped and patted each stone, part of the original foundation.

"Hey." Pewter stopped. "Do that again."

The two cats strained to hear. Murphy rapped her claws harder this time. A faint hollow sound rewarded her efforts.

"Flat down," Tucker whispered as Bobby and Booty returned, but once again the two men didn't look toward the room full of boxes.

When they pa.s.sed, the dog came over to the cats. She sniffed the wall as high up as she reached. "Yes, here. Human hands."

"Let's push it," Murphy said and the three leaned against the square stone.

A smooth, soft sliding sound rewarded their efforts, then a soft clink surprised them. The floor opened up. One big slate stone slid under another one, revealing a ladder. It was dark as pitch down there.

"Tucker, you stay here. Pewter, you with me?" Murphy climbed down the ladder.

Wordlessly, Pewter followed. Once down there their eyes adjusted.

"It's a bunch of machines." Pewter was puzzled.

"Yeah, those drip things. They don't look broken up."

"Get out of there. Someone's coming!" Tucker yelled.

The two cats shot up the ladder, the three animals leaned against the stone in the wall, and the slate rolled back into place.

Breathlessly they listened as the steps came closer.

"Behind this carton." They crouched behind a tumbled-down carton as Jordan Ivanic walked into the room and threw a switch. He plucked a carton off the top of the neat pile, turned, hit the switch off, and left.

"Let's get out of here before we're trapped," Pewter whispered.

"You know, I think you're right," Mrs. Murphy agreed.

They hurried down the corridor, pushed open the stairwell door, ran back up one flight of stairs, and dashed out onto the loading dock. They jumped off and ran the whole way back to the post office, bursting through the animals' door.

"Where have you been?" Harry noted the time at four-thirty.

"You'll never guess what we found," Pewter breathlessly told her.

"She won't get it." Tucker sat down.

"It's just as well. The last thing we want is Harry back in that hospital." Murphy wondered what to do next.

30.

"What is this?" Mim pushed a letter across the counter.

Mrs. Murphy, with quick reflexes, smacked her paw down on the 8'' x 11'' white sheet of paper before it skidded off onto the floor. "Got it."

Pewter, also on the counter, peered down at the typewritten page. She read aloud, Meet me. I will be the next victim. I need your help to escape. Why you? You are the only person rich enough not to be corrupted. Put a notice for a lost dog named Bristol on the post office bulletin board if you will help me. I will get back to you with when and where."

Harry slid the paper from underneath the tiger's paw.

"Well?" Miranda walked over to read over her shoulder.

"Well, this is a crackpot of the first water." Miranda pushed her gla.s.ses back up on her head. "I'm calling the sheriff." She flipped up the divider.

"Wait. Let's talk about this for a minute," Harry said.

"This could be the killer playing some kind of weird game." Mim headed for the phone.

"Sit down, Mim. You've had a shock." Miranda propelled her to the table.

"Shock? Seismic." The thin, beautifully dressed woman sank into the wooden kitchen chair at the back table.

"This letter is from someone who knows our community, knows it well." Miranda searched her mind for some explanation but could come up with nothing.

Harry noticed the time, eight-thirty in the morning. She had a habit of checking clocks when she'd walk or drive by, then she'd check her wrist.w.a.tch, her father's old watch. Ran like a top. Mim usually preceded everyone else into the post office in the morning. Like Harry and Miranda she was an early riser and early risers find each other just as night owls do. She tiptoed around Mim, knowing how hard Larry's death had hit her.

"Trap." Tucker found the letter irritating.

"Possibly." Mrs. Murphy twitched the fur along her spine.

"Flea?" Pewter innocently asked.

"In February?" Mrs. Murphy shot her a dirty look.

"We spend much of our time indoors. They could be laying eggs in the carpet, the eggs hatch, and you know the rest of the story."

"You're getting some kind of thrill out of this. Besides, if I had fleas you'd have them, too." The tiger swatted at the gray cat.

"Not me." Pewter smiled, revealing her white fangs. "I'm allergic to fleas."

"Doesn't mean you don't get them, Pewter, it means once you do get them you also get scabs all over." Tucker giggled. "Then Mother has to wash and powder you and it's a big mess."

"She hides the powder until she's grabbed you." Mrs. Murphy relished Pewter's discomfort at bath time. "First the sink, a little warm water, baby shampoo, lots of lather. My what a pretty cat you are in soapsuds. Then a rinsing. A second soaping. More rinsing. A dip with medicated junk. Drying with a towel. You look like a rock star with your spiky do. Pewter, the Queen of Hip-Hop."

"I don't listen to hip-hop." The rotund gray kitty sniffed.

"You hip-hop. You shake one hind leg, then the other. Real disco." Murphy howled with laughter.

"You know." Tucker, on the floor, paced as the humans discussed the letter. "What if this plea is like Mom with the flea powder? What's hidden?"

Murphy leapt down to sit next to her friend. "But we know what's hidden."

Pewter put her front paws on the wood, then slowly slid down. "Not exactly, Murphy. We know those machines, those IVAC units are under the bas.e.m.e.nt floor but maybe that was the only place to store them. So we don't really know what's hidden and we don't know what this letter is hiding."

"Why Mim? Why not Sheriff Shaw?" Tucker frowned, confused.

"Because the writer is tainted somehow. The sheriff would pose a danger. Mim's powerful but not the law." Mrs. Murphy leaned into Tucker. She often sat tight with the dog or slept with her, her head curled up next to Tucker's head.

"Put up the notice. Put one up in the supermarket, too." Harry put her hands together, making a steeple with her forefingers. "Everyone will see it. That we know. Then do like the letter requests: wait for directions."

"Without calling Sheriff Shaw!" Mim was incredulous.

"Well-don't you think he'll want to keep you under watch? It would be clumsy. The letter writer would notice."

"Are you suggesting I be bait?" Mim slapped her hand on the table.

"No."

"What are you suggesting, Harry?" Miranda folded her arms across her chest.

"That we wait for directions."

"We? You don't know when and where I might receive these directions. I could be hustled into a car and no one would know."

"She's right," Miranda agreed.