Cat Fear No Evil

24

The ringing phone woke Charlie. She was alone in bed, alone in the house. The time was 11:40. Muzzily she picked up the receiver dunking it was Max. The woman who spoke, her voice, her words, sent chills wriggling down Charlie's spine. "Who?" She sat up in bed, switching on the lamp. "Who is this?''

"It's Lucinda, my dear. Lucinda Greenlaw."

Outside the bedroom window, the thick fog was smeared yellow by the two security lights that illuminated the yard and stable. Clutching the phone, Charlie didn't speak.

"Oh dear, I don't mean to shock everyone. I thought Kate might have called you. We weren't in the RV when it crashed, Charlie. We're alive. We…"

What kind of scam was this? Charlie listened warily. If the Greenlaws were alive, Max would have known right away, from the sheriff. And Lucinda would have called Wilma at once. Charlie sat holding the phone, trying to figure out what was going down.

"Charlie, this is Lucinda. I didn't mean to frighten you. I just talked with Wilma. I need to talk with Max… You're not on a cell phone?"

"No," Charlie said. "It's the be…" She caught her breath. She'd started to say the bedroom phone. She stared toward the hall, wondering if someone had gotten in the house, if someone was on one of the extensions, playing some insane trick. "Who is this?" She wished Max were there. There was no way this could be Lucinda. Max should be talking to this woman.

"It's Lucinda, my dear. Is the captain there? I just talked with Wilma-and with Kit, Charlie. I talked with Kit."

She pulled the covers up. "Lucinda?" She stuffed both pillows behind her.

"We weren't in the RV when it crashed and burned, Charlie, we'd already gotten out, before it reached the highway."

"But where have you been? Why didn't you call? The whole village is grieving."

As she listened to Lucinda's explanation and imagined the elderly couple crawling into the storage compartment and out the other side, slipping and sliding down into the muddy drainage ditch, Charlie began to grin.

She knew that Pedric had completed some work on the new RV to customize it before they ever began to travel, but she hadn't known how much.

"I didn't know," she said, laughing, "how sly Pedric could be. I didn't know with what foresight he did those improvements."

"Sometimes it pays," Lucinda said, "to have grown up in a family of thieves. Pedric knows every way there is to get into- or get out of-a house or trailer or RV."

"This is just… You two are incredible. Max will want to hear this. Call him now, Lucinda. At the station."

"It's all right to call there so late?"

"More than all right." Charlie gave her the number. "We love you, Luanda."

Hanging up, turning out the light, and pulling up the covers, Charlie snuggled down. This was indeed a gift of grace- for the Greenlaws, for the kit, for all their friends. A deep sense of protection filled her, as powerful as when, on her and Max's wedding day, they had escaped that terrible explosion that had been set to kill them and most of the wedding party. Escaping that disaster, she had felt that all of them were blessed and watched over. She felt the same now, with this amazing reprieve.

Within the fog-shrouded police station, Max Harper and Detective Garza sat on either side of Harper's desk with Marlin Dorriss's phone and credit card bills spread out between them. Garza was busy recording pertinent motel stays or gas or restaurant purchases onto a chart, next to the corresponding burglaries. So far they had put Dorriss near the scene of seven thefts. Interestingly, during five of those, his motel bill showed double occupancy.

Harper said, "I hope to hell that wasn't Helen Thurwell. That would tear it. You want to check Helen's time off from the real estate firm?"

Garza nodded. The fact that Dorriss's bills had come to them through the holding cell window did not dampen the intensity with which the officers sorted through them-though how their informant had gotten away so fast off the roof, with uniforms blasting the sky with searchlights, neither Harper nor Garza cared to speculate.

As they studied the information, preparing to petition the judge for a search warrant, the informant himself looked down on their heads from atop Max Harper's bookcase. The tomcat appeared to be sleeping, his yellow eyes closed, his breathing slow and deep. Occasionally, one or the other of the officers would glance up at him, amused. No one knew why the cat was so attracted to cops.

The cat was good company, though, on a quiet late night. Probably he was addicted to the fried chicken and doughnuts that the dispatchers saved for him. Whatever reasons the cat might have, the nervy little freeloader had become a fixture around the station. As were his two lady pals, though the females didn't sprawl all over a guy's desk quite so boldly, nosing at papers and reports.

By the time Harper and Garza set the bills aside, they had eleven possible hits. Leaning back in his chair, Harper propped his feet on the desk, grinning at Dallas. "I think we've made Marlin Dorriss. We sure have enough for a warrant."

"But why the hell," Garza said, "if Dorriss also has a dozen false identities, with credit cards and drivers' licenses as our informant claims he does, why didn't he set up to use those for the thefts?" Their informant had, an hour after the Visa bill drop, called the station to relay the information about the false IDs to the captain.

Garza shrugged. "Guess he couldn't though. In every one of those thefts, there was some affair or charity dinner, so he had a reason to be there. How would he receive phone calls? And in a small town, if he checked into a hotel under a false name, there would be too many possible leaks."

Harper rose to refill their coffee cups. "This is some kind of game for the thief-some high-powered game. Steals one trophy piece from each residence, leaves a fortune untouched."

Garza shrugged. "Takes all kinds."

"I'll see the judge first thing in the morning."

Joe found it hard not to yowl with triumph, not to leap down and give the officers a high five. He listened, very still.

"You really think," Dallas said, "there's any point in searching his local residence? Why would he stash his take anywhere near the village?"

"Not likely, but we'll have to cover it. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me to find it right here. I went through his Molena Point house when it was being built. Contractor is a friend of mine. Dorriss doesn't know I was ever in there."

Harper's dry smile rearranged his lean, tanned wrinkles. "You know how the rich like to build with hiding places, foil the bad guys. That house has it in spades. All those different alcoves, it must have a dozen double walls, hidden dead spaces that no one would ever notice. Sealed up, no access you'd easily see."

"What about the contractor? Dorriss trusted him?"

"I think Dorriss had a little something on the guy." Harper set down his cup. "If the local search gives us nothing, maybe there's rented storage space, though I doubt it. More likely his San Francisco condo, or even Tahoe. I'll call Judge Brameir in the city, get him early in the morning, see if he'll issue a warrant for the condo."

Above the officers' heads, Joe Grey smiled. That was his thinking exactly. And, if Azrael had been in Dorriss's house, as he suspected, if the cat was welcome there, and if Azrael ran with Consuela, then was she Dorriss's partner? Had Consuela been Dorriss's companion in those double occupancy rooms while Dorriss pulled off his burglaries?

If Dorriss's stash was there at the condo, Joe thought, what about Clyde's antique Packard? Was it there, as well, hidden in a garage? Wouldn't that be a hoot. San Francisco PD goes out with a warrant, searches the place, and there's Clyde's valuable restored Packard sitting right there waiting for them. Joe's head was so full of possibilities he thought he'd explode. He had risen, faking a yawn, burning to leap down and go tell Clyde his theory, when the phone buzzed.

Harper hit the speaker.

The dispatcher said, "Thought you'd want this one, Captain."

When she'd put through the call and when Joe heard Lucinda's voice, he nearly fell off the bookshelf. The Greenlaws were alive? Not in the hospital, not harmed in any way, but alive and heading for the city?

Joe listened with the two officers to Lucinda's amazing story, watched the two men's pleased smiles, and listened to Harper's questions and Lucinda's responses: no, they hadn't yet talked with the sheriff, yes they were watching that they weren't followed. When Harper had the whole story and had hung up, he and Dallas were both grinning. This time, even without the law, it looked like the bad guy had got what he deserved. The sense of satisfaction that filled the officers and filled Joe Grey was thick enough to cut with a knife.

As the tomcat dropped from the bookcase to the desk, hit the floor yawning, and padded lazily out of the room, he was so wired that he could barely keep from racing up the hall to the glass door shouting for the dispatcher to let him out-by this time Dulcie knew, the kit knew, and he could hardly wait to hear the little tattercoat's excited yowls.